Know Your Terrorists: Ayman Al-Zawahiri

WORKING PRESS — CIA STYLE by Carl Bernstein

To understand the role of most journalist‑operatives, it is necessary to dismiss some myths about undercover work for American intelligence services. Few American agents are “spies” in the popularly accepted sense of the term. “Spying” — the acquisition of secrets from a foreign government—is almost always done by foreign nationals who have been recruited by the CIA and are under CIA control in their own countries. Thus the primary role of an American working undercover abroad is often to aid in the recruitment and “handling” of foreign nationals who are channels of secret information reaching American intelligence.

Many journalists were used by the CIA to assist in this process and they had the reputation of being among the best in the business. The peculiar nature of the job of the foreign correspondent is ideal for such work: he is accorded unusual access by his host country, permitted to travel in areas often off‑limits to other Americans, spends much of his time cultivating sources in governments, academic institutions, the military establishment and the scientific communities. He has the opportunity to form long‑term personal relationships with sources and—perhaps more than any other category of American operative—is in a position to make correct judgments about the susceptibility and availability of foreign nationals for recruitment as spies.

“After a foreigner is recruited, a case officer often has to stay in the background,” explained a CIA official. “So you use a journalist to carry messages to and from both parties”

Journalists in the field generally took their assignments in the same manner as any other undercover operative. If, for instance, a journalist was based in Austria, he ordinarily would be under the general direction of the Vienna station chief and report to a case officer. Some, particularly roving correspondents or U.S.‑based reporters who made frequent trips abroad, reported directly to CIA officials in Langley, Virginia.

The tasks they performed sometimes consisted of little more than serving as “eyes and ears” for the CIA; reporting on what they had seen or overheard in an Eastern European factory, at a diplomatic reception in Bonn, on the perimeter of a military base in Portugal. On other occasions, their assignments were more complex: planting subtly concocted pieces of misinformation; hosting parties or receptions designed to bring together American agents and foreign spies; serving up “black” propaganda to leading foreign journalists at lunch or dinner; providing their hotel rooms or bureau offices as “drops” for highly sensitive information moving to and from foreign agents; conveying instructions and dollars to CIA controlled members of foreign governments.

Often the CIA’s relationship with a journalist might begin informally with a lunch, a drink, a casual exchange of information. An Agency official might then offer a favor—for example, a trip to a country difficult to reach; in return, he would seek nothing more than the opportunity to debrief the reporter afterward. A few more lunches, a few more favors, and only then might there be a mention of a formal arrangement — “That came later,” said a CIA official, “after you had the journalist on a string.”

Another official described a typical example of the way accredited journalists (either paid or unpaid by the CIA) might be used by the Agency: “In return for our giving them information, we’d ask them to do things that fit their roles as journalists but that they wouldn’t have thought of unless we put it in their minds. For instance, a reporter in Vienna would say to our man, ‘I met an interesting second secretary at the Czech Embassy.’ We’d say, ‘Can you get to know him? And after you get to know him, can you assess him? And then, can you put him in touch with us—would you mind us using your apartment?”‘

Formal recruitment of reporters was generally handled at high levels—after the journalist had undergone a thorough background check. The actual approach might even be made by a deputy director or division chief. On some occasions, no discussion would he entered into until the journalist had signed a pledge of secrecy.

“The secrecy agreement was the sort of ritual that got you into the tabernacle,” said a former assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. “After that you had to play by the rules.” David Attlee Phillips, former Western Hemisphere chief of clandestine services and a former journalist himself, estimated in an interview that at least 200 journalists signed secrecy agreements or employment contracts with the Agency in the past twenty‑five years. Phillips, who owned a small English‑language newspaper in Santiago, Chile, when he was recruited by the CIA in 1950, described the approach: “Somebody from the Agency says, ‘I want you to help me. 1 know you are a true‑blue American, but I want you to sign a piece of paper before I tell you what it’s about.’ I didn’t hesitate to sign, and a lot of newsmen didn’t hesitate over the next twenty years.”

