Secrecy News Articles
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on secrecy from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban emigres, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's ... Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years. The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba. Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof ... that the fault lies with the Communists." The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after.
Note: Why was ABC the only major news source to report on this highly revealing story? Read the shocking declassified documents on Operation Northwoods. Many military and political leaders look at the world as a grand chessboard. Sacrificing pawns (innocent civilians) is sometimes necessary to capture the queen. Explore revealing news articles on military corruption. Then check out eye-opening 9/11 news articles.
How much influence do private networks of the rich and powerful have on government policies and international relations? One group, the Bilderberg, has often attracted speculation that it forms a shadowy global government. Every year since 1954 [they have brought] together about 120 leading business people and politicians. At this year's meeting in Germany, the audience included the heads of the World Bank and European Central Bank, Chairmen or Chief Executives from Nokia, BP, Unilever, DaimlerChrysler and Pepsi ... editors from five major newspapers, members of parliament, ministers, European commissioners ... and the queen of the Netherlands. The chairman ... is 73-year-old Viscount Etienne Davignon. In an extremely rare interview, he played down the importance of Bilderberg. "I don't think (we are) a global ruling class because I don't think a global ruling class exists." Will Hutton ... who attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1997, says people take part in these networks in order to influence the way the world works, to create what he calls "the international common sense". And that "common sense" is one which supports the interests of Bilderberg's main participants. For Bilderberg's critics the fact that there is almost no publicity about the annual meetings is proof that they are up to no good. Bilderberg meetings often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names. Bill Clinton went in 1991 while still governor of Arkansas, Tony Blair was there two years later while still an opposition MP. All the recent presidents of the European Commission attended Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed. Informal and private networks like Bilderberg have helped to oil the wheels of global politics and globalisation for the past half a century.
Note: Why is this meeting of top world leaders kept so secret? Why, until a few years ago, was there virtually no reporting on this influential group in the major media? Thankfully, the alternative media has had some good articles. And a Google search can be highly informative. Explore many other revealing major media news articles on powerful secret societies. And for those interested, check out reliable, eye-opening information covering the big picture of how and why these secret societies are using government-sponsored mind control programs to achieve their agenda.
The U.S. government's official line may be that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) don't pose a national security threat, but a group of former Air Force officers gathered Monday in the nation's capital to tell a different story. During a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., seven former Air Force officers once stationed at nuclear bases around the country said that not only have UFOs visited Air Force bases, some have succeeded in disabling nuclear missiles stationed there. "I want the government to acknowledge that this phenomenon exists," said Robert Salas, a former U.S. Air Force Nuclear Launch Officer. Salas said he doesn't think the UFOs he claims to have encountered had any offensive intent, but he believes they wanted to leave an impression. "They wanted to shine a light on our nuclear weapons and just send us a message," he said. "My interpretation is the message is get rid of them because it's going to mean our destruction." Other former officers recounted similar stories of unexplained moving lights and odd-shaped flying objects during their time in the service. Leslie Kean, an investigative journalist and author of the new book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record," said thousands of pages of documentation support the officers' accounts. She spent the last 10 years researching UFOs and combing through thousands of pages of declassified government material. Kean said that one declassified document that she researched for her book, relating to the Salas incident, said, "the fact that no apparent reason for the loss of the 10 missiles can easily be identified is a cause for grave concern to this headquarters."
Note: Watch CNN coverage of this most fascinating testimony. A 3-minute summary is available here. This is not the first time government and military witnesses have testified at the National Press Club about a major cover-up of UFOs. Watch 22 witnesses testifying to remarkable personal stories in May 2001. A two-page written summary presents amazing UFO testimony from top officials. And don't miss these fascinating news articles on UFOs. What may be the best UFO documentary ever made, Out of the Blue, is also available for free viewing.
Findings of the Select Committee on Assassinations in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Tex., November 22, 1963. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy. The [original] investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive. The Department of Justice failed to exercise initiative in supervising and directing the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the assassination. The Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. The Central Intelligence Agency was deficient in its collection and sharing of information both prior to and subsequent to the assassination. The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.
Note: This sameUS Congressional report, on the subject of the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, states that "The committee believes, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence available to it, that there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King asa result of a conspiracy." Why hasn't this information been widely reported and become public knowledge? Explore apossible answer. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on assassinations from reliable major media sources.
The Central Intelligence Agency conducted a 14-year program to find ways to "control human behavior" through the use of chemical, biological and radiological material, according to agency documents made public today by John Marks. The documents ... suggested broader experimentation on unwitting humans by the intelligence agency or its paid researchers than had been publicly known before. Mr. Marks distributed 20 documents that described the following incidents, among others: In 1956, the C.I.A. contracted with a private physician to test "bulbocapnine," a drug that can cause stupor or induce a catatonic state, on monkeys and "convicts incarcerated at" an unnamed state penitentiary. A letter from an unnamed C.I.A. official in 1949 discussed ways of killing people without leaving a trace. "I believe that there are two chemical substances which would be most useful in that they would leave no characteristic pathological findings," the letter said. In 1952, two Russian agents who were "suspected of being doubled" were interrogated using "narcohypnotic" methods. The two men were given sodium pentothal and a stimulant. One interrogation produced a "remarkable" regression, the papers said, during which "the subject actually relived certain past activities of his life. The subject totally accepted Mr. [name deleted] as an old and trusted and beloved personal friend whom the subject had known in years past in Georgia, U.S.S.R." The C.I.A. conducted secret medical experiments from 1949 through 1963 under the code names Bluebird, Artichoke, MK Ultra and MK Delta.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Watch a one-minute video clip showing Congressional testimony on a dart gun which causes a heart attack without leaving any evidence. Explore further reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up of government mind control programs. Read other revealing news articles on mind control.
A posthypnotic of the night before (pointed finger, you will sleep) was enacted. Misses [deleted] and [deleted] immediately progressed to a deep hypnotic state with no further suggestion. Miss [deleted] 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 [deleted] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and failing this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [deleted]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to kill [deleted] for failing to awaken. Miss [deleted] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded) gun at [deleted] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. Both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss [deleted] 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. For many revealing news articles on mind control, click here.
In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. authorities seized and suppressed film shot in the bombed cities by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams to prevent Americans from seeing the full extent of devastation wrought by the new weapons. It remained hidden until the early 1980s and has never been fully aired. "Although there are clearly huge differences with Iraq, there are also some similarities," said Mitchell, co-author of "Hiroshima in America" and editor of Editor & Publisher. "The chief similarity is that Americans are still being kept at a distance from images of death, whether of their own soldiers or Iraqi civilians." The Los Angeles Times released a survey of six months of media coverage of the Iraq war in six prominent U.S. newspapers and two news magazines -- a period during which 559 coalition forces, the vast majority American, were killed. It found they had run almost no photographs of Americans killed in action. "So much of the media is owned by big corporations and they would much rather focus on making money than setting themselves up for criticism from the White House and Congress," said Ralph Begleiter, a former CNN correspondent. In 1945, U.S. policymakers wanted to be able to continue to develop and test atomic and eventually nuclear weapons without an outcry of public opinion. "They succeeded but the subject is still a raw nerve."
Note: As this highly revealing Reuters article was strangely removed from both the New York Times and the Reuters websites, see this webpage to view it in its entirely on one of the few news websites to report it. And see this powerful article to go much deeper into how the devastating effects of the bomb were covered up by various entities within government. For more, read an essay by one of the most highly decorated U.S. generals titled "War is a Racket."
For more than 50 years, the National Prayer Breakfast has been a Washington institution. Every president has attended the breakfast since Eisenhower. Besides the presidents ... the one constant presence at the National Prayer Breakfast has been Douglas Coe. Although hes not an ordained minister, the 79-year-old Coe is the most important religious leader you've never seen or heard. Scores of senators in both parties ... go to small weekly Senate prayer groups that Coe attends, [including] senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Observers who have investigated Coes group, called The Fellowship Foundation, [describe] a secretive organization. Coe repeatedly urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Its a commitment Coe compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded. "Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler. Think of the immense power these three men had. Coe also quoted Jesus and said: One of the things [Jesus] said is 'If any man comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple." Writer Jeff Sharlet ... lived among Coe's followers six years ago, and came out troubled by their secrecy and rhetoric. We were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao. Hitlers genocide wasnt really an issue for them. It was the strength that he emulated, said Sharlet, who ... has now written about The Fellowship, also known to insiders as The Family, in [a] book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
Note: This article strangely has been removed from the MSNBC website, though you can still access it using the Internet Archive. Watch the incredible four-minute NBC video clip showing Coe praising a communist Red Guard member for cutting the head off his mother at this link. For more on Coe's powerful links to Congress and corruption, see the MSNBC article available here. And for powerful inside information from a mind programmer who claims to have escaped from "the family," and another who says he is from a very high level there, click here and here. To develop an understanding of the bigger picture behind all of this, click here.
Pres. Bush and John Kerry were both members of the secret organization. ‘Skull and Bones’ dates to 1832. It was in fact a reaction to a secret society, the Masons. Founder William Huntington Russell thought of his little enclave as sort of anti-Masons and as a home for the wealthy and the powerful ... who would do anything for another Bonesman. Each year, 15 young undergraduate seniors are tapped for membership. Members of ‘Skull and Bones’ gather on High Street in the Yale campus at the tomb. New members, the neophytes, are expected to do things like lie in coffins, wrestle in mud, kiss a skull, and confess their sexual histories in front of the group to bond themselves together. Once you‘re in, you‘re in: ‘Skull and Bones’ is for life. There are a lot of [famous] Bonesmen ... Henry Luce, who created “TIME” magazine; Harold Stanley, founder of Morgan Stanley; William F. Buckley; Averell Harriman, long-time governor of New York. And then there are the presidents: William Howard Taft, whose father, Alphonso, had helped found the group; George Herbert Walker Bush, whose father, Prescott, was a Bonesman and a senator; the current President Bush. [And there's] John Kerry, Bonesman class of ‘66. His wife Teresa Kerry‘s first husband, John Heinz ... was ‘Skull and Bones.’ Both Bush and Kerry refused to answer ‘Meet the Press’ host Tim Russert when asked about the organization. Alexandra Robbins, author of “Secrets of the Tombs" [said] "The sole purpose of Skull and Bones is to get members into positions of power and then to have those members hire other members to prominent positions, which is something that President Bush has done."
Note: For a highly revealing, four-minute CNN News clip on Skull and Bones, click here. Many have claimed that secret societies have not had much influence on world politics. This article and video raises many serious questions about this. For those interested in exploring reliable information covering the big picture of how and why these secret societies are using government-sponsored mind control programs to achieve their agenda, click here. And for other revealing media news articles on powerful secret societies, click here.
For nearly nine months the congressional investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency have been conducted behind closed doors. In the old Senate caucus room the ten members of the select Senate committee were questioning CIA officials, including Director William Colby and the deputy director for science and technology, Sayre Stevens, about 11 gm. of shellfish toxin and 8 mg. of cobra venom discovered last May in a CIA storeroom. Colby revealed that the agency in 1952 began a supersecret research program, code-named M.K. Naomi, partly to find countermeasures to chemical and biological weapons that might be used by the Russian KGB. CIA researchers ... came up with an array of James Bond weaponry that could use the shellfish toxin and other poisons as ammunition. To illustrate his testimony, Colby handed a pistol to Committee Chairman Frank Church. Resembling a Colt .45 equipped with a fat telescopic sight, the gun fires a toxin-tipped dart, almost silently and accurately up to 250 ft. Moreover, the dart is so tinythe width of a human hair and a quarter of an inch longas to be almost indetectable, and the poison leaves no trace in a victim's body. Charles Senseney, an engineer for the Defense Department, told the Senators that he had devised dart launchers that were disguised as walking canes and umbrellas.
Note: This silent, lethal dart gun causes what looks like a natural heart attack. If this sophisticated assassination technology was available back in 1975, what kind of secret weapons do you think they have now? To watch an incredible one-minute video clip on this dart gun, click here. To watch the full, highly revealing Warner Brothers documentary Secrets of the CIA, click here. For other riveting major media articles along these lines, click here.
After receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending it. Some won't even talk about it. "We're choosing not to disclose that," said Kevin Heine, spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, which received about $3 billion. The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific answers. Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going. There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion ... to help rescue the financial industry. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them ... not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks that don't comply. Meanwhile, banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year. Congress attached nearly no strings to the $700 billion bailout in October. And the Treasury Department, which doles out the money, never asked banks how it would be spent. No bank provided even the most basic accounting for the federal money. Most banks wouldn't say why they were keeping the details secret.
Note: Explore key information that the bankers don't want you to know on the Federal Reserve, which is neither federal, nor a reserve. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the banking bailout from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources suggesting major corruption provided in our Banking Information Center.
Project Blue Book was the code name for an Air Force program set up in 1952 ... to explain away or debunk as many [UFO] reports as possible in order to mitigate possible panic and shield the public from a genuine national security problem. The prominent astronomer J. Allen Hynek ... was recruited as Blue Books scientific consultant and was indeed initially committed to explaining away flying saucers as natural phenomena or mistaken identifications. Hynek, the former U.F.O. skeptic, eventually concluded that they were a real phenomenon in dire need of scientific attention, with hundreds of cases in the Blue Book files still unexplained. Even many of the closed cases were resolved with ridiculous, often infuriating explanations, sometimes by Hynek himself. Blue Book compiled reports of 12,618 sightings of unidentified flying objects, of which 701 remain unexplained to this day. The mystery of the elusive flying objects is still far from solved. In 1947. Lt. General Nathan Twining ... sent a secret memo on Flying Discs to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces at the Pentagon. Twining stated that the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious. Documents show the C.I.A. then devised a plan for a national policy, as to what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic. The C.I.A. issued a secret report recommending a broad educational program for all intelligence agencies, with the aim of training and debunking. When Blue Book closed in late 1969, the Air Force flatly lied to the American people.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on a UFO cover-up from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Saying that the current investigation into how and why the twin towers fell on Sept. 11 is inadequate, some of the nation's leading structural engineers and fire-safety experts are calling for a new, independent and better-financed inquiry that could produce the kinds of conclusions vital for skyscrapers and future buildings nationwide. Experts critical of the current effort ... point out that the current team of 20 or so investigators has no subpoena power and little staff support and has even been unable to obtain basic information like detailed blueprints of the buildings that collapsed. Some structural engineers have said that one serious mistake has already been made ... the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses that held up the buildings. Interviews with a handful of members of the team, which includes some of the nation's most respected engineers, also uncovered complaints that they had at various times been shackled with bureaucratic restrictions that prevented them from interviewing witnesses, examining the disaster site and requesting crucial information like recorded distress calls to the police and fire departments. Members have been threatened with dismissal for speaking to the press.
Note: Our website has over 30 full articles posted from the New York Times. This is the only article for which the Times threatened to sue us if we didn't remove it. We were allowed to replace it with this short summary. For more on this, click here. For a two-page summary of many more major media news articles suggesting a major cover-up of 9/11, click here.
On July 26, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”. The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015 the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion. Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress. An appendix to the July 2016 report shows $2 trillion in changes to the Army General Fund balance sheet due to unsupported adjustments. On the asset side, there is $794 billion increase in the Army's Fund Balance with the U.S. Treasury. There is also an increase of $929 billion in the Army's Accounts Payable. What is the source of the additional $794 billion in the Army's Fund Balance? The July 2016 report is not the only such report of unsubstantiated adjustments. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015. [And why] after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, [was] the OIG's webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported "accounting adjustments," ... mysteriously taken down?
Note: Explore this webpage for a brief background to this astounding news. See also a detailed analysis of these missing trillions, which amount to $65,000 per man, woman, and child in the US. And don't miss this highly revealing interview with Prof. Mark Skidmore of Michigan State with even more startling news.
There he was, five decades later, the priest who had raped Joe Callander in Massachusetts. The photo in the Roman Catholic newsletter showed him with a smile across his wrinkled face, near-naked Amazon Indian children in his arms and at his feet. The Rev. Mario Pezzotti was working with children and supervising other priests in Brazil. It's not an isolated example. In an investigation spanning 21 countries across six continents, The Associated Press found 30 cases of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad. Some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in another country, and some abused again. A priest who admitted to abuse in Los Angeles went to the Philippines, where U.S. church officials mailed him checks and advised him not to reveal their source. A priest in Canada was convicted of sexual abuse and then moved to France, where he was convicted of abuse again in 2005. Another priest was moved back and forth between Ireland and England, despite being diagnosed as a pederast, a man who commits sodomy with boys. "The pattern is if a priest gets into trouble and it's close to becoming a scandal or if the law might get involved, they send them to the missions abroad," said Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and critic of what he says is a practice of international transfers of accused and admitted priest child abusers. "Anything to avoid a scandal."
Note: This is only the tip of the iceberg. If you want to understand how pedophile rings have infiltrated the highest levels of government, don't miss the powerful Discovery Channel documentary on this available here.
Former New Jersey attorney general John Farmer served as senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, tasked with investigating the government response to the attacks. His new book, The Ground Truth, picks up where the commission left off — taking a deeper look at the government's ... response to the attacks and exposing officials determined to hide their failings from the inquiry. Farmer uses newly released transcripts and recordings to cast doubt on the official version of events. He spoke with TIME. [Time:] Why do you think officials tried to obscure [the truth about 9/11]? [Farmer:] It's almost a culture of concealment. You have someone like Sandy Berger ... taking rather extreme measures to remove documents from the National Archives and hide them at a construction site where he could retrieve them later and destroy them. There were interviews made at the FAA's New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened. If what the government is telling you isn't true, then the truth could be anything. I think there is evidence that the truth wasn't told and that at least some of that was deliberate.
Note: Many respected scholars, officials and professionals have questioned the 9/11 Commission's report. Click here and here to read some of their statements. For lots more reliable, verifiable information from the major media questioning the 9/11 Commission's report, click here and here.
LARRY KING: On July 8th, 1947, Colonel William H. Blanchard, commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field released a press statement that a flying saucer had crashed ... and that the Army had recovered the disk within hours. A second press release was issued claiming that it was nothing more than a weather balloon. Carlene Green['s] father was stationed [there]. GREEN: He said, "Don't let anybody tell you that the incident at Roswell did not happen. I was there. I saw the spacecraft." They were told, don't talk about it. SCHMITT: [They] threatened physical violence if they should ever talk about this. KING: Frankie Rowe. Her father was a fireman in Roswell. [He] reported to his family that in addition to a crashed saucer, he saw two full body bags and one living little person. ROWE: He said that they tried to help it. KING: We are now joined by ... Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo XIV astronaut, sixth man to walk on the moon. MITCHELL: All of my experience comes from what I call the old timers. Because I lived in the area ... and because I was an astronaut, some of them wanted to get it off their chest before they passed on. I eventually went to the Pentagon and asked for a meeting with the Intelligence Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A vice admiral said ... I don't know about that but I'm going to find out. [He] called a few weeks later and said he had found the source of the black budget funding for this project and that he was going to subsequently investigate. [Yet he was later] told, I'm sorry, admiral, you do not have need to know here. We knew many of the people, including the ranch where this was discovered, and in spite of all of the security oaths, etc, the talk in the community was ... that it was an alien craft.
Note: Watch video clips of this CNN report. Read more detailed, fascinating testimony on the existence of UFOs from Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon. Explore our resource-filled UFO Information Center. For other revealing news articles on UFOs, see this webpage.
The Sept. 11 commission was so frustrated with repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and FAA about their response to the 2001 terror attacks that it considered an investigation into possible deception, the panel's chairmen say in a new book. Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton also say in "Without Precedent" that their panel was too soft in questioning former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and that the 20-month investigation may have suffered for it. The book...recounts obstacles the authors say were thrown up by the Bush administration, internal disputes over President Bush's use of the attacks as a reason for invading Iraq, and the way the final report avoided questioning whether U.S. policy in the Middle East may have contributed to the attacks. "Fog of war...could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue," the book states. The questioning of Giuliani was considered by Kean and Hamilton "a low point" in the commission's examination of witnesses during public hearings. "We did not ask tough questions, nor did we get all of the information we needed to put on the public record." In their book, which goes on sale Aug. 15, Kean and Hamilton recap obstacles they say the panel faced in putting out a credible report in a presidential election year, including fights for access to government documents and an effort to reach unanimity.
The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency. For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States. I e-mailed a list of 28 questions to Bill Keller, the executive editor [of the New York Times], on Dec. 19, three days after the article appeared. He promptly declined to respond to them. I then sent the same questions to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, who also declined to respond. They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future. The top Times people involved in the final decisions [are] refusing to talk and urging everyone else to remain silent.
Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this. "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" ... argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned ... around the world." Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people? Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing? The film ... directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda. "The nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."
Note: If above link fails, click here. This highly revealing film by one of Britain's most respected documentary makers is available for free viewing on the Internet. For the link and lots more on this amazingly revealing documentary, click here. For an excellent review of the film in one of the U.K.'s leading newspapers, click here.
The Carlyle Group [is] an investment house famous as one of the most well-connected companies anywhere. Former president George H.W. Bush is a Carlyle adviser. Former British prime minister John Major heads its European arm. Former secretary of state James Baker is senior counselor, former White House budget chief Richard Darman is a partner, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt is senior adviser -- the list goes on. Those associations have brought Carlyle enormous success. The Washington-based merchant bank controls nearly $14 billion in investments, making it the largest private equity manager in the world. It buys and sells whole companies the way some firms trade shares of stock. But the connections also have cost Carlyle. It has developed a reputation as the CIA of the business world -- omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister. Media outlets from the Village Voice to BusinessWeek have depicted Carlyle as manipulating the levers of government from shadowy back rooms. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even suggested that Carlyle's and Bush's ties to the Middle East made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It didn't help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. Bush['s] primary function is to give speeches for Carlyle that attract wealthy foreigners in places where the former president is especially revered, such as Asia. The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36 percent average annual rate of return.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. To understand the amazingly powerful role of this low-profile, yet extremely wealthy and influential group, click here to view free a 48-minute documentary shown on Dutch national TV which clearly depicts the depths of corruption and deceit at the highest levels of government. You will be thankful that you watched this highly educational film.
A group of about 20 former government workers, many of them military and security officials ... stepped forward on Wednesday to say they had witnessed evidence of aliens and unidentified flying objects and called for congressional hearings about such sightings. "These testimonies establish once and for all that we are not alone," said Steven Greer, director of the Disclosure Project, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to disclosing alleged alien sightings. Greer, who organized the program at the National Press Club in Washington, argued that the United States and other governments have known about UFOs for at least 50 years and have been keeping the information secret. Greer said there were some 400 witnesses who claim to have firsthand experience with UFO sightings or alien evidence, and are willing to testify before Congress. Among them is Daniel Sheehan, a well-known Washington lawyer who is acting as counsel for members of Greer's group. Sheehan told reporters that during the Carter administration he found out about government-held UFO information that then-CIA Director George Bush, father of the current president, would not release. Sheehan said he was then led into the National Archives, where he was shown photographs of captured UFOs, complete with what appeared to be alien writing symbols. Former Air Force Maj. George Filer III told reporters that when he was at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, an alien craft came down, and an alien got out and was shot by a military policeman. "Our security police went out there and found him at the end of the runway dead," Filer said.
Note: To watch a video of this most intriguing program, click here. An MD and former hospital ER director, Dr. Steven Greer has videotaped interviews with over 100 military and government witnesses who had personal experiences with the UFO cover-up. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on this intriguing topic, click here.
Sidney Gottlieb, who presided over the Central Intelligence Agency's cold-war efforts to control the human mind and provided the agency poisons to kill Fidel Castro, died on Sunday. He ... spent his later years caring for dying patients ... and fighting lawsuits from survivors of his secret tests. He will always be remembered as the Government chemist who dosed Americans with psychedelics in the name of national security. Mr. Gottlieb joined the C.I.A. in 1951. Two years later, the agency established MKUltra and Mr. Gottlieb was running it. He served two decades as the senior scientist presiding over some of the C.I.A.'s darkest secrets. The first of these were the LSD experiments. Mr. Gottlieb was fascinated by the drug [and] took it hundreds of times. In the 1950's and early 1960's, the agency gave mind-altering drugs to hundreds of unsuspecting Americans in an effort to explore the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. In one case, a mental patient in Kentucky was dosed with LSD continuously for 174 days. Other experiments involved agency employees, military officers and college students. In all, the agency conducted 149 separate mind-control experiments, and as many as 25 involved unwitting subjects. At least one participant died, others went mad, and still others suffered psychological damage after participating in the project, known as MK Ultra. The C.I.A. ... deliberately destroyed most of the MKUltra records in 1973. Mr. Gottlieb was also involved in the C.I.A.'s assassination plots. [He] developed a poison handkerchief to kill an Iraqi colonel, an array of toxic gifts to be delivered to Fidel Castro, and a poison dart to kill a leftist leader in the Congo.
Note: Read more about the CIA'sMK-ULTRA program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealingnews articles on mind controlfrom reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in ourMind Control Information Center.
It may be difficult for Americans to comprehend the frame of mind of the men who ... started the Central Intelligence Agency's effort to manipulate human behavior. The C.I.A. leaders were certain the Communists had embarked on a campaign to control men's minds and they were determined to find a defense, setting out in earnest the next year1950with Project Bluebird, which evolved into Project Artichoke, then became MK-ULTRA - MK-DELTA. With each code name change, they broadened their sweep, until there remained virtually no avenue of human behavior control they were not exploring. There was an "urgent need," the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies argued, to develop "effective and practical techniques" to "render an individual subservient to an imposed will or control." The C.I.A. men ... acknowledged among themselves that much of what they were setting out to do was "unethical," bordered on the illegal and would be repugnant to the American people. "Precautions must be taken," one agency official wrote in an internal memo, "not only to protect the operation from exposure to enemy forces, but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general." They wanted to be able to get away with murder without leaving a trace. In attempts to develop ways to administer lethal and mind-altering drugs surreptitiously through clothing as thick as a leather jacket, they tried out small spray guns and pencil-like injectors. They studied the writing of the psychologist who worked with Adolf Hitler, wondered about the use of the "occult" and of "black psychiatry."
Note: To see a free copy of this highly revealing New York Times article, click here. For lots more reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up of government mind control programs, click here.
Multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. [In 2008, Epstein] received what might have been the most lenient plea deal for a serial sex offender in U.S. history. The Miami Herald identified over 60 of his victims, just young middle and high school girls at the time of the abuse. They were betrayed by the very prosecutors who were supposed to hold Epstein accountable. One child would be lured over. [She] would be offered the further inducement of being paid a bounty for anybody else that she was able to bring to [him]. Epstein ... was also suspected of organizing sex activities with underage girls at his homes in New York City, New Mexico and on his private island in the Caribbean. Hundreds of children all over the world ... were alleged sex slaves of Jeffrey Epstein. Flight logs from his plane and his address book read like a Whos Who of some of the richest and most famous and powerful people in the worldcelebrities, actors, philanthropists, academics and world leaders. There was ample physical evidence and witness testimony. [Yet] State Attorney Barry Krischer wanted to charge Epstein only with a misdemeanor. The U.S. Attorneys Office got involved, [yet Epstein's] attorneys were able to manipulate the sitting U.S. attorney and the assistant U.S. attorney working the cases. The U.S. attorneys here had an indictment, and they were sending it back and forth to Jeffreys lawyers for changes. This is a situation where ... the defendant and the government are working together against the victims.
Note: Don't miss the revealing video of all this at the link above. Then read a great interview with Julie Brown, the intrepid reporter who broke this case. Learn about other major cover-ups in high places in deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources. Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this topic in the US.
Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet. It sounds like science fiction, but it's true. Two of the chief protagonists - Britain and America - officially deny its existence. But the BBC has confirmation from the Australian Government that such a network really does exist. The base is linked directly to the headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Mead in Maryland, and it is also linked to a series of other listening posts scattered across the world, like Britain's own GCHQ. The power of the network, codenamed Echelon, is astounding. Every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission can be listened to by powerful computers capable of voice recognition. They home in on a long list of key words, or patterns of messages. The network is so secret that the British and American Governments refuse to admit that Echelon even exists. But another ally, Australia, has decided not to be so coy. The man who oversees Australia's security services, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security Bill Blick, has confirmed to the BBC that their Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) does form part of the network. Asked if they are then passed on to countries like Britain and America, he said: "They might be in certain circumstances." They are looking for evidence of international crime, like terrorism. But the system is so widespread all sorts of private communications, often of a sensitive commercial nature, are hoovered up and analysed.
Note that this is a 1999 article, long before the revelations of Edward Snowden. The capability to monitor all communications has existed for a long time. For a powerful, well documented 20-page paper in the Federal Communications Law Journal providing strong evidence that this program is unconstitutional, click here.
Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information. The practice is known by the term eyewash. Officials said there is no clear mechanism for labeling eyewash cables or distinguishing them from legitimate records being examined by the CIAs inspector general, turned over to Congress or declassified for historians. Senate investigators uncovered apparent cases of eyewashing as part of a multi-year probe of the CIAs interrogation program, according to officials who said that the Senate Intelligence Committee found glaring inconsistencies in CIA communications about classified operations, including drone strikes. Former CIA officials ... acknowledged that the internal mechanisms for managing eyewash cables were largely informal. Skeptics described the safeguards as inadequate. When you introduce falsehoods into the communications stream then you can destabilize the whole system of intelligence oversight and compliance with the law, said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. It wasnt that long ago that we had a CIA executive director who was engaged in criminal activity - you dont want someone like him preparing eyewash cables, Aftergood said, referring to Kyle Dusty Foggo, the former No. 3 executive at the agency.
Note: Read more about the strange case of Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the CIA executive convicted of fraud in connection with secret CIA prisons. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing Intelligence agency corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
The U.S. government secretly allowed radiation from a damaged reactor to be released into air over the San Fernando and Simi valleys in the wake of a major nuclear meltdown in Southern California more than 50 years ago fallout that nearby residents contend continues to cause serious health consequences and, in some cases, death. "Area Four," which is part of the once-secret Santa Susana Field Lab, [was] founded in 1947 to test experimental nuclear reactors and rocket systems. In 1959, Area Four was the site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history. But the federal government still hasn't told the public that radiation was released into the atmosphere as a result of the partial nuclear meltdown. Now, whistleblowers ... have recounted how during and after that accident they were ordered to release dangerous radioactive gases into the air above Los Angeles and Ventura counties, often under cover of night, and how their bosses swore them to secrecy. For years starting in 1959, workers at Area Four were routinely instructed to release radioactive materials into the air above neighboring communities, through the exhaust stacks of nuclear reactors, open doors, and by burning radioactive waste. Radioactive contamination ... remains in the soil and water of Area Four and in some areas off-site. The fallout could be linked to illnesses, including cancer, among residents living nearby. In addition to the radiation, dozens of toxic chemicals, including TCE and Perchlorate, were also released ... from the 1950s to 80s.
Note: The government is lying, and people are dying. For lots more on this huge nuclear cover-up, see this NBC article and this one. You can also watch an eight-minute History Channel video on this disaster. The video states that the amount of radiation released during this accident was 240 times the amount released at Three Mile Island, making it one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, yet it was all kept secret. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and nuclear power issues.
Less than two weeks after the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a top Pentagon official ordered all photos of bin Laden's corpse be destroyed or turned over to the CIA. In an e-mail dated May 13, 2011, Adm. William McRaven, the U.S. Special Operations commander, wrote: "One particular item that I want to emphasize is photos; particularly UBLs remains. At this point all photos should have been turned over to the CIA; if you still have them destroy them immediately or get them to the (redacted)." Shortly after the raid in Pakistan, President Obama said he would not authorize the release of any images of the al-Qaeda leader's body. Days before the order to destroy the photos, watchdog group Judicial Watch and the Associated Press had separately filed a Freedom of Information Act request for photos, videos and documents regarding bin Laden during the raid. Typically, when a Freedom of Information Act request is filed to a government agency under the Federal Records Act, the agency is obliged to preserve the material sought even if the agency later denies the request.
Note: Why would a top military commander order all photos of bin Laden's dead body destroyed? Why would Obama prevent the release of any images of the body? For powerful evidence that the dead body was not, in fact, bin Laden's, click here and here. For other solid evidence that the official story of 9/11 is riddles with holes, see our 9/11 Information Center available here.
The Defense Department has launched 20 or more projects to build modern business-management systems since the late 1990s. At least five were subsequently killed as complete failures after billions of dollars were spent on them. With each failure, a pattern emerges: An off-the-shelf product with a proven track record in the private sector is chosen and then modified to the point where it doesn't work properly. The Pentagon is unable to account for itself, and thus for roughly half of all congressionally approved annual federal spending. Interviews with scores of current and former defense officials, contractors and Pentagon watchers, as well as a review of dozens of reports by oversight agencies, show that the Pentagon is continually thwarted by a lack of accountability for failures ... and an incentive to spend. All other federal agencies are audited annually ... and with rare exceptions, they pass every year. The Pentagon alone has never been audited, leaving roughly $8.5 trillion in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for since 1996. The Pentagon has for years kept lousy books with impunity. The 2009 law requiring the Defense Department to be audit-ready by 2017 provides for no penalties if it misses the deadline. From 1995 through 2002, Senator Charles Grassley pushed through an amendment to the annual defense appropriations bill requiring the Pentagon to account for its expenditures by following one seemingly simple procedure: match each payment to the expense it covered. The order was ignored, and Grassley gave up. There is no doubt that bad bookkeeping conceals movements of money that in some instances are illegal.
Note: See also this article on the Reuters website. This article sadly fails to state the obvious: Many military officers illegally rake in tons of money with false contracts which benefit those officers and contracting companies. They obviously don't want their accounts to be properly audited. For a revealing essay by a top U.S. general exposing major war manipulations, click here. For more on military corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In an interview with ABC News/Yahoo! News last Friday, former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) said statements by U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch officers regarding mysterious aerial objects interfering with the functionality of American ICBMs make clear that top government officials are lying to the public when they claim to have no knowledge of national security-related UFO incidents. Gravel first gained national recognition in 1971, by placing the still-classified Pentagon Papers which documented U.S. government malfeasance during the Vietnam War into the public record. Gravel said the revelations by former/retired Captains Robert Salas, Bruce Fenstermacher, and David Schindele, as well as retired Security Policeman Sgt. David Scott, are "the smoking gun of the whole issue" of government secrecy on UFOs. On September 27, 2010, Captain Salas co-hosted the "UFOs and Nukes" press conference with noted researcher Robert Hastings, during which seven USAF veterans revealed ongoing UFO activity at U.S. nuclear weapons sites during the Cold War era. That media event was extensively and favorably covered by hundreds of news organizations worldwide, including CNN, which streamed the proceedings live. The full-length video of the press conference appears at http://www.ufohastings.com. The latest testimony about UFOs knocking ICBMs offline was heard by Senator Gravel and five other former members of congress at the "Citizen Hearing on Disclosure" organized by Stephen Bassett at the National Press Club last week.
Note: For the thorough research of Capt. Salas into the event where UFOs disabled nuclear missiles, click here. Could UFOs disabling nuclear warheads be a message from extraterrestrial forces for us not to play with such dangerous toys? Hundreds of military and government witnesses have gone on record claiming a major cover-up around UFOs, including a former chief of the CIA, the former chiefs of defense of the UK and Canada (see video), and Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon. Why is it that so few people are aware of this and other amazing and even inspiring facts around UFOs? For more, click here.
Internal documents from the Boy Scouts of America reveal more than 125 cases in which men suspected of molestation allegedly continued to abuse Scouts, despite a blacklist meant to protect boys from sexual predators. A Los Angeles Times review of more than 1,200 files from 1970 to 1991 found suspected abusers regularly remained in the organization after officials were first presented with sexual misconduct allegations. Predators moved from troop to troop because of clerical errors, computer glitches or the Scouts' failure to check the blacklist, known as the "perversion files." In at least 50 cases, the Scouts expelled suspected abusers, only to discover they had re-entered the organization and were accused of molesting again. In other cases, officials failed to document reports of abuse in the first place, letting offenders stay in the program until new allegations came to light. One scoutmaster was expelled in 1970 for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Indiana. After being convicted of the crime, he went on to join two troops in Illinois between 1971 and 1988. He later admitted to molesting more than 100 boys. The "perversion files" naming suspected child molesters include admissions of guilt as well as unproven allegations. The confidential documents have come to light in recent years in lawsuits by former Scouts, accusing the group of failing to detect abuses, exclude known pedophiles or turn in offenders to authorities. The Boy Scouts have fought in court to keep the records from public view, saying confidentiality was needed to protect victims, witnesses and anyone falsely accused.
Note: Sexual offender lists are widely available to the public without endangering victims. Why would the scouts refuse to release the names of sexual abusers?
If a spate of recent allegations proves true, Hollywood may have a hideous epidemic on its hands. The past two weeks have brought three separate reports of alleged child sexual abuse in the entertainment industry. Martin Weiss, a 47-year-old Hollywood manager who represented child actors, was charged in Los Angeles on Dec. 1 with sexually abusing a former client. His accuser, who was under 12 years old during the time of the alleged abuse, reported to authorities that Weiss told him "what they were doing was common practice in the entertainment industry." Weiss has pleaded not guilty. On Nov. 21, Fernando Rivas, 59, an award-winning composer for Sesame Street, was arraigned on charges of coercing a child to engage in sexually explicit conduct in South Carolina. The Juilliard-trained composer was also charged with production and distribution of child pornography. Registered sex offender Jason James Murphy, 35, worked as a casting agent in Hollywood for years before his past kidnapping and sexual abuse of a boy was revealed by the Los Angeles Times. Revelations of this sort come as no surprise to former child star Corey Feldman. Feldman, 40, himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, unflinchingly warned of the world of pedophiles who are drawn to the entertainment industry last August. "I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia, Feldman told ABCs Nightline. That's the biggest problem for children in this industry... It's the big secret.
Note: These allegations surfaced long before Harvey Weinstein's crimes came to light. For powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government, click here. And for an abundance of major media news articles showing rampant child sexual abuse at high levels in many prominent organizations, click here.
The secretive Bilderberg Group ... is bringing together the world's financial and political elite this week. Conspiracy theories abound. It's only recently that the media has picked up on the Bilderbergers. Meetings are closed to the public and the media, and no press releases are issued. In the manner of a James Bond plot, up to 150 leading politicians and business people are to gather in a ski resort in Switzerland for four days of discussion about the future of the world. Meetings often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names. Under the group's leadership of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and one-time EU vice president, Viscount Davignon, the aim is purportedly to allow Western elites to share ideas. But conspiracy theorists have accused it of everything from deliberately engineering the credit crunch to planning to kill 80% of the world population. Denis Healey, co-founder of the group, told the journalist Jon Ronson in his book Them that ... "The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions." Secret cabals extend beyond the Bilderberg Group. The Illuminati ... is alleged to be an all powerful secret society. The Freemasons [is another] secret fraternity society. The conspiracy theorists may get overexcited, but they have a point, says Prof Andrew Kakabadse. The group has genuine power that far outranks the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, he argues. And with no transparency, it is easy to see why people are worried about its influence. The theme at Bilderberg is to bolster a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe, he says. "There's a very strong move to have a One World government in the mould of free market Western capitalism."
Note: Why is there so little reporting on this influential group in the major media? Thankfully, the alternative media has had some good articles. And a Google search can be highly informative. For many other revealing news articles from major media sources on powerful secret societies, click here. And for reliable information covering the big picture of how and why these secret societies are using government-sponsored mind control programs to achieve their agenda, click here.
Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief. He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico. An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [ATF] senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen. Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States. Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico. ATF named the case "Fast and Furious." Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets. The Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence. One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence. Senior agents including Dodson ... confronted their supervisors over and over. Their answer ... "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs." On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry's murder. Dodson said, "I felt guilty. I mean it's crushing." Dodson said they never did take down a drug cartel. However, he said thousands of Fast and Furious weapons are still out there and will be claiming victims on both sides of the border for years to come.
Note: Could it be that there are those in high positions of power who want this violence to keep us in fear? The fear industry brings huge profits. For more powerful information on this, click here and here.
Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital. Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago. U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States. Inevitably, they will be compared to the well-known Tuskegee syphilis study. In that episode, U.S. health officials tracked 600 black men in Alabama who already had syphilis but didn't give them adequate treatment even after penicillin became available. Though people in the studies were usually described as volunteers, historians and ethicists have questioned how well these people understood what was to be done to them and why, or whether they were coerced. In the last 15 years, two international studies sparked outrage. U.S.-funded doctors failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study in Uganda even though it would have protected their newborns. The other study, by Pfizer Inc., gave an antibiotic named Trovan to children with meningitis in Nigeria, although there were doubts about its effectiveness. Critics blamed the experiment for the deaths of 11 children and the disabling of scores of others. Pfizer settled a lawsuit with Nigerian officials for $75 million but admitted no wrongdoing.
Note: Though it appears these highly unethical studies have stopped in the US, the article points out that many drug companies are now doing their studies in countries where ethical codes are not strong. For an astounding list of government-sponsored programs where humans were used as guinea pigs, click here. For a two-page summary of solid evidence of government involvement in mind control programs, click here.
The government took the threat of UFOs so seriously in the 1950s that UK intelligence chiefs met to discuss the issue, newly-released files show. Ministers even went on to commission weekly reports on UFO sightings from a committee of intelligence experts. The files show reports of UFOs peaked in 1996. The latest batch of UFO files released from the Ministry of Defence to the National Archives shows that, in 1957, the committee received reports detailing an average of one UFO sighting a week. The files also include an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent "mass panic". Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: "The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed. But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid. The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views."
Note: For reliable information on UFOs, check out our UFO Information Center.
Germany is fighting to keep sealed the Adolf Eichmann files detailing the years the Holocaust chief logistical organiser spent on the run before he was captured by Mossad agents. Those hoping to have a 50-year secrecy order overturned believe the government is embarrassed by details within that may prove German and Vatican officials colluded in his escape and freedom. For the current papacy under the German pope, Benedict XVI, the 4,500 page Eichmann dossier could be the smoking gun that would shoot down his plans to canonize Pope Pius XII (1939-58), aka Hitlers Pope. The role of Pope Pius XII during World War II, his relationship with Nazism and his efforts (or lack of them) to save Jews from the gas chambers are hotly disputed. Even within the Jewish community there are strong opinions on both sides of the debate. In fact historys most savage mass murderers Adolf Eichmann, Dr Josef Mengele, better known as Auschwitzs Angel of Death, Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp escaped justice down the ratline that ran straight through the Vatican state in Rome. Senior members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy marinaded in virulent Judeophobia and obsessed by Bolshevism organised the escape of thousands of the most debauched, cruel monsters to a peaceful, prosperous retirement in Catholic South America.
Note: As mentioned by the initiator of the lawsuit to open the documents in this Associated Press story, "I think it's impossible that in Germany we are hiding documents about a convicted Nazi mass murderer today." Evidence suggests that these Nazis were purposely allowed to escape with the involvement of the Vatican, the CIA, and other groups. Josef Mengele is purported to have gone on to train the CIA in powerful mind control techniques he perfected using concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs. For more on this, click here.
Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man. It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer. Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display. "He needed the head because of its perfect teeth," Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest. But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and today he is the most wanted Nazi war criminal on a list of hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates are still free.
Note: As this article shows, some Nazi concentration camp doctors had virtually no moral aversion to killing and torturing any prisoner. Some of the most infamous doctors were tasked with perfecting mind control by any means. And many, like Heim, were allowed to escape. For reliable information on this, and how some of these doctors were then secretly brought to the US to train the CIA in mind control techniques, click here.
