El Salvador: Declassified documents opens the lid on Jesuits' murders

Source: IPS

Saturday, November 28, 2009
El Salvador: Declassified documents opens the lid on Jesuits' murders
By Edgardo Ayala - IPS

SAN SALVADOR, Nov 27 (IPS) - Thousands of pages of declassified U.S. documents shedding light on the 1989 murders of six prominent Jesuit clerics, their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter in El Salvador could give a new twist to the case that opened in the Spanish courts in January.

The documents, which were presented to Spain's National Court by attorneys representing the victims' families, provide new clues that could lead to an increase in the number of people accused of the murders, Spanish lawyer Almudena Bernabeu, who is representing the organisations that brought the case, told IPS in a telephone interview from Madrid.

The declassified documents from the late 1980s and early 1990s indicate the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) and U.S. State Department had foreknowledge of the Salvadoran military leadership's plan to kill the then-rector of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador, along with four other Spanish priests and a Salvadoran priest on Nov. 16, 1989.

The documents, which include cables to Washington from U.S. embassy, military and CIA officials, "provide important, compelling elements," said Bernabeu, without entering into detail, because the case is in the hands of the justice system.



Read more: http://ionglobaltrends.blogspot.com/2009/11/el-salvador-declassified-documents.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FzqKG+%28i+On+Global+Trends%29

Acting Republicon by occultly violating the intentions and the honor of the citizens of the United States of America.

Sorry...

By the way, this is more info on an old case that the Murican people don't give a fuck about.

as bodies turn up in the ditch in Honduras today, crimes without statutes of limitations are also being logged. Someday, someone will answer for this too, post-coup.

late 80's and early 90's. They couldn't have alerted the church or the white house they were getting cables like this and that safety precautions should be taken? Maybe they did and it was ignored? Another reason jr. wanted poppy's white house records sealed?

What were Jesuits doing 20 years ago? Reagan/Bush's worst political enemy, by far!!
Jesuits were threatening the Reagan and Bush administrations with probable impeachment
by investigating and revealing the Iran-Contra crimes. Even I gave them some evidence.

===========================
REV. WILLIAM J. DAVIS, S.J., chair of our board of directors, is director
of Christic Institute West. His investigation of the contra underworld helped
build the case for the Avirgan v. Hull. ....A Roman Catholic priest,
he has lived in Latin America and traveled
widely in the developing world. Father Davis was an official observer at the
1984 elections in Nicaragua. In 1981, he investigated the disappearance of
Charles Horman, a United States citizen whose murder by the Chilean military
was dramatized in Missing, a film directed by Costa Gavras. He is the former
director of the National Jesuit Office of Social Ministries.

Daniel Sheehan, served as General Counsel for the Jesuit National Headquarters,
National Social Ministry Office when Father William J Davis was Director of the National Office.

Daniel Sheehan for nearly five years investigated criminal
activity by United States citizens supporting the contra war and has testified
on his findings before Congress. He also fought for justice in
some of the most celebrated civil lawsuits of the past two decades: Silkwood,
the Pentagon Papers, Wounded Knee, Attica and Greensboro. He was one of the
attorneys representing Stacey Ann Merkt, the first activist in the sanctuary
movement arrested by Federal authorities for sheltering Salvadoran refugees.
Sheehan assembled the legal team that represented Karen Silkwood's family in
Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee and was coordinating counsel in the Greensboro Massacre
case. Shortly after his graduation from Harvard Law School, he joined the legal
team that represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case. At
Harvard, he was a cofounder and editor of the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties Law Review.

theology and would have been on the side of the people. There were several clergy assassinated because of their liberal stands and it would stand to reason that they would have wanted to know who, what, when and why. Raygun and boosh sr were deeply involved in much of this. Raygun cried forgetfulness and boosh hid behind his role of non-involved vp.

as part of the political opposition!

LINDA FRAZIER: Killed May 30 by a bomb blast at a press conference...

News Organizations: THE TICO TIMES and a Catholic paper
Killed May 30 by a bomb blast at a press conference called by a Nicaraguan rebel leader Eden Pastora just inside the border with Costa Rica. Three others were also killed, including two journalists. Pastora blamed the CIA immediately.

ABC cameraman Tony Avirgan was one od 18 injured journalists, and became plaintiff in the lawsuit by Christic Institute.

