Fleming had a hand in shaping OSS and CIA

Aug. 15, 2008

LONDON, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- James Bond creator Ian Fleming used to claim, partly in jest, that he also helped create the CIA, but a new report indicates he probably wasn't kidding.

A good decade before Agent 007 took on his first case, during World War II, part of Fleming's work with Naval Intelligence was with Gen. William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services or OSS, America's wartime answer to Britain's MI6.

When Donovan was ordered to begin preparing plans for a new U.S. intelligence service in 1941, which became the OSS, he asked Fleming to write him a blueprint, The Times of London said.

The resulting 72-page memo on how a U.S. service might look contains a description of the ideal secret agent, who sounds a lot like James Bond.

His perfect secret agent, the Times said, "must have trained powers of observation, analysis and evaluation; absolute discretion, sobriety, devotion to duty; language and wide experience, and be aged about 40 to 50."

The OSS, after the war, became the CIA. And, the memo to Donovan is on display at London's Imperial War Museum as part of the exhibition For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/08/15/Fleming_had_a_hand_in_shaping_OSS_and_CIA/UPI-58871218825407/

Lockerbie Evidence Called into Question

by Ian Robson
Sunday Sun
Aug 31 2008

A COUPLE have revealed how they were caught up in a conspiracy theory over the Lockerbie plane crash.

Geoff and Decky Horton found a key piece of evidence after wreckage was strewn over their farm, located 60 miles from the crash site. But the piece of paper — believed to be from the package which contained the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 — was damaged after it was handed over to investigators.

In a TV documentary to be shown today, conspiracy buffs claim the evidence was tampered with.

Geoff and Decky, of Morpeth, Northumberland, are interviewed in the BBC2 programme The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie. The documentary highlights several theories about the tragedy which claimed the lives of 270 people almost 20 years ago in December 1988.

Geoff tells the programme: “On the night in question there was a strong gale, about 90 miles per hour, and the wreckage from Lockerbie was spread right across the North Sea.

“We were finding Christmas cards written by the bairns on board, letters, personal effects, things like that. Quite harrowing.”

Decky said she found part of a radio cassette manual with the word Toshiba clearly visible. She later gave evidence at the trial of the Libyan man accused of the terrorist attack, but the evidence bag she was shown contained several pieces of paper.

She said: “It was in one piece when I found it but in the bag there were several pieces and the name Toshiba was only just discernable by then.

“When I found the piece of paper it was more or less intact, a bit tatty round the edges, but it definitely had Toshiba written across it.” Police said the paper was damaged following a battery of forensic tests. But the documentary says: “Why was the piece of paper so altered from when the Hortons found it?

“Was it proof of a conspiracy or careless handling by the police? The mystery remains.” Conspiracy theorists believe key evidence was tampered with to implicate Libya in the bomb plot. The documentary also mentions several other theories, including allegations of involvement by rogue American spies.

It includes an interview with Siaf Al Islam Al Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader, who attacks the families of victims for seeking compensation. He claims Libya only accepted responsibility to end international sanctions.

The show says Libyan national Abdelbaset Al Megrahi’s conviction for mass murder was controversial. And it has a rare interview with Ahmed Jibril, leader of a Palestinian faction, who was an early suspect in the investigation.

The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie can be seen today, at 9pm on BBC2.

http://www.sundaysun.co.uk/news/north-east-news/2008/08/31/lockerbie-evidence-called-into-question-79310-21640187/

Californian Claims Stepfather Zodiac Killer

www.chinaview.cn
2008-08-30

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. authorities are running tests on items allegedly belonging to the infamous Zodiac killer, who had taunted police for more than a decade in Northern California, a report said Friday.

The articles were given to the FBI by a Californian man who claimed his stepfather was the serial killer who had murdered five people and maybe some more in the San Francisco area in the 1960s and 1970s and thus inspired many Hollywood producers.

The killer calling himself Zodiac sent to press a series of taunting letters with cryptograms related to his identity, challenging police's wisdom. Most of the cryptograms are yet to be solved.

San Francisco Police Department marked the Zodiac killer's case "inactive" in 2004, but reopened it some time before March 2007.

The man who claimed to be the stepson of the killer told FBI investigators that he found a black hood with a zodiac on it along with a knife stained with blood when going through his late stepfather's belongings, reported local TV station KTVU.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/30/content_9738699.htm
•••••••
FBI May Be On The Verge of Identifying The Real Zodiac Killer

... According to CBS13 in Sacramento, the FBI is now running lab tests on the belongings of a man named Jack Tarrance, who died in 2006. Tarrance’s stepson, Dennis Kaufman, has spent eight years trying to prove that Tarrance was the Zodiac killer.