A group of former pilots who have recounted seeing strange phenomena in the sky has demanded the US government reopen an investigation into UFOs. Several pilots offered dramatic accounts of witnessing UFOs - including a transparent flying disc and a triangular craft with mysterious markings. "We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms," said Fife Symington, [a] former governor of Arizona and air force pilot who says he saw a UFO in 1997. "Our country needs to reopen its official investigation that it shut down in 1969," Symington said. "Nothing in my training prepared me for what we were witnessing," said James Penniston, a retired US Air Force pilot, as he described seeing and touching a UFO when he was stationed at a British air base in Woodbridge. He said he saw an inexplicable triangular craft in a clearing in the woods with "blue and yellow lights swirling around the exterior". The UFO was "warm to the touch and felt like metal," Penniston said. One side of the craft had pictorial symbols. Then after 45 minutes, the light from the object "began to intensify" and it then "shot off at an unbelievable speed" before 80 Air Force personnel, he said. "In my logbook, I wrote 'speed: impossible'." A former official with the Federal Aviation Administration, John Callahan, said government agencies discourage inquiries into UFOs. "'Who believes in UFOs?' is the kind of attitude of the FAA all the time," he said. "However, when I asked the CIA person: 'What do you think it was,' he responded 'a UFO'." When Callahan suggested the government tell Americans about [the] UFO, the CIA official allegedly told him: "'No way, if we were to tell the American public there are UFOs they would panic."'
Note: For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information and resources suggesting a UFO cover-up, click here.
If you have ever wondered why the cost of prescription drugs in the United States are the highest in the world or why it's illegal to import cheaper drugs from Canada or Mexico, you need look no further than the pharmaceutical lobby and its influence in Washington, D.C. Congressmen are outnumbered two to one by lobbyists for an industry that spends roughly a $100 million a year in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to protect its profits. One reason [drug company] profits have exceeded Wall Street expectations is the Medicare prescription drug bill ... passed three-and-a-half years ago. The unorthodox roll call on one of the most expensive bills ever placed before the House of Representatives began in the middle of the night. The only witnesses were congressional staffers, hundreds of lobbyists, and U.S. Representatives like Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Walter Jones, R-N.C. "The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill," says Jones. Why did the vote finally take place at 3 a.m.? "They didn't want on national television in primetime," according to Burton. "I've been in politics for 22 years," says Jones, "and it was the ugliest night I have ever seen." Jones says the arm-twisting was horrible. It certainly wasn't ugly for the drug lobby which ... has been a source of lucrative employment opportunities for congressmen when they leave office. In all, at least 15 congressional staffers, congressmen and federal officials left to go to work for the pharmaceutical industry, whose profits were increased by several billion dollars. "They have unlimited resources," Burton says. "And when they push real hard to get something accomplished in the Congress of the United States, they can get it done."
Note: This article also states that the Medicare prescription bill "was the largest entitlement program in more than 40 years, and the debate broke down along party lines." Usually Republicans are against entitlement programs while Democrats support them. Why was it the opposite in this case? Could it be that big industry made huge profits from the passage of this bill? For lots more, click here.
Whistle-blower AT&T technician Mark Klein says his effort to reveal alleged government surveillance of domestic Internet traffic was blocked not only by U.S. intelligence officials but also by the top editors of the Los Angeles Times. Klein describes how he stumbled across "secret NSA rooms" being installed at an AT&T switching center in San Francisco and later heard of similar rooms in at least six other cities. Eventually, Klein says he decided to take his documents to the Los Angeles Times, to blow the whistle on what he calls "an illegal and Orwellian project." But after working for two months with LA Times reporter Joe Menn, Klein says he was told the story had been killed at the request of then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and then-director of the NSA Gen. Michael Hayden. Klein says he then took his AT&T documents to The New York Times, which published its exclusive account last April [later removed from NY Times website]. In the court case against AT&T, Negroponte formally invoked the "state secrets privilege," claiming the lawsuit and the information from Klein and others could "cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States." The Los Angeles Times' decision was made by the paper's editor at the time, Dean Baquet, now the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times. As the new Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, Baquet now oversees the reporters who have broken most of the major stories involving the government surveillance program, often over objections from the government.
Note: This webpage was removed from the ABC website, but is still available through archive.org on thise webpage. So after the NY Times has the guts to report this important story, the man who was responsible for the censorship at the LA Times is transferred to the very position in the NY Times where he can now block future stories there. For why this case of blatant media censorship isn't making headlines, click here.
A community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds ... may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that. An academic paper written for the Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of [such] a weapon. "The signal can be a 'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or encourage the enemy to surrender." In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology: using microwaves to send words into someone's head. The patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility. The official U.S. Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal effects of microwaves. Yet ... the military's use of weapons that employ electromagnetic radiation to create pain is well-known. In 2001, the Pentagon declassified one element of this research: the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses electromagnetic radiation to heat skin and create an intense burning sensation. While its exact range is classified, Doug Beason, an expert in directed-energy weapons, puts it at about 700 meters, and the beam cannot penetrate a number of materials, such as aluminum. Given the history of America's clandestine research, it's reasonable to assume that if the defense establishment could develop mind-control or long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would. And, once developed, the possibility that they might be tested on innocent civilians could not be categorically dismissed.
Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information on the little-known, yet critical topic of nonlethal weapons, click here. For an excellent two-page summary of government mind control programs, click here.
In December 1974, the New York Times reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by both Congress (in the form of the Church Committee) and a presidential commission (known as the Rockefeller Commission) into the domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI, and intelligence-related agencies of the military. Congressional hearings and the Rockefeller Commission report revealed to the public for the first time that the CIA and the DOD had conducted experiments on both cognizant and unwitting human subjects as part of an extensive program to influence and control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs (such as LSD and mescaline) and other chemical, biological, and psychological means. They also revealed that at least one subject had died after administration of LSD. Frank Olson, an Army scientist, was given LSD without his knowledge or consent in 1953 as part of a CIA experiment and apparently committed suicide a week later. Subsequent reports would show that another person ... died as a result of a secret Army experiment involving mescaline. The CIA program, known principally by the codename MKULTRA, began in 1950 and was motivated largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean uses of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. Most of the MKULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of then-Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms.
Note: This highly revealing article on a U.S. government website shows that the CIA was actively involved in mind control projects. Explore also an excellent summary based on thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents showing the secret creation of unknowing assassins or "Manchurian Candidates."
New video and photographic evidence ... puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination. It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968. The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles. Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House. A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin. However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time. Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind. Dr Herbert Spiegel, a world authority on hypnosis at Columbia University, believes Sirhan may have been hypnotically programmed to act as a decoy for the real assassin. Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base. David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.
Note: There is ample evidence that Sirhan Sirhan was a programmed Manchurian Candidate. Declassified CIA documents show that U.S. intelligence services were creating programmed assassins back as early as the 1950s. For reliable, verifiable information on this key topic, click here.
Former CIA director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that he had warned of an imminent threat from Al Qaeda in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice, adding that he believed Rice took the warning seriously, according to a transcript of the interview and the recollection of a commissioner who was there. The meeting has become the focus of a fierce and often confusing round of finger-pointing involving Rice, the White House, and the 9/11 Commission, all of whom dispatched staffers to the National Archives and other locations yesterday in attempts to sort out what had occurred. Members of the commission, an independent bipartisan panel created by Congress to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, have said for days that they were not told about the July 10 meeting and were angry at being left out. As recently as yesterday afternoon, both commission chairman Thomas H. Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said they believed the panel had not been told about the July 10 meeting. But it turns out that the panel was, in fact, told about the meeting, according to the interview transcript and Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who sat in on the interview with Tenet. Rice added to the confusion yesterday by strongly suggesting that the meeting may never have occurred at all, even though administration officials had conceded for several days that it had.
Note: Could it be possible that some of our nation's top leaders are lying? How could they have just forgotten about such important matters? For lots more see http://www.WantToKnow.info/911information.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, wrote "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror." Between January 1996 and June 1999 I was in charge of running operations against Al Qaeda from Washington. When it comes to this small slice of the large U.S. national security pie, I speak with firsthand experience (and for several score of CIA officers) when I state categorically that during this time senior White House officials repeatedly refused to act on sound intelligence that provided multiple chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden either by capture or by U.S. military attack. I witnessed and documented, along with dozens of other CIA officers, instances where life-risking intelligence-gathering work of the agency's men and women in the field was wasted. I was never charged with deciding whether to act against Bin Laden. That decision properly belongs solely to senior White House officials. However, as a now-private American citizen, it is my right to question their judgment; I am entitled to know why the protection of Americans most selfishly, my own children and grandchildren was not the top priority of the senior officials who refused to act on the opportunities to attack Bin Laden provided by the clandestine service. Each of these officials have publicly argued that the intelligence was not "good enough" to act, but they almost always neglect to say that they were repeatedly advised that the intelligence was not going to get better and that Bin Laden was going to kill thousands of Americans if he was not stopped.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For many other serious questions around the 9/11 attacks, click here.
Hundreds of mentally ill patients who were subjected to barbaric CIA-funded brainwashing experiments ... could be entitled to compensation following a landmark court ruling. Doctor Ewan Cameron, who became one of the worlds leading psychiatrists, developed techniques used by Nazi scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of people in his care. Cameron ... was recruited by the CIA during the cold war while working at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He carried out mind-control experiments using drugs such as LSD on hundreds of patients, but only 77 of them were awarded compensation. Now a landmark ruling by a Federal Court judge in Montreal will allow more than 250 former patients, whose claims were rejected, to seek compensation. Last week, Alan Stein, of Montreal law firm Stein and Stein ... confirmed he was in the process of contacting former clients who could now renew their appeal. There are about 200 people still due compensation, he said. Using techniques similar to those portrayed in the celebrated novel the Manchurian Candidate, it was believed that people could be brainwashed and reprogrammed to carry out specific acts. Cameron developed a range of depatterning treatments. Patients were woken from drug-induced stupors two or three times a day for multiple electric shocks. In a specially designed sleep room made famous by Anne Collinss book of the same name, Cameron placed a speaker under the patients pillow and relayed negative messages for 16 hours a day. Cameron ... rose to become the first president of the World Psychiatric Association.
Note: If the above link does not work, click here. 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. This article clearly shows that the Manchurian candidate (programmed assassin) is not just fiction. For a powerful two-page summary of 18,000 pages of declassified CIA documents on this disturbing mind control program, click here. Links to view the original top secret documents are included.
Six air traffic controllers provided accounts of their communications with hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, on a tape recording that was later destroyed by Federal Aviation Administration managers. It is unclear what information was on the tape because no one ever listened to, transcribed or duplicated it. The FAA ... said it took disciplinary action against the employee who destroyed the tape but declined to elaborate on what kind of action they took. [Earlier, an FAA official incorrectly stated that the agency took action against two employees in the case.] Hours after the [9/11 attacks] an FAA manager at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center gathered six controllers who communicated or tracked two of the hijacked planes and recorded in a one-hour interview their personal accounts of what occurred. The manager, who is not named in the report, said that his intentions were to provide quick information to federal officials investigating the attack before the air traffic controllers involved took sick leave for the stress of their experiences, as is common practice. A second manager ... destroyed the tape between December 2001 and January 2002 by crushing the tape with his hand, cutting it into small pieces and depositing the pieces into trash cans around the building. The tape's existence was never made known to federal officials investigating the attack. The New York managers acknowledged that they received an e-mail from FAA officials instructing them to retain all materials related to the Sept. 11 attacks. But the managers decided not to include the tape in a November 2001 "Formal Accident Package" report the office prepared.
Note: Why on earth wouldn't this most important tape have been included in the FAA's official report. And more importantly, why did someone later destroy it so carefully and thoroughly. For lots more, click here.
LEHMAN. Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training? RICE. I was not. LEHMAN. Were you told that the red team in F.A.A. for 10 years had reported ... that the U.S. airport security system never got higher than 20 percent effective. RICE. To the best of my recollection I was not told that. LEHMAN. Were you aware that I.N.S. had quietly internally halved its internal security enforcement budget? RICE. I was not made aware of that. LEHMAN. Were you aware that it was the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary policies [which] prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration authorities? RICE. I do not believe I was aware of that. LEHMAN. Were you aware of a program that was well established that allowed Saudi citizens to get visas without interviews? RICE. I learned of that after 9/11. LEHMAN. Were you aware of the extensive activities [of] the Saudi government in supporting over 300 radical teaching schools and mosques around the country, including right here in the United States? Were you aware at the time of the fact that Saudi Arabia ... had in their custody the C.F.O. [Chief Financial Officer] and the closest confidante of Al Qaeda, of Osama bin Laden, and that they refused direct access to the United States? RICE. I don't remember anything of that kind. LEHMAN. Were you aware that they would not cooperate and give us access to the perpetrators of the Cobar Towers attack? RICE. I was very involved in issues concerning Cobar Towers. LEHMAN. Were you aware that it was the policy of the Justice Department ... to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning? RICE. No.
Note: Don't miss the full revealing transcript at the link above. Most of the quotes above are towards the bottom of the webpage. Why didn't we hear lots more about these astounding facts put forward by one of the 9/11 commissioners, yet hardly mentioned in the final report? For lots more, click here.
Much of what the Pentagon knows about the effects of bacterial attacks on cities came from ... secret tests conducted on San Francisco and other American cities from the 1940s through the 1960s, experts say. In the 1950s, Army researchers dispersed Serratia on Panama City, Fla., and Key West, Fla., with no known illnesses resulting. They also released fluorescent compounds over Minnesota and other Midwestern states to see how far they would spread in the atmosphere. The particles of zinc-cadmium-sulfide -- now a known cancer-causing agent -- were detected more than 1,000 miles away in New York state, the Army told the Senate hearings. In New York, military researchers in 1966 spread Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, also believed to be harmless, in the subway system by dropping lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto tracks in stations in midtown Manhattan. The bacteria were carried for miles throughout the subway system. The Army kept the biological-warfare tests secret until word of them was leaked to the press in the 1970s. Between 1949 and 1969 ... open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times, according to the Army's testimony in 1977 before the Senate's subcommittee on health. In 80 of those experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria that its researchers at the time thought were harmless. Several medical experts have since claimed that an untold number of people may have gotten sick as a result of the germ tests. These researchers say even benign agents can mutate into unpredictable pathogens once exposed to the elements.
Note: Reading the full article on the Wall Street Journal website requires a paid subscription. You can read it free at this link. Considering that the army kept all of these tests secret for decades, is it possible that they are keeping information on chemtrails secret from the public? For lots more on the government secretly using unsuspecting citizens as guinea pigs in its risky experiments over the years, click here. For powerful evidence that this is still happening, click here.
Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal. United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb. Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Papers stamped "top secret" show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too. The experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami. It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s. The bomb was never tested on a full scale. "Whether it could ever be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I think it could be devastating."
A car driven by a 10-year-old and built at a French school has set a new world record for fuel efficiency. The Microjoule team managed the equivalent of 9,845 miles per gallon while driving for 10 miles around Silverstone race track in the UK. More than 100 teams competed in the Shell Eco-Marathon. Their one goal was to see how far they can get these amazing machines to travel on a minuscule amount of fuel. While we might be delirious if we managed 40 miles (64 kilometres) to the gallon (4.5 litres) pottering about town in our super minis, these people are not happy until they have seen the mileometer click through the thousands. The teams have a choice of petrol or diesel, with solar assistance permitted for the first time this year. A car is allowed three 40-minute runs. It must average at least 15 mph (24 kph) after which the stewards at the meeting calculate the machine's fuel efficiency. "The top fuel teams do about 10 miles, which is six laps on the club circuit at Silverstone," says the event's fuel manager Geoff Houlbrook. "They do that on less than 10 millilitres which is just two teaspoons of fuel." The entries come from all over Europe. Some teams use advanced materials like titanium and carbon fibre. Some of the machines built by schoolchildren are made from parts of old sewing and washing machines. "It's fun but it's also science," says BBC Top Gear presenter and racing driver Tiff Needell. "It's like an experiment with people learning how to save energy."
Note: Some of these amazing vehicles built in 1999 were "built by schoolchildren," yet the auto industry still can't come up with a car that get's 100 mpg? Granted these cars are slow and small, but if they can get almost 10,000 mpg, don't you think similar technology could be used to get at least several hundred mpg in regular cars? For why car mileage hasn't increased much since the 1908 Model T got 25 mpg, click here and here.
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.
For seven generations, one European family has dominated an incredible part of all that money can buy. From its London and Paris banks, the family's millions have been sent forth to ... business enterprises on six continents. Some of its stately dwellings are the kind of mansions that mere San Simeons hoped to imitate. This ancient and unusual banking dynasty shields itself from the curious eye of the public, but the map and history of Europe have been changed by its action and etched with its name: the House of Rothschild. Seldom unimaginative in the use of their money, Rothschild gold has powered the ambitions of prime ministers, princes and popes. It has financed wars and reparations treaties, changed the course of politics and bailed out armies and nations. The Rothschilds strung railroads across the Continent, gained control of the Suez Canal [and] carved diamond mines in the African veld. The British Rothschilds [are still] the world's most important bullion dealers. No modern family ... has been so important for so long in European business. Newer dynasties such as the Rockefellers and the Fords have made more millions, but ... ledgers cannot reflect the Rothschild lands, their possessions and influence accumulated over the generations, their priceless collections of art. Today, the legend is very much aliveand being added to. The Rothschilds are striking out in many new directions behind a silver curtain of discretion. Rather than run companies by themselves, the Rothschilds often prefer to start or join syndicates, placing their men on boards to exert maximum influence with minimum investment risk. [They rely on] a far spreading network of agents, who seldom even admit that they are employed by the Rothschilds.
Note: To read the full, fascinating article, click here. The major media have very rarely exposed the power and wealth of the Rothschilds as in this article. Note that the article was written less than a month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Could it be because of some anger at the elite who killed Kennedy that this highly revealing article was actually published? For more on secret societies which command huge hidden power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The Air Force has sent its commands a warning to treat sightings of unidentified flying objects as "serious business" directly related to the nation's defense, it was learned today. An Air Force spokesman confirmed issuance of the directive after portions of it were made public by a private flying saucer group. The new regulations were issued by the Air Force inspector general Dec. 24. Existence of the document was revealed by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena [NICAP]. The privately financed committee accused the Air Force of deception in publicly describing reports of unidentified flying objects as delusions and hoaxes while sending the private admonition to its commands. Vice Admiral R. H. Hillenkoetter (Ret.), a committee board member and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said ... "It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings. Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense," the retired admiral said. He charged that "to hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel.
Note: If the above link fails, click here for a free copy of this article. Why would a former head of the CIA be claiming that Air Force officers are "soberly concerned" about UFOs? For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information on this major cover-up, click here
It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. "It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me. [The] release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief. The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible." By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation. The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain. And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For other reliable information on the 9/11 cover-up, click here.
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. The company, Crypto AG ... made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican. But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the companys devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages. The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project. The company always made at least two versions of its products secure models that would be sold to friendly governments, and rigged systems for the rest of the world. Throughout the 1980s, the list of Cryptos leading clients read like a catalogue of global trouble spots. In 1981, Saudi Arabia was Cryptos biggest customer, followed by Iran, Italy, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Jordan and South Korea. To protect its market position, Crypto and its secret owners engaged in subtle smear campaigns against rival companies ... and plied government officials with bribes.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
In 1967, Israel attacked a US spy ship, killing 34 men and injuring many more. The Israelis claimed it was an accident, the Americans backed them up. Both governments concealed the horrific truth. As the [USS] Liberty sat within eyeshot of El Arish, eavesdropping on surrounding communications, Israeli soldiers turned the town into a slaughterhouse, systematically butchering their prisoners. In the shadow of the El Arish mosque, they lined up about 60 unarmed Egyptian prisoners, hands tied behind their backs, and then opened fire with machine guns until the pale desert sand turned red. This and other war crimes were just some of the secrets Israel had sought to conceal since the start of the conflict. An essential element in the Israeli battle plan seemed to have been to hide much of the war behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies: lies about the Egyptian threat, lies about who started the war, lies to the US. Into this sea of deception and slaughter sailed the USS Liberty, an enormous spy factory loaded with the latest eavesdropping gear. The order was given to kill her and at 12.05pm, three motor torpedo boats from the port of Ashdod, about 50 miles away, departed. Israeli air force fighters, loaded with 50mm cannon ammunition, rockets and napalm, followed. According to information, interviews and documents obtained, for nearly 35 years the NSA has hidden the fact that one of its planes - a Navy EC-121 ferret - was overhead at the time of the incident, eavesdropping on what was going on below.
Note: Watch an excellent documentary on this cruel attack. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Someone wrote to Wright Field recently, saying he understood this country had got together quite a collection of enemy war secrets, that many were now on public sale, and could he, please, be sent everything on German jet engines. 'The Army Air Forces' answered: "Sorry but that would be fifty tons." Moreover, that fifty tons was just a small portion. Wright Field is working from a documents "mother lode" of fifteen hundred tons. It is estimated that over a million separate items ... very likely contain practically all the scientific, industrial, and military secrets of Germany. What did we find? The head of the communications unit ... showed me then what had been two of the most closely-guarded technical secrets of the war: the infra-red device which the Germans invented for seeing at night, and the remarkable diminutive generator which operated it. The diminutive generator five inches across stepped up current from an ordinary flashlight battery to 15,000 volts. It had a walnut-sized motor which spun a rotor at 10,000 rpm. The generator then ran 3,000 hours! "As for medical secrets in this collection," one Army-surgeon has remarked, "some of them will save American medicine years of research; some of them are revolutionary like, for instance, the German technique for treatment after prolonged and usually fatal exposure to cold." This discovery ... reversed everything medical science thought about the subject. And in aeronautics and guided missiles [the secrets] proved to be downright alarming. Army Air Force experts declare publicly that in rocket power and guided missiles the Nazis were ahead of us by at least ten years.
Note: To read the entire fascinating article, click here. To verify this article on the Harper's Magazine website, click here. How can the Nazi technology have been so far superior to that of the allies? For the riveting testimony of numerous military officers on the back engineering of UFO technologies, click here.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. Newly discovered files in the US National Archives [confirm] that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings ... continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war ... he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now [a] multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson. Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society.
Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, believes his newspaper in company with the US mainstream media failed their audiences after 9/11. He told the German news magazine Der Spiegel that he agreed with the criticism originally made by an NYT reporter, James Risen, Baquet said: The mainstream press was not aggressive enough after 9/11, was not aggressive enough in asking questions about a decision to go to war in Iraq, was not aggressive enough in asking the hard questions about the war on terror. I accept that for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Baquet, in charge of the NYT since May 2014, was previously editor-in-chief of the LA Times. In his wide-ranging interview with Der Spiegel, Baquet also spoke about the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden having chosen to tell his story to the Guardian. He said he regards the Guardian as a new competitor [for the NYT] in the digital age. He said: Does it make me nervous that they compete with us and in fact beat us on the Snowden story? Yes. "It hurt a lot. It meant two things. Morally, it meant that somebody with a big story to tell didnt think we were the place to go, and thats painful. And then it also meant that we got beaten on what was arguably the biggest national security story in many, many years.
Note: When asked about the New York Times' refusal to report on military drone base locations in the interview referenced above, Baquet recalls, "A high-ranking CIA official called me up and made the case to leave out where the drone base was. It was Saudi Arabia. I accepted it. And I was wrong." For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about mass media manipulation.
British spies have developed "dirty tricks" ... that include releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones and computers, and using sex to lure targets into "honey traps." Documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden ... describe techniques developed by a secret British spy unit called the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG). According to the documents ... the agency's goal was to "destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt" enemies by "discrediting" them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications. The propaganda campaigns use deception, mass messaging and "pushing stories" via Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. JTRIG also uses "false flag" operations, in which British agents carry out online actions that are designed to look like they were performed by one of Britain's adversaries. Other documents ... show that JTRIG ... used a DDOS attack to shut down Internet chat rooms used by members of the hacktivist group known as Anonymous. A computer virus called Ambassadors Reception was "used in a variety of different areas" and was "very effective." When sent to adversaries ... the virus will "encrypt itself, delete all emails ... and block the computer user from logging on. Spies have long used sexual "honey traps" to snare, blackmail and influence targets. Most often, a male target is led to believe he has an opportunity for a romantic relationship or a sexual liaison with a woman, only to find that the woman is actually an intelligence operative.
Note: You can read the documents released by Snowden at this link and this one. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistans president courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader. We called it ghost money, said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzais deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. It came in secret, and it left in secret. The C.I.A. ... has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing. Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washingtons exit strategy from Afghanistan. The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan, one American official said, was the United States. Now, Mr. Karzai is seeking control over the Afghan militias raised by the C.I.A. to target ... insurgent commanders, potentially upending a critical part of the Obama administrations plans for fighting militants as conventional military forces pull back this year. But the C.I.A. has continued to pay.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.
A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom the report said were being blackmailed by outsiders. The pope's spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica. The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair. The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation". In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail. It quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments." The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.The cardinals' report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop.
Note: For more revelations on this astounding information from a reliable source, click here.
A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites. Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names. The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY's reporting on the military's "information operations" program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored. For example, Internet domain registries show the website TomVandenBrook.com was created Jan. 7 just days after Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook first contacted Pentagon contractors involved in the program. Two weeks after his editor Ray Locker's byline appeared on a story, someone created a similar site, RayLocker.com, through the same company. If the websites were created using federal funds, it could violate federal law prohibiting the production of propaganda for domestic consumption. Some postings ... accused them of being sponsored by the Taliban. "They disputed nothing factual in the story about information operations," Vanden Brook said.
Note: For more on a proposed amendment to a U.S. bill which would make it legal to use propaganda and lie to the American public, click here.
On April 19, 1995, a huge truck bomb destroyed a large part of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City ... killing 168 people, including 19 children. In a matter of days the FBI established that the bombing was the work of a conspiracy. The first conspirator arrested was Timothy McVeigh, a 27-year-old Army veteran. The second conspirator arrested was Terry Nichols. "Oklahoma City," an extraordinarily well-researched book, asserts that the FBI investigation of the bombing was badly flawed and missed, or disregarded, evidence of a larger conspiracy. The authors, Andrew Gumbel and Roger Charles, are both highly regarded investigative reporters who have been immersed in this case for more than a decade. They were given access to vast amounts of material assembled by the defense teams, including 18,000 FBI witness interviews. The book ... outlines how federal prosecutors, eager to wrap up the McVeigh and Nichols cases, avoided raising questions about possible co-conspirators that the defense could use to confound a jury. Among the glaring gaps in the investigation was the failure of the FBI to attempt to match the more than 1,000 unidentified latent fingerprints found in the investigation. [And] almost all the eyewitnesses to the crime claimed that McVeigh was not alone. No fewer than 24 witnesses said that they saw McVeigh, just before and after the crime, with a man who could not have been ... Mr. Nichols. The FBI concluded that these witnesses had all been confused. Certainly eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, but 24 mistaken witnessesand no accurate ones?
Note: Many aspects of the Oklahoma City bombing were covered up. For a compilation of media videos showing without doubt there were other bombs in the building which later were completely ignored, click here. For other major media articles showing major manipulation, click here click here, here, and here.
Government officials have openly discussed details of the mission [to kill Osama bin Laden] in speeches, interviews and television appearances, but the administration won't disclose records that would confirm their narrative of that fateful night. The Associated Press asked for files about the raid in more than 20 separate [FOIA] requests, mostly submitted the day after bin Laden's death. The Pentagon told the AP this month it could not locate any photographs or video taken during the raid or showing bin Laden's body. It also said it could not find any images of bin Laden's body on the Navy aircraft carrier where the al-Qaida leader's body was taken. The Pentagon said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government planned to dispose of bin Laden's body if he were killed. It said it searched files at the Pentagon, U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and the Navy command in San Diego that controls the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier used in the mission. The Defense Department told the AP in late February it could not find any emails about the bin Laden mission or his "Geronimo" code name that were sent or received in the year before the raid by William McRaven, the three-star admiral at the Joint Special Operations Command who organized and oversaw the mission. It also could not find any emails from other senior officers who would have been involved in the mission's planning.
Note: WantToKnow team member Prof. David Ray Griffin, in his book Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, lays out the extensive evidence that bin Laden died in December 2001, and that since that time Pentagon psyops had been keeping him "alive" with fake videos and audiotapes to maintain a crucial pretext for the ever-expanding "war on terror." Could it be that the Pentagon will produce no records of its purported "death raid" because in fact it will reveal major manipulations involving bin Laden's death?
It's the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. This is ... an official old boys' network. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons. It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible.
Note: To understand how democracy is easily circumvented, read this full article. For lots more from reliable sources on the hidden background to the control over governments held by financial powers, click here.
The CIAs armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of Americas enemies in the decade since the 9/11 attacks. Troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many [suspects as has the CIA], holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA managed. Were the dark matter. Were the force that orders the universe but cant be seen, a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit. The SEALs are just part of the U.S. militarys Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, which has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into Americas secret army, routinely [used] to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria. The president has also given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list and then to kill, rather than capture, them. JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 to as many as 25,000. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes, even its own dedicated satellites.
Note: This article describing JSOCs spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before, is adapted from a chapter of the newly released Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. For lots more on the secret realities of the "Endless War" launched by the 9/11 false-flag operation, click here.
The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the Second World War, according to a book that pulls together evidence from unpublished documents. Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They throw light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others evaded capture by the allies. By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents, Steinacher says Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947, many on the basis of valid documents issued mistakenly. The documents which are discussed in Steinacher's book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's henchmen fled justice offer a significant insight into Vatican thinking, particularly, because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment. Through the Vatican Refugee Commission, war criminals were knowingly provided with false identities.
Note: Many Nazis were allowed entry, often under false identities, into the US in the late 40's and early '50s. Some were doctors who had experimented on concentration camp inmates without their consent, often torturing them and killing them. They continued to experiment on unwilling subjects in CIA mind-control experiments. For confirmation and more information, click here.
Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of "promiscuity" with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years. The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups. Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. He said undercover officers, particularly those infiltrating environmental and leftwing groups, viewed having sex with a large number of partners "as part of the job". His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists. The claims follow the unmasking of undercover PC Mark Kennedy, who had sexual relationships with several women during the seven years he spent infiltrating a ring of environmental activists. Another two covert officers have been named in the past fortnight who also had sex with the protesters they were sent to spy on, fuelling allegations that senior officers had authorised sleeping around as a legitimate means of gathering intelligence.
Note: For a comprehensive overview of the still-ongoing revelations about police provocateur Mark Kennedy and his cohorts in the UK police infiltration of environmental and related activist groups, click here.
The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show. In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops. "Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices," said Stapleton, who with Bush co-owned the St Louis-based Texas Rangers baseball team in the 1990s [and is married to Dorothy Walker, a first cousin of former U.S. president George H.W. Bush]. In other newly released cables, US diplomats around the world are found to have pushed GM crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative. In addition, the cables show US diplomats working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto. It also emerges that Spain and the US have worked closely together to persuade the EU not to strengthen biotechnology laws. In one cable, the embassy in Madrid writes: "If Spain falls, the rest of Europe will follow." The cables show that not only did the Spanish government ask the US to keep pressure on Brussels but that the US knew in advance how Spain would vote, even before the Spanish biotech commission had reported.
Note: For a powerful 13-minute video revealing the disturbing results of the first long-term scientific study on GMOs and showing how they greatly increased cancer incidence in rats, click here. For more revealing information on this from Dr. Mercola, click here. For an excellent overview of scientific studies on the risks from genetically-modified foods, click here.
A secret history of the United States government's Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a "safe haven" in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II. The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades. It describes the government's ... pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz. The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis. The report's most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement with Nazi emigres. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.'s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations. The Justice Department has resisted making the report public since 2006. Under the threat of a lawsuit, it turned over a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group, the National Security Archive, but even then many ... portions were omitted. A complete version was obtained by The New York Times.
Note: To read the complete Justice Department report obtained by The New York Times, click here. For a brief comparison with the heavily redacted version previously available, click here. For a more detailed analysis by the the National Security Archive, click here.
Armed with declassified documents and vivid details, a group of former Air Force officers gathered Monday to go public with an assertion they have kept mostly under wraps for decades: that UFOs visited the bases they were stationed at and caused nuclear weapon system to temporarily malfunction. The group, convened by UFO researcher Robert Hastings, came to the National Press Club in Washington to discuss their individual experiences and to urge a government that tried to ignore and silence them when they came forward years ago to finally come clean. Hastings said he believes that visitors from outer space are fixating on nuclear weapons because they want to send a message: Disarm before the world destroys itself. Hastings said he has heard of a UFO incident occurring at Malmstrom as recently as 2007. The declassified documents Hastings presented at Monday's news conference include decades-old government memos detailing reports of sightings of objects in the skies above Alabama, Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota. He has talked to 120 former or retired U.S. military about the presence of UFOs at nuclear weapons sites across the United States and around the globe as early as 1945, when the world entered the nuclear age with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For some of the officers who came forward Monday, going public wasn't easy. Bruce Fenstermacher, a missile combat crew commander at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., was "laughed at" by superiors when he reported a UFO sighting at a launch site that one of his sergeants had passed on to him, he said. He decided to keep his head low after that. "I was very careful about who I told what," he said. "I was concerned. I don't want to be considered a kook. But I think it's more important to come out and tell our story."
Note: To watch 18-minutes of this most fascinating testimony on the CNN website, click here. For a treasure trove of reliable, verifiable information on the UFO cover-up, see our resource-filled UFO Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/ufoinformation.
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has attempted to block a book about the tipping point in Afghanistan and a controversial pre-9/11 data mining project called "Able Danger." In a letter obtained by Fox News, the DIA says national security could be breached if Operation Dark Heart is published in its current form. The agency also attempted to block key portions of the book that claim "Able Danger" successfully identified hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. In a highly unusual move, the Department of Defense is now negotiating with the publisher, St. Martin's Press, to buy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of the book to keep it off shelves -- even after the U.S. Army had cleared the book for release. Specifically, the DIA wanted references to a meeting between Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the book's author, and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, removed. In that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, Shaffer alleges the commission was told about "Able Danger" and the identification of Atta before the attacks. No mention of this was made in the final 9/11 report. Once back in the U.S., Shaffer says he contacted the commission. Without explanation, the commission was no longer interested.
Note: Click here to read the full DIA letter (pdf). For a video of Fox News' exclusive interview with the author of the book blocked by the Pentagon, Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, click here.
In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. Most [sources for this story] requested anonymity either because they are prohibited from speaking publicly or because, they said, they feared retaliation at work for describing their concerns. Beyond redundancy, secrecy within the intelligence world hampers effectiveness in other ways. For the Defense Department, [the] problem goes back to an ultra-secret group of programs for which access is extremely limited and monitored by specially trained security officers. These are called Special Access Programs - or SAPs - and the Pentagon's list of code names for them runs 300 pages. The intelligence community has hundreds more of its own, and those hundreds have thousands of sub-programs with their own limits on the number of people authorized to know anything about them. All this means that very few people have a complete sense of what's going on. Such secrecy can undermine the normal chain of command when senior officials use it to cut out rivals or when subordinates are ordered to keep secrets from their commanders. One military officer involved in one such program said he was ordered to sign a document prohibiting him from disclosing it to his four-star commander, with whom he worked closely every day, because the commander was not authorized to know about it
Note: To read the full text of this important article, please make sure to press the "Continue Reading" button at the end of the first webpage to access all of the fascinating information provided. For lots more on government secrecy, click here.
Classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, was released on [April 5] by a group that promotes leaking to fight government and corporate corruption. The group, WikiLeaks, told a news conference in Washington that it acquired encrypted video of the July 12, 2007, attack from military whistleblowers and had been able to view and investigate it after breaking the encryption code. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the video and audio were authentic. David Schlesinger, Reuters' editor-in-chief, said the video released by WikiLeaks showed the deaths of [Namir] Noor-Eldeen and [Saeed] Chmagh were "tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones." "The video released today via WikiLeaks is graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result," he said. Reuters has pressed the U.S. military to conduct a full and objective investigation into the killing of the two staff. WikiLeaks posted the video at http://www.collateralmurder.com.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Should the above video disappear, click here to view it on one of our websites. The only reason this event made news is because the two cameramen killed were Reuters reporters. US forces then fired on an unarmed van with children in it, which was attempting to bring the dead and wounded out of the combat zone. How many innocent civilians are killed like this and never make the news? Spread this important video and help others to wake up and work together to stop the creulty of some of the US forces. The Pentagon is working hard to shut down Wikileaks, the organization which secured this powerful video.
Top Vatican officials including the future Pope Benedict XVI did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit. The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal. The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vaticans chief doctrinal enforcer. The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger.
Note: If you want to know just how deep this goes, watch the powerfully revealing documentary "Conspiracy of Silence," available at this link.
Mark Pittman, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News ... filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Reserve Board, seeking the details of its unprecedented efforts to funnel money to the collapsing banks of Wall Street. That was in September 2008. Just more than a year later, Mr. Pittman ... died unexpectedly at age 52. But his cause has persevered. It is now known as Bloomberg L.P. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, an attempt to unlock the vault of the largest Wall Street rescue plan in decades or, as the legal briefs put it, to break down a wall of secrecy that the Fed has kept in place for nearly two years in its controversial use of public money to prop up financial institutions. The Federal Reserve has wrapped itself in secrecy since the turn of the 20th century, when a select group of financiers met at the private Jekyll Island Club off the eastern coast of Georgia and, forgoing last names to preserve their anonymity among the staff, drafted legislation to create a central bank. Its secrecy, of course, persists today, with Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, refusing to tell even Congress which banks received government money under the bailout. There is also a heated battle to force the Fed to disclose its role in the controversial attempt to save the insurance giant American International Group.
Note: Isn't it interesting that Pittman died at age 52 while trying to expose manipulations of the big bankers? For a one-minute video proving the existence of a secret weapon which can cause an undetectable heart attack, click here. For a concise, excellent background on the hidden role of the Federal Reserve, click here.
A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in the case are dead. And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on written records provided to Lord Hutton's inquiry which were not produced in evidence. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has conducted his own investigations into Dr Kelly's death, described the order as "astonishing". Dr Kelly's body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the Government's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of being fired within 45 minutes. An inquest was suspended by then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, who ruled that Lord Hutton's inquiry could take its place. But ... the inquiry focused more on the question of how the BBC report came to be broadcast than on the medical explanation for Dr Kelly's death. Lord Hutton's report in 2004 concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. But the finding has been challenged by doctors who claim that the weapons inspector's stated injuries were not serious enough.
Note: For a cache of illuminating reports on government secrecy, click here.
The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history. Bloomberg argued that the public has the right to know basic information about the unprecedented and highly controversial use of public money. Banks and the Fed warn that bailed-out lenders may be hurt if the documents are made public, causing a run or a sell-off by investors. New York-based Bloomberg ... sued in November 2008 after the Fed refused to name the firms it lent to or disclose the amounts or assets used as collateral under its lending programs. Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the publics right to learn basic information, Thomas Golden, an attorney for the company with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, wrote in court filings. More than a dozen other groups or companies filed amicus, or friend-of-the-court, briefs, including the American Society of News Editors and individual news organizations. The judge postponed the application of her ruling to allow the appeals court to consider the case.
Note: When doling out trillions of dollars of tax-payers' money, doesn't the public have a right to know who is receiving the money and what it is being used for?
Osama Bin Laden died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from a US bomb or from a serious kidney disease. Or so the conspiracy theory goes. The theory that has developed on the web since 9/11 is that US intelligence services are manufacturing the Bin Laden statements ... to justify the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and back at home. Numerous audio and video statements purporting to be from Bin Laden have been released, but their authenticity has been continually questioned. The veracity of all of the videos is questioned by David Ray Griffin, a former theology professor and member of the 9/11 Truth Movement, which also questions mainstream accounts of the attack on the World Trade Centre. "None of them can be proven to be authentic," he says. "At least three of them can be shown to be almost certainly fake. And if somebody is faking Bin Laden videos, then that leads to the suspicion that all the videos and audio tapes have been faked." His first example is a video released by the US Department of Defense in December 2001. In it, [the] Bin Laden [figure] confesses to 9/11, yet Mr Griffin points out that al-Qaeda has only rarely admitted responsibility for terrorist attacks. He also maintains that the Bin Laden figure looks very different to previous footage - fatter, with shorter fingers, and that he is even writing with the wrong hand.
Note: To see how easily audio and video materials can be faked, read excerpts from this Washington Post article. WantToKnow supporter David Ray Griffin has written extensively about the evidence regarding whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead, including his recent book, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? BBC also interviewed former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who stated in 2007 that bin Laden was dead. She was murdered one month later. For more on this, click here
Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision. Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, manufacturers must report to the federal government new chemicals they intend to market. But the law exempts from public disclosure any information that could harm their bottom line. Government officials, scientists and environmental groups say that manufacturers have exploited weaknesses in the law to claim secrecy for an ever-increasing number of chemicals. In the past several years, 95 percent of the notices for new chemicals sent to the government requested some secrecy, according to the Government Accountability Office. About 700 chemicals are introduced annually. Some companies have successfully argued that the federal government should not only keep the names of their chemicals secret but also hide from public view the identities and addresses of the manufacturers.
Note: So according to this law, the bottom line (profits) trumps public health. For lots more on corporate and government secrecy, click here.
If you want to encourage the kind of conspiracy theories that have prospered in the wake of last years financial crisis those that describe a secret cabal of elites running the world try doing the following: Have a group of 30 high-powered economists, government officials and bankers meet under the auspices of an international group that shares ideas on how to run the global financial architecture. Have your Board of Trustees led by an influential former Federal Reserve chairman whos now working as a senior advisor to the president of the United States. Name the former vice chairman of bailout behemoth AIG as the groups Chairman and CEO (It helps that he [is] former governor of the Bank of Israel). Ensure that membership includes the likes of these: A former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard who also now works as a top presidential economic advisor; Citigroups senior vice chairman; a former IMF deputy managing director and the current governor of the Bank of Israel; and top representatives of the worlds four most important central banks. Hold two days of closed-door meetings at the New York Fed. Do not publicize a list of attendees and leave everyone guessing about the agenda. These were the circumstances surrounding Fridays start to the 62nd plenary meetings of the Group of 30, whose formal name is The Consultative Group on International Economic and Monetary Affairs, Inc.
Note: The article interestingly then goes on to claim that this secret meeting of the world's top bankers is not really anything to worry about, that they are really working for the public good. If so, why not have the meeting open and widely covered by the press? For many other revealing articles from major media reports on secret societies and secret meetings of the most rich and powerful people in our world, click here.
In August 2009, CBS News made a simple request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public documents, e-mails and other materials CDC used to communicate to states the decision to stop testing individual cases of Novel H1N1, or "swine flu." When the public affairs folks at CDC refused to produce the documents and quit responding to my queries altogether, I filed a formal Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the materials. Two months after my FOI request, the CDC has yet to produce any of these easily retrievable materials. This has become standard operating procedure in Washington. Today, I received a letter from the CDC Freedom of Information office ... to inform me that my request for "expedited" treatment of my FOI request has been denied because CDC has determined the request is "not a matter of widespread and exceptional media and public interest." The CDC may be the only agency on the planet to argue that testing and counting of swine flu cases is "not of widespread and exceptional media and public interest." CBS News reporting on the topic has been quoted and reproduced internationally by news organizations such as California NPR, radio talk shows and others. The Freedom of Information Act ... was supposed to stop federal agencies from using their power and control to withhold public information from the people who own it. Many federal agencies use it to obstruct the delay or release of obviously public information.