===================
How many people were murdered by the Reagan/Bush administration?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1398351#1401628

Costa Rica and Nicaragua; Remember La Penca and Ronald Reagan
NotiCen, 9:23, 17 June 2004

Former US President Ronald Reagan died just days after the 20th anniversary of the bombing at La Penca, a place inside Nicaragua on the Costa Rica border. The bombing, an act of terrorism almost entirely forgotten in the US, is well-remembered in a region that was once the focus of Reagan's foreign policy.

The May 30, 1984, explosion at a press conference called by Eden Pastora, the famed Sandinista Comandante Cero of the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, left four dead, three of them journalists. Since then, books have been written and lawsuits launched, but no one has ever been tried for a multiple murder that Costa Rica still treats as an active case that is seriously stalled.

Attorney General Francisco Dall'Anese has blamed US obstruction in the form of blocked access to classified documents. In a Feb. 27, 2004, letter to Costa Rica's Defensor de los Habitantes Jose Manuel Echandi, he enumerated the reasons for the deadlock: ....

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/460.html

===================
The following piece comes from The Christic Institute, 1324 N. Capitol St., N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20002

In a civil lawsuit filed last May in Miami Federal Court, the Christic
Institute, an interfaith law and public policy center in Washington, D.C.,
charged that the contra leadership and their private supporters bombed a
press conference in order to assassinate contra leader Eden Pastora, kill
U.S. journalists, and blame the attack on the Sandinista government of
Nicaragua.

The Institute represents U.S. journalists Tony Avirgan ......

The principal issue in the case, however, is the covert operations of a
"Secret Team" of current and former intelligence community and military
personnel allied with anti- Communist extremists. According to the
Institute's sources, this "team" was reactivated by Lt. Col Oliver North to
train and equip the contras when the Congress passed the Boland Amendment
cutting off official U.S. aid to the contras.

Among the 29 defendants are the chief of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force
(F.D.N.), retired generals in the United States Army and Air Force, former
senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency, two leading underworld
figures in the Colombian cocaine industry, and members of Cuban-American
terrorist organizations.

Documents filed by the Christic Institute in Miami Federal court charge
that the contras, aided by the Secret Team: ......

================

SEE ALSO: Washington's war on Nicaragua
By Holly Sklar

==================
the "Secret Team" or "Enterprise," a covert, privately-funded, anti-communist
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2781263#2781350

Does any of this sound familiar?

"... all of the principals in the Iran-Contra scandal also worked for the "Secret Team" or "Enterprise," a covert, privately-funded, anti-communist organization made up of present and former U.S. military and CIA officials. According to Christic, members of the Secret Team, "acting both officially and on their own, have waged secret wars, toppled governments, trafficked in drugs, assassinated political enemies, stolen from the U.S. government, and subverted the will of the Constitution, the Congress, and the American people" for the past twenty five years...."

" "These are people who believe that they are above the law, who are perfectly willing to lie to protect their programs, who think that their agenda is so important that our representatives do not matter and neither do we," says Nelson. "We never voted for death squads. We never thought that this is what they were doing in our name. We believed them when they said 'We are spreading democracy. We are fighting for freedom.' But that is not what has been going on."

FROM:
Southern Changes.
Contras in Dixie By Eric Guthey
Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, pp. 1-6
http://beck.library.emory.edu/southernchanges/article.p...

In 1984 an assassin's bomb intended for Contra leader Eden Pastora killed eight people, including an American journalist, at the Contra outpost of La Penca on the southern front of the U.S.-sponsored war against Nicaragua. ...

.... Honey and Avirgan also uncovered substantial evidence that Hull's ranch was being used as a trans-shipment point for cocaine entering the U.S. and arms coming back to the Contras.

In 1985, after Honey and Avirgan published their findings, Hull sued them for criminal libel in a Costa Rican court. According to a sworn affadavit from Christic Institute general counsel Daniel Sheehan, who defended Honey and Avirgan, several witnesses for the defense were kidnapped and tortured on Hull's ranch. According to a member of the Costa Rican Rural Guard, one of their key witnesses was executed there as well. A Costa Rican judge threw Hull's case out of court.

The allegations by Honey and Avirgan about Hull's drug smuggling and arms dealing activities in support of the Contras have recently received independent confirmation from Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) during hearings on the Contra-drug connection. On Frontline, Hull still denied any wrongdoing but said, "If it were within my power, people like Kennedy and Kerry would be lined up and shot tomorrow."

........