For those that don’t remember the film Zodiac, it chronicled the attempts of San Francisco Chronicle employees Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), in addition to detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), to find the identity of a serial killer who brutally murdered several people in Northern California during the late 1960s. The killer sent letters to the Chronicle in the form of strange ciphers and codes, hence the Zodiac moniker. One of the main suspects of the film, Arthur Leigh Allen (who died in 1992) was positively identified in a mugshot by a Zodiac murder victim during the film’s closing scene. However, other elements implicating Allen never added up and the case has remained one of the country’s most infamous unsolved murders.

Perhaps no more. While going through his late stepfather’s belongings, Kaufman discovered a number of incriminating items, including a knife covered with what could be blood, a black hood with a zodiac on it (which conceivably could have been used in the 1968 Lake Berryessa murder) as well as rolls of film, at least one of which contained gruesome images that “[a]ppeared to be people who were murdered,” according to Kaufman.

Kaufman also believes that Tarrance’s handwriting and photo match the handwriting and composite sketch of the Zodiac killer. I’ve embedded the handwriting comparison and the headshot comparison in this post, but for the full write-up and some more photos, head on over to CBS13. According to the FBI, they could get the results of their tests any day. We’ll report more updates as they become available.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/08/30/fbi-may-be-on-the-verge-of-identifying-the-real-zodiac-killer/

Germany: New Group Helps 'Persecuted' Far-Right Women

By Siobhán Dowling
SPIEGEL ONLINE
08/07/2008

Two young women who lost their jobs because of their association with Germany's far-right scene have formed a group to help other 'persecuted' women. It is part of a growing trend of women becoming more prominent on the extreme-right scene.

ENTIRE RIDICULOUS STORY

Announcing: Formation of a New Political Party and My Bid for World Domination in 2012

2013:

"First they came for the Fundamentalist Christian Right-Wing Pedophiles, and I said nothing.
Then they came for the post-9/11 War Contractors, and I said nothing.
Then they came for the Right-Wing Electronic Media Wingnuts, and I said nothing.
Then they came for me, Dick Cheney ... "
•••••••
For Immediate Release

Midnight

It's Midnight in America

Pompous AC is forming a new political force to be called The Other-Two-Parties-are-Fascist Party. So far, I'm the only card carrier.

The Other-Two Parties-are-Fascist Party was created over "our" concern that the world is cooking in a stew of petroleum waste, and this is happening as a direct result of corporate fascist rule. Therefore, fascist rule of the United States must come to a rapid and decided end before all hominids on this ball of rock hurtling through space are poisoned and baked to death.

It can only happen if I take charge and make my bid for world domination in 2012. This will take some doing, the "gentle" reader mutters malignantly.

We have no choice. It's The Other-Two Parties-are-Fascist Party ... or certain annihilation.

It's The Other-Two-Parties-are-Fascist Party... or four more years of environmental hell and the eventual immolation of all intelligent life ... not to mention bad cable programming, scores of weird "suicides" at decisive moments, meaningless warfare, poisoned food additives ... The Other-Two Parties-are-Fascist Party is the only escape from the sulphurous hole opening up beneath your very feet, the gases of hell creeping up to your throat to choke you into mortal submission.

Corporate fascism must be legislated out of existence so the world can be freed from the death hold of the bottomfeeders who are killing us. No revolution is necessary. The Other-Two-Parties-are-Fascist Party will revive the sleeping justice system and use it legitimately to stop the life-draining exterminators in the boardroom.

You have no options, when you think it through. It's the Other-Two-Parties-are-Fascist Party - "us" - or four more years of Apocalyptic disintegration. It's the OTPAFP with the stupid acronym - or the probable discomforts of planetary death. (That may have to be "our" motto.)

Think it over, Bubs. The Party is giving you time to consider ... four more years, in fact ... but in 2012, when the adrenals lapse, breathing is forced, and the lesions begin to spread, we'll see eye to eye. (Party official(s) will be taking the liberty, before the next election cycle, of registering three-fourths of the American population - the statistical percentage that believes it opposes fascism - to the OTPAFP, anyways.)

- AC (for World Dominator in 2012)

The CIA and the AQ Khan Nuclear Network

Caveat: The NY Times story detailed below, although generally consistent with earlier leaks pertaining to CIA involvement with the AQ Khan nuclear black market net, is based on unnamed domestic intelligence sources. This appears to be a limited hang-out that baits the hook with the CIA's destruction of evidence, and quietly slips in the illicit sale of nuclear materials to Iran, thereby giving substance to GW Bush's puffy-chested vagaries - these remain to be proven and there is scant evidence for them apart from the word of the Times' intelligence "sources." Missing in this story are connections that blow back to the Bush State Department, particularly in Turkey.
- AC

Also see: "Access to AQ Khan to Expose Many Sacred Cows/Richard Armitage's Secret Deal"

Paul Woodward, Online Correspondent
The National
August 26. 2008

Under pressure from the CIA, the Swiss government destroyed thousands of documents that would have revealed the CIA's relations with a family a Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, who are suspected of supplying Iran and Libya with nuclear technology, The New York Times reported. Last May, when the Swiss president announced the documents' destruction, he claimed that it was to make sure that detailed plans for nuclear weapons never fell into the hands of terrorists. The real explanation, according to US government officials, was that the United States had urged that the files be destroyed in order to conceal ties between the Tinners and the CIA.

