Last edited Sat Feb 21, 2015, 02:27 PM - Edit history (2)

For all this talk about Russian propaganda--the information war the pentagon & state department is very transparent. When it comes to whatever it is, I try to dig into independent, facts-on-the-ground type of sources. Video journalism from Vice is especially valuable.

You know its bad when there are headlines like this -- Can Ukraine Win Its Information War With Russia?

If 9-1 Google links brings up "West losing information to Russia" to a simple "information war" search it is obvious both sides are waging an information war.

We have seen this show before

thanks.

Going by this excerpt from the socialist POV, it's may cause some conversation in the legal community, if not consternation.

on these cockroach traitors.

In addition, the Justice Department had become involved. The CIA inspector general, David Buckley, had reviewed the CIA searches conducted on Senate computers and had found enough evidence of wrongdoing to warrant passing the file to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. Perhaps in a tit-for-tat response and certainly with the aim of intimidating his adversaries, the acting CIA general counsel, Robert Eatinger, had made a referral of his own, this time targeting Senate staffers and apparently accusing them of gaining improper access to classified materials and handling them improperly. Secrecy was unsheathed as a sword against an institution suddenly seen as a bitter foe: the U.S. Congress.

Eatinger’s appearance as a principal actor in this drama was revealing. He was hardly an objective figure. A key point for the committee investigators was the relationship between CIA operations and the Department of Justice, and particularly the process the CIA had used to secure opinions from Justice authorizing specific interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that amounted to torture.

As the senior staff attorney in the operations directorate, Eatinger would certainly have played a pivotal role throughout the process leading to the introduction of torture techniques. The Senate investigators concluded that the CIA had seriously misled the Justice Department about the techniques being applied in an effort to secure approvals that would cover even harsher methods than those described, and Eatinger was right at the center of those dealings. Indeed, Eatinger’s name appears 1,600 times in the report.

Like many agency figures closely connected with the black sites and torture program, Eatinger had skyrocketed through the agency, ultimately becoming senior career lawyer and acting general counsel. No figure in the agency would have had a stronger interest in frustrating the issuance of the report. All those involved with the torture and black sites program risked being tarnished by the report, but few more seriously than the CIA figures who dealt with the Justice Department. Moreover, other risks were looming on the horizon outside the Beltway. As Eatinger struggled to block the Senate report, courts in Europe were readying opinions concluding that the CIA interrogation program made use of criminal acts of torture and that the black site operations amounted to illegal disappearings. The United States was not subject to the jurisdiction of these courts, but its key NATO allies were, and the courts would soon be pressing them to pursue criminal investigations and bring prosecutions relating to the CIA program.

Those involved in the program, including Eatinger, thus risked becoming international pariahs, at risk of arrest and prosecution the instant they departed the shelter of the United States.

"Secrecy was unsheathed as a sword against an institution suddenly seen as a bitter foe: the U.S. Congress." -- Scott Horton

We really need a new Church Committee where the abuses of the CIA are concerned.

Frank Church was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American.

The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

been forgotten. They must love how when the Left is in power, the 'left' resistance simply goes away. They don't have to worry much about the Right, but they do worry a lot about the 'left'. Very clever they way they manage to always have a 'majority' aiding and abetting them.

One day maybe, the Left at least will not lose its enthusiasm to prosecute war criminals simply because they 'win'. But for now, it's working beautifully for torturers, war criminals and Wall St criminals.

Is itself a illegal in addition to obstruction of justice.

The CIA keeps getting away with shit and is always handled with kid gloves. I'm beginning to wonder if they've sat someone down and said something similar to "It would be a shame if something happened to Chicago, nice town but a suitcase nuke would be really hard to find there."

Of course, the are "patriots under a lot of pressure".

For a good cause, I'm told. The Have-Mores.

On one hand I appreciate it and on the other hand it isn't good for my phyche. Maybe those that drink the cool-aid and live in the denial bubble have a point.

All seriousness aside, I do appreciate all the information you provide here.

Secret Government is why the pendulum won't swing back.

Prof. Alfred McCoy studied the history of the crimes of the secret national security state and found that when they previously occurred, there usually was a reaction from the party not in executive power. LBJ and COINTELPRO/CHAOS were countered by the Repuke investigators in the House and Senate; Nixon and Watergate were countered by the Church Committee and new Congressional oversight. Today there has been no response from either party when the other's treasons were exposed, thanks to the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA warrantless full-spectrum spying op preventing the Constitutional pendulum from swinging.