Note: See powerful media reports suggesting that both the Avian Flu and Swine Flu were manipulated to promote fear and boost pharmaceutical sales. For other verifiable information on health corruption, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.
Dan Brown's best-selling novel, "The Lost Symbol," [reveals] part of the history of the secretive brotherhood called the Freemasons. Dan Brown: [The book] raises provocative questions about the beliefs of the man on the dollar bill, about the power of the human mind, about whether people can become gods. George Washington was a Mason, along with 13 other presidents and numerous Supreme Court Justices. Benjamin Franklin published a book about Freemasonry on his own printing press. Nine signers of the Declaration of Independence were Freemasons, including ... John Hancock. The last master Mason to serve as president was Gerald Ford. Freemasons have been accused of everything from murder to devil worship to secretly controlling the U.S. government. Arturo de Hoyos is the grand archivist and grand historian of the supreme council of the Scottish rite and himself a 33rd-degree Mason. Arturo de Hoyos: The father of our country was a Freemason. And historians agree that some principles of Freemasonry became cherished principles of the United States. Dan Brown: America wasn't founded a Christian country. It became a Christian country. Many of the founding fathers were deists. Deists believe that a supreme being created the universe, but that being is impersonal. The Masons celebrate mankind and the power of the human mind. I hear about these experiments that are being done that categorically and scientifically prove that the human mind has power over matter. Noetic science really is the reason this book took me so long to write. Noetic scientists study whether age old ideas like faith healing ESP, mind over matter actually have a scientific basis. Another important aspect of Freemasonry is this idea of freedom of religion. The last word of the book is one that will surprise people: hope.
Note: Watch this full, fascinating interview on the MSNBC webpage at the link above. If you don't have time to read Brown's gripping novel, at least watch this video or read the text at the link above. The book also describes the fascinating, little-known science of liquid breathing - the ability to breathe while submerged in liquid. For more on this, click here and here. Many secret societies came into existence to escape the oppressive hand of the church, but some also became quite twisted. For lots more revealing information on secret societies, click here and here. For a surprising example of secret masonic symbols, click here.
Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday. "The real story is what's missing," said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000-pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said. "Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence," Trentadue said. He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because "they had run out of tape" or "the tape was being replaced." "The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see." Trentadue said he is seeking more tapes along with a variety of bombing-related documents from the FBI and the CIA. An FOIA request by Trentadue for 26 CIA documents was rejected in June. A letter from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which reviewed the documents, said their release "could cause grave damage to our national security."
Note: This revealing article also tells how Trentadue's brother was murdered by FBI agents who mistakenly thought his brother was the bomber. For more valuable information on this and other evidence challenging the official story of the Oklahoma City bombing, click here.
The secretive religious group, the Family, ... appears to be the connective tissue of the Senator Ensign sex scandal and the Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina sex scandal. Its a mystery that concerns this house at 133 C Street Southeast in Washington, D.C. This buildings financial paper trail [shows] that its actually considered to be a church. That designation makes C Street a convenient tax-free haven for the secretive organization that runs it, an organization known as the Family. Members of Congress who live there are sworn to secrecy. This powerful, poorly understood religious group ... and the house at C Street have ended up reluctantly in the headlines now because of the two major politicians sex scandals. Embattled Nevada Senator John Ensign lives at the C Street house. Prominent members of the Family ... as well as other members of Congress who live at C Streetwere both aware of Ensigns secret affair and were involved in his efforts to pay off the mistress and her family. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford mentioned C Street by name in his long public statement of regret about his affair with a woman in Argentina. Jeff Sharlet ... secretly infiltrated the family to write a book [The Family] about them. SHARLET: They like to call themselves the Christian mafia. They mean this in the sense of money moving quietly behind the scenes. Where the money goes they believe God goes. Douglas Coe, "The Family" leader, ... again and again [uses] the model of Hitler as an ideal of strength. Its not that hes a neo-Nazi. Its that they fetishize strength. They look for the leader who they believe is chosen by God. Evidence [of this] is his power, his wealth, and his willingness to align himself with their version of American power.
Note: To watch a stunning MSNBC video clip on "the Family," click here. For how political sex scandals may be much more commonplace than you might think, click here. And for powerful inside information from one who claims to have escaped from "the family," and another who says he is from a very high level there, click here and here. To develop an understanding of the bigger picture behind all of this, click here.
Quality, affordable health care is on the critical list in America. And so is the newspaper business. So maybe it's not surprising that one of the most powerful papers in the country attempted an unholy alliance, trying to turn a profit from its newsroom's coverage of the fight for health care reform. You may have missed the story because it broke on the eve of the July 4th weekend. The publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Weymouth one of the most powerful people in the nation's capital invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story. But she then invited CEOs and lobbyists from the health care industry to come, too providing they fork over $25,000 a head, or a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy little get-togethers. And what is the inducement she offers them? Nothing less than and I'm quoting the invitation verbatim "An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done." The invitation promises this private, intimate, and off-the-record dinner is an extension "of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard." Let that sink in. The "stakeholders" in health care reform in this case do not include the rabble the folks across the country who actually need quality health care but can't afford it. If any of them showed up at the kitchen door on the night of this little soiree, a bouncer would drop kick them beyond the beltway.
Note: To read the complete text, click on the link above and scroll below the video box at the top of the page. For an excellent article on the Washington Post's ties to the CIA and manipulative politics, click here.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, HOST: Despite growing pressure from the House and ordinary people, the Senate decided not to increase scrutiny on the Federal Reserve. They actually blocked a bid on procedural grounds to have the Government Accountability Office audit the Federal Reserve and issue a report. Here is Republican Senator Jim DeMint. Senator DeMint, ... Why should the Federal Reserve be audited? DEMINT: Well, the value of our dollar, our whole economic system, rides on [this] unelected, secret agency called the Federal Reserve. We're not sure what they're doing right now. And Ron Paul in the House with over half of the House signing up as cosponsors, and me and Bernie Sanders in the Senate are pushing the idea of a complete audit of the Federal Reserve, because frankly, a lot of us here in this country and around the world, are concerned that we're going to destroy the American dollar and the worldwide reserve currency. NAPOLITANO: How is it that legislation that has more than half the members of the House behind it and is proposed by a staunch conservative Republican like you and then independent socialists like Bernie Sanders is stopped on the floor of the Senate cold before you can even formally introduce it, before you can make a speech in favor of it? DEMINT: Well, if we could get the Federal Reserve under control, it would make it more difficult for the Obama administration, I think, to carry out the continued spending and growing of debt. Because one thing we're concerned about is the Federal Reserve ... will do what we call monetize the debt, basically print money, buy our own debt as a country, and devalue the dollar that way.
Note: For two powerful, short videos revealing efforts to expose the intriguing secrets of the Federal Reserve, click here and here. If you care about the financial health of the U.S. and its implications in our world, these are both must watch videos.
Area 51. It's the most famous military institution in the world that doesn't officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada's high desert. Then again, maybe not the U.S. government refuses to say. You can't drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades. It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk in fact, five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh "Slip" Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, ... spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous aircraft. Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. As for the underground-tunnel talk ... Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program ... in Area 51's backyard. "Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground," he says.
Note: So the government has been lying to us for 50 years about Area 51 and underground research there. What else are they lying to us about? For a more powerful, incisive article on this development, click here. And why isn't this getting more coverage? For another report showing major media cover-up of UFOs, click here.
Having been handed vast authority and almost no restrictions in the bailout law that Congress passed ... a committee of five little-known government officials, aided by a bare-bones staff of 40, is picking winners and losers among thousands of banks, savings and loans, insurers and other institutions. It is new and unfamiliar terrain for the officials, who are making monumental decisions a form of industrial policy, some critics say that contradict the free market philosophy they usually espouse. Predictably, the process is stirring alarm from Capitol Hill to Wall Street. Among the problems, critics say, is that despite earlier promises of transparency, the process is shrouded in secrecy, its precise goals opaque. Treasury officials have refused to disclose their criteria for deciding which banks ... get money. And officials have yet to say they even have a broader strategy, though banking executives are convinced the government wants to encourage acquisitions. Already, critics from Capitol Hill to Wall Street are lashing out at the program, saying the banks are misusing the capital infusions by hoarding the money rather than lending it. The government, the critics say, is wrongly steering funds to banks to take over weaker rivals. All this comes after Mr. Paulson abruptly shifted the focus of the program to injecting capital rather than buying distressed mortgage-related assets from the banks. This meant that Congress had never debated the details of how the government ought to carry out a recapitalization.
Note: With the intense secrecy and all of the lobbyist and big guns for banking fighting for hundreds of billions of dollars given practically free by the government, do you really think these "five little-known government officials" will be impartial in their decisions? For many revealing, reliable reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
The Environmental Protection Agency is telling its pollution enforcement officials not to talk with congressional investigators, reporters and even the agency's own inspector general, according to an internal e-mail provided to The Associated Press. The June 16 message instructs 11 managers in the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, the branch of the agency charged with making sure environmental laws are followed, to remind their staff members to keep quiet. "If you are contacted directly by the IG's office or GAO requesting information of any kind . . . please do not respond to questions or make any statements," reads the e-mail sent by Robbi Farrell, the division's chief of staff. Instead, staff members should forward inquiries to a designated EPA representative, the memo says. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility obtained the e-mail and provided it to the AP. The group is a nonprofit alliance of local, state and federal professionals. Jeff Ruch, its executive director, said ... the e-mail reinforces a "bunker mentality" within EPA under the Bush administration. "The clear intention behind this move is to chill the cubicles by suppressing any uncontrolled information." The Office of Inspector General said it did not approve of the language in the e-mail. "All EPA officials and employees are required to cooperate with OIG," the statement said. "This cooperation includes providing the OIG full and unrestricted access to EPA documents, records, and personnel."
Note: For many revealing reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials called on the U.S. government on Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings. "Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns ... which cannot be associated with performances of existing aircraft and helicopters," they said in a statement released at a news conference. The panelists from seven countries, including former senior military officers, said they had each seen a UFO or conducted an official investigation into UFO phenomena. "It's a question of who [are] you going to believe: your lying eyes or the government?" remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to hush up the sighting of a huge lighted ball four times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska. The panel, organized by a group dedicated to winning credibility for the study of UFOs, urged Washington to resume UFO investigations through the U.S. Air Force or NASA. "It would certainly, I think, take a lot of angst out of this issue," said former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who said he was among hundreds who saw a delta-shaped craft with enormous lights silently traverse the sky near Phoenix in 1997.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For a eight-minute CNN clip on this historic event including witness testimony, click here. For lots more media coverage of this and other major UFO events, click here. For their bios, photos, and official statements, click here.
David Frost: Does anyone know exactly who was responsible for this assassination attempt? There is one report that said that you arranged to send President Musharraf a letter ... in the event of your death by assassination, urging him to investigate certain individuals in his government. Is that true? Benazir Bhutto: Yes it is true that I wrote to General Musharraf. I feel these are the forces that really want to stop not just me, but the democratic process and the will of the people [from] triumphing. David Frost: In terms of these three people you mentioned where they members of or associated with the government? Benazir Bhutto: One of them is a very key figure in security. He is a former military officer. He is someone who has had dealings with Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of the band [of] groups of Maulana Masood Azhar, who was in an Indian jail for decapitating three British tourists and three American tourists. And he also had dealings with Omar Shiekh, who murdered Osama bin Laden.
Note: The key statement on bin Laden's murder happens at minute five in the video at the above link. If the link fails, click here. For a Jan. 9, 2010 BBC article also suggesting bin Laden may already have been dead years earlier and that his death had been covered up, click here. Bhutto was assassinated not long after this interview on Dec. 27, 2007.
[BBC Radio] uncovers details of a planned coup in the USAin 1933 by right-wing American businessmen.The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell [House] and George Bushs grandfather, Prescott [Bush]) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Why [is] so little ... known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy?
Note: The highly decorated General Smedley Butler, author of the landmark book War is a Racket, was approached by the plotters for assistance in carrying out this coup. He at first played along, but then eventually exposed the coup plot in Congressional testimony. Yet news of this huge plot was squelched by both the government and media. To understand why, read a two-page summary of General Butler's book by clicking here and listen to the gripping, 30-minute BBC broadcast at the link above.
Ten years ago in Arizona's capital, thousands of people reported seeing a massive, v-shaped line of lights. Some government officials later said military flares caused the confusion. But Gary Tuchman spoke with one former governor who's now saying they didn't look like flares to him. GARY TUCHMAN, CNN REPORTER: Fife Symington ... was the Republican governor of Arizona for six years. FIFE SYMINGTON: If you had been here ten years ago, and looked at the lights and the view, you would have been astounded. TUCHMAN: Governor Symington is referring to what is now known as the Phoenix lights -- an object videotaped by many and seen by thousands over several nights in the Arizona sky in 1997. It was described by witnesses as larger than a football field and silent. The governor, a Vietnam Air Force veteran, had never publicly acknowledged seeing it until now. SYMINGTON: I suspect that unless the Defense Department proves us otherwise, that it was probably some form of alien spacecraft. TUCHMAN: So why didn't he say anything then? Partly he says, because he didn't want people to panic. UFO enthusiasts were not amused, especially since the governor was believed to have seen nothing. But now he's coming out. SYMINGTON: The lights were really brilliant. And it was just fascinating. It was enormous. It just felt otherworldly. TUCHMAN: Symington will be talking about this in an updated film about UFOs called 'Out of the Blue.' Governor Symington says he did tell his family, friends, and staff about what he saw early on. SYMINGTON: I still behind the scenes tried to investigate it, but I got nowhere.
Note: To watch this fascinating three-minute CNN broadcast, click here. For more on the intriguing Phoenix lights, click here. For lots more on the powerfully revealing UFO documentary Out of the Blue, arguably the best UFO documentary ever made, click here. Learn about dozens of top military brass who have publicly testified on a major cover-up of UFOs and more. For a two-page summary of this powerful witness testimony, click here.
While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence. Page 1, Chapter 1 ... lays out Iraq's importance: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. Recommendation No. 63 ... calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise." This is an echo of calls made [by] the U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003. Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are ... rejected by all the top oil producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies than the governments. For any degree of oil privatization to take place ... Iraq has to amend its constitution. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that U.S. oil companies considered passage of the new oil law more important than increased security. Further, the Iraq Study Group would commit U.S. troops to Iraq for several more years to ... provide security for Iraq's oil infrastructure. We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.
Note: For more on corporate complicity in fomenting war exposed by a top U.S. general, click here.
A federal appeals court yesterday backed the president's power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil without any criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former gang member and U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago in 2002 and a month later designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. Padilla has been held without trial in a U.S. naval brig for more than three years, and his case has ignited a fierce battle over the balance between civil liberties and the government's power to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A host of civil liberties groups and former attorney general Janet Reno weighed in on Padilla's behalf, calling his detention illegal and arguing that the president does not have unchecked power to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely. In its ruling yesterday, the three-judge panel overturned a lower court. Avidan Cover, a senior associate at Human Rights First, said the ruling "really flies in the face of our understanding of what rights American citizens are entitled to." Opponents have warned that if not constrained by the courts, Padilla's detention could lead to the military being allowed to hold anyone who, for example, checks out what the government considers the wrong kind of reading materials from the library.
Note: For many disturbing reports from major media sources on government threats to civil liberties, click here.
Confidential letter reveals Ratzinger ordered bishops to keep allegations secret. Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001. It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week. Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a 'clear obstruction of justice'. 'Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,' Ratzinger's letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication. The letter is referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas and Ratzinger on behalf of two alleged abuse victims. By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims claim the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice. Daniel Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: 'If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10 the priest will get away with it.'
I get this a lot: Hey Mark ... why don't you quit toeing the typical blas journalism line ... and instead write about the real truths? Like for example how both Kerry and Bush are members of mega-yuppie Yale secret society/boys' club Skull & Bones. And why, furthermore, don't you talk about the real truths of 9/11? Haven't you seen that amazing [9/11] video on that Web site? And what about Building 7? Why did that 47-story tower adjacent to the WTC collapse when it had no fire and no plane crash? Why isn't the media reporting any of this? Does this make you laugh? Scoff? It is, after all, incredibly easy to dismiss conspiracy theories. But you know what? It's not that easy. These people ... have a point. They are indeed onto something quite large and ominous and it very much has to do with the media toeing the line of "safe" information. There is indeed ample evidence that the U.S. government, long before 9/11, had already discussed the quite plausible possibilities and strategic benefits of unleashing a "Pearl Harbor"-type event on America. There are plenty of strangely unanswered questions about 9/11, about the stunning inaction of NORAD and Bush's stupefying nonreaction upon hearing of the attack, not to mention his administration's incredible attempts to halt any independent 9/11 investigations. Of course, no one in any major media will touch this stuff. It is professional suicide to dare suggest an alternate truth to the one supplied by the Pentagon and regurgitated by the media. And the truth is, we don't really want such unstable questions answered. We simply cannot tolerate to have our world, our leaders, our foundations so questioned. We prefer stasis to growth, security to true knowledge.
Eric Olson now has a new verb for what happened to his father, Frank Olson, who worked for the Army's top-secret Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, where he developed bioweapons and experimented with mind-control drugs. Eric Olson found the verb in a 1950s CIA manual. The verb is "dropped." And the manual is a how-to guide for assassins. "The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface," the manual says, adding helpfully: "It will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before dropping him." Eric Olson believes his father -- who developed misgivings about his work and tried to resign -- was murdered by government agents to protect dark government secrets. "No assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded," says the CIA assassination manual. "Decision and instructions should be confined to an absolute minimum of persons." It adds: "For secret assassination the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated." William P. Walter, 78, who supervised anthrax production at Detrick, says Olson's colleagues were divided about his death. "Some say he jumped. Some say he had help," Walter says. "I'm one of the 'had-help' people." So is James Starrs, a George Washington University forensic pathologist who ... called the evidence "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide." In a report to the CIA on the death, [Harold] Abramson, [a doctor who had experimented with LSD] wrote that the LSD experiment was designed "especially to trap (Olson)." This ... raised a troubling possibility: that the LSD experiment was actually designed to see whether Olson could still be trusted to keep the agency's dark secrets.
Note: Frank Olson was just one of many tragic casualties of the CIA's mind-control programs. For revealing information on this secret history, click here.
Your commission ... has now issued its "9/11 Commission Report". After [9/11] we, the translators at the FBI's largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down, even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities. This issue has been confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Melek Can Dickerson, with the assistance of her direct supervisor, forged signatures on top-secret documents related to certain 9/11 detainees. Not only does the supervisor facilitating these criminal conducts remain in a supervisory position, he has been promoted. In April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset ... received information that: 1) Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major cities, 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes [and] the attack was going to be carried out soon. No action was taken. After 9/11, the agents and the translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue. The translator who was present ... reported this incident to Director Mueller in writing. Why did your report choose to exclude the information ... despite the public confirmation by the FBI, witnesses provided to your investigators, and briefings you received directly? As you are fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a Senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. Even FBI officials 'confirmed all my allegations and denied none' during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff. However, neither your commission's hearings, nor your commission's five hundred sixty seven-page report ... include these serious issues, major incidents, and systemic problems.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Sibel Edmonds is one of the great heroes of our day. She has been gagged directly by the U.S. Attorney General from telling what she knows. The above letter was not published in any major U.S. media, though widely reported in alternative new sources. To understand how such vital information is hidden from the public, click here. For lots more on Ms. Edmonds, click here.
The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever. On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting. For four days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues. What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique. Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted. A former journalist, Mr Gosling runs a campaign against the group from his home in Bristol, UK." One of the first places I heard about the determination of US forces to attack Iraq was from leaks that came out of the 2002 Bilderberg meeting," says Mr Gosling.
The news that the bankers Rothschild are to withdraw from the gold market, in which they have been a major player for two centuries, has been hailed as the end of an era. In one sense, of course, it is. But in another way it marks out the continuation of an even older tradition - the ability of the family which has founded one of the world's largest private banking dynasties to sustain their secretive fortune, which industry insiders count not in billions but in trillions, and keep it within the family. Secrecy has been a hallmark of the Rothschilds from the outset. The Rothschilds created the world of banking as we know it today. [They] invented, or at any rate popularised, the government bond, which allowed investors, big and small, to buy bits of the debts of sovereign states by purchasing fixed-interest bearer bonds. It brought investment in railways, the industrial revolution and ventures like the Suez Canal. The Rothschilds got a cut of everything. They made billions in the 1980s from Margaret Thatcher's privatisations of state-owned industries on which they advised. In France after their bank was nationalised by the Socialist president Francois Mitterrand they slowly built a new business which, under Baron David de Rothschild, has risen to the top ranks of the merger and acquisition league tables. They have pulled out of retail fund management - into which they went with much fanfare only three years back - and now they are pulling out of oil and gold in favour of the higher-margin areas of private banking and wealth management
Note: For some reason this article was removed from the website of the Independent, which is why the above link takes you to a cached version of this revealing article. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
For decades, priests in this country abused children in parish after parish while their superiors covered it all up. Now it turns out the orders for this cover up were written in Rome at the highest levels of the Vatican. [A] confidential Vatican document, obtained by CBS News, lays out a church policy that calls for absolute secrecy when it comes to sexual abuse by priests anyone who speaks out could be thrown out of the church. The policy was written in 1962 by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. The document, once "stored in the secret archives" of the Vatican, focuses on crimes initiated as part of the confessional relationship. Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone (including the alleged victim) ... is to observe the strictest secret, which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office ... under the penalty of excommunication." Larry Drivon, a lawyer who represents alleged victims, said, This document is significant because it's a blueprint for deception. It's an instruction manual on how to deceive and how to protect pedophiles ... and exactly how to avoid the truth coming out." Richard Sipe, a former priest who has written about sex abuse and secrecy in the church, said the document sends a chilling message. You keep it secret at all costs, Sipe said. It's happened in every diocese in this country. According to church records, the document was a bedrock of Catholic sex abuse policy until America's bishops met last summer and drafted new policies to address the crisis in the church.
Is the Bush White House trying to put the brakes on the congressional panel created last fall to investigate 9-11 attacks? The White House brushed off a request quietly made last week by the 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, to boost his budget by $11 million. The panel has until the end of May 2004 to complete its work, but it will spend the $3 million it was originally allotted by around August 2003 if it doesn't get the supplement. Bush's recent move has miffed some members of the 9-11 panel. Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the panel's top Democrat, requested additional funding in a letter to the administration last week. In denying the request, the White House irritated many of the members of the commission. The White House sidestepped the issue of why the request wasn't granted. The latest effort to curtail funding has angered victims of the attacks. Stephen Push, a leader of the 9/11 victims' families, who are closely monitoring the commission, said the White House decision was another in a long line of efforts to water down or shrink the panel's role. Commission member Tim Roemer ... has gone so far as to draw comparisons with the $50 million provided to investigate the recent Columbia tragedy in which seven people died. "If we're looking at well over $11 million for that, we certainly should be looking for at least the same vicinity of money for how 3,000 people died and how to strengthen our homeland security," he said.
Note: MSNBC reported that "the Ken Starr investigation of Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky cost the tax-payer $64 million." The Columbia tragedy invstigation ran $50 million. Yet the White House wanted to limit the investigation of the worst terror attack ever to $3 million. What secrets are they hiding? Click here for more.
The Middle Ages had the Knights Templar. The 18th century had the Masons and the Illuminati. Our modern age has golf-playing businessmen. [Jon] Ronson, a 35-year-old British writer, humorist and documentarian, kept reading and hearing about the "tiny elite [that] rules the world from inside a secret room" -- so he decided to go in search of it. He met with extremists of many stripes: Ku Klux Klansmen with a PR bent, Muslim rabble-rousers ... and others convinced that a New World Order meant the end of the world. He sought out the industrialists of groups such as the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove. He wrote about his experiences in "Them." Ronson's extremists seem rather normal. Some are very much aware of how their views marginalize them. The people of "Them" are people who are all too human -- even if they would deny others their humanity. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you. Ronson doesn't deny that many of the extremists in "Them" are, well, extreme. Many have put together half-baked theories that blame the troubles of the world on wealthy businessmen, usually a code word for Jews. Ronson, who's Jewish himself, sometimes found it awkward to listen to their views. Conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. While researching a Bilderberg Group meeting, [Ronson] was chased through parts of Portugal by shadowy security men. He found out just how thin the membrane between "us" and "them" may be.
Note: Them is by far the most balanced, entertaining book you are likely to find on conspiracy theorists. It pokes a lot of fun both at the conspiracy theorists and at the powerful secret groups which he finds to be deluded almost as much as the conspiracy theorists themselves.
The Defense Department is dramatically expanding its 'black world' of covert operations. The Bush administration has turned to what the Pentagon calls the "black world" to press the war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The increasingly dominant role of the military ... reflects the desire of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to gain greater overall control of the war on terror. "Our task is to find and destroy the enemy before they strike us." Though covert action can bring quick results, because it is isolated from the normal review processes it can just as quickly bring mistakes and larger problems. The epicenter of the Pentagon's covert operations remains the North Carolina-based Joint Special Operations Command, often referred to as Delta Force. The super-secret command is still not officially acknowledged to exist. Rumsfeld's influential Defense Science Board ... recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception. This body would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces. The Air Force is designing its own Global Response Task Force ... capable of delivering a "worldwide attack within an hour."
Note: For an amazing expos by a highly decorated U.S. general on the hidden reasons behind war, click here.
Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States. When president Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua he issued a series of executive orders that provided the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with broad powers in the event of a "crisis" such as "violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a US military invasion abroad". On July 20 the Detroit Free Press ran a story entitled "Arabs in US could be held, official warns". The story referred to a member of the US Civil Rights Commission who foresaw the possibility of internment camps for Arab Americans. FEMA has practised for such an occasion. FEMA, whose main role is disaster response, is also responsible for handling US domestic unrest. From 1982-84 Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defence preparations. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA. A Miami Herald article on July 5, 1987, reported that the former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida's deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law portion of the planning. Today Mr Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security.
Note: Most of these provisions are still in place today. Isn't it time for a change?
Key congressional leaders say they didn't know President Bush had established a "shadow government," moving dozens of senior civilian managers to secret underground locations outside Washington. Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) [said] he had not been informed by the White House about the role, location or even the existence of the shadow government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept. 11 hijackings. Among Congress's GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line to succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) said they were not sure whether they knew. Mr. Bush acknowledged yesterday that the administration had taken extensive measures to guarantee "the continuity of government," adding, "This is serious business." Such an operation was conceived as a Cold War precaution against nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration but never used until now. It went into effect in the first hours after the terror attacks [and] is an extension of a policy that has kept Vice President Dick Cheney in secure, undisclosed locations away from Washington. Cheney has moved in and out of public view as threat levels have fluctuated.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here. For an abundance of solid information suggesting a major cover-up around 9/11, click here.
As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a UFO. As president, Ronald Reagan mused openly on how petty differences among nations might evaporate in the face of an extraterrestrial threat. And no one has done more to turn up the speculative heat than retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, who held a slew of top intelligence posts, including deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In a Learning Channel documentary, Inman said but has since repeatedly and vigorously denied that the military is attempting to use technology from unspecified "recovered vehicles." The most perplexing UFO mystery of all began in the desert north of Roswell, NM. Ideas of what happened here during the first week of July 1947 range from the simple a weather balloon crash to the downright silly Earth was being scouted for an intergalactic invasion. The latest official government explanation there have been three thus far is that the recovered debris came from a Project Mogul balloon that was carrying instruments to detect Soviet nuclear tests. After interviewing witnesses who had seen and handled crash-site debris, and reviewing [classified documents], we have concluded that there really was a crashed disc, dead bodies and a secret that could have been politically deadly to presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Note: If the above link fails, click here or here. This well researched article raises more questions than it answers, yet it leaves virtually no doubt that there was a major cover-up. For lots more intriguing media articles suggesting a major cover-up of UFOs and related phenomena, click here.
Remote viewers have been in the headlines recently because it's come to light that several of them worked on the "Stargate" program, a top-secret, multimillion-dollar project at Fort Meade, Md. [They helped] locate American hostages, enemy submarines, strategic buildings in foreign countries and who knows what else. [Joseph] McMoneagle, 49, defended remote viewing, which he explained as the act of describing or drawing details about a place, person or thing without having any prior knowledge. He said that true remote viewing, unlike crystal-ball gazing and tea-leaf reading, is always conducted under "strict scientific protocols." He put his skills on the line last week on national television when ABC became, for an hour, the other psychic network and the demonstration was impressive. "My career was destroyed in the Army," said McMoneagle, who joined in 1964. He said he knew when he first joined the Stargate project which was then called Grillflame in 1978 that he would never again be taken seriously for any other job in the military. But he felt the assignment was too important to national security to decline. The government was ... using remote viewers, about 15 of them, who operated under strict guidelines developed in the laboratories at SRI International, a California contractor, to provide additional information to be used in conjunction with intelligence gathered by satellites or spies or any other traditional means. Research has shown that remote viewing works 14 percent of the time or more. He said, "There is a huge percentage of intelligence collection systems that don't do as well." He helped the Army locate hostages in Iran. He said he predicted almost precisely where Skylab was going to fall, 11 months before the spacecraft returned to Earth in 1979.
Note: The U.S. government completely denied the existence of this program for decades. For a free copy of this entire, fascinating article, click here. For a four-minute newscast video showing how remote viewing works, click here. For an excellent, albeit overly dramatized documentary on remote viewing, click here.
Fifty years ago, the US Navy locked 17-year-old Glenn Jenkins into a gas chamber within sight of the dome of the US Capitol in Washington. It then poisoned him with mustard and lewisite (arsenic) gas. He never recovered his good health. Nathan Schnurman, another 17-year-old, was asked to test summer uniforms for the navy. He was locked in a small hut heated by a furnace and with a door that could be opened only from the outside. When something went wrong with his mask, he asked over the intercom to come out, but was refused. He vomited into his mask, passed out and had a heart attack. The plight of Mr Jenkins, Mr Schnurman and 2,500 other sailors who were used in what the navy called 'man break' experiments with poison gas, has remained a secret for five decades. Only last week, under pressure from the victims, did the Pentagon agree to let them tell their stories. Many, who had been told that the Espionage Act would be used against them, did not even tell their doctors what had happened. All the survivors, now in their late sixties, tell similar stories. The navy not only volunteered its own men, but for decades after the war also refused to compensate them for crippling injuries. [And] the experiments were for nothing. Mustard gas was used just once in the Second World War by the Allies, and then by accident.
Note: The military has repeatedly condoned horrendous research on live subjects. For a revealing list of highly unethical experimentation on human over the past 75 years, click here. For a concise summary of the government's secret quest to control the mind and human behavior no matter what the cost, click here.
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 Hitlers 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 nations security that were 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.
The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars, according to three new reports, on secret projects to investigate extrasensory phenomena and to see if the sheer power of the human mind can be harnessed to perform various acts of espionage and war - penetrating secret files, for example, locating submarines or blowing up guided missiles in midflight. The Pentagon denies that it is spending money on psychic research. The assertions to the contrary appear in a trio of new books, one just published and two scheduled to be released this spring, and in a series of interviews in which past Pentagon officials and scientists who study the paranormal have discussed what they contend is the military's decades-long psychic quest. What emerges is a picture of [the Pentagon] trying to master such esoteric arts as ESP (extrasensory perception), telepathy (thought transfer), clairvoyance (seeing things that are out of sight), and psychokinesis (mental influence over objects or events) - all in the name of the national defense. A Pentagon spokesman went so far as to deny that the Department of Defense today ''spent a nickel'' on psychic research, but he also suggested that he could not acknowledge the existence of highly classified projects. The most detailed study of an actual set of psychic experiments comes from The Mind Race, by Russell Targ and Keith Harary.
Note: This is one of many examples of blatant lying by the Pentagon on secret projects. The Pentagon consistently denied the existence of a remote viewing project (called Stargate) until the documents from the project were declassified in 1995. You can find the documents online at this link. For a long period of time, the US government denied the existence of the NSA, so that the moniker "No Such Agency" was jokingly used.
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of Americas leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA. Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine servicesfrom simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of Americas leading news organizations.
Note: To understand how the CIA and others manipulate the major media is in its news coverage, see the brilliant summary of the work of 20 award-winning journalists on this key topic at this link.
At request of Brigadier General George F. Schulgen, Chief of the Requirements Intelligence Branch of Army Air Corps Intelligence, Special Agent [deleted] discussed the above captioned matter with him on July 9, 1947. General Schulgen indicated to [deleted] that the Air Corps has taken the attitude that every effort must be undertaken in order to run down and ascertain whether or not the flying disks are a fact and, if so, to learn all about them. He advised that to complete the picture he desired the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in locating and questioning the individuals who first sighted the so-called flying disks in order to ascertain whether or not they are sincere in their statements that they saw these disks. [Deleted] indicated that it was his attitude that the flying disks are not the result of any Army or Navy experiments. He stated that he was of the opinion that the Bureau, if at all possible, should accede to General Schulgen's request. [FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's handwritten response:] I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the Sa. case the army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory investigation.
Note: The excerpt above is from pages 44 and 45 of the rich collection of declassified FBI documents on UFOs at the link above. If the link fails, click here. Note that this was just days after the Roswell crash. For lots more solid evidence of a major UFO cover-up, see our UFO Information Center at this link. Why hasn't this been widely reported and become public knowledge? For a possible answer, click here.
YouTube has banned any coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts World Health Organization (WHO) advice. The Google-owned service says it will remove anything it deems "medically unsubstantiated". Chief executive Susan Wojcicki said the media giant wanted to stamp out "misinformation on the platform". The move follows YouTube banning conspiracy theories falsely linking Covid-19 to 5G networks. Mrs Wojcicki made the remarks on Wednesday during her first interview since the global coronavirus lockdown began. "So people saying, Take vitamin C, take turmeric, well cure you, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy, she told CNN. Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy. Last week, Facebook announced users who had read, watched or shared false Covid-19 information would receive a pop-up alert urging them to visit the WHO's website. Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp, meanwhile, stopped users forwarding messages already shared more than four times by the wider community to more than one chat at a time. It comes as some of the UK's largest news publishers, including Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, criticised Google for failing to be transparent about its approach to filtering adverts alongside coronavirus-related content, according to the Financial Times.
Note: So now anything posted by those not deemed to be "experts" will be banned. Whatever happened to free speech? Watch YouTube's CEO spell this out in this video. More excellent, little-known information here in an interview with a respected MD whose video was banned. And how can BBC state links between 5G and Covid-19 are false, when that has yet to be established? Is it just a coincidence this CNBC article states China's 5G networks went online just weeks before the coronavirus outbreak? See also concise summaries of revealing coronavirus news articles.
According to arecent study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Other studies report much higher figures, claiming the number of deaths from medical error to be as high as 440,000. [The study] defines a death due to medical error as one that is caused by inadequately skilled staff, error in judgment or care, a system defect or a preventable adverse effect. This includes computer breakdowns, mix-ups with the doses or types of medications ... and surgical complications. The U.S. patient-care study, which was released in 2016, explored death-rate data for eight consecutive years. The researchers discovered that based on a total of 35,416,020 hospitalizations, there was a pooled incidence rate of 251,454 deaths per year or about 9.5 percent of all deaths that stemmed from medical error. According to Dr. John James, a patient-safety advocate and author of A Sea of Broken Hearts: Patient Rights in a Dangerous, Profit-Driven Health Care System, patients need to take charge. There needs to be a balance between the provider community and the patients. James site,Patient Safety America, lists the three levels in which patients can protect themselves. These include being a wise consumer of health care by demanding quality, cost-effective care; by participating in patient-safety leadership through boards, panels and commissions that implement policy and laws; and by pushing for laws that favor safer care, transparency and accountability.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.
On April 30, 1966 ... Anton LaVey signed away his soul forever and became leader of ... the Church of Satan. In the church's first year, LaVey conducted a satanic wedding, a satanic funeral on Treasure Island (in cooperation with the U.S. Navy) and a satanic baptism of his young daughter, Zeena. The church was brazenly and publicly devoted to selfish hedonism. In 1968, LaVey opened up his home to a documentary film crew. Satanic rituals were staged for the cameras, with a nude woman serving as the altar. In 1969, LaVey published "The Satanic Bible": "Hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, SMASH him on the other." The canon has gone on to sell nearly a million copies. Michael Aquino began corresponding with Anton LaVey while a psychological operative for the U.S. Army. Aquino returned to the States and was soon made a high-ranking priest. His distinctive appearance – he sported a prominent widow's peak and darkly accented eyebrows – was further enhanced by a small 666 tattooed on his scalp. In 1975, Aquino left with many church members and priests ... to form the Temple of Set, a tightly organized religion that revolved around an Egyptian deity on whom the Hebraic Satan supposedly was based. LaVey's church has been besieged for years by bickering former adherents who insist that he was a fraud and that his institution does not worship the Devil properly. "My estrangement from Anton LaVey caused me intense personal pain," Aquino writes. "For six years I had regarded him as a friend, mentor, and ultimately Devil-father."
Note: An openly avowed Satanist while serving as a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army, Michael Aquino coauthored the highly controversial document Mindwar in 1980, which would define the strategy and importance of Psychological Operations, aka PSYOPS, for the U.S. Department of Defense. Aquino was investigated in connection with military child abuse scandals, but never brought to court. He defended his beliefs dressed in Satanic wear on this Geraldo show.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is asking President Biden to pardon a former Air Force intelligence analyst who exposed secrets about drone warfare in Afghanistan. In July, Daniel Hale pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria to violating the Espionage Act and was sentenced in July to 45 months in prison for leaking classified documents to the Intercept. In court, Hale said he felt compelled to speak out about the immorality of the drone program after realizing he had helped kill Afghan civilians, including a small child. "Not a day goes by that I don't question the justification for my actions," he wrote to the judge. "I am grief-stricken and ashamed of myself." One document he leaked showed that during a five-month operation in Afghanistan, nearly 90 percent of the people killed were not the intended targets. "I take extremely seriously the prohibition on leaking classified information, but I believe there are several aspects of Mr. Hale's case that merit a full pardon," Omar wrote in the letter sent to Biden. "The information, while politically embarrassing to some, has shone a vital light on the legal and moral problems of the drone program and informed the public debate on an issue that has for too many years remained in the shadows." This week, Hale was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, given by a group of whistleblowers from the national security community. Edward Snowden received the same award in 2013.
Note: Hale's leak was the basis for an article series called The Drone Papers. A 2014 analysis found that attempts to kill 41 people with drones resulted in 1,147 deaths. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
YouTube has removed two videos of California doctors ... Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi of Bakersfield, California [which] downplayed the risk of the coronavirus and asserted that stay-at-home measures were unnecessary. Facebook, however, has not removed the doctors' videos. The different reactions of YouTube and Facebook highlight the challenges of moderating high-stakes misinformation as it goes viral, especially when it is considered to be expert opinion. The video removed by YouTube showed a one-hour news conference livestreamed by local media, including NBC and ABC affiliates in Bakersfield. By Wednesday, the video had been seen at least 15 million times. Erickson and Massihi, owners of several urgent care centers in the area, presented data from 5,213 COVID-19 tests. The data, they claimed, showed that the coronavirus was widespread in the community already but had caused few deaths. Their data, they said, supported the need to rethink state stay-at-home measures. Furthermore, Erickson ... claimed that COVID-19 death numbers were inaccurate, citing other unnamed doctors in Wisconsin and California who he said had told him that they were urged to list the disease as a cause of death even if it was unrelated. "The only justification for taking it down was that the two physicians on screen had reached different conclusions from the people currently in charge," said Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Massihi posted a video to his personal Facebook page Tuesday thanking supporters while insisting that their comments were meant only to share their own data, not to drive national or even state policy.
Note: Watch an excellent follow-up interview with Dr. Erickson exposing further deception. Even if these doctors are wrong about some of their conclusions, don't they have a right to express their opinions? Will anyone who disputes the claims of government officials be banned from expressing their opinions on social media? Sadly, this BBC article shows that is already true for the coronavirus on YouTube. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Dr Fauci has been the face of the nation's Covid-19 response. But emails have raised questions on whether he backed Chinese denials of the theory that Covid-19 leaked from a lab. A trove of Dr Fauci's emails covering the onset of the coronavirus outbreak were released this week to media under a freedom of information request. Chinese authorities linked early Covid-19 cases to a seafood market in Wuhan. But recent US media reports have suggested growing evidence the virus could instead have emerged from a lab in Wuhan, perhaps through an accidental leak. The NIH, which is a US public health agency, gave $600,000 (425,000) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from 2014-19 via a grant to the New York-based non-profit group EcoHealth Alliance, for the purpose of researching bat coronaviruses. Peter Daszak, head of EcoHealth Alliance, emailed Dr Fauci in April 2020, praising him as "brave" for seeking to debunk the lab leak theory. Department of State officials ... were told not to explore claims about gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab to avoid attracting unwelcome attention to US government funding of such research. Gain-of-function studies involve altering pathogens to make them more transmissible in order to learn more about how they might mutate. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that three employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill and were admitted to hospital in November 2019, just before the first reported Covid-19 cases.
Note: Read lots more important information on this not covered in the BBC article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Nearly everyone whos seen it and lived to tell the tale describes it the same way: a horrifying, otherworldly thing of ghastly beauty that has haunted their life ever since. The colors were beautiful, remembers a man in Morgan Knibbes short documentary The Atomic Soldiers. I hate to say that. Many tales of the atomic bomb, however, werent told at all. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an estimated 400,000 American soldiers and sailors also observed nuclear explosions - many just a mile or two from ground zero. From 1946 to 1992, the U.S. government conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests, during which unwitting troops were exposed to vast amounts of ionizing radiation. After the tests, the soldiers, many of whom were traumatized, were sworn to an oath of secrecy. Breaking it even to talk among themselves was considered treason, punishable by a $10,000 fine and 10 or more years in prison. In Knibbes film, some of these atomic veterans break the forced silence to tell their story for the very first time. They describe how the blast knocked them to the ground; how they could see the bones and blood vessels in their hands, like viewing an X-ray. What appalled Knibbe the most was how the U.S. government failed the veterans. Until this day, a lot of what has happened - and the radiation-related diseases the veterans have contracted and passed on to the generations after them - is still being covered up, Knibbe said.
Note: Don't miss the most profound, 22-minute video at the link above. And for lots more on the huge cover-up of the terrifying effects of the bomb, see this most informative webpage. Explore lots more astonishing, verifiable information on humans used as guinea pigs in the last 100 years.
In the 1970s, a handsome ex-Israeli army paratrooper popularized extrasensory perception, or ESP. Uri Geller claimed he could ... see inside sealed containers, and even read other people's minds. Geller ... caught the eye of the intelligence community. "Scientists would consider, 'Wait a minute, maybe we can read the minds of other government officials, [or] see inside a nuclear facility in Russia,'" said national security reporter Annie Jacobsen. Jacobsen has written about the U.S. government's ... attempts to use Uri Geller, and others like him, for psychic espionage. "It's sort of like a highly-classified black program inside of a black program," Jacobsen said. "One, because you don't want the Russians or the Chinese to know what we are doing; and two, because a lot of scientists didn't want their colleagues to know what they were doing." In the 1980s, the Defense Intelligence Agency began "Project Star Gate," which was, according to Dean Radin, a scientist who worked on the program, top secret. The program employed about a dozen psychics and mediums. Its aim: espionage. Angela Ford was with Project Star Gate for nine years. She calls herself a medium; the Defense Department preferred "remote viewer." Her assignment? To look for missing hostages and fugitives without ever leaving a building at Fort Meade in Maryland. She recalled one assignment, in 1989, when she says she was able to psychically track down a former customs agent who had allegedly gone rogue.