"Over four years, several of these officials said, operatives of the CIA paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash. In return, the Tinners delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya's bomb programme, reveal Iran's atomic labours and, ultimately, undo Dr Khan's nuclear black market."

While efforts to dismantle the Khan network have been widely reported in recent years, The New York Times indicated that the CIA was also in effect making use of the network in an effort to undermine the targeted nuclear programmes.

The report said:

"The Tinners played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, a major but little-known element of the efforts to slow their nuclear progress.

"The relationship with the Tinners 'was very significant,' said Gary S Samore, who ran the National Security Council's nonproliferation office when the operation began. 'That's where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,' which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel."

The report said:

"The sabotage first came to light, diplomats and officials said, when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled to Iran and Libya in 2003 and 2004 and discovered identical vacuum pumps that had been damaged cleverly so that they looked perfectly fine but failed to operate properly. They traced the route of the defective parts from Pfeiffer Vacuum in Germany to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. There, according to a European official who studied the case, nuclear experts had made sure the pumps 'wouldn't work.'

"A more serious disruption involved a power supply shipped to Iran from Turkey, where Dr Khan's network did business with two makers of industrial control equipment.

"The Iranians installed the power supply at their uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. But in early 2006, it failed, causing 50 centrifuges to explode - a serious, if temporary, setback to Iran's efforts to master the manufacture of nuclear fuel, the hardest part of building a bomb."

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080826/GLOBALBRIEFING/312893413/-1/NEWS

Video: Pakistani City of Peshawar could fall to Taliban as Fear and Attacks Grow

" ... Clerics and political leaders critical of the Taliban have been kidnapped and shot dead, around 15 suicide bombers have attacked inside the city, and to escape kidnappers businessmen are giving up and moving to the capital Islamabad, two hours drive away, or overseas to Dubai if they can afford to.

Nobody has ever known the city so fearful. ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/2650734/Pakistani-city-of-Peshawar-could-fall-to-Taliban-as-fear-and-attacks-grow.html

Deutsche Bank Loan to IG Farben Financed Auschwitz Rubber Plant

" ... [Deutsche Bank's Hermann] Abs was briefly interned after the war, but later played key roles in implementing the Marshall Plan and reconstructing West Germany's economy. ... "

Deutsche Bank denies hiding Nazi deals
CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9902/06/deutsche.bank/

In this story: Loans went to Auschwitz rubber plant

February 6, 1999

FRANKFURT, Germany (CNN) -- A Deutsche Bank official on Saturday dismissed allegations that the bank was hiding evidence of financial dealings with the Nazis.

Responding to the accusations by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, spokesman Walter Schumacher said the bank is actively making public what it knows about its history during the Nazi era. "We will also quickly make public the results of research that become known to us," he said.

Holocaust researcher Rabbi Marvin Heir on Friday cited a 1946 U.S. military report that says Germany's largest commercial bank had contributed thousands to projects of Adolf Hitler and Gestapo director Heinrich Himmler.

He also said the bank had loaned $250 million to a firm it knew was building a slave labor rubber plant inside the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hier said Deutsche Bank knew far more than it was making public. ...

The bank is also planning to acquire U.S.-based Bankers Trust Corp. in the spring. Schumacher said it was not known whether the case of payments to Holocaust victims might delay the planned acquisition.

New York City comptroller Alan Hevesi has pressed regulators to block the acquisition until Deutsche Bank compensates Holocaust victims.

On Thursday, Deutsche Bank officials said they were "extremely shocked" by the finding of loan documents that revealed a branch in Nazi-occupied Poland had helped to finance construction of Auschwitz and other Nazi projects.

Loans went to Auschwitz rubber plant

In a Saturday interview with Saarland state radio, Ignatz Bubis, chairman of Germany's Central Council of Jews, said he did not believe the reports about Deutsche Bank would improve Nazi victims' chances for compensation.

The reports simply show "that more or less most (German) companies had connections with the Nazis," at the time, Bubis said.

Manfred Pohl, director of the bank's historical institute, said other newly discovered documents included loans to I.G. Farben, which built a rubber plant at Auschwitz, and account records for the Gestapo. Pohl said it was the first time Deutsche Bank had been directly linked to financing of companies involved with Auschwitz.

But Heir said much of the information was known soon after World War II. A November 1946 report detailing an Allied investigation of the Deutsche Bank recommended it be liquidated and its leaders indicted and tried as war criminals, Heir said.