“One of the things we always had going for us in terms of enticing reporters,” observed a CIA official who coordinated some of the arrangements with journalists, “was that we could make them look better with their home offices. A foreign correspondent with ties to the Company [the CIA] stood a much better chance than his competitors of getting the good stories.”

Within the CIA, journalist‑operatives were accorded elite status, a consequence of the common experience journalists shared with high‑level CIA officials. Many had gone to the same schools as their CIA handlers, moved in the same circles, shared fashionably liberal, anti‑Communist political values, and were part of the same “old boy” network that constituted something of an establishment elite in the media, politics and academia of postwar America. The most valued of these lent themselves for reasons of national service, not money.

The Agency’s use of journalists in undercover operations has been most extensive in Western Europe (“That was the big focus, where the threat was,” said one CIA official), Latin America and the Far East. In the 1950s and 1960s journalists were used as intermediaries—spotting, paying, passing instructions—to members of the Christian Democratic party in Italy and the Social Democrats in Germany, both of which covertly received millions of dollars from the CIA. During those years “we had journalists all over Berlin and Vienna just to keep track of who the hell was coming in from the East and what they were up to,” explained a CIA official.

In the Sixties, reporters were used extensively in the CIA offensive against Salvador Allende in Chile; they provided funds to Allende’s opponents and wrote anti‑Allende propaganda for CIA proprietary publications that were distributed in Chile. (CIA officials insist that they make no attempt to influence the content of American newspapers, but some fallout is inevitable: during the Chilean offensive, CIA‑generated black propaganda transmitted on the wire service out of Santiago often turned up in American publications.)

According to CIA officials, the Agency has been particularly sparing in its use of journalist agents in Eastern Europe on grounds that exposure might result in diplomatic sanctions against the United States or in permanent prohibitions against American correspondents serving in some countries. The same officials claim that their use of journalists in the Soviet Union has been even more limited, but they remain extremely guarded in discussing the subject. They are insistent, however, in maintaining that the Moscow correspondents of major news organizations have not been “tasked” or controlled by the Agency.

The Soviets, according to CIA officials, have consistently raised false charges of CIA affiliation against individual American reporters as part of a continuing diplomatic game that often follows the ups and downs of Soviet‑American relations. The latest such charge by the Russians—against Christopher Wren of the New York Times and Alfred Friendly Jr., formerly of Newsweek, has no basis in fact, they insist.

CIA officials acknowledge, however, that such charges will persist as long as the CIA continues to use journalistic cover and maintain covert affiliations with individuals in the profession. But even an absolute prohibition against Agency use of journalists would not free reporters from suspicion, according to many Agency officials. “Look at the Peace Corps,” said one source. “We have had no affiliation there and they [foreign governments] still throw them out”

The Secret Government Speaks: Bob Woodward of the CIA Issues Public Warning to POTUS Over Iranian Olive Branch

The Cryptocracy are really stepping up the aggressive overtones towards the Adminstration, and have wheeled out one of their heavy hitting sacred cows to do so, issuing a public warning to the President to STOP what he is doing in the Persian Gulf.

The budget negotitions have NOTHING to do with global troop or force deployments; this is the COMING year's budget that is under discussion, the operational costs of the deployment are procured, paid for, ring-fenced and firewalled.

He's not holding back on the Truman's deployment to Hormuz to save a few dollars on gas.

That's absolutely ABSURD.

And Bob Woodward is a Navy veteran. Supposedly. 

He knows how large warships work, he knows how the Pentagon works and he knows how the US Military and National Security apparatuses work.

Woodward is a man who knows how business is done, covertly. He understands the nuance of international diplomacy and statecraft, and this is a move by him to wreck what the interests he represents see being attempted. This is not about austerity.

Make no mistake - that is NOT the reason that POTUS is not sending the ship on it's long-scheduled patrol, and there is no way that Bob Woodward does not know that.