Note: Explore lots more solid information on remote viewing the government's psychic spying program. Could it be that key elements in government don't want us to know of the unlimited powers contained within each of us? See undeniable evidence that remote viewing was quite successful.
In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find. Which was how the Pentagon wanted it. For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagons C Ring. The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. The shadowy program ... was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who ... has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur ... Robert Bigelow. The program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift. Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft. Two other former senators and top members of a defense spending subcommittee - Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat - also supported the program. None of the three senators wanted a public debate ... about the funding for the program, Mr. Reid said. This was so-called black money, he said.
Note: Watch a CNN interview with the Navy Pilot who spotted something he is convinced was not of this world. This appears to be part of a planned roll out so that the public becomes more comfortable with the existence of UFOs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing UFO news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Members of Congress are demanding answers after a St. Louis scholar's new book revealed details of secret Cold War-era U.S. government testing in which countless unsuspecting people, including many children, pregnant women and minorities, were fed, sprayed or injected with radiation and other dangerous materials. Lisa Martino-Taylor ... wrote "Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans," [using] Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain previously unreleased documents, including Army records. She found that a small group of researchers, aided by leading academic institutions, worked to develop radiological weapons and later "combination weapons" using radioactive materials along with chemical or biological weapons. Martino-Taylor said the offensive radiological weapons program was a top priority for the government. Unknowing people in places throughout the U.S., as well as parts of England and Canada, were subjected to potentially deadly material through open-air spraying, ingestion and injection. "They targeted the most vulnerable in society," Martino-Taylor said. "They targeted children. They targeted pregnant women. People who were ill in hospitals. They targeted wards of the state. And they targeted minority populations." [House Democrat William Lacy] Clay said he was angered that Americans were used as "guinea pigs" for research. "I join with my colleagues to demand the whole truth about this testing," Clay said in a statement.
Note: See this news article for photos and a video of this event. Read about dozens of other incidents in which humans were used as guinea pigs, at times resulting in deaths that were covered up. Another video is available here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the scientific community.
It took years of public pressure and a lawsuit, but the California Department of Public Health has finally released a set of guidelines for the public about the risks associated with cell phone use and the best ways for cell phone users to reduce their exposure to potential dangers. What on earth took so long? We asked the department for an answer to this question. It didnt offer us a direct response but wrote, [This] project was discontinued when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued national guidance on the same subject. However, the states document, dated April 2014 and stamped draft and not for public release ... paints a very clear picture of the potential dangers of cell phone use. Health officials are concerned about possible health effects from cell phone EMFs (electromagnetic fields) because some recent studies suggest that long-term cell phone use may increase the risk of brain cancer and other health problems, the guidelines read. The two-page document goes on to suggest ways to lower your exposure, including using speaker phone and headsets, keeping the phone away from your body when its not being used, and sending text messages instead of voice calls. Californias public health department released the document only after a judge said she would order the guidelines to be disclosed. Joel Moskowitz, a public health researcher at UC Berkeley, sued the department last year after repeatedly requesting them.
Note: The medical community has long been aware that cell phone use negatively impacts human health. Despite the American Academy of Pediatrics urging the US to reassess to cell phone safety standards for children in 2012, the Centers for Disease Control backed away from warning the public about the risks of cell phone radiation to kids. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.
The dozens of American diplomats taken hostage by revolutionary students who seized the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 might have had some secret company during their 15-month captivity: U.S. intelligence agencies had a squad of military-trained psychics using ESP to watch them, according to declassified documents in a newly available CIA database. In an operation code-named Grill Flame, half a dozen psychics ... on more than 200 occasions tried to peer through the ether to see where the hostages were being held, how closely they were guarded and the state of their health. Whether the psychics provided any useful intelligence was the subject of a debate among intelligence officials as heated as it was secret. The debate continues today. The stuff that the CIA has declassified is garbage, one of the Grill Flame psychics, Joseph McMoneagle, told the Miami Herald. They havent declassified any of the stuff that worked. Agreed Edwin May, a physicist who oversaw parapsychology research for government intelligence agencies for 20 years: The psychics were able to tell, in some cases, where the hostages were moved to. They were able to see the degree of their health. Operation Grill Flame was just one part of a broader U.S. intelligence project involving psychics and ESP that continued for 20 years. It went through as many as 10 different code names as its management shifted from agency to agency ... and carried out 26,000 telepathic forays by 227 psychics before the government shut it down in 1995.
Note: Read more on McMoneagle's work as a psychic for the US military. For more excellent, well resourced material on remote viewing and why the intelligence community continues to deny its successes, see this webpage.
A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Turkey wrote a provocative essay this summer about the deep state. The phrase refers to a parallel secret government embedded in the military and intelligence services, whose purpose is to provide a check on electoral democracy. The essay, written by Philip Giraldi ... called the American deep state of today an unelected, unappointed, and unaccountable presence within the system that actually manages what is taking place behind the scenes. The American deep state of his description consists of ... Capitol Hill aides and legislators who cash in as lobbyists; former politicians who earn millions speaking to banks ... technocrats who ricochet between Goldman Sachs and the Treasury Department; billionaire kingmakers dangling political donations; thinkers whose tanks are financed by corporations with a financial stake in their research. The deep state metaphor seems to be ascendant as a way to explain present American realities. The writer Peter Dale Scott ... last year published a similarly minded book called The American Deep State, which emphasized the role of security contractors, oil companies and financial firms. Meanwhile, Mike Lofgren, a Republican who spent 28 years as a congressional aide before quitting in 2011, has used deep state to describe a subterranean cross-party consensus on issues like financialization, outsourcing, privatization ... from which the public is distracted by above-ground debates over diversionary social issues.
Note: Read an incisive essay by "deep state" author Prof. Peter Dale Scott showing how big money continues to run the Trump team, just as it has all previous government of both parties. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on secrecy and lies in government and industry.
Mark Rossini, a former FBI special agent at the center of an enduring mystery related to [9/11] says he is "appalled" by the newly declassified statements by former CIA Director George Tenet defending the spy agency's efforts to detect and stop the plot. Rossini, who was assigned to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC) at the time of the attacks, has long maintained that the U.S. government has covered up secret relations between the spy agency and Saudi individuals who may have abetted the plot. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who flew commercial airliners (on 9/11) were Saudis. A heavily redacted 2005 CIA inspector general's report, parts of which had previously been released, was further declassified earlier this month. The Obama administration has [still] refused to declassify 28 pages dealing with Saudi connections. Rossini and another FBI agent assigned to the CTC, Doug Miller, learned in January 2000 that one of the future hijackers ... had a multi-entry visa to enter the U.S. But when Miller and Rossini attempted to warn FBI headquarters that al-Mihdhar could be loose in the U.S., a CIA supervisor ordered them to remain silent. Rossini says he is "deeply concerned" by how the agency continues to suppress information related to contacts between the CIA and Saudi Arabia, particularly when the spy agency is declassifying other portions of documents to show that it did everything possible to thwart the September 11, 2001 plot. "There would have not been a 9/11 if Doug's CIR [Central Intelligence Report] on al-Mihdhar was sent," he told Newsweek in an email. "Period. End of story."
Note: Read a Times of London article showing that some of the hijackers listed in the final 9/11 report are still alive. Several major media articles also reported that some of the 9/11 hijackers may have trained at US military bases. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore other excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.
A secretive group met behind closed doors in New York this week. What they decided may lead to higher drug prices for you and hundreds of millions around the world. Representatives from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries convened to decide the future of their trade relations in the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (T.P.P.). Powerful companies appear to have been given influence over the proceedings, even as full access is withheld from many government officials from the partnership countries. Among the topics negotiators have considered are some of the most contentious T.P.P. provisions those relating to intellectual property rights. These rules could help big pharmaceutical companies maintain or increase their monopoly profits on brand-name drugs [and] block cheaper generic drugs from the market. Big Pharmas profits would rise, at the expense of the health of patients and the budgets of consumers and governments. Of course, pharmaceutical companies claim they need to charge high prices to fund their research and development. This just isnt so. For one thing, drug companies spend more on marketing and advertising than on new ideas. Overly restrictive intellectual property rights actually slow new discoveries. As it is, most of the important innovations come out of our universities and research centers, like the National Institutes of Health, funded by government and foundations.
Note: Read what a former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Health has to say about the egregious profiteering of Big Pharma. Watch an excellent, two-minute video by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on the TPP titled "The Worst Trade Deal You've Never Heard of," or read leaked draft texts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership for yourself.
A major FBI cover-up ... connects Sarasota and the 9/11 hijackers to the Saudi Arabian government. While still at Sarasota's Emma E. Booker Elementary on the day of the 2001 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush said, "Terrorism against our nation will not stand." However, the president's visit wasn't the only thing to tie this Bay area county to the September 11th attacks. Within days, we learned three of the hijackers had been living in the area while taking flying lessons at Huffman Aviation and Florida Flight Training in Sarasota County... but there is even more than that. "There was a network supporting the hijackers," says former U.S. Senator and Florida governor Bob Graham. According to Graham, the FBI has been covering up that fact for years, and continues to try and hide it even now. Graham says he is convinced there was a direct line between some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia. According to Graham, the FBI was aware of the strong connection between hijackers and a Saudi Arabian family who were living in an upscale Sarasota gated community. Twelve days before 9/11, the family abandoned the house -- leaving behind valuable items including food, clothing, furnishings and three vehicles. "There are some things I can't talk about," Graham told us, "And there are others like what I know is involved in the investigation in Sarasota, which is diametrically opposed to what the FBI said publicly."
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources.
A report released on [August 26] on accusations of widespread sexual abuse in the northern England city of Rotherham found that about 1,400 minors some as young as 11 years old were beaten, raped and trafficked from 1997 to 2013 as the local authorities ignored a series of red flags. Some children were doused in gasoline and threatened with being set on fire if they reported their abusers. Others were forced to watch rapes and threatened with the same fate. In more than a third of the cases, the victims appear to have been known to child protection agencies, but the police and local government officials failed to act. Within hours of the reports publication, [Roger Stone, the leader of the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council since 2003,] resigned. It was not until 2010 that the first case of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, a South Yorkshire city of about 250,000 people, made it to court. Five men received long prison sentences for grooming three teenage girls for sex. It was one of several high-profile prosecutions over the past four years that revealed sexual exploitation in cities including Oxford, Rochdale and Derby. Alexis Jay, the author of the report and a former chief inspector of social work, said that vulnerable girls as young as 11 and largely from disadvantaged backgrounds had been brutalized by groups of men. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated, she wrote. The report described the failures of the political and police leadership as blatant.
Note: Further information is available in this story in the UK's Guardian. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.
It was revealed this week that many government information officers block specific journalists they don't like from accessing information. The news comes as 47 federal inspectors general sent a letter to lawmakers criticizing "serious limitations on access to records" that they say have "impeded" their oversight work. The data about public information officers was compiled over the past few years by Kennesaw State University professor Carolyn Carlson. Her surveys found that 4 in 10 public information officers say "there are specific reporters they will not allow their staff to talk to due to problems with their stories in the past." Carlson has conducted surveys of journalists and public information officers since 2012. In her most recent survey of 445 working journalists, four out of five reported that "their interviews must be approved" by government information officers, and "more than half of the reporters said they had actually been prohibited from interviewing [government] employees at least some of the time by public information officers." The Associated Press reported earlier this year that in 2013 "the government cited national security to withhold information a record 8,496 times a 57 percent increase over a year earlier and more than double Obama's first year." This week's letter from more than half of the federal government's inspectors general [said] that government agencies' move to hide information from them represents a "potentially serious challenge to the authority of every Inspector General and our ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner."
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government secrecy news articles from reliable major media sources.
Contradicting an earlier assertion made under oath by a senior FBI official, an attorney for the Justice Department said [on April 30] that the FBI has identified four more boxes of classified 9/11 documents held by its Tampa field office. The government, however, has yet to comply with a federal judges orders ... that it turn over copies of that massive 9/11 file now said to total 27 boxes for his personal inspection. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch issued those orders in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by BrowardBulldog.org seeking records about the FBIs investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota. Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has said that the FBI did not disclose the existence of the Sarasota investigation to either the Joint Inquiry or the subsequent 9/11 Commission. The documents state that the Sarasota Saudis had many connections to individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001. One document lists three individuals, with names blacked out, and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained.
Note: For solid evidence that many more were involved in 9/11 than is generally admitted, see the revealing newspaper article at this link. For an excellent documentary focused on the Venice, Florida flight school which all but proves a major cover-up involving US citizens involved in the planning of 9/11, click here. And for a treasure trove of reliable information showing a major cover-up around 9/11, click here.
Here is how a stunning PBS documentary describes itself: In Secrets of the Vatican, FRONTLINE tells the epic, inside story of the collapse of the Benedict papacy and illuminates the extraordinary challenges facing Pope Francis as he tries to reform the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, root out corruption and chart a new course for the troubled Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers. Take everything you have ever heard about the Catholic Church and the global clergy child sexual abuse scandals, the dodgy Vatican bank, add in drug abuse, and multiply it all by ten. A primary insight is that Pope Benedict really did not step down from the papacy so much as flee the job. No one could make up what this documentary reveals. For all of the horror on display, the reality is basic: arrogance, hubris and insularity will bring down any organization, even one ordained to do Gods work on earth. A human organization manifests all human frailties. Allow it to make its own rules and hide, and the worst happens. This is a tragedy that defies description. Abuse of people, power and a benefit of the doubt that goes with the job description. Pope Francis is [presented] as the institutional savior who comes from far enough outside the Roman Curia and the inner sanctum to instigate and sustain change. The only optimism in the documentary are references to a new beginning for a wounded church, and a religious crusade to save the church. Watch Secrets of the Vatican. You might know the story line. You have no clue about the depth of the shame.
Note: To watch this devastating documentary, click the link above or click here. For a more detailed description, click here. For more on institutional secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In the years after the end of WWII, CIA and US intelligence operatives tested LSD and other interrogation techniques on captured Soviet spiesall with the help of former Nazi doctors. It was 1946. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing for total war with the Soviets. They even set an estimated start date of 1952. U.S. military officers had been capturing and then hiring Hitlers weapons makers in a Top Secret program that would become known as Operation Paperclip. Soon, more than 1,600 of these men and their families would be living the American dream, right here in the United States. In 1948, Operation Paperclips Brigadier General Charles E. Loucks ... was working with Hitlers former chemists when one of the scientists [shared] information about a drug with military potential ... LSD. Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that the U.S. developed its post-war enhanced interrogation techniques ... under the CIA code name Operation Bluebird. The CIA teamed up with the Army Chemical Corps at Camp Detrick, in Maryland, to conduct further research and development on the chemistry of mind-altering drugs. One [Detrick agent was] Dr. Frank Olson, a former army officer and bacteriologist turned agency operative whose sudden demiseby covert LSD poisoningin 1953 would nearly bring down the CIA. In one of the rare, surviving official documents from the program, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles sent a secret memo to Richard Helms: In our conversation of 9 February 1951, I outlined to you the possibilities of augmenting the usual interrogation methods by the use of drugs, hypnosis, shock, etc., and emphasized the defensive aspects as well as the offensive opportunities.
Note: To read excerpts from incredibly revealing declassified CIA documents on these programs, click here. For more on secret government mind control programs which have had a powerful hidden influence on global politics, see our Mind Control Information Center available here.
The Brothers is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of inconvenient regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men. John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen, were ... lawyers, partners in the immensely powerful firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. John Foster Dulles served as secretary of state from 1953 to 1959; his brother ran the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961. In his detailed, wellconstructed and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer ... shows how the brothers drove Americas interventionist foreign policy. Kinzer highlights John Foster Dulless central role in channeling funds from the United States to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Sullivan & Cromwell floated bonds for Krupp A. G., the arms manufacturer, and also worked for I. G. Farben, the chemicals conglomerate that later manufactured Zyklon B, the gas used to murder millions of Jews. For the Dulles brothers, and for much of the American government, threats to corporate interests were categorized as support for communism. There are also reminders in Kinzers book of dark events in the history of American intelligence. Sixty years ago, Frank Olson, a C.I.A. officer, was reported to have jumped to his death during mind-control experiments in which psychoactive drugs were administered to unknowing victims. But last year, Kinzer reports, Olsons family filed suit, claiming he had actually been murdered after visiting secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Israel has 80 nuclear warheads and the potential to double that number, according to a new report by U.S. experts. In the Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, proliferation experts Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris write that Israel stopped production of nuclear warheads in 2004. But the country has enough fissile material for an additional 115 to 190 warheads, according to the report, meaning it could as much as double its arsenal. Previous estimates have been higher but the new figures agree with the 2013 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute yearbook on armament and international security. The yearbook estimated 50 of Israel's nuclear warheads were for medium-range ballistic missiles and 30 were for for bombs carried by aircraft. Although widely assumed a nuclear power, Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons or capabilities and continues to maintain its decades-old "strategic ambiguity" policy on the matter, neither confirming nor denying foreign reports on the issue. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, leaked the country's alleged nuclear secrets to a British newspaper, and said Israel had at least 100 nuclear weapons. Vanunu was later convicted of espionage and treason and was released from jail in 2004 after serving 17 years. Israel continued to adhere to its vagueness policy after comments made by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2006 were interpreted by many as an inadvertent confirmation that Israel had nuclear weapons.
Note: For more on government secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
[Barrett] Brown is not a household name like Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning. But after helping expose a dirty tricks plot, he faces jail. Brown made a splash in February 2011 by helping to uncover "Team Themis", a project by intelligence contractors retained by Bank of America to demolish the hacker society known as Anonymous. The Team Themis story began in late 2010, when Julian Assange warned WikiLeaks would release documents outlining an "ecosystem of corruption [that] could take down a bank or two." Bank of America went into damage-control mode and, as the New York Times reported, assembled "a team of 15 to 20 top Bank of America officials scouring thousands of documents in the event that they become public." Days later, Bank of America retained the well-connected law firm of Hunton & Williams [which] "proposed various schemes to attack" WikiLeaks. Its partners suggested creating false documents and fake personas to damage progressive organizations. The tech companies' emails which Anonymous hacked and Barrett Brown helped publicize listed planned tactics: "Feed[ing] the fuel between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization. Submit fake documents and then call out the error." Brown [has] been cooling his heels in a jail outside Dallas ... awaiting two separate trials that could put him on ice for more than 100 years. In contrast to the FBI's aggressive pursuit of Brown, no probe of the Team Themis project was launched despite a call from 17 US House representatives to investigate a possible conspiracy to violate federal laws.
Note: With the wide focus on the privatized national security state by the leaks from Edward Snowden, there is renewed interest in Brown's plight and the campaign for justice in his case. For more on this and to support Barret Brown, click here. For more on intelligence agency corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA). The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate. One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects. This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets. The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Britain's technical capacity to tap into the cables that carry the world's communications ... has made GCHQ an intelligence superpower. A total of 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases.
Note: For solid evidence spy agencies targeted even top politicians, click here. For more on intelligence agency corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Pope Francis has admitted that a "gay lobby" exists within the Vatican's administration and is planning to take action about it, according to reports. "Yes, it is difficult," he reportedly said. "In the Curia there are holy people, truly holy people. But there is also a current of corruption, also there is ... a 'gay lobby' and that is true. It is there ... we will have to see what we can do." In February, Italian newspapers reported that a dossier on scandals within the Vatican, ordered by Pope Benedict XVI and delivered to him in December, exposed a network of patronage among a powerful lobby of homosexual churchmen as well as the potential blackmailing of homosexuals. The Italian reports suggested that the details exposed had pushed Benedict to resign in February. The dossier was compiled by three senior cardinals, who were charged with looking into secret rivalries and corruption within the Vatican following the leaking of Benedict's private letters by his butler, Paolo Gabriele. In his audience, Pope Francis allegedly promised to reform the Vatican but said it would be "difficult" and that he could not carry out the reforms himself because he was "disorganised". He reportedly said he would be relying on the commission of eight cardinals he appointed in April to organise reform of the Curia, which is due to meet in October.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on secrecy, click here.
When Pope Benedict XVI resigns at the end of this month, he leaves behind a Church grappling with a global fallout from sex abuse and a personal legacy marred by allegations that he was instrumental in covering up that abuse. For 25 years, Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the Vatican office responsible for investigating claims of sex abuse, but he did not act until he received an explicit order from Pope John Paul II. In 1980, as Archbishop of Munich, Ratzinger approved plans for a priest to move to a different German parish and return to pastoral work only days after the priest began therapy for pedophilia. In 1981, Cardinal Ratzinger became head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the office once known as the Inquisition -- making him responsible for upholding church doctrine, and for investigating claims of sexual abuse against clergy. Thousands of letters detailing allegations of abuse were forwarded to Ratzinger's office. A lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the Survivors' Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a victims' rights group, charges that as head of the church body Ratzinger participated in a cover-up of abuse. The suit alleges that investigators of sex abuse cases in several countries found "intentional cover-ups and affirmative steps taken that serve to perpetuate the violence and exacerbate the harm." "Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, either knew and/or [in] some cases consciously disregarded information that showed subordinates were committing or about to commit such crimes," the complaint says.
Note: This is one of the few media stories to reveal what may be the real reason for the Pope's resignation - his direct involvement in protecting priests who were known child sexual abusers. To learn how child sex-abuse rings lead to top levels of leadership around the world, watch the powerful Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.
It's been revealed that the United States and New Zealand conducted secret tests in the 1940s of a 'tsunami bomb' designed to inundate coastal cities. Thousands of underwater tests were carried out near Auckland during the Second World War and showed such a weapon was feasible. The top-secret operation code-named, ''Project Seal'', was shelved just months before the atomic bomb was used on Japan in 1945. The secret plans have been uncovered during research by a New Zealand author and filmmaker, Ray Waru. EMILY BOURKE: Where were these tests carried out? RAY WARU: They were carried out at one of ... New Zealand's most well-known holiday spots, the Whangaparaoa Peninsula just north of Auckland. Over a period of several months they carried out almost 4,000 test explosions to kind of calibrate the size of the explosions, the number of explosions and the depth of the explosion in the water would need to be in order to create a tsunami effect. EMILY BOURKE: Was there any damage that occurred as a result of the research and those tests? RAY WARU: No. They never actually produced a tidal wave. They decided at the end if there were 2 million kilograms and they were detonated in an array a specific number of kilometres from the shore that they would produce a wave ... about ten or 12 ... metres in height. That would have been enough to wash out a shore installation. EMILY BOURKE: Were these tests carried out at the behest of the United States? Did the United States fund it? RAY WARU: Yes they were [and] they were carried out with the full cooperation of the New Zealand government.
Note: This article was published on the website of Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia's equivalent of the BBC. A 1999 article in New Zealand's leading newspaper at this link also discusses this secret tsunami bomb. For a very well researched webpage on HAARP, a secret weapon allegedly used for weather control and much more, click here.
Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public. A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign and helped many cover their tracks. Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, "chronic brain dysfunction" and duties at a Shakespeare festival. The details are contained in the organization's confidential "perversion files," a blacklist of alleged molesters, that the Scouts have used internally since 1919. Scouts' lawyers around the country have been fighting in court to keep the files from public view. As The Times reported in August, the blacklist often didn't work: Men expelled for alleged abuses slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again. Now, a more extensive review has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps. In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from boys, parents, staff members or anonymous tips. In about 400 of those cases 80% there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it.
Note: For a list giving details of Boy Scout leaders who sexually abused scouts with impunity, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on institutional sexual abuse, click here.
Revelations that prominent radical activist Richard Aoki was an FBI informant have prompted angry denials among his supporters, but newly released records confirm he was secretly providing information to agents during the period he gave the Black Panthers guns and firearms training. The documents from Aoki's FBI informant file - totaling 221 pages - were released after a court challenge under the Freedom of Information Act and show that Aoki was an informant from 1961 to 1977, with only brief interruptions. The records say that at various points, he provided information that was "unique" and of "extreme value." The records chronicle Aoki's 16-year career as an informant, including years in which he was a student at Merritt College in Oakland and at UC Berkeley, participating in the Black Panthers and other radical groups. They also cover years during which Aoki was a teacher at those universities. An early FBI report says Aoki was assigned the alias "Richard Ford" to use when signing reports, as well as a permanent informant number, which the FBI redacted. It notes his date of birth, his parents' names and his address. "Coverage furnished by this informant is unique and not available from any other source," the FBI report says. "Many activist individuals seek informant's advice and counseling since informant is considered as a militant who has succeeded within the establishment without surrending (sic) to it."
Note: Here is undeniable evidence that the FBI was involved in infiltrating movements and radicalizing them with guns and weapons. Why isn't this being discussed widely in the media, particularly as it is likely this is still going on, most recently with the Occupy movement? The revelation that Aoki was an informant was first made last month in a news report and video by the Center for Investigative Reporting, based on the new book Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power.
The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad a sum larger than the entire American economy. James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system. "This offshore economy is large enough to have a major impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt ratios; and most importantly to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax bases of 'source' countries," Henry says. John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network [commented] "Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people. This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich." In total, 10 million individuals around the world hold assets offshore, according to Henry's analysis; but almost half of the minimum estimate of $21tn $9.8tn is owned by just 92,000 people.
Note: Henry's report, entitled The Price of Offshore Revisited, is available here. For more on this, click here.
The Vatican has denounced as criminal a new book of leaked internal documents that shed light on power struggles inside the Holy See and the thinking of its embattled top banker, and warned that it would take legal action against those responsible. Pope Benedict XVI has already appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the Vatileaks scandal, which erupted earlier this year with the publication of leaked memos alleging corruption and mismanagement in Holy See affairs and internal squabbles over its efforts to comply with international anti-money laundering norms. The publication Saturday of His Holiness, by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, added fuel to the fire, reproducing confidential letters and memos to and from Benedict and his personal secretary. The bank has been trying for some two years to remedy its reputation as a shady tax haven beset by scandals, which include the collapse of Italys Banco Ambrosiano and the death of its head, Roberto Calvi, who also helped manage Vatican investments and was found hanging from Londons Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.
Note: For lots more on this most revealing case of Vatican corruption and media complicity in keeping silent, click here and here. And to learn who is being accused of leaking these documents, click here.
Question: A group proposing a change in monetary policy based on the writings of Stephen Zarlenga (monetary.org) [argues] that the government should print the money, not the Fed or any other private body. H.R. 2990 proposed by Dennis Kucinich is based on these ideas. Are they reasonable to you? Paul Solman: As the Treasury borrows more and more money by issuing bonds and selling them to all comers, it commits itself, "with the full faith and credit" of the United States, to pay back its creditors in full. That means it will either raise taxes in the future or -- and this is the relevant point -- get the Fed to create more money by purchasing bonds on the open market. This is called "monetizing the debt." There's a legitimate case that the Fed has too much power, is insufficiently beholden to the people in what's supposed to be a democracy, since no one on the Fed is chosen by popular election and private bankers are heavily represented on its board. This has long been the argument of financial journalist William Greider, author of a major book on the Fed, "The Secrets of the Temple." Greider: "The idea of giving the Federal Reserve still greater power [is] dangerous. First of all it rewards failure. But secondly, it puts them in the position as arbiter of who shall fail and who shall succeed. It asks to be able to choose what are the 30 or 40 or 50 banks and industrial firms that it regards as systemic risks for the society and ... it will protect those from failure. The government stands behind them and the rest of us are on our own."
Note: If you look at the top of any U.S. currency bill, you will see the words "Federal Reserve Note." Thus, though U.S. dollars are printed by the Treasury, they are issued and controlled by the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned, though subject to minimal federal oversight. To see just how much control the Federal Reserve has over the issuance of U.S. currency, see their webpage at this link. For lots more on hidden manipulations of the Federal Reserve, click here.
A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists who now want to publish full details of how they did it. Some scientists are questioning whether the research should ever have been undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility. For the first time the researchers have been able to mutate the H5N1 strain of avian influenza so that it can be transmitted easily through the air in coughs and sneezes. Until now, it was thought that H5N1 bird flu could only be transmitted between humans via very close physical contact. Dutch scientists carried out the controversial research to discover how easy it was to genetically mutate H5N1 into a highly infectious "airborne" strain of human flu. They believe that the knowledge gained will be vital for the development of new vaccines and drugs. But critics say the scientists have endangered the world by creating a highly dangerous form of flu which could escape from the laboratory. The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed hundreds of millions of birds since it first appeared in 1996, but has so far infected only about 600 people who came into direct contact with infected poultry. What makes H5N1 so dangerous, though, is that it has killed about 60 per cent of those it has infected, making it one of the most lethal known forms of influenza in modern history a deadliness moderated only by its inability (so far) to spread easily through airborne water droplets.
Note: For key major media reports revealing manipulation around both the avian and swine flus, click here. For solid evidence that Lyme disease originated in a secret government germ laboratory, click here.
It was early afternoon on Friday, Aug. 17, 2001. Special Agent Harry Samit of the FBIs Minneapolis field office [sat] across from ... Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French-born student arrested the day before for overstaying his visa. Samit, a former intelligence officer at the Navys celebrated Top Gun flight school, felt sure the man across the desk from him was a Muslim extremist who was part of a plot to hijack a commercial jetliner filled with passengers. That same day [at] FBI headquarters ... in Washington, counterterrorism supervisors were treating Samits first reports about Moussaoui with skepticism, even contempt. New disclosures about Samits story suggest that FBI agents in Minneapolis were much closer to unraveling the 9/11 plot than previously known. The officials directly involved in the case were denied access to a key internal memo - prepared for outgoing FBI Director Louis Freeh - that could have allowed the Minneapolis field office to connect the dots and possibly preempt the attacks. Their efforts were thwarted by a group of arrogant, slow-moving supervisors at FBI headquarters. There is no clear reference to the Freeh memo in the 9/11 commissions report.
Note: For questions raised about the official story of 9/11 by hundreds of highly-respected citizens from all walks of life, click here and here.
The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests. Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested [on] May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse. According to investigators, Seppia told a friend a former seminarian and barman who is currently under investigation that the town's malls were the best places to entice minors. In tapped phone conversations the two cursed and swore against God. The priest is charged with having attempted to kiss and touch an underage altar boy and of having exchanged cocaine for sexual intercourse with boys over 18.
Note: It's not just the church. To learn how child sex trafficking reaches to the highest levels of government, watch the revealing Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.
A Roman Catholic bishop pleaded guilty in Ottawa on [May 4] to possession of child pornography for importation. Bishop Raymond Lahey, ... who once led the Diocese of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, was charged after customs agents examined his laptop computer as he returned to Canada from an overseas trip in 2009. They found 588 graphic images of children, 33 videos and the texts of stories featuring the enslavement of children. Customs officials estimated that some boys in the photographs were only 8 years old. A month before his arrest, Bishop Lahey negotiated a $15 million settlement with people who had been sexually abused by priests in his diocese as far back as 1950. Bishop Lahey, who resigned his post in Antigonish, has been out on bail, but on Wednesday he asked to be jailed immediately. He faces one to 10 years in prison.
Note: The bishop who negotiated a settlement for children sexually abused by priests is caught with videos featuring the sexual enslavement of children. How high in the church do you think this might go? If you are willing to explore deeper into this matter through a Discovery Channel documentary that shows sexual enslavement of children going to the highest levels of government, click here.
More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantnamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America's controversial prison camp in Cuba. The US military dossiers ... reveal how ... many prisoners were flown to the Guantnamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment. The 759 Guantnamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there. The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim. The documents also reveal: US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation. Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantnamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide. A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members.
Note: For many key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
In the past six months, the value of [silver] has increased nearly 80 percent, to more than $34 an ounce. [This] is reminiscent of ... the Hunt Brothers. When the Hunts started buying silver in 1973, the price of the metal was $1.95 an ounce. By early 1980, the brothers had driven the price up to $54 an ounce before the Federal Reserve intervened, changed the rules on speculative silver investments and the price plunged. When JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in March 2008, it inherited Bear Stearns large bet that the price of silver would fall. The international bank HSBC got into the market heavily on the bear side as well. These actions artificially depressed the price of silver dramatically downward, according to a class-action lawsuit ... filed against both banks in November. The conspiracy and scheme was enormously successful, netting the defendants substantial illegal profits in the billions of dollars between June 2008 and March 2010, according to the suit. In November 2009, [Andrew Maguire] ... a former employee of Goldman Sachs and a 40-year industry veteran, [related] tales of how the silver traders at JPMorgan were bragging about all the money they were making as a result of the manipulation, which entailed flooding the market with short positions every time the price of silver started to creep upward. In March 2010, Maguire released his e-mails publicly. Then came the cloak and dagger element: [On March 26th] Maguire was involved in a bizarre car accident in London. The Commodity Futures Trading Commissions investigation is still unresolved, and at least one commissioner Bart Chilton after interviewing more than 32 people and reviewing more than 40,000 documents, [says] there has been enough investigating and not enough prosecuting. Chilton said ... that one participant in the silver market still controlled 35 percent of the silver market.
Note: Gold and silver have been intensely manipulated for many years. The price of gold has risen 500% in the last 10 years, while silver prices have rocketed 700% in the last eight years. Yet the media consistently underreports this amazing news. Few media gave more than a passing mention to gold passing the $1,000 mark in 2008, which was a historic event. Read the full article to understand this important topic. For lots more quality information on this from a former US assistant secretary for HUD, click here.
In December 2003, security forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri. For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been whisked to a secret prison for interrogation in Afghanistan. But he was the wrong guy. In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officers who committed serious mistakes that left people wrongly imprisoned or even dead have received only minor admonishments or no punishment at all. Many officers who made significant missteps are now the senior managers fighting the president's spy wars. The AP investigation of the CIA's actions revealed a disciplinary system that takes years to make decisions, hands down reprimands inconsistently and is viewed inside the agency as prone to favoritism and manipulation. When people are disciplined, the punishment seems to roll downhill, sparing senior managers even when they were directly involved in operations that go awry. Two officers involved in the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan, for instance, received no discipline and have advanced into Middle East leadership positions. Other officers were punished after participating in a mock execution in Poland and playing a role in the death of a prisoner in Iraq. Those officers retired, then rejoined the intelligence community as contractors. Since 9/11, retired CIA officers have published a variety of books opining on what ails the CIA. Their conclusions differ, but they are in nearly unanimous agreement that the system of accountability is broken.
Note: It is great news that the media is now revealing some of the craziness at the CIA, a topic that was almost taboo for the press in the past.
A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police a disclosure that victims groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of cover-up. The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits. Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the 1997 letter should demonstrate, once and for all, that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but ordered by them. "The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere," said Colm O'Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International. The Vatican does advise bishops worldwide to report crimes to police in a legally nonbinding lay guide on its Web site. This recourse is omitted from the official legal advice provided by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and updated last summer. That powerful policymaking body continues to stress the secrecy of canon law.
Note: For many key reports from major media sources on institutional secrecy, click here.
A report to Congress reveals details on how U.S. intelligence officials used and protected some Nazi Gestapo agents after World War II. The report was authored by historians hired by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The report draws from an unprecedented trove of records on clandestine operations that the CIA was persuaded to declassify and from previously inaccessible Army intelligence files. "The CIA records give us a much better picture of the movements of Nazi war criminals in the postwar period. The Army records are voluminous, and will be keeping people busy for many years," said Richard Breitman, of the American University in Washington, D.C., who co-authored the report with Norman J.W. Goda, of the University of Florida. The records were made available under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998. Nazi hunters and lawmakers have long raised questions about what U.S. government knew and its involvement with war criminals during the Cold War. The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act has so far resulted in more than 8 million documents being declassified; a landmark 2005 book on U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis in part authored by Breitman and Goda; and a final report to Congress.
Note: The CIA would never have declassified these documents were it not for pressure from caring citizens which caused Congress to act. For details of the CIA employment of Nazis in its post-war mind-control experimentation on humans without their consent, click here.
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian ... via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The new logs detail how: A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender. More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. The logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities. The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death. The whistleblowing activists say they have deleted all names from the documents that might result in reprisals.
Note: For an analysis by the Ad Hoc Committee for Justice for Iraq of the still very one-sided picture of the devastation of Iraq provided by this leak of Iraq war logs, click here. For an interview of the leader of Wikileaks on CNN in which he walks out after being asked about his personal life rather than Iraqi deaths, click here.
The astounding revelation that U.S. medical researchers intentionally gave Guatemalans gonorrhea and syphilis more than 60 years ago is so horrifying that we want to believe that what happened then could never happen today. A report from the United States Department of Health and Human Services noted that roughly 80 percent of drug approvals in 2008 were based in part on data from outside the U.S. Susan Reverby, a distinguished historian at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, has ... long researched the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the experiment where poor, black men in rural Alabama were deliberately left untreated for syphilis by government researchers. The study, somehow, was allowed to run from 1932 to 1972. More recently, Reverby came across documents that showed that Dr. John C. Cutler, a physician who would later be one of the researchers involved in the Tuskegee study, was involved in a completely unethical research study much earlier in Guatemala. Cutler, who went to his grave defending the Tuskegee experiment, directly inoculated unknowing prisoners in Guatemala with syphilis and also encouraged them to have sex with diseased prostitutes for his research from 1946-48. His work was sponsored by lauded organizations such as the United States Public Health Service, the National Institutes of Health with collaboration of the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the Pan American Health Organization), and the Guatemalan government.
Note: The author of this commentary is Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. For many other examples of government-sponsored experimentation on human guinea pigs, click here.
Whatever the mysterious lights in the sky were, they seemed to have an interest in our nukes. One of the more out-of-the-ordinary press conferences held in Washington this week consisted of former Air Force personnel testifying to the existence of UFOs and their ability to neutralize American and Russian nuclear missiles. UFO researcher Robert Hastings of Albuquerque, N.M., who organized the National Press Club briefing, said more than 120 former service members had told him they'd seen unidentified flying objects near nuclear weapon storage and testing grounds. Robert Jamison, a retired USAF nuclear missile targeting officer, told of several occasions having to go out and "re-start" missiles that had been deactivated, after UFOs were sighted nearby. [In a] December 1980 incident near two Royal Air Force Bases in Suffolk, England ... several U.S. Air Force personnel reported seeing a strange metallic object hovering. Retired USAF Col. Charles Halt said that in December 1980, when he was deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters, strange lights in the forest were investigated by three patrolmen. They reported approaching a triangular craft, "approximately three meters on a side, dark metallic in appearance with strange markings." Halt found indentations in the ground, broken branches, and low-level background radiation. He and his team also witnessed various lights moving silently in the sky, of one which was "shedding something like molten metal." Several of the ex-servicemembers speaking Monday said when they'd brought their concern of such appearances to superiors, they'd been told it was "top secret" or that it "didn't happen." Hastings suggested the presence of such phenomena meant that aliens were monitoring our weapons, and perhaps warning us - "a sign to Washington and Moscow that we are playing with fire."
Note: To watch 18-minutes of this most fascinating testimony on the CNN website, click here. For lots more reliable information on the famous RAF Bentwaters incident, click here. For what may be the best UFO documentary ever made, watch Out of the Blue, available for free viewing at this link.
Nearly 40 years before the Obama White House denounced the WikiLeaks website for publishing classified documents, another president, Richard Nixon, was even more obsessed with the same phenomenon. Only Nixon and his top aides went to far greater lengths to deal with the problem: They launched an extraordinary campaign to smear and discredit the journalist who, more than anyone else, was bedeviling them by publishing government secrets: newspaper columnist Jack Anderson. The White House obsession with Anderson whose "Washington Merry Go-Round" column was the WikiLeaks of its day is detailed in a new book being published this month, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washingtons Scandal Culture, by journalism professor Mark Feldstein. The book relies in part on newly unearthed tapes from the National Archives that document how Nixons aides plotted to destroy Anderson by planting forged evidence with him and spreading false rumors about his sex life and that of one of his associates. Feldstein also has uncovered new evidence that documents one of the more outrageous schemes of the Nixon presidency: a plot to assassinate Anderson by either putting poison in his medicine cabinet or exposing him to a massive dose of LSD by smearing it on the steering wheel of his car.
Note: For more on the use of LSD and other substances by the CIA for mind control and assassination, click here.
With a civilian population haunted by the Blitz and the Second World War still in the balance, it was one development Winston Churchill could have done without an incursion into British airspace by an arrow-shaped metallic object feared to contain an invasion force of little green men. Such was the sensitivity of an alleged UFO sighting by an RAF bomber crew returning to England from a mission over Germany that Churchill ordered it to be covered up with the words: "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church." This at least was the allegation put to the Ministry of Defence by relatives of a senior British military aide who claimed to have witnessed the cigar-chomping Prime Minister discuss the incident with General Dwight Eisenhower as part of a meeting about a succession of "foo fighter" sightings by Allied air crews in the Second World War. The curious matter of visits by wartime aliens is one of hundreds of reports of strange celestial phenomena from a space station covered in pulsating lights to an unusually agile rocket which buzzed a Boeing 737 at Manchester Airport to be revealed in documents released today by the National Archives.
Note: For reliable information on UFOs, check out our UFO Information Center.
It wasn't his daredevil stunt [on his motorcycle] that has [Anthony Graber] facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later -- taken with his helmet camera -- of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore. In early April, state police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent. Arrests such as Graber's are becoming more common along with the proliferation of portable video cameras and cell-phone recorders. Videos of alleged police misconduct have become hot items on the Internet. YouTube still features Graber's encounter along with numerous other witness videos. "The message is clearly, 'Don't criticize the police,'" said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland who is part of Graber's defense team. "With these charges, anyone who would even think to record the police is now justifiably in fear that they will also be criminally charged." Carlos Miller, a Miami journalist who runs the blog "Photography Is Not a Crime," said he has documented about 10 arrests since he started keeping track in 2007. Miller himself has been arrested twice for photographing the police.
Note: To our knowledge, no one has ever been prosecuted for videotaping police doing good things, which they often do, yet many have been arrested for catching police doing bad things. Where's the justice here?
As recently as 2007, 98 percent of Irish schools were run by the Catholic Church. Schools for troubled youth have been rife with barbaric corporal punishments, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. In October 2005, a report sponsored by the Irish government identified more than 100 allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Ferns, a small town 70 miles south of Dublin, between 1962 and 2002. Accused priests weren't investigated by police; they were deemed to be suffering a "moral" problem. In 2009, a similar report implicated Dublin archbishops in hiding sexual abuse scandals between 1975 and 2004. Pope Benedict's so-called apology takes no responsibility for the transgressions of Irish priests. His letter states that "the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children." What about the Vatican's complicity in those sins? Benedict's infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication -- updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims "observe the strictest secret" and be "restrained by a perpetual silence."