"The U.S. government certainly has this report," Heir said. "All the Allies certainly have this report. The bank knew about it."

Heir claims the Deutsche Bank report and its indictment recommendations were "deep-sixed" because of Cold War expediency.

The Allies needed the financial acumen of Deutsche Bank's top officials to help rebuild West Germany and to keep it from Communist-controlled East Germany, Heir said.

The Wiesenthal Center obtained the report in 1983, using it to protest the Vatican's hiring of Hermann Abs, the chairman of Deutsche Bank during and after the war. Abs was briefly interned after the war, but later played key roles in implementing the Marshall Plan and reconstructing West Germany's economy. He died in 1994 at age 92.

The Long Reach of General Pinochet (Book Review)

Also see: OPERATION CONDOR, 9/11/1973 & 2001

The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents, by John Dinges, NEW PRESS; 322 Pages; $25.95

Reviewed by Paul McLeary
www.sfgate.com
March 14, 2004

Henry Kissinger continues to cast a deep, lingering shadow over the violent middle decades of the Cold War years. From 1969 to 1977, his smug baritone dominated U.S. foreign policy, guiding many of the more dubious alliances formed with less-than-democratically minded governments. It should come as no surprise, then, as John Dinges makes clear in his book "The Condor Years," that Kissinger played a role in the unflinching brutality that was known as Operation Condor.

Led by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Condor was a highly organized anti-terrorist, anti-communist military intelligence operation carried out by six "Southern Cone" countries (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil), roughly between 1973 and 1980. During that time, anywhere from 15, 000 to 30,000 people were tortured or murdered by the group, all in the name of keeping communist forces from gaining a foothold in South America -- and keeping corrupt military dictatorships in power.

The ball started rolling with the 1970 election of Salvador Allende as the president of Chile. Allende immediately took steps to socialize the country's economy, taking business ownership away from several large U.S. corporations and handing them over to local workers. Kissinger and President Nixon, hardly amused by a country in the Western Hemisphere "going communist," gave the nod to the CIA to stage a military coup, resulting in the kidnapping and (possibly mistaken) murder of Chilean chief of staff Rene Schneider. By 1973, under pressure from militant groups on the right and left, and buckling under a U.S. embargo, the Allende government was overthrown by Gen. Pinochet's forces. Allende was killed in a firefight.

Soon after installing himself in power, Pinochet reached out to other like-minded military dictatorships in South America and set up Operation Condor, a far-reaching operation that shared information and coordinated action against leftist groups, and -- through a process of intimidation, arrest, torture and murder -- attempted to break the back of the opposition. Although the U.S government didn't officially support Condor, it tended to turn a blind eye to some of its more violent -- and illegal -- actions.

Kissinger, like any master of realpolitik, refrained from making any overt comments about the situation, instead using the CIA and U.S. embassies in South America to communicate his wishes by gesture, inference and inaction. "Under the leadership of Henry Kissinger," Dinges writes, "first as Richard Nixon's national security adviser and later as secretary of state, the United States sent an unequivocal signal to the most extreme rightist forces that democracy could be sacrificed in the cause of ideological warfare. Criminal operational tactics, including assassination, were not only acceptable but supported with weapons and money."

Dinges brings to light all manner of recently declassified CIA and State Department memos and communications, including one in which the U.S. ambassador to Chile, David Popper, alarmed by the human rights abuses he was witnessing, made the mistake of broaching the subject to Pinochet during a meeting, the result of which was a quick Chilean protest to Kissinger, who shot back a memo to the embassy saying, "Tell Popper to cut out the political science lectures." Unsurprisingly, this curt reprimand doesn't exactly place Kissinger on the right side of history.

The abuses Condor perpetrated against leftist groups remained largely ignored for years, but thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with former officials and those who escaped the carnage alive, Dinges is able to go into remarkable detail in exposing the actions of both the opposition groups and the military strongmen who battled them. One often-overlooked nugget Dinges includes in the book is one of the most brazen acts of terrorism Condor ever attempted -- in Washington, D.C., of all places.

Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to Washington and a Pinochet opponent, was assassinated when his car was blown up near Sheridan Square by a remote-control bomb in September 1976. Several men working for Condor were later arrested, and it was soon discovered that the group also had its sights on then-New York Rep. Ed Koch for a brief period of time.

Operation Condor fell victim to its own internal tensions in the late 1970s and broke apart soon after. By the early 1990s, none of the participating governments were still in power, and few involved had ever been brought to justice. But in 1996, Joan Graces, who at the time of the 1973 Chilean coup was an adviser to Allende, and by the 1990s was working as a lawyer in Spain, started work to bring charges against Pinochet, alleging that Chile and Argentina were participants in a conspiracy to commit human rights crimes.