Another task force discovery -- also dropped from the final report -- was that conservative "journalist" Michael Ledeen, another Shackley associate, was privately collaborating with the Reagan-Bush campaign on the Iran hostage issue. The draft chapter said Ledeen was an unofficial member of the campaign's "October Surprise" group. A separate page of Allen's notes revealed Ledeen joining campaign director, William J. Casey, in a Sept. 16 meeting for what was called the "Persian Gulf Project."

In 1980, Shackley had teamed up with Ledeen as paid consultants to a "war game" for SISMI, the Italian intelligence service with close ties to the secret international right-wing Masonic lodge, P-2. As the 1980 campaign neared its end, Italian intelligence leaked a damaging -- and questionable -- story to Ledeen about President Carter's brother Billy and his business ties to Libya. Ledeen wrote the story for The New Republic without mentioning that he was working for SISMI or assisting the Reagan-Bush campaign. (See David Corn's The Blond Ghost, p. 359.)

The Safari Club -- a template for how making an end-run around the Constitution.

Though Booz Allen’s role is to verify that the access to the SWIFT data is not abused, its relationship with the U.S. Government calls its objectivity significantly into question. (Emphasis added.)

Among Booz Allen’s senior consulting staff are several former members of the intelligence community, including a former Director of the CIA and a former director of the NSA.

supposed to keep people busy with fluff, 'deflated footballs' or 'one case of Measles in NJ' or Beyonce, the Kardashians etc. Morning 'news' is a series of stories about who is starring in what movie, or which celebrity is getting divorced etc.

Maybe none of this can ever be fixed and we are destined to live in an Empire until it collapses as they all do in the end.

“There is no constituency for the truth.”

years ago. But it's never too late to do justice.

The guy helped lie America into war on Iraq twice. The guy set up the circumstances for same wars to profit his "future" and "former" employer by outsourcing and privatizing warfighting. Said company paid tens of millions -- at least -- to the guy after he left his job. Said company was documented to have overcharged, under-performed and was criminally negligent in its responsibilities. Said company and industry has been doing the same thing in Washington since Vietnam belonged to France.

That's not even mentioning how the guy outted a spy and rolled up her cover outfit to send a message to Doves in Washington so there'd be no official opposition to the war lie, let alone his "work" helping A.Q. Khan and Pakistan develop the Bomb.

Now you got me goin', hifiguy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1187445

Great read! Thanks!

For some reason, CIABCNNBCBSFoxNutworks mostly missed it.

http://harpers.org/blog/2007/08/judge-fuller-and-the-trial-of-don-siegelman/

And for some, uh, other reason Attorney General Eric Holder and then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan decided to agree with Karl Rove's Dipartament of Just Us.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8614514

sets up the trust Feinstein put in the CIA when they were limiting Senate staffers' access to documents. her prior "gentlemanly" agreements with intelligence led her to believe that they were "playing fair." wow. makes you wonder what else she missed playing by these rules.

Jeez.

No telling who is responsible, who benefits, who pays.

This got published in the Washington Post and, evidently, few other newspapers at the time:

Will return later for a more detailed examination.
Thanks.

keep fading away today.

I try to do my part to help people understand the real threat to our nation.

The leadership has proven itself disappointing. One recent example is the agency became the fall-guys for Bush lying America into war. "Slam dunk" uh huh became "Mistakes were made." Must've forgotten Bush's quote after the CIA gave him a nice briefing in Crawford during that extended August 2001 summer vaca:

[font color="red"]"All right. You've covered your ass."[/font color]

From WaPo's review of Suskind's book:

Looking through CIA convictions, I only see a few outside of double agents, selling secrets, & leakers. Two of them by Italy.

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions

MILAN — In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge on Wednesday convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.

The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to coercive interrogation techniques.

<snip>
Citing state secrecy, the judge did not convict five high-ranking Italians charged in the abduction, including a former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolò Pollari.

<snip>

Italian prosecutors had charged the Americans and seven members of the Italian military intelligence agency in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors said he was snatched in broad daylight, flown from an American air base in Italy to a base in Germany and then on to Egypt, where he asserts that he was tortured.