The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication. From Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on down, the militarys position is clear: U.S. forces no longer eradicate, as one NATO official put it. Opium is the main livelihood of 60 to 70 percent of the farmers in Marja. American Marines occupying the area are under orders to leave the farmers fields alone. United Nations drug officials agree with the Americans. Pictures of NATO and other allied soldiers walking next to the opium fields wont go well with domestic audiences, but the approach of postponing eradicating in this particular case is a sensible one, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, who is in charge of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime here. Though the United States governments official position is still to support opium crop eradication in general, some American civilian officials say that the internal debate over Marja is far from over within parts of the State Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. A spokesman for the United States Embassy in Kabul, Brendan J. OBrien, said officials would decline to comment while the matter was under review.
Note: For weeks the Pentagon and press claimed Marja is a city of 80,000 people, and compared the "battle for Marja" as comparable to the attack on Falluja, Iraq. Then the news leaked out that Marja is not even a town, but an unincorporated agricultural area with a few villages. Now the "city" turns out to be a center of opium poppy production! Could protection of the lucrative poppy crops be the real reason for the selection of this area for the largest single military operation of the occupiers since the invasion in 2001? For more on this, click here.
Pope Benedict XVI addresses Ireland on [March 20] in a letter apologizing for the sex abuse scandal [there] - a message being watched closely by Catholics from Boston to Berlin to see if it also acknowledges decades of Vatican-approved cover-ups. The scandals first emerged in Canada and Australia in the 1980s, followed by Ireland in the 1990s, the United States this decade and, in recent months, Benedict's German homeland. Victims' rights activists say that to begin mending the church's battered image, Benedict's message ... must break his silence on the role of the Catholic hierarchy in shielding pedophile clergy from prosecution. That includes abuses committed decades ago under the pope's watch, when he was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, as well as the pontiff's role in hushing up the scandals. As leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger was responsible for a 2001 Vatican edict that instructed bishops to report all cases of child abuse to Vatican authorities under strict secrecy; it made no mention of reporting crimes to police. "Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility?" said the Rev. Hans Kung, a Swiss priest and dissident Catholic theologian. "Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa," Kung said.
Brussels bureaucrats [are determined] to spread GM crops throughout Europe, against the will of most of its people. In a little-noticed move last week, the European Commission defied most of the governments to which it is supposed to answer to give the green light to growing a [genetically] modified potato across the continent. It was the first time a GM crop had been authorised for cultivation in 13 years. But, now the long moratorium has been broken, similar approvals for others are expected rapidly to follow. The decision has its origins in a couple of secret, top-level meetings called by Jose Manuel Barroso, the Commission's strongly pro-GM president. He invited the prime ministers of each of the 27 EU member states to send a personal representative along to discuss how to "speed up" the spread of the technology and "deal with" public opposition. About three times as many Europeans oppose genetic modification as support it. As a result, GM crops cover only about 0.12 per cent of Europe's agricultural land and the continent accounts for just 0.08 per cent of the area growing them worldwide. And they have been losing ground. In the past two years, both France and Germany banned the Monsanto maize, joining Austria, Hungary, Greece and Luxembourg.
Note: Though Europeans are very aware of the threat of genetically modified foods and have worked hard to prohibit them, the media in the US have managed to stifle almost any reporting on the topic. Most Americans have no idea that they are regularly eating GM foods known to have serious health risks.
[Here's a story] from Ellsberg's book Secrets. The setting is a meeting with Henry Kissinger in late 1968. In 1968 Ellsberg was a highly respected analyst ... who had worked for both the Pentagon and Rand, and Kissinger was just entering the government. Ellsberg told him, "Henry, there's something I would like to tell you. You've dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you're about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret. First, you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information. But second, ... you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information. In particular, you'll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this ... and you'll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well. You will feel like a fool. Then, after you've ... become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, ... you will forget there ever was a time when you didn't have it. You'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't ... and that all those other people are fools. [In] a matter of two or three years you'll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. It's often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray. But that takes a while to learn. In the meantime ... you will deal with a person who doesn't have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with. You'll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him.
Note: Don't miss the entire fascinating, highly revealing article at the link above. To see this quote from Ellsberg's book on Google books, click here. For more on government secrets, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
U.S. securities regulators [at the Securities and Exchange Commission] originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security. The SEC ... agreed to limit the number of SEC employees who would review the document to just two and keep the document locked in a safe while the SEC considered AIG's confidentiality request. The SEC had also agreed that if it determined the document should not be made public, it would be stored "in a special area where national security related files are kept." Emails ... that have become public in recent weeks reveal that some at the New York Fed had gone to great lengths to keep the terms of the bailout private and the SEC may have played a role in contributing to some of the secrecy surrounding the AIG rescue package. "The New York Fed was orchestrating what can only be characterized as an extreme effort to ensure that details of the counterparty deal stayed secret," Rep. Darrell Issa ... said. "More and more it looks as if they would've kept the details of the deal secret indefinitely, it they could have."
Note: So now bank transactions are being considered a matter of "national security." What next? It's becoming ever more apparent that "national security" is used as a catch-all phrase for information that those in power don't want us to know about their secret dealings which benefit themselves at the expense of most of the rest of us.
Deception [is reliant] on the close control of information, running agents (and double-agents) and creating stories that adversaries will readily believe. In an era of ubiquitous information access, anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries. Thus, strategic deception capabilities and plans must perforce be highly classified. Deception cannot succeed in wartime without developing theory and doctrine in peacetime. In order to mitigate or impart surprise, the United States should develop more robust interagency deception planning and action prior to the need for military operations. To be effective, a permanent standing office with strong professional intelligence and operational expertise needs to be established.
Note: The above excerpts can be found on pages 77 and 78. For a powerful two-page summary of a top general's description of how the American public is deceived into supporting war, click here.
Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned. Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely documented by human rights groups. The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI) is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians' work. One senior western official said: "The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services." A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered "an advanced arm of the war on terror". Among the human rights organisations that have documented or complained about the mistreatment of detainees held by the PA in the West Bank are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, al-Haq and the Israeli watchdog B'Tselem.
Note: For many accounts from major media sources of the horrific abuses committed by military, intelligence and security forces in the wars of occupation in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.
Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result. This will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said. Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said. "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."
Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on the hidden realities behind the global financial crisis, click here.
The controversy surrounding Adolf Hitler's skull fragments is a little embarrassing for the Russian secret services. In 2000 they presented a skull fragment and a piece of jawbone that they claimed were the remains of the Nazi leader. It was an attempt to quash outlandish rumors that he had escaped alive at the end of World War II. But in October US researchers presented the results of DNA tests on the skull and said it definitely didn't belong to the dictator because it was from a female. Scientists had already harbored doubts about the authenticity of the piece of bone because it was thinner than a male's usually is. "The bone seemed very thin -- male bone tends to be more robust. It corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40," said Nick Bellantoni of the University of Connecticut. The position of the exit wound at the back of the skull also made scientists suspicious because eyewitnesses said Hitler had committed suicide by firing into his right temple. Bellantoni said he was allowed to work on the skull for an hour. When he flew home from Moscow he had two samples in his luggage: a sample from the skull fragment and one sample of blood from the sofa on which Hitler is said to have shot himself. Bellantoni was able to compare the bloodstains on the blood-stained fabric with photos the Soviets took after they seized Hitler's bunker in Berlin. The stains had matched those in the photos. The research showed that the sofa blood DNA did not match the skull DNA. The sofa blood was male and the skull belonged to a woman, claimed Bellantoni.
Note: For more on the mysteries surrounding the end of Hitler's life, click here.
Jesse Ventura is back for another stab at TV stardom, this time hosting a program that digs into conspiracy theories, including alternate views of what was behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the purpose of a sprawling research center in remote Alaska. The former Minnesota governor, professional wrestler and Navy SEAL stars in "Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura," ... on truTV. The cable network, part of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., has ordered seven episodes of the hourlong weekly series. Marc Juris, executive vide president and general manager of truTV, said Ventura is passionate about the show and brings "knowledge from the inside" of government. "He's not doing this as an act or a gimmick. It's true to his heart. He's really looking for the answers," Juris told the AP. The premiere episode deals with the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, a 35-acre compound of 180 antennas near Gakona, Alaska, that is used to study the Earth's ionosphere. Ventura and those he interviews question whether the government is using the site to manipulate the weather or to bombard people with mind-controlling radio waves. Future "Conspiracy Theory" shows explore alleged cover-ups surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks and whether there are real "Manchurian Candidate" assassins who are programmed to kill, said Juris.
Note: Ventura was also a Navy Seal, where he personally was involved in top secret activities and learned how what is presented to the public is very different from the deeper realities. Don't miss the highly educational episode on the vitally important topic of HAARP by clicking here. And watch the excellent episode on 9/11 by clicking here. You'll be surprised by the new angles presented.
What really happens behind the padlocked doors of this windowless building, [the home] of Skull and Bones, Yale's oldest secret society? Its members include some of America's most powerful and privileged elite all sworn to secrecy. [CAMPBELL] BROWN: Alexandra Robbins broke through the wall of silence to write Secrets of the Tomb based on clandestine interviews with dozens of bonesmen. Only 15 [Yale students] get picked each year. The society includes at least three U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and too many senators and CEOs to name. In 2004, Bush versus Kerry was the first all-bonesmen presidential election. ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Skull and Bones' only purpose is to get its members into positions of prominence around the world so that they can elevate other members to similar positions. One of the first activities they participate in is called connubial bliss, where ... each member must spend an evening standing in front of the other 14 bonesmen and recount his or her entire sexual and romantic history. BROWN: According to one ... story, Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, was part of a group that broke into the Oklahoma burial place of the Apache chief Geronimo and made off with his skull. Geronimo's grave was disturbed back in 1918, there are photos of skulls inside the "Skull and Bones" tomb. They have their own private retreat. Deer Island off the coast of New York. And a world of ready investors and political contacts in the highest echelons of American society. What has kept the secret society alive for all these years? Good old fashioned networking for the super elite.
Note: To watch the CNN video clip on this Yale secret society, click here. For lots more powerful information on Skull and Bones and other secret societies reported in major media articles, click here.
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.
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.
PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour economics correspondent: As the Federal Reserve moved rapidly and radically last year to prevent what it feared was an economic meltdown, it bailed out some institutions, but not others, forced mergers, [and] created hundreds of billions of dollars. The net result: increased suspicion of the Fed itself. That's nothing new. The 1913 act of Congress that established America's central bank was ... a compromise between government ... and private banking interests, which owned the 12 regional Fed branches. [All along,] some Americans have been suspicious of the Fed for operating above politics, too close to bankers, and behind closed doors. Simply Google "Federal Reserve." You encounter everything from skepticism to fear of conspiracy. NARRATOR: With the power to regulate the money supply is also the power to bring entire economies and societies to its knees. DONALD KOHN, Federal Reserve vice chairman: We bring information to bear from the private sector, from foreign governments and foreign central banks that they tell us in confidence about what's going on in their businesses. WILLIAM GREIDER, author, "Secrets of the Temple": You could say, "We have to have our meetings in secret because things will be said that are national security secrets, but we'll vet the transcript and release it four weeks later." Why not do that? SOLMAN: A House bill ... would give the Government Accountability Office the right to audit the Fed's interest rate decisions. Chairman Bernanke opposes it as compromising the Fed's independence.
Note: If you look at the top of any U.S. currency, you will see the words "Federal Reserve Note." U.S. dollars are issued and controlled by the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned, though subject to minimal federal oversight. To see just how much control the Federal Reserve has over the issuance of U.S. currency, see their webpage at this link. For lots more on hidden manipulations of the Federal Reserve, click here.
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 Presidents 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 Presidents 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.
Charlie Black, senior adviser to John McCain, caused a fluff by saying that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a "big advantage" to his candidate. No one mentioned that eight years ago, the Project for a New American Century called for "a new Pearl Harbor" that could move the American people to accept the neoconservative vision of militarized global domination. Then 9/11 happened, lifting George W. Bush from the shadows of a disputed election to the heights of a "war presidency." Bush has taken on unprecedented powers since the events of 9/11. On that day, the president issued his "Declaration of Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks" under the authority of the National Emergencies Act. This declaration, which can be rescinded by joint resolution of Congress, has instead been extended six times. In 2007, the declaration was quietly strengthened with the issuance of National Security Presidential Directive 51, which gave the president the authority to do whatever he deems necessary in a vaguely defined "catastrophic emergency," including everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Not a single congressional hearing was held on this directive. Will Congress act decisively to remove the president's emergency powers, challenge the directive and defend the Constitution?
The Justice Department concluded in October 2001 that military operations combating terrorism inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, in one of several secret memos containing new and controversial assertions of presidential power. The memo, sent on Oct. 23, 2001, to the Defense Department and the White House by the Office of Legal Counsel, focused on the rules governing any deployment of U.S. forces inside the country "in the event of further large-scale terrorist activities." Administration officials declined to detail what domestic military operations were being contemplated at the time. The memo has not been formally withdrawn. The Fourth Amendment assertion is one of several far-reaching legal arguments revealed by the disclosure Tuesday of a 2003 Justice Department memo that authorized harsh military interrogations. In its footnotes, asides and central text, that 81-page memo asserted nearly unlimited presidential powers during a time of war. The document disclosed, for example, that the administration's top lawyers had declared that the president has unfettered power to seize oceangoing ships as commander in chief; that Congress has no ability to pass legislation governing the interrogations of enemy combatants; and that federal laws prohibiting assault and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators. One section discussed to what extent the president might be allowed to legally maim a prisoner, such as through the use of a "scalding, corrosive, or caustic substance." A footnote argued that Fifth Amendment guarantees of due-process rights "do not address actions the Executive takes in conducting a military campaign against the Nation's enemies."
Note: For further disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.
Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistle-blower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington's highest levels sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. Ms. Edmonds' account is full of dates, places and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators. But Congress has refused to act, and the Justice Department has shrouded Ms. Edmonds' case in the state-secrets privilege, a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances. Ms. Edmonds' revelations have attracted corroboration in the form of anonymous letters apparently written by FBI employees. There have been frequent reports of FBI field agents being frustrated by the premature closure of cases dealing with foreign spying, particularly when those cases involve Israel, and the State Department has frequently intervened to shut down investigations based on "sensitive foreign diplomatic relations." Curiously, the state-secrets gag order binding Ms. Edmonds, while put in place by DOJ in 2002, was not requested by the FBI but by the State Department and Pentagon which employed individuals she identified as being involved in criminal activities. If her allegations are frivolous, that order would scarcely seem necessary.
Note: The author of this article, Philip Giraldi, is a retired career CIA officer. For further powerful details of Sibel Edmonds' revelations, click here.
More than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. Soon after its creation, the presidents chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission. The commissions mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes and did not tell us about them obstructed our investigation. No one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations. We did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes. Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information ... that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives, portions of whose interrogations were apparently recorded and then destroyed. The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing information gained in the interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as they answered. So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.s general counsel. The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies. The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any form. Government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.
Note: The authors of this op-ed, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 Commission.
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture abhorrent in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations. But soon after Alberto R. Gonzaless arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document; according to officials briefed on it, [it was] an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The new opinion ... for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard. The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bushs second term and Mr. Gonzaless tenure at the Justice Department. Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.
Easily lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities". "Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects." Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest. "We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects. The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strangeloves and engaged pharmaceutical companies to help its experiments. The agency appealed to Big Pharma to pass on any drugs that could not be marketed because of "unfavourable side effects" to be tested on mice and monkeys. Any drugs that passed muster would then be used ... on volunteer US soldiers. The Family Jewels files do not provide further detail into the numerous mind-control programs, such as MKULTRA, covertly propped up by the agency. In 1953, MKULTRA was given 6 per cent of the total CIA budget without any oversight. The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims' brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium. "The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952 starting at the tender age of four," wrote Carol Rutz of her experiences.
Note: The entire body of the CIA's "Family Jewels" documents have been posted online by the National Security Archives, and can be read by clicking here. And for a 10-page summary of Carol Rutz's riveting book on her experiences as a government-created Manchurian candidate, click here.
Part One: 'A Different Understanding With the President': In less than an hour ... Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions." "What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded ... when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part. "Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert. Over the past six years, Cheney has shaped his times as no vice president has before. [The] relationship [between Bush and Cheney] is opaque, a vital unknown in assessing Cheney's impact on events. Officials who see them together often, not all of them admirers of the vice president, detect a strong sense of mutual confidence that Cheney is serving Bush's aims.
Note: This is an important, in-depth investigation of the Cheney vice-presidency. It is highly revealing and well worth reading it its entirety.
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.
New charges have been filed alleging that a former top CIA official pushed a proposed $100 million government contract for his best friend in return for lavish vacations, private jet flights and a lucrative job offer. The indictment [brings] charges ... against Kyle Dusty Foggo, who resigned from the spy agency a year ago, and ... defense contractor Brent Wilkes. The charges grew from the bribery scandal that landed former U.S. Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham in prison. The pair now face 30 wide-ranging counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering [including that] Foggo provided Wilkes with sensitive, internal information related to ... national security, including classified information, to help him prepare proposals for providing undercover flights for the CIA under the guise of a civil aviation company and armored vehicles for agency operations. Then, he pushed his CIA colleagues to hire Wilkes companies without disclosing their friendship, prosecutors allege. In a June 2005 e-mail to the head of CIA air operations quoted in the indictment, Foggo offered to use some EXDIR grease on Wilkes behalf. Foggo was the agencys executive director at the time. In return, Wilkes offered to hire Foggo after he retired from government service. [An] initial indictment in February charged the pair with 11 counts of the same charges in connection with a $1.7 million water-supply contract Foggo allegedly helped win for one of Wilkes companies while he was working as a logistics coordinator at a CIA supply hub overseas. Foggo, the former No. 3 official at the CIA, resigned from the spy agency after his house and office were raided by federal agents.
Note: Until just a few years ago, there was a virtual blackout in the media on any negative coverage of the CIA. The prosecution of the #3 man in the CIA is an external manifestation of huge shake-ups going on behind the scenes. Buzzy Krongard, the previous #3 at the CIA has been linked to the millions of dollars in suspicious stock option trades made just prior to 9/11 that were never claimed, though this received little media coverage.
A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administrations behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law. The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which ... essentially limits a presidents use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights. The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. The president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any other condition. Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. The president made no mention of the changes when he signed the measure, and neither the White House nor Congress consulted in advance with the nations governors.
[Book Review of] Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present. Harriet Washington opens the door on the torture room in "Medical Apartheid". Experimental operations on the skulls of slave children, Washington writes, were a favorite pursuit of a particularly sadistic South Carolinian doctor named J. Marion Sims, widely revered today as the "father of gynecology." For years, Sims experimented on a group of slave women, to whom he refused anesthesia. The most notorious post-slavery racial crime of American medicine [was] the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service between 1932 and 1972. More than 100 black subjects ... were denied treatment, even and especially after the discovery of penicillin in 1943. The research required that they suffer and die, the more slowly the better. Tuskegee was hardly unique. The Rockefeller Institute ... conducted a study in 1910 that saw 470 black syphilitics injected with a deadly strain of malaria. Black Americans were also disproportionately used ... as subjects in government inquiries into the effects of radiation. Washington's chilling history ends with contemporary case studies. At the Incarnation Children's Center in New York, Columbia University doctors continue to administer experimental AIDS drugs to minority orphans, even after many develop painful and debilitating reactions. As for current clinical trials in Africa, Washington describes the continent as the new "laboratory for the West," where unsuspecting patients regularly receive experimental therapies that might never receive state sanction in the United States or Europe.
Note: For more reliable, verifiable information on major corruption in the health industry, click here. It's also interesting to not that no other major media chose to review this important book.
Stock sales by America's corporate leaders exceeded purchases last month by the widest ratio in nearly 20 years. Executives sold $63.18 of shares for every $1 they bought in November, the largest ratio since at least January 1987. U.S. securities laws require company executives and directors to disclose stock purchases or sales within two business days. Insiders sold $8.4 billion in shares last month, according to data compiled from SEC filings. Buying was ... $133 million. The overall insider-selling amount was the fifth-highest since 1987. Selling peaked at $13.9 billion in March 2000. The data have "value for investors," said Wayne Reisner at Carret Asset Management in New York. "It's people who are very familiar with their company and their stock." Insiders executed 6.34 sales transactions for each purchase transaction in the eight weeks ended Dec. 1. That's up from 2.45 in the period ended Aug. 4 and above the ratio of 2.25 he considers neutral for the market. Microsoft ranked first among U.S. companies, with $594.2 million in sales by insiders in November. Seagate Technology and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. ranked second and third, at $311.8 million and $224.2 million, respectively. Google Inc. was fourth, at $182.1 million.
Note: Isn't it interesting that the NASDAQ stock index reached it's all-time high in March 2000, the exact month executive stock selling hit its record, and just prior to the huge NASDAQ crash. Is it possible that corporate executives knew something the rest of us didn't?
The Pentagon ... has resisted entreaties from U.S. anti-narcotics officials to play an aggressive role in the faltering campaign to curb the country's opium trade. Military units in Afghanistan largely overlook drug bazaars, rebuff some requests to take U.S. drug agents on raids and do little to counter the organized crime syndicates shipping the drug to Europe, Asia and, increasingly, the United States. Poppy cultivation has exploded, increasing by more than half this year. Afghanistan supplies about 92% of the world's opium. "It is surprising to me that we have allowed things to get to the point that they have," said ... a former top State Department counter-narcotics official. Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade is a law enforcement problem, not a military one. The opium trade is one-third of the country's economy. Several dozen kingpins ... have become more brazen, richer and powerful. [They] openly run huge opium bazaars and labs that turn opium into heroin. [The] head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said ... that the location of major drug operations were "well-known to us and to the authorities." The Pentagon has balked at drug interdiction efforts even when it had the resources, said a former senior U.S. anti-drug official. "There were [drug] convoys where military people looked the other way," the former official said. "DEA would identify a lab to go hit or a storage facility and [the Pentagon] would find a reason to ground the helicopters." A recent congressional report said the DEA asked the Pentagon for airlifts on 26 occasions in 2005, and the requests were denied in all but three cases.
Note: Some observers and insiders believe the reason Afghanistan was attacked is because the Taliban had virtually stopped the opium trade in 2001. For reliable evidence supporting these allegations, click here.
After six years of technological research, more than $4 billion spent by Washington on new machinery and a widespread overhaul of the nations voting system, this months midterm election revealed that the country is still far from able to ensure that every vote counts. Tens of thousands of voters, scattered across more than 25 states, encountered serious problems at the polls. The difficulties led to shortages of substitute paper ballots and long lines that caused many voters to leave without casting ballots. Voting experts say it is impossible to say how many votes were not counted that should have been. In Florida alone, the discrepancies ... amount to more than 60,000 votes. In Colorado, as many as 20,000 people gave up trying to vote ... as new online systems for verifying voter registrations crashed repeatedly. In Arkansas, election officials tallied votes three times in one county, and each time the number of ballots cast changed by more than 30,000. Election experts say that with electronic voting machines, the potential consequences of misdeeds or errors are of a [great] magnitude. A single software error can affect thousands of votes, especially with machines that keep no paper record. In Ohio, thousands of voters were turned away or forced to file provisional ballots by poll workers puzzled by voter-identification rules. In Pennsylvania, the machines crashed or refused to start, producing many reports of vote-flipping [where] voters press the button for one candidate but a different candidates name appears on the screen. In Ohio, even a congressman, Steve Chabot, a Republican, was turned away from his polling place because the address listed on his drivers license was different than his home address.
In a nation that preaches the virtues of democracy, the United States government has consistently eroded the media's ability to report. U.S. press freedom has been slipping away since Sept. 11, 2001. Many other countries are now ranked freer than the United States. In the most recent survey by Freedom House [the U.S.] tied for 17th place. International free-press advocates Reporters Without Borders ranked us 53rd, tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. Now that we are in a seemingly permanent "war" on terrorism, the government claims wartime powers that result in restricting press freedom. The Bush administration has multiplied exponentially the number of documents it classifies as secret. The office of Vice President Dick Cheney claims to be exempt from reporting even the numbers of records it brands with the "classified" stamp. Within weeks after 9/11, President Bush issued Executive Order 13233, allowing him to veto public release not only of his own presidential papers but those of former [presidents]. One of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's first post-Sept. 11 acts was to issue a directive to federal agencies restricting access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act. Cheney [refused] to disclose even the identity of the corporate executives he met with to determine the administration's energy policy. The U.S. Supreme Court held ... that there is no such thing as a First Amendment right of access to government information or facilities. The Bush administration did not advance press freedom by producing ... favorable "news" stories with fake reporters. It is hard to stomach the hypocrisy of claiming to spread democracy abroad while restricting at home the very freedoms that make democracy possible.
There were many problems with voting in this election. In at least one Congressional race, the evidence strongly suggests that paperless voting machines failed to count thousands of votes, and that the disappearance of these votes delivered the race to the wrong candidate. [In] Floridas 13th Congressional District .. according to the official vote count, the Republicans [won] narrowly. The problem is that the official vote count isnt credible. In much of the 13th District, the voting pattern looks normal. But in Sarasota County, which used touch-screen voting machines ... almost 18,000 voters nearly 15 percent of those who cast ballots using the machines supposedly failed to vote for either candidate in the hotly contested Congressional race. That compares with undervote rates ranging from 2.2 to 5.3 percent in neighboring counties. The Herald-Tribune of Sarasota ... interviewed hundreds of voters. About a third of those interviewed by the paper reported that they couldnt even find the Congressional race on the screen. Moreover, more than 60 percent of those interviewed ... reported that they did cast a vote in the Congressional race but that this vote didnt show up on the ballot summary page. An Orlando Sentinel examination of other votes cast by those who supposedly failed to cast a vote ... shows that they strongly favored Democrats, and Mr. Buchanan won the official count by only 369 votes. For the nation as a whole, the important thing isnt who gets seated to represent Floridas 13th District. Its whether the voting disaster there leads to legislation requiring voter verification and a paper trail. I’ve been shocked at how little national attention the mess in Sarasota has received.
"The Under Secretary of the Navy (UNSECNAV) is the Approval Authority for research involving: (a) Severe or unusual intrusions, either physical or psychological, on human subjects (such as consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques). (b) Prisoners. (c) Potentially or inherently controversial topics (such as those likely to attract significant media coverage or that might invite challenge by interest groups). The UNSECNAV forwards to the Director, Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) for final determination: (a) All proposed research involving exposure of human subjects to the effects of nuclear, biological or chemical warfare agents or weapons, as required by reference (a)."
Note: This 2006 US Department of the Navy document shows that the US military continues to develop mind control techniques, use mind-altering drugs, and expose individuals to lethal nuclear, biological, and chemical agents while keeping it all out of the media's eye. For lots more showing blatant disregard for human rights on this topic, click here and here.
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
Nearly all members of the House of Representatives opted out of a chance to read this year's classified intelligence bill, and then voted on secret provisions they knew almost nothing about. The bill, which passed by 327 to 96 in April, authorized the Bush administration's plans for fighting the war on terrorism. Many members say they faced an untenable choice: Either consent to a review process so secretive that they could never mention anything about it in House debates, under the threat of prosecution, or vote on classified provisions they knew nothing about. Most chose to know nothing. A Globe survey sent to all members of the House, [revealed] the vast majority of the respondents ... said they typically don't read the classified parts of intelligence bills. The failure to read the bill, however, calls into question the vows of many House members to provide greater oversight of intelligence. The rules make open debate on intelligence policy and funding nearly impossible, lawmakers say. Revealing classified secrets has long been a crime, punishable by expulsion from the House and criminal prosecution. Operating largely in secret, the intelligence panels have a limited staff because of the security clearances involved. Further, committee members can't go to outside experts to vet policies or give advice, leaving members with no way to fact-check the administration's assertions. Democratic and Republican leaders are no longer briefed together, raising questions about whether the two leaders are being told the same things.
Note: If above link fails, click here. If you want to understand how U.S. Congressional representatives are kept in the dark and easily manipulated when it comes to intelligence matters, this article is a must read.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside an exclusive California retreat for government and business leaders Saturday to challenge the right of a "ruling elite" to make policy decisions without public scrutiny. The annual Bohemian Grove retreat has attracted powerful men such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, philanthropist David Rockefeller, former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It's also become a magnet for all types of activists who increasingly use the event to network and organize their campaigns. The men who attend the Bohemian Grove retreat spend two weeks performing plays, eating gourmet camp grub, listening to speakers and power-bonding at the 2,700-acre compound near the Russian River in Sonoma County. The retreat is organized by the exclusive San Francisco-based Bohemian Club. The club and event are shrouded in mystery, much like Yale University's most-famous secret society, Skull and Bones, whose members include President George W. Bush and his presidential rival Sen. John Kerry.
Note: This article strangely has been removed from the San Francisco Chronicle website. To see it in the Internet Archive, click here. For an informative five-minute ABC news clip on the power elite gathering Bohemian Grove reported in 1981, click here. And for reliable information on the most secretive meeting of the world's elite reported by the major media, see our Bilderberg Group compilation available here.
The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post-9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it "was not historically significant." This astounding conclusion -- in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings -- raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself. The Able Danger team had identified Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers by mid-2000 but were prevented by military lawyers from giving this information to the FBI. The Pentagon...blocked several military officers from testifying...about the Able Danger program. The chairman of the 9/11 Commission reacted to Able Danger with the standard Washington PR approach. [He] demanded that the Pentagon conduct an "investigation" to evaluate the "credibility" of Col. Shaffer and Capt. Phillpott. The final 9/11 Commission report...concluded that "American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks." This now looks to be embarrassingly wrong. The Joint Intelligence Committees should reconvene and, in addition to Able Danger team members, we should have the 9/11 commissioners appear as witnesses so the families can hear their explanation why this doesn't matter.
Note: If the above link fails, click here.
John K. Vance [was] a member of the Central Intelligence Agency inspector general's staff in the early 1960s who discovered that the agency was running a research project that included administering LSD and other drugs to unwitting human subjects. Code-named MKULTRA (and pronounced m-k-ultra), the project Mr. Vance uncovered was the brainchild of CIA Director Allen Dulles, who was intrigued by reports of mind-control techniques allegedly conducted by Soviet, Chinese and North Korean agents on U.S. prisoners of war during the Korean War. The CIA wanted to use similar techniques on its own POWs and perhaps use LSD or other mind-bending substances on foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro a few years after the project got underway in 1953. Heading MKULTRA was a CIA chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. In congressional testimony, Gottlieb, who died in 1999, acknowledged that the agency had administered LSD to as many as 40 unwitting subjects, including prison inmates and patrons of brothels set up and run by the agency. At least one participant died when he jumped out of a 10th-floor window in a hotel; others claimed to have suffered serious psychological damage. Mr. Vance learned about MKULTRA in the spring of 1963 during a wide-ranging inspector general survey of the agency's technical services division. The inspector general's report said: "The concepts involved in manipulating human behavior are found by many people both within and outside the agency to be distasteful and unethical." MKULTRA came to public light in 1977 as a result of hearings conducted by a Senate committee on intelligence chaired by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho).
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For an excellent two-page summary of reliable verifiable information on CIA mind control programs which clearly violated ethical and moral standards, click here.
There was a close-up of a soldier who was holding someone's severed leg. There were photos of G.I.'s happily posing with the bodies of dead Iraqis. This is what happens in war. It's the sickening reality that is seldom seen in the censored, sanitized version of the conflict that Americans typically get from the government and the media. Mr. Delgado, 23, is a former Army reservist who was repelled by the violence and dehumanization of the war. He completed his tour in Iraq. But he sought and received conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January. Some of the most disturbing photos in his possession were taken after G.I.'s at Abu Ghraib opened fire on detainees who had been throwing rocks at guards during a large protest. Four detainees were killed. The photos show American soldiers posing and goofing around with the bodies of the detainees. In one shot ... a G.I. is leaning over the top of the body bag with a spoon in his right hand, as if he is about to scoop up a portion of the dead man's wounded flesh. "These pictures were circulated like trophies," Mr. Delgado said. Some were posted in command headquarters. But while at work in a headquarters office, he said, he learned that most of the detainees at Abu Ghraib had committed only very minor nonviolent offenses, or no offenses at all. (Several investigations would subsequently reveal that vast numbers of completely innocent Iraqis were seized and detained by coalition forces.) His goal, he said, is to convince his listeners that the abuse of innocent Iraqis by the American military is not limited to "a few bad apples," as the military would like the public to believe.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more on war manipulations and the suffering of our soldiers by a highly decorated U.S. general, click here.
The FBI has moved to fire a veteran agent who alleged that the bureau had mishandled domestic investigations. On Thursday, Robert Wright was ordered by superiors at an FBI counterterrorism command office in Washington to hand over his badge and weapon, was suspended and was told he would be fired within 30 days, said an official with Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group whose attorneys represent Wright. Wright was told he was being dismissed for, among other things, publicly discussing sensitive FBI matters in 2003, the official said. Wright has been under disciplinary investigation for almost three years. He has two lawsuits pending against the FBI. Yesterday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) sent FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III a letter repeating their support for Wright and expressing concern that the FBI was retaliating against him for his public statements.
Note: What the Post article completely fails to mention is that Robert Wright was hot on the trail of key terrorists before 9/11, yet he was ordered to stop the investigation by his FBI supervisors. For past media stories on this with links to original sources, click here, here, and here. Mr. Wright is one of the FBI agents who approached renowned attorney David Schippers just weeks before 9/11 to warn that a major terrorist attack was going to take place in lower Manhattan. For more, click here.
In the frenzied days after Sept. 11, 2001, when some flights were still grounded, dozens of well-connected Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, managed to leave the United States on specially chartered flights. Newly released government records show previously undisclosed flights ... and point to a more active role by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in aiding some of the Saudis in their departure. The F.B.I. gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed. The material ... provides details about the F.B.I.'s interaction with at least 160 Saudis who were living in or visiting the United States and were allowed to leave the country. Some of the departing Saudis were related to Osama bin Laden. In several ... cases, Saudi travelers were not interviewed before departing the country, and F.B.I. officials sought to determine how what seemed to be lapses had occurred. "From these documents, [the Saudi interviews that did occur] look like they were courtesy chats, without the time that would have been needed for thorough debriefings," said Christopher J. Farrell, who is ... a former counterintelligence interrogator for the Army. "It seems as if the F.B.I. was more interested in achieving diplomatic success than investigative success." The F.B.I. documents left open the possibility that some departing Saudis had information relevant to the Sept. 11 investigation.
Note: For lots more crucial, verifiable information suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, click here.
In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times. That amounts to once every 28 months for an entire century. Direct intervention occurred in 17 of the 41 cases. These incidents involved the use of U.S. military forces, intelligence agents or local citizens employed by U.S. government agencies. In another 24 cases, the U.S. government played an indirect role. That is, local actors played the principal roles, but either would not have acted or would not have succeeded without encouragement from the U.S. government. The 41 cases do not include incidents in which the United States sought to depose a Latin American government, but failed in the attempt. The most famous such case was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. Also absent from the list are numerous cases in which the U.S. government acted decisively to forestall a coup detat or otherwise protect an incumbent regime from being overthrown. In nearly every case, U.S. officials cited U.S. security interests, either as determinative or as a principal motivation. With hindsight, it is now possible to dismiss most these claims as implausible. In many cases, they were understood as necessary for generating public and congressional support, but not taken seriously by the key decision makers.
The F.B.I. has failed to aggressively investigate accusations of espionage against a translator at the bureau and fired the translator's co-worker in large part for bringing the accusations, the Justice Department's inspector general concluded. In a long-awaited report that the Justice Department sought for months to keep classified, the inspector general issued a sharp rebuke to the F.B.I. over its handling of claims of espionage and ineptitude made by Sibel Edmonds, a bureau translator who was fired in 2002 after superiors deemed her conduct "disruptive." The report [came] from the office of Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general. Mr. Fine's investigation found that many of Ms. Edmonds's accusations "were supported, that the F.B.I. did not take them seriously enough and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the F.B.I.'s decision to terminate her services." Ms. Edmonds's case has become a cause clbre for critics who accused the bureau of retaliating against her and other whistle-blowers who have sought to expose management problems related to the campaign against terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union joined her cause earlier this week, asking an appellate court to reinstate a whistle-blower lawsuit she brought against the government. The suit was dismissed last year after Attorney General John Ashcroft, invoking a rarely used power, declared her case to be a matter of "state secret" privilege, and the Justice Department retroactively classified a 2002 Congressional briefing about it.
Note: What this article completely fails to mention is that Ms. Edmonds has claimed repeatedly that she has key information revealing major corruption related to 9/11. For a highly revealing report written by Ms. Edmonds to the 9/11 Commission chairman, click here. Another highly revealing article is available here. The Times link above requires payment. To view the above article free, click here.
The grainy 30-second commercials ... suggest a government cover-up of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The advertisements, which ran repeatedly ... on several cable networks, including CNN, Fox News and ESPN, offer a Web site, an address and a phone number. The ads are the latest salvo from James W. Walter ... who over the years has financed programs promoting voter registration in low-income neighborhoods and prison reform. The television commercials, as well as ads in magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Daily News, are part of a $3 million national campaign paid for by Mr. Walter in an effort to press for the reopening of the investigation by the independent Sept. 11 commission. "We've never gotten solid answers on why Tower 7 collapsed when it was two full blocks away from where the planes hit," he said. "We've also never received an answer for how such a large plane left such a small hole in the side of the Pentagon." A Zogby poll of New Yorkers' opinions about the 9/11 investigation, released last month, indicated that 49 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of New York state residents believed that some federal officials "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." The poll also found that 66 percent of New York City residents and 56 percent of state residents wanted a fuller investigation of the "still unanswered questions."
Note: For lots more reliable information suggesting a major cover-up of 9/11, click here.
The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons. The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction films. But antimatter itself isn't fiction. During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. Following an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. Still, details on the program appear in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet prior to the ban. It almost defies belief, the amount of explosive force available in a speck of antimatter. One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT. A simple calculation, then, shows that about 50-millionths of a gram could generate a blast equal to the explosion ... in Oklahoma City in 1995. Officials at Eglin Air Force Base initially agreed enthusiastically to try to arrange an interview with ... Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin. "We're all very excited about this technology," spokesman Rex Swenson [said] in late July. But Swenson backed out in August after he was overruled by higher officials in the Air Force and Pentagon. Reached by phone in late September, Edwards repeatedly declined to be interviewed. His superiors gave him "strict instructions not to give any interviews personally. "I'm sorry about that -- this (antimatter) project is sort of my grandchild."
The three companies that certify the nation's voting technologies operate in secrecy, and refuse to discuss flaws in the machines to be used by nearly one in three voters in November. Federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing of the technology. The certification process, in part because the voting machine companies pay for it, is described as obsolete by those charged with overseeing it. Despite concerns over whether the so-called touchscreen machines can be trusted, the testing companies won't say publicly if they have encountered shoddy workmanship. They say they are committed to secrecy in their contracts with the voting machines' makers even though tax money ultimately buys or leases the machines. Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist and electronic voting expert, told lawmakers in Washington, D.C. "Ifind it grotesque that an organization charged with such a heavy responsibility feels no obligation to explain to anyone what it is doing." The system for "testing and certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken, but is virtually nonexistent," Shamos added. More than a decade ago, the Federal Election Commission authorized the National Association of State Election Directors to choose the independent testers. On its Web site, the association says the three testing outfits "have neither the staff nor the time to explain the process to the public, the news media or jurisdictions."
There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US government so keen to cover it up? Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court? [Another] witness is Sibel Edmonds ... former FBI translator of intelligence. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. The FBI, illegally, [also] continues to refuse the to release of their agent Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, and has even refused to turn the manuscript over to Senator Shelby, vice-chairman of the joint intelligence committee charged with investigating America's 9/11 intelligence failures.
Note: The above article was written by Michael Meacher, who served as the U.K. Minster of Environment from 1997 to 2003. For lots more reliable information suggesting a major cover-up around 9/11, click here.
As opposite as George Bush and John Kerry may seem to be, they do share a common secret - one they've shared for decades. The secret: details of their membership in Skull and Bones, the elite Yale University society whose members include some of the most powerful men of the 20th century. Bonesmen, as they're called, are forbidden to reveal what goes on in their inner sanctum. Bones has included presidents, cabinet officers, spies, Supreme Court justices, [and] captains of industry. They'd responded to questions with utter silence until an enterprising Yale graduate, Alexandra Robbins, managed to penetrate the wall of silence in her book, Secrets of the Tomb. "I spoke with about 100 members of Skull and Bones. They were members who were tired of the secrecy,” says Robbins. “But probably twice that number hung up on me, harassed me, or threatened me.” Skull and Bones, with all its ritual and macabre relics, was founded in 1832. Since then, it has chosen or "tapped" only 15 senior students a year who become ... lifetime members of the ultimate old boys' club. A lot of Bonesmen have gone on to positions of great power. President Bush ... tapped five fellow Bonesmen to join his administration. Bonesmen have [included] William Howard Taft, the 27th President; Henry Luce, the founder of Time Magazine; and W. Averell Harriman, the diplomat and confidant of U.S. presidents. Mr. Bush, like his father and grandfather before him, has refused to talk openly about Skull and Bones. But as a Bonesman, he was required to reveal his innermost secrets to his fellow Bones initiates. They're supposed to recount their entire sexual histories in ... a dimly-lit cozy room.
Note: For a highly revealing, four-minute CNN News clip on Skull and Bones, click here. For other major media news clips reporting on this powerful secret society, click here. And for lots more reliable information from major media sources on powerful, secret groups like this, click here.
In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise ... the target was the Pentagon but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say. NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. "Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures." On April 8, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons. President Bush said ... "Nobody in our government ... could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale." One operation, planned in July 2001 ... involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons. "Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission.
Note: This highly revealing news was reported on the front page of USA Today, yet no other major media even picked up the story. Why? For lots more, click here and here.
At least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation. The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. In November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough. The BBC reported [that] a former Pakistan foreign secretary was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Zacarias Moussaoui ... was arrested in August 2001. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers. US agents ... sought a warrant to search his computer. They were turned down by the FBI. [A] PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document ... which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership". The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool". The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.
Note: This is one of the very few articles recommended as a must read. Michael Meacher was the U.K. Minister of Environment from May 1997 to June 2003. Mr. Meacher lays out a wealth of highly revealing information backed by reliable sources. To confirm most of his statements on our 9/11 timeline, click here. Mr. Meacher's cliams were reported on BBC News, as well, though the BBC mentioned amazingly little on his claims of U.S. involvement in 9/11. To see the BBC article click here.
In naming Henry Kissinger to direct a comprehensive examination of the government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush has selected a consummate Washington insider. Unfortunately, his affinity for power and the commercial interests he has cultivated since leaving government may make him less than the staunchly independent figure that is needed for this critical post. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed. It seems improbable to expect Mr. Kissinger to report unflinchingly on the conduct of the government, including that of Mr. Bush. He would have to challenge the established order and risk sundering old friendships and business relationships. The new inquiry will be undone if the 10-member panel is hesitant to call government organizations and officials to account. There can be no place for the kind of political calculation and court flattery that Mr. Kissinger practiced so assiduously during his tenure as Richard Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state. Nor is there any tolerance for the kind of cynicism that Mr. Kissinger applied to the prosecution of the Vietnam War.