At the same time, in a separate case, a court in Spain had begun proceedings to prosecute former members of Argentina's military junta for human rights abuses carried out in the '70s. Using contacts at the FBI, Graces unearthed thousands of Department of Justice, FBI and CIA documents outlining what the U.S. government knew about Condor and its crimes, and in October 1998, Pinochet was arrested in London.

There are more than 200 international warrants for the arrest of military officials who took part in Condor, but the U.S. government has remained mum on the issue. Kissinger has refused to testify in criminal proceedings related to Condor, and Dinges says that there is ample evidence of "cooperation, liaison, acquiescence, and even complicity" between the United States and Condor.

The Cold War, like the current war on terrorism, made for strange bedfellows. Nixon and Kissinger were willing to overlook human rights abuses and fund the overthrow of a democratically elected socialist government in the name of containing communism. Dinges' book, dense with fact and personal account, goes a long way toward finally bringing the truths of that dark time into the light.

Paul McLeary is a New York writer.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/14/RVGVQ5DN7N1.DTL

BERKELEY POLICE, FBI RAID ACTIVIST CENTER, SEIZE COMPUTERS

BERKELEY (BCN)
http://cbs5.com/localwire/22.0.html?type=bcn&item=INTERNET-CAFE-RAID-bagm-

Law enforcement agencies including the FBI raided an activist center and Internet shop in Berkeley on Wednesday morning and seized 14 computers, University of California, Berkeley spokesman Robert Sanders said.

The raid, which started at around 10:30 a.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop at 3124 Shattuck Ave., was the result of an investigation initiated by UC Berkeley police, Sanders said.

Sanders said the raid was related to "threatening e-mails," but declined to provide any details on the e-mails, citing the ongoing investigation. He did say that the cafe is known as a "hangout for anarchists and other groups.''

A member of Long Haul, which identifies itself as a nonprofit and runs a cafe and a library at the building where the raid occurred, said the agents and officers broke locks, shattered a wooden door and shuffled through multiple files.

"It looked like a breaking and entering,'' Long Haul member Chloe Smith said.

Smith said the raid was inappropriate because the Infoshop would have opened the gate for law enforcement and provided whatever they needed had they shown a warrant.

Authorities did have a warrant to seize the computers, Sanders said.

Smith said they came into the shop before it was open and that the raid lasted until about noon.

She responded to the allegation about the threatening e-mails, saying, "We have our computer area open all hours that we're open, and we keep that space unmonitored and many different people have come through here in the last 30 years.''

The Infoshop is still open but all the computers are gone, as well as some hard drives and other documents.

Pappadum Pam: Her acts enthralled a nation

" ... It was also alleged that she was friends with the cousin of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and was the mistress of infamous arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi ... "

Her sex-capades almost brought down a government and made her a media star

By Sheela Narayanan
Electric New Paper
August 26, 2008

IT was 1989. The New Paper was a year old. The Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States was on its last legs. Burmese opposition leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest and the Tiananmen Square incident happened.

And then there was Pappadum Pam.

Pamella Bordes nee Singh was a 23-year-old sultry former Miss India-turned-prostitute who scandalised Britain and the then-Conservative government.

Her fee for a weekend of sex: $6,500.

She had paid sessions with several Members of Parliament, a junior government minister Colin Moynihan (who is now chairman of the British Olympic Committee) and prominent newspaper editors. Using her high-level political connections, she snagged a research job that came with security clearance for the British House of Commons.

It was also alleged that she was friends with the cousin of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and was the mistress of infamous arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.

When her story broke, everyone wanted to know everything about her. How did the daughter of an Indian army officer became a hooker and very nearly threaten the political survival of the British Conservative government?

It was a scandal that instantly drew comparisons with the 1963 Profumo affair when British War Minister John Profumo's mistress, Christine Keeler, was revealed to be having an affair with a Soviet naval attache. That controversy resulted in the downfall of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's government - Keeler was jailed and Profumo resigned in disgrace, and the man who introduced them killed himself.

Margaret Thatcher's government managed to withstand the shock of Pappadum Pam. There were no political fallouts, even though the prime minister was pressured to investigate the matter when the alleged Libyan links were seen as a threat to national security.

A Thatcher aide had remarked then: 'As far as we can ascertain, there is no political dimension at all to this.'

The Sun newspaper took the liaisons lightheartedly, polling British national editors to find out if they too had had an affair with Pamella. The paper later apologised to one editor, who complained that by leaving him out of the poll, it had challenged his manhood.

Pamella eventually sold her story to The Daily Mail for £250,000 ($660,000).

It was not just readers in the UK who were hooked on her affairs.

In June 1989, when The New Paper started carrying a series of reports on her, it pushed daily circulation to a high of around 66,000. The figure was around 38,000 in July 1988 when the paper was launched. But soon after all the shortlived thunder and fury, Pamella slipped out of the limelight and went into hiding in India.