There is another reason for doing this that the Administration has not stated and which Woodward knows but for some reason does not want to publically acknowledge, invoking instead this ludicrous divertion of smoke and mirrors, alleging that the Democrat is playing politics with the military and irresponsibly weakening US Military Power Projection in the world's number one geopolitical hotspot.

It's NOT that. So what is it?

Obama is choosing not to send an enonormous 116,000 tonne Nimitz-class supercarrier to it's scheduled patrol on-station 8 miles off the Iranian coastline.

This is a massive and symbolic gesture of DE-ESCALATION in US-Iranian Relations.

And the Secret Government are MAD as HELL....

The staunchly conservative Bob Woodward grew up in Wheaton, Illinois.
A good student at Yale, he was ultimately one of fifteen seniors "tapped" for one of that university's secret societies, Book and Snake, a cut below the more infamous Skull and Bones, but the top of the second-tier fraternities.

The "Floating Pentagon" Assignment

"Three days after graduating from Yale, Woodward was sent by the U.S. Navy to Norfolk, Virginia, where he was commissioned as an ensign by none other than U.S. Senator George Smathers from Florida. Bob's assignment was to a very special ship, called a "floating Pentagon," the U.S.S. Wright.

The ship was a National Emergency Command Ship-a place where a President and cabinet could preside from in the event of a nuclear war. It had elaborate and sophisticated communications and data processing capabilities. It had a smaller replica of the war room at the Pentagon.

It ran under what was called SIOP-Single Integrated Operation Plan. For example, in the event of nuclear war, the Wright was third in line to take full command if the two ahead of it, the Strategic Air Command in Omaha (SAC) and NORAD, were rendered incommunicado. Woodward-straightfacedly-told authors Colodny and Gettlin (Silent Coup) that he guessed he was picked for the ship because he had been a radio ham as a kid.

Aboard the Wright, Woodward had top secret "crypto" clearance-the same clearance researcher Harold Weisberg found had been assigned to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was himself in the Marines. Such clearance in Woodward's case gave him full access to nearly all classified materials and codes on the ship. Woodward also ran the ship's newspaper. Woodward has insisted that possessing a high security clearance is not necessarily indicative of intelligence work.

The Wright carried men from each of the military services, as well as CIA personnel. One of Havill's government sources reported that the CIA would likely have had additional informants on a ship of such sensitivity, adding that "the rivalry between the services was intense."

After a two and a half year stint on the Wright, Woodward was assigned to go to Vietnam. Woodward wrote the Pentagon asking to serve on a destroyer. The wish was granted. One naval captain told Havill that it seemed reasonable Woodward would have a little pull from his previous duty to avoid getting assigned to Vietnam. Another former naval officer disputed that, saying "Nobody got out of going to Vietnam in 1968."

But Woodward did. He was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Fox, based in Southern California. The personnel on board the Fox included an intelligence team, many of whom had studied Russian and Asian languages at the famous armed services language school in Monterey, California.

By 1968, Woodward ran the ship's radio team. In 1969, Woodward was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal for his communications work. From there, Woodward moved on to a Pentagon assignment, a job that included briefing top officers in the government. Admiral Thomas Moorer and former secretary of defense Melvin Laird are both on record noting that Woodward briefed Al Haig at the White House during this period. What is suspicious is Woodward's semi-admittance to Hougan that he had done some briefing, and his complete denial to Colodny and Gettlin that he had ever briefed anyone at the White House. Havill notes:

Considering the evidence, Bob Woodward's denial more strongly suggests intelligence than it does his uninvolvement in White House briefings.
Woodward's secrecy about his past, his choice of associates, and what is known of his activities caused Havill to write:

The question, then, begs itself once more. Was Bob Woodward ever a free-lance or retained Central Intelligence Agency liaison officer, informant or operative . . . ? This author got various forms of affirmative opinions from intelligence experts. It would explain his assignment to the Wright and his misleading statements to interviewers. It would make understandable his being able to get out of going to Vietnam in 1968, his extension for an additional year at the Pentagon, his being chosen to brief at the White House and his denials as well. It would also help explain his subsequent high-level friendships with leaders of the U.S. military and the CIA.