The Scandal of the Eighties

The Iran-Contra Committees brushed aside a horrifying story of state-sponsored terrorism by focusing on the question of whether the president knew what was going on. But as Noam Chomsky writes in his book THE CULTURE OF TERRORISM, Reagan is "largely a creation of the Public Relations Industry," and the question of what he knew retains significance only "in the world of imagery and illusion in which ideologists must labor to maintain the pretense that the public determines policy guidelines by voting for the chief executive." The scores of conflicting and erroneous statements that have come out of Ronald Reagan's mouth about the Iran-Contra scandal serve to confirm his irrelevance to real issues in the real world. Whether or not Reagan knew what went on, it happened--a secret government waged wars, murdered at least one American citizen and many others abroad, flooded the country with drugs, and flouted the will of the American people. A president with any degree of competence would have to be held responsible.

The defense of choice around the White House these days adheres to the revised slogan "Just say I don't know"--a defense in which Administration officials are proud of the fact that they kept themselves uninformed or, better still, that they haven't been indicted yet. George Bush's continued assertions that he stayed "out of the loop" as far as the Iran-Contra affair was concerned illustrate just how far the Reagan gang will go to insult the intelligence of the American people. Recent press reports indicate that Bush may try to manipulate the debates before the election in order to avoid being confronted with his complicity in the Iran-Contra scandal and the operations of the Secret Team. He must not be allowed to do so. And the Democratic candidates must be carefully questioned as well--to make sure that, if elected, they will put an end to such threats to the Constitution and to the people's right to know how their country is being governed.

On May 2, Oliver North addressed the graduating class at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Falwell likened North's current legal trials to the sufferings of Christ, .....

http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/contrarv.htm

=================
Costa Rica is preparing a murder case. US obstruction is the problem.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2781263#2781356

Remember La Penca and Ronald Reagan
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/460.html

.....

Attorney General Francisco Dall'Anese has blamed US obstruction in the form of blocked access to classified documents. In a Feb. 27, 2004, letter to Costa Rica's Defensor de los Habitantes Jose Manuel Echandi, he enumerated the reasons for the deadlock:

* Exhaustive investigations in Costa Rica have not yielded sufficient results to bring a case to trial.
* Documents in the possession of the Senate of the United States of America have been declared secret by the US government and are therefore inaccessible.
* It has not been possible to identify the material author of the crime, not even through Interpol, and efforts to extradite US citizen John Hull and Miami-based Cuban-American Felipe Vidal have been fruitless.

Of the three reasons, Dall'Anese said in the letter, The second point is the major obstacle to terminating the investigations because the identity of the author of the deeds could be established and linked to Hull, and, without evidence, it is impossible to found an accusation.

Costa Rican authorities have attempted to extradite two alleged CIA collaborators, Hull and Vidal, from the US, but to no avail. ..............

.... MORE ...........

My father was president of a Catholic organization working for civil rights and social justice. It has been a travesty for me to see the church here overtaken by the RW. The social justice Catholics are in short supply these days.

they were doing because I often wanted to join in. The church has not changed for the better.

for that crucial bit of basic dot-connecting.

The k and the r.

of Americans in the Iran-Contra conflict, before I was nearly killed while doing so, before Hassenfus' plane was shot down, before Meese took the microphone and confessed that sales of missles to terrorists funded Reagan's illegal mercenary terrorist army killing people in Central America (not those exact words), before we discovered the role of cocaine in covert funding.

A poisonous skankload of treason against the United States and the honest and honorable sons and daughters who wear the uniform of our military as it should be worn -- not to cover their asses after treasonous drug and weapon deals like the Republicons pulled off with their occult SKULLduggery.

by the bomb aimed at Eden Pastora in the La Penca bombing.

since the administration is pointing the same finger as the previous administration.

Btw, I found this report from the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights. I haven't read it yet. It looks thorough.

http://www.walkingwithelsalvador.org/lchr_report%20on%20Jesuit%20murders.pdf

Colombia's military and closely tied rightwing death squads have slaughtered thousands of union leaders, human rights workers, community organizers, small peasant farmers, political leftists, journalists and others--an on-going slaughter in Colombia--as the preliminary to this: Colombia is a Pentagon/CIA tool, larded with $6 BILLION in US taxpayer-funded military aid, and is currently instigating part one of a Rumsfeld-designed oil war in South America.