She resurfaced in 1992 and reinvented herself as Pamela Singh, serious photographer. By then, she had dropped the extra 'l' in her name and her French businessman husband Henri Bordes. But she could not shake her past completely.

British-Asian journalist and author Mihir Bose recalled his encounter with Pamella in 1992, in his 2006 book, Bollywood: A History.

He recounted how Pamella, who was hired to take photos for his article on Bollywood, was frightened of being recognised in India. She checked into a Mumbai hotel using her maiden name but word soon got out that she was in town.

Instead of treating her like a leper, she was feted by the Indian media and the Bollywood glitterati as a conquering heroine, for taking 'revenge' on India's former colonial masters. Mr Bose even received a phone call from Pamella's mother, who had disowned her daughter 12 years earlier. The mother reportedly urged her daughter: 'Come to Delhi and stand for parliament; the youth of the north are all for you.'

Mr Bose concluded: 'I ended up writing the most extraordinary story I have ever written, not about the Bollywood stars but about the photographer who was supposed to be merely taking the pictures to illustrate my piece.'

Pamela became a freelance news photographer in 1993, shooting for publications such as The Washington Post, The Telegraph, The Independent, Paris Match, Elle, Newsweek and wire agencies such as Reuters.

Recluse

The Hindu Business Line reported that Pamella did a stint in architecture at the New York Parson School of Design and attended the International Centre for Photography in the same city.

She later trained under photographers such as Peter Beard, David Bailey and Raghu Rai of India.

She said: 'These masters taught me the art in their own unique ways. And I was as keen a student as one could ever get.'

The New Paper's attempts to find the elusive woman, now 42, were unsuccessful. She is said to be a recluse living in Jaipur and rejects all media interviews. If she does give the rare press interview, she never talks about her past, only about her work and exhibitions.

The New Paper found an e-mail address and a mobile number from a New Delhi art gallery where she held her last exhibition. We also tried another e-mail address, another phone number and made a dozen phone calls to Indian newspapers - but Pamella could not be found.

And it seems that is the way she likes it - quietly doing her work in India, meditating, doing yoga, travelling and just being left alone with her studio and cameras.

She said: 'Whenever I am in the mood, I pack my bags and head for some exotic destination with a set of frames in my mind. I am enjoying my work and want to do it in a perfect way.'

Pappadum Pam has become Zen.

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,174411,00.html

Audio: Iraq Veterans Against the War Make their Point Heard

FSRN Segment
08/27/2008 - 14:02

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War are showing the City of Denver what it's like to be occupied by a foreign military force. They're using street theatre to educate Americans on some of the realities surrounding US troop presents in Iraq. The group is wrapping up three days of demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention, where they have now teamed up with Rage Against the Machine, and have staged a massive anti-war march to the Pepsi Center today. FSRN's Blake Wesley has the story.

Click here for Wednesday's newscast.
http://www.fsrn.org/content/iraq-veterans-against-war-make-their-point-heard/3144

The Growing Threat of Wildfire Government

newsblaze.com/story

By L.K. Samuels

There was a time when volunteer fire departments, paid fire fighters, and local residents would work hand-in-hand to put out wildfires. It was an amenable relationship, sharing hardships, goals, and camaraderie. But if the 2008 California wildfires proved anything, it demonstrated that this alliance is no longer a cornerstone of American communities.

During the Big Sur fires in July, residents who did not evacuate reported that they felt they were behind "enemy lines." When 79-year-old Don McQueen traveled down the road to his campground business to provide hot water showers for fire crews, he was detained by sheriff deputies and scolded.

Although McQueen was released, he soon discovered that fire officials had changed the rule book. To him it seemed like the various federal and state firefighting agencies no longer wanted to work with the community to put out fires. Instead, they wanted Big Sur residents to leave the area and stop defending their property. Worse still, the fire fighter crews were "strictly forbidden to assist locals."

Despite experience fighting fires since the 1940s, McQueen was told to get off his ranch. When he refused, an official reportedly said, "We're carefully allowing these homes to burn down. You can build a new house at no cost with your insurance money." McQueen could hardly believe what he had heard.

According to local residents, many of the fire crews were grounded and told to let the fire burn itself out. One ashamed firefighter told them, "I was taught to put out fire, not let them burn." Professionals watched as the locals on the front line fought the blaze. Finally, one crew become so upset that they covertly parked their engine near McQueen's property, rolled out a 4,000-foot fire hose, and helped him to maintain his fire break.

On Apple Pie Ridge in Big Sur another family worked feverishly to protect their 55-acre ranch and home. The Curtis family had successfully fought several fires going back to the 1970s. Some family members and friends had worked in the past as seasonal firefighters. When the fire crept within 12 feet of the family's property, they set a backfire, which is legal "for the purpose of saving life or valuable property" under California Public Resources Code 4426.