It would also explain the role Woodward and Bernstein wittingly or unwittingly played in keeping the CIA's nose clean while making sure the world saw the President's nose was dirty....

Obama’s sequester deal-changer

By Bob Woodward, Published: February 22

Bob Woodward (woodwardb@washpost.com) is an associate editor of The Post. His latest book is “The Price of Politics.” Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this column.

Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”

A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Lew’s nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: “Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lew responded, “and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States.”

“Did you make the suggestion?” Burr asked.

“Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action.”

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president’s statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: “Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.”

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a “meat-cleaver approach” that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity.

“The sequester was something that was discussed,” Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, “and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward.”

This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong.

Why does this matter?

First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.)

Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew’s point, a senior White House official said Friday, “The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases.”

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

© The Washington Post Company

Jobs

"’Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.

Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that.

The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.

Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ’Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’

Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ”freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

"One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized.

He is too intelligent.

He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly.

The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear."

Roger Cook of The Cook Report: Ramsey Yousef, 9/11 Warnings Ignored,Murdoch, Nuclear Proliferation and Satanic Ritual Abuse

The Rise And Fall Of The TV Journalist

This is a short, and possibly unfair story of the rise and fall of the TV Journalist as a hero...

If you go back 50 years ago, television journalists were creeps. Above all, to politicians.

They followed the rule of their boss, Lord Reith: The BBC has said it is for The People; the government is for The People, so it follows that the BBC must be for the government.

With the questioning of authority in the 1960s, this began to change - but it was Watergate that transformed everything. Two journalists, Woodard and Bernstein exposed corruption at the highest levels of government, and suddenly, TV journalists realised what they had been born to do - to expose the dark heart of government, big business and bureaucracy. 

It was the start of a heroic age, in which TV journalists revealed the sinister forces that WE couldn't see that those in power wanted to hide from us.

Out of it came much great journalism; but then, an event happened that proved that despite their great confidence, the journalists didn't know everything - the Berlin Wall sudden collapsed, which was one of the biggest events of the twentieth century - and NONE of them had seen it coming....

With the end of the Cold War, the journalists were thrown into a new and terrifying world - where all the old certainties of good and bad, right and left began to blur.... in an unnerving way.

It destroyed their ability yo tell us their simple, moral fables.

So as a way out, they came up with a new theory:- they had actually been patronising and elitist when they had lectured us about corruption in high places; instead, all stories in future should reflect OUR experience.

And attempts to explain WHY things happen were abandoned.

A classic example was anew kind of investigative journalist, Donal Macintyre.

He set out to show what it was like to get mugged.

He took his mobile phone out onto the streets of Brixton; for three nights, he desperately tried to get it snatched, until finally, someone gave him his story.

And as Donal cried, we knew that he was sharing OUR pain.

But there was one final step in this transformation of journalism. We cut out the middile man: - The Jorunalist.

Now, our presenters plead with us to send in our photos and videos. They proudly present it as a new kind of open democracy. 

But in reality, it's something very different.

Because the journalists don't understand what is going on in today's complex, chaotic world, they have had to revert to their old habit of finding someone in authority who will tell them.

But this time, it's not the politicians, it's US, the audience, who they have turned to.

The only problem is that we don't have a clue what's going on; particularly as the journalists have given up on THEIR job of explaining the world to US.

Major Rudolf Anderson, Jr., United States Air Force

"The President of the United States of America, authorized by Title 10, Section 8742, United States Code, takes pride in presenting the Air Force Cross (Posthumously) to Major Rudolf Anderson, Jr., United States Air Force, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving as Pilot of a U-2 airplane with the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, Strategic Air Command (SAC), from 15 October 1962 to 27 October 1962.