Note: Kissinger was later forced to decline this offer as it was revealed that he was a paid advisor to members of the bin Laden family. To confirm this, watch minutes 15 to 18 of the amazing 84-minute 9/11 documentary, "9/11: Press for Truth," available here. This excellent video is focused on the revealing investigations of the "Jersey Girls," who lost their husbands in the attacks and uncovered Kissinger's bin Laden connections. Yet though the major media reported widely that Kissinger resigned for "conflict of interest" reasons, none of the media mentioned that it was because of his bin Laden connections. To find out why, click here
The Ministry of Defence turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public. A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain's biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979. Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told. While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments. The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any 'inquisitive inquirer' the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution. The tests [were] carried out by government scientists at Porton Down. In most cases, the trials did not use biological weapons but alternatives which scientists believed would mimic germ warfare and which the MoD claimed were harmless. But families in certain areas of the country who have children with birth defects are demanding a public inquiry.
Note: Military personnel were ordered to lie to cover-up potentially dangerous experiments on the public. So how can we trust that these people have the public interest as a priority?
Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro. Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA. The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden, and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. Intelligence sources say that another CIA agent was also present; and that Bin Laden was also visited by Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence, who had long had links with the Taliban, and Bin Laden. The American hospital in Dubai emphatically denied that Bin Laden was a patient there. Washington last night also denied the story. Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years. According to Le Figaro, last year he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Note: For many unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11 asked by highly-respected professors and officials, click here and here.
In the first days after the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Saudi Arabia supervised the urgent evacuation of 24 members of Osama bin Laden's extended family from the United States, fearing that they might be subjected to violence. Most of Mr. bin Laden's relatives were attending high school and college. They are among the 4,000 Saudi students in the United States. King Fahd, the ailing Saudi ruler, sent an urgent message to his embassy here saying there were "bin Laden children all over America" and ordered, "Take measures to protect the innocents," the ambassador said. The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks. A majority of the men who hijacked four airliners in the attacks carried Saudi passports. Surprisingly, Osama bin Laden was not a stranger even to a royal family member like Prince Bandar. In the early 1980's, bin Laden came to greet the prince and thank him for helping to build the coalition that fought against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Mr. bin Laden is one of 52 children of a Yemeni-born migrant who made a vast fortune building roads and palaces in Saudi Arabia.
Note: Should the above link fail to function, click here. For a Boston Globe article on this key topic, click here. For more detailed information which both the Times and Globe neglected to report, click here.
For a quarter of a century, [Eric Olson] has believed that the Central Intelligence Agency murdered his father, a United States government scientist. On Nov. 28, 1953, around 2 a.m. [the] night manager at the Statler Hotel ... in New York rushed out the front door ... to find a middle-aged man lying on the sidewalk. The man had fallen from the 10th floor -- apparently after crashing through a closed window. [In late July, 1975] the C.I.A.'s director, William Colby [provided Olson's] family ... declassified documents relating to Frank Olson's death. Olson had not been a civilian employee of the Department of the Army. He had been a C.I.A. employee working at Fort Detrick. Olson's specialty, it turned out, had been the development of aerosols for the delivery of anthrax. The Colby documents were ... full of unexplained terms like the ''Artichoke'' and ''Bluebird'' projects. These turned out to be the precursors of what became known as MK-ULTRA, a C.I.A. project, beginning in the Korean War, to explore the use of drugs like LSD as truth serums, as well as botulism and anthrax, for use in covert assassination. The documents claimed that during a meeting between the C.I.A. and Fort Detrick scientists ... on Nov. 19,1953, Sidney Gottlieb of the C.I.A. slipped LSD into Olson's glass of Cointreau. Olson, a scientist by training, would have known that he was working for a government that had put Nazi scientists on trial at Nuremberg for immoral experiments on human beings. Now, in the late summer of 1953, [Olson] faced up to the possibility that his own government was doing the same thing. Slipping LSD into Olson's Cointreau was ... designed to get him to talk ... to assess what kind of risk he posed and then eliminate him if necessary.
Note: For those interested in this vital, yet disturbing topic, the entire Times article is well worth reading. For further verifiable information on the CIA mind control programs mentioned in this article, click here.
The CIA is acknowledging for the first time the extent of its deep involvement in Chile, where it dealt with coup-plotters, false propagandists and assassins. The agency [released] a declassified report required by the U.S. Congress. Despite the disclosures, the CIA report admits to no abuses or cover-up by CIA agents. But it chronicles clandestine contacts authorized by then-U.S. President Richard Nixon and other top U.S. officials which it said would violate standards now upheld by the agency. Among the disclosures: The CIA had prior knowledge of the plot that overthrew Allende three years later. The CIA supported a kidnapping attempt of Chile's army chief in October 1970, as part of a plot to prevent the congressional confirmation of Allende as president. The kidnapping attempt failed, and Gen. Rene Schneider was shot and killed. The CIA later paid $35,000 to the kidnappers in what it termed "humanitarian" assistance. The CIA made a one-time payment to secret police head Gen. Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, the head of the military regime's feared secret police. He was sentenced in 1993 for killing Chilean socialist leader Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976. Contreras has said the CIA was behind the assassination. The report also describes efforts to influence news media in Chile against Allende and to continue anti-leftist propaganda efforts by successor Pinochet, "including support for news media committed to creating a positive image for the military Junta" now accused of an array of abuses during his 17-year rule, including more than 3,000 killings.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.
The Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of its covert operation to overthrow Iran's government in 1953 offers an inside look at how the agency stumbled into success, despite a series of mishaps that derailed its original plans. Written in 1954 by one of the coup's chief planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran's elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist. The document shows that: * The C.I.A. and S.I.S., the British intelligence service, handpicked Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and covertly funneled $5 million to General Zahedi's regime two days after the coup prevailed. * Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government.
Note: For the complete text of this major report in single-page format, click here.
Secret wartime experiments were conducted off the New Zealand coast to perfect a bomb that could trigger devastating tidal waves, according to government files declassified in Auckland. The New Zealand Herald, citing the files, said that senior United States defence officials believed the weapon had the potential to be as deadly as the atomic bomb. But the tsunami bomb, as it was known, was never fully tested and the war ended before the project was completed. Its mastermind was Thomas Leech, an Australian professor who as the dean of engineering at Auckland University from 1940 to 1950. He was seconded to the New Zealand Army during the Second World War. He set off a series of underwater explosions that triggered mini tidal waves at Whangaparaoa, just north of Auckland, in 1944 and 1945. Details of the research, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53- year-old documents released by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. What happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington in the late 1940s is not clear.
Note: For a revealing, well researched article presenting solid evidence that elements within the military have much more control over the weather than is generally believed, click here.
This was a difficult book for Avner Cohen to write. As an Israeli, he had to break the code of silence that surrounds the discussion of nuclear weapons in his homeland. But he has done a superb job of laying out the political history of Israel's nuclear program from its foundation in 1950 through the acceptance by the United States of Israel as a nuclear-weapon state in 1970. With "Israel and the Bomb," he has written a scholarly treatise that includes over 1,200 footnotes, yet reads like a novel. Israel was the sixth nation in the world - and the first in the Middle East - to acquire nuclear weapons. However, unlike those of the first five, its nuclear program has remained opaque, that is, shrouded in secrecy, officially unacknowledged and insulated from domestic politics. Israel's policy was also shaped by its interaction with France, the United States and Egypt. For its part, the United States realized as early as the Eisenhower Administration that it was not in a position to stop the Israeli program. At the same time, Israel could not openly defy American opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons. Opacity was the solution. Israel also did not wish to provoke the Arab nations into developing their own nuclear weapons or launching a pre-emptive attack on its Dimona reactor. As long as the Israelis kept a low profile, the Arabs, led by Egypt, played down the issue. Israel today remains the only nuclear-opaque state in the world.
Note: Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or allow UN inspectors to inspect its opaque nuclear program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government secrecy news articles from reliable major media sources.
When Kevin Warwick enters his office building on the campus of Reading University, strange things happen. As Warwick heads down the main hall, lights turn on. When he turns to the right, an office door unbolts and opens. Each step is clocked and recorded. The building knows who he is, where he is, and what he expects to happen. The building [even] says, Hello Professor Warwick. The structure knows Warwick because of the electrical fuse-sized smart card implanted in his left arm. In Britain, hes been dubbed The Cyborg Man, the first person known to have a microchip implanted in his body for communication with outside machines. Warwick predicts chip implants will one day replace time cards, criminal tracking devices, even credit cards. Capable of carrying huge amounts of data, they may, he says, one day be used to identify individuals by Social Security numbers, blood type, even their banking information. No one knows yet how the body will respond to this type of invasion. Warwick is not blind to the ethical questions of this technology. Implants ostensibly designed to clock workers in and out might be misused to monitor where people are at all times and who they are meeting. Governments could move to use implants instead of I.D. cards and passports, but what would stop them from using this new science to invade privacy? I feel mentally different. When I am in the building I feel much more closely connected with the computer.
Note: Those who would like to control the public named these implants "smart cards" to encourage us to accept them. For more reliable information on important topic, click here and here.
At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term describing an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow. There are times when the United States, faced with ... moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s ... was one of those times. Bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who ... has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests. Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as ... the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war. MAK was nurtured by Pakistans state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIAs primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscows occupation. The CIA ... had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities. Given that context, a decision was made to provide Americas potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower. That decision is coming home to roost.
Note: The #2 man (who later became #1) at the CIA acknowledges that the CIA deceived the president in order to forward its own confrontational objectives. How often do you think this might happen? Who's really in charge here? For a highly revealing documentary titled "Secrets of the CIA," click here.
Melvin Goodman was a senior analyst in Soviet affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he worked for two decades (1966-1986). He currently is professor of international studies at the National War College. [In the CIA], not only do you have political assassinations -- attempts at least -- throughout the Fifties and the Sixties ... but you even have assassination attempts against international leaders: the Mongoose operation in Cuba [and] assassination attempts in Chile, where you were dealing with a country that wasn't even in the vital national interests or concerns of the United States. All of these assassination attempts were done with the authorization of the White House. I think the major problem at the CIA -- and it exists to this day -- is that you have two cultures. You have an intelligence or analytical culture that must remain open. The opposite of that is the clandestine side: it's secret, it's a policy branch of the government. The White House basically uses the operational component of the CIA to do its bidding. It's very useful to have a clandestine corps to carry out military or paramilitary actions very cheaply, without the hand of the United States or a particular president being obvious. In many ways, you're getting worst-case assessments, because quite often the contacts of the CIA are people on the CIA payroll, telling the CIA what these people believe the CIA wants to know -- in return for payment. So the whole tradecraft is somewhat suspicious and somewhat corrupt from the very outset.
Note: Melvin Goodman is one of many senior government officials who question the government's 9/11 story. For his comments on this, click here. For other senior officials with similar sentiments, click here.
REPRESENTATIVE JACK BROOKS, Democrat of Texas. Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C., were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster? SENATOR DANIEL K. INOUYE, Democrat of Hawaii. I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that. MR. BROOKS. I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American Constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was, and I wanted to get his confirmation. MR. INOUYE. May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon, at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.
Note: Why was the chairman not allowing a discussion of the fact that plans were being made in the event of an emergency for the suspension of the U.S. Constitution? To watch a two-minute video which includes this testimony, click here.
A dispute between the Brazilian Navy and an American marine archeologist has led Brazil to bar the diver from entering the country and to place a ban on all underwater exploration. The dispute involves Robert Marx, a Florida author and treasure hunter, who asserts that the Brazilian Navy dumped a thick layer of silt on the remains of a Roman vessel that he discovered inside Rio de Janeiro's bay. The reason he gave for the Navy's action was that proof of a Roman presence would require Brazil to rewrite its recorded history, which has the Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral discovering the country in 1500. All ... permits for underwater exploration and digging, a prolific field in Brazil, have been canceled as a result of the Marx controversy ... Navy officials said. The story goes back to 1976 when lobster divers first found potsherds studded with barnacles. Then a Brazilian diver brought up two complete jars with twin handles, tapering at the bottom, the kind that ancient Mediterranean peoples widely used for storage and are known as amphoras. According to Elizabeth Will, a professor of classics and specialist in ancient Roman amphoras at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the jars are very similar to the ones produced at Kouass, a Roman Empire colony that was a center for amphora-making on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Reached by telephone, Professor Will said of the fragments she had studied: ''They look to be ancient and because of the profile, the thin-walled fabric and the shape of the rims I suggested they belong to the third century A.D..''
Note: Many archeological finds which don't match accepted history have been suppressed and covered up. For five revealing BBC articles showing more manipulation around this, click here. For a compilation of 10 mysteries that hint at ancient civilizations which have largely been ignored, click here.
OSI [Office of Scientific Intelligence] has investigated the work currently being performed on flying saucers. Since 1947, ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center] has received approximately 1500 official reports of sightings plus an enormous volume of letters, phone calls and press reports. During the month of July 1952 alone, official reports totaled 250. Of the 1500 reports, Air Force carries 20% as unexplained. A study should be instituted to determine what, if any, utilization could be made of these phenomena by United States psychological warfare planners, and what, if any, defenses should be planned in anticipation of Soviet attempts to utilize them. A national policy should be established as to what should be told the public regarding the phenomena, in order to minimize risk of panic. It is recommended that: a. The Director of Central Intelligence advise the National Security Council of the security implications inherent in the flying saucer problem. b. CIA, under its assigned responsibilities, and in cooperation with the psychological strategy board, immediately investigate possible offensive or defensive utilization of the phenomena for psychological warfare purposes both for and against the United States.
Note: To access this document on the CIA website, click on the link above and then click on the first link listed, with the title "FLYING SAUCERS," or see a full copy with comments at this link. Why was the CIA interested in using the UFO phenomenon for psychological warfare? How did that play out? For lots more reliable, verifiable information on this intriguing topic, click here.
Since 9/11, the government has been building a huge anti-terror apparatus. In the first few days, the entire blueprint for what would happen over the next decade was written, all in secret. The public didn't know. The media didn't know. And it would take us years to find out. In secret, the administration had authorized the CIA to use what they called "enhanced interrogation techniques." They can do a lot of things that used to be considered torture. Waterboarding, for example. By any definition, it's torture. The Justice Department called it "enhanced interrogation methods" and it approved seven of them, including waterboarding. It took reporter Dana Priest years to piece together where prisoners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were. They had been hidden in a secret network of CIA prisons known as "black sites." For the first time, the White House had approved the building of an international prison system entirely in secret. The Terrorist Surveillance Program authorized the NSA to intercept certain telephone calls and emails of American citizens without a warrant. The NSA created a global electronic dragnet capable of reaching into America's communication networks, capturing 1.7 billion intercepts every day. The NSA turned to a new force in the covert war, private contractors. You had this boom in the corporate intelligence world, as well, companies like CACI, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics. The NSA spent billions of dollars on more than 480 private companies.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and 9/11 from reliable major media sources.
A whistleblower who works in Project Nightingale, the secret transfer of the personal medical data of up to 50 million Americans from one of the largest healthcare providers in the US to Google, has expressed anger to the Guardian that patients are being kept in the dark about the massive deal. The anonymous whistleblower has posted a video on the social media platform Daily Motion that contains a document dump of hundreds of images of confidential files relating to Project Nightingale. The secret scheme ... involves the transfer to Google of healthcare data held by Ascension, the second-largest healthcare provider in the US. The data is being transferred with full personal details including name and medical history and can be accessed by Google staff. Unlike other similar efforts it has not been made anonymous through a process of ... de-identification. The disclosed documents include highly confidential outlines of Project Nightingale, laying out the four stages or pillars of the secret project. By the time the transfer is completed next March, it will have passed the personal data of 50 million or more patients in 21 states to Google, with 10 million or so files already having moved across with no warning having been given to patients or doctors. Google has entered into similar partnerships on a much smaller scale with clients such as the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine. But in that case all the data handed over to the search giant was encrypted, with keys being held only on the medical side.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Laura Hughes, an Air Force veteran, says her daughter Catherine Werner is struggling with the effects of traumatic brain injury after experiencing strange sounds and sensations at her apartment in Guangzhou [China], where Werner was a foreign trade officer until being medevaced out earlier this year. She's calling on the State Department to do more to solve the mystery that has eluded investigators since U.S. diplomats and spies starting getting sick in Cuba in late 2016. Hughes is coming forward publicly because she says her daughter and the other government workers cannot. Werner is the only U.S. worker in either Cuba or China whose identity is publicly known. For Hughes, the saga started nearly a year ago when she said her daughter's health started declining: nausea, unbearable headaches, and problems with balance, vision and memory. [Then Hughes] started experiencing the sounds and sensations, too. She is concerned that the U.S. is downplaying what happened. She says rather than conducting a transparent investigation, some State Department officials have been "misinforming and they've been suppressing information. Our whole lives are uprooted. And instead of being helped by the State Department, it's an atrocity how they're taking care of this." U.S. officials [say] they're considering the possibility of an electromagnetic weapon, possibly involving microwave technology. Doctors have said many of the Havana diplomats have brain injuries that look like concussions, except with no known blow to the head. Both Hughes and her daughter remain in intensive rehabilitation.
Note: For decades, many countries have been secretly developing highly advanced weapons which, using electromagnetic waves from large distances, can destroy a person's health and even kill them. Sometimes they use them clandestinely against their own citizens who are considered dissidents. Why are the victims being kept from speaking? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on nonlethal weapons from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Mind Control Information Center.
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted: Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World. The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, [became] one of the worlds largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain. Major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family ... built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One. Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Uranium is considered a strategic asset. The deal had to be approved by ... United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clintons wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One ... a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium Ones chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
Note: The State Department also approved $165 Billion in commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors under Clinton's leadership. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
MJ was just 5 years old, when her father admitted to his bishop that he was sexually abusing her. The father, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [of the Bisbee, Arizona ward], was in counseling with his bishop when he revealed the abuse. The bishop ... followed church policy and called what church officials have dubbed the “help line” for guidance. Lawyers for the church, who staff the help line ... told Bishop John Herrod not to call police or child welfare officials. Instead he kept the abuse secret. The Associated Press has obtained nearly 12,000 pages of sealed records from an unrelated child sex abuse lawsuit against the Mormon church in West Virginia. Families of survivors who filed the lawsuit said ... church leaders divert abuse accusations away from law enforcement and instead to church attorneys who may bury the problem, leaving victims in harm’s way. “Child abuse festers and grows in secrecy,” said [lawyer] Lynne Cadigan. Laws in more than 20 states [assert] that clergy who receive information about child neglect or sexual abuse during spiritual confessions “may withhold” that information from authorities ... under church doctrine. [Survivors and their families are trying to] change church policy so that any instance of child sexual abuse is immediately reported to civil authorities. Inaction by the church have raised ethical issues. “What aspect of your religious practice are you advancing if you don’t report something like this?” [investigator Gerard Moretz] asked.
Note: To understand the scope of child sex abuse worldwide, learn about other major cover-ups in revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources. Furthermore, watch powerful evidence in a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse rings reach to the highest levels of government. Then watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which also leads directly to the highest levels of government.
Just before leaving his Defense Department job two months ago, intelligence officer Luis Elizondo quietly arranged to secure the release of three of the most unusual videos in the Pentagon's secret vaults: raw footage from encounters between fighter jets and "anomalous aerial vehicles" - military jargon for UFOs. In interviews, he said his ultimate intention was to shed light on a little-known program Elizondo himself ran for seven years: a low-key Defense Department operation to collect and analyze reported UFO sightings. The existence of the program, known as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was confirmed officially for the first time Saturday by a Pentagon spokesman. Spending for the program totaled at least $22 million. The funding officially ended in 2012. But officials familiar with the initiative say the collection effort continued as recently as last month. The program operated jointly out of the Pentagon and, at least for a time, an underground complex in Las Vegas managed by Bigelow Aerospace, a defense contractor that builds modules for space stations. It generated at least one report, a 490-page volume that describes alleged UFO sightings in the United States and numerous foreign countries over multiple decades. The first public revelations of the program came in a video conference aired in October by To the Stars Academy for Arts and Sciences, the firm Elizondo joined as a consultant after retiring from his Pentagon job.
Note: Elizondo is one of a several former government officials now employed by To the Stars Academy for Arts and Sciences, which claims it will "advance research into unexplained phenomena and develop related technology." Watch an excellent 8-minute video showing that something is fishy about this company. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing UFO news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Jake Williams, [a] cybersecurity expert, was dismayed to discover that ... the Shadow Brokers, a mysterious group that had somehow obtained many of the hacking tools the United States used to spy on other countries [had] identified him - correctly - as a former member of the National Security Agencys hacking group, Tailored Access Operations, or T.A.O., a job he had not publicly disclosed. Then the Shadow Brokers astonished him by dropping technical details that made clear they knew about highly classified hacking operations that he had conducted. Americas largest and most secretive intelligence agency had been deeply infiltrated. Current and former agency officials say the Shadow Brokers disclosures, which began in August 2016, have been catastrophic for the N.S.A., calling into question its ability to protect potent cyberweapons and its very value to national security. Fifteen months into a wide-ranging investigation by the agencys counterintelligence arm, known as Q Group, and the F.B.I., officials still do not know whether the N.S.A. is the victim of a brilliantly executed hack ... an insiders leak, or both. Three employees have been arrested since 2015 for taking classified files, but there is fear that one or more leakers may still be in place. There is broad agreement that the damage from the Shadow Brokers already far exceeds the harm to American intelligence done by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who fled with four laptops of classified material in 2013. For decades after its creation in 1952, the N.S.A. No Such Agency, in the old joke was seen as all but leakproof. But since Mr. Snowden flew away with hundreds of thousands of documents in 2013, that notion has been shattered.
Note: In 2014, it was reported that the NSA was developing tools to make it relatively easy to hack millions of computers at once. Two years later, a large collection of NSA hacking tools was leaked. Now, these tools are being used by criminals against people all over the world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
A lawsuit filed in a US district court claims that American aid to Israel is illegal under a law passed in the 1970s that prohibits aid to nuclear powers who dont sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, who filed the lawsuit ... said the United States has given Israel an estimated $234 billion in foreign aid since Congress in 1976 passed the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, with its stipulation regarding countries that did not sign the NPT. Though Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Smith noted that it is a known nuclear power and recipient of US aid. Israel ... is widely believed to possess dozens, if not hundreds of nuclear warheads. Smiths lawsuit comes on the eve of an aid deal that would boost US assistance to the country. Israel already gets $3 billion a year in US aid. To sustain a policy of nuclear ambiguity on Israels weapons program, Smith says the government uses improper classification and threatens federal employees and researchers with prosecution, fines and imprisonment. The gag is driven ... by a Department of Energy directive known as WNP-136, Foreign Nuclear Capabilities. This is an Energy Department directive that demands imprisonment for any federal official or contractor who even mentions that Israel might have a nuclear weapons program, Smith said. Foreign aid to Israel violates two amendments of the 1961 Foreign Aid Act ... which ban aid to clandestine nuclear powers.
Note: How interesting the the US press is not covering this. Consider also that $3 billion in US aid divided by Israel's population of 8.5 million means Israel receives the equivalent of about $350 in aid per person per year, far greater than any other country. Watch a good interview with Miko Peled, a former member of Israeli special forces, on this topic. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
It was July 1974. William Simon, newly appointed U.S. Treasury secretary, and his deputy, Gerry Parsky, stepped onto an 8 a.m. flight. [Simon's] mission, kept in strict confidence within President Richard Nixon's inner circle, would take place during a four-day layover in the coastal city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The goal: persuade a hostile kingdom to finance America's widening deficit with its newfound petrodollar wealth. The United States would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America's spending. At the end of months of negotiations, there remained one small, yet crucial, catch: King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud demanded the country's Treasury purchases stay "strictly secret." With a handful of Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, the secret was kept for more than four decades. In response to a Freedom-of-Information-Act request submitted by Bloomberg News, the Treasury broke out Saudi Arabia's holdings for the first time this month. The $117 billion trove makes the kingdom one of America's largest foreign creditors. A former Treasury official ... says the official figure vastly understates Saudi Arabia's investments in U.S. government debt, which may be double or more. In April, Saudi Arabia warned it would start selling as much as $750 billion in Treasuries and other assets if Congress passes a bill allowing the kingdom to be held liable in U.S. courts for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Note: In May, the Senate approved a bill that allows victims of 9/11 and their families to pursue lawsuits against Saudi Arabia for its role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Several prominent figures are currently pushing for the declassification of hidden 9/11 report pages which reportedly shed further light on Saudi support for terrorism. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government secrecy news articles from reliable major media sources.
America's only top-secret airline may be hiring again. Janet Airlines, which flies from from Las Vegas to a number of government sites, is reportedly looking for a pilot for its Boeing 737 aircraft. Janet - an acronym which some claim stands for "Just Another Non-Existent Terminal" - is a shuttle service that is operated by defense contractor AECOM and the U.S. Air Force, making daily flights from a private, unmarked (and heavily guarded) terminal at McCarran International Airport to military bases including the restricted Tonopah Test Range, aircraft manufacturing site Plant 42 and a site at Groom Lake, Nevada which ... is more commonly known as Area 51. The Tactical Air Network discovered a job posting on AECOM's website for a First Officer, and the contractor is currently accepting applications from candidates with a ... Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) in order to qualify for Top Secret security clearance. Janet's fleet currently includes white 737-600 aircraft, which are remarkable for how completely unremarkable they are, with no logos and no markings other than a red stripe and a registration number. The Janet jets are the narrow visible bandwidth of a much broader spectrum of 'black world' places and projects. At its core, Janet Airlines is the heart of an entire clandestine defense ecosystem that is spread across the deserts of the American southwest, pumping talent and brain power to some of the most advanced technologies mankind has ever developed.
Note: For more on this secret airline, see this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing secrecy news articles from reliable major media sources.
The United States has slipped so far with respect to transparency that some open-government groups now rank it behind Yemen, Kyrgyzstan and Liberia. Today, the Freedom of Information Act our countrys signature right-to-information law is alarmingly dysfunctional. It is impeding the ability of the press to do its job. Sharyl Attkisson, a journalist with five Emmy Awards ... asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October for records related to a virus that had possibly killed 14 children and paralyzed another 115. The CDC still hasnt turned over a single document in response. This isnt the first such experience for Attkisson. She recently told a congressional committee that it took the Department of Defense 10 years to respond to a request she made in 2003. It is a sad turn of events that FOIA has become so unhelpful to journalists. Like many other citizens who make requests under FOIA which allows any person to request federal agency records for any reason journalists face backlogs, excuses for withholding, and delays. Non-responsiveness is the norm, Karen Kaiser, general counsel of The Associated Press, told a Senate panel in May. Agencies could do a far better job of enforcing FOIA as it is written. Notably, agencies need to faithfully adhere to a provision of FOIA that allows journalists requests to go to the front of the queue when there is an urgency to inform the public. As it stands, agencies reject these so-called expedited processing requests the vast majority of the time.
Note: Along with having her FOIA requests stalled, Sharyl Attkisson has sometimes been spied on and computer-hacked by U.S intelligence agencies for her investigative journalism. The number of FOIA requests denied by government agencies has been rapidly increasing in recent years.
[One spy unit is] responsible for some of the United Kingdom's most controversial tactics of surveillance, online propaganda and deceit. Documents ... demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers "extremist". Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile [after] Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in "dirty tricks" like deploying sexual "honey traps" designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online. Particularly revealing is a fascinating 42-page document from 2011 detailing JTRIG's activities. The document lays out the tactics the agency uses to manipulate public opinion, its scientific and psychological research into how human thinking and behavior can be influenced. Many GCHQ documents describing the "missions" of the "customers" for which it works make clear that the agency has a wide mandate far beyond national security, including providing help on intelligence to the Bank of England, ... to various departments on agriculture and whaling activities, to government financial divisions to enable good investment decisions. Beyond JTRIG's targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists deemed to be "radical," even monitoring the visits of people to the WikiLeaks website. [The document] includes detailed discussions of how to foster "obedience" and "conformity".
Note: Read amazing excerpts of this report at the link above showing how JTRIG plays an active role on the Internet in directly manipulating many political discussions and websites. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in intelligence agencies from reliable major media sources.
Todays conspiracy theory is tomorrows news headlines. The truth is not only out there, but its more outlandish than anything we could have made up. So, what are some of our biggest conspiracies? The Iraq War. America is attacked by terrorists and so, declares war on a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks, while ignoring an oil rich ally which had everything to do with them. The result is a disaster. And yet, we cant really bring ourselves to hold anyone accountable. Fifa [is] the conspiracy du jour. We always knew Fifa was shonky and bribey, but ... it now looks like every World Cup in the last three decades ... could have been fixed. For those who say "its only a stupid sport", well, recently weve heard accusations of arms deals for votes involving ... Saudi Arabia. The banking crisis [is a] nice financial counterpoint to Iraq. Virtually destroy the western financial system. Get bailed out by the taxpayers who youve been ripping off. Oh, and while were at it, the banks played a part in the Fifa scandal. Paedophiles. At first it was just a few rubbish light entertainers. Then we had people muttering about the political establishment and others counter-muttering dont be ridiculous, thats a conspiracy theory. But it wasnt. Now, its a slow-motion train crash and an endless series of glacial government inquiries.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.
The trade rules of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership ... would cover nearly 40 percent of the world economy. Access to the text of the proposed deal is highly restricted. At last months World Economic Forum in Switzerland, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman defended the ... refusal to release the full text of the proposed trade pact. It is incomprehensible to me that leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP, while at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge of whats in it, wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., in a letter to Froman last month. Congressional lawmakers are permitted to view the text of the agreement only in the U.S. trade representatives office, without their own staff members or experts present. They are not allowed to take copies of the agreement back to Capitol Hill for deeper, independent evaluation. Despite those restrictions, specific details of the agreements text have surfaced from unauthorized leaks. One of the leaks showed the U.S. proposing to empower corporations to attempt to overturn domestic regulations, while ... another leaked provision would help the pharmaceutical industry inflate the price of medicines.
Note: For more, watch an excellent, two-minute video by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on the TPP titled "The Worst Trade Deal You've Never Heard of," or read leaked draft texts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership for yourself.
Nearly 130,000 pages of declassified Air Force files on UFO investigations and sightings are now available in one place online. Declassified government records about UFOs have long existed on microfilm in the National Archives in Washington, DC. Many of them also live on websites devoted to the topic. But UFO enthusiast John Greenewald says his database, Project Blue Book Collection, is the first to compile every single declassified document from the Blue Book project -- headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio from 1947 to 1969 -- in one place for anyone to search or download for free. The collection consists of files from Project Blue Book, Project Sign and Project Grudge, the names given to official investigations into unidentified flying objects by the United States military. Greenewald's ... says he's just driven by curiosity. "I'm a history buff. I think this stuff should be accessible," he said. "It defied explanation," he said, "and 5,000 FOIAs later my curiosity hasn't gone away." The collection contains 10,000 PDFs, each representing a different case. The files include the details of some of the most famous UFO cases, including the Exeter incident, the Kenneth Arnold sighting and the Mantell crash. Still, Greenewald believes the contents are "just the tip of the iceberg." "It's all a puzzle," he said. "Just when you think you've got all the pieces to make a picture, you realize it's only a piece of a bigger puzzle."
Note: Explore Greenewald's revealing searchable archive of Air Force UFO files. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our comprehensive UFO Information Center.
Entrepreneurs and established companies alike depend on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Newly released documents reveal that the office, tasked with evaluating and protecting the rights to intellectual property, has a covert system for delaying controversial or inconvenient patents. Its a system that ... could function as a way to limit or stomp out emerging companies. Before today, the program named the Sensitive Application Warning System (SAWS) has been mentioned only anecdotally by examiners who work in or with the office, and in a government memo that was leaked in March 2006. However, a new 50-page document obtained by a law firms Freedom of Information Act request shows the sweeping scope and conflicting interests of this particular set of rules. The law firm behind the request, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, frequently represents major tech companies, including Apple, Google, Twitter, and Oracle. For Thomas Franklin, a partner at Kilpatrick Townsend, applications that he prosecutes typically issue as patents 22 months after filing. Any application that is categorized in SAWS, however ... can be delayed for years. There is no official channel to notify an applicant once her patent is placed in the system. Franklin told Yahoo Tech., Thats what piqued my interest as a constitutional issue. Theres a secret program that theyre not supposed to talk about.
Note: When the government has a "property interest" in any patent application, it may be rejected, stolen, or classified according to secret criteria. Among new energy technology researchers, it is well known that the patent office can block patents of amazing inventions that could cost oil and energy companies billions of dollars. Read this excellent summary for more on this.
In 2003, caravans of trucks began to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on a regular basis, unloading an unusual cargo pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills. The cash, withdrawn from Iraqi government accounts held in the United States, was loaded onto Air Force C-17 transport planes bound for Baghdad. Exactly what happened to that money after it arrived? Finding the answer became first the job and then the obsession of Stuart W Bowen Jr. His investigators finally had a breakthrough, discovering that $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion had been stolen and moved to a bunker in rural Lebanon. Bowen kept the discovery and his investigation of the cash-filled bunker ... secret. He has never publicly discussed it until now. Billions of dollars have been taken out of Iraq over the last ten years illegally, he said. The money ... came from the Development Fund of Iraq, which was created by a United Nations resolution in May 2003 to hold Iraqi oil revenue. An advantage of using the cash from the Development Fund instead of money appropriated by Congress for Iraq was that there were not a lot of rules governing its use, and no federal regulations or congressional oversight of what happened to it. The CIA expressed little interest in pursuing the matter, and the FBI said it lacked jurisdiction, Bowen recalled. An informant told [Bowen] about the bunker, which in addition to the cash, was believed to also have held approximately $200 million in gold belonging to the Iraqi government.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about wartime deceptions and government secrecy from reliable major media sources.
Nearly 13 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the extent of Saudi involvement in the deaths of almost 3,000 people remains unclear but according to members of Congress and the families of victims, information about this has been suppressed ever since the publication of a 2002 congressional investigation into the plot. Prior to the release of the final report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration classified a 28-page section in the name of national security. The 28 pages make up part four of the report, a section titled Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters. They are widely believed to implicate Saudi officials or describe support from Saudi intelligence for the hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens. Former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who co-chaired the joint Senate-House investigation, dispensed with the equivocation and told VICE News that the redactions are a cover up. Ive said this since the first classification of the 28 pages, he remarked. Its become more and more inexplicable as to why two administrations have denied the American people information that would help them better understand what happened on 9/11. Graham said that the 28 pages describe the financing of the attacks. Follow the money, he said. That will illuminate other significant aspects of 9/11. The Saudi kingdom has always denied any complicity in the attacks.
Note: Watch a video of Congressman Massie telling how shocked he was to read these 28 pages. Why aren't the major media reporting this important news? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources.
A sweeping [gag] order issued in Australia to block reporting of any bribery allegations involving several international political leaders in the region has been exposed by WikiLeaks. The prohibition emerged from a criminal case in the Australian courts and applies throughout the country. It was issued by the criminal division of the supreme court of Victoria in Melbourne. The Australia-wide [gag] order is a superinjunction, which means it also contains a clause insisting that the terms of the order itself should remain secret. [It] states: "Subject to further order, there [shall] be no disclosure, by publication or otherwise, of any information derived from or prepared for the purposes of these proceedings including the terms of these orders." In a statement published with the leak, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said the gagging order relates to a case that "concerns the subsidiaries of the Australian central bank". He said it was the first blanket suppression order of this nature in Australia since 1995. "With this order, the worst in living memory, the Australian government is not just gagging the Australian press, it is blindfolding the Australian public," said Assange, who is himself Australian. "This is not simply a question of the Australian government failing to give this international corruption case the public scrutiny it is due. Foreign minister Julie Bishop must explain why she is threatening every Australian with imprisonment in an attempt to cover up an embarrassing corruption scandal involving the Australian government".
Note: Very few media were even willing to report on the reasons for this gag order, which were clearly to cover up corruption at the highest levels. See the CNN article for how no mention is even made of what was revealed. It seems that the higher up the corruption goes, the more vehemently courts rule to keep the investigations secret. Could there be a double standard here? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, is ... widely recognised as the leader of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) paradigm. In 1992, despite opposition from the CIA, he obtained Marine Corps permission to organise a landmark international conference on open source intelligence the paradigm of deriving information to support policy decisions not through secret activities, but from open public sources available to all. The conference was such a success it brought in over 620 attendees from the intelligence world. But the CIA ... ensured that Steele was prohibited from running a second conference, [prompting] him to resign from his position as second-ranking civilian in Marine Corps intelligence. Last month, Steele presented a startling paper at the Libtech conference in New York. Drawing on principles set out in his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto ... he told the audience that all the major preconditions for revolution set out in his 1976 graduate thesis were now present in the United States and Britain. Steele's book ... connects up the increasing corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability of the intelligence system and its political and financial masters with escalating inequalities and environmental crises. But he also offers a comprehensive vision of hope. "Sharing, not secrecy, is the means by which we ... can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity."
Note: Watch an excellent video showing Mr. Steele believes that most terrorist attacks are false flag operations.
The Obama administration has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology they are using to sweep up basic cellphone data from entire neighborhoods. Citing security reasons, the U.S. has intervened in routine state public records cases and criminal trials regarding use of the technology. This has resulted in police departments withholding materials or heavily censoring documents in rare instances when they disclose any [information] about the purchase and use of such powerful surveillance equipment. One well-known type of this surveillance equipment is known as a Stingray. The equipment tricks cellphones into identifying some of their owners' account information, like a unique subscriber number, and transmitting data to police as if it were a phone company's tower. That allows police to obtain cellphone information without having to ask for help from service providers ... and can locate a phone without the user even making a call or sending a text message. The Obama administration is asking agencies to withhold common information about the equipment, such as how the technology is used and how to turn it on. "These extreme secrecy efforts are in relation to very controversial, local government surveillance practices using highly invasive technology," said Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has fought for the release of these types of records. "People should have the facts about what the government is doing to them."
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government surveillance news articles from reliable major media sources.
Reports from an oil rig worker who saw a fire in the sky on the night Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared are being taken seriously, police sources have confirmed. But New Zealander Mike McKay, 55, has lost his job in the circus that developed after his report to authorities was leaked. Mr McKay had been working on the Songa Mercur oil rig in the South China Sea when he saw an orange light on an especially clear night. The object was still in one piece and close to where MH370 first dropped off radar between Malaysia and Vietnam on March 8 with 239 people on board. He emailed his employer and Vietnamese authorities about his sighting, but his statement was leaked, which included his full name, email, passport number, and full details of the company operating the rig. In the ensuing media storm, Mr McKay said the Japanese-based petroleum company, Idemitsu, was flooded with emails and he was taken off the rig. He is now unemployed and disappointed his efforts at reporting potentially vital information turned into such a circus. I was only trying to privately help, he told Fairfax Media during a series of interviews. If it was the aeroplane I saw, then it must have been an external fire. How far would an aeroplane stay in the air after such a fire?
Note: So much strangeness here. Why was this man fired for reporting simply what he saw? And why isn't this getting more media attention? For possible answers, see our essay on media corruption.
Reports that nearly 800 dead babies were discovered in the septic tank of a home run by nuns [have] sparked calls for accountability from government and Catholic Church officials. Some 796 children were secretly buried in the sewage tank of the home in Tuam, County Galway, where unmarried pregnant women were sent to give birth in an attempt to preserve the country's devout Catholic image. The home was run by nuns from the Bon Secours Sisters congregation between 1925 and 1961. People who lived near the home said they have known about the unmarked mass grave for decades, but a fresh investigation was sparked this week after research by local historian Catherine Corless ... showed that of the hundreds of children who died at the home, only one was buried at a cemetery. She also said that health board records from the 1940s said conditions at the home were dire, with children suffering malnutrition and neglect and dying at a rate four times higher than in the rest of Ireland. The claims came to light after Corless obtained death records for the home and cross checked them with local cemetery records. According to Eoin O'Sullivan, associate professor at Trinity College Dublin, "Tuam was a former workhouse and conditions were pretty bleak," said O'Sullivan, co-author of the 2001 book Suffer the Little Children: The inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools. "Ireland's first mother and baby home, at Bessborough, in Cork, had an even worse infant mortality rate of around 82 percent: In the year ending March 31, 1944, 124 children were born or admitted there, and 102 died."
Note: For more on institutional abuse of children, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The federal governments spy-satellite agency failed to alert authorities after some of its employees and contractors admitted during polygraph tests to crimes including child molestation and lying on security-clearance questionnaires, according to a watchdog. The intelligence communitys inspector general released two reports ... saying the National Reconnaissance Office did not refer some of the cases because of confusion about reporting expectations and requirements. According to one of the reports, an Air Force lieutenant colonel admitted during a 2010 lie-detector test to touching a child in a sexual way and downloading child pornography on his work computer. The NRO only reported that case to the Air Force division that oversees security clearances instead of the Justice Department or the Air Forces special-investigations office, the inspector general said. The NRO is not legally required to report certain state crimes such as child molestation. Thirty individuals who took NRO lie-detector tests from 2009 through 2012 admitted to child abuse or using child pornography, according to the report. The NRO failed to report three of those cases. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who requested the review after a McClatchy news investigation raised concerns about the matter in 2012, said the NRO showed a complete lack of common sense in failing to require reporting of serious state crimes of this sort.
Note: The NRO is the agency that was running a drill on the morning of 9/11 of an airplane crashing into one of its Washington, DC buildings, as reported in this USA Today article. It has also allegedly been involved in the UFO cover-up, as reported in this testimony.
Malaysia's prime minister says the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 appears to be "deliberate." The latest evidence suggests the plane didn't experience a catastrophic incident over the South China Sea as was initially suspected. Prime Minister Najib Razak said the investigation has refocused onto the crew and passengers aboard the missing plane. He added that ... all possibilities are still being investigated. A Malaysian government official who is involved in the investigation said investigators have concluded that one of the pilots or someone else with flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory. "It is conclusive." A Malaysian official, who also declined to be identified because he is not authorized to brief the media, said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar. Malaysian officials have said radar data suggest it may have turned back and crossed back over the Malaysian peninsula westward, after setting out toward the Chinese capital. The flight altered its course more than once after it lost contact with ground control and that it made significant changes in altitude. Investigators say there's further evidence suggesting the jet did not crash immediately after being lost on radar; a transmitter on the plane tried for another four hours to ping satellites.
Note: Why is the military radar 50% certain? How could a transmitter on the plane ping for four hours, yet no one on the plane made a phone call? Remember that after Flight 93 was hijacked on 9/11, many phone calls were made by passengers on the plane. There is an abundance of high strangeness to this airplane's disappearance. For valuable speculation on the missing flight not well covered in the major media, click here. For some very unusual radar evidence of its disappearance, click here.
In the tense days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission made a concerted effort to play down the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to Americas aging nuclear plants, according to thousands of internal emails reviewed by NBC News. The emails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show that the campaign to reassure the public about Americas nuclear industry came as the agencys own experts were questioning U.S. safety standards and scrambling to determine whether new rules were needed to ensure that the meltdown occurring at the Japanese plant could not occur here. At the end of that long first weekend of the crisis three years ago, NRC Public Affairs Director Eliot Brenner thanked his staff for sticking to the talking points that the team had been distributing to senior officials and the public. "While we know more than these say," Brenner wrote, "we're sticking to this story for now." There are numerous examples in the emails of apparent misdirection or concealment in the initial weeks after the Japanese plant was devastated: When asked to help reporters explain what would happen during the worst-case scenario -- a nuclear meltdown -- the agency declined to address the questions. The emails pull back the curtain on the agencys efforts to protect the industry it is supposed to regulate. The NRC officials didn't lie, but they didn't always tell the whole truth either. When someone asked about a topic that might reflect negatively on the industry, they changed the subject.