But within a short time a different type of firestorm flared up.

A Cal Fire official and several sheriff deputies drew guns on Ross Curtis and a friend. The civilians were arrested, handcuffed, and charged with lighting a backfire. Outraged authorities said that the Curtis family, friends, and tenants had disobeyed warnings not to use backfires. But the Curtis family was also told earlier that firefighters were ordered away from his property-that the area was written off as "inaccessible and undefendable."

Ironically, some of Curtis's fire-protection gear was confiscated as one deputy warned him to stop impersonating a firefighter. There was even talk that the two men might be charged with arson. Despite the arrest, no homes burned down on Apple Pie Ridge. In other areas, where people had evacuated, many lost their homes.

Cal Fire Battalion Chief Paul Van Gerwen still maintains that the Curtis family was protecting their property in an "unlawful way," saying that they had no permission from the government. Other officials said that only professionals should fight fires.

Jerry Teeter, the Monterey County sheriff's commander, commented that they tried not to arrest locals as long as they did not drift off to another property or interfere with firefighters. In other words, residents were under "house arrest." Of course, this was ludicrous. Since many of the government firefighters were either benched or ordered not to assist residents, only the local citizens were left to protect structures. And they needed to move around, to help each other fight the moving flames and to resupply residents and businesses.

Ideally, government officials should closely work with the locals to mitigate crises. But under Big Sur's "Unified Command," local agencies had little authority. Australia, by contrast, has a more libertarian approach in which rural residents are expected to defend their homes from any danger. But in California it appears that our government is opposed to the freedom that would allow citizens to respond to emergencies themselves or to take an active role in being responsible and self-reliant.

Unfortunately, good government only works in theory. That is why it is up to citizen participation and vigilance to keep political systems from getting out of control and from becoming over centralized. One must wonder which power is more devastating in the long run: wildfires or the government's determination to make citizens dependent.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20080826103226tsop.nb/topstory.html

VIDEOS: War in Georgia

CLICK MOI
http://war.georgia.su/

Susanville, CA Man Faces Terrorist/Arson Threat Charges

" ... Michael Karl McNeil, 34, a former firefighter with the United States Forest Service, faces 36 felony charges in Los Angeles Superior Court of using explosives, arson and making terrorist threats. ... McNeil is charged with violating California Penal Code Section 451 (d), arson. ... "

Also see: DOCUMENTED: SIEGE OF ARSON FIRES IN CALIFORNIA


Los Angeles Times
August 26, 2008

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction — much stranger.

Susanville resident Michael Karl McNeil, 34, a former firefighter with the United States Forest Service, faces 36 felony charges in Los Angeles Superior Court of using explosives, arson and making terrorist threats.

The charges were filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office on Thursday, Aug. 7. His bail has been set at $2.87 million.

Several sources close to the case say they expect additional charges may be filed against McNeil in the future.

Apparently McNeil, embroiled in a bitter divorce battle in Lassen Superior Court, tried to discredit his wife, a Kazakhstan national (part of the former Soviet Union), by sending threatening e-mails that appeared to come from her computer to national and local elected officials.

The threatened officials include Lassen County Superior Court Judge Stephen Bradbury, Lassen County Superior Court Judge Donald Sokol, Lassen County District Attorney Robert Burns, Lassen County Public Defender David Marcus, Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca, United States Senator Barbara Boxer, United States Congresswoman Mary Bono, Anne Bryant, Rob Jordan and a Los Angeles peace officer.

According to the documents filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, McNeil delivered 34 terrorist threats in just 26 days between Sunday, July 6 and Thursday, July 31.

McNeil also faces felony charges of using a destructive device and explosive to destroy property and arson. Sources close to the investigation say McNeil soon may face more criminal charges.

Local investigation

Tom Downing, a Susanville Police Department captain, said the SPD began the investigation, but turned it over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“We’re aware of the investigation, and they keep us up to date on the process,” Downing said.

While most of the victims are Lassen County residents, Downing said it is believed the alleged crimes were committed at McNeil’s father’s house in Southern California, and that’s why the investigation moved out of Susanville. Downing declined to discuss the exact nature of the terrorist threats or the facts of the case.

“They were pretty specific threats toward the individuals,” Downing said. “They were not ambiguous threats.”

A representative for Bradbury and Sokol said the two Lassen County judges would not comment on an ongoing case.

Burns also declined to discuss the details of the case, but he did make a statement.

“If and when Mr. McNeil (who currently has two criminal matters pending in Lassen County) comes back to the Lassen County courts, I expect to withdraw and ask the Attorney General’s Office to handle the matters,” Burns said. “In essence, Mr. McNeil threatened my life.”

Marcus, who had represented McNeil, was a little more candid.

