~ The CIA's Family Jewels ~

[Zman]

:sl:/Peace To All

The CIA's Family Jewels

Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years,Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents

CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s "Skeletons" File, Archive Posts

Justice Department Summary from 1975,With White House Memcons on Damage Control

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 222
Edited by Thomas Blanton
Posted - June 21, 2007
For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton - 202/994-7000
Courtesy Of: The George Washington University's National Security Archive

Washington D.C., June 21, 2007 - The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called the file "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency." The papers are scheduled for public release on Monday, June 25.

"This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness at the Agency," commented Thomas Blanton, the Archive's director.

Hayden also announced the declassification of some 11,000 pages of the so-called CAESAR, POLO and ESAU papers--hard-target analyses of Soviet and Chinese leadership internal politics and Sino-Soviet relations from 1953-1973, a collection of intelligence on Warsaw Pact military programs, and hundreds of pages on the A-12 spy plane.

The National Security Archive separately obtained (and posted today) a six-page summary of the illegal CIA activities, prepared by Justice Department lawyers after a CIA briefing in December 1974, and the memorandum of conversation when the CIA first briefed President Gerald Ford on the scandal on January 3, 1975.

Then-CIA director Schlesinger commissioned the "family jewels" compilation with a May 9, 1973 directive after finding out that Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord (both veteran CIA officers) had cooperation from the Agency as they carried out "dirty tricks" for President Nixon. The Schlesinger directive, drafted by deputy director for operations William Colby, commanded senior CIA officials to report immediately on any current or past Agency matters that might fall outside CIA authority. By the end of May, Colby had been named to succeed Schlesinger as DCI, and his loose-leaf notebook of memos totaled 693 pages [see John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 259-260.]

Seymour Hersh broke the story of CIA's illegal domestic operations with a front page story in the New York Times on December 22, 1974 ("Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years"), writing that "a check of the CIA's domestic files ordered last year… produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities… beginning in the nineteen fifties, including break-ins, wiretapping, and the surreptitious inspection of mail."

On December 31, 1974, CIA director Colby and the CIA general counsel John Warner met with the deputy attorney general, Lawrence Silberman, and his associate, James Wilderotter, to brief Justice "in connection with the recent New York Times articles" on CIA matters that "presented legal questions."

Colby's List Included 18 Specifics:

1. Confinement of a Russian defector that "might be regarded as a violation of the kidnapping laws."

2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott.

3. Physical surveillance of muckraker Jack Anderson and his associates, including current Fox News anchor Brit Hume.

4. Physical surveillance of then Washington Post reporter Michael Getler.

5. Break-in at the home of a former CIA employee.

6. Break-in at the office of a former defector.

7. Warrantless entry into the apartment of a former CIA employee.

8. Mail opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union.

9. Mail opening from 1969 to 1972 of letters to and from China.

10. Behavior modification experiments on "unwitting" U.S. citizens.

11. Assassination plots against Castro, Lumumba, and Trujillo (on the latter, "no active part" but a "faint connection" to the killers).

12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971.

13. Surveillance of a particular Latin American female and U.S. citizens in Detroit.

14. Surveillance of a CIA critic and former officer, Victor Marchetti.

15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus Americans related to the antiwar movement.

16. Polygraph experiments with the San Mateo, California, sheriff.

17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state laws.

18. Testing of electronic equipment on US telephone circuits.
Read the Documents

Note: The following documents are in PDF format.You will need to download and install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.

Document 1: Summary of the Family Jewels Memorandum for the File, "CIA Matters," by James A. Wilderotter, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 3 January 1975Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

On New Years' eve, 1974, DCI Colby met with Justice Department officials, including Deputy Attorney General Lawrence H. Silberman, to give them a full briefing of the "skeletons."

Document 2: Colby Briefs President Ford on the Family JewelsMemorandum of Conversation, 3 January 1975Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library

Ten days after the appearance of Hersh's New York Times story, DCI William Colby tells President Ford how his predecessor James Schlesinger (then serving as Secretary of Defense) ordered CIA staffers to compile the "skeletons" in the Agency's closet, such as surveillance of student radicals, illegal wiretaps, assassination plots, and the three year confinement of a Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko.

Document 3: Kissinger's ReactionMemorandum of Conversation between President Ford and Secretary of State/National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, 4 January 1975Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library

An apoplectic Kissinger argues that the unspilling of CIA secrets is "worse than the days of McCarthyism" when the Wisconsin Senator went after the State Department. Kissinger had met with former DCI Richard Helms who told him that "these stories are just the tip of the iceberg," citing as one example Robert F. Kennedy's role in assassination planning. Ford wondered whether to fire Colby, but Kissinger advised him to wait until after the investigations were complete when he could "put in someone of towering integrity." The "Blue Ribbon" announcement refers to the creation of a commission chaired by then-vice president Nelson A. Rockefeller.

Document 4: Investigations ContinueMemorandum of Conversation between Kissinger, Schlesinger, Colby et al., "Investigations of Allegations of CIA Domestic Activities," 20 February 1975Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

Cabinet and sub-cabinet level officials led by Kissinger discuss ways and means to protect information sought by ongoing Senate (Church Committee) and House (Pike Committee) investigations of intelligence community abuses during the first decades of the Cold War. Worried about the foreign governments that have cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies, Kissinger wants to "demonstrate to foreign countries that we aren't too dangerous to cooperate with because of leaks."

Source:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm

[Zman]

:sl:/Peace To All

The CIA's Bomb School

June 5, 2002
Via: GlobalSecurity

After 41 years of explosive training at a secret base in eastern North Carolina, the CIA's paramilitary wing is back on the front lines. For the base's neighbors in nearby Hertford, the echo of bombs is business as usual--and nobody's business.

B Y J O N E L L I S T O N
The Independent Weekly
April 11, 2002

On Jim Pavitts, the Central Intelligence Agency's top covert operations official, stood up before a Duke University Law School conference on national security issues and did something he almost never does: He spoke publicly about his operations.

In the little-noticed speech, Pavitts assured the audience that the CIA is actively engaged in the fight against terrorism. To prove it, he cited the early involvement of the agency's commandos in Operation Enduring Freedom.

"Teams of my paramilitary operations officers, trained not just to observe conditions but if need be to change them, were among the first on the ground in Afghanistan," Pavitts said.

Indeed, the first U.S. casualty, Johnny "Mike" Spann, who was killed in the prison uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif on Nov. 25, was one of those officers. Spann was part of an elite and super-secretive unit, the CIA's Special Activities Division, which serves as the knifepoint of the agency's cloak and dagger contributions to national security.