Interesting interview (Italian-English translation first 4 questions)

Mr. Lady, the process is now nearing its end. She has never been questioned. So the first question is inevitable: pleads guilty? Co-organized the kidnapping of Abu Omar?
"No, I am not guilty. I am responsible only to have carried out an order that I had received from my superiors. But it was not a criminal matter. It was an affair of state. So I am not guilty. This is my opinion. "
However, we are talking about a kidnapping. Under Italian law, as for the American, the seizure is a serious crime. She had the knowledge to commit a crime when he collaborated seizure?
"I worked in intelligence for twenty-five years old, and almost no activity I've done in these twenty-five years he was legal in the country where I realized. When you work in intelligence, do the things that in the country where jobs are not legal. It is a life of illegality, if we want to see it. But State institutions around the world have available to professionals in my field, and we must do our duty. Besides, when Achilles attacked Troy did an operation that was not legal, but it was what he and others felt they had to do. "
That the CIA has come to Milan to kidnap an extremist as Abu Omar is not particularly amazing. Instead, it is astounding how they have conducted the operation, leaving behind a slew of tracks: phone calls, credit cards and so on. How was this possible?
"The question I've made myself. How could we be so unprofessional? The answer that I gave is that there were too many people involved. These steps must be in a few, and we we've forgotten, this is the only explanation. There is no possible excuse, too many mistakes have been made. But how it was possible to actually do not know why I have not organized it. "
Yet she was the head of the CIA station in Milan.
"Yes, but the CIA that Milan is a small station, I was a big shot. What happened in my jurisdiction, all there, but it was not totally under my control. It always works well and there's a reason: the local chief should not be involved because everyone knows him. So I was not able to control what was happening. And many things in intelligence do not know why the rule is the need to know, you know just what you need you to know. "
http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/lex-capo-cia-cos-rapimmo-abu-omar.html

This is how another kidnapping prosecution in Italy went down

CIA Rendition Case: US Pressured Italy to Influence Judiciary

The CIA rendition of cleric Abu Omar in 2003 turned into a headache for Washington when a Milan court indicted the agents involved. Secret dispatches now show how the US threatened the Italian government in an attempt to influence the case. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was apparently happy to help.

In 2007, a court in Milan started trying several CIA agents in absentia for their roles in the 2003 kidnapping of Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric who had been living in the northern Italian city. When the indictments first came down, the US government tried to intervene -- first in Milan and then in Rome -- so as to influence the investigations of the public prosecutor's office.

At first, the efforts were conducted via diplomatic channels. But, later, they also took place during top-level talks with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. American diplomats and even the US secretary of defense were assured that the Italian government "was working hard to resolve the situation." And they also got to hear Berlusconi vent his rage at his own country's judicial system.

<snip>
The notes provide deep insights into relations between Italy and the United States. Even before the Americans started exerting pressure, the Italian government had already been doing all it could to cover up the Abu Omar affair. All the evidence and knowledge that Italian officials had about the kidnapping were declared state secrets, making them worthless to prosecutor Spataro in terms of arguing his case. The Americans were very happy about this move. In fact, one American diplomatic cable regarding the classification of evidence says that the Italian government "is fully committed to maintaining our strong anti-terrorism cooperation."

<snip>

Berlusconi's response shows his condescending attitude towards an independent judiciary. According to the cable, he told Gates that he "was working hard to resolve the situation." Then, he apparently said that the justice system was "dominated by leftists" and that he had many enemies, especially among the public prosecutors. He also made the prediction that the "courts will come down in our favor" in the appeal proceedings.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/cia-rendition-case-us-pressured-italy-to-influence-judiciary-a-735268.html

Thank you for the important news from Italy. Berlusconi symbolizes all that has gone "right" for the West. To give you an idea of how tilted things are in the USA, consider who Chief Justice John Roberts appoints to the courts "overseeing" the legality cough whatever of the CIA/NSA/FBI etcetc spy programs the People happen to hear about:

The G.O.P.’s Surveillance Judiciary

Is it possible to simply disband the partisan FISA court?

By Scott Horton
Harper's, July 29, 2013

In Friday’s New York Times, Charlie Savage takes a closer look at the judges hand-picked by John Roberts for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

Ten of the court’s 11 judges — all assigned by Chief Justice Roberts — were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents; six once worked for the federal government. Since the chief justice began making assignments in 2005, 86 percent of his choices have been Republican appointees, and 50 percent have been former executive branch officials.

Not surprisingly, the Times review shows that Roberts has fashioned a court in his own image: movement conservative, Republican, largely consisting of persons who previously worked in the government. In sum, Roberts has picked a court that can be relied upon to quickly approve any government request for surveillance, through whatever instruments and according to whatever rules the government wishes.

The two chief justices who preceded Roberts, William H. Rehnquist and Warren E. Burger, were also conservative Republicans, and like Roberts they also ensured that a majority of the FISA court’s judges were conservative Republicans. However, neither of his predecessors was nearly so obsessive about it as Roberts — two-thirds of their selections were Republicans, while for Roberts, all but one have been Republican.

SNIP...

The special judicial body put in place by FISA to check government surveillance activities has been transformed by John Roberts into a cheerleader for such programs. This judicial adulteration leaves NSA critics in Congress with little alternative but to push for laws establishing further limits on NSA activities — though even if they manage to pass such a law, they must be wary of the demonstrated ability of the Justice Department, the NSA, and the FISA court to find secret “understandings” of statutes that justify unforeseen forms of overreach.

CONTINUED...

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/07/the-gops-surveillance-judiciary/

I'd like to add "The biggest CIA-drug money scandal you never read" -- this one has numerous sources

<snip>

The Reagan Commission on Organized Crime spent much of 1984 attacking Deak’s global foreign exchange firm, Deak-Perera. By the end of the year, Deak was forced to appear before the commission in a testy public interrogation; his financial empire collapsed within days.

A year later, in 1985, Deak was assassinated in his Wall Street high-rise by a paranoid-schizophrenic bag lady from Seattle, who’d been hired for the job by Latin American mobsters, according to a private internal investigation led by former FBI detectives. The assassin, Lois Lang (pictured above), had previously spent several murky years in the underbelly of Silicon Valley, where she fell under the care of a famous Stanford Research Institute psychiatrist, Frederick Melges — an expert on dosing his subjects with drugs and hypnosis to induce “artificial” dissociative states. Perhaps not surprisingly, Dr. Melges was up to his eyeballs in secret CIA behavior modification programs that were going on at Stanford until they were exposed in Congressional hearings in 1977. [For more on this stranger-than-fiction story, read “James Bond and the Killer Bag Lady” co-authored with Alexander Zaitchik.]

<snip>

Nicholas Deak should’ve been the least likely target for a Reagan Administration takedown over cocaine money laundering, and not only because the same Reagan Administration was busy aiding and abetting the CIA’s mercenary army, the Contras, as they moved cocaine into the US, and illegal weapons into their Honduras bases. What made targeting Deak all the stranger was that one of Deak’s closest longtime friends, William Casey, was head of Reagan’s CIA at that time. And as Gary Webb’s reporting (and Robert Parry’s exposés before and after Webb) have shown, Casey’s CIA was at that very same time aiding and protecting the Contras’ cocaine-running operation.

<snip>

Kristof did enough of his archive searching to uncover Deak’s role in some spectacularly shady intelligence operations, but somehow managed to miss Deak’s own intelligence links — including Deak-Perera’s central role in the Lockheed Bribery Scandal, the “Watergate of Corporate America,” under which the CIA funneled millions of bribe dollars to a Japanese war criminal-turned-Yakuza don, who used the funds to influence Japan’s ruling party. Deak-Perera moved the CIA’s funds; Lockheed reps and a Spanish-born priest in Macao carried the cash. Here, however, Kristof leaves out the CIA’s role, so that it all appears, in Kristof’s limited grasp, to reflect “the peculiar world of high finance”:

http://pando.com/2014/10/26/the-biggest-cia-drug-money-scandal-you-never-read/

Probably more important than whatever it is, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, oil production, etc, is for some reason following the money doesn't interest people or viewed as a similar concern but what is more important or more harmful is where the money goes.

Wachovia launders $378 billion in drug money, hit with $70 million fine, invest in for-profit prisons. It implies the higher up you go the pyramid, the more you begin to see in political & business connections.

Follow the oil money, private defense contractors, Saudi Arabia--Kuwait--Qatar, the information wars. Why the media hypes a bad guy. I wanted to scream when the panel on Real Time expressed a desire for Saudi Arabia to be more involved in battling IS. Really, IS can only be marginally worse than the 'House of Saud'. Follow the money which the above article does an excellent job of.

Thank you for the heads-up, JonLP24. Lots to learn. Lots to learn.



The Tailor of Panama

with a very flawed perception that has been conditioned into them.

They are schooled to have the idea that "what benefits me, benefits the country, and I am the country."

Therefore, they can do no wrong, nothing they do is illegal, and anyone against them is against the US.

I guess civilian oversight is out of the question.

I want to think that you'll still be dispensing wisdom to those willing to listen another 30 years from now.

Most eye opening thread...the unraveling of the emperor's cloths.

This is one of the most significant thread posted to DU in a looooong time.
It deserves 1000 Recs, and a pin to the top of GD.