See this and my comment "Happy Time for U.S. warmongers!" (including details on the 'South Vietnamization' of Colombia):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4162996

The coup in Honduras is part of this plan. Ousted President Mel Zelaya has said that a hundred people have already been murdered in Honduras, and thousands have been beaten up (including an independent candidate for president who had his arm broken by the police), tear-gassed, arbitrarily imprisoned, raped and tortured. Homes are being invaded and people dragged out and beaten or 'disappeared' into the night. The military and the police are under NO Constitutional restraints. Civil rights do not exist any more in Honduras. The country is one big prison under a state of martial law.

And the main reason for this is to secure the US military base and port facilities in Honduras for the oil war against Venezuela. Zelaya had proposed converting the US military base in Honduras to a commercial airport. That sealed his fate.

The US always allies with (dominates, runs, funds, organizes) DEATH SQUAD governments in Latin America, and this is no different today than it has ever been. Our "best friends" in Latin America are those leaders who kill and brutally suppress their own people--Colombia, a cauldron of blood; Honduras, becoming a cauldron of blood; Peru, run by corrupt "free traders" who recently open-fired on indigenous protestors from a helicopter gunship no doubt paid for by you and me for the corrupt, failed, murderous US 'war on drugs.' President Obama's stated policy of peace, respect and cooperation in Latin America is dead. Fini. Kaput. Either he never meant it in the first place, or he has been overruled.

And the war to guarantee Exxon Mobil and the Pentagon more oil--denied them in Iran (mostly by China)--is now under way in South America.

actions

http://www.greatchange.org/ov-martin,case_for_sedition.html

and installing these death squad right wing dictators. I had somewhat hoped our policy might change when the Republicans lost power.

i.e., the Vietnam War all over again, this time in South America, with the goal of commandeering South America's oil for the Pentagon war machine and for globalized "free trade for the rich."

The US, under Obama, is accelerating the 'South Vietnamization' of Colombia as the front country for US aggression in the region. The Bushwhack ambassador in Colombia, on Obama's behalf, just signed a secretly negotiated agreement with Colombia for SEVEN new US military bases in Colombia, 600 US soldiers and 600 US 'contractors,' with NO LIMIT on the number of future US military personnel, and complete diplomatic immunity for all US military personnel, plus US military use of all civilian airports and other facilities. And a secret USAF document has been uncovered which states that the purpose of all this is "full spectrum" US military operations throughout the region.

The US has been larding Colombia with $6 BILLION in US taxpayer funded military aid--as the preliminary to this escalation--while winking at the slaughter of thousands of union leaders, political leftists, human rights workers and others, and the forced displacement of an estimated 2 million peasant farmers--by the Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads.

The agreement for this dramatic US military buildup was kept a secret from the Colombian legislature, the Colombian people, the other leaders of Latin America, and the people of the US. It now has to come to the US Congress for approval, where Jim DeMint (first term Puke-SC)--who apparently is Obama's real Secretary of State--and his Puke/"Blue Dog" allies will likely assure its passage with little discussion and less scrutiny.

In so far as this US military buildup has been mentioned at all, in the US, the White House and the Pentagon have replied with a version of the bullshit that we heard from them in 1963--"just a few hundred military 'advisors'." Those of us who lived through that horror will never forget that phrase. Within two years, it was well on its way to a half a million US soldiers.

Furthermore, the US/Colombia have been working on preparing the border incident, between Colombia/Venezuela (or possibly Colombia/Ecuador), that will parallel the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident, to trigger the escalation. This secretly negotiated Colombia/US military agreement is the preliminary "paper work" for that escalation--Colombia "inviting" a huge US military presence into Colombia with NO LIMITATION on US military personnel. Its parallels to South Vietnam, where a puppet US government invited the US military in, and provided a front for the US war, is haunting, as are the many other parallels to Vietnam.

We have seen escalating border incidents on the Colombia/Venezuela border, recently, and there was a big one last year on the Colombia/Ecuador border--the US/Colombia dropping ten 500 lb US "smart bombs" on a FARC guerilla hostage release camp just inside Ecuador's border, and a raid over the border, in which 25 people were killed in their sleep, without benefit of trial--an incident that almost started a war, then and there. This may well have been a rehearsal for the coming "Gulf of Tonkin" on Venezuela's border, or nearby in the Caribbean, off Venezuelan waters. It had the additional benefit, for the US/Colombia, of killing the FARC guerillas' chief hostage negotiator who was trying to broker a peace settlement in Colombia's 40+ year civil war. The US. does. not. want. peace. in. Latin. America. It wants conflict that it can escalate into toppling governments that resist US global corporate predator rule.

And it is getting very difficult not to conclude that President Obama is on board for this war. Back in 1964, LBJ (who had succeeded to the presidency after JFK's assassination) ran for president on a peace platform. I remember this well. It was my first vote for president. I voted for peace.

I am trying to maintain hope that a new generation of Americans has not been similarly lied to, and fooled, by a Democratic president talking peace and secretly planning war. It may be that Obama is simply powerless to prevent it. He announced one policy--"peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America--and has possibly been overruled, and is so hampered by deals he made not to be Diebolded in 2008, that he can't stop these war preparations. Bear in mind that Exxon Mobil and the US war machine were denied their next planned source of oil, after Iraq--Iran (possibly because China and Russia threatened to come into it). So, where are they going to get that oil?

I am laying out a worst case scenario because I see so many signs and omens similar to those that most Americans missed back in 1963-1964. A few people were "crying in the wilderness" about the pending war in Vietnam*, but almost no one heard them. I don't want that to happen again.

It may be that US actions in Honduras, this US military buildup in Colombia and the other evidence of a planned war is intended to cause division, fear, in-fighting and other impacts on Latin America's new, independence-minded, leftist leadership, and is not a serious war plan--more of a "divide and conquer" ruse. Maybe they think that Latin Americans will start voting for fascists, if they threaten them enough. Or that may be how Obama/Clinton are playing it--using the obviously Bushwhack-designed war (and very likely Rumsfeld-designed) as a bully tool to accomplish US global corporate predator and war profiteer ends, by other means. Maybe by "peace" in Latin America, Obama meant "not-war"--that is, domination short of war. It is impossible to know for sure, at this point. And, in any case, it may not matter what Obama thinks.

As for "respect" and "cooperation," those went out with the Obama administration's backstabbing of President Zelalya, in the teeth of a unanimous Latin America and OAS that Honduran democracy be RESPECTED. Obama cooperated with the brutal, fascist Honduran "ten families" oligarchy, and with far rightwing Pukes and big corpo/war profiteer players here, to overthrow Honduras' democracy--and NOT with the democrats of Latin America. He was lying about "respect" and "cooperation." Is he lying about "peace" as well?

One more effort to be charitable to Obama: Maybe he has sacrificed Honduran democracy in order to stop (or mitigate) the Pentagon war scheme when it comes to Congress. That is a remote possibility--that he had to choose between them, and has thrown the Honduran people to the dogs (Jim DeMint, John McCain, John Negroponte, James Baker, et al) in order to (in his mind) maintain the peace. We'll have to see how he handles this dangerous, proposed US military invasion of Colombia when it comes to Congress. But I am not hopeful that this is what is going on with Obama--and, if it is, its "realpoltik" immorality is appalling. At least a hundred people are already dead in Honduras, trying to defend their democracy; thousands have been harmed and millions terrorized.


--------------------------------------


*(...including, as it turns out, JFK himself, who stood virtually alone within the US government, on scaling down the US military presence in Vietnam and arranging neutral status for Vietnam in the "Cold War," like Laos--and who stood virtually alone, also, in refusing to annihilate Russia with nuclear weapons, when the US had the chance. Read James Douglass' book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.")

I have watched as they vilified Chavez these past years and hoped it wasn't what it appeared to be. I have been appalled to see how the American people, even on this site, have swallowed this down without so much as a peep. The lack of condemnation over the Honduran coup has been discouraging, as well. I fear your analysis is spot on.

Did they know something but couldn't alert the appropriate authorities?

There are no "appropriate authorities" when the problem is "the authorities" oppressing the people.

The death squads and "the authorities" were one and the same.

It was "the authorities" who killed the Jesuits (and just about anyone suspected of being a liberal).

US fundamentalist spent millions to demonize it.

anything about liberation theology was out the door. None could kiss the hem of Pope John XXIII. The church took a totally wacked turn right with the rest of this country.

Remember the death of the "laughing pope" after Pope John? His death right after his coronation--it gave us Paul.

may have prompted the right wing anti liberation theology to think twice who was elected pope.
Then John Paul II was an effective warrior against communist but also neglected the poor.

even he wrote and spoke about the poor his actions did not gave much fruit than what the UN could accomplish.

and we all KNEW that our government was up to no good in the region.