With personnel drawn from other commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army Special Forces, the unit is skilled in the dark arts of paramilitary warfare: assassination, advanced demolitions, high-tech surveillance and behind-enemy-lines combat.

...Pavitts offered few details, saying he could share "just a bit" of what the CIA has been up to lately. Among the matters he did not discuss was North Carolina's crucial but behind-the-scenes role in the CIA's paramilitary program.

Officials have maintained strict silence about that role for more than four decades. In fact, no serving CIA officer has ever uttered the words "Harvey Point" in public.

That's because the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity, a high-security compound tucked into a quiet corner of marshland near Hertford, N.C., and officially owned by the Defense Department, has served as the spy agency's secret demolitions training base since 1961.

It's where CIA operatives like the ones who infiltrated Afghanistan--and the ones who will likely lead the way in the next battles of the war against terrorism, starting with Iraq--learn the rough stuff.

The CIA's covert warriors train as secretly as they spy and fight. So at Harvey Point, the boom! boom! is very hush-hush.

...For anyone who does want to know, getting the facts from the government can prove to be a frustrating endeavor. Because of the shroud of secrecy over Harvey Point, military and intelligence spokespeople have difficulty being candid about it, and they can't quite get the cover story straight.

The Independent started by calling the Navy, which acquired the property during World War II and later announced it was setting up an off-limits testing center there. A spokesman for the Navy's Mid-Atlantic Region Command in Norfolk, Va., which oversees operations in the area, checked with the Defense Department and then referred questions to the CIA. A CIA public affairs officer, in turn, refused to discuss the base and suggested contacting the Defense Department.

Eventually, a Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Mike Halbig, agreed to field questions about Harvey Point. "The Department of Defense took over the facility in 1961," he says. "The primary mission is to test and evaluate conventional explosives, ordnance and ballistic materials."

And what of the stories that it's a major center for CIA special warfare training? "It is a Department of Defense facility that serves the military services and it serves the special needs of other U.S. government departments," is all Halbig will say.

Base personnel cannot speak to reporters, he says, nor can visits be arranged. "The projects and materials that they test there are highly classified, and for that reason we do not allow public access," he says.

...Despite the CIA's best efforts to keep its role at Harvey Point under wraps, there is a mounting body of public information about the base's secret history.

The latest example: In his newly published memoir, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, former CIA officer Bob Baer describes the "two weeks of nonstop demolition training" he received in North Carolina as a young recruit in the early 1970s:

"We spent two days crimping blasting caps to make sure we understood that if you crimped them too high, they'd explode and take your hand off. After we'd mastered that, we crimped them in the dark, by feel. Then we started blowing things up: cars, buses, diesel generators, fences, bunkers. We made a school bus disappear with about 20 pounds of U.S. C-4. For comparison's sake, we tried Czech Semtex and a few other foreign plastic explosives.

"Not that you really needed anything fancy. We blew up one bus using three sacks of fertilizer and fuel oil, a mixture called ANFO (ammonium nitrate fuel oil), that did more damage than the C-4 had. The biggest piece left was a part of the chassis, which flew in an arc, hundreds of yards away. We learned to mix up a potent cocktail called methyl nitrate. If you hit a small drop of it with a hammer, it split the hammer. Honest. We were also taught some of the really esoteric stuff like E-cell times, improvising pressurized airplane bombs using a condom and aluminum foil, and smuggling a pistol on an airplane concealed in a mixture of epoxy and graphite. By the end of the training, we could have taught an advanced terrorism course."

...The agency has never disclosed its reasons for setting up an undercover bomb school at Harvey Point. But the timing and the context, along with scattered press reports, offer indications of the base's original purpose. Fidel Castro, it seems, was the impetus--and the target of the first commandos to train at Harvey Point.

The story begins in 1959, when Castro led a revolutionary government to power in Cuba. At first, White House officials hoped to topple him quickly. In March of 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to create a force of anti-Castro, Cuban exile fighters, and John F. Kennedy, who succeeded Eisenhower in 1961, authorized the operation to go forward.

In mid-April of that year, the CIA staged its most ambitious and disastrous paramilitary operation: the Bay of Pigs invasion. It took Castro's military and militia just three days to rout the agency's force of 1,300 Cuban exiles. The debacle was viewed as an abject failure by the CIA's paramilitary wing.

Harvey Point had played a supporting role in the disaster, press reports would later reveal. The CIA quietly amassed weapons for the operation at the base, which was secretly on its way to becoming a full-blown training facility.

In June of 1961, two months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Navy announced it was officially opening a new facility at the old Seamaster base. A spokesman said that all four branches of the military would conduct "testing and evaluation of various classified materials and equipment" at the site. He added that training "now being done at Camp Perry, Va., will be transferred to Harvey Point."

At the time, Camp Perry, which is located next to Williamsburg, was officially a military base.

But since then, reporters and CIA veterans have written about the camp's true role: It is the agency's training compound for new spy officers.

Code-named ISOLATION, the 12,000-acre Camp Perry is referred to in the intelligence community as "the Farm," and to this day it serves as the CIA's main spy school.

But in 1961, the agency moved its most dangerous and sensitive training--in demolitions and unconventional weaponry--to Harvey Point.
Following the Bay of Pigs, Harvey Point is one place where the CIA hoped to continue efforts to undermine Castro.

JFK wanted the job done right, and he appointed his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to oversee the new operations, which mainly consisted of hit-and-run sabotage raids.

"Bobby wanted boom and bang all over the island," Sam Halpern, a high-ranking officer on the CIA's Cuba desk, told a historian years later.

The "boom and bang" the Kennedy brothers pressed for would be taught at Harvey Point. The base was code-named ISOLATION TROPIC, but most of the operatives who trained there came to call it "the Point."
Over the years, it has carved out a unique space in paramilitary history as a clandestine landmark, of sorts.

Veterans who have passed through it share an intimate knowledge of how covert action plays a central role in U.S. foreign policy.

Over the years, U.S. and foreign commandos who trained at "the Point" have fought in shadowy conflicts around the globe, from Cuba to the Congo, from Nicaragua to Vietnam, and lately, in Afghanistan.

For its first decade or so of operations, the base managed to maintain the covert character the CIA was looking for. But slowly, parts of the real story began to filter out. (See "The Truth About Harvey Point," p. 22.)

A major, but still only partial, disclosure appeared in the April 1967 edition of Ramparts, a once popular and now defunct leftist magazine. The issue carried a testimonial from a CIA officer who had recently resigned after passing through the agency's demolitions course.

The former officer, who kept his name out of print, did not specify the location of his training.

