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Iran/Contra Connections to 9/11
By Alex Constantine

"the presence of Secord in Best's Azerbaijani oil venture
ought to have raised blood red flags around the world..."

"Aid for Terrorists" CounterSpy, vol. 6, no. 2 Feb 1982

In spite of repeated attempts at unification, the Afghan rebel' groups are as divided as ever.

Infighting was pushed to a new peak recently by Sayed Ahmad Gailand, the head of the "National Islamic front of Afghanistan." Gailani confirmed statements made by the Afghan government, when he told a press conference in London, England in early November 1981 that it is incomprehensible and unforgivable' that the West is aiding certain rebel groups who are terrorizing the Afghan population.'

Gailani, who likes to style himself as a moderate and who is asking for Western aid himself, singled out Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Islamic Party which has shot villagers who had refused to pay them taxes, and sometimes burnt down villages which supported other resistence groups.' Kekmatyar received U.S. and Pakistani support as early as 1973 when Pakistan clandestinely trained some 5,000 Afghan "rebels" to destabilize the government of Muhammad Daoud.

"God Save the Shah: American Guns, Oil and Spies in Azerbaijan"
by Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodrarian and Cali Ruchala

GARY BEST HAS made it his business not to be found.

A self-described electronics importer,' he has left a long trail of anecdote and innuendo of past misdeeds but few testifying witnesses.

He was a marginal figure in one of the many subplots of the Iran-Contra Scandal, though how exactly he was related to the activities of Oliver North and his co-conspirators is unclear.

His importing business was concentrated primarily in Southeast Asia, but somehow brought him into contact with the Afghan Mujahedin, Iran-Contra conspirator Richard Secord and legendary Air Force special operations commander Brigadier General Harry Heinie' Aderholt. His current mailing address, and his current profession, are unknown.

"In 1985, Gary's business was headquartered in Marietta, Georgia. What exactly his company did, and how he spent his days, is a mystery. Bob Fletcher, another figure on the periphery of Iran-Contra, claims that in 1985, Gary Best became a partner in his toy company, which he and other Iran-Contra figures planned to use as a cover for illicit weapons transfers of the sort that made Ollie (and Secord) famous....

He allegedly made several visits to the USSR as well as to Mujahedin headquarters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and former associates say that Best bragged about his friendship with sometime-Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who, like many former Mujahedin, is now a sworn enemy of the United States.

At the time of writing, Hekmatyar had just been placed on a terrorist list by the State Department, and a staffer contacted at his movement's headquarters in Pakistan was understandably reluctant to discuss too many things with outsiders that spoke English. A week later, the staffer, who claimed to be Hekmatyar's son-in-law, told us that no one in the organization had ever heard of Gary Best....

"According to Andrew, Best has a warrant out for his arrest in the United States and is probably traveling under a false passport.... The "crowd" expanded in 1991 to include another ghost from America's past: prominent Iran-Contra co-conspirator Richard Secord. Whereas the partnership of Best and Aderholt could be written off as a curious pairing, the presence of Secord in Best's Azerbaijani oil venture ought to have raised blood red flags around the world.

"Secord is a man that many people believe should have been in jail in 1991 - just two years after copping a plea to a count of lying to Congress (he was facing trial on eleven other felony charges).

Instead, we are to believe that this former mastermind of arms shipments and shady deals with guerrillas and Ayatollahs was taken by the possibilities of dead oil wells in Azerbaijan.

"Best, Aderholt and Secord, with their lack of background in public relations, might be forgiven for picking such an Orwellian name for their venture as "MEGA Oil."

Assuming that Aderholt and Secord were, as they say they are, accidental patsies in Best's devious schemes, it's still difficult to believe the atrocious due diligence that two men with extensive backgrounds in intelligence executed.

Conducting a post-mortem on MEGA Oil - noting its birthdate and vital statistics - is almost as difficult as tracking down Gary Best.

"MEGA Oil's American partners wrote in press releases that the company was based in either Marietta or Atlanta, Georgia.

A search of public records finds not one but two companies known as "MEGA Oil USA."

One is called "MEGA Oil USA/Vista Joint Ventures," and was incorporated in 1985. "MEGA Oil USA" on the other hand wasn't incorporated until 1993.

There is, moreover, a third MEGA Oil involved in the food processing business. None of these Georgia companies could be definitively traced to Best.

"To make up for MEGA Oil's lack of experience in the industry, Best contracted a company which specialized in rehabilitating and servicing existing oil wells.

Ponder Industries, registered in Delaware but conducting business in Alice, Texas, entered into partnership with MEGA Oil in Azerbaijan feeling like they had trumped an entire industry.

Later, an Securities and Exchange Commission panel expressed astonishment that Ponder had done even less due diligence on MEGA than they would have with any Texas partner - almost as little as Aderholt and Secord.

Gary Best, insiders say, led Ponder to believe that his connections with the Azeri government would take care of any problems.

As a result, Ponder agreed to fund and staff the oil wells in Azerbaijan by themselves, as well as providing unspecified "operating costs" to MEGA.

All MEGA had to do was bring them the contract with SOCAR, the Azeri state oil company.

Best promptly faxed it over.

It was written in Russian, and no one in Ponder's office could read it.

Incredibly, they took Best's word that the fax was exactly what he said it was: a joint venture agreement between MEGA Oil and SOCAR to service the abandoned oil wells.

"Ponder began flying their equipment and staff into Azerbaijan in late 1991 and January of 1992.

The latter was the date when the conflict in Karabakh, which had hitherto been fought by guerrillas and militias, exploded into a full-scale war as Azeri soldiers pounded the Karabakh Armenians' "capital," Stepanakert, with thousands of rounds of artillery fire.

It was intended to soften the Armenians' position, with thousands of fresh troops following the path of fire.

"The hopes of the Azeris for a quick and decisive thrust into Karabakh were bolstered when their American friends offered to help train-and-equip their beleaguered armed forces, and even bring in some of their old special forces friends to lend a hand in drilling and structural reorganization.

MEGA Oil, a company in Azerbaijan which was created in order to fund a farcical search for POWs in Vietnam, was now hiring mercenaries.

http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2003/shah2.html



Deterring Democracy

Excerpt, Noam Chomsky South End Press, 1991
... the CIA shifted its attention to the terrorist war against Nicaragua and the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation.

The complicity of the Reagan-Bush administrations in the drug rackets in Central America as part of their contra support operations is by now well known.
Pakistan is reported to have become one of the major international centers of the heroin trade when Afghan manufacturers and dealers found their operations restricted after the Soviet invasion in 1979,' and moved the enterprise across the borders (South).

"The U.S. government has for several years received, but declined to investigate, reports of heroin trafficking by some Afghan guerrillas and Pakistani military officers with whom it cooperates," the Washington Post reported well after the drug war was charging full steam ahead. U.S. officials have received first-hand accounts of extensive heroin smuggling' by the leading Afghan recipients of U.S. aid and the Pakistani military establishment, who gave detailed information to the press in Pakistan and Washington.

Nevertheless, according to U.S. officials, the United States has failed to investigate or take action against some [read any'] of those suspected.' U.S. favorite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist leader of the fundamentalist Hizbe-Islami party, is reported to be deeply implicated in drug trafficking.

Other reports indicate that the Aghan rebels are being debilitated by increasingly fierce local battles for the lucrative heroin trade.'"

www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c04-s04.html#FN22


Colin Powell

"How to Unseat the War Criminals and Reverse the Tide of War "
Exposing the Links between Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration
by Michel Chossudovsky
www.globalresearch.ca 15 March 2003

Colin Powell's Role: From Iran-Contra to September 11

"Both Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, who casually accuse Baghdad and other foreign governments of "harboring" Al Qaeda, played a direct role, at different points in their careers, in supporting terrorist organizations.

"Although Colin Powell was not directly involved in the arms' transfer negotiations, which had been entrusted to Oliver North, he was among at least five men within the Pentagon who knew arms were being transferred to the CIA.' (The Record, 29 December 1986).

Lieutenant General Powell was directly instrumental in giving the green light' to lower-level Irangate officials in blatant violation of Congressional procedures.
According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at the level of military procurement), to allow the delivery of weapons to Iran:

"Hurriedly, one of the men closest to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Maj. Gen. Colin Powell, bypassed the written "focal point system" procedures and ordered the Defense Logistics Agency [responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008 TOW missiles to the C.I.A., which acted as cutout for delivery to Iran" (New York Times, 16 February 1987) ... More on Colin Powell ...

Both Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, who casually accuse Baghdad and other foreign governments of "harboring" Al Qaeda, played a direct role, at different points in their careers, in supporting terrorist organizations.

Both men were implicated --operating behind the scenes-- in the Irangate Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, which involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contra paramilitary army.

(Michel Chossudovsky, "Colin Powell's Role: From Iran-Contra to September 11")
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html

Colonel Oliver North

set up a team including [Richard] Secord; Noel Koch [Armitage's deputy] , then assistant secretary at the Pentagon responsible for special operations; George Cave, a former CIA station chief in Tehran, and Colin Powell, military assistant to U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger...

(The Guardian, December 10, 1986)

Colin Powell [was] was among "at least five men within the Pentagon who knew arms were being transferred to the CIA." (The Record, 29 December 1986).

Lieutenant General Powell was directly instrumental in giving the "green light" to lower-level Irangate officials in blatant violation of Congressional procedures.

According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at the level of military procurement), to allow the delivery of weapons to Iran: Hurriedly, one of the men closest to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Maj. Gen. Colin Powell, bypassed the written "focal point sy stem" procedures and ordered the Defense Logistics Agency [responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008 TOW missiles to the C.I.A., which acted as cutout for delivery to Iran"

(New York Times, 16 February 1987)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html

Richard Armitage (Killer Pimp in the State Department)

"CIA Director William Casey with the collaboration of Richard Armitage in the Pentagon ran the Mujahideen covert war against the Soviet Union' (quoted in Domestic Terrorism: The Big Lie The "War") "Contragate was also an off-the-shelf drug-financed operation run by Casey." (Ibid ).

Financing the Islamic Brigades
"The Iran Contra procedure was similar to that used in Afghanistan, where secret aid was channeled to the militant Islamic brigade (US News and World Report, 15 December 1986).

In fact part of the proceeds of the weapons sales to Iran had been channeled to finance the Mujahideen.

"The Washington Post reported that profits from the Iran arms sales were deposited in one CIA-managed account into which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had placed $250 million apiece. That money was disbursed not only to the contras in Central America but to the rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan."
(U.S. News & World Report, 15 December 1986)
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html


Dick Cheney, Vice President
Cheney said today that he would advise President Bush not to turn over to Congress the August intelligence briefing that warned that terrorists were interested in hijacking airplanes, and he insisted that the investigation into September 11
should be handled by the Congressional intelligence committees, not an independent commission.

In appearances on several television news programs, Mr. Cheney said "it would be a mistake" to give broad Congressional access to the Aug. 6 memorandum to the president, which ignited a political uproar over whether the nation could have anticipated the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
(Alison Mitchell , "Cheney Moves to Block 9-11 Probe")
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.21A.Che...Block.911.p.htm

Thomas Kean, 911 Commission Chairman

Not mentioned on Kean's official Commission biography was his role as director of Amerada Hess Corporation, which in 1998 formed joint venture Delta-Hess, with Delta Oil, in part owned by Khalid bin Mahfouz.

Mahfouz inherited a controlling interest in the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the country's largest bank, and was a director with 20% interest in BCCI, the now defunct financial conglomerate involved in money laundering, bribery,
support of terrorism, arms trafficking and other crimes.

Mahfouz paid $225 million to escape prosecution for his role in the BCCI scandal.

Mahfouz also inherited the assets
of the Saudi bin Laden group when Salem bin Laden died in a 1988 plane crash.
These included an interest in Arbusto Energy, a Houston, Texas oil company founded by George W. Bush. Bin Mahfouz's interests were managed in part by James R. Bath, a close friend of Bush, who served in the Texas ANG with him. Bath's name was inexplicably redacted in Bush's Air National Guard military medical reports.
http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/K/Khalid-bin-Mahfuz.htm .

Osama bin Laden

The emergence of William Casey and his 'off-the-shelf' (meaning unaccountable and invisible) covert operations as Director of the CIA led from the arming of the fundamentalist Islamic mujehaddin to the intricacies of Contragate. This covert funding included profits from the sale of opium and illicit drugs, and half was funneled through BCCI at the behest of the Saudi Arabian government, working closely with the American CIA that used a proxy to cover its involvement, Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency, or ISI.

These funds went to a drug dealer named Hekmyatar and to his protégé, Osama bin Laden. CIA funding is reported to have stopped when the USSR withdrew, and the Taliban came to power. However, the US continued to fund the Taliban as well, giving them $43 million in 2001 to stop growing opium. ISI funding to Mohammed Atta, allegedly linked to bin Laden continued as late as August, 2001

http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_critique.html T

The Congress for Cultural Freedom - CIA Covert Operations in the ...
Lee Hamilton, 911 Commission Vice Chairman

Lee H. Hamilton brings to the commission the "damage control" procedures followed during the Iran Contra investigation, which broadly served to uphold the practices of US foreign policy.
- "Who's Who On 911 Commission," by Michel Chossufdovsky
http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/96732.php

Chairman of the House select committee investigating the Iran-contra affair, was shown ample evidence against Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but he did not probe their wrongdoing (See Khashoggi, Part XVIII)
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/911_intel_commission.htm

911 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste

According to Dan Hopsicker, author of "Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History", Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste "has made a career of defending political crooks, specializing in cases that involve drugs and politics."
Ben-Veniste was the attorney for CIA narco-trafficker Barry Seal.

http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_coverup.html

Works at the international law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, is a former New York prosecutor and was chief of the Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office (1973-75). Watergate was another massive scandal that was never fully investigated or revealed. He was also chief counsel of the Senate Whitewater Committee, and served as attorney for CIA-linked and drug smuggler and pilot Barry Seal.
(The Washington Monthly - 06/09/97)
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_critique.html

Powell, Poindexter, Reich, Negroponte, Armitage, Abrams, Secord, Tripp, etc.

The Contragate team that was only partially exposed by the Congressional investigations continued to operate in the deeper politics that combine drugs, oil and war. Linda Tripp, whose taping of Monica Lewinsky was reportedly inspired by Lucianne Goldberg, was in Army intelligence, held a GS-16 federal job rating, and transferred into the White House from her job with President Bush, Sr. He had of course presided over the White House operations with Ronald Reagan at the time of the Contragate operations, and was involved in them.

Linda Tripp at the time was a personal secretary to Richard Secord of the Army's secret Delta Force team, and a partner in Oliver North's company that assisted in illegally passing funds through to the Nicaraguan rebels against yet another socialist government. Another covert operation run by William Casey at the CIA.

It is in this deeper context that others responsible for the Iran-Contra secret and illegal shipments of missiles, guns and drugs came back into the new Bush White House in the months prior to 9/11. They include Powell, Poindexter, Reich, Negroponte, Armitage, Abrams, among others.
(See Drugs, Oil and War, Peter Dale Scott)
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_critique.html

Henry Kissinger, Bush's First Choice for Chairman of the 911 Commission

At one point Kissinger & Associates members were considering a merger with the infamous Bank for Credit & Commerce International (BCCI), which was deeply involved in the covert funding of both the Afghan resistance and Contragate
(Congressional Report, December 1992, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Kerry-Brown).
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_critique.html

John Poindexter & Syntek

Poindexter was recruited by Syntek Technologies, a firm in bed with DARPA.
His hand was back in the hi-tech cookie jar. As a company vice-president, Poindexter helped develop Genoa - - an "intelligence mining, information harvesting" system designed to explore (clandestinely) large computer databases.
Listen in on America's electronic conversations, that is. Poindexter is, once again, one of the most powerful men in America.

His job description is "crisis manager".
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/NoMoreMrSguy.html

US alleges Pan Am 103 bombed by Gaddafi in retaliation.
Bankrupt Pan Am said Bush White House's Iran-Contra CIA drug dealers did it to murder Pentagon cops "

Ahmed Chalabi, Janos Kadar of Iraq Chalabi, a non-practicing Shia and reportedly a close friend of the late Shah of Iran, the former Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and Col. Oliver North of the Reagan Administration, whose name came to prominence in the 1980s during the exposure of the Iran-Contra scandal, is the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which is a member of the anti-Saddam Hussein coalition clubbed together and funded by the CIA and the MI-6 and used by the Pentagon
as its cat's paw in an attempt to cover its invasion with the fig leaf of Iraqi support.