During this period of great national crisis, Major Anderson, flying an unescorted, unarmed aircraft, lost his life while participating in one of several aerial reconnaissance missions over Cuba. While executing these aerial missions,

Major Anderson made photographs which provided the United States government with conclusive evidence of the introduction of long-range offensive missiles into Cuba and which materially assisted our leaders in charting the nation's military and diplomatic course.

Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of the enemy, Major Anderson reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force."

Eisenhower and the Unspeakable

"I must tell you a secret. When I made my first report I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and well... and now just look how many silly things the Americans have said."

Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev

"In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city.

At the end of that period, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet Union would turn over to East Germany complete control of all lines of communication with West Berlin; the western powers then would have access to West Berlin only by permission of the East German government.

The United States, United Kingdom, and France replied to this ultimatum by firmly asserting their determination to remain in West Berlin and to maintain their legal right of free access to that city.

In May 1959 the Soviet Union withdrew its deadline and instead met with the Western powers in a Big Four foreign ministers' conference.

Although the three-month-long sessions failed to reach any important agreements, they did open the door to further negotiations and led to Premier Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September 1959.

At the end of this visit, Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower stated jointly that the most important issue in the world was general disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and "all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiations."

Khrushchev and Eisenhower had a few days together at Camp David, the presidential retreat.

There the leaders of the two superpowers talked frankly with each other. "There was nothing more inadvisable in this situation," said Eisenhower, "than to talk about ultimatums, since both sides knew very well what would happen if an ultimatum were to be implemented."

Khrushchev responded that he did not understand how a peace treaty could be regarded by the American people as a "threat to peace."

Eisenhower admitted that the situation in Berlin was "abnormal" and that "human affairs got very badly tangled at times."

Khrushchev came away with the impression that a deal was possible over Berlin, and they agreed to continue the dialogue at a summit in Paris in May 1960.

However, the Paris Summit that was to resolve the Berlin question was cancelled in the fallout from Gary Powers's failed U-2 spy flight on 1 May 1960."

Gary Powers Flight Was Sabotaged To Fail!
Col. L.Fletcher Prouty (Ret.)

What I am writing now is already covered in detail and with references in my books and articles. I am writing today because of the good questions you have received and to put the "POWERS U-2" subject on firm ground. For more refer to my book "The Secret Team" or the many essays on the CD-ROM 

The Lockheed U-2 aerial reconnaissance aircraft was ordered after meetings that took place in the Pentagon between Kelly Johnson of Lockheed, Gen. Ken Bergquist of the Air Force and Gen. Charles Cabel, Deputy Director of the CIA in late 1954, and into 1955. 

An Air Force officer in the Pentagon, in the same office as I, worked with them on this special project. Therefore for all practical purposes the U-2 was an Air Force aircraft, and was covered for clandestine reconnaissance purposes by the CIA. As a result of National Security Council Directive #5412 the U.S. Military Services were prohibited from operating clandestine activities. I was responsible for providing the military support for other military aircraft in a similar, for the clandestine activities of the CIA and under CIA cover. 

By 1960 President Eisenhower's biggest wish was to end his presidential service with a massive world around "Crusade for Peace". For example, more than one million people had gathered in New Delhi to honor his visit to India. 

A significant step along this crusade was to be a High-Power Summit Conference in Paris on May 1, 1960 between Eisenhower, Macmillan, DeGaulle and Khrushchev; to be followed by the most massive of all meetings with Eisenhower as a guest of Khrushchev in Moscow in mid summer 1960. This was to be the goal of his "Crusade for Peace." 

Among the "Powers that be" there were those who did not favor that close collaboration between those leaders at that time. They took action to interfere with this plan for a "Summit Conference" and for its Moscow follow-up... in the following manner. 

Sometime earlier, a CIA scheduled U-2 had made a "belly" landing near the CIA U-2 base, Atsugi, Japan. Quite "incidentally" this was the U-2 base where a young U.S. Marine, Lee Oswald, had been assigned. 