But now it's clear that the place he wrote about, the place where he ultimately soured on the CIA, was Harvey Point:

"The stated purpose of the paramilitary school was to train and equip us to become instructors for village peasants who wanted to defend themselves against guerrillas. I could believe in that.

"Some of the training was conventional: But then we moved to the CIA's demolition training headquarters. It was here that Cubans had been, and still were, being trained in conventional and underwater demolitions. And it was here that we received training in tactics which hardly conform to the Geneva Convention.

"The array of outlawed weaponry with which we were familiarized included bullets that explode on impact, silencer-equipped machine guns, home-made explosives and self-made napalm for stickier and hotter Molotov cocktails. We were taught demolition techniques, practicing on late-model cars, railroad trucks, and gas storage tanks. And we were shown a quick method for saturating a confined area with flour or fertilizer, causing an explosion like in a dustbin or granary.

"And then there was a diabolical invention that might be called a mini-cannon. It was constructed of a concave piece of steel fitted into the top of a #10 can filled with a plastic explosive. When the device was detonated, the tremendous heat of friction of the steel turning inside out made the steel piece a white-hot projectile.

There were a number of uses for the mini-cannon, one of which was demonstrated to us using an old Army school bus. It was fastened to the gasoline tank in such a fashion that the incendiary projectile would rupture the tank and fling flaming gasoline the length of the bus interior, incinerating anyone inside.

It was my lot to show the rest of the class how easily it could be done.

I stood there watching the flames consume the bus. It was, I guess, the moment of truth.

What did a busload of burning people have to do with freedom?

What right did I have, in the name of democracy and the CIA, to decide that random victims should die?

The intellectual game was over. I had to leave."

Of course most officers stayed in the spy agency, and the operations that benefited from such training were many and varied.

In 1978, Outside magazine published a detailed account of a madcap mission involving Harvey Point.

According to the magazine, in 1964, the CIA brought a small group of amateur mountain climbers to the base for demolitions training. The climbers later infiltrated an isolated mountain range in India in an attempt to place listening devices for monitoring Chinese nuclear tests. The mission failed, but at Harvey Point, the climbers did learn how to blow a hole in a glacier where the devices were supposed to be placed.

Those who trained at Harvey Point certainly learned how to do some damage, and some continued to use their deadly skills after they quit working for the CIA.

The Cuban exiles were perhaps the most prodigious bomb experts to pass through the facility.

Not only did they set off a sizable wave of terrorism against Cuba, some of them went freelance after their CIA ties were cut, and helped make Miami the car-bomb capital of the world during the 1970s.

In addition, Cuban exile operatives, some of whom had received CIA training, staged two audacious acts of terrorism in 1976:

They bombed a Cuban airliner, killing 73 people, and participated in the assassination of Chilean exile leader Orlando Letelier and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, who were killed by a car bomb as they drove up Embassy Row in Washington, D.C.

In the 1980s, Harvey Point played a role in some of the CIA's most controversial covert operations.

In 1983, a team of agency operatives mined Nicaraguan harbors--while floating the cover story that Nicaraguan contra guerrillas had placed the mines.

The attack prompted quick rebukes from Congress, which moved to halt funding of such sabotage operations.

According to a 1999 article in Jane's Intelligence Weekly, which detailed the CIA's modern paramilitary capabilities, the team that mined the harbors trained at Harvey Point.

About the same time,

The agency used the base to train three Lebanese operatives for a most-sensitive mission:

They would lead a special, CIA-sponsored squad for rescuing U.S. hostages and combating Islamic extremists. The operation is detailed in two books, Bob Woodward's Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987, and Amir Taheri's Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in Iran.

In March 1985, the squad staged a disastrous assassination attempt against a prominent holy warrior in Beirut.

They missed their target, but managed to kill an estimated 80 civilians when their car bomb crashed into the wrong building.

As a result, the CIA cut its ties to the group.

Even then, the CIA continued to instruct foreign operatives, along with its own personnel, in North Carolina.

In 1998, The New York Times reported that Harvey Point's most recent guests included members of the security detail for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

© 2002, Durham Independent

For The Complete Article:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/ne...605-harvey.htm

[islamirama]

Interesting Testimonies from Iraqi civilians

"One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up.

"There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile and told to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tell them what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landline phone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tell you what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."


Source

Khadduri's report went like this: "A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license… we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. …The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.

(2) On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson. They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount. ….A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers. "They intended it to explode in Baghdad …'.


Source

[Zman]

:sl:/Peace To All

The CIA & Iraq's WMD's

Media Tags are no longer supported

Hey there! Looks like you're enjoying the discussion, but you're not signed up for an account.

When you create an account, you can participate in the discussions and share your thoughts. You also get notifications, here and via email, whenever new posts are made. And you can like posts and make new friends.
Sign Up

[NobleMuslimUK]

Is this the other side of the coin, or is it an illusion.

[Zman]

:sl:/Peace To All

CIA Drafts Covert Plans To Topple Saddam

Courtesy Of: Global Security
By Time Weiner
February 26, 1998

The CIA has drafted plans for a major program of sabotage and subversion against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials say.

Four prior covert operations, involving everything from radio propaganda to paramilitary plots, have failed to dislodge the Iraqi leader, just as smart bombs, cruise missiles and stiff economic sanctions have failed.

...The plan calls for enlisting Kurdish and Shiite agents to destroy or damage key Iraqi pillars of economic and political power, like utility plants or government broadcast stations, the officials said.
At the same time, the plan calls for increasing political pressure on Iraq through propaganda programs like a "Radio Free Iraq" broadcast to Baghdad.

The plan aims to try to undermine Saddam by showing Iraqi citizens that he is not invincible, strengthening his opponents inside Iraq and trying to ignite a rebellion within his inner circle.

"This is not a propaganda operation," one senior government official said of the CIA's plan. "This is a major campaign of sabotage."
...Since the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the agency has backed Kurdish dissidents in the north of Iraq, Shiite Muslim groups in the south, Iraqi exiles in London and Iraqi military defectors based in Jordan. These operations, which have cost about $100 million, have had little or no success.

Most recently, in August 1996, Saddam sent tanks into northern Iraq to destroy a CIA base staffed by U.S. intelligence officers and Kurdish agents, arresting and executing scores of Kurds.
...But the Iraqi opposition is fragmented, "plagued by divisions," in the words of Wafiq Samoraei, a former head of Iraqi military intelligence based in London.

"It is lacking in sufficient support in Baghdad-controlled Iraq to be a significant factor in internal politics in Iraq," said Kenneth Katzman, a Iraq expert at the Congressional Research Service and a former CIA analyst of Persian Gulf politics.

The diplomatic, political and economic structures that can conceal CIA officers and agents -- a U.S. embassy, a network of political contacts, a bevy of businessmen going in and out of the country -- do not exist in Iraq. That makes it exceedingly hard for agents to penetrate the inner circle surrounding Saddam, who controls tens of thousands of soldiers and spies whose sole duty is to preserve his power.

The two major opposition groups in exile, the Iraqi National Congress, based in London, and the Iraqi National Accord, based in Amman, Jordan, have been riven by dissent. The Kurds, the world's largest stateless ethnic group, have bases in northern Iraq but also are bitterly divided. Shiite groups in the south of Iraq, some with ties to Saudi Arabia, some with ties to Iran, have proven politically impotent in the past.

Covert operations aimed at subverting Saddam's government date back to the Bush administration. Immediately after the gulf war, President George Bush ordered the CIA to support a coup against the Iraqi leader. The Kurds and Shiites were openly encouraged to rise up against him. The opposition was crushed.

Then the agency supported the Iraqi National Congress from 1992 to 1996. The group achieved little. In 1995, after some key Iraqi military officers defected, the agency shifted its support to the Iraqi National Accord. But in the summer of 1996, Saddam's military and intelligence services crushed the small clique of Iraqi military officers working with the group and destroyed a CIA base in northern Iraq.

Source:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell...980226-nyt.htm

[Zman]

:sl:/Peace To All

CIA Trained Iraqi Paramilitary Group To Conduct Sabotage Operations

Before the war in Iraq began, the CIA recruited and trained an
Iraqi paramilitary group, code-named the Scorpions, to foment rebellion,
conduct sabotage, and help CIA paramilitaries who entered Baghdad and
other cities target buildings and individuals. The Scorpions were trained
in secret CIA bases in Jordan.

Authorized by a presidential finding signed by President Bush in February or March 2002, the Scorpions were part of a policy of "regime change" in Iraq. The covert members, many of whom were exiles recruited by the Kurds, were trained in target identification, explosives and small arms at two secret bases in Jordan, according to one U.S. government official.

They were sent surreptitiously into Iraq before the war and were in cities such as Baghdad, Fallujah and Qaim to give the impression that a rebellion was underway and to conduct light sabotage, according to the two defense sources and the three former and current intelligence officials.

"They painted X's [for targeting] on buildings and things like that," said one former intelligence officer.(1)

The CIA spent millions of dollars on the Scorpions, even giving them former Soviet Hind helicopters...

After Baghdad fell, the CIA used the Scorpions to try to infiltrate the insurgency, to help out in interrogations, and, from time to time, to do "the dirty work," as one intelligence official put it.

In one case, members of the unit, wearing masks and carrying clubs and pipes, beat up an Iraqi general in the presence of CIA and military personnel according to several defense and intelligence officials.

The Scorpions have been implicated in the events that led to the death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush while in US captivity.

These events included the use of physical and psychological torture under the auspices of a US CIA operative identified only as "Brian".

After the initial combat phase of the war, the CIA used the paramilitary units as translators and to fetch supplies and retrieve informants in an increasingly
dangerous Iraq where CIA officers largely stayed within the protected Green Zone, according to the officials.

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080201579.html

[MTAFFI]

Interesting Testimonies from Iraqi civilians"One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up.

"There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile and told to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tell them what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landline phone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tell you what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."


Source

Khadduri's report went like this: "A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license… we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. …The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.

(2) On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson. They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount. ….A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers. "They intended it to explode in Baghdad …'.


Source

+o( garbage

[Zman]

:sl:/Peace To All

CIA Car Bombs In Afghanistan & Iraq

Courtesy Of: Asia Times Online
By Mike Davis
April 16, 2006
ATimes

"The CIA officers that Yousef worked with closely impressed upon him one rule: never use the terms sabotage or assassination when speaking with visiting congressmen." -

Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.
Gunboat diplomacy had been defeated by car bombs in Lebanon, but the Ronald Reagan administration and, above all, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Casey were left thirsting for revenge against Hezbollah.

"Finally in 1985", according to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward in Veil, his book on Casey's career, "he worked out with the Saudis a plan to use a car bomb to kill [Hezbollah leader] Sheikh [Muhammad Husayn] Fadlallah who they determined was one of the people behind, not only the Marine [Corps] barracks [suicide truck bomb], but was involved in the taking of American hostages in Beirut ... It was Casey on his own, saying, 'I'm going to solve the big problem by essentially getting tougher or as tough as the terrorists in using their weapon - the car bomb'."

The CIA's own operatives, however, proved incapable of carrying out the bombing, so Casey sub-contracted the operation to Lebanese agents led by a former British SAS (Special Air Service) officer and financed by Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz. In March 1984, a large car bomb was detonated about 45 meters (50 yards) from Fadlallah's house in Bir El-Abed, a crowded Shi'ite neighborhood in southern Beirut.

The sheikh wasn't harmed, but 80 innocent neighbors and passersby were killed and 200 wounded. Fadlallah immediately had a huge "Made In USA" banner hung across the shattered street, while Hezbollah returned tit for tat in September when a suicide truck driver managed to break through the supposedly impregnable perimeter defenses of the new US Embassy in eastern (Christian) Beirut, killing 23 employees and visitors.

Despite the Fadlallah fiasco, Casey remained an enthusiast for using urban terrorism to advance American goals, especially against the Soviets and their allies in Afghanistan.

A year after the Bir El-Abed massacre, Casey won Reagan's approval for NSDD-166 (national security decision directive), a secret directive that, according to Steve Coll in Ghost Wars, inaugurated a "new era of direct infusions of advanced US military technology into Afghanistan, intensified training of Islamist guerrillas in explosives and sabotage techniques and targeted attacks on Soviet military officers".

US special forces experts would now provide high-tech explosives and teach state-of-the-art sabotage techniques, including the fabrication of ANFO (ammonium nitrate-fuel oil) car bombs, to Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (or ISI) officers under the command of Brigadier Mohammed Yousaf. These officers, in turn, would tutor thousands of Afghan and foreign mujahideen, including the future cadre of al-Qaeda, in scores of training camps financed by the Saudis.

"Under ISI direction," Coll wrote, "the mujahideen received training and malleable explosives to mount car-bomb and even camel-bomb attacks in Soviet-occupied cities, usually designed to kill Soviet soldiers and commanders. Casey endorsed these despite the qualms of some CIA career officers."

Mujahideen car bombers, working with teams of snipers and assassins, not only terrorized uniformed Soviet forces in a series of devastating attacks in Afghanistan but also massacred left-wing intelligentsia in Kabul, the country's capital.

"Yousaf and the Afghan car-bombing squads he trained," wrote Coll, "regarded Kabul University professors as fair game," as well as movie theaters and cultural events.

Although some members of the US National Security Council reportedly denounced the bombings and assassinations as "outright terrorism", Casey was delighted with the results.
Meanwhile, "by the late 1980s, the ISI had effectively eliminated all the secular, leftist and royalist political parties that had first formed when Afghan refugees fled communist rule."

As a result, most of the billions of dollars that the Saudis and Washington pumped into Afghanistan ended up in the hands of radical Islamist groups sponsored by the ISI.

They were also the chief recipients of huge quantities of CIA-supplied plastic explosives as well as thousands of advanced E-cell delay detonators.

It was the greatest technology transfer of terrorist technique in history.

There was no need for angry Islamists to take car-bomb extension courses from Hezbollah when they could matriculate in a CIA-supported urban-sabotage graduate program in Pakistan's frontier provinces.

"Ten years later," Coll observed, "the vast training infrastructure that Yousaf and his colleagues built with the enormous budgets endorsed by NSDD-166 - the specialized camps, the sabotage training manuals, the electronic bomb detonators and so on - would be referred to routinely in America as 'terrorist infrastructure'."

...But Zarqawi did not originate car bomb terrorism along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; that dark honor belongs to the CIA and its favorite son, Iyad Allawi. As the New York Times revealed in June 2004:

Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990s to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the CIA, several former intelligence officials say.

Dr Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosives devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq ... One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed".

According to one of the Times' informants, the bombing campaign, dead school kids and all, "was a test more than anything else, to demonstrate capability".

It allowed the CIA to portray the then-exiled Allawi and his suspect group of ex-Ba'athists as a serious opposition to Saddam and an alternative to the coterie (so favored by Washington neo-conservatives) around Ahmad Chalabi.

"No one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," a CIA veteran reflected.

Source:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HD18Aa01.html

[islamirama]

The CIA and Fatah; Spies, Quislings and the Palestinian Authority

By Mike Whitney

06/20/07 "ICH" -- - When Hamas gunmen stormed the Fatah security compounds in Gaza last week they found huge supplies of American-made weaponry including 7,400 M-16 assault rifles, dozens of mounted machine guns, rocket launchers, 7 armored military jeeps, 800,000 rounds of bullets and 18 US-made armored personnel carriers. They also discovered something far more valuable--- CIA files which purportedly contain "information about the collaboration between Fatah and the Israeli and American security organizations; CIA methods on how to prevent attacks, chase and follow after cells of Hamas and the Committees; plans about Fatah assassinations of members of Hamas and other organizations; and American studies on the security situation in Gaza." (Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily.com)

If the documents prove to be authentic, they will confirm what many critics of Fatah believed from the beginning; that US-Israeli intelligence agencies have been collaborating with high-ranking members of the PA to help crush the Palestinian national liberation movement. The information could be disastrous for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his newly-appointed “emergency government”. It could destroy their credibility before they even take office.

The extent of Fatah’s cooperation with the CIA is still unknown, but an article in The New York Sun, (“Hamas Takes over Gaza Security Services” 6-15-07) suggests that the two groups may have been working together closely. Former Middle East CIA operations officer Robert Baer, who was interviewed in the article, said that the discovery of the documents was “a major blow to Fatah” and will show “a record of training, spying on Hamas”.

Baer added ironically, “Fatah equals CIA is not a good selling point.”

Baer is right. The uncovering of the documents is “big trouble” for Abbas who is already facing a loss of public confidence from his closeness to Israel and for his appointment of Salam Fayyad, the ex-World bank official who the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz calls “everyone’s favorite Palestinian.”

Perhaps more significant is the fact that members of Hamas who spoke with WorldNetDaily claimed that “the files contain, among other information, details of CIA networks in the Middle East” and that Hamas plans to “use these documents and make portions public to prove the collaboration between America and traitor Arab countries.” Imagine what a headache it will be for the Bush administration if Hamas exposes the broader network of US spies and Arab quislings operating throughout region.

Bush Support for “Regime Change” in the PA

It’s no secret that the Bush administration has been funneling money to Palestinian militias that are preparing to overthrow Hamas. On Monday, Condoleezza Rice announced that the US would resume “full assistance to the Palestinian government” and end the year long boycott to the people in the West Bank. The new aid—which could amount to as much as $86 million---will be used to shore up the PA security apparatus and pay the salaries of officials in the “emergency government.” The uncovering of the CIA documents in Gaza will cast a cloud over the administration’s largesse and make Abbas look like a Palestinian Karzai who gets financial treats from Washington to follow their diktats.

Yesterday, Condoleezza Rice was given the task of outlining the administration’s new policy vis-à-vis the Abbas’ “emergency government”. The Bush team had already decided the night before that they would throw their full support behind Abbas and his “unelected” clatter of pro-western stooges. Rice could hardly contain her glee the next day when she ascended the podium and began wagging her finger reproachfully at Hamas:

"Hamas has made its choice,” Condi growled. “It has sought to attempt to extinguish democratic debate with violence and to impose its extremist’s agenda on the Palestinian people in Gaza, now responsible Palestinians are making their choice and it is the duty of the international community to support those Palestinians who wish to build a better life and a future of peace."

This typically Orwellian statement was intended to justify the deposing of the legally-elected government of Palestine. No matter; Rice’s pronouncements are always reiterated verbatim in the media without challenge regardless of how incongruous they may be.

The Bush administration had plenty of time to observe developments on the ground and make an informed decision about what to do next. There was no need to hurry. Instead, they decided to blunder ahead and launch their “West Bank First” policy which commits US support to Abbas without any consideration of the public mood. The frantic pace of the decision-making, makes it look like Bush and Olmert are elevating Abbas to promote their own political agendas. Naturally, the Palestinians can be expected to resent this conspicuous outside meddling.

Former President Jimmy Carter was the first to blast Bush’s new plan. He said that “the United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements…. Carter said that Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government and that the Bush administration's refusal to accept the 2006 election victory of Hamas was ‘criminal.’”

Carter’s comments appeared in just one newspaper--the Jerusalem Post. The ex-president has been increasingly marginalized since he dared to imply that Israel is an apartheid state. But Carter's analysis is dead-on---Bush is just aggravating an already tense situation. He’d be better off trying to bring the two sides together and reconciling their differences rather than igniting a potentially explosive confrontation. Besides, Abbas’ close ties to Washington and Tel Aviv doesn’t bode well for his government’s long-term prospects. The US and Israel are widely reviled in the occupied territories and, as author Khalid Amayreh says, “Palestinians won’t accept a Vichy Government.