In August,1989, Chalabi fell foul of the late King Hussein of Jordan, who had him sacked after the bank had incurred huge liabilities and was on the verge of collapse. This, however, did not affect his personal friendship with Prince Hassan, who allegedly helped him to escape from Jordan before the Police, on the orders of King Hussein, could arrest him for investigation into the alleged mismanagement of the affairs of the bank. It was alleged that during his association with the bank he had embezzled nearly US $ 70 million and spirited it away in secret Swiss bank accounts According to sources close to Chalabi, part of the money was also allegedly used to fund Col. Oliver North's travels abroad in connection with the Iran-Contra operation.
http://www.saag.org/papers7/paper659.html

George H.W. Bush

Details of George Bush's five arrests, including stripped of his TxANG flying license for desertion from Nam; Dick Cheney's 2 arrests; Bush Jr's First Lady's DWI homicide; Bush Sr's DWI arrest as Veep with mistress as told by First Lady Nancy Reagan; Bush Girls Gone Wild; Noelle Bush's narcotics arrest Invisible, hijacked, Mob-infested, Republican-infiltrated Knoxville Green Party - this website is censored and banned by the Knoxville Green Part. KGP does NOT allow its members to run for political office. Details of Ralph Nader's Y2K lawsuit to police and his lawsuit against the Bush Sr. White House for murder of journalists and narcoterrorism during Iran-Contra. Knoxville, Tennesseeóhome of the Mafia-connect world-wide cartel for nuclear waste, garbage-trucking, tow-trucking; the only city in world history to nuke another city; where our nuke-bomb factory INTENTIONALLY releases radiation
to experiment on damage to local residents (link to 1994 White House report); ranked in 2001 as having the worst air pollution is USA by EPA; and where Mohammed Atta, an alleged terrorist on 9/11 and Saudi pilot trained by the US Navy flight school, allegedly took additional flying lessons in Knoxville to inquire about local nuke plants

http://www.geocities.com/september911surpr...11surprise.html

Untold story of US Special Forces rescuing Gaddafi before USAF bombed his home in alleged assassination attempt, as told by Pentagon Chief of Public Affairs and editor of Al Gore's Carthage, TN Courrier. US alleges Pan Am 103 bombed by Gaddafi in retaliation. Bankrupt Pan Am said Bush White House's Iran-Contra CIA drug dealers did it to murder Pentagon cops...
http://www.geocities.com/pentagon_whistleblower/

Shiekhs Mahfouz, Hammoud & Adham

During the 1980ís, Sheikh Adham and his successor as Saudi Intelligence Director, Abdul Khalil, secretly acted as BCCI nominees in a hostile take-over of Washington D.C.ís largest bank, Financial General Bankshares, that soon became First American Bankshares.
First American was, in fact, a [BCCI] front for Mahfouz that was set up in the U.S.
with the pivotal assistance of billionaire Jackson Stephens, a lavish financial backer of many political campaigns for both Bush presidents. Another principle shareholder of 25 million dollars in First American was arms merchant, Mohammed Hammoud,
a long-time friend and business associate of Bahrain's Ambassador Hostler. And according to the Kerry Committee report, five Iran-contra related wire transfers
were made out of North/Secord accounts at First American in the amount of $346,000.00.

http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html

Kamel Adham, Saudi Intelligence director, 1963-79:

One of Kamel Adham's close contacts, Adnan Khashoggi, is among the richest men in the world, who is a life-long friend of the bin Laden family and was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. In 1985, Sheikh Mahfouz's Saudi National Commercial Bank loaned Khashoggi 35 million dollars
to purchase weapons to illegally sell to Iran, at the behest of Oliver North

http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html


Adnan Khashoggi, w/Links to 911 Terrorists

A major investor in BCCI and a key player in the Iran-Contra affair.
[Slate, 12/4/00, Slate, 11/14/01, Slate, 3/12/03] < timeline="complete_911_timeline&theme=incompetence" timeline.jsp www.cooperativeresearch.org>

A long-time friend of George W. Bush, [James R.] Bath was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. Khashoggi, whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Laden's older brother, Salem.
[See, Khashoggi XIX Appendix]
http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/5/277.html 1089859823

Caspar Weinberger, Forbes CEO

Osama bin Laden's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget, have just made his family a great big pile of money. More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens.

The WSJ story also notes that, "During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family's close ties to the Saudi royal family prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration . 'We would call on them to get their view of the country and what would be of interest to investors.'" President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1989
www.factnet.org/discus/messages/5/277.html 1089859823

Porter Goss, Current CIA Director

Daniel Hopsicker: "In the early 1960s there was a CIA assasination squad called 'Operation 40,' commanded by E. Howard Hunt (of Watergate fame) operating under the supervision of Vice President Nixon.

A photo of several members of the group was found in the safe of [CIA cocaine smuggler] Barry Seal after the Justice (sic) Department arranged his murder.
In the photo, seated between Seal and Cuban terrorist/Iran-Contra alum Felix Rodriguez, across the table from Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis and Kennedy assasination suspect William Seymour, and together with Iran-Contra member Luis Carriles Posada and 'Blonde Ghost' Ted Shackley, is Porter Goss!"

http://www.madcowprod.com
Michael Hayden 9/11 connection NSA

9/11: Mae Brussell vs. Solomon and Parry

Disinformation Rule 13 9-11 review

James R. Bath, Bush-Saudi Middleman

During his Arbusto period, in 1979, James Bath purchased a Houston mansion for Mahfouz at 4.3 million dollars, with the payment made through none other than James Baker III's law firm, Bakers and Botts. In 1990, during his Harken period,
Bath obtained a 1.4 million dollar loan from Mahfouz. Bath was also the sole director for Mahfouz's Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd, which did a brisk business with Saudi Sheikhs and began in the Grand Cayman Islands in 1980 as a company briefly called Cotopax Investments. It should be noted that several unusual business behaviors of Mahfouz's Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd. demonstrated a pattern reminiscent of money laundering. First, within a month of its incorporation, the temporary board at Cotopax named Bush's friend James Bath as company president, changed the company name to Skyways and then resigned en mass, leaving Bath as a sole director. Second, the Cayman Islands are an effective tax-shelter and haven for banking secrets. Third, one of the original subscribers to Cotopax, a company called Cayhaven Corporate Services, Ltd., was also a subscriber to IC, Inc. In reality, IC Inc. was the same entity as ICIC, which is the International Credit and Investment Corporation of Grand Caymans, termed BCCI's "bank-within-a-bank" in the Kerry Committee report. Curiously, Mahfouz's "IC Inc.,"
the company related to George W. Bush's friend James Bath, was found by investigators to be at the very center of a chart drawn by Oliver North, in North's own White House safe, that showed the private banking network supporting the Iran-Contra operation
http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html

Frank Carlucci, Carlyle Group

The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party operative.

http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/5/277.html 1089859823

Armitage received Pakistan's highest award available to a civilian by virtue of his assistance to the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s, in part, by supplying the fighters with shoulder-launched Stinger missles, that have not yet been recovered by the U.S.. Currently, Carlyle's Frank Carlucci and the re-emerged Richard Armitage, are board members of the influencial Washington think tank,
the Middle East Policy Council.

http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html


The Sultan of Brunei and Elliot Abrams, current National Security Council special assistant for democracy, human rights and international operations Another Iran-Contra conspirator is Elliot Abrams. As the Assistant Secretary of State during the Reagan-Bush administration, Abrams was charged with contempt of Congress
by Iran-contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh after evading questions about Oliver North's secret mission to extract 10 million dollars from the Sultan of Brunei and about the Contra supply plane shot down. Abrams gave the Sultan of Brunei the number of the bank account owned by InterMaritime Bank president, Bruce Rappaport, a golfing friend of then CIA director, William Casey. General Secord was the subsequent recipient of the $10 million cash, which was used for distribution to the contras. Elliot Abrams, the current National Security Advisor, earlier had pleaded guilty for withholding information from Congress and was pardoned by the former President Bush in 1992.
http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html

Bush1 - Carlyle - Bin Laden -Ties - 9/11 Encyclopedia
BCCI & The Bush-Bin Laden Cartel

BCCI funded Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistanâs fight against the Soviet Union, and helped fund operations in the Iran-Contra, guns for drugs affair which also tied in with Central America during the elder Bush's Vice Presidency. 1981-1989 Bush Sr. was US Vice President. In 1986 G.W. Bush, son of then Vice president G.H.W. Bush, merged his Arbusto Energy company with Harken Energy Corp. Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh then bought into the company, buying 17.6%. The Saudi Sheik was associated with Khalid bin Mahfouz, who inherited Salim Bin Ladin's interest when he died in 1988. From several different angles, the Bush family was tied to the Bin Laden family, passing finances back and forth, making G.W. Bush
an indirect financier of Osama Bin Ladin. Mahfouz reportedly attempted in 1999 to transfer $3 million to Osama

http://www.rense.com/general30/cart.htm

"Many of those involved in the Reagan Administration's war against Nicaragua shared a common desire to consolidate support for right-wing guerillas....

"Gen. John Singlaub set up committees within the World Anti-Communist League for eight different guerilla groups....

Singlaub also drafted a memo outlining a contra international of sorts with its own arms company, financed by a series of technology transfers among Israel, South Africa and China.

Once this flow of technology was in place, they wrote, 'The United States then has at its disposal a large and continuous supply of Soviet technology and weapons to channel to Freedom Fighters worldwide.'

... [The Singlaub memo] was later found in Oliver North's safe. "Even the Saudis got into the act, with a proposal to establish offshore companies to serve a multiplicity of purposes. Palestinian-American businessman Sam Bamieh says he was approached by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, and at a separate time, by a member of the embassy's staff, and asked 'to set up a company, an offshore company, whereby we will supply goods and services to different anti-communist movements in different parts of the world. ...'

"Bamieh said that the offshore company would buy the oil from Saudi Arabia - which nominally adheres to the UN oil embargo against the apartheid regime - and resell it to South Africa at a markup of 75 cents to one dollar a barrel. He said while he was discussing this with Bandar in Cannes in February 1984, Bandar sought to reassure him it was in line with U.S. policy by telling him that CIA Director Casey and King Fahd were at that very moment discussing the same topic in a yacht in the Mediterranean [Adnan Khashoggi's ]. (This was later confirmed.)

Bamieh said he refused the request, even though Bandar told him such a company could make $50 to $100 million in annual profits.

" Jane Hunter, "Tricontranental," Report on the Americas, September-October 1988, p. 15.

Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, and Adnan Khashoggi
Bush "spent most of his time in the early and mid-1980s hobnobbing with ex-Cuban intelligence officers, Nicaraguan Contras, and others plugged into the lucrative orbit of Miami-area front groups for the CIA. But he, too, had some Middle East connections.

Two of his business associates, Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya and Camilo Padreda, both indicted for financial dealings, were longtime associates of Middle Eastern arms dealer, BCCI investor and Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi.

"Prosecutors dropped the case against the two, and a federal judge ordered Padreda's name expunged from the record.

But a few years later Padreda, a former Miami-Dade County GOP treasurer, was convicted of fraud over a federally insured housing development that Jeb Bush had helped to facilitate. Jeb Bush also socialized with Adbur Sakhia, the Miami BCCI branch chief and later its top U.S. official."

http://www.lagunajournal.com/global.htm

Martial Law Jeb Bush - 9/11 Encyclopedia
Huffman Aviation - 9/11 Encyclopedia

Mohammed Zia al-huk, Pakistani Prime Minister
"Dictator of Pakistan, and knew all about Iran/Contra, the training, funding, and arming of narco-terrorists like Osama bin Laden. In August 1988, the same day George Bush got the Republican nomination, his plane crashed into the ground with all engines running. The Pakistanis kept the bodies around (in violation of Islamic custom) ..."
http://bushbodycount.com/voices/thelist.php catid=24&blogid=4

"Ejaz Ul-Haq, Zia's eldest son, has launched a barrage of allegations about a cover-up. Generally, his target has been the Bhutto government, but at a news conference earlier this week he blamed the United States ...

" - "50,000 Pakistanis Mark Anniversary of Ruler Zia's Death," Orange County Register, August 18, 1989.

"Sabotage or another criminal act caused a plane crash that killed President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq...

. About 30 people aboard the plane were killed, including U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel; Brig. Gen. Herbert Wasson, a U.S. defense adviser, and five top Pakistani generals ... Among the scenarios, [Pakistan Air Force Commander Abbas]
Mirza suggested were that the flight crew was drugged ..." - Kathy Gannon, "Sabotage caused crash of Zia plane, report says,"
Associated Press, October 17, 1989.

Slade Gorton, 911 Commissioner

"Former Senator Slade Gorton served on the notorious Senate Intelligence Committee for over a decade. Throughout his career, over scores of hearings', the hawkish Gorton consistently ran interference for Iran-Contra-smeared Republicans,
such as Robert Gates..."
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_coverup.html

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
9/11 CIA Drug Traffic Iran-contra ISI Daniel Pearl " - Online Journal "...
Then there is Baron Rumsfeld over at DoD, who seemed to dart around like a bee pollinating CBW (chemical and biological weapons) to Saddam under the Reagan administration, being part of Iran-Contra, planning and practicing the invasion of Afghanistan in early 2001 well in advance of 9-11, attacking on October 7, 2001, to get rid of those silly Taliban folks, and immediately after 9-11 wanted to start planning to go kick Saddam really good."

http://www.criticalhistory.com/index.php?itemid=467

Charles M. McKee and Matthew Gannon

"Charles M. McKee, ostensibly a military attaché for the DIA in Beirut, Matthew Gannon, CIA Deputy Station Chief in Beirut, and three others were on board Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. They were part of a counterterrorist team in Beirut investigating the possible rescue of 9 American hostages in Lebanon. The McKee team uncovered evidence that a rogue CIA unit called COREA, based in Wiesbaden, was doing business with a man called Monzer Al-Kassar, a Syrian arms dealer and drug trafficker. "Al-Kassar was part of the covert network run by U.S. Lieut. Colonel Oliver North. Outraged that the COREA unit in Wiesbaden was doing business with a Syrian who had close terrorist connections and might endanger their chances of rescuing the hostages, the McKee team decided to fly back to Virginia unannounced and expose the COREA unit's secret deal with al-Kassar. They never got there. For three years, I've had a feeling that if Chuck hadn't been on that plane, it wouldn't have been bombed,' said Beulah McKee, 75, Charles McKee's mother, to Time Magazine.

Four months after her son was killed for his efforts to expose the CIA, Mrs. McKee received a sympathy letter from George H. W. Bush.

Mrs. McKee has never been satisfied with the government's version of events."
http://bushbodycount.com/voices/thelist.ph...tid=24&blogid=4

Senator Henry John Heinz III

"He chaired the three-man presidential review board that probed the Iran-contra affair. He died in a plane crash in April 1991..."
http://bushbodycount.com/voices/thelist.ph...tid=24&blogid=4

Israel, Jonas Savimbi, Unita, Saudis:
"Israel, which in 1982 began training a 5,000-man Zairian unit in Shaba proince that was to be stationed along the border with Angola, is well-positioned to take over adising Unita should the U.S. public eer force Congress to halt aid, as it did in 1975 and more recently with the contras. As one of the major right-wing guerilla armies still in the field, Unita is almost certain to attract the covert action funds
Saudi Arabia continues to wish to bestow upon Washington. In addition to wateer Saudi funds he may be receiving, Jonas Savimbi gets $75 million in South African aid. And though the Enterprise' has been put out of business, the fronts run by retired military and intelligence officers that competed to sell arms to the contras are still open for business to supply Unita."

- Jane Hunter, "Honduras All Over Again,"
Report on the Americas, September-October 1988, p. 24.

Michael Ledeen, Advisor to Carl Rove

"September 01, 2004 - Ledeen has been branded an 'ultra neo-conservative' and is seen by his critics as the most sinister and radical of them all. He is a scholar at the neo-conservative think tank The American Enterprise Institute, which also counts
the former chair of Pentagon Defence Policy Board Richard Perle among its members.

"He also writes regularly for American Spectator magazine. A former Rome Correspondent for the New Republic newspaper, Ledeen first rose to political prominence as a member of the National Security Council during Ronald Reagan's reign. "But it was in 1985, that he became a well-known figure in the US when his Israeli intelligence contacts were used to help broker the illegal Iran/contra rebel affair - a move was aimed at destablising the left-wing government in Nicaragua.
"However, he does say that he didn't approve of the final deal in that affair. Prof Ledeen is also a student of Machiavelli and has written a book about the Renaissance philosopher whose name has become synonymous with strong and brutal governments. He is also the author of The War Against the Terror Masters, which claims that America must topple the regimes
of the terror masters such as Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia to eliminate the threat of terrorism.

"Prof. Ledeen is also believed to have the ear of the White House's current Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and has regular conversations with him.
His view on the war on terror is clear, he said: "Iraq is just one battle in a larger war, bringing down the regime in Iran is the central act,
because Iran is the world's most dangerous terrorist country."
http://dual-loyalties.blogspot.com/2004/09...or-to-carl.html
Richard Perle - 9/11 Encyclopedia


Other links at the link below:
Mockingbirds Cannistraro and McGovern - CIA - iran contra

Iran-Contra - 9/11 Encyclopedia

Secret Government - Iran Contra - Bill Moyers

ADNAN KHASHOGGI: RICHARD PERLE'S "NARCO-TERRORIST" BUSINESS PARTNER

The Schmitz Family - A Key Nazi Connection to 9/11

the Deaths of Princess Diana Spencer and Dodi Al-Fayed 9/11 and Atta

Khashoggi, Part 36: Who Mentored Michael Hayden?