Note: For more on corruption in the nuclear power industry, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: US lawyers. A top-secret document, obtained by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that a US law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance of Americans ensnared by the eavesdroppers and is of particular interest because US lawyers with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance. The government of Indonesia had retained the law firm for help in trade talks, according to the February 2013 document. The NSAs Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, notified the agency that it was conducting surveillance of the talks, including communications between Indonesian officials and the US law firm, and offered to share information. The NSA is banned from targeting Americans, including businesses, law firms, and other organizations based in the United States, for surveillance without warrants, and intelligence officials have repeatedly said the NSA does not use spy services of its partners in the so-called Five Eyes alliance Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand to skirt the law. The Australians told officials at an NSA liaison office in Canberra, that information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included in the intelligence gathering. Most attorney-client conversations do not get special protections under US law from NSA eavesdropping.
Note: For more on intense deception perpetrated by the intelligence community, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In an extraordinary feat of subterfuge, Israel managed to assemble an entire underground nuclear arsenal now estimated at 80 warheads, on a par with India and Pakistan and even tested a bomb nearly half a century ago, with a minimum of international outcry or even much public awareness of what it was doing. Despite the fact that the Israel's nuclear programme has been an open secret since a disgruntled technician, Mordechai Vanunu, blew the whistle on it in 1986, the official Israeli position is still never to confirm or deny its existence. When the former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo last month, declaring Israeli possession of both nuclear and chemical weapons and describing the official non-disclosure policy as "outdated and childish" a rightwing group formally called for a police investigation for treason. Meanwhile, western governments have played along with the policy of "opacity" by avoiding all mention of the issue. Israel ... almost certainly broke a treaty banning nuclear tests, as well as countless national and international laws restricting the traffic in nuclear materials and technology. The list of nations that secretly sold Israel the material and expertise to make nuclear warheads, or who turned a blind eye to its theft, include today's staunchest campaigners against proliferation: the US, France, Germany, Britain and even Norway. Israeli agents charged with buying fissile material and state-of-the-art technology found their way into some of the most sensitive industrial establishments in the world.
Note: For more on government secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors. But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress investigative report on 9/11 dealing with specific sources of foreign support for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. It was kept secret and remains so today. President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. The pages are completely blank. Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally. The Saudis deny any role in 9/11. The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. Is the federal government protecting the Saudis? Case agents [say] they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks. Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. [Ambassador Bandar ibn-Saud] made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 just hours after he met with the president.
Note: For verifiable evidence the bin Ladens were evacuated shortly after 9/11, click here. Why are most media not reporting this important story? A search showed only one other major media outlet in the US (Boston Globe at this link) that covered this news. The appearance of this article in the most popular tabloid in New York is being interpreted by some observers as a sea change in public attitudes to the tragedy of 9/11. Of course the most important question is whether there was US government involvement in the attacks. For abundant evidence implying this, see the deeply revealing reports available at our 9/11 Information Center.
[Since] Sept. 11, 2001, victims loved ones, injured survivors, and members of the media have all tried without much success to discover the true nature of the relationship between the 19 hijackers 15 of them Saudi nationals and the Saudi Arabian government. Many news organizations reported that some of the terrorists were linked to the Saudi royals and that they even may have received financial support from them as well as from several mysterious, moneyed Saudi men living in San Diego. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any connection. But earlier this year, Reps. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., were given access to the 28 redacted pages of the [Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001] issued in late 2002, which have been thought to hold some answers about the Saudi connection to the attack. Last week, Jones and Lynch introduced a resolution that urges President Obama to declassify the 28 pages, which were originally classified by President George W. Bush. It has never been fully explained why the pages were blacked out, but President Bush stated in 2003 that releasing the pages would violate national security. Some of the information has leaked out over the years ... that the 28 pages in fact clearly portray that the Saudi government had at the very least an indirect role in supporting the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attack. In addition, these classified pages clarify somewhat the links between the hijackers and at least one Saudi government worker living in San Diego.
Note: For more on the government cover-up of the truth behind 9/11, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In his new book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, award-winning investigative journalist [Eric Schlosser] challenges and expands on the U.S. government's secretive record regarding nuclear accidents. Let's get the big question out of the way: How many times have we just barely avoided nuclear armageddon in the U.S.? It's a very secretive subject, and I did my best, through interviews and through the Freedom of Information Act, to get as much information as I could on these accidents. The Pentagon lists 32 broken arrows, which are their official nuclear weapon accidents that they consider really serious. A lot of other accidents [posed the] threat of accidental detonation on American soil. For many years, there were safety flaws with our nuclear weapons which weren't being addressed and which were being covered up. We're just very, very ... fortunate that a major city has not been destroyed by a nuclear weapon since Nagasaki. But there's no guarantee that that luck will last. Very little has been written about the ordinary servicemen and women who often took great risks. I tell the story of a guy whose job it was to walk over to a nuclear weapon damaged in an accident and dismantle it basically a bomb squad guy trained to handle nuclear weapons. That takes a lot of nerve to do. People like that put themselves at risk in order to prevent catastrophes. I think their stories are really worth telling. It was important to me to show, not just the bureaucratic incompetence in many cases, but also the incredible heroism of these ordinary servicemen. So it's not a simplistic, black-and-white anti-military thing at all.
Note: For more on the dangers of nuclear technologies, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the governments top-secret budget. The $52.6 billion black budget for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses the money or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress. The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, which has 107,035 employees. Among the notable revelations in the budget summary: Spending by the CIA has surged past that of every other spy agency, with $14.7 billion in requested funding for 2013. The figure vastly exceeds outside estimates and is nearly 50 percent above that of the National Security Agency, which conducts eavesdropping operations and has long been considered the behemoth of the community. The CIA and the NSA have begun aggressive new efforts to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems, embracing what the budget refers to as offensive cyber operations.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence operations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
It has been an infuriating few days for anyone who values the freedom of the press, as authorities in the United Kingdom resorted to the tactics of tyrants and thugs to squelch reporting that they simply don't like. In acts clearly calibrated for optimal intimidation, they have detained the partner of a journalist, threatened to shut down a reporting operation that has prompted a critical public debate over government spying and forced the destruction of a major publication's hard drives. It's breathtaking in its audacity - and if it comes to light that the U.S. government took any part in organizing, encouraging or supporting these acts, it will warrant immediate congressional investigation. As it is, the accelerating assaults on investigative journalism [indicate the need for] stronger protections for journalists and their sources. Using laws designed to ferret out suspected terrorists to detain a person aiding acts of journalism is a cut-and-dried abuse of government power, an act of intimidation that may well be illegal - and certainly should be. It gives the lie to the naive but oft-repeated notion that if you've done no wrong, you have nothing to fear. Such attacks on investigative journalism here and abroad appear to be escalating. The Justice Department has been caught spying on reporters at the Associated Press, and named a Fox News reporter a "co-conspirator" in a leak inquiry. Judges have threatened reporters at both the New York Times and Fox News with jail time for refusing to disclose their sources.
Note: For more on government attacks on civil liberties, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot and long after official inquiries ended, thousands of pages of investigative documents remain withheld from public view. The contents of these files are partially known and intriguing and conspiracy buffs are not the only ones seeking to open them for a closer look. Some serious researchers believe the off-limits files could shed valuable new light on nagging mysteries of the assassination including what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before Nov. 22, 1963. It turns out that several hundred of the still-classified pages concern a deceased CIA agent, George Joannides, whose activities just before the assassination and, fascinatingly, during a government investigation years later, have tantalized researchers for years. "This is not about conspiracy, this is about transparency," said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and author embroiled in a decade-long lawsuit against the CIA, seeking release of the closed documents. "I think the CIA should obey the law. I don't think most people think that's a crazy idea." But so far, the Joannides files and thousands more pages primarily from the CIA remain off-limits at a National Archives center in College Park, Md. Anthony Summers, a British author whose sequel to his JFK book Not In Your Lifetime will be released this year, [said] "By withholding Joannides material, the agency continues to encourage the public to believe they're covering up something more sinister."
Note: For more on the strange secrecy around Joannides and his checkered past, see the New York Times article summarized here. For more on political assassinations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
For reasons unknown, the government finally has admitted that Area 51 the Shangri-La of alien hunters and a sturdy trope of science-fiction movies is a real place in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. Area 51 is confirmed in declassified CIA documents posted online [by] the National Security Archive at George Washington University. A dogged researcher pried from the CIA a report on the history of the U-2 spy plane, which was tested and operated at Area 51. The military, which runs the base, always denied that Area 51 was called by its famous moniker. Your honor, there is no name, an Air Force attorney told a federal judge in 1995. There is no name for the operating location near Groom Lake. The hearing was part of an environmental poisoning case brought by Area 51 workers who said that they had been sickened by exposure to toxic chemicals ... burned in open pits on the base. The men could tell no one what they did; they had signed national-security oaths barring any disclosures about the black-budget facility, where the stealth bomber also was tested. National Security Archive fellow Jeffrey Richelson [filed a FOIA] request in 2005 and the documents arrived about a month ago. Therein, the first-ever reference to Area 51. Why was the veil finally lifted? It is something we do not know the answer to, Richelson said. One of the things I want to find out is the genesis of this decision: Why did they not redact it? The secrecy surrounding Area 51 amplified conspiracy theories claiming it was infested with extraterrestrials a notion popularized in movies such as Independence Day and, more recently, Super 8.
Note: After denying its existence for so many years, the government admits it was lying all along. What else aren't they telling us? For powerful, reliable information suggesting a major cover-up around UFOs, click here.
The top U.S. special operations commander, Adm. William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public. The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary, said that the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has presidential authority to conduct covert operations. The records transfer was part of an effort by McRaven to protect the names of the personnel involved in the raid, according to the inspector general's draft report. But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn't find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and would represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny. "Welcome to the shell game in place of open government," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private research institute at George Washington University. "Guess which shell the records are under. If you guess the right shell, we might show them to you. It's ridiculous."
Note: For a powerful analysis of the strong evidence that Osama bin Laden most likely died in Afghanistan in December 2001, long before he was "killed" by the SEALs raid in Pakistan, read David Ray Griffin's Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? For more on government secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nations surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans. The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny. The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come. In one of the courts most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the special needs doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendments requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures. Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case the government and its findings are almost never made public.
Note: For more on government secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A cadre of six government and non-government experts who served the National Transportation Safety Board when that independent federal agency investigated the explosion of a Boeing 747 off the coast of Long Island in July 1996 ... are the protagonists of a new documentary, "TWA Flight 800". After four years of investigation, the NTSB claimed the cause of Flight 800's explosion was a mechanical defect, but the new documentary, written and directed by journalist Kristina Borjesson, claims the FBI, NTSB and other government agencies may have covered up that the plane was brought down by a missile strike. Participants in the film have called on the NTSB to reopen the case based on altered physical evidence, suppressed data, and unexamined testimony from hundreds of eyewitnesses. [The] book Attention All Passengers: The Airlines Dangerous Descentand How to Reclaim Our Skies ... published last year ... thanked the brave men and women who are Federal Aviation Administration, Transportation Security Administration, and airline whistleblowers. These whistleblowers confirmed such problems as defective airline maintenance outsourcing, FAA oversight failures, TSA waste, and many other important findings. After watching the documentary, I believe there are enough smoking guns to warrant an unbiased reexamination. Last week one major news site was in near hysterics about the documentary, employing the term conspiracy ten times. Kristina Borjesson ... wasnt surprised, noting that reexamining hot topics discredits previous reporting.
Note: Kristina Borjesson is a long-time supporter of WantToKnow.info who has written a great piece on Flight 800, which we have posted at this link. She's also the editor of what may be the best book ever on media corruption and manipulation, Into the Buzzsaw. You can find an excellent two-page summary of the book at this link. For the engaging trailer to this film, click here.
It's beyond dispute that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, [the new Pope], failed to openly confront the 1976-1983 military junta as it kidnapped and killed thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist opponents. But human rights activists differ on how much responsibility Pope Francis personally deserves for the Argentine church's dark history of supporting the murderous dictatorship. Some leading Argentine human rights activists agree that Bergoglio, now 76, doesn't deserve to be lumped together with other church figures who were closely aligned with the dictatorship. "Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting the junta's atrocities, said. But others say Bergoglio's rise through the Argentine church since then has put him in many positions of power where he could have done more to atone for the sins of Catholic officials who did actively conspire with the dictators. Some priests even worked inside torture centers, and blessed those doing the killing. Bergoglio twice invoked his right under Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court in trials involving torture and murder inside the feared Navy Mechanics School and the theft of babies from detainees.
Note: An entire edition of Democracy Now! was devoted to the record of Bergoglio, including an interview with the Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky. For more analysis, click here, here and here.
Faces at the scandal-struck Vatican were even redder than usual after it emerged that the Holy See had purchased a 23 million (21 million) share of a Rome apartment block that houses Europes biggest gay sauna. The senior Vatican figure sweating the most due to the unlikely proximity of the gay Europa Multiclub is probably Cardinal Ivan Dias, the head of the Congregation for Evangelisation of Peoples. This 76-year-old prince of the church enjoys a 12-room apartment on the first-floor of the imposing palazzo, at 2 Via Carducci, just yards from the ground floor entrance to the steamy flesh pot. There are 18 other Vatican apartments in the block, many of which house priests. The Holy See is still reeling from allegations that the previous pontiff, Benedict XVI, had quit in reaction to the presence of a gay cabal in the curia. La Repubblica newspaper noted that the presence of Italys best known gay sauna in the premises is an embarrassment. There was further embarrassment for the Holy See when the press observed that thanks to generous tax breaks it received from the last Berlusconi government, the church will have avoided hefty payments to the Italian state. The properties are recognised as part of the Holy City. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Pope Emeritus Benedicts widely disliked right-hand man, ... was said to have been the brains behind the purchase of 2 Via Carduccio in 2008.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on secrecy, click here.
A life ... out of moral bounds, is how Pope Benedict XVI described Maciel in a 2010 interview, two years after Maciels death. A wasted, twisted life. And a life that exposed shocking flaws in the Vatican and the papacy. The saga of Father Maciel opens a rare view onto the flow of money in the Roman Curia across the last half century. In the late 1940s, Maciel began sexually plundering teenage seminarians in the religious order he founded, the Legion of Christ. He also shuttled between Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain ... portraying his Legionaries as a force of resurgent orthodoxy, himself a fearless foe of Communism. Maciel won government support for seminary scholarships in Madrid, after the Spanish Civil War cemented ties between Francisco Francos dictatorship and the Catholic hierarchy. Wealthy industrialists and patricians from the Spanish-speaking world poured money into Maciels fledgling order. Legionaries called their leader Nuestro Padre (Our Father). They were taught that their founder was a living saint. They took private vows, swearing never to criticize Maciel or their superiors and to report on anyone who did. The cultlike insular culture Maciel molded would reward spying as an act of faith and shield Nuestro Padre from scrutiny as the youngest victims grew up and left the order, returning to Mexico and years of grappling with his traumatic impact on their lives.
Note: Jason Berry is author of Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex, oddly named Site 911, at an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv. Only U.S. construction firms are being allowed to bid on the contract and proposals are due Dec. 3, according to the latest Corps of Engineers notice. Site 911 is the latest in a long history of military construction projects the United States has undertaken for the IDF under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The 1998 Wye River Memorandum between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has led to about $500 million in U.S. construction of military facilities for the Israelis, most of them initially in an undeveloped part of the Negev Desert. Over the years, the Corps has built underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons (though Israel does not admit having such weapons), command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators. Site 911 ... appears to be one of the largest projects. Each of the first three underground floors is to be roughly 41,000 square feet, according to the Corps notice. The lower two floors are much smaller and hold equipment. The purpose of Site 911 is far less clear.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government secrecy, click here.
A huge but little-known trade agreement could transform America's foreign relations. The Trans-Pacific Partnership [could] be the most significant foreign and domestic policy initiative of the Obama administration. More than any other policy, the trends the TPP represents could restructure American foreign relations, and potentially the economy itself. On the core question of these trade agreements, the parties basically agree. The Trans-Pacific Partnership ... would be the largest one since the 1995 World Trade Organization. It would link Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico and Canada into a free trade zone similar to that of NAFTA. The subject matter being negotiated extends far beyond traditional trade matters. TPPs 29 chapters would set binding rules on everything from service-sector regulation, investment, patents and copyrights, government procurement, financial regulation, and labor and environmental standards, as well as trade in industrial goods and agriculture. As with other such agreements, Congress must vote to approve it, most likely under a Fast Track provision that prohibits any amendments and limits debate. The public has no access to the text [of the agreement]. Congress has extremely limited access. Trade, though constitutionally a congressional prerogative, is now firmly in the hands of the executive branch. And trade negotiations have become a venue for rewriting wide swaths of domestic non-trade policy traditionally determined by Congress and state legislatures.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Gaeton Fonzi was one of the most relentless investigators on the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, remembered by former colleagues with [awe at] his pursuit of the full story behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Fonzi was also the staff member most publicly dismayed by the committees final report, which concluded in 1979 that the president was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. Of course it was a conspiracy, said Mr. Fonzi, a journalist recruited mainly on the strength of scathing magazine critiques he had written about the Warren Commission and its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But who were the conspirators? What was their motive? How could the committee close its doors without the answers? Mr. Fonzi ... nailed those questions to the committees locked doors, figuratively, in a long article he wrote the next year for Washingtonian magazine and in a 1993 book, The Last Investigation. In both, he chronicled the near-blanket refusal of government intelligence agencies, especially the C.I.A., to provide the committee with documents it requested. And he accused committee leaders of folding under pressure from Congressional budget hawks, political advisers and the intelligence agencies themselves just as promising new leads were emerging. Is it unrealistic to desire, for something as important as the assassination of a president, an investigation unbound by political, financial or time restrictions? he asked.
Note: For the government report stating that Kennedy's assassination was like the result of a conspiracy and other revealing reports from reliable major media sources on political assassinations, click here.
F.B.I. agents on a hunt for leakers have interviewed current and former high-level government officials from multiple agencies in recent weeks, casting a distinct chill over press coverage of national security issues as agencies decline routine interview requests and refuse to provide background briefings. The criminal investigation, which has reached into the White House, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and the C.I.A., appears to be the most sweeping inquiry into intelligence disclosures in years. It coincides with Senate consideration of new legislation designed to curb intelligence officials exchanges with reporters. The legislation approved last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee would reduce to a handful the number of people at each agency permitted to speak to reporters on background, or condition of anonymity; require notice to the Senate and House intelligence committees of authorized disclosures of intelligence information; and permit the government to strip the pension of an intelligence officer who illegally discloses classified information. The Obama administration has set a record for prosecuting leaks of classified information to the news media, with six cases to date, more than under all previous presidents combined. The F.B.I. appears to be focused on recent media disclosures on American cyberattacks on Iran, a terrorist plot in Yemen that was foiled by a double agent and the so-called kill list of terrorist suspects approved for drone strikes.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government secrecy, click here.
A teenage girl whose disappearance in Rome has remained a mystery for 30 years was kidnapped for sex parties by a gang involving Vatican police and foreign diplomats, the Roman Catholic Church's leading exorcist has claimed. The tomb of a mafia don buried in a basilica in Rome is to be opened in an attempt to solve a mystery that has dogged the Vatican for three decades. Emanuela Orlandi, who was 15 at the time of her disappearance, was the daughter of a Vatican employee. Father Gabriele Amorth, who was appointed by the late John Paul II as the Vatican's chief exorcist and claims to have performed thousands of exorcisms, said Emanuela Orlandi was later murdered and her body disposed of. In the latest twist in one of the Holy See's most enduring mysteries, he said the 15-year-old schoolgirl was snatched from the streets of central Rome in the summer of 1983 and forced to take part in sex parties. "This was a crime with a sexual motive. Parties were organised, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the 'recruiter' of the girls. "The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up a victim of this circle," Father Amorth, the honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists, told La Stampa newspaper.
Note: Though Father Amorth is a controversial figure, these claims most certainly deserve to be investigated. For deeply revealing reports from reliable sources on sexual abuse scandals within elite institutions like the Vatican and governments, click here. And for a shocking Discovery Channel documentary showing that sophisticated child abuse rings lead to the very highest levels of government, click here.
A scandal over leaked Vatican documents and reports of political infighting, financial mismanagement and administrative chaos in its frescoed halls have cast a cloud over this weekend's ceremony to create 22 new cardinals. Reports abound in the Italian media of cardinals and their supporters jockeying for prominence ahead of a future papal election, and of a Vatican bureaucracy in disarray as [84-year-old Pope] Benedict focuses his waning strength on other matters. The Vatican spokesman has been doing serious damage control of late amid reports and leaked documents alleging corruption in the running of the Vatican city state and money laundering at the Vatican bank. The scandal began last month with the publication of letters from the former No. 2 Vatican administrator, who begged the pope not to be transferred after he exposed millions of euros in cost overruns in the Vatican administration. He was then removed and named the Vatican's U.S. ambassador in Washington. Subsequent news reports focused on four priests under investigation for allegedly using Vatican bank accounts to launder cash. The pope's top banker, meanwhile, remains under investigation for allegedly breaking Italy's anti-money laundering law by trying to transfer cash from two Vatican bank accounts without identifying the sender or the recipient.
Note: For other revealing news articles on major child abuse scandals in the Catholic church, click here.
Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty and friend of seemingly everyone in the spheres of finance, business and politics, ... has lost his libel case against the Daily Mail, which he sued for "substantial damages" over its account of his and [Lord] Mandelson's extraordinary trip to Russia in January 2005. Mr Rothschild claimed he was subjected to "sustained and unjustified" attacks in the May 2010 article, which portrayed him as a "puppet master", dangling his friend Lord Mandelson in front of the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to ease the passage of colossal business deals. It began on Mr Rothschild's private jet from the World Economic Forum in Davos to Moscow, where they met Mr Deripaska, the aluminium plant manager who became the richest oligarch of them all, and continued on Mr Deripaska's private jet to his chalet in Siberia. The judge rejected the notion that Mr Rothschild and Mr Mandelson had flown out as friends, not business associates, and said Mr Rothschild's behaviour had in part been "inappropriate". "That conduct foreseeably brought Lord Mandelson's public office and personal integrity into disrepute," the judge said. That leading politicians, bankers and businessmen associate with each other in fashions that blur the boundaries between work and pleasure is a secret too great to be maintained with any success, but it doesn't make the details, on the rare occasions they actually emerge, any more palatable.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
In his private journal, Jason Michael Handy once described himself as a "pedophile, full blown." His job as a production assistant at one of the nation's most prominent producers of children's television programs, Nickelodeon, gave him access to child actors on and off the set, and allowed him to exchange email addresses and phone numbers with them. He used the hopes of at least two girls who dreamed of careers in TV to sexually exploit them. Handy was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading no contest in 2004 to two felony counts, one of lewd acts on a child and one of distributing sexually explicit material by email, and to a misdemeanor charge related to child sexual exploitation. His arrest and prosecution received scant media attention at the time but are attracting renewed interest now, after the recent arrest of a talent manager on molestation charges and reports by The Times that a registered sex offender was working with children as a casting associate. The Handy case, which in part prompted Nickelodeon to toughen its background checks for all employees, is among at least a dozen child molestation and child pornography prosecutions since 2000 involving actors, managers, production assistants and others in the industry, according to court documents and published accounts.
Note: For released government documents showing sexual abuse in secret mind control programs that make these Hollywood child sex abuse cases look mild in comparison, click here.
At one point in the 1970s there were more than 1,000 people in the Danbury area working on The Secret. And though they worked long hours under intense deadlines, sometimes missing family holidays and anniversaries, they could tell no one not even their wives and children what they did. They were engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors. It was dubbed Big Bird and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earths atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks. The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves. Hexagon was declassified in September. The question became, how do you hide an elephant? a National Reconnaissance Office report stated at the time. It decided on a simple response: What elephant? Employees were told to ignore any questions from the media, and never confirm the slightest detail about what they worked on.
Note: This is another excellent example of how government is able to keep huge projects secret, and how top secret military technology is often decades ahead of anything which has been publicly revealed. Note that even the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office, founded in 1960, was completely denied until it's existence was declassified in 1992. Does government lie to us? Without a doubt.
More than 400 sex-crimes reported to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office during a three-year period ending in 2007 including dozens of alleged child molestations ... were inadequately investigated and in some instances were not worked at all, according to current and former police officers familiar with the cases. Many of the victims, said a retired El Mirage police official who reviewed the files, were children of illegal immigrants. The botched sex-crimes investigations have served as an embarrassment to a department whose sheriff is the self-described "America's Toughest Sheriff" and a national hero to conservatives on the immigration issue. Bill Louis, then-assistant El Mirage police chief who reviewed the files after the sheriff's contract ended, believes the decision to ignore the cases was made deliberately by supervisors in Arpaio's office and not by individual investigators. "I know the investigators. I just cannot believe they would wholesale discount these cases. No way," Louis said. "The direction had to come (from) up the food chain." Louis said he believes whoever made the decision knew that illegal immigrants who are often transient and fear the police were unlikely to complain about the quality of investigations.
Note: For powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government, click here.
The Penn State allegations may seem unthinkable: revered assistant coach and prominent community activist Jerry Sandusky preying on eight children. But such abuses of trust play out in the USA over and over again. Respected people who set up charitable or social groups for children, only to be implicated in some form of child sexual abuse, are a frightening reality. Washington, D.C., journalist Patrick Boyle, author of the 1994 book Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution, says reaction to Catholic church sex abuse complaints and those against the Boy Scouts of America were similar. "In both cases, there was a lot of willful ignorance among the higher-ups," he says. "They almost tried not to know things." In the Penn State case, Boyle says, "everybody seems to have done the minimum, instead of doing the maximum or more, which is what we'd expect of these institutions." "If you can give 110% on the field, why can't you give 110% for the victims?"
Note: For powerful evidence that this kind of abuse is much more widespread than expected, click here. To understand how this relates to secret societies and deep hidden knowledge of our world, click here.
Israel's prime minister [Benyamin Netanyahu] has ordered an investigation into alleged leaks of plans to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida, the main suspects are the former heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, respectively Israel's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. Netanyahu is said to believe that the two, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, wanted to torpedo plans being drawn up by him and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to hit Iranian nuclear sites. The purpose of the leaks was to prevent an attack, which had moved from the stage of discussion to implementation. Both Dagan and Diskin oppose military action against Iran unless all other options primarily international diplomatic pressure and perhaps sabotage have been exhausted. In January the recently retired Dagan, a hawk when he was running the Mossad, called an attack on Iran "the stupidest idea I've ever heard". The Kuwait paper has a track record of running stories based on apparently high-level leaks from Israeli officials. Even well-informed Israeli observers admit to being confused about what is going on behind the scenes. "It seems that only Netanyahu and Barak know," commented Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, both respected Haaretz writers. "While many people say Netanyahu and Barak are conducting sophisticated psychological warfare and don't intend to launch a military operation, top officials are still afraid."
Note: The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that "U.S. officials are concerned that Israel will not warn them before taking military action against Iran's nuclear facilities."
Working inside the New York Police Department is one of the CIA's most experienced clandestine operatives. He arrived in July as the special assistant to the deputy commissioner of intelligence. While his title is clear, his job responsibilities are not. Federal and city officials have offered differing explanations for why this top CIA officer was assigned to a municipal police department. The CIA is prohibited from spying domestically, and its unusual partnership with the NYPD has troubled top lawmakers and prompted an internal investigation. The last time a CIA officer worked so closely with the NYPD, beginning in the months after the 9/11 attacks, he became the architect of aggressive police programs that monitored Muslim neighborhoods. With that earlier help from this CIA official, the police put entire communities under a microscope based on ethnicity rather than allegations of wrongdoing. On Monday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the arrangement. "If the CIA can help us I'm all for getting any information they have and then letting the police department use it," he said. All of this has troubled lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has said the CIA has "no business or authority in domestic spying, or in advising the NYPD how to conduct local surveillance."
Note: While it is quite amazing that this information was reported in the major media, well-informed people have known that CIA operatives are secretly inserted in police stations across the US. They are also deployed in key positions in every major media outlet in the U.S. and many around the world, where they can stop reporting of information which reveals too much. To read the fascinating accounts of two award-winning journalist providing clear evidence of this, click here.
Ten years after [the 9/11 attacks], the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission's investigative records remain sealed at the National Archives in Washington, even though the commission had directed the archives to make most of the material public in 2009. The National Archives' failure to release the material presents a hurdle for historians and others seeking to plumb one of the most dramatic events in modern American history. Matt Fulgham, assistant director of the archives' center for legislative affairs..., said that more than a third of the material has been reviewed for possible release. But many of those documents have been withheld or heavily redacted, and the released material includes documents that already were in the public domain, such as press articles. Commission items still not public include a 30-page summary of an April 29, 2004 interview by all 10 commissioners with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, conducted in the White House's Oval Office. This was the only time the two were formally questioned about the events surrounding the attacks. The information could shed light on public accounts the two men have given in recent weeks of their actions around the time of the attacks. The still-sealed documents contain source material on subjects ranging from actions by President Bush on the day of the attacks to ... vast amounts of information on al Qaeda and U.S. intelligence efforts in the years preceding the attacks.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
A court case against a translator who leaked US government secrets was conducted in secret because it centred on the revelation that the FBI had eavesdropped on Israeli embassy phone calls, it was revealed yesterday. The extraordinary limitations in place for the prosecution of Shamai Leibowitz, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison for disseminating classified information, meant that even the judge sentencing him did not know what he was supposed to have leaked. "All I know is that it's a serious case," Judge Alexander Williams said last year. "I don't know what was divulged other than some documents, and how it compromised things, I have no idea." But now Richard Silverstein, the blogger to whom Leibowitz passed his information, has come forward to defend his source. Leibowitz passed him about 200 pages of verbatim records of phone calls and conversations between embassy officials, saying that he believed the documents revealed Israeli officials trying unlawfully to influence US policy and edging towards military action against Iran. There has been dismay among civil liberties and open government advocates who point to pledges made by Mr Obama before his election to seek new transparency in Washington. Instead, his administration has launched a record number of prosecutions under the Espionage Act five including the Leibowitz case. Previously, there had been only four such prosecutions opened by all previous administrations.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
A once-secret CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion lays out in unvarnished detail how the American spy agency came to the rescue of and cut deals with authoritarian governments in Central America, largely to hide the U.S. role in organizing and controlling the hapless Cuban exile invasion force. The most powerful people in Central American embassies were the CIA station chiefs. Ambassadors step aside and allow the CIA to negotiate deals for covert paramilitary bases in a newly released portion of the CIAs Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation. What youre reading in this report shows again that in the hypocritical name of democracy the United States and CIA were willing to prop up some of the most cut-throat dictatorships, says researcher Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. He sued the CIA for release of the Top Secret document that dissects one of the agencys greatest failures. Using secret interviews, cables and memos, CIA historian Jack B. Pfeiffer wrote the classified account of the disastrous operation to topple Fidel Castro. Its unusually candid because nobody except spies were expected read it. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy governments wanted to be able to deny responsibility for the invasion.
Note: To read the formerly-secret CIA history of the Bay of Pigs operation, just released by the National Security Archive, click here.
A helicopter was shot down today by Afghan insurgents as it was rushing to aid troops in a firefight, killing 30 Americans, including 22 Navy SEALs, most of whom belonged to Team 6, the unit whose members were involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said. It's unclear how far away the helicopter was from the initial firefight when it went down and unclear how the troops in the firefight got to the crash location, the official said. Although the Taliban have claimed to have shot the helicopter down, U.S. officials have only identified the attackers as insurgents. The last worst one-day U.S. casualty record in Afghanistan was on June 28, 2005 when 16 U.S. soldiers were killed in Kunar province after a helicopter was shot down by Taliban insurgents.
Note: Many scholars claim Osama bin Laden was already dead long before he was allegedly killed by the Navy Seal Team 6. Isn't it strange the his body was buried at sea, so that the identity of the dead body could never be certain, when those in charge knew about theories that bin Laden wasn't dead. And now, many members of the team that took part in the raid may be dead, so that they can't tell their side of the story. For more evidence that bin Laden died long before the raid, see BBC articles here and here, a Washington Post article, and an article in New Zealand's leading newspaper showing the published death photo was a fake.
Four decades ago, [Daniel Ellsberg] leaked a top-secret study packed with damaging revelations about U.S. conduct of the Vietnam War. On [June 13] that study, dubbed the Pentagon Papers, finally came out in complete form. The National Archives and a trio of presidential libraries released the papers 40 years after The New York Times published the first in its series on the report. Most of the 7,000-page study has been out for years. Monday's release draws it together for the first time, and online. The study reveals a pattern of deception as the Johnson, Kennedy and prior administrations secretly escalated the Vietnam conflict. The declassified report includes 2,384 pages missing from what was regarded as the most complete version of the Pentagon Papers, published in 1971 by Democratic Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska. Ellsberg served with the Marines in Vietnam and came back disillusioned. A proteg of Nixon adviser Henry Kissinger, who called the young man his most brilliant student, Ellsberg served the administration as an analyst, tied to the Rand Corporation. The report was by a team of analysts. To this day, Ellsberg regrets staying mum for as long as he did. "I was part, on a middle level, of what is best described as a conspiracy by the government to get us into war," he said. His message to whistleblowers now: Speak up sooner. "Don't do what I did. Don't wait until the bombs start falling."
Note: Forty years later, both Democratic and Republican administrations continue to escalate war expenses while telling the public they are doing the opposite. For the powerful revelations of a top US general exposing the manipulations behind the war machine, click here. Senator Gravel is spearheading the call for an independent 9/11 investigation and prosecution of Bush and Cheney. For more on this, click here and here.
[When Diarmuid Martin], the archbishop of Dublin, ... was sent home to Dublin in 2003 after 27 years in the Vatican bureaucracy and diplomatic corps, [he] found the Irish church in crisis, reeling from a cover-up [sexual abuse of minors] that spanned the tenures of four past Dublin archbishops. In February, Martin held an unprecedented Liturgy of Lament and Repentance at a Dublin cathedral, where he asked forgiveness from God and victims of abuse and praised the courage of those who had come forward. In return for doing the right thing, he has been ostracized by fellow bishops in Ireland and snubbed by the Holy See. Martin is standing alone against the tide right now, but hes on the right side of history, said Jason Berry, who has written two books on the church scandal. I think he is probably the single best hope for the church within the hierarchy. Yet Martin, famous protector of victims, is an outlier of the club, while Cardinal Bernard Law, notorious protector of pedophiles, has a cushy Vatican sanctuary. And Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who was in league with the notorious abuser of seminarians and inseminator of women, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, is the dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome.
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show. The papers ... raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd". But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture. Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change. The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Note: The recently completed Chilcot Inquiry found that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair exaggerated the Iraqi threat and disregarded intelligence which predicted military intervention in Iraq would be disastrous. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
U.S. government officials, in private sessions on Capitol Hill [on Friday, March 18], repeatedly declined to give details of radiation measurements at the stricken Japanese nuclear complex, saying the situation is shrouded in a "fog of war." Separately, the Obama administration said ... "miniscule quantities" of radiation from the Japanese nuclear accident were detected Friday at a monitoring station in Sacramento, Calif., a day after similar traces of radiation were detected in Washington state. The administration said the levels of the radioactive isotope xenon 133 were approximately equivalent to one-millionth the dose received from the sun, rocks or other natural sources. The Obama administration's reluctance to detail in public what it is learning from radiation-detection operations around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi complex in Japan ... comes after statements Wednesday by the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that painted a grimmer picture of the nuclear crisis than Japanese officials had offered, and suggested that the U.S. didn't trust the information coming from the Japanese government.
Note: Shouldn't the title be something more like "U.S. Refuses to Give Radiation Details for Fear of Industry Repercussions"? How sad that money often continues to trump public health in matters like this.
International police led by a UK team say they shut down the largest internet paedophile ring yet discovered. The global forum had 70,000 followers at its height, leading to 4,000 intelligence reports being sent to police across 30 countries. The operation has so far identified 670 suspects and 230 abused children. Detectives say 184 people have been arrested - 121 of them were in the UK. Some 60 children have been protected in the UK. The three-year investigation, Operation Rescue, was led by investigators from the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop). The members of the network went into a private channel, boylover.net, and then used its secret systems to share films and images of abused children, said Rob Wainwright, director of European police agency Europol. In the UK, the 240 suspects include police officers, teachers and a karate teacher. One of the suspects in the UK is a woman. The internet has proved to be fertile territory for people with a sexual interest in children. Taking advantage of the anonymity modern computer technology provides, paedophiles download and exchange vile images of abuse unaware of the reality of the suffering.
Note: For powerful evidence that this kind of abuse is much more widespread than believed, and even goes to the highest level of government, click here.
How could more than 130,000 children be shipped from Britain to Australia and other Commonwealth countries, often without their parents' knowledge, and the world not know about it? [This is] the chilling poser at the heart of Jim Loach's debut film, Oranges and Sunshine, which centres on a policy that saw children from poor and struggling families sent halfway across the world to a promised new life. Instead, many endured virtual slave labour and, in some extreme cases, serial abuse. In the film, we follow Margaret [as] she gradually uncovers the devastating effects that the deportation has had on its victims. In Australia, Margaret's efforts amass evidence that defenceless children, in the care of the Roman Catholic Christian Brotherhood, have been physically and sexually abused by members of the order. However, Margaret is seen as a troublemaker, an outsider stirring up long-forgotten memories. Back in the UK, charities and government officials are refusing to accept responsibility for sending the children abroad. She receives death threats. Margaret eventually finds personal solace as her efforts finally come to fruition. Families are brought back together after decades apart, and the now grown-up children are able to establish their true identities. Finally, in 2009-10, after many years of official denial and vacillation, there are full public apologies from the Australian and British governments. Loach's film intelligently explores a grave injustice. The title, Oranges and Sunshine, refers to the inviting picture of a new life sold to the children in advance of their long journey to the other side of the world. It is a shattering, yet inspiring story.
Note: For more on this huge scandal of child abduction and abuse, click here. For another scandal of major child abuse based in Australia that has yet to be fully exposed, click here. For more on child sexual abuse, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Three weeks after a scathing grand jury report said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had provided safe haven to as many as 37 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward minors, most of those priests remain active in the ministry. The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey, as the grand jury put it has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church. The situation in Philadelphia is Boston reborn. The Boston Archdiocese was engulfed in a scandal starting in 2002 involving widespread sexual abuse by priests and an extensive cover-up that reached as high as the cardinal. The church has not explained directly why these priests ... are still active. Cardinal Justin Rigali initially said there were no active priests with substantiated allegations against them, but six days later, he placed three of the priests ... on administrative leave. Philadelphia is unusual in that the archdiocese has been the subject of not one but two grand jury reports. The first, in 2005, found credible accusations of abuse by 63 priests, whose activities had been covered up by the church. But there were no indictments, mainly because the statute of limitations had expired. The thing that is significant about Philadelphia is the assumption that the authorities had made changes and the system had been fixed, said Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, which archives documents from the abuse scandal in dioceses across the country. But the headline is that in Philadelphia, the system is still broke.
Note: For powerful evidence that this kind of abuse is much more widespread than believed, and goes beyond the Catholic Church, click here.
Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables appear to show that the United States has been snooping on NATO's top official using secret sources on his own staff. Confidential cables from the U.S. mission to NATO released [on February 11] by WikiLeaks, ... said American diplomats received information on the private conversations of Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen from "a member of the NATO international staff." Instead of the staffer's name, the phrase "strictly protect" was inserted in a cable dated Sept. 10, 2009. The cable dealt with Fogh Rasmussen's proposal to improve ties with Russia by establishing contacts with the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-dominated security alliance. The cable was signed off by U.S. ambassador Ivo Daalder. There has been no known [previous] case in the past of a nation spying on the secretary-general.
[Mark] Kennedy moved from undercover agent to agent provocateur. He worked for a murky organisation called the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). With a budget of 5m this operates as a branch of the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) which, in turn, works alongside the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU). Ask where this stands, and you will be told it reports to the Association of Chief Police Officers' Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee, codenamed Acpo(TAM). Kennedy's bosses in the NPOIU work for Acpo, but this is not what it seems. It is not, as its name suggests, the police officers' staff club, nor is it a public body of any sort. [ACPO] is a private company, incorporated in 1997. It is sub-contracted by Whitehall to operate the police end of the government's counterterrorism and "anti-extremism" strategies. It is thus alongside MI5, but even less accountable. It now runs its own police forces under a police chief boss, Sir Hugh Orde, like a British FBI. It trades on its own account, generating revenue by selling data from the police national computer for 70 an item (cost of retrieval, 60p). It owns an estate of 80 flats in central London. As a private company, Acpo need not accede to Freedom of Information requests and presumably could distribute its profit to its own board. The whole operation is reminiscent of the deals set up by the Pentagon with private firms to run the Iraq and Afghan wars, free of publicity or accountability.
Note: For further information on the amazing undercover career of UK agent provocateur Mark Kennedy, click here and here and here.
Sexual assault pervades the military, but the Pentagon refuses to release records that fully document the problem and how it is handled, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups said in a federal lawsuit that seeks access to the records. Tens of thousands of service members have reported some form of sexual assault, harassment or trauma in the past decade, according to the lawsuit filed [on December 13] in New Haven against the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. "The government's refusal to even take the first step of providing comprehensive and accurate information about the sexual trauma inflicted upon our women and men in uniform ... is all too telling," said Anuradha Bhagwati, a former Marine captain. The government prosecutes 8 percent of military sex offenders, while 40 percent of civilian sex offenders are prosecuted. The lawsuit contends sexual assaults are nearly twice as common within military ranks as in civilian society, and surveys show that nearly one in three women report being sexually assaulted during their time in the military. About 80 percent of unwanted or threatening sexual acts are not reported, according to the lawsuit. Victims who report abuse to their superiors often face social isolation, retribution and counteraccusations, the lawsuit says.
Note: Sexual abuse in the military is much more pervasive than most people would think. For some shocking revelations by the wife of a US Marine Corps colonel's wife, Kay Griggs, click here and here.
WikiLeaks' publication starting Nov. 28 of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables was the largest unauthorized release of contemporary classified information in history. It contained 11,000 documents marked secret. The WikiLeaks revelations could change history. The number of documents and other communications [classified as secret] has skyrocketed nearly 10 times, from 5,685,462 in 1996 to 54,651,765 in 2009. Governments are calling more things secret when they are really not. The number of people with access to that Everest of information has grown too. In its deep investigation of American secrecy earlier this year, the Washington Post found that some 854,000 people inside and out of government had top-secret clearance, the highest classification. [Julian Assange] has launched a crusade predicated on the idea that nearly all information should be free and that confidentiality in government affairs is an affront to the governed. In the process, he has published everything from a video of U.S. troops killing civilians in Iraq to the documents behind the so-called Climategate scandal. "When trusted insiders no longer have faith in the judgment of government regarding secrets, then they start to substitute their own judgment," says William J. Bosanko, head of the Information Security Oversight Office. "The world is moving irreversibly in the direction of openness, and those who learn to operate with fewer secrets will ultimately have the advantage over those who futilely cling to a past in which millions of secrets can be protected," says a former intelligence-community official.
Note: For an abundance of major media articles showing the problems with excessive secrecy, click here.