Three days ago Abbas disbanded the Hamas-dominated parliament and sacked Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Abbas had no legal justification for this action. In fact, the "Basic Law" which applies to this case stipulates that “The President cannot suspend the legislative Council during a state of emergency” and there is “no provision whatsoever for an emergency government”. The president does not even have the authority to “call for new elections”---let alone, replace the elected representatives of the people. Abbas only support comes from political leaders in Tel Aviv and Washington and their reluctant accomplices in the EU.

The key issue here is whether democratic elections have any real meaning or if they can simply be rescinded by executive decree?

This question should be as relevant to Americans as it is to Palestinians. After all, both people now face a similar predicament; the flagrant abuse of executive authority to enhance the powers of the president. In both cases, the president must be forced to conform to the law. Democracy cannot be decided by fiat.

Free elections are not a crime---that is, unless one lives in the Occupied Territories. Then voting for the candidate of one’s choice provides the justification for cutting off food, water, medicine, and financial resources—as well a stepping up a campaign of illegal detentions, destruction of personal property and targeted assassinations.

This is what the “Bush Doctrine” looks like in the Gaza Strip today. The occupants of the “most densely populated place on earth” participated in the balloting at insistence of the Bush administration and they’ve been rewarded for their cooperation with a savage boycott and daily brutality.

If Bush didn’t want democracy, then why did he force it on the Palestinians?

Political powerbrokers in the US and Israel immediately rejected the election results and initiated a plan to scuttle Hamas through economic strangulation, persistent harassment and covert warfare. For the last year, the newly “elected” government has shown remarkable restraint under constant assault. Hamas has kept its word and refrained from suicide bombings in Israel even though hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed or injured during that same time. In fact, there has NOT BEEN ONE HAMAS-BACKED SUICIDE BOMBING SINCE THE PARTY TOOK OFFICE. (This fact is invariably ignored by the media which is far-more sympathetic to the Israeli position) We should remember that suicide bombing has been used for years as the excuse for putting off “final settlement” negotiations. Now that the bombing has stopped, Israel has invented an entirely new excuse to avoid dialogue, that is, that Hamas “refuses to recognize the state of Israel”.

Actually, it is Israel that refuses to accept Palestinian statehood---a fact that is further underlined by its relentless efforts to topple the Hamas government.

Hamas has done nothing illegal since they were elected. The Qassam rockets which are fired into Israel are the unavoidable corollary of the 40-year long occupation. How is Hamas supposed to stop these sporadic attacks? If Israel seriously believed that Hamas was responsible for the rockets, they wouldn’t hesitate to arrest or kill every leader in the current parliament. The fact is, Israel knows that Hamas is not instigating these attacks. It’s just another red herring.

Regardless of what one may think about Hamas, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has shown that he is a man who can be trusted to keep his word. In an interview in the Washington Post with Lally Weymouth, Haniyeh and asked him if Hamas sought the “obliteration of the Jewish people”? (another myth propagated in the western press)

Haniyeh answered, “We do not have any feelings of animosity toward Jews. We do not wish to throw them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our land back, not to harm anybody.”

This, of course, is not the response that neocon extremists in the US-Israeli political establishment want to hear. It undermines the rationale for the ongoing military occupation and expansion of illegal settlements. They would rather promote the image of Palestinians as vicious radicals bent on the Israel’s complete annihilation. But how accurate is that image?

In a particularly affecting editorial in the Washington Post, Prime Minister Haniyeh stated his case in simple terms. He said:

“As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure---all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles -- my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?

They think of the pluck and "toughness" of Israel, "standing up" to "terrorists." Yet a nuclear Israel possesses the 13th-largest military force on the planet, one that is used to rule an area about the size of New Jersey and whose adversaries there have no conventional armed forces. Who is the underdog, supposedly America's traditional favorite, in this case?

I hope that Americans will give careful thought to root causes and historical realities, (of) why a supposedly "legitimate" state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals.

Israel's nearly complete control over the lives of Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by the humanitarian and economic suffering of the Palestinians since the January elections. Israel's ongoing policies of expansion, military control and assassination mock any notion of sovereignty or bilateralism. Its "separation barrier," running across our land, is hardly a good-faith gesture toward future coexistence.

But there is a remedy, and while it is not easy it is consistent with our long-held beliefs. Palestinian priorities include recognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people; resolution of the refugee issue from 1948; reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner.

This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun”.

Haniyeh’s appeal to the American people helps us understand that what Hamas really wants is for Israel to conform to “unanimously approved” UN resolutions “predicated on historical truth, equity and justice.”

Does that sound unreasonable? Wasn't the same demanded of Saddam?

Haniyeh is not a madman nor is he an “Islamofascist.” In fact, it may be that Haniyeh’s dreams are not that different from the average Israeli citizen.

Consider the polls that were conducted just days after the election of Mahmoud Abbas. One survey showed that nearly 80% of Israelis supported immediate peace talks with the new Palestinian president. The Israeli leadership, of course, stubbornly refused even though Yasir Arafat had died a month earlier. The Israeli political establishment is resolutely against peace talks or negotiations. Unlike the vast majority of Israeli citizens--Israel's ruling elite reject the principle of "land for peace!”

Perhaps, Arafat wasn’t the “obstacle to peace” after all. Perhaps it was just a PR swindle to avoid real dialogue?

Israeli leaders have no intention of negotiating with the Palestinians, regardless of what the Israeli public wants or who’s sitting in Ramallah. The Zionist “grand plan” will not be compromised by conferences or bartering. The military occupation and settlement activity will continue until US support dries up and Israel is forced to the bargaining table. Until then the onslaught will continue.

Another Siege of Gaza?

Ha’aretz reports that Israel is planning to launch a military operation in Gaza aimed at crushing Hamas.( “Barak planning military operation in Gaza within weeks” 6-17-07) The invasion will involve 20,000 troops, armored vehicles, tanks, and air support.

But what is the justification? Is it because the US-Israeli plan to overthrow Hamas with Palestinian militias failed? Or is it because the duly-elected government has reclaimed the power it was given at the ballot box?

According to an Israeli official, the invasion will be in response to the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel or another suicide bombing.

In other words, Israel is devising a pretext for “regime change” EVEN BEFORE THEY ARE ATTACKED. Until then, the border crossings will remain closed, the blockade will be tightened, and the economic asphyxiation will continue.

In the face of US-Israeli plotting, consider the comments of Prime Minister Haniyeh, who articulates as well as anyone, the aspirations of the Palestinians people:

“We do not want to live on international welfare and American handouts. We want what Americans enjoy -- democratic rights, economic sovereignty and justice. We thought our pride in conducting the fairest elections in the Arab world might resonate with the United States and its citizens. Instead, our new government was met from the very beginning by acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White House. Now this aggression continues against 3.9 million civilians living in the world's largest prison camps.

We present this clear message: If Israel is prepared to negotiate seriously and fairly, and resolve the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967, a fair and permanent peace is possible. Based on a hudna (comprehensive cessation of hostilities for an agreed time), the Holy Land still has an opportunity to be a peaceful and stable economic powerhouse for all the Semitic people of the region. If Americans only knew the truth, possibility might become reality”.

Hamas history of violence is problematic, but it should not be an insurmountable obstacle to peace. The IRA had a similar history and, yet, those issues were ultimately resolved through the Good Friday peace accords. Now, the warring factions have joined together in a power-sharing agreement and there’s reason to believe that the armed struggle phase of the conflict is over. A similar remedy is possible between Israel and Palestine.

Hamas entry into the political system should be seen for what it is--- a step in the right direction. It is an indication that they are tired of the armed struggle and want to pursue a political solution. Israel and the US should be receptive to this. They should reward Hamas’ efforts to stop the suicide bombing and agree to backchannel negotiations. That will determine whether common ground can be reached on any of the main issues. If the violence resumes, Israel can always return to its present strategy but, it’s certainly worth a try.

At the very least, Bush and Olmert should respect the will of the Palestinian people and allow Hamas to perform its duties without further hectoring, sanctions, violence or sabotage. The US and Israel have no right to intervene in the affairs of a sovereign government. If Hamas perpetrates violence against Israel, then Israel has every right to respond. But until then, they should show restraint and try to play a constructive role in strengthening the emergent Palestinian democracy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle17906.htm

[islamirama]

Castro blasts CIA over spy papers

Cuban President Fidel Castro has said recent CIA admissions of illicit Cold War activities disguise the fact the US is using such "brutal" tactics today.

"Everything described in the documents is still being done, only in a more brutal manner around the entire planet, including an increasing number of illegal actions in the very United States," President Castro wrote.

In an editorial called the Killing Machine, he wrote: "Sunday is a good day to read what appears to be science fiction."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6259738.stm

[Cognescenti]

The minute I found myself agreeing with Fidel Castro on anything but baseball or cigars I would make an appt. with my doctor.

[Zman]

:sl:/Peace To All

Agency's Strangeloves Altered Mind Of A Girl Aged 4

By Robert Lusetich,
Los Angeles correspondent
28 Jun 07
The Australian

EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities".

"Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects."

Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest.

"We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects.

The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strangeloves and engaged pharmaceutical companies to help its experiments.

The agency appealed to Big Pharma to pass on any drugs that could not be marketed because of "unfavourable side effects" to be tested on mice and monkeys. Any drugs that passed muster would then be used, according to an internal memo, on volunteer US soldiers.

The Family Jewels files do not provide further detail into the numerous mind-control programs, such as MKULTRA, covertly propped up by the agency.

In 1953, MKULTRA was given 6per cent of the total CIA budget without any oversight.

Only the tip of a large iceberg had been previously released by the CIA under Freedom of Information Act provisions.

...The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims' brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.

"The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952 starting at the tender age of four," wrote Carol Rutz of her experiences.

"Over the next 12 years, I was tested, trained, and used in various ways. Electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other types of trauma were used to make me complain and split my personality (to create multiple personalities for specific tasks). Each alter or personality was created to respond to a post-hypnotic trigger, then perform an act and (I would) not remember it later.

"This Manchurian Candidate program was just one of the operational uses of the mind-control scenario by the CIA.

"Your hard-earned tax dollars supported this."

The US began these experiments after World War II when it made a grab for hundreds of Nazi scientists and doctors who had been researching mind control in concentration camps, fearing they would fall into Soviet hands.

US military intelligence leaders were paranoid that they were falling behind the communist bloc in the brainwashing race.

The programs, though carefully hidden, continued into the 1970s - when Helms ordered much of the documentation to be destroyed.

Some conspiratorial theorists believe the CIA completed its goal, initially outlined in the early 1950s, of altering a personality and having someone "perform an action contrary to an individual's basic moral principles".

The attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, Lawrence Teeter, has said his client was programmed to assassinate Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, volunteered to take part in CIA mind-control experiments when he was a student at Harvard University in the late 50s.

© The Australian

Source:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...980496,00.html

[MTAFFI]

The minute I found myself agreeing with Fidel Castro on anything but baseball or cigars I would make an appt. with my doctor.

that is what i am sayin'!!!! Go live in Cuba for a couple years, see if you agree with him then

[islamirama]

The minute I found myself agreeing with Fidel Castro on anything but baseball or cigars I would make an appt. with my doctor.

better him then that lieing two face monkey u call president.

[Zman]

better him then that lieing two face monkey u call president.

The proof has been presented and the CIA's past & present dirty wars have been exposed.

Some of these non-Muslims were never able to refute the truth, instead they comment on Castro.

It would have been better to remain silent :D

[MTAFFI]

better him then that lieing two face monkey u call president.

LOL

like i said, go live in Cuba for a year or two, you mind find yourself on a 3 tree raft praying you hit shore is florida, and taking your chances with the weather and sharks rather than with Fidel

[MTAFFI]

The proof has been presented and the CIA's past & present dirty wars have been exposed.

Some of these non-Muslims were never able to refute the truth, instead they comment on Castro.

It would have been better to remain silent :D

What is there to refute? It is obvious that you posted this for a reaction rather than information purposes, well what reaction do you want? You want the reaction that, what people are supposed to be suprised? At least they come clean out of their dirty laundry, what can other countries around the world say? You think the CIA is the only ones with "family jewels"? Please, things happen every day that are disgraceful, by every government in the world, including Muslim ones and especially in war times or in particular the cold war era. So OK Zman, great job, you proved to everyone that the CIA (a government organization that is known to carry out secret missions) has committed less than honorable actions, that until now, some where "unknown" to the public (like everyone didnt know that the US wanted to assassinate Castro). So now what would you like everyone to do, admit that this same agency carries out "less than honorable" actions in Muslim countries? There is no doubt, it is called intelligence gathering, removing security threats, completing objectives that will further our country in the world or in other words THEY ARE DOING THEIR JOB

[Keltoi]

What is there to refute? It is obvious that you posted this for a reaction rather than information purposes, well what reaction do you want? You want the reaction that, what people are supposed to be suprised? At least they come clean out of their dirty laundry, what can other countries around the world say? You think the CIA is the only ones with "family jewels"? Please, things happen every day that are disgraceful, by every government in the world, including Muslim ones and especially in war times or in particular the cold war era. So OK Zman, great job, you proved to everyone that the CIA (a government organization that is known to carry out secret missions) has committed less than honorable actions, that until now, some where "unknown" to the public (like everyone didnt know that the US wanted to assassinate Castro). So now what would you like everyone to do, admit that this same agency carries out "less than honorable" actions in Muslim countries? There is no doubt, it is called intelligence gathering, removing security threats, completing objectives that will further our country in the world or in other words THEY ARE DOING THEIR JOB

That was going to be my point. The CIA has a job to do, and sometimes it isn't pretty or glorious. I would think most people understand that. In the case of the "family jewels" being declassified, most of these things were already assumed to be true. Now we know for sure.

[Cognescenti]

Some seem to be suffering from what Freud might have called "jewel envy".


BTW...anyone want to bet when we see a full and complete airing of the KGB "family jewels"

[Zman]

:sl:

"The CIA has a Job to do,"

"War is dirty, and people die in war,"

"Guerrilla warfare is dishonorable,"

"The cowardly insurgents hide in populated areas,"

If we ever face these situations, you'll see these people change their tune, and Justify what they do and condemn what is being done to them.

It'll be more excuse making up the wazoo.

Their level of hypocrisy and double standards are absolutely nauseating...

[Cognescenti]

:sl:
[i]
If we ever face these situations, you'll see these people change their tune, and Justify what they do and condemn what is being done to them.

Who, exactly, is "we"?

Dood, quit strutting around like some kind of Daniel Webster reincarnation...the chief directive of the CIA for all those years was the defeat of the Soviet Union. There were indeed excesses in that struggle...some of which I don't think you even mentioned but I am not sure because your posts are insufferably long and innumerable and no mortal has the patience to read them.

Two big ones were the Bay of Pigs invasion and the support of the coup and (as it happened, assassination) of President Ky in South Vietnam. Both of these were actually explicitly authorized by Kennedy. Subsequently, Ford, I think, explicitly authorized a Presidential Order specifically forbiding any agency of the US Govnmt from conducting "political assassination". There is a substantial legal penalty for disobeying the Order.

Allende, the Shah, stingers for the Mujahadin ..those were all about thwarting the Soviet Union, which was responsible for the murder/enslavement/forced exodus of dozens of millions of people, no small number of them Muslim. How do you think the Russians got into Chechnya and Ossetia to start with...invitations?

How do you think the hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states feel about the Russians? Why do you think the Berliners stood on the Wall in ecstasy and started to tear it down with sledge hammers? Have you ever spoken to a Cambodian about the Kmer Rouge? I have. You ever talk to Cuban expats living in the US. I have. They would cut out Castro's liver with a Boy Scout knife if they had a chance.

You have such a monolithic worldview that you cannot see the grander historical perspective. Guess what. The Soviet Union is kaput. You are welcome.

[Keltoi]

:sl:

"The CIA has a Job to do,"

"War is dirty, and people die in war,"

"Guerrilla warfare is dishonorable,"

"The cowardly insurgents hide in populated areas,"

If we ever face these situations, you'll see these people change their tune, and Justify what they do and condemn what is being done to them.

It'll be more excuse making up the wazoo.

Their level of hypocrisy and double standards are absolutely nauseating...

All those statements are true. Nobody is suggesting the American military is a display of perfection on the battlefield, and nobody is suggesting the CIA is innocent or perfect. It many cases it comes down to intent. In the case of guerilla warfare, especially the urban kind, civilians are shields. That is the point of hiding among them. No matter how much restraint a conventional military may exercise, eventually the hammer will drop. Sometimes that hammer drops on the wrong spot, and civilians are killed. You don't "justify" it, you rationalize it. In war civilians will be killed, sometimes it is intentional, like the Dresden firebombing, or the atomic bombs in Japan, and sometimes it is a product of bad planning or faulty intelligence. Nobody is safe from war, especially not civilians.

Again, the issue is intent. No sane pilot is hoping that when he pulls that trigger his munitions will blow up a civilian complex. They are either following coordinates given to them by command, or they are going by radar blips that show the source of rocket or missile fire. Then it goes back to the other side. Why are the these guerilla fighters firing rockets from a civilian apartment complex? The answer is two fold. Firstly, they are hoping that their enemies will restrain themselves from firing upon a civilian area even though they are taking fire from a civilian area. Secondly, they are hoping that if their enemies do fire upon them in the civilian areas, these attacks will kill civilians, creating bad PR for their enemies. That is guerilla warfare 101.

As I stated earlier, the hammer will eventually fall. There is no way around it. Civilians die as a result. Who is the good guy? Nobody. Who bears responsibility? Both parties. However, since most people see the world as "us vs. them", each side will rationalize and attempt to justify their mistakes and deliberate actions. Those guerilla fighters who took up residence in the civilian areas bear obvious responsibility. Those forces who opposed them bear responsibility for rationalizing the benefits of killing those guerilla fighters regardless of the civilian cost.

[MTAFFI]

:sl:

"The CIA has a Job to do,"

"War is dirty, and people die in war,"

"Guerrilla warfare is dishonorable,"

"The cowardly insurgents hide in populated areas,"

If we ever face these situations, you'll see these people change their tune, and Justify what they do and condemn what is being done to them.

It'll be more excuse making up the wazoo.

Their level of hypocrisy and double standards are absolutely nauseating...

I think Cog & keltoi summed it up for you pretty well.... My question for you is, what do you think you are proving or what is the point behind these mass posts of copy and paste? Did you really think you were proving something with this or the issue of "terror" plots by other people than Muslims or so called Muslims? I am just curious... you say "If we ever face these situations, you'll see these people change their tune, and Justify what they do and condemn what is being done to them. It'll be more excuse making up the wazoo.", are you not making excuses in nearly every post you put on here? Instead of taking a look at the real problem, people using the Muslim title to justify violence, you would rather attempt to divert attention or ask why isnt anything else being focused on, or why isnt it called terrorism or why arent Christians being chased around... it seems as though your hypocrisy and double standards are nauseating, by your own definition. When have you ever posted a single thing about insurgent injustices? There are certainly plenty of them, they happen every day probably around 50 to 100 people each day, but no you would rather talk about the CIA activities during the cold war... LOL, perhaps if you at least tried to take a look at the whole scope of things you might be a little more credible or worth actually replying to

[Zman]

:sl:

The CIA's War On The Third World

John Stockwel, former CIA Angola Station Chief, talks about the Agency's: Third World War.

Stockwell, also talks about: How 6 million People Were slaughtered In The Many CIA Secret Wars Against Third World Countries...

Media Tags are no longer supported