One of the reasons that I have never been a swooning Al Gore fan (aside from his being a founding member of the DLC) is that he supported the Contras, who "fought Communism" by destroying schools, health clinics, and irrigation projects and murdering civilians and foreign aid workers. He either didn't bother to look closely at who he was supporting or did know and didn't care.

We also knew that our government was lying to us, but I never realized how much until I saw a lecture comparing coverage of one of the Salvadoran elections in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and Canada.

The visuals were exactly the same in all four reports: residents of San Salvador lined up for blocks at a polling place in the early morning hours.

The U.S. report gushed about how these lines showed the Salvadoran people's commitment to democracy and determination to fight against Communism.

The Canadian, British, and Australian reports differed in detail but agreed on the following points: 1) Voting was compulsory, 2) People who had voted received an ink stamp, and the right-wing death squads let it be known that anyone who didn't vote would be considered a guerrilla sympathizer, 3) The candidates ranged from right-wing to far-right wing, 4) There were only 8 polling places in the entire city, 5) Soldiers were stationed at the polling places and looked at each ballot before it went into the box. They were looking for people who spoiled their ballots or voted for write-in candidates.

The 1980s destroyed my faith in America, and no one in the political establishment has succeeded in restoring it.

soon to be seen in Honduras, republicans and democrats alway play the roll of good cop bad cop in latin america to support the elites.

The first 'illegals' I ever met while working in CA were a string of oddly well-educated dishwashers. Most were from south and central America, one was even a doctor.

I've always wondered if they were part of the sanctuary phenomenon.

The US record in Central Am. is shameful.

For it is the Quetzal which 'marries' the Eagle and the Condor.

Will it?

Will it be? Hell no.

they've got their fingers in every right wing pie down there. even now.

could easily have been full of Salvadorans, Nicaraguans or Guatemalans.

but your point is well taken.

lol

:)

And his mutant son!

opened the School of the Americas where they taught most of the criminals of the world how to torture?

happened. Where to you think the people that ordered and carried it out were trained?

It's now called WHINSEC.

So, no.

and Kissinger was in Chile setting up the whole mess.

Plan Condor: Crimes Without Borders in Latin America
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=102&topic_id=4162999&mesg_id=4163216

He should be rotting in a prison somewhere.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i4MpbaMH2pl4hw6MnYpCptWREDpAD9C0T3MG0

Tiger Woods accident seems to have been a gift to the MSM. Fodder for the MSM distraction factory.

That was an ass whooping.

Ending months of speculation, President Barack Obama chose Gates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, to remain at the Pentagon. He did so because Gates is widely credited with putting Washington’s Iraq war policies on a path towards a successful outcome, but the Pentagon chief still considers himself a Republican.

As Obama's defense secretary, Gates will be charged with ending major combat operations in Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010, and managing a troop increase in Afghanistan. ( Stay tuned. Details to follow on Tueday evening from West Point.)

John Negroponte, John Poindexter, Richard Pearl, Otto Reich, Larry Silberman.. hail hail the gang's all here... "Consultants" one and all.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article410491.ece

Those Iran Contra felons are still calling the shots.

Allen Dulles planted undercover CIA in EVERY department of the government and the Pentagon even before JFK was elected. The evidence shows that they had CIA in the major city police departments during that time frame also.

Imagine what kind of network they have now--fifty years and how many hundreds of BILLIONS of "black budget" dollars later.

What we are finding out about El Salvador and Chile and other Central and South American nations has been going on ALL OVER THE WORLD. It's we Americans who are in the dark. Everyone else knows the score.

Recommend this thread highly.

Any ideas on how we can fight this cancer in our national body??

eom

right now.

The other day I thought all that "duck and cover" we went through was preparing us for something horrible and sure enough, something horrible happened.

in its own right--and still is.

There are those we know about, and then there's the covert side.
The National Reconnaissance Agency (http://www.nro.gov/) built
a headquarters in Virginia larger than CIA's before Congress even found out about it!

Look to the military and NSA for the hidden side of domestic spying.

political interference from the CIA. The bottom line then was that it was domestic--JFK wanted to destroy them--but they had international assets working on the project. How and when those other groups got their mojos going and how they differ from the CIA is a mystery to me.

Judging from the amount of clout the CIA has and the stranglehold it has on many of our elected/appointed leaders, it is hard for me to believe that they are not exerting domestic influence in any situation they feel might be in their "jurisdiction".

i have been very impressed with their committment to justice in the past few years - starting with pinochet

the dots together once again. Real news worthy research. Thanks to every one who posted their own take on this disaster.