[Introduction] An internal history of the United States governments Nazi-hunting operation provides gripping new evidence about some of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades. The Justice Department kept the 600-page report secret for the last four years, releasing a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group that sued to force its release. A complete version was obtained by The New York Times. [From the document] In the 1970s, the public was shocked to leam that some Nazi persecutors had emigrated to the United States. There were calls for their expulsion and legislation was passed to facilitate their deportation. OSI was created in 1979 to handle the caseload. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) is often referred to as the government's "Nazi-hunting" organization. While the cases and projects are individually fascinating, this report was not written simply to recount a series of unrelated but interesting undertakings. It is designed to serve as a teaching and research tool for historians, the media, academics, policy makers and the general public. While one would hope that the Holocaust was such an aberration that its like would never recur, the world has since learned of new and horrific genocidal undertakings. Bosnia, Cambodia, Croatia, Iraq, Rwanda, Serbia and Sudan are among the all too-many countries involved. These societies will inevitably have to confront some of the same issues which faced OSI.
Note: This suppressed report contains clear evidence that top Nazi war criminals were given aliases and allowed to escape prosection by elements both outside and inside of government. For even more powerful evidence from released US government documents that top government leaders felt the need for mind control techniques developed by the Nazi's warranted secretly protecting and eventually working with some of the most heartless of the Nazis, click here.
A secret internal history of the Justice Departments Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, chronicles numerous hidden chapters in the offices 31-year-existence. But a heavily redacted version of the report turned over by the Justice Department in response to a lawsuit deletes more than 1,000 passages in the report, including many of the most intriguing references. Here is a sampling of the original passages in the unredacted report, obtained by the New York Times, as compared with the deleted versions. The full report details how the United States became a safe haven for some Nazis, with some American officials actively working to help persecutors gain entry to the United States and conceal their identities and crimes. But the redacted version prepared by the Justice Department omits many of the central elements of these cases. The redacted report omits the debate within the CIA in 1953 over what Otto von Bolschwing, a Nazi associate of Adolph Eichmann who became a CIA asset, should tell immigration officials or others in the United States if confronted about his Nazi past. It also deletes references to what American officials knew about his atrocities, including the assertion from a Justice Department officials that he might be guilty of acts more heinous than anyone else currently under investigation. [many additional examples follow]
Note: This suppressed report contains clear evidence that top Nazi war criminals were given aliases and allowed to escape prosecution by elements both outside and inside of government. For even more powerful evidence from released US government documents that top government leaders felt the need for mind control techniques developed by the Nazi's warranted secretly protecting and eventually working with some of the most heartless of the Nazis, click here.
American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai. The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans. Two of the former drug dealer’s ex-wives had gone to American authorities between 2005 and 2008, before the Mumbai attacks, to say they feared he was plotting with terrorists. Combined with the earlier warning from the former girlfriend, three of the women in Mr. Headley’s life reported his ties to terrorists, only to have those warnings dismissed. An examination of Mr. Headley’s story shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A. informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.
Note: This story certainly raises the question whether the Mumbai attacks were not in fact a false-flag operation. For many reports from reliable sources that reveal similar ties between government agencies running clandestine operations and terrorist attacks, click here.
If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is worth considering. There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs that something devastating might be in the planning stages. One of us, Coleen Rowley, was a special agent/legal counsel at the FBI's Minneapolis division and worked closely with those who arrested would-be terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui on an immigration violation less than a month before the World Trade Center was destroyed. Following up on a tip from flight school instructors who had become suspicious of the French Moroccan who claimed to want to fly a jet as an "ego boost," Special Agent Harry Samit and an INS colleague had detained Moussaoui. A foreign intelligence service promptly reported that he had connections with a foreign terrorist group, but FBI officials in Washington inexplicably turned down Samit's request for authority to search Moussaoui's laptop computer and personal effects. Later, testifying at Moussaoui's trial, Samit testified that he believed the behavior of his FBI superiors in Washington constituted "criminal negligence." WikiLeaks might have provided a pressure valve for those agents who were terribly worried about what might happen and frustrated by their superiors' seeming indifference.
Note: For questions raised about the official account of 9/11 by many courageous professionals, click here and here.
A document obtained and witnesses interviewed by Fox News raise new questions over whether there was an effort by the Defense Department to cover up a pre-9/11 military intelligence program known as "Able Danger." At least five witnesses questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General told Fox News that their statements were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report -- or it left out key information, backing up assertions that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified a year before 9/11. Lt. Col Tony Shaffer, an operative involved with Able Danger [and author of Operation Dark Heart, a recent book which discussed the Able Danger operation, and all copies of which were destroyed by the Pentagon] said, "My last interview was very, very hostile." When asked why the IG's report was so aggressive in its denials of his claims and those of other witnesses -- that the data mining project had identified Atta as a threat to the U.S. before 9/11 -- Shaffer said [the] Defense Department was worried about taking some of the blame for 9/11. Specifically, the Defense Intelligence Agency ... wanted the removal of references to a meeting between Shaffer and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, removed. Shaffer alleges that in that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, the commission was told about Able Danger and the identification of Atta before the attacks. Shaffer, who was undercover at the time, said there was "stunned silence" at the meeting. No mention of this was made in the final 9/11 Commission report.
Note: Able Danger was the program which identified Mohamed Atta and three other alleged 9/11 hijackers as a potential terror threat before 9/11. To read major media reports on the intense controversy around this program (which is likely why Shaffer's book is being burned by the Pentagon), click here. For a highly revealing Fox News interview with Col. Shaffer on these major deceptions, click here.
That photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying I Am a Man signs in Memphis? His. He was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, Dr. Kings room, on the night he was assassinated. But now an unsettling asterisk must be added to the legacy of Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era: He was a paid F.B.I. informer. On [September 12], The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Mr. Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two F.B.I. agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil rights movement. From at least 1968 to 1970, Mr. Withers, who was black, provided photographs, biographical information and scheduling details to two F.B.I. agents in the bureaus Memphis domestic surveillance program, Howell Lowe and William H. Lawrence, according to numerous reports summarizing their meetings. The reports were obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on its Web site. While he was growing close to top civil rights leaders, Mr. Withers was also meeting regularly with the F.B.I. agents, disclosing details about plans for marches and political beliefs of the leaders, even personal information like the leaders car tag numbers.
Note: For a fascinating CNN interview with civil rights leader and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young on this issue, click here. For key reports from reliable sources raising unanswered questions about the assassination of Martin Luther King and other major US political leaders, click here.
Germanys intelligence service has turned over thousands of files on top Nazi Adolf Eichmanns whereabouts after World War II to a journalist who sued for them. But with so many passages blacked out and pages missing, shes taking the matter back to court. An attorney for freelance reporter Gabriele Weber said ... he was confident that she would win greater access eventually, even though Chancellor Angela Merkels office has argued that some Eichmann files should stay secret. Last week, Weber went to see the government files on the man known as the architect of the Holocaust for coordinating the Nazis genocide policy. She was surprised to find some 1,000 pages missing, despite a federal courts order in April that the intelligence agency, the BND, could not keep all of the documents secret. Of the pages she did receive, much of the information was blacked out. Weber hopes the files will shed more light on missing pieces of the [Eichmann] puzzle. Who helped him escape? How much did Germany know about where he was? Is there more to the story of his capture?
Note: Why are these documents from over 60 years ago still being censored? Could it be that the Vatican and allies were secretly working together to allow key German leaders to escape? For lots more on this learn about Operation Paperclip here and here.
A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department -- including some with the highest available security clearance -- who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show. The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions. In a related inquiry, the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.
With Mir Hossein Mousavi as the de facto leader of the opposition movement, the mass executions of the 1980s have become a hot topic among Iranians and Iran watchers, including many readers of this site. Mousavi was prime minister in that decade. Though this article was first published in 1986, it lends a new perspective to the issue, at least with respect to the thousands of executions that took place in the early 1980s. The CIA's assistance to Ayatollah Khomeini, which apparently prompted the executions, is not a well-known fact: The Reagan administration's secret overtures and arms shipments to Iran are part of a seven-year-long pattern of covert Central Intelligence Agency operations -- some dating back to the Carter administration -- that were designed both to curry favor with the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and support Iranian exiles who seek to overthrow it, according to informed sources. In 1983, for example, the CIA participated in a secret operation to provide a list of Soviet KGB agents and collaborators operating in Iran to the Khomeini regime, which then executed up to 200 suspects. Khomeini also expelled 18 Soviet diplomats, imprisoned the Tudeh party leaders and publicly thanked God for "the miracle" leading to the arrests of the "treasonous leaders." At the same time, secret presidential intelligence orders, called "findings," authorized the CIA to support Iranian exiles opposed to the Khomeini regime, the sources said.
Nearly 60 years ago, a French town was hit by a sudden outbreak of hallucinations, which left five people dead and many seriously ill. On 16 August 1951, postman Leon Armunier was doing his rounds in the southern French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations. "It was terrible. I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire and the serpents coiling around my arms," he remembers. Leon, now 87, fell off his bike and was taken to the hospital in Avignon. Over the coming days, dozens of other people in the town fell prey to similar symptoms. Doctors at the time concluded that bread at one of the town's bakeries had become contaminated by ergot, a poisonous fungus that occurs naturally on rye. That view remained largely unchallenged until 2009, when an American investigative journalist, Hank Albarelli, revealed a CIA document labelled: "Re: Pont-Saint-Esprit and F.Olson Files. SO Span/France Operation file, inclusive Olson. Intel files. Hand carry to Belin - tell him to see to it that these are buried." F. Olson is Frank Olson, a CIA scientist who, at the time of the Pont St Esprit incident, led research for the agency into the drug LSD. David Belin, meanwhile, was executive director of the Rockefeller Commission created by the White House in 1975 to investigate abuses carried out worldwide by the CIA. Albarelli believes the Pont-Saint-Esprit and F. Olson Files, mentioned in the document, would show - if they had not been "buried" - that the CIA was experimenting on the townspeople, by dosing them with LSD.
Note: Frank Olson later had his drink spiked with LSD and allegedly committed suicide shortly thereafter. Yet many believe he was "suicided" as he was having misgivings about his involvement in this program and considering spilling the beans, as reported in this news article. For an overview of CIA mind-control experimentation, click here.
For six years, Nicholas Merrill has lived in a surreal world of half-truths, where he could not tell even his fiancee, his closest friends or his mother that he is "John Doe" -- the man who filed the first-ever court challenge to the FBI's ability to obtain personal data on Americans without judicial approval. No one knew he was the plaintiff challenging the FBI's authority to issue "national security letters," as they are known, and its ability to impose a gag on the recipient. Now, following the partial lifting of his gag order 11 days ago as a result of an FBI settlement, Merrill can speak openly for the first time about the experience, although he cannot disclose the full scope of the data demanded. "One of the most dangerous and troubling things about the FBI's national security letter powers is how much it has been shrouded in secrecy," said Melissa Goodman, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who helped Merrill sue the government in April 2004 and was one of only a handful of people outside the FBI -- all lawyers -- who knew Merrill had received a letter. The FBI between 2003 and 2006 issued more than 192,500 letters -- an average of almost 50,000 a year. The Justice Department inspector general in 2007 faulted the bureau for failing to adequately justify the issuance of such letters.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on the erosion of civil liberties by government, click here.
The Vatican on [June 28] issued an unprecedented rebuke of a top cardinal who had accused the retired Vatican No. 2 of blocking clerical sex abuse investigations, publicly dressing down a man who had been praised for his criticism of church abuse cover-ups. The silencing of Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna and long considered a papal contender, drew heated criticism from clerical abuse victims. They said the Vatican should be honoring Schoenborn, not publicly humiliating him, for his calls for greater transparency and demands for a crackdown on priests who rape and sodomize children. Schoenborn has also called for an open discussion of priestly celibacy, views that the Vatican said he "clarified" on Monday during an audience with the pope. Schoenborn had accused the former Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in April of blocking a church investigation into the late Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who was accused by victims in 1995 of abusing boys at a seminary. "With his words, Benedict professes concern for victims. But by his actions, Benedict shows concern for his colleagues," said David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Note: For more on sex crimes and the Vatican, click here.
Hired in 2001 by the National Security Agency to help it catch up with the e-mail and cellphone revolution, Thomas A. Drake became convinced that the government’s eavesdroppers were squandering hundreds of millions of dollars on failed programs. He contacted a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. Today, because of that decision, Mr. Drake, 53, ... faces years in prison on 10 felony charges involving the mishandling of classified information and obstruction of justice. The indictment of Mr. Drake was the latest evidence that the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks. In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush. Mr. Drake was charged in April; in May, an F.B.I. translator was sentenced to 20 months in prison for providing classified documents to a blogger; this week, the Pentagon confirmed the arrest of a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst suspected of passing a classified video of an American military helicopter shooting Baghdad civilians to the Web site Wikileaks.org.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on government secrecy, click here.
When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in [the] Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request. A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied. “We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?” recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. “The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: ‘Not allowed.’ ” Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials. Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources. Three weeks passed, for instance, from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and the first images of oil gushing from an underwater pipe were released by BP.
Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on government and corporate corruption and collusion, click here and here.
The Department of Defense announced that Specialist [Bradley] Manning, of Potomac, Md., had been arrested and was under investigation [for leaking a video of a US helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad to a whistleblower website, Wikileaks]. The leak of the helicopter video, which Wikileaks titled “Collateral Murder,” caused serious consternation at the Pentagon, where senior officials are increasingly concerned about technology that makes it easier to anonymously post documents, photographs and videos online. But opponents of the Iraq war have said that the video provided irrefutable evidence of a military blunder, and that it should not have been classified. The episode also drew wide attention to Wikileaks, a once-fringe Web site that aims to bring to light secret information about governments and corporations. It was founded three years ago by Julian Assange, an Australian activist and journalist, and has published documents about toxic dumping in Africa, protocols from Guantánamo Bay and e-mail messages from Sarah Palin’s personal account.
Note: In case the above video disappears, click here to view it on one of our websites. The only reason this event made news is because the two cameramen killed were Reuters staff. US forces then fired on an unarmed van with children in it, which was attempting to bring the dead and wounded out of the combat zone. How many innocent civilians are killed like this and never make the news? Please spread this important video and help others to wake up and work together to stop the cruelty of some of the US forces. The Pentagon is working hard to shut down Wikileaks, the organization which secured this powerful video.
After half a century of investigation, a former nuclear physicist -- who worked on fission and fusion rockets for companies like Westinghouse and Aerojet General Nucleonics -- is convinced that not only are UFOs real, the government has known about them since 1947. "Some UFOs are intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft," Stanton Friedman told AOL News, calling the vast cover-up of their existence "the biggest story of the millennium." In 1958, UFOs caught his attention, and Friedman has since lectured about this subject at more than 700 colleges and professional groups in all 50 states and around the world. "After 53 years of investigation, I'm convinced we're dealing here with a cosmic Watergate," he [said]. "That means a few people within major governments have known since at least 1947 that some UFOs are alien spacecraft." In Friedman's new book, Science Was Wrong: Startling Truths About Cures, Theories, and Inventions "They" Declared Impossible, co-authored with Kathleen Marden, he wrote, "There's been no shortage of strong, negative proclamations from debunking groups and individuals who refuse to examine the evidence ... to support the notion that some UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin.
Note: For the full article at AOL News, click here.
The Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials. Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world. Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not." Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush's administration. The Special Operations capabilities requested by the White House go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them. Obama has made such forces a far more integrated part of his global security strategy. He has asked for a 5.7 percent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011, for a total of $6.3 billion, plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding.
Note: For an analysis, click here. For lots more from reliable sources about the war crimes committed ongoingly by the US military and Special Forces worldwide, click here.
Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of [Israel's] possession of nuclear weapons. The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret. The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky ... provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence. The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request.
Note: A New York Times article states that Isreal has strongly denied this story. Yet even this articles states, "Israel has a longstanding policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying that it has nuclear weapons, though it is widely believed to have developed a large arsenal."
Capitalism is dead. The economy has a new Invisible Hand, the Goldman Conspiracy of Wall Street bankers. This transfer of power happened suddenly. As recently as late 2008 the Invisible Hand was on life support, near death. Suddenly, miraculously the Treasury secretary, Goldman's former CEO, transferred the power into a new Invisible Hand of God, the free-market ideology of Reaganomics ... a power absolutely essential to the survival of Wall Street's mega-bonus culture. Yes, that's why the Goldman Conspiracy must kill financial reforms ... why they will kill effective reform with the backroom support of Obama. This was predicted back in late 2008, even before the bailouts, back when we thought Reaganomics dead. Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein warned: "Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital ... During boom times it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles ... When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance and goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue," then a neo-Reaganomics "ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis," setting up a new bubble, bigger meltdown, and the Great Depression 2 the world narrowly avoided in 2008.
Note: For a wealth of key reporting on the hidden realities of the Wall Street's shadowy operations, click here.
Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released [on April 15]. Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he agreed with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to take the heat for destroying the tapes. PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat, according to one document. A number of documents released Thursday provide the most detailed glimpse yet of the deliberations inside the C.I.A. surrounding the destroyed tapes, and of the concern among officials at the spy agency that the decision might put the C.I.A. in legal jeopardy. The documents detailing those deliberations, including two e-mail messages from a C.I.A. official whose name has been excised, were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. According to one of the e-mail messages released Thursday, Mr. Rodriguez told Mr. Goss that the tapes ... would make the C.I.A. look terrible; it would be devastating to us.
Note: For lots more on the realities of the "war on terror", click here.
He hobnobbed with Mexico's rich and famous, cut lucrative real estate deals and was rumored to travel on occasion with a briefcase full of cash. He fathered at least one child, molested seminarians and boys and is said to have boasted that he had the pope's permission to get massages from young nuns. And all the while the conservative priest was building one of the most influential organizations in the Roman Catholic Church. Two years after the death of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, a Mexico native, scandals continue to unfold. Buffeted by the string of revelations, Maciel's powerful Legion of Christ is fighting for its survival in Rome, the headquarters of the church. But here in Mexico, where the Legion has long-standing ties with the ruling class and an expansive network of elite schools, the organization remains strong. Rather than the desertions that some branches of the Legion have experienced in the United States and elsewhere, student enrollment in Legionary schools in Mexico grew by 6% to 8% last year, spokesman Javier Bravo said. The order's assets are estimated by some to be worth $20 billion.
The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did. Transparency and openness were so important to the new president that on his first full day in office, he dispatched a much-publicized memo saying: "All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA." One of the exemptions allowed to deny Freedom of Information requests has been used by the Obama administration 70,779 times in its first year; the same exemption was used 47,395 times in Bush's final budget year. An Associated Press examination of 17 major agencies' handling of FOIA requests found denials 466,872 times, an increase of nearly 50% from the 2008 fiscal year under Bush.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government secrecy, click here.
The Boy Scouts of America has long kept an extensive archive of secret documents that chronicle the sexual abuse of young boys by Scout leaders over the years. The "perversion files," a nickname the Boy Scouts are said to have used for the documents, have rarely been seen by the public, but that could change in the coming weeks in a Portland, Ore., courtroom. The attorney for a man who was allegedly molested in the 1980s by a Scout leader has obtained about 1,000 Boy Scouts sex files and is expected to release some of them at a trial that began [on March 17]. The lawyer says the files show the organization has covered up abuse for decades. The trial is significant because the files could offer a rare window into how the organization has responded to sex abuse by Scout leaders. The only other time the documents are thought to have been presented at a trial was in the 1980s in Virginia. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the organization over sex abuse allegations, but judges for the most part have either denied requests for the files or the lawsuits have been settled before they went to trial.
Note: Why isn't the leadership of the Boy Scouts being proactive in releasing these files. Do you think they might have something to hide?
The Vatican ... denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland. The Vatican's campaign to defend the pope's reputation and resolve in combating clergy abuse of minors followed acknowledgment by the Munich archdiocese that it had transferred a suspected pedophile priest to community work while Benedict was archbishop there. Benedict is also under fire for a 2001 church directive he wrote while a Vatican cardinal, instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential. Germany's justice minister has blamed the directive for what she called a "wall of silence" preventing prosecution. Skeptical about the Vatican's handling of abuse, a U.S.-based advocacy group for abuse victims, Survivors Network of those Abused for Priests, urged faithful to bring candles and childhood photos to vigils outside churches, cathedrals and German consulates across the U.S. this weekend to remind people to "call police, not bishops" in cases of suspected abuse. Meanwhile, the scandal swirling around Benedict's brother, Georg Ratzinger, escalated with the first public allegations of abuse of choirboys during some of the 30 years he ran the boys' choir in Regensburg.
Note: If you want to know just how deep this goes, watch the powerfully revealing documentary "Conspiracy of Silence," available at this link.
The Ministry of Defence will destroy all future UFO reports it receives so it does not have to make them public, a previously secret memo reveals. Britain's official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December. Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows. This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives. The MoD recorded 634 UFO sightings in 2009, the second highest annual total after 1978, when there were 750, according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke. This compares with an average of about 150 reports a year over the past decade. The document includes as an annex a printout from the US Department of Defence website explaining that the American government stopped collecting reports of UFO sightings in December 1969.
Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here.
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama promised transparency in government. Specifically, Obama said, well have [healthcare reform] negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. But now, the White House seems to be pulling back from that pledge. The House and Senate each of which have passed versions of healthcare reform were putting the final bill together behind closed doors according to an agreement by top Democrats. Not so fast, cry Republicans, who are feeling left out even though their general approach on the issue has been just say no. The negotiations are obviously being done in secret and the American people really just want to know what they are trying to hide, said Rep. Tom Price, (R) of Georgia.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on government secrecy, click here.
Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Work is under way on devices that may eventually let you communicate with friends telepathically, give you superhuman hearing and vision or even let you download data directly into your brain, a la "The Matrix." Researchers are practically giddy over the prospects. "We don't know what the limits are yet," says Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech University's BrainLab. At the root of all this technology is the 3-pound generator we all carry in our head. It produces electricity at the microvolt level. But the signals are strong enough to move robots, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs -- with the help of an external processor. One of the more controversial uses under development is telepathy. It would require at least two people to be implanted with electrodes that send and receive signals. DARPA, the Pentagon's technology research division, is currently working on an initiative called "Silent Talk," which would let soldiers on secret missions communicate with their thoughts alone. This stealth component is attractive, but naysayers fear that such soldiers could become manipulated for evil means.
Note: Remember that secret military research such as that undertaken by DARPA is often years ahead of capabilities publicly acknowledged.
President Obama will maintain a lid of secrecy on millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified by the end of the year. The missed deadline spells trouble for the White Houses promises to introduce an era of government openness, say advocates, who believe that releasing historical information enforces a key check on government behavior. They cite as an example the abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, including domestic spying and assassinations of foreign officials, that were publicly outlined in a set of agency documents known as the "family jewels." The White House has given the agencies ... an extension beyond Dec. 31 of an undetermined length - possibly years. It will be the third such extension: Clinton granted one in 2000 and Bush granted one in 2003. The documents, dating from World War II to the early 1980s, cover the gamut of foreign relations, intelligence activities, and military operations. The records in question are held by the Central Intelligence Agency; the National Security Agency; the departments of Justice, State, Defense, and Energy; and other security and intelligence agencies. None of the agencies involved responded to requests for comment. Steven Aftergood, a specialist on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington [said] "If binding deadlines can be extended more or less at will, then any new declassification requirements will be similarly subject to doubt or defiance."
Note: These documents are all more than 25 years old. Why can't the public know what their government is trying to hide from them? For lots more on government secrecy, click here.
Though rarely shown on TV these days ... 9/11 footage is replayed more than once in "The Unofficial Story" [on the CBC News program the fifth estate]. The documentary follows up on some fairly startling public-opinion polls of late. To wit: More than half of all Americans believe the Bush administration had advance knowledge of 9/11, and did nothing to stop it; slightly more than one-third of the Canadian population believes likewise. The number of people who believe the U.S. government was involved in the attacks appears to be growing, says fifth estate veteran Bob McKeown, who helms the report. Most of them believe there are still questions that have gone unanswered. Among the group's more prominent proponents is Richard Gage, a well-regarded architect interviewed by McKeown in the program. Gage is fervent in his belief that the destruction was intentional, and was not accomplished with airplanes, but with explosives. Also speaking out for the Truthers movement is academic and Nobel Peace Prize nominee David Ray Griffin who questions the lack of NORAD response after the first plane struck the tower and Canadian professor Kee Dewdney, who insists the fabled on-board struggle between hijackers and passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 could only be a hoax. The really interesting thing to me is that you cannot get these people to speculate, observes McKeown. They will say, That is not my job.'
Note: Watch this first-ever North American major media network news documentary on the 9/11 truth movement by clicking here. And for what may be the best ever documentary on 9/11 for opening people's eyes, click here.
The Justice Department has indicated that the Obama administration is in support of renewing [three] controversial sections of the USA Patriot Act that expire later this year. The provisions that will expire in December include Section 206, that allows "roving" wiretaps so FBI agents can tap multiple phones or computers (with court authorization) that a specific person (target) may use. Another expiring provision, Section 215, is the so-called "library provision," which allows investigators to obtain [library, medical, business, banking and other] records with approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And the final provision which was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" authorization, allows intelligence gathering of people not suspected of being part of a foreign government or known terrorist organization. Critics of the Patriot Act protested loudly that the FBI could obtain individuals' library records under the legislation. [But] section 215 is much more expansive than reviewing a suspected terrorist's summer reading list. [It] allows the FBI to obtain any business record, "any tangible things," like credit card and bank statements and also allows access to medical and mental health records. The provision has been used to obtain communication and subscriber information to help set up surveillance and monitoring of computers and telephones.
Note: The American Library Association, the national organization of professional librarians, was the first and strongest defender of civil liberties after the passage of the PATRIOT Act. For a discussion of the concerns of professional librarians over this decision by the Obama administration, click here.
[President] Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find [Osama bin Laden]. Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of the war on terror. This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive. Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff? What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts. Still more questions have been raised with the publication in America and Britain of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, ... it is provoking shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West. The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan. His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom. The author insists that the many Bin Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe Bin Laden is alive. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?
Note: Hundreds of scholars, officials and professionals have raised questions about bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and other aspects of the official conspiracy about the events of 9/11. Click here and here to read their concerns.
A sleepy Montana checkpoint along the Canadian border that sees about three travelers a day will get $15 million under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan. A government priority list ranked the project as marginal, but two powerful Democratic senators persuaded the administration to make it happen. Despite Obama's promises that the stimulus plan would be transparent and free of politics, the government is handing out $720 million for border upgrades under a process that is both secretive and susceptible to political influence. It wasn't supposed to be that way. In 2004, Congress ordered Homeland Security to create a list, updated annually, of the most important repairs at checkpoints nationwide. But the Obama administration continued a Bush administration practice of considering other, more subjective factors when deciding which projects get money. The results: A border station in Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's home state of Arizona is getting $199 million, five times more than any other border station. A checkpoint in Laredo, Texas, which serves more than 55,000 travelers and 4,200 trucks a day, is rated among the government's highest priorities but was passed over for stimulus money. The Westhope, N.D., checkpoint, which serves about 73 people a day and is among the lowest-priority projects, is set to get nearly $15 million for renovations. The Whitetail project, which involves building a border station the size and cost of a Hollywood mansion, benefited from two key allies, Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester.
Note: For lots more on government corruption, click here.
The murder of President Kennedy was a seminal event for me and for millions of Americans. It changed the course of history. It was a crushing blow to our country and to millions of people around the world. Today, ... profound doubts persist about how President Kennedy was killed and why. My film "JFK" was a metaphor for all those doubts, suspicions and unanswered questions. Now an extraordinary new book offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance. That book is James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. In his beautifully written and exhaustively researched treatment, Douglass lays out the "motive" for Kennedy's assassination. Simply, he traces a process of steady conversion by Kennedy from his origins as a traditional Cold Warrior to his determination to pull the world back from the edge of destruction. Many of these steps are well known, such as Kennedy's disillusionment with the CIA after the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and his refusal to follow the reckless recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. But many of his steps remain unfamiliar: Kennedy's back-channel dialogue with Khrushchev and their shared pursuit of common ground; his secret opening to dialogue with Fidel Castro (ongoing the very week of his assassination); and his determination to pull out of Vietnam after his probable re-election in 1964. All of these steps caused him to be regarded as a virtual traitor by elements of the military-intelligence community. These were the forces that planned and carried out his assassination.
Note: For more on this important book, click here. For an excellent collection of the best information, videos, books, and essays on the John F. Kennedy assassination, click here.
Weapons inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his mysterious death. He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the British and American invasion. He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets. Following his death, his computers were seized and it is still not known if any rough draft was discovered by investigators and, if so, what happened to the material. Dr Kelly was also intending to lift the lid on a potentially bigger scandal, his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa. US television investigators have spent four years preparing a 90-minute documentary, Anthrax War, suggesting there is a global black market in anthrax and exposing the mystery suicides of five government germ warfare scientists from around the world. Director Bob Coen said: The deeper you look into the murky world of governments and germ warfare, the more worrying it becomes. We have proved there is a black market in anthrax. David Kelly was of particular interest to us because he was a world expert on anthrax and he was involved in some degree with assisting the secret germ warfare programme in apartheid South Africa. Dr Kelly was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home on July 17 2003. His apparent suicide came two days after he was interrogated in the Commons over his behind-the-scenes role in exposing the flaws in the sexed-up Number 10 dossier which justified Britain going to war with Iraq. Conspiracy theorists have claimed he was murdered.
Note: For more on the CBC documentary Anthrax War, click here. And to read about the strange deaths of 13 renowned microbiologists in the space of less than five months, click here.
Powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill are clamoring for creation of a bipartisan "9/11 style" commission to investigate the legality of the Bush administration's antiterrorism tacticsespecially its use of harsh interrogation techniques. The case for a "truth" commission was bolstered by the disclosure this month that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of the interrogations and confinement of Al Qaeda suspects. A dozen showed the use of ... torture. Lawmakers say the obvious model for such an inquiry would be the 9/11 Commission. [But] the commission appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda's history relied heavily on information obtained from detainees who had been subjected to torture, or something not far from it. The [Commission] raised no public protest over the CIA's interrogation methods. In fact, the Commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions. That has troubling implications for the credibility of the commission's final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through torture is typically discredited; research shows that people will say anything under threat of intense physical pain. Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat on the commission, told me last year he had long feared that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking. Kerrey said it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.
Note: For key statements by hundreds of respected scholars and professionals questioning the accuracy of the 9/11 Commission's report, click here.
The American International Group said on Monday that it ... had secured a new $150 billion government assistance package intended to stem the bleeding from its complex financial contracts. A central component of the new package will be to get the most tainted assets out of the company, in an effort to stop the collateral calls that have been rapidly draining A.I.G.s cash. A.I.G.s trading partners in these financial contracts will largely be made whole in the process. [An] important feature will be government investments of about $50 billion to create special-purpose entities to relieve the company of its most tainted assets. About $30 billion of the government money will be used to buy complex debt securities that were insured by A.I.G. and about $20 billion more will be used to buy securities backed by home loans. A.I.G.s counterparties financial institutions in the United States and Europe have not borne significant losses on the financial contracts that led A.I.G. to the brink, and the new program suggests they will not. Were funding somebody on the other side of A.I.G.s derivatives contracts, said Lynn E. Turner, a former chief accountant with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Neither A.I.G. nor the federal government has been willing to provide the names of the companys biggest counterparties, or their amount of exposure. Weve had way too many things here that nobody knows anything about, said Mr. Turner, who is on the Treasurys Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession. Thats why no one has faith in the capital markets.
Note: The culture of secrecy around this bailout using nearly $1 trillion of taxpayer money is appalling. For many revealing and reliable reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return. Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure. The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months. The Fed's lending is significant because the central bank has stepped into a rescue role that was also the purpose of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, bailout plan -- without safeguards put into the TARP legislation by Congress. Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The nation's biggest banks, Citigroup, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, declined to comment on whether they have borrowed money from the Fed. They received $120 billion in capital from the TARP, which was signed into law Oct. 3.
Note: For many revealing and reliable reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
The case of a freelance photographer in Iraq who was barred from covering the Marines after he posted photos on the Internet of several of them dead has underscored what some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war. Zoriah Miller, the photographer who took images of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack and posted them on his Web site, was subsequently forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of the country. After five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers. Opponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the right to see in whatever medium the human cost of a war that polls consistently show is unpopular with Americans. Journalists say it is now harder ... to accompany troops in Iraq on combat missions. And while publishing photos of American dead is not barred under the embed rules in which journalists travel with military units, the Miller case underscores what is apparently one reality of the Iraq war: that doing so, even under the rules, can result in expulsion from covering the war with the military. "It is absolutely censorship, Mr. Miller said. I took pictures of something they didnt like, and they removed me. Deciding what I can and cannot document, I dont see a clearer definition of censorship."
Note: For more coverage of war censorship and the realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click here.
The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials. The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations. The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the War Council," drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to prevent anyone ... from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes. The international conventions ... to which [the US is] a party, were abandoned in secret meetings among the five men in one another's offices: ... David Addington, the ... longtime legal adviser and now chief of staff to Cheney [whose] primary motive, according to several former administration and defense officials, was to push for an expansion of presidential power that Congress or the courts couldn't check; Alberto Gonzales, first the White House counsel and then the attorney general; William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel; former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, [and] Timothy E. Flanigan, a former deputy to Gonzales.
Note: Virtually no major media other than the Herald picked up this key story.
The U.S. military hid the locations of ... detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released. "We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said. [Another] person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world. "In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said. The document, along with two dozen others, shows that top administration officials pushed relentlessly for tougher interrogation methods. Fredman of the CIA also appeared to be advocating the use of techniques harsher than those authorized by military field guides. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," the minutes report Fredman saying at one point.
Note: For many revealing reports on the brutal realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click here.
One afternoon in April, six dozen wealthy Americans were entertained at a luncheon party in Midtown Manhattan, along with a special guest from Paris: Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre. The host of the exclusive gathering was the Swiss bank UBS, whose elite private bankers built a lucrative business in recent years by discreetly tending the fortunes of American millionaires and billionaires. But now, as the federal authorities intensify an investigation into offshore bank accounts, the secrets of this rarefied world are being dragged into the open and UBSs privileged clients are running scared. Under pressure from the authorities, UBS is considering whether to divulge the names of up to 20,000 of its well-heeled American clients, according to people close to the inquiry, a step that would have once been unthinkable to Swiss bankers, whose traditions of secrecy date to the Middle Ages. Federal investigators believe some of the clients may have used offshore accounts at UBS to hide as much as $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service. Doing so may have enabled these people to dodge at least $300 million in federal taxes on income from those assets, according to a government official connected with the investigation. The case could turn into an embarrassment for Marcel Rohner, the chief executive of UBS and the former head of its private bank, as well as for Phil Gramm, the former Republican senator from Texas who is now the vice chairman of UBS Securities, the Swiss banks investment banking arm. It also comes at a difficult time for UBS, which is reeling from $37 billion in bad investments, many of them linked to risky American mortgages.
Note: For an illuminating overview of the secret world of banking and finance, click here.
[News anchor LOU DOBBS:] Open borders advocates are refusing to acknowledge rising evidence of plans for a NAFTA superhighway. Many in the mainstream media absolutely refuse to acknowledge the reality. The plans could be a major step toward that North American Union of the United States, Canada and Mexico. BILL TUCKER, CNN Correspondent: There is no NAFTA superhighway. Not officially. In Texas planning a development is under way for what are officially called transportation corridors. The Trans Texas Corridor, I-69, a combination of rail lines, utility lines, car and truck lanes, [is planned] to be as wide as three football fields laid end to end. It will be financed by a private foreign company ... who will then own the lease on the road and the revenue generated by the tolls. Texas may use eminent domain to lay claim to some of the land needed to build it. For an imaginary road there's a lot of money and effort involved [and] some very real opposition. TERRI HALL, TEXASTURF.ORG: There's just no doubt that this is happening. We've been to the public hearings. We've seen the presentations. We've seen the documents. We waded through them and there's a whole lot more groups besides just ours. And we've got Farm Bureau, Sierra Club, a whole host of groups from the left and the right. TUCKER: In Kansas a resolution opposing the superhighway overwhelmingly passed the State House.
Note: To watch a video of this Lou Dobbs Tonight segment, click here.
The Bush administration has been posting hundreds of highly confidential U.N. audits and investigation reports on a U.S. government Web site, opening the United Nations' inner workings and some of its more colorful scandals to unusual public scrutiny. Together, the nearly 500 documents and thousands of pages constitute a trove of U.N. secrets stretching back over five years, including allegations of bribes paid for tsunami relief projects in Indonesia, of sexual harassment in Gaza and a revelation that a U.N. anti-drug official ran a presidential campaign while receiving a U.N. paycheck. The pages also document a spree of alleged criminal activities, including a bribery scheme at the airport in Pristina, Kosovo, gold trading by U.N. peacekeepers in Congo, and the theft and resale of food rations by Ukrainian pilots serving the United Nations in Liberia. Mark D. Wallace, the U.S. representative for U.N. management and reform, has posted 477 documents. Most of the names of those targeted in the reports have been redacted by the United Nations, but the identities are easily deciphered. For years, the United Nations has guarded the confidentiality of its audits, saying they are meant as constructive criticism for managers. Their disclosure by the United States has generated a mixed reaction from U.N. officials: One said it was ironic that an administration that has placed such a premium on secrecy would be so transparent about the United Nations.
Note: For many reliable reports on increasing government secrecy, click here.
A piece of JFK assassination history now lies buried in the most unlikely of places: a former limestone quarry in Kansas. It is the end at least for now in the long and sometimes strange journey of Parkland Memorial Hospital Trauma Room No. 1, where President John F. Kennedy died on Nov. 22, 1963. The entire room was purchased by the federal government 35 years ago, when Parkland officials decided to modernize their emergency facilities. It was dismantled and the contents all of them, the examination table, clocks, floor tiling, lockers, trash cans, surgical instruments, gloves, cotton balls, even a towel dispenser were placed in a locked vault in a Fort Worth warehouse run by the National Archives and Records Administration. The artifacts lay undisturbed there until September, when they were moved to an archives facility in Lenexa, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, Mo. "It's in a secure location," Reed Whitaker, the agency's Central Plains Region administrator, confirmed last week. And in a comment guaranteed to get the conspiracy theorists going, he added: "Basically, it's not to be examined, not to be shown to the press, not to be photographed, not to be exhibited to the public." Under the sale agreement between Parkland and the federal government, archives officials agreed to close the trauma room and its contents to the public, saying that they wanted to shield the pieces from exploitation. A formal request in 2000 from The Dallas Morning News to view and photograph the artifacts was summarily rejected.
Note: For a treasure trove of revealing stories from reliable sources on major assassinations, click here.
Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees. According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists." What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people? The 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ... gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 ... allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who ... speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike. What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?
Note: This important warning from former U.S. Congressman Dan Hamburg and Lewis Seiler should be read in its entirety. For more chilling reports on serious threats to our civil liberties, click here.
A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said ... President Bush is standing by "feverish legal theories" to justify actions which are unconstitutional. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., made the comments on the Senate floor during debate. Whitehouse said that ... he had examined "highly classified secret legal opinions" issued by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel [OLC]. Whitehouse recounted that, "Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Islands Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on." Whitehouse related three OLC legal opinions which he got declassified: "An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order."; ... "The President ... can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the Presidents authority"; [and] "The Department of Justice is bound by the Presidents legal determinations." "Imagine a general counsel to a major U.S. corporation telling his board of directors, 'In this company the counsels office is bound by the CEOs legal determinations,'" Whitehouse said. "The board ought to throw that lawyer out - its malpractice, probably even unethical." We are a nation of laws, not of men. This nation was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that ... 'The King can do no wrong'."
Note: To hear the revealing Senate speech on this vital topic by Senator Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, click here. For Whitehouse's comments on this topic on his Senate website, click here.
In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality. I witnessed a massive delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I'd ever seen. The incident was witnessed by hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people in Arizona, and my office was besieged with phone calls from very concerned Arizonians. The growing hysteria intensified when the story broke nationally. I decided to lighten the mood of the state by calling a press conference where my chief of staff arrived in an alien costume. We managed to lessen the sense of panic but, at the same time, upset many of my constituents. I would now like to set the record straight. I never meant to ridicule anyone. My office did make inquiries as to the origin of the craft, but to this day they remain unanswered. Eventually the Air Force claimed responsibility stating that they dropped flares. This is indicative of the attitude from official channels. We get explanations that fly in the face of the facts. Explanations like weather balloons, swamp gas and military flares. I was never happy with the Air Force's silly explanation. I now know that I am not alone. There are many high-ranking military, aviation and government officials who share my concerns. While on active duty, they have either witnessed a UFO incident or have conducted an official investigation into UFO cases relevant to aviation safety and national security. By speaking out with me, these people are putting their reputations on the line. Investigations need to be re-opened, documents need to be unsealed and the idea of an open dialogue can no longer be shunned.
Note: For a two-page summary of UFO testimony by top government and military officials, click here.
CIA Director Michael Hayden has mounted a highly unusual challenge to his agency's chief watchdog, ordering an internal investigation of an inspector general who has issued a series of reports sharply critical of top CIA officials. Hayden is seeking to rein in an inspector general who has used the office to bring ... scrutiny upon CIA figures from former Director George Tenet to undercover operatives running secret overseas prison sites. The investigation is focused on ... CIA Inspector General John Helgerson and his office, particularly whether they were fair and impartial in their scrutiny of the agency's terrorist detention and interrogation programs. Officials said that the investigation also will span other subjects and that it already has expanded since its start months ago. U.S. intelligence officials concerned about the inquiry said it is unprecedented and could threaten the independence of the inspector general position. The investigation "could at least lead to appearances he's trying to interfere with the IG, or intimidate the IG, or get the IG to back off," one U.S. official familiar with the investigation said. Frederick Hitz, who served as the CIA's inspector general from 1990 to 1998, said the move will be perceived as an attempt by Hayden "to call off the dogs." "What it would lead to is an undercutting of the inspector general's authority and his ability to investigate allegations of wrongdoing," Hitz said. "The rank and file will become aware of it, and it will undercut the inspector general's ability to get the truth from them." Hayden has been a staunch defender of the Bush administration's counterterrorism programs.
Note: What does it say about an agency when they accuse their own internal investigator of being corrupt?
The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence operations today. In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show. Over the past five years (some say almost a decade), there has been a revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing. Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune ... of more than $42 billion a year. Intelligence professionals [say] that more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of the CIA -- has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. These firms recruit spies, create non-official cover identities and control the movements of CIA case officers. They also provide case officers and watch officers at crisis centers and regional desk officers who control clandestine operations worldwide. As The Los Angeles Times first reported last October, more than half the workforce in two key CIA stations -- Baghdad and Islamabad, Pakistan -- is made up of industrial contractors, or "green badgers," in CIA parlance. Intelligence insiders say that entire branches of the NCS have been outsourced to private industry.
The Pentagon has placed unprecedented restrictions on who can testify before Congress, reserving the right to bar lower-ranking officers, enlisted soldiers, and career bureaucrats from appearing before oversight committees or having their remarks transcribed. The guidelines, described in an April 19 memo to the staff director of the House Armed Services Committee, adds that all field-level officers and enlisted personnel must be "deemed appropriate" by the Department of Defense before they can participate in personal briefings for members of Congress or their staffs. In addition, according to the memo, the proceedings must not be recorded. Any officers who are allowed to testify must be accompanied by an official from the administration. Veterans of the legislative process -- who say they have never heard of such guidelines before -- maintain that the Pentagon has no authority to set such ground rules. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed th