Who Lost Russia?

Why isn't this being asked? Who lost Russia?

Joe McCarthy and Whitaker Chambers (actually a former Communist himself!) slurred U.S.' Chinese diplomat, Edmund Clubb, and others in State as being crypto-commies or pinks, allowing China to be taken over by Communists in the late 1940s.

Condoleeza Rice, our Secretary of State, after her failure as NSC Director (allowing the 9/11 attacks), first tutored Bush in foreign policy, since he didn't know who was in charge of Pakistan when he was running for President, got her Ph.D. as a Soviet expert! Good for her that a 'former' KGB man had just taken over there, using fake false-flag self-inflicted terrorism to seize power.

Maybe she only knows what to do with a Soviet Union, and not a Yeltsin-style free (or free-for-all) Russia, or a socialist-reformed Soviet State like under Gorbachev, and so the KGB-veteran Putin just seems so much more familiar. Or maybe Condi and Bushie see in Putin something that they see in how they like things to work.

It was disappointing to hear Bush say this after Putin was already quite shady. Nine months before Bush met Putin, the Russian leader allowed the Kursk to sink without rescue and when family members were at a town hall with the Navy a distraught mother who told the ranking officer he should take his medal off as she screamed from the audience found herself getting a dose of old school Soviet-era shut-up-and-go-to-sleep-juice.







Shortly after being grabbed and jabbed, she collapsed and was carried out and the photographers were ejected. Days later she 'emerged,' giving a statement to deny being drugged, but media were not allowed to see her or speak with her in person. Maybe the Russians gave her a nice pay off, an offer she couldn't refuse.

It was in this context that Bush2 said about he and Putin:

"We've got common interests. And from that basis we will seize the moment to make a difference in the world. That's why he ran for the presidency, and it's why I ran for the presidency."

Of course, as we'll see later,* how far Putin had to go to begin to 'make a difference' in his country and how he got to run for re-election after forcing Yeltsin to appoint him in late 1999 as a strong man in the aftermath of the apartment bombings pinned on the Chechens, allowing for a state of emergency to emerge and the revival of war with the Muslim province.

And then this kind of strange Bush remark :
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country..."



What did Bush see in Putin's eyes? The cold glare of his CIA father's scheming and putsches? Or perhaps his own?

From Wikipedia

Starting from 1998, people from state security services came to power as Prime Ministers of Russia: a KGB veteran Yevgeny Primakov; former FSB Director Sergei Stepashin; and finally former FSB Director Vladimir Putin who was appointed in August 8, 1999.

In August 7, Shamil Basaev began incursion to Dagestan which was regarded by Anna Politkovskaya [she was the reporter-friend of Litvenenko (he got murdered in November with Polonium, accusing Putin on his deathbed from England), and she got killed shortly after reputedly giving him documents about how the Beslan School Terror attack might have been botched on purpose or worse, an inside job... Litvenenko got killed because, as a former intelligence agent, refused to kill his countrymen -- and blew the lid off how the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings were not done by Chechen terrorists but by the FSB when Putin was in charge! -editor] as a provocation initiated from Moscow to start war in Chechnya, because Russian forces provided safe passage for Islamic fighters back to Chechnya. ...

In September 4 [1999] a series of four Russian apartment bombings has began. Three FSB agents were caught while planting a large bomb at the basement of an apartment complex in the town of Ryazan in September 22. That was last of the bombings. Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Rushailo congratulated police with preventing the terrorist act, but FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev had declared that the incident was a training exercise just an hour later, when he had learned that the FSB agents are caught.


Next day, Boris Yeltsin received a demand from 24 Russian governors to transfer all state powers to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to Sergei Yushenkov. The Second Chechen War began in September 24. This war made Prime Minister Vladimir Putin very popular, although he was previously unknown to the public, and helped him to win a landslide victory in the presidential elections in March 26, 2000.

That was a successful coup d'état organized by the FSB to bring Vladimir Putin to power, according to former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov, and journalist David Satter, a Johns Hopkins University and Hoover Institute scholar. All attempts to independently investigate the Russian apartment bombings were unsuccessful. Journalist Artyom Borovik died in a suspicious plane crash. Vice-chairman of Sergei Kovalev commission created to investigate the bombings Sergei Yushenkov was assassinated. Another member of this commission Yuri Shchekochikhin died presumably from poisoning by thallium. Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin hired by relatives of victims was arrested and convicted by Russian authorities for allegedly disclosing state secrets.

FSB as ruling political elite

According to former Russian Duma member Konstantin Borovoi, "Putin's appointment is the culmination of the KGB's crusade for power. This is its finale. Now the KGB runs the country." Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Study of Elites, has found that 78% of 1,016 leading political figures in Russia have served previously in organizations affiliated with KGB or FSB. She said: "If in the Soviet period and the first post-Soviet period, the KGB and FSB people were mainly involved in security issues, now half are still involved in security but the other half are involved in business, political parties, NGOs, regional governments, even culture... They started to use all political institutions." "Like cockroaches spreading from a squalid apartment to the rest of the building, they have eventually gained a firm foothold everywhere," said Sergei Grigoryants, a Soviet dissident.

This situation is very similar to that of the former Soviet Union where all key positions in the government were occupied by members of the Communist Party. The KGB or FSB members usually remain in the "acting reserve" even if they formally leave the organization ("acting reserve" members receive second FSB salary, follow FSB instructions, and remain "above the law" being protected by the organization, according to Kryshtanovskaya). As Vladimir Putin said, "There is no such thing as a former KGB man". GRU defector and writer Victor Suvorov explained that members of Russian security services can leave such organizations only in a coffin, because they know too much. Soon after becoming prime minister of Russia, Putin also claimed that "A group of FSB colleagues dispatched to work undercover in the government has successfully completed its first mission."

The idea about KGB as a political force rather than a security organization has been discussed by journalist John Barron, historian Victor Suvorov, retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, and Evgenia Albats, a Harvard graduate and writer on KGB subjects, who was assigned to examine the KGB archives after the failed Soviet coup attempt of 1991. According to Albats, most KGB leaders, including Lavrenty Beria, Yuri Andropov, and Vladimir Kryuchkov, have always struggled for the power with the Communist Party and manipulated the communist leaders. Moreover, FSB has formal membership, military discipline, an extensive network of civilian informants, hardcore ideology, and support of population (60% of Russians trust FSB), which makes it a perfect totalitarian political party. However the FSB party does not advertise its leading role because the secrecy is an important advantage.

With regard to death of Aleksander Litvinenko, the highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa stated that there is "a band of over 6,000 former officers of the KGB — one of the most criminal organizations in history — who grabbed the most important positions in the federal and local governments, and who are perpetuating Stalin’s, Khrushchev’s, and Brezhnev’s practice of secretly assassinating people who stand in their way."

Suppression of internal dissent

Many Russian opposition lawmakers and investigative journalists have been assassinated while investigating corruption and alleged crimes conducted by FSB and state authorities: Sergei Yushenkov, ‎Yuri Shchekochikhin, Galina Starovoitova, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, Paul Klebnikov, Nadezhda Chaikova, Nina Yefimova, and many others. Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky believes that murders of writers Yuri Shchekochikhin (author of "Slaves of KGB"), Anna Politkovskaya, and Aleksander Litvinenko show that FSB has returned to the practice of political assassinations which were conducted in the past by Thirteenth KGB Department. Just before his death, Alexander Litvinenko accused Vladimir Putin of personally ordering the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya.

An increasing number of scientists have been accused of espionage and illegal technology exports by FSB during the last decade.... All these people are either under arrest or serve long jail sentences. Human rights groups also identified Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a political prisoner.

....There are credible reports that FSB use drugs to erase memory of people who had access to secret information

Criticism of anti-terrorist operations

Use of excessive force by FSB spetsnaz was criticized with regard to resolving Moscow theater hostage crisis and Beslan hostage crisis. According to Sergey Kovalev, Russian government kills its citizens without any hesitation. He provided the following examples: murdering of hostages by the poison gas during Moscow theater hostage crisis; burning school children alive by spetsnaz soldiers who used RPO flamethrowers during Beslan school hostage crisis; crimes committed by death squads in Chechnya.... Anna Politkovskaya and Irina Hakamada, who conducted unofficial negotiations with terrorists, [were assassinated after they] stated that the hostage takers were not going to use their bombs to kill the people and destroy the building during Moscow theater hostage crisis. This was supported by the subsequent events when the Chechens did not use their bombs.

It is also possible that FSB has returned to the old NKVD practice of creating puppet rebel forces ...Former FSB officer Aleksander Litvinenko stated in a June 2003 interview, with the Australian SBS television programme Dateline, that two of the Chechen terrorists involved in the 2002 Moscow theatre hostage crisis — whom he named as "Abdul the Bloody" and "Abu Bakar" — were working for the FSB, and that the agency manipulated the rebels into staging the attack. Litvinenko said: "[w]hen they tried to find [Abdul the Bloody and Abu Bakar] among the dead terrorists, they weren't there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among Chechens organised the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released." The story about FSB connections with the hostage takers was confirmed by Mikhail Trepashkin. Yulia Latynina and other journalists also accused FSB of staging many smaller terrorism acts, such as market place bombing in the city of Astrakhan, bus stops bombings in the city of Voronezh, and the blowing up the Moscow-Grozny train, whereas innocent people were convicted or killed. Journalist Boris Stomakhin claimed that bombing in Moscow metro in 2004 was probably organized by FSB agents rather than by the unknown man who called to Kavkaz Center and claimed his responsibility. Stomakin was arrested and imprisoned for writing this and other articles.

....

According to Anna Politkovskaya, most of the "Islamic terrorism cases" were fabricated by the government, and the confessions have been obtained through the torture of innocent suspects. "The plight of those sentenced for Islamic terrorism today is the same as that of the political prisoners of the Gulag Archipelago... Russia continues to be infected by Stalinism", she said.

Alleged involvement in organized crime

Former FSB officer Aleksander Litvinenko accused FSB personnel of involvement in organized crime, such as drug trafficking and contract killings. It was noted that FSB, far from being a reliable instrument in the fight against organized crime, is institutionally a part of the problem, due not only to its co-optation and penetration by criminal elements, but to its own absence of a legal bureaucratic culture and use of crime as an instrument of state policy [

International affairs

FSB collaborates very closely with secret police services from some former Soviet Republics, especially Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The FSB is accused of working to undermine governments of Baltic states and Georgia. During 2006 Georgian-Russian espionage controversy several Russian GRU officers were accused by Georgian authorities of preparations to commit sabotage and terrorist acts. Historian J. R. Nyquist believes that "The KGB president of Russia wants to reestablish the USSR...."

Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission Richard Butler found than many Russian state-controlled companies are involved in the Oil-for-Food Programme-related fraud. "

...And so did we and Kofi Anan's kid.

Here is Wikipedia's take on the Russian Apartment Bombings of 1999 and the ascent of Putin:

"The first bombing, which did not target an apartment, occurred in Moscow, the Russian capital, on August 31, 1999. A bomb exploded in a mall, killing one person and leaving 40 others wounded. A note was left saying the bombing was a result of increasing Russian consumerism.

On September 4, 1999, a car bomb detonated outside an apartment building housing Russian soldiers in the city of Buynaksk, in the province of Dagestan. Sixty-four people were killed and dozens of others were wounded. Russia blamed separatists from Chechnya, and days later invaded the province of Dagestan.

On September 8, 1999, 300 kg to 400 kg of explosives detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in southeast Moscow. The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 94 people inside and wounded 150 others. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. A caller to a Russian news agency said the blast was a response to recent Russian bombing of Chechen and Dagestan villages in response to the invasion of Dagestan.

Moscow, Kashirskoye highway

September 13, 1999, was supposed to be a day of mourning for the victims of the previous bomb attacks. But on that day, a large bomb exploded at an apartment on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete hundreds of yards away. In all, 118 people died and 200 were wounded.

It was at this time when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared a war against the "illegal military units" in Chechnya. Though there was not much evidence pointing to Chechens, preparations were made by the Russian military forces to re-enter the province and to strip the Chechen government of its powers.

The motive for the forceful solution was clinched when a truck bomb exploded September 16, 1999, outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people.

In response, Russia launched air strikes on Chechen rebel positions, oil refineries, and other buildings inside that province. By the end of September it was clear another war over Chechnya was underway, and by October Russian troops had entered the province. The attacks would not be the last in Russia or Chechnya.

Ryazan incident

On the evening of September 22, 1999, an alert resident of an apartment building in the town of Ryazan noticed strangers moving heavy sugar sacks into the basement from a car. Militia (the local police) were called to the site and all residents were evacuated. The first test of the powder from the sacks showed the presence of an explosive. All roads from the town were brought under heavy surveillance but no leads were found. A telephone service employee tapped into long-distance phone conversations managed to detect a conversation in which an out-of-town person suggested to take care and to watch for patrols. That person's number was found to belong to an FSB office in Moscow.

Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB) declared that the incident was a training exercise forty-eight hours later. The original chemical test was declared inaccurate due to contamination of the analysis apparatus from a previous test. The public inquiry committee could not come to a complete conclusion on this and other incidents due to incoherent answers from federal bodies. The General Prosecutor's office has closed the criminal investigation of the Ryazan incident in April 2000.

Official investigation

According to the official investigation, the apartment bombings were planned and organized by Amir Khattab and Abu Umar, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents, both of whom were later killed. The planning was carried out in Khattab's guerilla camps in Chechnya, "Caucasus" in Shatoy and "Taliban" in Avtury.

This particular operation was led by an ethnic Karachay Achemez Gochiyayev. The explosives were prepared in Urus-Martan, Chechnya at the fertilizer factory by mixing hexogen, TNT, aluminium powder and nitre with sugar. From there they have been sent to a food storage facility in Kislovodsk which was managed by an uncle of one of the terrorists, Yusuf Krymshakhalov. Another conspirator, Ruslan Magayayev, had leased a KamAZ truck which the sacks were stored in for two months. After everything was planned, the participants were organized into several groups which transported the explosives to different cities. Most of the people participating were not ethnic Chechens. [Most were subsequently killed. editor]

....
Attempts at independent investigation

The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident. Duma, on a pro-Kremlin party block vote, voted to seal all materials related to Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation of what really happened. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have since died in apparent assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003 respectively. The Commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin has been arrested in October 2003 to become one of the better-known political prisoners in Russia. Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis, was brutally beaten in November 2003 and two years later on 3rd of November 2005 dies in the hospital after a car accident.

Theory of FSB involvement

The Ryazan incident on September 22, 1999 prompted the initial speculation in the Western press that the Moscow bombings were organized by the FSB, the Russian domestic intelligence service.

The FSB were caught by local police and citizens in the city of Ryazan planting a bomb with a detonator in the basement of an apartment building at the address of 14/16 Novosyelov on the night of September 22, 1999. Explosives experts arriving at the scene found that the bomb tested positive for hexogen (i.e., RDX). On September 24, 1999, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, said on the NTV channel that the bomb in the basement of the apartment had been a dummy and that the FSB had been conducting a test. The FSB officially stated that the gas analyzer that detected hexogen had malfunctioned, and that the substance in the dummy bomb was sugar.

....

Yuri Tkachenko, the explosives expert who defused the bomb claimed that it was real. Tkachenko suggested that the explosives, including a timer, power source, and detonator were genuine military equipment and obviously prepared by a professional. He also alleged that the gas analyzer that tested the vapors coming from the sacks unmistakably indicated the presence of hexogen. The police officers who answered the original call and discovered the bomb also insisted that the incident was not an exercise and that it was obvious from its appearance that the substance in the bomb was not sugar.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent who was dismissed from the service, accused FSB agents with coordination of the apartment block bombings in his book Gang from Lubyanka sponcored by the exhiled tycoon Boris Beresovsky. On 29 December 2003 Russian authorities confiscated over 5000 copies of the book en route to Moscow from the publisher in Latvia.

Boris Berezovsky also financed a documentary film "FSB blows up Russia" ("An assault on Russia"?) and the book with the same title (financing 25% of the costs). The film accused Russian special services of organising the explosions in Volgodonsk and Moscow. According to research carried out by two French journalists, Jean-Charles Deniau and Charles Gazelle, the explosions were carried out by FSB to provide justification for the continuance of the Chechen War, which in turn helped Putin beat the communists in the presidential election of 2000."

I think Bush in his dreamworld would be Putin.

So, who lost Russia? Who lost the democratic USA?


"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." George W Bush, 43rd President of the U.S. Dec. 18, 2000 on his transition to the Presidency and his having to deal with Congress (a month after the Supreme Court stopped the recount of the Florida votes (which later indicated he lost both the popular and the electoral votes))

I've long believed that to fight an enemy, you become like the enemy. That in the Cold War with missile delivered nuclear weapons the US lost its democracy with the rise of the 'security' state. The US allowed 'former' Nazi 'intelligence' assets who proclaimed an expertise on the Soviet Union to join the CIA (Project Paperclip) where they over-hyped the Soviet threat, leading to US bellicosity and arms build-ups, while keeping these war criminals in clover and power.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, we did not return to democracy after the war ended or enjoy the peace dividend. Yet there were few reasons to justify these enormous global military expenses, a military larger than the rest of the world's militaries combined. 700 full Bases in over 100 countries. What justifies this when millions have no health coverage or pensions?

Ten years later, attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, basically larger versions of the attacks on Russian malls, highways, apartment buildings, and military housing, were used to to propel the US to a 'soft' privatized military - corporate - 'security' 'counter-terror' state. These attacks and the lack of full investigation seem very similar to what happened in Russia in what was basically a coup without it being identified as one -- even better to have a soft coup that way.

Even though we are bogged down in Iraq, the largest military in the world, now we are less secure, and the only solution is to throw more money at the problem.

More about how experts and witnesses are cowed in the Bush2 juggernaut

Michael Isikoff and David Corn, co-authors of "Imperial Hubris," discuss how the aluminum tubes found (by Valerie Plame!) were pounced upon as evidence that Saddam had an active nuclear weapons program. This piece also touches on how the U.S. first considered provocating Iraq to attack the British and US forces by Kuwait and the no-fly zone by helping a 'Bay of Pigs' type force take over a section of Iraq by the border covered by the 'no-fly zone.' This piece also mentions how Plame was in charge of anti-nuclear proliferation for Iran. When her work or her husband started threatening the Bush2 party-line for invasions and their justification, they turned against her and her network.

MI: ....the image of the mushroom cloud was based on and first pushed vigorously by Vice President Cheney. That Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and was close to -- was on its way to getting a nuclear bomb. The intelligence supporting that conclusion -- the primary piece of intelligence -- was these aluminum tubes that Iraq was seeking to purchase on the open market. A shipment of the tubes was seized in Jordan under an operation headed by Valerie Plame Wilson. She oversaw the operation that intercepted these tubes that were then shipped back to the CIA. A CIA analyst came to the conclusion that these tubes could only be used for a nuclear centrifuge to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. That piece of intelligence was shared by the White House, embraced by the White House, and then jumped on by Vice President Cheney and the Administration to argue the nuclear weapons case. Well, it turns out that there was vigorous dispute within the intelligence community about the conclusion about the aluminum tubes. The Energy Department scientists who were experts in nuclear centrifuges to the man...

DC:.. the biggest and most prominent experts in the US government...

MI: ... said, This is not the case, these tubes aren't suited for nuclear centrifuges. We believe they're for conventional rockets. There were multiple Energy Department reports written to this effect. The State Department intelligence bureau came to the same conclusion. Those dissents were recorded in the classified National Intelligence Estimate that was released to Congress on the eve of war but it was not made public. And in fact the White Paper -- the public version of the NIE -- contained no reference to those dissents.

DC: We talked to some of these scientists after the fact and they saw this piece of evidence being used to support a war and they all said they were afraid to speak publicly or to get into the debate. Because they feared they would lose their top-secret classifications. So the people who knew the most were cut out of the debate internally eventually. And then when they saw it going public with Cheney citing the tubes and the White House doing the same -- and all these documents -- they sat on their hands.

In this world, Department of Energy nuclear analysts and developers, to lose your classification is career-death. You can't get further work. Maybe you lose your pension if you don't work x number of years before retirement. Maybe you get fired or impugned. Look what happened to the Plame-Wilsons, John O'Neill, Sibel Edmonds, maybe Hatfill.... They were out, completely out.

As Giuliani once said about a good-government organization (middle of the road, if not pro-business) that once criticized his budgeting or performance: 'cut off their air supply.' He went after the corporate sponsors of their Annual Dinner. ]

... People often retort, when folks speak about rogue parts of the U.S. government being involved in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon in 2001, that wouldn't someone from the government speak out? Some folks have spoken out, such as firemen, and they have been reprimanded or demoted... so they speak privately or keep their mouths shut about witnessing explosions visually or hearing them throughout the buildings... or they grumble about seeing the black box being carried off.

As for many of the others, they could have been confused, distracted or taken out of the scene by the dozens of wargames going on that day. Besides with such huge events - planes crashing into buildings, fires, collapses, deaths, it is easy to be distracted. Few people in the public even noticed that a third WTC building crashed that day at 5:20 pm.

Folks who work in government often work there for a steady job with benefits, retirement, and pensions. One of the few jobs like that left in a constantly changing world. Risking all that to bear witness to one small detail by one person -- well, it kind of makes sense that people wouldn't step forward. You don't just have everything to lose and little personally to gain, but you can more than just lose everything, you can be attacked, ridiculed, labeled as insane or dangerous, so that you can't work anymore anywhere.

Patterns from Repeat Players - Aspens Turn in Clusters, connected at their roots

Sy Hersh' New Yorker piece about the Iran-Contra Conspirators' Lessons Learned Conference in the VP's office is the latest example of the same cast of characters doing the same things.

The hazy memory / bad governing excuse has been in vogue since Reagan 'couldn't recall.' Libby used it, and now it is being used for Gonzalez' firing the 'disloyal' prosecutors for not prosecuting Democrats or for prosecuting Republicans, sometimes in the middle of investigations or trials. This is win-win for them for two reasons: 1) It is hard to audit someone's memory, 2) if 'public servants' come off stupid, then fine! That only makes government look more incompetent, which these guys want, so we'll run towards corporatism/privatization.

I can't get over how often these characters are reused. And then, perhaps, abused. (Note to moths: flying around candles is fun, but flying into the flame will get you killed.)

Judge Reggie Walton of the Libby Trial, which didn't get to the bottom of the actual crime -- who outed Plame-Wilson, ruining her counter-proliferation work. Walton was a highly placed anti-drug policy administrator, second to Kemp, and he was an anti-drug crusader in the Reagan days, and during Bush1's days he was appointed his first judge position. He was assigned Sibel Edmonds' judge about five times, including after she requested and was granted switches to other judges, but then Walton was back, supposedly randomly assigned,, quashing her case. And he was the judge on the Stephen Hatfill anthrax outing suit, allowing the government to drag the case out, while Hatfill deals with being blacklisted.

These are three cases that each have the potential of blowing the lid off the Bush2 admin and their vision for a national corporatist security state. All of them judged by Reggie Walton, a judge with his own penchant for privacy, as we see in how he approaches his public disclosure of where his income comes from...

Stephen Hatfill, a bio-wmd specialist, was fingered for the Anthrax Attacks, which really changed America after 9/11/01 because of the Patriot Act (but few remember those attacks and that investigation going nowhere)... He's the same fellow who designed and built training trailers for the US military to identify Iraqi Mobile Weapons Labs of the same design that Colin Powell had for his UN presentation. The return addresses on the envelopes from the Anthrax attacks referenced a fake school, Greendale, possibly alluding to Hatfill's days in a Rhodesian pro-white/anti-communist paramilitary force [There is a school in the once white Harare suburb of Greendale named for Courtney Selous, and Haftill fought in that commando unit (while perhaps working with the CIA or the USA). This unit has been accused of anthraxing hundreds of rural black villagers who experienced the skin type of the disease. Still, anthrax is a disease of livestock that affects humans through the skin. Of course, this 'Greendale' could have been put on the envelopes to set Hatfill up. Yet, there are dozens of Greendales, including one linked to a popular British TV show referencing a postman from Greendale, which would be appropriate for a mail-attack irony.] Also the the messages inside the envelopes could have set up Islamists as terrorists, using poor English, handwriting, and anti-Israeli, pro-Allah statements. Yet in Hatfill's suit (with Judge Reggie Walton) he says he only knows how to make pasty anthrax, not the finely milled dried weaponized kind... The kind made in Fort Detrick in Maryland where Hatfill stopped working a couple of years previously. Curiouser and curiouser. The FBI is against him, or maybe he's their convenient fall guy, but the DoD uses and needs him for counter-terrorism. The biggest mystery is why is the Anthrax killer investigation seemingly dead and dead for years? This is the first US WMD domestic case. And why did the DoD/CIA need Hatfill to build a practically working prototype. (Judy Miller said it was never plugged in... I won't even deal with her ... Aspens turning in clusters. Maybe Libby knew he was going to jail just as she was already in jail, so she might as well get out.) Wouldn't a drawing work for searchers just as well as a prototype? Was the DoD attempting to plant at least one fake WMD lab in Iraq for discovery to justify the war? Was Brewster-Jennings/the CIA's Counter-Terrorism unit a threat to such a ruse? Was Hatfill's reputation pro-actively assassinated so that he'd be forced to cooperate with the DoD and keep his mouth shut about plants?

There's a fine line between defense and offense, between terror and counter-terror, news and propaganda, between war-games and war.

I really like how the Washington Post covered Hatfill's work in 2001 creating nearly functional versions of mobile weapons labs for the DoD in this article:

One of Hatfill's most intriguing projects at the SAIC was his design of the mock mobile lab, which was assembled for training of the Delta Force, a commando unit of the U.S. Special Forces based at Fort Bragg. The nonfunctional lab was built on an 18-wheel trailer and fitted with a fermenter and other specialized equipment.

Hatfill planned the equipment, designed the interior layout and stored construction materials in a warehouse before building began, said a source who has seen the vehicle.

In its investigation, the FBI has traced all of the materials ordered for the lab by Hatfill and others at the SAIC, the source said.

The trailer, known at the SAIC as the "can," was under construction in late 2001 at a shop in Frederick, where Hatfill once lived in an apartment near Fort Detrick.
....
Col. Bill Darley, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, said that Hatfill also designed a fixed or "static" nonfunctional bioweapons lab for use in training Special Forces in an unspecified location in the western United States.

Darley said he could not discuss details of how these labs have been used in training. The programs, he said, are at the heart of the "dark tactics, techniques and procedures" used to prepare troops for missions abroad.

I have pointed out in previous posts how dangerous (from a fragging or 'friendly-fire' perspective) it is to work in US counter-terrorism during the Bush2 era. I am not sure if Hatfill fits this pattern. But it seems that the message has been received loud and clear in the US community, even if proliferators in Pakistan get to live a bit easier. It took over a year for the 'mobile bio-weapons labs' were finally admitted to really be weather balloon inflaters. The scientists on the team were frightened to come forward and kept their mum until word came out about their work in spring 2006. The truth kind of leaked out from other sources in autumn 2004 (when they knew since spring 2003). Even so, those scientists are still cautious, and their work is still largely classified -- another example of politically motivated classification and abuse of the privileges of state secrets to subvert democracy.

The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons -- who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.

None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.

"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."

" In the end, the final report -- 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix -- remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.

"It was very assertive," said one weapons expert familiar with the report's contents.

Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.

"I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated," one member recalled. "It never happened. And I just had to live with it." "

Nicholas Berg, a leftist going to Iraq to build cellphone radio towers for the Iraqi's in the name of freedom... Cellphone towers? High-tech communications equipment? Maybe signals intelligence or setting up compromised networks? And he knew or at least met Zack Moussaoui? Berg lent him his computer and web-email account. Hotmail I think. It takes five minutes to set up a Hotmail account... Why lend yours out? Moussaoui was a student. Students can use web terminals. Then Berg gets beheaded like Daniel Pearl. And then Robert Baer the former CIA agent posthumously says Pearl and he were collaborating together, which kind of echoes the terrorists' statements that Pearl was a spy. I got a kick out of President Mushareff's quotes about Perl, that he basically had it coming to him for digging where he was. It did seem to have a chilling effect on journalism since...

The Mo. Atta stories are pretty wild, too, and then there's the time he had those anthrax sores in the Florida hospital.. And his passport survives the plane attacks on the WTC, but somehow the black boxes are never revealed or publicly examined, presumed missing, so some say. You can read whole books about Atta, or is it more than one guy? Several of the hastily identified 9/11/01 hijackers are actually still alive, and the Atta stories just don't add up.

Back to Sibel Edmonds, she finds that a Turkish version of AIPAC is running drugs and arms, buying politicians, and that tipoffs to 9/11/01's plane attacks, as well as plans of buildings, probably including the WTC, were sent to the mid-east, and that plane attacks associated with Bin Laden were being planned. This arms network has a nuclear component, too, in which neo-cons are allowing parts to go to AQKhan's proliferation network. Edmonds is gagged, and her testimony to congress is retroactively classified! She's the defending whistleblower, and they stuff her.

Yet so long as people like Sibel Edmonds are prevented from speaking and the Libby trial remains restricted in scope, we will likely know little about the facts, whatever they may be and wherever they may lead.

Finally, the non-judicial nature of Judge Walton's prior job as a government policy crafter at a very high level, something that must have involved the same cast of characters, denotes in and of itself a conflict of interest. Courts are vexed whenever some famous person is tried and it becomes impossible to find jurors who have no prior opinion of them. That said, in what kind of country is a judge appointed to try his own former colleagues, who themselves are being defended by other former colleagues?

Back to Valerie Plame-Wilson (of Libby and Rove and NOVAKula fame), her international cover company, Brewster Jennings [the fake energy consultancy (named after a Rockefeller associate and Mobil oil founder)] is completely blown, ruining our intelligence gathering in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and North Africa.

Bush and Cheney weren't after Joe Wilson, they were after Plame-Wilson and Brewster Jennings' work. Novak's statement on CNN, months after his column blows Plame's cover, then goes on to blow out Brewster-Jennings as a fake company! The whole revenge/schoolyard theme is a smokescreen.