Barbara Honegger - 9/11 Encyclopedia

Operation Mockingbird - 9/11 Review

Michael Hayden 9/11 connection NSA

Blackwater USA New Orleans hurricane katrina

GEORGE BUSH "DUBYA" AND IRAQ Part I


All of the above is posted here:
http://911review.org/Alex/Iran-Contra_911.html

From 9/11 Encyclopedia:

In October and November 1986, two secret U.S. Government operations were publicly exposed, potentially implicating Reagan Administration officials in illegal activities. These operations were the provision of assistance to the military activities of the Nicaraguan contra rebels during an October 1984 to October 1986 prohibition on such aid, and the sale of U.S. arms to Iran in contravention of stated U.S. policy and in possible violation of arms-export controls. In late November 1986, Reagan Administration officials announced that some of the proceeds from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran had been diverted to the contras with the help of Oliver North (->), who was later convicted of altering and destroying documents. The Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, Secretary of State George P. Shultz (->), Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey (->), and national security advisers Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter (->)
Source: http://www.webcom.com/pinknoiz/covert/icsummary.html

Only 15 years, some of the former Iran-Contra key persons, had been given jobs in the current Bush administration:

. JOHN POINDEXTER (->)

Reagan national security adviser during Iran-Contra, the retired admiral is director of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office. Created after the September 11 terror attacks, the office uses computer technology to detect and analyze new kinds of military threats, including those from terrorist organizations. Poindexter was convicted in 1990 on five felony counts of conspiracy, making false statements to Congress and obstructing congressional inquiries. In 1991, an appellate court overturned the convictions and similar ones against former White House aide Oliver North. The court held that the government had improperly used immunized congressional testimony against them.

. ELLIOTT ABRAMS A former assistant secretary of state

for Western Hemisphere affairs, Abrams was hired by Bush in 2001 as special White House assistant for democracy and human rights. Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding Iran-Contra information from Congress and was among six Iran-Contra figures pardoned on Dec. 24, 1992, by the first President Bush.

. OTTO REICH His nomination as assistant

secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, the top post for Latin America, was predicted to draw the most congressional fire. Reich was head of the now-defunct Office for Public Diplomacy (OPD), which the House Committee on Foreign Affairs censured for "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" (Washington Post, 10/11/87). In January 2003, Reich was appointed to a top White House position. The move, announced by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, keeps Reich in government, working out of the National Security Council and reporting to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
(See Venezuela Plot)
In another interesting twist, former Iran-Contra Top prosecutor James Bosnahan became the lawyer of the so called shoebomber (->) .

Compare some other biographies: "IRAN-CONTRA Trading Cards" http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/old/people/chris.h...q/contra.cards/
http://www.fair.org/extra/0109/iran-contra.html


links at the original below:

Iran/Contra Connections to 9/11

Behind The Israeli Mole - 9/11Review

Mockingbirds Cannistraro and McGovern - CIA - iran contra

CIA Casino Arms and Drugs Stefan Halper, Ray Cline, S&Ls, Global,CSIS

Charles Baldwin - 9/11 Encyclopedia

The Terrible – and Documented – Truth About Able Danger

Anis Shivani: Noncooperation and Resistance When Kafka Aligns with Orwell

Rogue US Own Goal - 9-11Review

If the US attacks Iran....: George Bush's "Samson Option"

Operation Mockingbird - 9/11 Review

ADNAN KHASHOGGI: RICHARD PERLE'S "NARCO-TERRORIST" BUSINESS PARTNER

CIA Casino Arms and Drugs Stefan Halper, Ray Cline, S&Ls, Global,CSIS

Conspiracy Theory Encephalopods are Deranged and Really have the Bollocks

Adnan Khashoggi Charged by SEC with Securities Fraud

Darpa - 9/11Encyclopedia

Carlyle Group - 9/11 Encyclopedia

Fort Detrick - 9/11 Encyclopedia

Anthrax Attacks 9-11 Review

Dyncorp - 9/11 Encyclopedia

Prior Knowledge No Oil War - 9/11 conspiracy

Michael Hayden 9/11 connection NSA

Khashoggi, Part 36: Who Mentored Michael Hayden?

Pnac - 9/11Encyclopedia

Computer simulation warfare September 2001 terror threat Weapon


http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/Iran-Contra.shtml

"The 'triple gunshot voicemail' message"


ROOT CAUSE OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS:
THE CIA FUNDS ITSELF BY FRAUD


CATASTROPHIC BANKERS’ RAMP TO CONTINUE UNDER OBAMA

SMALL PROBLEM: THE MARKET AND THE WORLD AREN’T BUYING IT
Sunday 15 February 2009 04:00


Some excerpts only:

“On 1st November 2008, according to Mr Wayne Madsen's service, the Spanish news agency EFE reported that Venezuelan military intelligence operatives raided Stanford International Bank in Caracas and investigated three Stanford Bank employees at the Venezuela branch believed to be US drug-running intelligence agents. The press is also reporting an extremely unfortunate photo of Stanford and Barack Obama 'in happier times'.

So you see, folks (to coin a phrase), it's not simply all about the money, it's ALL ABOUT THE CIA MONEY: THE COLOSSAL DRUG-TRAFFICKING AND FRAUDULENT FINANCE CRIMINAL PONZI NEXUS upon which the power to control the US Government USURPED by the CIA rests.”



“Given moreover that the Central Intelligence Agency is a criminal enterprise directed de facto by the Bush Crime Family with its Clinton add-ons (2) via the George Bush Center for Terrorism (oops, Intelligence), it may well view the threat to its hegemony by the ongoing and irreversible collapse of the derivatives fraud as a pretext for taking matters even further into its own hands, by which we mean perpetrating some atrocity or other to provide a pretext for drastic domestic repression. This may satisfy its power lust but will not, of course, solve its financial problems insofar as the collapse of the derivatives sector will leave it dependent solely on its drug-trafficking proceeds.

In this connection we need to reiterate that anonymous, unprovenanced reports by a fictitious source calling itself Sorcha Faal and purporting to be derived from the Kremlin, is actually a diversionary disinformation operation perpetrated by an Irishman, S. L. O’Huallachain and by Commander J. Forrest Sharpe, of Light in the Darkness Publications, Vienna, VA, located, as we recently pointed out, deep in US intelligence communitysville, according to our sources.

Sharpe is said to be ‘active duty submarine service fleet’, implying an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) link here – ONI being one of the most ruthless of all the arms of the CIA sub-Octopus, as well as ‘incidentally’ being where Admiral Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), comes from: which probably tells you all you need to know about the agenda of such reports.”

**


“The Intelligence Power in the United States controls the Government, not the other way round.”

**

“• This is not democracy: it is corrupt, anti-democratic, abusive rule by a ‘State within the State’.

This overpowerful and ruthlessly amoral American ‘State within the State’ is financed by means of the Fraudulent Finance operations exposed in these reports. The ‘State within the State’, this controlling Intelligence Power, is unwilling to give up its hegemony over the Executive Branch (as well as de facto the other branches of the Federal Government). It is therefore purposefully and short-sightedly resisting and BLOCKING the implementation of the SOLUTION outlined above.

• Moreover the Intelligence Power is indifferent to the consequent suffering of the American people and the Rest of the World. It is concerned exclusively with the threatened retention of its control hegemony. It imagines that if it just continues this obnoxious resistance, it will ‘win out’ in the end. That is a false presumption.

• On the contrary, the longer the Intelligence Power BLOCKS the SOLUTION, the greater will be the consequent damage and the greater the likelihood that, with the disintegration of the nation, and the entire world economy as a direct outcome of its obtuse behaviour, the arrogant, ruthless and opinionated US Intelligence Power will be destroyed as well.”

***

“Instead of accepting that the products of the Bankers’ Ramp – so-called derivative ‘Structured Products’ – are without instrinsic value, the fools and co-conspirators in the US Treasury and at the Federal Reserve under Bernanke thought they could con the world, as Mr Paulson tried to do, into believing that these worthless fraudulent assets could be repackaged with an insurance wrap, and thereby converted from trash status with no recourse to the underlying flow of real cash-cash, into value-laden assets of tangible value. Which is impossible. Natch, this latest marketing ploy failed even as it was being tentatively launched.

For unsurprisingly, Treasury Secretary Geithner’s revamped version of the duplicitous H. Paulson TARP scheme, the purpose of which was to refinance Carlyle, Carlyle Capital, George H. W. Bush Sr. and other notorious Fraudulent Finance parties [see below], was given an immediate thumbs-down by the financial markets on 10th February, even as Mr Geithner was speaking. Specifically, the S & P 500 closed down 4.9%, while its financial sub-index fell on the day by 11%.

The widespread decline wiped out most of the preceding week’s strong stock market gains, with JPMorganChase and Wells Fargo shares losing 9.8% and 14.2% respectively, while Bank of America and Citigroup stocks dropped by 19.3% and 15.2%.

Now this Geithner fellow is the son of Peter F. Geithner, the Director of the Asia Program at the Ford Foundation in New York. Mr Geither’s dad oversaw the Ford Foundation’s micro-finance operations in Indonesia which were being developed by Ann Dunham-Soetoro, the mother of President Barack Obama. Timothy Geithner’s maternal grandfather, whose name was Charles F. Moore, was an adviser to President Eisenhower, and was also a Vice President of Ford Motor Company. Timothy Geithner spent most of his childhood living outside the United States, first graduating from the International School in Bangkok. He also obtained a degree from Dartmouth College in Government and Asian studies, and his MA from Johns Hopkins University was in international economics.”

**

“The Treasury’s stance is governed by the fact that it defers to the Intelligence Power which controls the US Federal Government, selects its personnel, and has usurped the power of the Executive Branch. As we have frequently pointed out, the CIA is in control, out of control and needs to be brought under control. “



“...we are in fact pinpointing the core of the problem facing the United States and the WHOLE WORLD, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency (proxy for the vast, corrupted US intelligence community and its drug-running operations) is a self-financing ‘State within the State’ that controls the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of Government – not the other way round. The CIA is supposed to be the clandestine arm of the White House.

But thanks to its proven ability to penetrate all other branches of Government and its structures, and to finance its operations on a gargantuan scale using drug-trafficking proceeds and Ponzi schemes of ever increasing sophistication, it has usurped the US Government itself.

For it was the intelligence community that developed these Fraudulent Finance schemes in the first place. Who do you suppose provided traders with the special satellite-linked ‘grey screen’ trading equipment enabling Agency operatives based in the boonies to conduct secret Fraudulent Finance trading operations within the closed financial system that is at the root of this crisis?

The equipment is provided by the Intelligence Power. The Editor knows of one family where the successive husbands operated this equipment clandestinely without even explaining what they were doing to their family members. And this secret trading, designed to increase the illicit, hidden takings of the Intelligence Power through Fraudulent Finance, goes on all over the United States.

The Intelligence Power finances itself via Fraudulent Finance operations and is jealous of its total independence from Congress and of its power to control the Government. Key figures throughout the Administration are either intelligence operatives or puppets of the CIA.

Therefore, the Administration defers to the Intelligence Power, instead of the CIA operating from a position of subordination to the Executive Branch.”





“Given moreover that the Central Intelligence Agency is a criminal enterprise directed de facto by the Bush Crime Family with its Clinton add-ons (2) via the George Bush Center for Terrorism (oops, Intelligence), it may well view the threat to its hegemony by the ongoing and irreversible collapse of the derivatives fraud as a pretext for taking matters even further into its own hands, by which we mean perpetrating some atrocity or other to provide a pretext for drastic domestic repression. This may satisfy its power lust but will not, of course, solve its financial problems insofar as the collapse of the derivatives sector will leave it dependent solely on its drug-trafficking proceeds.

In this connection we need to reiterate that anonymous, unprovenanced reports by a fictitious source calling itself Sorcha Faal and purporting to be derived from the Kremlin, is actually a diversionary disinformation operation perpetrated by an Irishman, S. L. O’Huallachain and by Commander J. Forrest Sharpe, of Light in the Darkness Publications, Vienna, VA, located, as we recently pointed out, deep in US intelligence communitysville, according to our sources.

Sharpe is said to be ‘active duty submarine service fleet’, implying an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) link here – ONI being one of the most ruthless of all the arms of the CIA sub-Octopus, as well as ‘incidentally’ being where Admiral Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), comes from: which probably tells you all you need to know about the agenda of such reports.”

**

“The Intelligence Power in the United States controls the Government, not the other way round.”

**

“• This is not democracy: it is corrupt, anti-democratic, abusive rule by a ‘State within the State’.

This overpowerful and ruthlessly amoral American ‘State within the State’ is financed by means of the Fraudulent Finance operations exposed in these reports. The ‘State within the State’, this controlling Intelligence Power, is unwilling to give up its hegemony over the Executive Branch (as well as de facto the other branches of the Federal Government). It is therefore purposefully and short-sightedly resisting and BLOCKING the implementation of the SOLUTION outlined above.

• Moreover the Intelligence Power is indifferent to the consequent suffering of the American people and the Rest of the World. It is concerned exclusively with the threatened retention of its control hegemony. It imagines that if it just continues this obnoxious resistance, it will ‘win out’ in the end. That is a false presumption.

• On the contrary, the longer the Intelligence Power BLOCKS the SOLUTION, the greater will be the consequent damage and the greater the likelihood that, with the disintegration of the nation, and the entire world economy as a direct outcome of its obtuse behaviour, the arrogant, ruthless and opinionated US Intelligence Power will be destroyed as well.”







*******************

“As is the case within the CIA, not everyone inside the US Treasury is corrupt: on the contrary, it has been the case since these exposures developed, that one or more Treasury Compliance Officers have been threatened with jail sentences under the Patriot Acts for actually doing their jobs properly and resisting the corruption ….

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York under Mr Geithner before he was translated to the US Treasury. As confirmed by the recent arrests, announced on this website, of Robert Armenta, the senior Federal Reserve Compliance Officer (who was offered a choice between 25 years in jail if he cooperated and 99 years if he chose not to divulge the names of those involved in these scams), and Christopher J. McCurdy, a senior Vice President who was arrested after he had destroyed the crucial banking codes associated with the Settlements, the New York Fed is a nest of corruption.” [Google fpr the names ...]

ANATOMY OF MBS-CDO-CDS FRAUDULENT FINANCE OPERATIONS
In our report dated 8th February 2009, we reported that the NSA had interfered with our production computer and had stolen three pages from our imminent analysis by Michael C. Cottrell, B.A., M.S., under the generic heading ‘The Legalisation of Financial Corruption’ in which we analyse in detail the precise steps of the Ponzi finance operations – and in which we demonstrate both that the derivatives have no value, and also that this ‘mystery’ is encased in a fog of jargon so dense that outsiders (such as the CNBC correspondent) never get to to understand what is going on.

The segment stolen from our production computer also contained the chart in which we show that the Paulson TARP operation represented a fraud designed to inject fictitious, fabricated value into worthless ‘Structured Products’ using taxpayers’ money so as to enable the speculators to ‘start over’ – with the top ‘insiders’ such as George Bush Sr., Carlyle and Carlyle Capital and James A. Baker III especially benefiting from the Government bailout operation.

Before we go any further, we need to repeat the sections that were stolen from our production and the introduction, in order to place this back into context:

NSA STEALS ICR TEXT PROVING TARP WAS A SCAM TO REFUND CARLYLE, BUSH ET AL.
On 5th February, the Editor was working with his colleague to finalise pages for the next issue of International Currency Review. This contains an analysis by Michael C. Cottrell, B.A., M.S., with 3 diagrams, entitled 'THE LEGALISATION OF FINANCIAL CORRUPTION', that carefully demonstrates and proves that the Paulson Treasury's TARP operation represented a colossal Ponzi-style fraud designed to refund Carlyle, Carlyle Capital and corrupt 'insiders' starting with George H. W. Bush Sr., James A. Baker III and other highest-level US financiers of terrorism.

All of a sudden, our screen became completely unstable under the impact of electrical pulses which can only have been directed externally. There were two attacks: on the first occasion, the relevant pages were retrieved without loss. About 20 minutes later, however, a further pulse attack resulted in the 'loss' of the concluding pages, associated with the final diagram which shows:

(a) How the Henry M. Paulson Treasury had concocted a devious false prospectus programme to inject false value into fraudulent and worthless derivative 'Structured Products' and:

( How this process, thanks to the fact that the Treasury now controlled the FNMA (‘Fannie Mae’) and FHLMC (‘Freddie Mac’) directly, would ensure that the Government bailout money agreed by Congress would refund Carlyle, Carlyle Capital, Bush Sr., James Banker II et al., as stated above.

We therefore publish immediately below the precise text that was stolen by the NSA in the course of this second 'pulse attack'. We were of course able to restore the stolen text, plus the concluding chart showing the scam in graphic form, almost immediately, so nothing was achieved except that the forces concerned obtained a copy of the language we are using.

They therefore knew that we were about to expose the TARP Ponzi scam, although they would have known that anyway since they listen in to all our telephone conversations.

• Reference is made in the text below, to the diagrams, which are not shown here (because this platform does not currently support illustrations).

• But it is necessary to include these diagram references in order to reveal why NSA stole this text by directing electrical pulses at our production computer. This is the text they stole:

HOW THE LEGISLATION ASSISTED THE FINANCIAL FRAUDSTERS:
THE PAULSON TREASURY’S TARP $700 BILLION PLATFORM SCAM
Figure 3 opposite illustrates the process of taking the private mortgage, commercial mortgage, credit card loans, and/or any other fungible debt, and via the underwriting group or underwriting trust pool, and turning that debt into a securitised ‘Structured Product’ to be pooled and sold into the global institutional market place.

The boxes indicating 'Pool A-1' etc. represent the securitised pools of mortgages and other 'assets', and the various tranches of these 'Structured Products'.

These tranches and/or pools are then sold on to the banks, investment banks, and ‘financial products’ companies for re-sale and/or re-packaging and then re-sale to international banks, investment banks, and corporations.

US Treasury Secretary Paulson’s TARP plan to obtain unlimited authority over the $700 billion was premised on the basis that via a reverse auction, the 'Structured Products'/derivatives could be purchased by the Treasury TARP group and re-packaged, via the new FNMA and FREDDIE MAC, and then re-sold at a profit.

BASED ON THE FALSE PRESUMPTION THAT THE ‘ASSETS’ HAVE VALUE
This operation assumed that the illiquid derivatives have a specific value or a market value.

Such an assumption is definitely false, since there is NO actual and specific asset that is directly attached to the 'Structured Product' – given the obvious fact that the asset was split from the locally filed UCC-1 that defines who is the mortgagee and mortgagor, and who has legal claim to the asset once the mortgage or debt is paid in full.

IN OTHER WORDS, holders of these fake, fraudulent exotic ‘assets’ have no recourse to the original underlying source(s) of ‘real money’ funds.

This separation of the asset and the legal authority to claim the asset occurred during the financial securitisation process of pooling, re-pooling, and re-packaging – supposedly (for gullible public consumption) to spread the risk of default to as many holders as possible – thus furthering the development of the Credit Default Swap derivatives market.

The typical CMO (‘Structured Product’) has ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘Z’ tranches, representing fast pay, medium pay, and slow pay bonds plus a tranche that bears no coupon but receives cashflow from the collateral remaining after all the other tranches are satisfied. More sophisticated CMOs have multiple ‘Z’ tranches and a ‘Y’ tranche incorporating a sinking funds schedule. [This passage in the printed version references the earlier discussion, not reproduced here].

Figure 3 illustrates a non-public TARP program, prior to the appointment of Mr. Kashkari, et al. and the Congressional Oversight Panel restrictions.

Under the guise of a government ‘bailout’ theme and marketed to Congress and the US general public as being for the purpose of buying the illiquid asset-backed securities, Treasury Secretary Paulson intended to operate TARP as a Trading Platform – that is to say, as an International Hedge Fund benefiting from US Government Guarantees – from within Treasury (behaviour which has hitherto been completely illegal) to purchase, at a higher price than necessary, the CDO, CDS, MBS etc. derivatives from the very entities and banks that have themselves directly contributed to the mass-production and sale of these toxic illiquid 'Structured Products'. The purpose of this Trading Platform was/is therefore to use public funds to quantify the value of the toxic products, and to overpay the holders, i.e.: the likes of leading Fraudulent Ponzi-Finance specialists such as: AIG, CITIBANK, GOLDMAN SACHS, CARLYLE CAPITAL, CARLYLE GROUP, and others.

BECAUSE, once the ‘Structured Products’ had been valued, via reverse auction, and purchased, Paulson and his friends would then be able to re-pool and re-package the relevant derivatives via FNMA and FHLMC for re-sale into the demonstrably gullible marketplace, where the phrase ‘due diligence’ appears to be foreign to many operators in the market – thereby repeating the process for as long as possible. Profits from this Trading Platform could then be transferred to an unknown Master Custodial Account set up within the huge external international monetary system – such as a receptacle set up for this purpose by President George W. Bush Jr. in Benin, West Africa – without the knowledge of, or any accountability to, the US Taxpayer, the US tax authorities, or anyone else.

“The TARP scheme is thus SPECIFICALLY shown, with the assistance of these diagrams which will appear on pages 25, 27 and 33 of International Currency Review Volume 34, #2, to have represented an operation concocted by the corrupt Paulson Treasury, to refinance and revalue the worthless derivatives trash ‘assets” and to refinance Carlyle, Carlyle Capital etc. – whereas it was fraudulently marketed to Congress and to the American population as a bank bail-out programme which was also intended to alleviate the mortgage ‘crisis’. It represented, therefore, a fraud on the United States Government, the American people and the whole world.

The new version of TARP under President Obama, marketed as an economic stimulus bill, has the same primary objective as the TARP scheme. It is NOTHING to do with resolving the crisis and, like Geithner’s incoherent and immediately discredited proposals, will be seen to represent another fraud – probably a fraud too far.

Significantly, the Chinese authorities were reported on Friday 13th February to have informed Mrs Hillary Clinton, whose own involvement in criminal financial operations they of course know all about, that if the United States is to receive further Chinese investments in US Treasury securities, the US Government will need to guarantee all preceding Chinese investments in US dollar assets. In other words, the Treasury must provide and insurance wrap or guarantee for Chinese investors, including the Chinese Government.

• Translated into the vernacular, this riposte represents a Chinese official black eye or raspberry for Mrs Clinton and the Geithner Treasury; or to be more precise, the Chinese have told the US Secretary of State, who removed $500 million from Bank Crozier in Grenada, to GET LOST. “ [See the recent news...]

“... governments are panicking in the face of a general expectation that they will indeed become progressively (or suddenly) liable to guarantee and therefore honour the liabilities of the recalcitrant criminal enterprise banks.

Against this background, they have embarked upon a desperate policy of printing money, a.k.a. of quantitative easing, to balloon the money supply, and to expand government debt on a scale with no precedent, thereby effectively ensuring a ‘wheelbarrow’ future.”

***

“... the criminal finance intentions and covert self-financing practices of the US ‘State within the State’ which controls the Executive Branch, selects its leading figures, and has usurped the power of the Executive.

In order to sustain this position, the CIA, controlled by the Bush-DVD faction inside the Intelligence Power, has seen to it that its Fraudulent Finance Ponzi operations have been exported to as many counterparties abroad as the external platforms that have been compromised can muster.

By enticing so many swarms of flies into its web the Bushspider operating out of the George Bush Center for Financial Terrorism has attempted to preclude the discontinuity that has actually taken place – namely, exposure of the fact that these transactions are ALL FRAUDULENT.

The US Treasury’s back-handed attempt to perpetuate the fraud, by having the corrupt Federal Reserve fund exotic new US Treasury instruments (or ‘Geithners’) ‘enhanced’ with an insurance wrapround and a deceitful Treasury ‘good health’ label, has both invited ridicule and drawn global attention to the relevance of Mervyn King’s warning that the situation will deteriorate sharply 'if the world’s policymakers fail to bring the banking crisis to an end'.”






“our earlier allusions to the reality that the Madoff Ponzi operation was linked to the Bush-Clinton-Chicago organised crime Octopus are supported by the following excerpt from Wayne Madsen’s WMR website (dated 9th February 2009):

‘The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had cut a deal with $50 billion Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff whereby Mr Madoff will neither admit nor deny fraud claims against him in a suit brought by the SEC. In return Madoff has agreed to pay civil fines and penalties levied by the SEC. The agreement has no bearing on Madoff's criminal trial’.

‘WMR has learned that in addition to 20 million documents stored by Madoff in a warehouse in Queens that were stored without any indexing system and merely placed in boxes and strewn around the floor, are millions of additional documents that were stored by Madoff in a Brooklyn warehouse that was partially flooded. A number of Madoff documents there were destroyed by water damage’.

‘WMR has also learned that a key element in Madoff's Ponzi scheme was Madoff Energy LLC, formed as a Delaware corporation in February 2007. Other Madoff firms in the energy arena were Madoff Energy Holdings LLC, Madoff Energy III LLC, and Madoff Energy IV LLC. There are links between these now-defunct Madoff energy entities and Texas oil and natural gas industry interests, some close to the Bushes and Dick Cheney'.

'WMR has also learned that the kid glove treatment given by Federal authorities to Madoff, including allowing him to remain in his Upper East Side luxury town home, is because Madoff's Ponzi scheme was part of a much larger operation, one involving top officials of both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations, as well as the notorious Russian-Israeli Mafia’.”

***

“‘WMR has learned that the CIA, with the support of the Barack Obama Administration [sic! The CIA CONTROLS the Obama Administration], is threatening to release details of other British abductions and torture if London proceeds to reveal details of the kidnapping and torture of Mohamed’.

The report then went on to spell out what blackmail cards the CIA thinks it holds against MI-6, which has the power and responsibility (see our earlier reports) to procure the implementation of the Settlements and the Refunding Programme.

The following package represents a crude, typically CIA-style blackmail threat:

‘Specifically, the CIA is in possession [how on earth does Madsen know? – Ed.] of potentially embarrassing details of the abduction and torture by Britain’s MI-6 intelligence service of 28 Pakistanis abducted by British agents in Athens after the July 7, 2005 transit bombings in London’. The report continued to elaborate on this matter in a tone which can only be described as very threatening, concluding with the following:

‘With suspicions growing that Milliband [British (Jewish) Foreign Secretary] and Prime Minister Gordon Brown are involved in a major intelligence cover-up, any US disclosures about Britain’s rôle in renditions and torture, violations of international and European law, could result in a further erosion of support to Labor in Britain…. If the British Government reveals details of Mohamed’s rendition and torture by the Americans, it can be expected that there will be a mutually-assured destruction campaign waged between Washington and London’.

The only problem with this barefaced blackmail threat is that a British Judge had already ruled – but in furious language, prompting superheated exchanges recently in the House of Commons – that the relevant information about the Americans’ brutal treatment of Mohamed would NOT be released for unspecified security reasons ‘and in order to preserve the essential confidences inherent in the intelligence relationships between the two countries’, or verbiage to that effect.

The British Foreign Secretary (Miliband) then elaborated at great length in Parliament about why the information would not be released.

• In other words, Madsen’s belated CIA blackmail threat was sterile, beyond its expiry date and empty – suggesting that the CIA was scratching around looking for some further pretext to exert pressure on the British, given the stand-off over the G-7-Approved Refunding Programme which it is systematically blocking.

• A pretty feeble operation, which was flattened when the British authorities saw through the CIA’s typically sordid blackmail attempt.”





LIST OF U.S. STATUTES, SECURITIES REGULATIONS AND LEGAL PRINCIPLES OF WHICH THE CRIMINALISTS, ASSOCIATES AND ALL THE MAIN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS REMAIN IN BREACH:

LEGAL TUTORIAL: The Steps of Common Fraud:

Step 1: Fraud in the Inducement: “… is intended to and which does cause one to execute an instrument, or make an agreement… The misrepresentation involved does not mislead one as the paper he signs but rather misleads as to the true facts of a situation, and the false impression it causes is a basis of a decision to sign or render a judgment”. Source: Steven H. Gifis, ‘Law Dictionary’, 5th Edition, Happauge: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 2003, s.v.: ‘Fraud’.

Step 2: Fraud in Fact by Deceit (Obfuscation and Denial) and Theft:

• “ACTUAL FRAUD. Deceit. Concealing something or making a false representation with an evil intent [scanter] when it causes injury to another…”. Source: Steven H. Gifis, ‘Law Dictionary’, 5th Edition, Happauge: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 2003, s.v.: ‘Fraud’.

• “THE TORT OF FRAUDULENT DECEIT… The elements of actionable deceit are: A false representation of a material fact made with knowledge of its falsity, or recklessly, or without reasonable grounds for believing its truth, and with intent to induce reliance thereon, on which plaintiff justifiably relies on his injury…”. Source: Steven H. Gifis, ‘Law Dictionary’, 5th Edition, Happauge: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 2003, s.v.: ‘Deceit’.

Step 3: Theft by Deception and Fraudulent Conveyance:

THEFT BY DECEPTION:

• “FRAUDULENT CONCEALMENT… The hiding or suppression of a material fact or circumstance which the party is legally or morally bound to disclose…”.

• “The test of whether failure to disclose material facts constitutes fraud is the existence of a duty, legal or equitable, arising from the relation of the parties: failure to disclose a material fact with intent to mislead or defraud under such circumstances being equivalent to an actual ‘fraudulent concealment’…”.

• To suspend running of limitations, it means the employment of artifice, planned to prevent inquiry or escape investigation and mislead or hinder acquirement of information disclosing a right of action, and acts relied on must be of an affirmative character and fraudulent…”.

Source: Black, Henry Campbell, M.A., 'Black’s Law Dictionary’, Revised 4th Edition, St Paul: West Publishing Company, 1968, s.v. ‘Fraudulent Concealment’.

FRAUDULENT CONVEYANCE:

• “FRAUDULENT CONVEYANCE… A conveyance or transfer of property, the object of which is to defraud a creditor, or hinder or delay him, or to put such property beyond his reach…”.

• “Conveyance made with intent to avoid some duty or debt due by or incumbent or person (entity) making transfer…”.

Source: Black, Henry Campbell, M.A., ‘Black’s Law Dictionary', Revised 4th Edition, St Paul: West Publishing Company, 1968, s.v. ‘Fraudulent Conveyance’.

U.S. SECURITIES REGULATIONS OF WHICH INSTITUTIONS
HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO BE IN BREACH [SEE REPORTS]:

• NASD Rule 3120, et al.
• NASD Rule 2330, et al
• NASD Conduct Rules 2110 and 3040
• NASD Conduct Rules 2110 and IM-2110-1
• NASD Conduct Rules 2110 and SEC Rule 15c3-1
• NASD Conduct Rules 2110 and 3110
• SEC Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4
• NASD Conduct Rules 2110 and Procedural Rule 8210
• NASD Conduct Rules 2110 and 2330 and IM-2330
• NASD Conduct Rules 2110 and IM-2110-5
• NASD Systems and Programme Rules 6950 through 6957
• 97-13 Bank Secrecy Act, Recordkeeping Rule for funds transfers and transmittals of funds, et al.

U.S. LAWS ROUTINELY BREACHED BY THE CRIMINAL OPERATIVES AND INSTITUTIONS:

• Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act
• Anti-Drug Abuse Act
• Applicable international money laundering restrictions
• Bank Secrecy Act
• Conspiracy to commit and cover up murder.
• Crimes, General Provisions, Accessory After the Fact [Title 18, USC]
• Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act
• Economic Espionage Act
• Hobbs Act
• Imparting or Conveying False Information [Title 18, USC]
• Maloney Act
• Misprision of Felony [Title 18, USC] (1)
• Money-Laundering Control Act
• Money-Laundering Suppression Act
• Organized Crime Control Act of 1970
• Perpetration of repeated egregious felonies by State and Federal public employees and their Departments and agencies, which are co-responsible with the said employees for ONGOING illegal and criminal actions, to sustain fraudulent operations and crimes in order to cover up criminalist activities and High Crimes and Misdemeanours by present and former holders of high office under the United States
• Provisions pertaining to private business transactions being protected under both private and criminal penalties [H.R. 3723]
• Provisions prohibiting the bribing of foreign officials [F.I.S.A.]
• Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act [R.I.C.O.]
• Securities Act 1933
• Securities Act 1934
• Terrorism Prevention Act
• Treason legislation, especially in time of war.

http://worldreports.org/news/195_catastrop...nue_under_obama



World Reports Limited [http://worldreports.org/ ] is a private intelligence publishing house and have no connections to any outside parties including intelligence agencies. The word ‘intelligence’ on this website and in all our marketing material is used for marketing/sales purposes only and has no other connotations whatsoever: see ‘About Us’ on the red panels under the Notes on the Editor, Christopher Story FRSA, who has been solely and exclusively engaged as an investigative journalist, Editor, Author and private financial and current affairs Publisher since 1963 and is not and never has been an agent for a foreign power, suggestions to the contrary being actionable for libel in the English Court.

Christopher E. H. Story FRSA, Managing and Operations Director, a former occasional adviser to Lady Thatcher, has over 37 years’ experience of specialist intelligence and financial publishing. Mr Story has testified on several occasions before US Congressional Committees on international affairs issues. He is a very well-known independent currency, economics, finance and current affairs specialist, and is also a conference speaker on dimensions of the World Revolution that are swamping and confusing the West.

http://worldreports.org/aboutus

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Journalism Isn't Dead: A Salute to Nathan Baca

http://stationcharon.blogspot.com/2009/06/...-to-nathan.html

The link above has three embedded videos.


The reports of the death of investigative journalism in America are premature despite the public relations flacks and sellout careerist shithacks who populate the propaganda palaces that provide the 'acceptable cover for ruling oligarchy. It is truly reassuring that there are still courageous, honorable and dedicated professionals out there who risk both their careers and their safety to drag the truth out into the light. I speak of Mr. Nathan Baca of Palm Springs, California television station KESQ who deservedly was awarded an Emmy earlier this week for his outstanding work on the series that has once again brought the story of 'The Octopus' into the public domain [see http://octopuswiki.com/ ].



The shadowy story of the rogue network of black ops specialists, weapons dealers, money launderers, corrupt government officials, organized crime figures and their involvement in some of the darkest and most dangerous secrets of the shadow government is one that has yet to be told and to be accorded the attention that it deserves. In short, there is no doubt in this humble blogger's mind that this story and the murders on the Cabazon Indian reservation that Mr. Baca has been investigating is the story of the century, and I am not just engaging in hyperbole here.

I myself have done three pieces on the ties to this story an the implications on the national security complex: Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and will soon be rolling out part 4. [These are already linked into the Lynx Lair; we eagerly await part 4.]

It is imperative for Americans to have an understanding of just how this rogue network of spooks, criminals and cowboys is the Rosetta Stone for new era of American fascism post 9/11. The Octopus is the nexus of all that has redirected the United States on our current downward trajectory and our ultimate destiny that is a historical infamy that will serve as a warning to all for centuries to come on what happens when a parallel power structure is allowed to run amok. I am looking forward to more from Mr. Baca.

I also want to put a plug in for the website DesertFae [ http://desertfae.com/indexnonplain.htm ] and her blog [ http://desertfae.com/wordpress/ ] that should be mandatory reading for all that are aware that something has gone terribly wrong in this country. I am taking the following videos dealing with 'The Octopus' from there and recommend them for not only viewing but also in sending them to everyone that you know.

The main link to Nathan Baca's outstanding series is here: http://www.kesq.com/Global/category.asp?C=...v=menu191_1_1_4 . Again, congratulations to one who truly understands the obligations of journalists in holding the truth to power, without them there would be no hope and with more like him we just may one day enjoy true liberty.

As George Orwell once famously put it In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act and we here in an America held hostage by fascists we need an information revolution that will shake the oligarchs, the looters, the blood barters and the schemers to their very foundations.

Posted by Ed Encho at 11:26 AM



Here are the links to the online stories:

By Nathan Baca
News Channel 3


PART 34: Cold Case Murder Squad Investigating Three Local Indian Tribes
Posted: Oct 9, 2008 07:03 PM
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=915...v=menu191_1_1_4


Updated: Oct 10, 2008 09:16 PM
Part 33: Local Indian Tribe Investigated in 'The Octopus' Murders
Posted: Sep 11, 2008 04:29 PM
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=899...v=menu191_1_1_4


Part 31: Secret Government Program Linked To Local Murders?
Posted: July 31, 2008 11:21 AM
By Nathan Baca
News Channel 3
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=876...v=menu191_1_1_4


****

[Magmak1 says:

#1) Congrats and a HUGE tip of the cap to DesertFae.

#2) JimiRay, put a feather in your cap, sit back, and pop the top on a cold one.]

NOW - how do we get all that into a 10 min Ipod broadcast? OR storytelling with extensive links: http://www.apture.com/

We can do this.

Monday, June 22, 2009
Unsolved Mysteries: Danny Casolaro's 'Suicide'

"In an effort to educate readers I am posting these two videos on the 'suicide' of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro that are from the TV series Unsolved Mysteries. Mr. Casolaro was working on an expose of a black ops network of United States government officials, their ties to BCCI, illegal weapons deals (including the October Surprise) and the theft and modification of the INSLAW corporation's very sophisticated PROMIS software that would go on be built upon to build the very surveillance systems that today spy on us all as Americans - illegally. The program was also capable of the manipulation of financial transactions, rigging of markets and industrial espionage. As the global economic collapse and the shadow banking system that has perpetuated it is now going to overcome the brief respite generated by the propagandists and descend into the depths it is imperative that people are able to understand how the markets are and have been for quite some time manipulated.

Anyway, here are[embedded at link below] the two parts of the Casolaro series....I have a post coming on 'The Octopus' in the very near future and this is an important resource to view."



Videos linked from Desertfae - check her site out and pass it around, this is some serious stuff and the more people that know about it the safer it is for her.

EE


Posted by Ed Encho
http://stationcharon.blogspot.com/

The long-awaited Part IV of Ed Encho's "Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government" (Pt. 4) Tuesday, July 14, 2009) has been posted:


http://stationcharon.blogspot.com/2009/07/...ernment_14.html

"It is no secret that Israel plays a major part in the PROMIS saga and that will be covered in the next part of this series in more depth...."


"... I would strongly suspect that the amount of money laundering, involvement with organized crime, narcotics and weapons dealing that is being currently conducted is stunning. Only the recent high profile cases like that of Alan Stanford who has been tied to such dirty activities as well as Madoff and Israel get the attention but they are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Without digressing too much I just want to point out that much of the post WW II intelligence apparatus including the cowboys who were at the heart of the original Octopus were directly tied to the Eastern establishment, Skull and Bones types from which the OSS/CIA was comprised of. This being said, it is only natural that such grand scale financial chicanery and speculation has come to dominate both the U.S. economy as well as the government itself which is so thoroughly intertwined with the pirates that the schemes of the Wall Street high rollers are preserved at the expense of the millions of lesser beings whose lives are being destroyed by the ongoing greed and the subsidizing of such by a system gone cancerous.

The presence of Robert Booth Nichols in the milieu surrounding Casolaro’s research as well as with Bayou Investments and the $250 billion treasury note is just another example of the interconnectivity between the underworld and the overworld. The financial aspects of this cannot be downplayed in the wake of the global meltdown that is largely due to the shadow banking system comprised of offshore banks largely exempt from U.S. laws, money laundering, pools of black money, narcotics/weapons dealing profits and speculative finance that have been a permanent fixture of the oligarchy’s financial matrix. Any legitimate investigation of power in the U.S. must include an analysis of intricate financial institutions, layered in Enron style subversion and patterned after CIA/Wall Street front companies expressly created for the purpose of funding off the books operations.

"I do want to state that the CIA is far from the only U.S. intelligence agency, there are many and too often they are lumped in with the CIA as it is the most prominent. There are at least sixteen separate intelligence agencies and those are only the ones that we know about and there is often collaboration with foreign intelligence to circumvent laws and ensure plausible deniability. The CIA though is unique in that it was created to serve as an enforcement arm for the Wall Street elite and the money power, its primary obligation is not to the United States itself but that element that exists in the shadows. I recommend reading: How the CIA Created a Ruling, Corporate Overclass in America for some very good examples."

"..the Bush Family is so heavily connected and is so interwoven with this systemic fraud, they're concerned about a cascade effect within the public. They don't mind if one incident comes out that they can point to it as an isolated incident. What they're concerned about is the public beginning to understand the level of corruption that exists within all agencies of government and the intricate connection the Bush family has had to this fraud over the decades."

-Al Martin (author of The Conspirators – Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider)



... There have been a few excellent books written about the family and of note are Webster Griffin Tarpley’s early and rather lurid tome that is entitled "George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography", Kevin Phillips’ "American Dynasty" and an extremely interesting recent book that has been completely ignored by the corporatist media (other than a few hit pieces) "Family Of Secrets" by Russ Baker.


I would strongly encourage everybody who has taken the time to read this to do your own research on the connections between the Bush family and the downward trajectory of this once great country into the fascist gangster state that it has become today and despite the disgraced rule of George W. Bush he was after all able to successfully eviscerate the Constitution during his time in office as well as to put into place the most formidable high-tech police state in the history of mankind. The economy has been destroyed, the privatization projects of the fascists are now a reality and with more states in financial distress along the lines of California there will soon be national fire sales of roads, infrastructure and landmarks to the descendants of the early Robber Barons whose power has been consolidated by insiders such as the Bush family beyond their wildest of dreams. The only things that the United States of America is now capable of producing is death, destruction, financial scams, for profit prisons, paranoia and a massive Big Brother style surveillance and repression apparatus that is the envy of all dictators.

And the Bush family isn't finished yet, Jeb is coming soon. You can count on it.


Read the rest of this long article at the link above, and look for "the next part of this series",

From previous posts at Cryptogon:

U.S. Federal Prosecutor: Stolen Goldman Sachs Software Could be Used to “Manipulate Markets in Unfair Ways”
July 8th, 2009


This isn’t a free market; it’s a black magic trick, involving supercomputers, psychological operations and lots and lots of leverage.

—CBOT Resembles Carnival Act as Billion Dollar Black Box Operators Move In
[ http://cryptogon.com/?p=2115 ]

Imagine my shock.




Via: CNBC / Reuters:

The purported theft of a Goldman Sachs trading platform threatens to cost it millions of dollars, a prosecutor told a court, but so far the bank has not reported damage to its business.

Questions were raised about the security of proprietary trading systems at a court hearing on July 4 for a former Goldman computer programmer arrested on a charge of stealing the information, which was copied to a server in Germany.

If the stolen information, or trading code, is allowed to go to a competitor who can start trading with it, “the bank itself stands lose its entire investment in creating this software to begin with, which is millions upon millions of dollars,” warned U.S. prosecutor Joseph Facciponte, according to a transcript of Saturday’s proceeding.

He added that because of the way this software interfaces with the various markets and exchanges, the bank has warned it could be used to “manipulate markets in unfair ways.” The FBI in New York said on Tuesday that measures had been taken to prevent code being sent from the server in Germany.

“Working through our assistant legal attache in Frankfurt and with the authorities in Germany, the FBI has taken steps to ensure that the appropriated code was not distributed,” FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said.

Sergey Aleynikov, 39, who left Goldman on June 5 for a Chicago firm and was arrested last Friday night, gave consent to the FBI to visit his home in Little Falls, New Jersey, over the weekend and remove all of his personal computers, according to court documents.

They show that Aleynikov, a father of three and a dual national of the United States and Russia, told the FBI he was cooperating because “I did not think I was doing anything wrong” when he downloaded copies to his personal computer, laptop and to a flash drive.

He told investigators that Goldman Sachs knew he worked on the program from home and said nothing about it previously, according to the court record.

Aleynikov said he had no intention of selling the information or breaking his employment agreement. Aleynikov was arrested at Newark Liberty airport in New Jersey on a flight from Chicago on July 3. On Monday, he was released on $750,000 bail, restricted to New York and New Jersey and ordered to surrender travel documents.

Goldman Sachs has declined to comment on the case. A source familiar with the situation said on Monday that the bank had seen no impact on clients or business.

http://cryptogon.com/?p=9745

For more on Goldman Sachs, read

http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/07/wobble-time.html#more

"... Goldman Sachs will announce impressive second-quarter profits, and set aside $18 billion or so for employee bonuses averaging $600,000 per head (though, of course, not evenly distributed among them). There probably are not fifty-three people in the USA who can explain how this development figures in with last fall's bailout gift from the US treasury, or the $13 billion GS received on the backside of US gift payments to the failed AIG insurance company, plus the reams of necrotic securitized debt paper rotting in the back of the GS vaults. This is a company playing with the fire of world history....."

Evil Syndicated
By James Howard Kunstler
on July 27, 2009 11:00 AM

By now, everyone in that fraction of the world that pays attention to something other than American Idol and their platter of TGI Friday's loaded potato skins knows that Goldman Sachs has been caught at another racket in the stock market: front-running trades. What a clever gambit, done with the help of the markets themselves - the Nasdaq in particular - in which information on trades is held back a fraction of a second from public view, while the data is shoveled to the computers of privileged subscribers who can execute zillions of programmed micro-trades before the rest of the herd makes a move. This allows them to vacuum up hundreds of millions of dollars by doing absolutely nothing of value. The old-fashioned method used by brokers was called "churning," in which stocks were bought and sold incessantly (by phone) from the portfolios of inattentive clients merely to generate commissions. In any sensible society - i.e. a society with an instinct for self-preservation - it would be against the law and the people doing it would be sent to prison.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've got to think that the actions at the Nasdaq end - shoveling the data to the privileged subscribers a fraction of a second early - is patently illegal in the first place, since the whole purpose of an exchange is to create a fair trading space. Where both parties are concerned, it should amount to a plain vanilla criminal conspiracy to commit stock trading fraud. Maybe the larger question is: since when did we become a society lacking the instinct for self-preservation - that is, a society bent on suicide? Or maybe the question is better put to Goldman Sachs's CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Since this racket was made public, there has been chatter all over the Web about how angry the American public is about Wall Street in general, and increasingly about Goldman Sachs in particular. Nobody has summed it up better than Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, calling the company "...a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." And Taibbi's fierce article about Goldman Sachs came out weeks before this latest outrage. As we turn the corner toward autumn, President Obama looks increasingly like a dupe, a tool, or a co-conspirator of Goldman Sachs. If he doesn't instruct the Justice Department to commence investigations of the company, and if he doesn't dissociate himself from their alumni hanging around the White House, the Treasury Department, and elsewhere in the government, he's going to become the object of an awful public wrath. Obama has no other choice at this point except to clean house - to fire Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Tim Geithner, and all other former Goldman Sachs employees in positions of power and influence around him.

Actually, it's not necessary for the whole general public to be fed up with this situation. According to the Pareto 80-20 rule, it only takes one-fifth of the public to set social actions in motion, and only one-fifth of that one-fifth to do the heavy lifting. I think we've reached that point. The sentiment is now overwhelmingly tipped against Goldman Sachs (and Wall Street generally) and the only questions are whether the President of the US ends up lumped in with them, and whether we'll see orderly prosecutions or disorderly persecutions. At this point, it even begins to look as though Mr. Obama is taking cover behind the health care reform debate to avoid answering for his government's association with Goldman Sachs.

The trouble is, if the thoughtful and trustworthy members of the "Pareto 20 percent" don't stir themselves into action over Goldman's behavior, then sooner or later the thoughtless and reckless will take over. Bill Moyers hosted a fascinating report on his most recent podcast about the savagery of right-wing broadcasting and how it had led, in one instance, to the murder of a doctor who performed abortions. What bothers me is that, sooner or later, the conduct of Goldman Sachs will lead the growing ranks of the unemployed, foreclosed, disentitled, and hopeless into the hands of a savage right wing seeking mindless vengeance, for instance, against "the Jews," (as represented by Goldman Sachs), or brown-skinned people (as embodied by a vilified president).

Readers of this blog know I'm allergic to conspiracy theories. But surveying the scene out there, it is hard to not conclude that Goldman Sachs has become the "front-runner" of a criminal syndicate defrauding US taxpayers. This isn't the first time in American history that business veered into extremely antisocial behavior on the grand scale. The last quarter of the 19th century was just as bad, with frauds, swindles, sociopathic trusts, and predatory corporations preying on people trying desperately to make an honest living. Then, one summer day in 1901, a factory drone named Leon Czolgosz stepped up to President William McKinley in a reception line at the Buffalo World's Fair and plugged him twice in the abdomen. (Czolgosz liked to think of himself as an "anarchist," a then-fashionable ideology among the simmering powerless.) Eight days later, McKinley expired and Teddy Roosevelt became president - to the extreme chagrin of the Republican business establishment - "... now that damned cowboy is in the White House!" cried Republican national leader Mark Hanna of Ohio.

He was correct to be nervous. TR turned the corporate world upside down with reform, from dismantling monopolies to establishing the cabinet departments of Commerce and Labor, to bringing the new food industry under regulation. This naturally leads me to wonder if or when Barack Obama will have his TR Moment, when he stands up to the large malign forces operating arrantly in the daily life of this nation. I get volumes of email complaining about Mr. Obama. The writers behind them seem, on the whole, crankish, cynical to an extreme, and not very trustworthy observers of the scene. But I begin to sympathize with them.

In the meantime, the US economy gives the illusion of recovery - but to what? Back to a "consumer" credit card shopping orgy? Another house-buying fiesta? I don't think so. Households are drowning in debt. They're using their credit cards, if they still can, to buy staple foods. Those are the lucky ones who still have lines of credit left. Soon, many of these families won't even amount to households because they won't have a house. There is absolutely no way we are going back to that particular bubble economy. The only bubble left is the government debt bubble, now leading to such extravagant excess that it can only end up wrecking the government, and perhaps American society with it. In the meantime, how much remaining wealth is Goldman Sachs and its cohorts vacuuming off the floor?

Also meanwhile, oil is heading back to the $70 range (with the dollar shedding basis points). That's the oil price range where the economy begins to get wrecked all over again - that is, whatever remains of the economy. That's the price range where airlines go back to the intensive care unit and citizens have to max out their credit cards to buy gasoline. We're moving toward a very hard landing and very soon.

http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/07/evil-syndicated.html#more

Humans Lose $21 Billion to Computers on Wall Street

http://hplusmagazine.com

"We are just mice dancing" between the supercomputers of Wall Street giants, complains one trading executive, and an investment manager notes computers are already making 73% of all stock trades on U.S. exchanges. One former NYSE chairman admitted to the New York Times that "This is where all the money is getting made." (Between April and June, Goldman Sachs earned $100 million in one day — on 46 different days.)

High-speed algorithms use 30-millisecond trades to probe market conditions, and can buy and sell with a nearly omniscient knowledge of every other investor's price point. The Times notes that already these algorithms "execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously..."

Full story: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/singu...g-goldman-sachs

http://www.disinfo.com/content/story.php?t...n-Wall-Street-1

Watch PROMIS - precursor to Ptech & then Agile Software Development
http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category...8306205z7h3wKwQ

then consider John Deutch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch

According to that WikiPedia article:

"In 1978, Deutch published two physical-chemistry papers (in, Combustion and Flame, 1,223;31,215) on the mechanism of the Fuel/Air Explosive (FAE), a thermobaric weapon. ... Soon after Deutch's departure from the CIA in 1996 it was revealed that classified materials were being kept on several of Deutch's laptop computers designated as unclassified. In January 1997, the CIA began a formal security investigation of the matter. Senior management at CIA declined to fully pursue the security breach. Over two years after his departure, the matter was referred to the Department of Justice, where Attorney General Janet Reno declined prosecution. She did, however, recommend an investigation to determine whether Deutch should retain his security clearance.[4] President Clinton pardoned Deutch on his last day in office.[5]"

and consider his role as a co-author of this paper which forecast 9/11 ...

KPMG and PwC Reykjavik offices are raided by Icelandic police

Police have raided the offices of KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Reykjavik, seizing documents and computer data as part of an investigation into alleged criminal activity at three collapsed Icelandic banks.

By Rowena Mason
Published: 9:30PM BST 01 Oct 2009

The targets of the raids were the firms' banking clients Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbanki, but the move is nevertheless likely to cause embarrassment for the two companies, both among the "big four" accountancy names in the world.

The Reykjavik branches of KPMG and PwC are owned by its partners, common with most accountancy practices, but are also part of the multinational network of firms.

The office of Olafur Thor Hauksson, the Icelandic investigator charged with examining the collapse of the three banks a year ago, confirmed that 22 policemen and six foreign accountants took part in the searches yesterday.

"The purpose of the searches was to look for and secure evidence related to the investigation of several charges which have been investigated by the office," a statement said.

Among the matters being investigated are "violation of laws on accounting and annual reports, violation of laws on financial institutions and securities transactions and violations of laws on public limited companies".

PwC Iceland could not be reached for comment.

Sigurdur Jonsson, the chief executive of KPMG Iceland, told The Daily Telegraph that the raids related to some of his clients and that none of his staff had been questioned. He refused to comment further on the investigation.

Mr Jonsson has already become embroiled in controversy after it emerged that KPMG Iceland had been responsible for investigating events leading up to the collapse of Glitnir, despite the fact that his son was chief executive of the bank's largest shareholder. KPMG later resigned from the case.

The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) agreed last month to send a team of investigators to Iceland to help "get to the bottom" of whether there were any criminal intentions in the country's collapsed banks, which had extensive links with London.

The Icelandic banks, which had large customer bases in the UK, failed last October, leaving 300,000 British savers unable to access their money and institutions nursing billions in losses. Following the crisis, the Treasury had to pay out £7.5bn to compensate UK savers, although £2.3bn of this will be repaid by Iceland over the next 15 years.

Allegations of fraud, embezzlement and market manipulation have been under investigation in Iceland since February. The SFO has separately been gathering intelligence on the Icelandic banking sector and its UK operations both involving investors and borrowers, which intensified after the leak of Kaupthing's loan book on to the internet last month.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbys...dic-police.html


and then factor in this good news courtesy of DesertFae:

http://desertfae.com/indexplain.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmicgzOlbA

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/vm,fre...s,9,27,09.html

JIMMY HUGHES ARRESTED FOR THE 1981 ALVAREZ TRIPLE EXECUTIONS
by Virginia McCullough


http://www.mydesert.com/article/2009...n-1981-murders

http://desertfae.com/pressrelease2.htm

related videos-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyjVd10w59I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19acWUZGAk (talks about the DA being Hughes' cousin)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thXt-oJ2z9g (talks about Glen Heggstad)
Los Angeles Time's story- http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ca...0,6420190.story

Congratulations, DesertFae

Sunday, October 4, 2009

FBI Data-Mining Programs Resurrect "Total Information Awareness"

Like a vampire rising from it's grave each night to feed on the privacy rights of Americans, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is moving forward with programs that drain the life blood from our constitutional liberties.

From the wholesale use of informants and provocateurs to stifle political dissent, to Wi-Fi hacking and viral computer spyware to follow our every move, the FBI has turned massive data-mining of personal information into a growth industry. In the process they are building the surveillance state long been dreamed of by American securocrats.

A chilling new report by investigative journalist Ryan Singel provides startling details of how the FBI's National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is quietly morphing into the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system of convicted Iran-Contra felon, Admiral John M. Poindexter. According to documents obtained by Wired:

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store. (Ryan Singel, "FBI's Data-Mining System Sifts Airline, Hotel, Car-Rental Records," Wired, September 23, 2009)


Among the latest revelations of out-of-control secret state spookery, Wired disclosed that personal details on customers have been provided to the Bureau by the Wyndham Worldwide hotel chain "which includes Ramada Inn, Days Inn, Super 8, Howard Johnson and Hawthorn Suites." Additional records were obtained from the Avis rental car company and Sears department stores.

Singel reports that the Bureau is planning a massive expansion of NSAC, one that would enlarge the scope, and mission, of the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force (FTTTF) and the file-crunching, privacy-killing Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW).

"Among the items on its wish list," Singel writes, "is the database of the Airlines Reporting Corporation--a company that runs a backend system for travel agencies and airlines." If federal snoops should obtain ARC's data-sets, the FBI would have unlimited access to "billions of American's itineraries, as well as the information they give to travel agencies, such as date of birth, credit card numbers, names of friends and family, e-mail addresses, meal preferences and health information."

The publication reports that the system "is both a meta-search engine--querying many data sources at once--and a tool that performs pattern and link analysis." Internal FBI documents reveal that despite growing criticism of the alleged "science" of data-mining, including a stinging 2008 report by the prestigious National Research Council, for all intents and purposes the Bureau will transform NSAC into a low-key version of Adm. Poindexter's Information Awareness Office. An internal FBI document provides a preview of the direction NSAC will take.

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO) May 2004 report on federal data mining efforts, the GAO defined data mining as "the application of database technology--to uncover hidden patterns and subtle relationships in data and to infer rules that allow for the prediction of future results" (GAO-05-866, Data Mining p. 4). There are a number of security and privacy issues that government and private industry must address when contemplating the use of technology and data in these ways. While the current activities and efforts of the IDW and FTTTF programs do not provide NSB [National Security Branch] users with the full level of data mining services as defined above it is the intention of the NSAC to pursue and refine these capabilities where permitted by statute and policy. The implementation and responsible utilization of these services will advance the FBI's ability to address national security threats in a timely fashion, uncover previously unknown patterns and trends and empower agents and analysts to better "hunt between the cases" to find those persons, places or things of investigative and intelligence interest. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, Internal Planning & Budget Review, Program Narrative for Enhancements/Increases," p. 5, emphasis added)


Unsurprisingly, in their quest for increased funding FBI officials failed to mention that the 2004 GAO report raised significant and troubling questions glossed over by securocrats. To wit, GAO investigators averred:

Privacy concerns about mined or analyzed personal data also include concerns about the quality and accuracy of the mined data; the use of the data for other than the original purpose for which the data were collected without the consent of the individual; the protection of the data against unauthorized access, modification, or disclosure; and the right of individuals to know about the collection of personal information, how to access that information, and how to request a correction of inaccurate information. (General Accounting Office, Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses, GAO-04-548, May 2004)


Despite these concerns, an FBI budget document released to Wired baldly states:

The NSAC will provide subject-based "link analysis" through utilization of the FBI's collection data sets, combined with public records on predicated subjects. Link analysis uses these data sets to find links between subjects, suspects, and addresses or other pieces of relevant information, and other persons, places, and things. This technique is currently being used on a limited basis by the FBI; the NSAC will provide improved processes and greater access to this technique to all NSB components. The NSAC will also pursue "pattern analysis" as part of its service to the NSB. "Pattern analysis" queries take a predictive model or pattern of behavior and search for that pattern in data sets. The FBI's efforts to define predictive models and patterns of behavior should improve efforts to identify "sleeper cells." Information produced through data exploitation will be processed by analysts who are experts in the use of this information and used to produce products that comply with requirements for the proper handling of the information. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, "National Security Branch Analytical Capabilities," November 12, 2008)


Four years after the GAO report cited the potential for abuse inherent in such techniques, The National Research Council's exhaustive study criticized the alleged ability of data-miners to discover hidden "patterns" and "trends" among disparate data-sets "precisely because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity; as a result, they are likely to generate huge numbers of false leads."

False leads that may very well land an innocent person on a terrorist watch-list or as a subject of a wide-ranging and unwarranted national security investigation. But as with all things relating to "counterterrorism," the guilt or innocence of the average citizen is a trifling matter while moves to "empower agents" to "find those persons, places or things of investigative and intelligence interest," is the paramount goal. "Justice" under such a system becomes another preemptive "tool" subject to the whims of our political masters.

The use of federal dollars for such a dubious and questionable enterprise has already had real-world consequences for political activists. Just ask RNC Welcoming Committee activists currently under indictment in Minnesota for their role in organizing legal protests against the far-right Republican National Convention last year in St. Paul.

As Antifascist Calling revealed earlier this year, one private security outfit, the now-defunct Highway Watch which worked closely with the FBI, used "social network theory" and "link analysis," and cited the group's legal political organizing, including "increased membership via the internet" and "public appearances at various locations across the US," as a significant factor that rendered the group a "legitimate" target for heightened surveillance and COINTELPRO-style disruption.

Singel also disclosed that NSAC shared data "with the Pentagon's controversial Counter-Intelligence Field Activity office, a secretive domestic-spying unit which collected data on peace groups, including the Quakers, until it was shut down in 2008. But the FBI told lawmakers it would be careful in its interactions with that group."

As journalists and congressional investigators subsequently revealed however, CIFA's dark heart--the office's mammoth databases--were off-loaded to other secret state security agencies, including the FBI.

CIFA: Closed Down or Farmed Out?

When CIFA ran aground after a series of media disclosures beginning in 2004, some critics believed that was the end of that. "From the beginning of its existence," investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed in Spies For Hire, "CIFA had extensive authority to conduct domestic counterintelligence."

Indeed, one CIFA official "was the deputy director of the FBI's multiagency Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force," Shorrock wrote, "and other CIFA officials were assigned to more than one hundred regional Joint Terrorism Task Forces where they served with other personnel from the Pentagon, as well as the FBI, state and local police, and the Department of Homeland Security."

Several investigative reports in Antifascist Calling have documented the close interconnections among Pentagon spy agencies, the FBI, DHS, private contractors, local and state police in what have come to be known as fusion centers, which rely heavily on extensive data-mining operations.

Their role as clearinghouses for domestic intelligence will expand even further under President Obama's purported "change" administration.

Federal Computer Week revealed September 30, that DHS "is establishing a new office to coordinate its intelligence-sharing efforts in state and local intelligence fusion centers."

According to the publication, a "new Joint Fusion Center Program Management Office will be part of DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis, [DHS Secretary Janet] Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Napolitano said she strongly supports the centers."

Though little reported by the corporate media, domestic spying had become big business with some very powerful constituencies.

Take CIFA, for example. Ostensibly a Defense Department agency, the secretive office which once had a multi-billion dollar budget at its disposal, was a veritable cash cow for enterprising security grifters. Much has been made of the corrupt contracts forged by disgraced Pentagon contractor Mitchell Wade and his MZM corporation, caught up in the "Duke" Cunningham scandal that landed the San Diego Republican congressman an eight-year federal prison term in 2006. Untouched however, by the outcry over domestic Pentagon spying were top-flight defense and security firms who lent their considerable resources--at a steep price--to the office.

Among the corporations who contracted out analysts and operatives to CIFA were heavy hitters such as Lockheed Martin, Carlyle Group subsidiary U.S. Investigations Services, Analex, Inc., an intelligence contractor owned by the U.K.'s QinetiQ, ManTech International, the Harris Corporation, SRA International, as well as General Dynamics, CACI International and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). All told, these corporations reap tens of billions of dollars annually in federal largesse.

As Shorrock revealed, by 2006 CIFA "had four hundred full-time employees and eight hundred to nine hundred contractors working for it." Many were military intelligence and security analysts who jumped ship to land lucrative six-figure contracts in the burgeoning homeland security market, as the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks revealed in July when they published a massive 1525-page file on just one fusion center.

Information illegally obtained on American citizens by CIFA came to reside in the office's Threat And Local Observation Notice (TALON) system and a related database known as CORNERSTONE.

In 2007, the National Security Archive published Pentagon documents outlining U.S. Northern Command's (USNORTHCOM) extensive surveillance activities that targeted legal political protests organized by antiwar activists. In April 2007, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lt. General James Clapper, "reviewed the results of the TALON program" and concluded "he did not believe they merit continuing the program as currently constituted."

Despite revelations that CIFA and USNORTHCOM had illegally conducted prohibited activities in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the military from carrying out domestic law enforcement, not a single operative or program manager was brought to book. According to The National Security Archive:

In June 2007, the Department of Defense Inspector General released the results of his review of the TALON reporting program. Its findings included the observation that CIFA and the Northern Command "legally gathered and maintained U.S. person information on individuals or organizations involved in domestic protests and demonstrations against DOD"--information gathered for law enforcement and force protection purposes as permitted by Defense Department directive (5200.27) on the "Acquisition of Information Concerning Persons and Organizations Not Affiliated with the Department of Defense." However, CIFA did not comply with the 90-day retention review policy specified by that directive and the CORNERSTONE database did not have the capability to identify TALON reports with U.S. person information, to identify reports requiring a 90-day retention review, or allow analysts to edit or delete the TALON reports.

In August the Defense Department announced that it would shut down the CORNERSTONE database on September 17, with information subsequently collected on potential terror or security threats to Defense Department facilities or personnel being sent to an FBI data base known as GUARDIAN. A department spokesman said the database was being terminated because "the analytical value had declined," not due to public criticism, and that the Pentagon was hoping to establish a new system--not necessarily a database--to "streamline" threat reporting, according to a statement released by the Department's public affairs office. (Jeffrey Richelson, "The Pentagon's Counterspies: The Counterintelligence Field Activity," The National Security Archive, September 17, 2007)


Last year Antifascist Calling reported that when CIFA was shut down, that organization's TALON database was off-loaded to the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center and the FBI's GUARDIAN database that resides in the Bureau's Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW).

The IDW is a massive repository for data-mining. As I reported in May, citing the Electronic Frontier Foundation's revelations, the IDW possesses something on the order of 1.5 billion searchable files. In comparison, the entire Library of Congress contains 138 million unique documents.

EFF has called the IDW "the FBI's single largest repository of operational and intelligence information."

In 2005, FBI Section Chief Michael Morehart said that "IDW is a centralized, web-enabled, closed system repository for intelligence and investigative data." Unidentified FBI agents have described it as "one-stop shopping" for FBI agents and an "uber-Google." According to the Bureau, "[t]he IDW system provides data storage, database management, search, information presentation, and security services."

As the Wired investigation reveals, NSAC intends to expand these data-mining capabilities. Currently, NSAC employs "103 full-time employees and contractors, and the FBI was seeking budget approval for another 71 employees, plus more than $8 million for outside contractors to help analyze its growing pool of private and public data." Long-term, according to a planning document, the FBI "wants to expand the center to 439 people."

While John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program may have disappeared along with the Bush administration, it's toxic heart lives on in the National Security Branch Analysis Center.

TIA, IDW, NSAC: What's in an Acronym? Plenty!

When the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) stood up the Information Awareness Office in 2002, the office's stated mission was to gather as much information on American citizens as possible and store it in a centralized, meta-database for perusal by secret state agencies.

Information included in the massive data-sets by IAO included internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases and travel itineraries, rental car records, medical histories, educational transcripts, driver's licenses, social security numbers, utility bills, tax returns, indeed any searchable record imaginable.

As Wired reported, these are the data-sets that NSAC plans to exploit.

When Congress killed the DARPA program in 2004, most critics believed that was the end of the Pentagon's leap back into domestic intelligence. However, as we have since learned, the data-mining portion of the program was farmed out to a host of state agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the FBI.

Needless to say, private sector involvement--and lucrative contracts--for TIA projects included usual suspects such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, The Analysis Group and SAIC, as well as a number of low-key firms such as 21st Century Technologies, Inc., Evolving Logic, Global InfoTech, Inc., and the Orwellian-sounding Fund For Peace.

These firms, and many more, are current NSAC contractors; to all intents and purposes TIA now resides deep inside the Bureau's Investigative Data Warehouse and NSAC's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.

While the FBI claims that unlike TIA, NSAC is not "open-ended" and that a "mission is usually begun with a list of names or personal identifiers that have arisen during a threat assessment, preliminary or full investigation," Wired reports that "the FBI's pre-crime intentions are much wider that the bureau acknowledged."

This will inevitably change--and not for the better--as NSAC expands its brief and secures an ever-growing mountain of data at an exponential rate. In this endeavor, they will be aided by the U.S. Senate.

With three provisions of the draconian Patriot Act set to expire at years' end, the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VI) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a member of the committee and chairwoman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, stripped-away privacy protections to proposed legislation that would extend the provisions.

Caving-in to pressure from the FBI which claims that protecting Americans' privacy rights from out-of-control spooks would jeopardize "ongoing" terror investigations, Leahy gutted the safeguards he had espoused just last week!

Claiming that his own proposal might hinder open-ended "terror" investigations Leahy said at the hearing, "I'm trying to introduce balances on both sides." The original amendment would have curtailed Bureau fishing expeditions and would have required an actual connection of investigated parties to terrorism or foreign espionage.

Leahy was referring to Section 215 of the Patriot Act that allows the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to authorize broad warrants for nearly any type of record, including those held by banks, libraries, internet service providers, credit card companies, even doctors of "persons of interest."

An amendment offered by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) to repeal the Leahy-Feinstein amendment was defeated in committee by a 4-15 vote. As the Senator from the FBI, Feinstein said that the Bureau did not support Durbin's amendment. "It would end several classified and critical investigations," she said. Or perhaps Durbin's amendment would have lowered the boom on a host of illegal programs across the 16-agency U.S. "Intelligence Community."

As Antifascist Calling reported in July, a 38-page declassified report by inspectors general of the CIA, NSA, Department of Justice, Department of Defense and the Office of National Intelligence collectively called the acknowledged "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and cross-agency top secret "Other Intelligence Activities" the "President's Surveillance Program," PSP.

The IG's report failed to disclose what these programs actually did, and probably still do today under the Obama administration. Shrouded beneath impenetrable layers of secrecy and deceit, these undisclosed programs lie at the dark heart of the state's war against the American people.

The Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General (OIG) described FBI participation in the PSP as that of a passive "recipient of intelligence collected under the program" and efforts by the Bureau "to improve cooperation with the NSA to enhance the usefulness of PSP-derived information to FBI agents."

The OIG goes on to state that "further details about these topics are classified and therefore cannot be discussed here." As The New York Times revealed earlier this year in April and June, the NSA's STELLAR WIND and PINWALE internet and email text intercept programs are giant data-mining meta-databases that sift emails, faxes, and text messages of millions of people in the United States.

Far from being mere passive spectators, the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse continues to be a major recipient of NSA's STELLAR WIND and PINWALE programs. As Marc Ambinder reported in The Atlantic PINWALE is "an unclassified proprietary term used to refer to advanced data-mining software that the government uses. Contractors who do SIGINT mining work often include a familiarity with Pinwale as a prerequisite for certain jobs."

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's report on the IDW revealed, the FBI closely worked with SAIC, Convera and Chiliad to develop the project. Indeed, as EFF discovered "The FBI set up an Information Sharing Policy Group (ISPG), chaired by the Executive Assistant Directors of Administration and Intelligence, to review requests to ingest additional datasets into the IDW, in response to Congressional 'privacy concerns that may arise from FBI engaging in 'data mining.' In February 2005, the Counterterrorism Division asked for 8 more data sources." The names of the data sources were redacted in three of the eight datasets reviewed by EFF while three came from the Department of Homeland Security.

All of which begs the question: what is the FBI hiding behind it's reorganization of the FTTTF and IDW into the National Security Branch Analysis Center? What role does the National Security Agency and private contractors play in standing-up NSAC? And why, as EFF disclosed, is the Bureau fearful of including Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) that might raise "congressional consciousness levels and expectations" in the context of Bureau "national security systems"?

Indeed, as the American Civil Liberties Union stated, "once again, the FBI has been found to be using invasive 'counterterrorism' tools to collect personal information about innocent Americans," and it "appears that the FBI has continued its habit of gathering bulk amounts of personal information with little or no oversight."

Not that congressional grifters and their corporate cronies, who have much to gain from billions of federal dollars pumped into these intrusive programs, actually care to explore what becomes of data illegally collected on innocent Americans by NSAC.

The civil liberties watchdog concludes they have "long suspected that the congressional dissent over and public demise of the Pentagon's TIA program would result in a concealed and more invasive version of the program."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Somewhere near Washington Admiral Poindexter is leaning back in his chair, filling his pipe and smiling...

Posted by Antifascist at 9:15 AM

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/

The Crime of Our Time: Was the Economic Collapse "Indeed, Criminal?"
A Review of Danny Schechter's Book

by Stephen Lendman



Danny Schechter is a media activist, critic, independent filmmaker, and TV producer as well as an author of 10 books and lecturer on media issues. Some call him "The News Dissector," and that's the name of his popular blog on media issues. He's also the co-founder of Media Channel.org that covers the "political, cultural and social impacts of the media," and provides information unavailable in the mainstream.

Schechter's books include The More You Watch The Less You Know, Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, and his newest and subject of this review, The Crime of Our Time: Was the Economic Collapse "Indeed, Criminal?"

As a form of economic terrorism, indeed so says Schechter and many others. Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, writes: Schechter "establishes the crime's elements, identifies the players, and exposes the weapons that have turned free markets into vehicles for mass manipulation and control."

More still, according to former high-level government and Wall Street insider Catherine Austin Fitts in describing a "financial coup d'etat" that includes inflating multiple market bubbles, pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active market intervention by Washington and the Fed that lets powerful insiders game the system, commit massive fraud, and be able to transfer trillions of public wealth to themselves, then get open-ended bailouts when the inevitable crisis surfaces.

In his last book, Plunder, Schechter deconstructed one element of the economy's financialization - the outlandish amounts subprime lending, instrumental in inflating the housing bubble and the economic crisis that followed.

The Crime of Our Time is his latest attempt to explain "the financial collapse as a crime story (and) the high status white-collar crooks" who wreak havoc on "the lives of hundreds of millions worldwide." He quotes from author and labor activist Jonathan Tasini in his new book, The Audacity of Greed, saying:

"Over the past quarter century, we have lived through the greatest looting of wealth in human history." While an elite few profited hugely, "the vast majority of citizens have lived through a period of falling wages, disappearing pensions, and dwindling bank accounts, all of which led to the personal debt crisis that lies at the root of the current financial meltdown."

The fallout cost millions of Americans their jobs, homes, savings, and futures, the result of a Washington - Wall Street criminal cabal and their scandalous conspiracy against the US public. In the Crime of Our Time, Schechter, once again, does a superb job explaining it astutely, thoroughly, and clearly.

Introduction - Our Time and Financial Crime

(1) In Wall Street We Trust

Once again, the major media betrayed the public by cheerleading the inflating market bubbles, ignoring the cause and Wall Street/Washington's role, then downplaying the severity of the crisis that has a long way to run. Instead their reasoning goes: "we are all to blame, guilty of greed, over-spending and under-saving," so "when everyone's at fault, no one can be held responsible."

Yet capitalism's internal contradictions make it crisis-prone, unstable, ungovernable, and self-destructive because of its repeated cycles of booms creating bubbles, creating busts, then depressions, and inevitably decay and demise.

Initially, The New Times deflected attention by focusing on human errors like "wild derivatives, sky-high leverage, (and) a subprime surge," but avoided the core issue of white collar crime and Washington's complicity in it. When it was too late to matter, columnists like Bob Herbert wrote about financial "malefactors" who walk away "with a suspended sentence, and can't wait to get back to their nefarious activities." Where were they when it mattered most?

Still today, the corporate media ignores the crime scene, instead calling criminal bankers "egotistical jerk(s) as trapped as anyone" in their own mess, as much victims as their prey.

(2) Former Bank Regulator William Black Speaks Out

Economics Professor William Black is a former senior bank regulator and Savings and Loan prosecutor. In April 2009 interviews in Barrons and with Bill Moyers on public television, he referred to "failed bankers (advising) failed regulators on how to deal with failed assets" they all conspired to create, proliferate, and use to defraud unwary buyers. He explained that many failed banks were deliberately brought down, and:

"The way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is" leverage up. It's hugely profitable and "inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road."

Black explained it in his book, The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One, especially in a lax regulatory environment under the privately owned Federal Reserve and powerful financial giants that run the government, not the other way around. They write the laws, make the rules, install their people in top Washington posts, and get open-ended bailouts and absolution when their scam implodes.

In the 1930s, the Pecora Commission's Chief Counsel Ferdinand Pecora noted how "Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker's stoutest allies." So weren't complicit government officials as well as media commentators turning a blind eye to their crimes.

(3) The Crime Wave Is Still With Us

In an environment of lax regulation, a Wall Street owned and operated Fed, the Treasury as their private piggy bank, a bipartisan criminal culture in Washington, and corporate lobbyists taking full advantage to get the best democracy their money can buy, it's little wonder that the same dirty game persists because who cares enough to stop it.

At the same time, millions of jobs are being lost. Home foreclosures are at record highs. Next year's 2010 mortgage resets will unleash a greater number, and ahead is the full impact of nationwide commercial real estate defaults plus any number of new unpleasant surprises.

Even so, little relief is in sight for beleaguered households or for 48 of the 50 states under water from their budget crises. But according to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, "the recession is very likely over at this point (even though) it's still going to feel like a weak economy for some time."

(4) "The Biggest Crime In The World"

That's what former Wall Street banker Nomi Prins told Schechter when he interviewed her last December. "You're talking double-digit trillions of dollars - minimum - already in the beginning of 2009, and we are nowhere near done with finding out how much loss there really is."

One estimate was $197.4 trillion, including "monies lost, value depreciated, and money spent to try to stabilize the system....and that (figure) may be low," yet it's incomprehensible. And getting to the bottom of it through a modern-day Pecora Commission may duplicate the 9/11 whitewash. According to economist Dean Baker:

"Instead of striving to uncover the truth, (an investigation) may seek to conceal it" and tell banksters they're free to steal again.

(5) Insiders Wanted

According to Schechter: "We need investigations by insiders who know where the bodies are buried, and in many cases, not yet" interred. We need more State Attorneys like Eliot Spitzer and enough honest politicians to embrace them. We need proof of who's on the take followed by "a jailout, not (another) bailout. We need to remember Balzac's insight (that) 'Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,' " in a culture where the only one is getting caught.

The Madoff Moment

In business since 1960, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC provided executions for broker-dealers, banks, and financial institutions, and was one of the world's largest hedge fund managers, handling billions of dollars for a select clientele that included banks, insurance companies, other hedge funds, universities, charities, and numerous prominent wealthy individuals.

Madoff served as vice-chairman of the NASD, was a member of its board of governors, and chairman of its New York region. He also chaired the Nasdaq's board of governors, served on its executive committee, and was chairman of its trading committee.

In addition, he was chief of the Securities Industry Association's trading committee in the 1990s and earlier this decade in the same capacity when he represented brokerage firms in discussions with regulators about new stock market trading rules. He was highly respected and a pillar among his peers until the scam he created imploded.

On December 11, 2008, he was revealed as a world class swindler when federal agents arrested him for running a giant Ponzi scheme. According to the FBI's Theodore Cacioppi:

Madoff "deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of billions of dollars."

He was tried in federal court on charges of criminal securities fraud, convicted, and, on June 29, 2009, sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum under the law. In fact, his real crime was getting caught, and for ripping off the rich and famous, his own kind, who welcomed the steady high returns until what seemed too good to be true turned out to be a scam.

Section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 established the SEC to prevent them. It's mandated to enforce the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the 1940 Investment Company Act and Investment Advisers Act, Sarbanes-Oxley of 2002, and the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006. Overall, it's responsible for enforcing federal securities laws, the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets. It's charged with uncovering wrongdoing, assuring investors aren't swindled, and keeping the nation's financial markets free from fraud.

For years, there were suspicions about Madoff because no one understood how his strategy produced annual double-digit returns. The SEC was alerted but didn't act. Derivatives expert Harry Markopolos wrote a report for internal SEC use listing 29 Red Flags and accused Madoff of running a giant Ponzi scheme, to no avail.

Wall Street takes care of its own, and even internal SEC documents suggest that the agency is notorious for being lax, preferring wrist-slaps alone, and nearly always against lesser players, not prominent ones like Madoff or major Wall Street banks and investment firms.

As a result, the agency doesn't regulate. Investigations aren't conducted or are whitewashed. Criminal fraud goes undetected or is swept under the rug. Little is done to prevent it, and only rarely are figures like Madoff caught. Wall Street's criminal culture is in safe hands under its new head, Mary Schapiro, a consummate insider with close ties to the Street's rich and powerful, which is why she was chosen in the first place.

The White-Collar Prison Gang

Even though felons like Enron's Jeffrey Skilling, Worldcom's Bernie Ebbers, and Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski are in prison, corporate America's criminal class is thriving, untouched, and mindful that very few of their kind get caught.

So far during the current economic crisis, not only are most banksters unscathed, but they've been rewarded with trillions of taxpayer dollars, interest-free Federal Reserve money, and an open-ended checkbook for as much more as they want. Who said crime doesn't pay?

The Crimes of Wall Street

Schechter names many, including:

-- "Fraud and control frauds;
-- Insider trading;
-- Theft and conspiracy;
-- Misrepresentation;
-- Ponzi schemes;
-- False accounting;
-- Embezzling;
-- Diverting funds into obscenely high salaries and obscene bonuses;
-- Bilking investors, customers and homeowners;
-- Conflicts of interest;
-- Mesmerizing regulators;
-- Manipulating markets;
-- Tax frauds;
-- Making loans and then arranging that they fail;
-- Engineering phony financial products; (and)
-- Misleading the public."

Add to these:

-- buying a controlling stake in Washington;

-- assuring their own officials run the Treasury, Fed, and all functions related to the economy and finance, including the regulatory bodies; and

-- writing laws and regulations that govern their industry and activities.

In Washington, what Wall Street wants, it gets. As a result, financial fraud and other scams are thriving. According to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, over 730,000 instances of suspected wrongdoing, or 13% more than in 2007, including a 23% rise in mortgage fraud to almost 65,000
incidents.

By the numbers, they amount to:

-- $994 billion in 2008 losses or a median loss of $175,000;

-- financial institutions or government agencies accounting for 27% of the total; and

-- an estimated 17 - 30 months elapse before a typical scheme is detected.

Examples include "shady lending practices....deepening debt, exploiting customers, overcharging borrowers with arbitrary late fees, and imposing other hidden costs that bilk consumers."

Most getting caught get off with mere wrist slaps or occasional fines amounting to a tiny fraction of the crimes, so it pays to keep committing them. According to Law Professor and corporate crime specialist John Coffee:

"Any criminal prosecution....must show either a specific intent to defraud or, what federal law calls, willfulness which means a real intent to deliberately defraud someone and engage in misconduct that you realize was causing injury."

So if fraud is committed with good intentions, criminal prosecutions won't follow, only civil ones can to redeem losses, and during the Bush administration, the Justice Department sought cash settlements most often to keep plaintiffs out of court. And over 60% of the relatively few tried and convicted served only about two years on average in country club prisons, and over one-fourth of them were never incarcerated.

It's why year after year, "The beat goes on (as) new scandals seem to surface daily....(yet) no sooner does one scandal erupt (when) another threatens to push it out of the public eye," or another unrelated issue is manufactured like the phony Swine Flu crisis tries to sweep them under the rug altogether. Sadly, it works because the public is none the wiser and never catches on to what investigative journalist IF Stone once explained:

"All governments are run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed." Or he simply said: "All governments lie," usually about the most important issues affecting everyone.

The Criminal Mind

The new Con Artist Hall of Infamy web site explains the art of the con, has a con watch, and lists current inductees, including many prominent past and more recent figures like Bernie Madoff, Jeff Skilling, Bernie Ebbers, and Conrad Black. But for everyone exposed, dozens more get away with cooking the books, manipulating markets, profiting from insider deals, selling toxic junk to unwary investors, and pocketing multi-millions as their legitimate right. Why not, when regulators and law enforcement are complicit in letting them.

They use "every angle to persuade people to believe" that their integrity is impeccable, their financial skills unmatched, and their strengths include:

-- "power & influence" because of friends in high places;

-- "charisma" to attract broad appeal; and

-- "strong cover" for being a respected financial community member.

They flourish best free from regulatory oversight during periods of economic prosperity and bull markets, or at least the illusion that these conditions exist. Former convicted felon Sam Antar explained:

"White-collar criminals are economic predators. We consider you, humanity, as a weakness to be exploited in the execution of our crimes. In order to commit (them), we have to increase your comfort level (by) build(ing) walls of false integrity around us....We have no respect for the laws. We consider your codes of ethics, your laws, weaknesses to be exploited in the execution of our crimes."

"You can't be prosecuted for being stupid. So all white-collar criminals always try to play stupid. They don't want to show intent. It's easier to say that this was a result of a mistake or an error of judgment, than to say that I intended to, to victimize or defraud somebody. It's relatively easy (and) the criminal element today is figuring out a way to exploit it" because of so much easy money around for the taking."

The Crime at the Heart of the Crime

Embracing fraud is simple when so many people in high places commit it, get away with it, and the few caught keep most of their gains and pay a small price for them. Further, "The line between legal and illegal can be a thin one or no line at all. It can also be complicated, even hard for government to investigate and prosecute."

Also, no widely accepted definition of economic crime exists because intent is so hard to prove, and in a lax regulatory environment no incentive to either, especially since unelected officials come from sectors they administer, then recycle themselves back to high-paying jobs.

Who Should Be Prosecuted?

Considering the extensive amount of fraud and harm caused, tough RICO prosecutions should be used the same as against organized crime that call for harsh sentencing penalties for the guilty.

More than ever today, the problem is endemic, the way William Black explains about the pressures on CEOs to keep up with their peers and generate impressive profits even if getting them means cooking the books and committing fraud.

He presented this paradigm in a public lecture:

-- "Corporate governance fails. Power is delegated to CEOs and collaborating members of management;

-- External controls fail through the manipulation of outside auditors and accounting firms as happened in the Enron and WorldCom frauds;

-- Rating agencies are co-opted and suborned through conflicts of interest; (and)

-- Regulation fails or is defanged with rules softened or changed (through)

(a) Deregulation

( No regulation

© Desupervision

(d) Lobbying by Companies to undercut regulators which is justified on ideological grounds as support for free markets (and)

(e) Capture - What regulators there are (are) drawn from the industry and share its outlook."

The result has been the greatest ever transfer of wealth from the many to an elite few that continues without missing a beat, and why not. No one stops them. In fact, the current environment under Democrats or Republicans lets them flourish.

Whenever a systemic collapse occurs, old scams continue and new ones emerge, always aimed at fleecing as much as possible from the unwary.

Investigating Financial Criminals

Given the unprecedented amount of financial fraud, a new independent Pecora Commission with teeth more than ever is needed to root it out and hold the guilty accountable. But getting one is another matter at a time Washington and Wall Street are co-conspirators with every incentive to facilitate criminality and whitewash attempts to expose it.

Nonetheless, economist Dean Baker lists questions needing answers:

-- asking financial executives under oath how they missed the inflating housing bubble; and

-- how they justify millions in compensation given the crisis they were complicit in creating.

However, getting straight answers will prove daunting at best, and what government authority will demand them. Perhaps a "People's Inquiry" can do better even with no teeth and no coverage by the dominant media.

Progressive web sites and online radio and television can feature the results and get them to growing audiences. Not millions but enough to spread the word and hope others pass it on.

If economic deterioration deepens over an extended period with millions more out of jobs, homes, savings and hope, then a public outcry for prosecutions might be unstoppable. Even then, it's a long shot but something worth watching.

Predatory Subprime Lending

According to Schechter, "subcrime over the years got millions of families into mortgages they couldn't afford, and that the lenders knew they couldn't sustain." Low teaser rates and financial institutions' collusion facilitated it to cash in on the enormous profits, then hang fleeced homeowners out to dry by unaffordable mortgage resets and eventual foreclosures.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the largest Wall Street banks backed 25 of "the sleaziest subprime lenders," including CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America. Combined, they originated $1 trillion in toxic mortgages from 2005 - 2007, nearly three-fourths of the total.

Even worse, warnings a decade ago went unheeded, and former insider Catherine Austin Fitts saw an earlier scam unfolding, brought it to the attention of her GHW Bush administration superiors, and was told to shut up and mind her own business.

The idea was to pump as much money into the housing market to scam buyers with fraudulent mortgages designed to fail. It was predatory lending across the board with corporate CEOs of the top Wall Street firms involved. In 2004, the FBI first warned of a "fraud epidemic," then later launched "Operation Malicious Mortgage" that charged over 400 defendants, convicted 173 of crimes, but only accounted for around $1 billion in losses, a tiny fraction of the total fraud, none committed by major players, and that's the problem.

A Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) April 2008 study mortgage fraud study found that "the total for mortgage fraud SARs (suspicious activity report) filed reached nearly 53,000, an increase of 42 percent" over 2007. The February 2009 report is even worse at over 62,000 SARs, and filings increased 44% from the previous year.

Suspected crimes included:

-- falsifying financial information, including fake accounting entries, bogus trades to inflate profits or hide losses, and false transactions to evade regulatory oversight;

-- "self-dealing" through insider trading, kickbacks, backdating executive stock options, misusing corporate property for personal gain, and violating tax laws relating to "self-dealing" that amounts to illegally taking advantage of insider positions; and

-- obstruction of justice to conceal criminal conduct.

According to the Center for Public Integrity (based on the FBI's Mortgage Fraud Report), the same parties allegedly involved in fraud also created the housing crisis. On July 30, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Senate launched an investigation and subpoenaed leading financial institutions believed to be involved. But given how these investigations go, it's unlikely to expect much, let alone top executives publicly exposed and later prosecuted.

The Victims Are Everywhere

Besides millions of defrauded homeowners, the big money, according to former insider Nomi Prins, came from leveraging. She explained:

"The (big) money was made because several layers up a pyramid, Wall Street investment firms and commercial bank investment groups decided to repackage these mortgages, create layers of them, that they then resold to investors." They leveraged up 30 times or more "against those (toxic) layers, which is the real crime" and sold the junk to unwary buyers knowing that most of it would default. Adding layers of high-risk credit default swaps greatly compounded the problem that ballooned into many trillions of dollars of bad assets.

Witnesses for the Prosecution

Schechter interviewed many homeowners who explained how they were conned and the devastating effect on their lives. According to one:

"I'm a person (who's) trying to save my house. I'm in foreclosure right now. I feel like someone's hand is in my pocket, and I just want a fair break, a fair shake at the American dream."

Millions had it stolen by willful fraud and deception, capitalizing on their "low level of financial literacy" to pull off the most egregious mortgage abuses, and most often get away with them.

Wall Street Complicity

The big players are the smartest, most devious, and best able to reap the greatest profits knowing that regulators and prosecutors won't touch them, so why worry.

According to economist Max Wolff:

The securitization process worked by "packag(ing), sell(ing), repack(aging) and resell(ing) mortages making what was a small housing bubble, a gigantic (one) and making what became an American financial problem very much a global" one by selling mortgage bundles worldwide "without full disclosure of the lack of underlying assets or risks."

Buyers accepted them on good faith, failed in their due diligence, and rating agencies were negligent, even criminal, in overvaluing and endorsing junk assets that they knew were high-risk or toxic. "The whole process was corrupt at its core."

According to political scientist Ben Barber:

"Capitalism has sort of gone off the rails. It ceased to be capitalism - it's financialization. The fact that it's now all about speculation, the fact that it's about Ponzi schemes, the fact that it's about selling and buying paper," not producing real products with real worth for a real purpose, the essence of industrial capitalism.

The Insurers

AIG was the most prominent, but the industry was complicit overall, including through "credit default swaps to protect themselves against defaults" they knew were most likely would happen because the assets they insured were junk. In addition, hedge funds were "also a pit of fraud," and according to William Black:

Toxic junk "was created out of things like liars' loans, which were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings....mean(ing) there is zero risk. So you take something that not only has significant risk, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that is has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. Again, there was nobody looking during the Bush years."

The result was "a 50-state-Katrina blast(ing) through America" causing millions of homeowner defaults, while criminal financiers prospered through massive securities fraud and racketeering.

According to economist Michael Hudson, it let the top 1% of the population raise their wealth level from 30% 10 years ago to 57% five years ago to almost 70% today. "It's unprecedented," he said (and) makes America look like a third world banana republic."

The Conspiratorial Role of the Media

They profit mainly through advertising revenue, and much of it comes from the FIRE industry (finance, insurance, and real estate). Newspapers especially depend heavily on real estate ads in weekend supplements and daily classified sections. In some communities, local broadsheets are the virtual "marketing arm of the real estate industry" so they have every incentive to ignore practices easily identified as fraudulent.

Overall, the media "politicized the problem....rarely acknowledging their laziness and superficial coverage." When it was too late to matter, they admitted irresponsibility but only asked questions like why didn't we see this coming. They did but failed to report it. As long as the economy appeared prosperous and big profits continued, why rock the boat? Why ask tough questions when it's easier saying nothing? Why risk offending bosses and jeopardizing careers? Why practice real journalism when the fake kind is demanded and rewards for it much greater?

Warnings Ignored

According to Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson and others, most economists as well as journalists got it wrong, or more accurately didn't try to get it right.

Law Professor Linda Beale was unsympathetic in saying professional economists helped cause the crisis, didn't see it coming, and don't know how to fix it. Too few even try because they're paid by the industry, (or related ones), that engineered the fraud, profited hugely from it, and need professionals to trumpet successes and hide scams.

As a result, dissenting voices were silenced. Denial was the order of the day, and as long an emerging crisis wasn't evident, why sound the alarm when it's much easier and safer playing along.

Yet "One didn't have to be an expert to see the warning signs (that) led to a massive market meltdown, a collapse of the subprime mortgage market, bankruptcies by the leading financial lenders, billions of dollars in losses by top banks and financial lenders, and prediction of more pain to come for millions of Americans facing foreclosures" plus more job losses than at any time since the 1930s.

But you'd never know it from the public media discourse that cheerlead the scam until it imploded. Or as former activist and academic Alex Carey might have said - corporate propaganda protected Wall Street predators from the truth.

The Bear Stearns "Bleed Out"

The 85-year old Wall Street firm was the first major one to fail, and "Its stockholders would eventually be wiped out in what was described as the first government bailout." Many others, of course, followed with perhaps more to come once the next leg of the crisis begins.

Writing in Vanity Fair about Bear Stearns, Bryan Burroughs said there was never "anything on Wall Street to compare to it: a 'run' on a major investment bank, caused in large part not by a criminal indictment or some mammoth quarterly loss but by rumor and innuendo (that) had little basis in fact."

The questions are why, cui bono, and did the firm fall or was it pushed, even though like others on the Street it took huge risks that could backfire in hard times. But there was more going on than reported. "There were forces at work here that suggest illegal activities on a number of levels."

The firm was also independent enough to rile competitors, perhaps some arranging for it to fail, and if it did, they'd profit hugely through greater consolidation for larger market shares. So by some accounts, it was targeted by naked short selling, rumors of a liquidity problem at a time it was adequately capitalized, and heavy put option buying to sink its stock price and drive the company to the wall in a matter of days. It gave JP Morgan Chase a chance to buy it at a tiny fraction of its peak valuation, or in other words, profit hugely from a vulture purchase arranged by the Fed.

In short order, Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch, and other noted firms failed, giving Wall Street survivors like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America more power than ever.

The Lehman Liquidation

In asking "Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed," Ellen Brown quoted author Lawrence MacDonald saying the company was in no worse shape than other major Wall Street banks, so he concluded that Lehman was "put to sleep. They put the pillow over (its) face and they put her to sleep." But why is key.

Schechter quoted economist Michael Hudson blaming CEO Dick Fuld saying:

"Lehman Brothers essentially committed suicide. Its head, Mr. Fuld, had many offers from Korea and from investment banks in the US to take it over. He tried to bluff them. He tried to say, "Crisis? What crisis? Our loans are perfectly good. We haven't lost a penny. We want you to pay at the book value of what we say our loans are worth."

But no one believed it, and why should they. "These are guys who like to wipe out their partners, like to wipe out people they are doing business with. He (f'd) the whole firm and wiped out the shareholders (saying) 'We're too big to fail.' " Was Fuld complicit in a deliberate scheme to bring down Lehman, and if so why?

Apparently, he profited hugely, and so did the Street by removing a key competitor. First Bear Stearns, then Lehman. According to Brown:

"Although Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, September 15, 2008, it was actually 'bombed' on September 11" when it was hit by the "biggest one-day drop in its stock" the result of manipulative naked short-selling and apparent sabotage to prevent the company from negotiating a deal to be bought. The UK-based Barclays Bank was interested and was willing to underwrite Lehman's debt.

But as Brown explained:

It "needed a waiver from British regulators of a rule requiring shareholder approval. (However,) UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling" stonewalled long enough to prevent it. He did the same thing with Britain's Northern Rock and "changed the rules of the game" by opening the spigot in both countries for open-ended bailouts for banks too big to fail.

Again, why so and cui bono? It "suggests that Lehman Brothers (Northern Rock and others) did not just fall over the brink but (were) pushed." The likely reasons were to engineer the financial crisis, create an emergency, pressure Congress (and the UK government) to provide billions in rescue funding, give selected major banks in both countries more power to consolidate, then use bailout proceeds to buy choice assets on the cheap plus reward themselves handsomely for their cleverness.

It's not new with numerous past examples of predatory bankers, including JP Morgan, engineering financial crises for profit. The difference is that today the stakes far higher and global with US giants Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley the major survivors - bigger and more powerful than ever, and so far thriving with open-ended bailouts.

Ellen Brown adds:

"The international bankers who caused the financial crisis are indeed capitalizing on it, consolidating their power in 'a new global financial order' that gives them (more) top-down global control" than ever with the public exploited and stuck with the bill.

Are Our Markets Manipulated?

Forget about "animal spirits," random movements, and asset prices reflecting true values, and understand that all markets are manipulated up and down for profit with insiders profiting hugely both ways.

Catherine Austin Fitts calls it a "pump and dump" scheme to artificially inflate valuations, then profit more on the downside by short-selling. "The practice is illegal under securities law, yet it is particularly common" because the gains are enormous, in good and bad times. When carried to extremes, Fitts calls it "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions, and it's more than just "a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."

The so-called Plunge Protection Team is one of the tools, authorized on March 18, 1989 under Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12631 creating the Working Group on Financial Markets (WGFM) with top government officials, including the President, Treasury Secretary and Fed chairman in charge.

It subverts market forces by theoretically intervening to avoid crises. In fact, it works both ways to drive valuations up or down along with active insider participation for huge profits with the public none the wiser.

Schechter explains that "this secret branch of government has a sophisticated war room, using every state of the art technology to monitor markets worldwide. It has emergency powers. It doesn't keep minutes. There is no freedom of information access to its deliberations." Google has 147,000 entries about it, but only 10 can be accessed, so the most secretive shenanigans are hidden along with the role of the Fed, the Treasury, and the White House.

Established by the 1934 Gold Reserve Act, the Treasury-run Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) originally operated free from congressional oversight "to keep sharp swings in the dollar's exchange rate from (disrupting) financial markets" through manipulation. Its operations now include stabilizing foreign currencies, extending credit lines to foreign governments, and more recently guaranteeing money market funds against losses of up to $50 billion. Overall, the ESF is a slush fund for Treasury officials to use as they wish and manipulate markets freely.

Established in 1999 after the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis, the Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPG) manipulates markets to benefit giant Wall Street firms and their high-level insiders. It lets financial giants collude through large-scale program trading to move markets up or down. It bails out members in financial trouble, and manipulates markets short or longer-term with government complicity and approval to go either way for huge profits on stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, futures, options, and an array of speculative vehicles like structured assets and derivatives. Market manipulation enriches insiders at the expense of the unwary, often fleeced by their chicanery.

The Testosterone Factor

Schechter wonders how different things might have been if "the Sheriff of the Street," Eliot Spitzer, hadn't been caught in a sex scandal and forced to resign as Governor. Two days before being outed in testimony before Congress and in a Washington Post op-ed, he accused the Bush administration of being a "partner in crime" with predatory lenders. He wrote:

"Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders."

"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."

However, his comments were quickly buried, then forgotten after his sex scandal erupted, even though it's widely known that well-healed Wall Street and other corporate types have "kept a vibrant, upscale sex industry" thriving. What Schechter calls the "testosterone factor" is brought on by what experts call a sense of exuberance, a feeling of infallibility, and a sense of entitlement to engage in risky behavior, including with high-paid prostitutes. It's the same euphoria gamblers feel when winning. They get addicted to the action and can't stop.

The Role of Regulators and Politicians

Wall Street predators profited hugely with complicit help from regulators, politicians, and prosecutors. Further, "The financialization (of the economy) did not just happen; it was engineered, projected as socially beneficial 'modernization' and innovation" at the same time industrial capitalism was eroding because operations were offshored to cheap labor markets.

Financialization is ripe for plunder and fraud under a system favoring bigness, lax regulations, prosecutorial weakness, and FIRE sector companies and high-powered lobbyists' influence buying from criminally complicit politicians.

They got:

-- Glass-Steagall repealed;

-- the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that licensed high-risk derivatives speculation;

-- off-balance sheet accounting chicanery to hide financial liabilities;

-- the SEC letting investment banks be self-regulating;

-- an overall regulatory climate conducive to widespread fraud and abuse;

-- new rules to let commercial banks determine their own capital reserve requirements;

-- federal bank regulators empowered to supersede state consumer protection laws, thus facilitating predatory lending;

-- new federal rules preventing victims of abusive loans from suing firms that bought them from issuing banks;

-- antitrust laws weakened or abandoned and the door opened to "too-big-to-fail megabanks," and

-- much more, creating opportunities for the worst kinds of fraud and abuse with virtually no government oversight to stop it.

Worse still, it persists under Obama in more extreme forms with plans for greater global reach and dominance creating new opportunities for plunder. According to Michael Hudson, "It looks as if as little will be done to (curb) financial fraud as will be done to the Guantanamo torturers and the high-ups who condoned their actions."

Or as Schechter explains:

"Is economic justice even possible under circumstances riddled with so many banksters still in charge and tangled up in so many conflicts of interest? In this environment, can we look forward to any serious fraud or prevention effort, much less a mass prosecution?"

That said, can reckless speculation be halted or will it continue unabated, followed by greater boom and bust cycles until the entire system implodes in an inevitable collapse after which no recovery is possible and most people are left impoverished and on their own because government did nothing to stop it.

Judgment Day

On September 15, Bloomberg News quoted Fed chairman Ben Bernanke saying "....from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point...." The dominant media agree, with commentators like CNN's Lou Dobbs stating months ago that the economy was improving and the recession would soon end. Others disagree, including former insider Nomi Prins saying:

"This economic cycle is not finished going downward. We are in the beginning of 2009. We've seen a decimated 2008. It's not getting better anytime soon."

According to economist Max Wolff:

"Sadly there is evidence that we're going to flush our tax dollars and our opportunity down the toilet to rebuild an unfair system that rewarded only the top at the expense of everybody and was fundamentally unsound."

Longtime market analyst Bob Chapman sees no recovery ahead "even with an official $23.7 trillion committed by the Treasury and the Fed....(Yet) we hear fairy tales of recovery in the US, Europe and Asia." Chapman sees the worst of times ahead and many dark years before returning to normality.

Leading monetary analyst Professor Tim Congdon explains that money and credit in America have been contracting at a pace comparable to the Great Depression. "There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s. The rapid destruction of money balances is madness."

Economist David Rosenberg is also worried because "For the first time in the post-WW2 era, we have deflation in credit, wages and rents and, from our lens, this is a toxic brew."

Worse still, Wall Street is more powerful and rapacious than ever. Speculation remains unabated. New bubbles are being inflated with a "whole new wave of criminal" fraud, according to investigative journalist Gary Weiss. Even so, top financial officials have escaped prosecution. Instead, beleaguered households have been hung out to dry, while meaningful reforms aren't coming because "financial sector lobbies appear stronger than ever." As a result, business as usual continues accompanied by the kind of Washington and media cheerleading we've grown accustomed to hearing.

Absent is any concern for the common good when more than ever the business of America is big business with a strategic long-term plan for co-opting world governments, waging permanent wars for profit, dominating everywhere militarily, ending social safety net protections, crushing civil liberties and freedom, tolerating no concern for human rights, controlling global markets and resources, turning workers everywhere into serfs, and extracting, unimpeded, as much public wealth as possible.

That's America's future with no simple solutions in sight. Yet more than ever the old order must be stopped or a far greater calamity is coming than The Crime of Our Time.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15676