Because the U-2 had not been seriously damaged it was shipped back to Lockheed for repair in California. Later it was returned to service and it "just happened" to be one of the available U-2's on the flight-line of the Peshawar air base in Pakistan that morning of May 1, 1960 when Captain Gary Powers was selected to fly it across the Soviet Union. 

We know now that during its preparation for this flight this U-2 had been stripped of its "TOP SECRET" Lundahl aerial reconnaissance camera. (That camera was too valuable to lose on a flight over the Soviet Union.) Furthermore, we have learned that when Captain Powers was given his pre-flight briefing and his medical exam, and other orders he then dressed in the special flight suit for U-2 pilots that had no pockets and no identifying labels of any kind. And, we now know that after his landing, yes... landing, not crash, near Sverdlovsk, the Soviets discovered, packed in his parachute, between the seat and the folded chute, all of his identification papers and such. He even had valuables ostensibly to trade for assistance if captured. (The list is too long; but he had a whole bag full of identification and other gear that is prohibited to "spy" pilots. This list with photos is available.) He was uninjured, and his plane had been only slightly damaged by a "belly" landing. 

On May 30, 1960 Mr. Allen Dulles, Director, Central Intelligence appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, under oath, stated that the U-2 had not been shot dawn. It is well known that if the U-2 had been hit by a missile or gunfire at its service altitude it would have exploded in that thin air. 

Powers himself has said that he felt a rumble toward the rear of the aircraft, and that his engine quit. Even U-2 pilots in those days had not been told that their extremely high altitude operation required a special pure hydrogen additive to their more ordinary fuel. If the U-2 ran out of this hydrogen additive, at altitude, the engine would flare out and it could not be re-started until it had descended to a much lower altitude. 

Powers knew that and began to let down, and then found that he was surrounded, at the lower altitude, by Soviet interceptors. He had but one choice...LAND. He did, and survived to tell his story. 

This is an interesting story because so much of what we have heard and read has been contrived to cover actual events. For example: once the Paris Summit Conference of May 1, 1960 had been scheduled the CIA was ordered to ground all "Over" flights of Communist territory - worldwide". The U-2's were grounded. I was responsible for supporting a large number of "over" flights" primarily in Asia to support the Tibetans who were being invaded by the Chinese, and to support major lower-level reconnaissance programs operating out of Taiwan, Thailand, and a few other places. Despite the fact that many of our flights were solely humanitarian, especially for the Khambas in Eastern Tibet, my special request, to the National Security Council, for permission to continue those flights was denied until after the Paris meetings. 

This was a strict and blanket order to us all. With that in mind, who was it then with the authority to "order the Powers U-2 flight"? It had to have been ordered from a very high echelon of the true power structure above the customary military or civilian elements of the government. 

Think back: 

a) Who (used here in the plural: WHO?) ordered that crashed U-2 in Japan to be repaired and to be refitted? 

b) Who knew so much about the U-2 that they knew that the U-2 was equipped with the finest, and most valuable high-altitude camera, the "Lundahl"? 

c) Who had the authority to order that precious camera to be saved in favor of a standard U.S.Air Force model that was used on May 1, 1960? 

d) Who knew enough about the CIA-operated U-2s to know that they functioned at extreme altitude on a mix of regular jet fuel and pure hydrogen? 

e) Who ordered the hydrogen bottle (like a fire extinguisher) to be half-filled, or half-empty? 

f) Who was familiar enough with U-2 operations to know that all U-2 pilots before take-off had been stripped to the bone, and dressed in a specially made flight suit with no pockets, etc.? 

g) Who was able to have someone else assemble Powers personal "pocket" belongings and other selected items such as gold rings, identification, etc. and pack them between the seat of Powers' chute and its folded fabric below? 

h) who had the authority to set this whole train of events that involved so many other skilled people, in motion early that morning from Peshawar, Pakistan? 