Back to Hersch, one of the 'explosive' revelations of his piece is that the US is using slush funds from Iraq (Is it the oil or is it the tons and tons of missing $12Billion in cash?) to finance Al-Q'aida-linked jihadists against Iran.

This stuff is just too big to cover and to wrap one's head around.

Basically, in the age of nuclear and oil fueled empire, it seems that some feel that democracy is just too unpredictable and deliberative for the needs of empire. But rather than officially Ceasarize the US Executive Branch and declare the empire, we just keep enough of an idea/illusion of democracy going to inspire people to keep going to work (rather than protesting or fomenting) and serving in the military, either for patriotic reasons, or just pure lack of alternatives in a stagnant economy with very expensive education and health care.



Here's a tangential link to a quoted 2004 LA Times article about a former Israeli former South African now American selling nuclear weapons electronics to Pakistan; he got busted. One of the firms he dealt with, Giza Tech, a US firm (owned by Turkish Jews), was mentioned in the Sibel Edmonds' cans of worms with regard to trafficking nuclear technology to the middle east.
My take on this is the so-called splits between Jews and Muslims, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Al Qu'aida and the USA and/or Israel is a canard. At the levels of the greediest and super-wealth, there is no division -- arms, drugs, terrorism, war, and oil all fuel that greed. The splits are to satisfy and distract the middle class, motivating them to pay the taxes and work hard, and motivating the lower classes to fight in the wars and get killed off to thin the herd while distracting it.
The Party is in Dubai, the Las Vegas and the Swiss Bank of the world, behind sand, water, and security.

Here's something about how 'we' 'knew' those mobile labs were for weather balloons, but the President and Colin Powell kept saying for six months that they were WMD bio-trailers.

After Libby Guilty Verdict - When Will We Get Some Answers and Oversight?

Now that it has been determined that Libby lied and covered-up the outing of CIA Agent Plame, it is time for the Senate to investigate and have a Special Prosecutor investigate the actual crimes behind the cover-up. We still have so many serious questions unanswered about the reckless abuse of Executive power.

Who outed a CIA agent, ruining her cover, her cover company, her network, and her work actually countering WMD proliferation in Iran, Iraq, and Africa? Who endangered all those lives? Who made public service so dangerous? Why?

I think this illegal outing was not just against Joe Wilson but was intended to cow and neutralize the CIA and its analysis that might slow the Bush Administrations plans and fake rationales for wars. This whole Novakula-reported 'nepotism cancels Joe Wilson's credibility' line was unbelievable or at best irrelevant from the start. Which is probably why so many reporters held off on the story. But Novakula, the Prince of Darkness, was counted on to plant the story. So, who ruined the CIA counter-WMD network? Why?

Whomever orchestrated this is guilty of high crimes and treason, and this is certainly impeachable. At the very least, public servants in intelligence need to know that they will not be sold out by the Executive Branch. That work is dangerous enough without having to worry about being fragged by the White House or the Vice Presidency.

In addition, an investigation with prosecutorial powers might uncover current treasons and high crimes, and will slow down or cow those who are quite well committing them right now.

Our government does not have a parliamentary system with a prime minister; we have term limits on the Presidency. On the surface this limits executive power, by limiting the time that one can exercise power, but it was subject to the continuing approval of the voters. But with term-limited Executives, this structure incentivizes Executive abuse of power, and its committing serious abuses as fast as possible, giving only foot-dragging co-operation with Congress and the Press, running out the clock toward the next election cycle and irrelevancy. That, combined with the power of Executive Pardon, makes it ideal for abuse of power and crimes.

This is what we found out recently with the deal between Nixon and Ford to pardon Nixon for Watergate. Bush1 gave a Christmas gift to Caspar Weinberger (and Colin Powell) just as Lawrence Walsh was getting close to them in 1992-1993. Bush was leaving office and he pre-emptively flushed Walsh' five year Iran-Contra investigation down the drain.

And now we are stuck with most of those perpetrators back in power, Armitage, Negroponte, Abrams, working with Bandar Bush... Maybe even Bush1 was involved... Colin Powell was, too. And we have warmongering in Iraq and it is coming elsewhere in the Middle East.

For these reasons we need a strengthened Legislative Branch, doing serious investigations, oversight, and prosecutions of Executive abuse and crimes.

Write your Senator! We need an investigation of who outed Plame. We need the Independent Prosecutor law renewed. We need an Independent Prosecutor and Investigation, one unhobbled by Congressional immunity in exchange for TV testimony.