Scenario by L. Fletcher Prouty and based upon considerable "Over Flight" operations and support experience, 1955-1963. 

http://www.prouty.org/sabotage.html

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"

"On May 18, 1987, President Reagan met with his speechwriters and responded to the speech by saying, "I thought it was a good, solid draft."

White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker objected, saying it sounded "extreme" and "unpresidential," and Deputy US National Security Advisor Colin Powell agreed.

Reagan then made his speech at the BrandenburgGate, in front of two panes of bulletproof glass protecting him from potential snipers in East Berlin.



What, you mean by violating the UN Charter?

Why would you encourage the violation of East German sovereignty by destroying property and attacking their borders?

It's not a Russian wall, it's a German wall - they put it up, it was their idea, it's their property, their borders, their national security and their country.

In what way is it down to the Soviet Premier to unilaterally move to carry out an act of destruction inside a completely different sovereign nation?

That's an act of war!

Talk to the Germans.



In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city.

At the end of that period, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet Union would turn over to East Germany complete control of all lines of communication with West Berlin; the western powers then would have access to West Berlin only by permission of the East German government.

The United States, United Kingdom, and France replied to this ultimatum by firmly asserting their determination to remain in West Berlin and to maintain their legal right of free access to that city.

In May 1959 the Soviet Union withdrew its deadline and instead met with the Western powers in a Big Four foreign ministers' conference.

Although the three-month-long sessions failed to reach any important agreements, they did open the door to further negotiations and led to Premier Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September 1959.

At the end of this visit, Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower stated jointly that the most important issue in the world was general disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and "all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiations."

Khrushchev and Eisenhower had a few days together at Camp David, the presidential retreat.

There the leaders of the two superpowers talked frankly with each other. "There was nothing more inadvisable in this situation," said Eisenhower, "than to talk about ultimatums, since both sides knew very well what would happen if an ultimatum were to be implemented."

Khrushchev responded that he did not understand how a peace treaty could be regarded by the American people as a "threat to peace."

Eisenhower admitted that the situation in Berlin was "abnormal" and that "human affairs got very badly tangled at times."


Khrushchev came away with the impression that a deal was possible over Berlin, and they agreed to continue the dialogue at a summit in Paris in May 1960. However, the Paris Summit that was to resolve the Berlin question was cancelled in the fallout from Gary Powers's failed U-2 spy flight on 1 May 1960."


"US and UK sources had expected the Soviet sector to be sealed off from West Berlin, but were surprised by how long the East Germans took for such a move. They considered the wall as an end to concerns about a GDR/Soviet retaking or capture of the whole of Berlin; the wall would presumably have been an unnecessary project if such plans were afloat. Thus they concluded that the possibility of a Soviet military conflict over Berlin decreased.


The East German government claimed that the Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" (German: "antifaschistischer Schutzwall") intended to dissuade aggression from the West.

(Their fears about the failure of denazification were entirely justified)

Another official justification was the activities of western agents in Eastern Europe.

(That would be the Gehlen Organisation and the Boorman Group)

The Eastern German government also claimed that West Berliners were buying out state-subsidized goods in East Berlin.

(Ecconomic warfare is the Capitalist way)

In some European capitals at the time there was a deep anxiety over prospects for a reunified Germany. In September 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pleaded with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev not to let the Berlin Wall fall and confided that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.

"We do not want a united Germany. This would lead to a change to postwar borders and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security", Thatcher told Gorbachev.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, French President François Mitterrand warned Thatcher that a unified Germany could make more ground than Adolf Hitler ever had and that Europe would have to bear the consequences."

Why You Should Give Obama the Benefit of the Doubt

There is a secret war being waged in plain sight between the Cryptocracy, the rich and powerful Military Industrial Malthusian billionaires who run the world and the President of the United States.

Typically, they kill or neutralise anyone who tries to end wars, extend or preserve social welfare, introduce universal healthcare, protect jobs and stand up for working people.

So far, having fooled them into thinking he works for them, he is successfully kicking their ass.

But they are fighting back HARD. And they don't care how many dead babies they have to pitchfork onto the front lawn of the White House to make him look bad and destroy him politically.

A Short Film about Richard Nixon — Paranoia And Moral Panics

"This is a film about how all of us have become Richard Nixon.

Just like him, we have all become paranoid weirdos.

Its the story of how television and newspapers did this to us and how it has paralysed the ability of politics to transform the world for the better"...





The President does NOT control the country, and he is only in charge to the extent he is allowed to be.

Those men who try to fulfil their mandate and job description usually end up dead.

Unless they are EXTREMELY astute, and a good and tireless scholar of history.




Or studied revolutionary politics and the strategic paramilitary history of counter-revolutionary covert subversion by the forces of reactionary international finance capital at the feet of Billy Ayers and spent four decades preparing to do the job, and not get taken out.

They got Jack. They got Bobby.

They did for Ted.

They sucker-punched Carter.

They hamstrung and blackmailed Clinton by making him appear central (rather than peripheral to their own worst scadals.

As Jimmy Carter said of Watergate and how he honed his art in 1974:

"I read a lot and I listen a lot."

Best advice ever offered in the history of politics.: Many times bitten, forever shy. Learn well from the mistakes of those you admire you came before you. And pull your enemy in close to you that you may know of his scheming before his intruiges to injure you bear their rancid fruits....

Vive la Revolution.

Ron Paul: Globalist

"We have Nothing to fear from globalism" (C-SPAN March 13th 2001)

“There’s nothing to fear from globalism, free trade and a single worldwide currency.... 

The effort in recent decades to unify government surveillance over all world trade and international financial transactions through the UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO, ICC, the OECD, and the Bank of International Settlements can never substitute for a peaceful world based on true free trade, freedom of movement, a single but sound market currency, and voluntary contracts with private property rights.... 

The ultimate solution will only come with the rejection of fiat money worldwide, and a restoration of commodity money. Commodity money if voluntarily and universally accepted could give us a single world currency requiring no money managers, no manipulators orchestrating a man-made business cycle with rampant price inflation.”

"Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya are with them, all of them with shield andhelmet;": Ronald Reagan and the End Times

"I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all My mountains,” says the Lord God. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother.

And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.

Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations.

Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”’

“Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “On that day when My people Israel dwell safely, will you not know it? 15

Then you will come from your place out of the far north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great company and a mighty army. 16

You will come up against My people Israel like a cloud, to cover the land. It will be in the latter days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me, when I am hallowed in you, O Gog, before their eyes"

9 “Then those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out and set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and bucklers, the bows and arrows, the javelins and spears; and they will make fires with them for seven years. 10 They will not take wood from the field nor cut down any from the forests, because they will make fires with the weapons; and they will plunder those who plundered them, and pillage those who pillaged them,” says the Lord God.

"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off.

Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.

For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapon."

Kaufman

Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)

"I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist.

On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.

I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.

I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.

On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that

“500 of them were militants.”

That was the reply of a Nazi.

I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin.

Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah.

It is too late for that.

They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine.

Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him.

Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006.

Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town.

The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:

“You make peace by talking to your enemies.”

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve.

They are not simply war criminals; they are fools."

"It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews, not to his repulsive Government. His actions are staining the star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, Mendelssohn and Mahler, Sergei Eisenstein and Billy Wilder, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps and now involved in killing Palestinians once again."

I noticed just yesterday this little bit of Black Hat SEO;

Sir Gerald Kuafman is one of the most influential and prominent leading Jewish, Zionist critics of Isreali domestic and foreign policy.

If you begin typing "Gerald Kaufman" into Google, the autocomplete will suggest as the top two searchterm hits "Gerald Kaufman paedo" and "Gerald Kaufman rumours"

Now, I wonder who could have possibly arrange for that to happen....