“I can talk about the case,” Marcus said. “I no longer represent Mr. McNeil, because I now have a conflict.”

According to Marcus, McNeil is “a pretty delusional individual” who was “just trying to make his ex-wife look bad. He sent out e-mails in her name. I understand he bought some program that would make it appear the e-mails were coming from his ex-wife’s computer address.”

Marcus said he received e-mails from McNeil “almost daily” but he wasn’t too concerned because “some of them were so absurd.”

The public defender said McNeil “threatened to blow us all up with dirty bombs. Could he carry that out? I don’t know that he really had that capability. Was I looking over my shoulder much? No, but then again, you couldn’t ignore them either.”

On Dec. 26, 1997, McNeil was charged in Los Angeles County with making a terrorist threat. He pleaded no contest in that case and was sentenced to 170 days in the Los Angeles County Jail.

The charges

McNeil is charged with 34 felony violations of California Penal Code Section 422, commonly referred to as terrorist threats.

That section reads applies anyone who “willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person,” regardless of how the threat is transmitted and even if “there is no intent of actually carrying it out.”

But the threat must be “so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to convey to the person threatened, a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat, and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety.”

McNeil is also charged with violating California Penal Code Section 12303.3 which applies to “Every person who possesses, explodes, ignites, or attempts to explode or ignite any destructive device or any explosive with intent to injure, intimidate, or terrify any person, or with intent to wrongfully injure or destroy any property.”

McNeil is charged with violating California Penal Code Section 451 (d), arson. That section applies to a person who “willfully and maliciously sets fire to or burns or causes to be burned or who aids, counsels, or procures the burning of, any structure, forest land, or property.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-marine27-2008aug27,0,2972286.story

Ex-Marine's testimony links squad leader to Iraqi prisoner killings

The former lance corporal says he saw Sgt. Jose Nazario standing over a dead Iraqi while holding an M-16 during a 2004 raid in Fallouja. Nazario is accused in the slayings of four unarmed Iraqis.

By Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times
August 27, 2008

A former Marine testified in federal court Tuesday that he saw Sgt. Jose Nazario standing over a dead Iraqi, with an M-16 in his hands, just seconds after he heard a gunshot from the room where Nazario was holding Iraqi prisoners.

Former Lance Cpl. Corey Carlisle also testified that before he heard the gunshot, he heard Nazario trying to talk a Marine into helping him kill Iraqi prisoners.

Carlisle was the first witness to testify in federal court in Riverside about the events of Nov. 9, 2004, when the Marine squad stormed a house in Fallouja.

"I consider this the worst day in my life, something I will never forget," he told jurors.

Nazario, the squad leader, is charged with manslaughter, assault and use of a firearm in the alleged execution of four unarmed Iraqi prisoners. He has pleaded not guilty. The case against Nazario has drawn national attention because it is the first time under a little-known 2000 law that a former member of the military is being tried in federal court in an alleged crime committed in combat.

Carlisle, 26, who is now a college student in Salt Lake City, told jurors that he was part of the squad that entered the house and came upon four unarmed Iraqi men. He said the Marines captured the men, and he and others went on to search the house. During the search, he said, he overheard Nazario asking another Marine to help him kill the Iraqis. He said he heard the other Marine refuse to do so. Carlisle said he then came upon the Marine with whom Nazario had been talking -- Lance Cpl. James Prentice. Prentice, he said, had already been shaken by the death of a friend a few hours earlier.

"I tried to calm Prentice down. I told him, 'We don't want to be part of this,' " Carlisle said of what was going on in the house. "I tried to find us an exit."

Not long after, as he continued to search the house, he said, he heard a shot fired and found Sgt. Ryan Weemer standing with his 9-millimeter handgun in his hand over one of the Iraqi men, who was dead. Soon after, he heard a second shot and found Nazario, holding his M-16, standing over another dead Iraqi prisoner. The dead man was lying on his back, shot in the head. The two remaining Iraqi prisoners stood terrified nearby, Carlisle testified. "It's something I won't forget, the dread on their faces," he said. "That's the face I saw on both men -- dread."

At that point, Carlisle told jurors, he wanted out of the house. As he left, he said, he heard two more gunshots -- presumably signaling that the last two prisoners had been shot.

Weemer and Sgt. Jermaine Nelson, who remain on active duty, face murder charges in military court in the shooting deaths.

In separate interviews before they retained counsel, Weemer and Nelson said that, upon orders from Nazario, they each killed a prisoner and Nazario killed two. Weemer's admission came in a job interview with the Secret Service; Nelson made his admission to an agent for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Another member of the platoon, Samuel Severtsgaard, testified Tuesday about encountering Carlisle shortly after he left the house.

Severtsgaard, who was then a lance corporal and now works as a security guard in Minnesota, described Carlisle as shaken and speechless. He said Carlisle wouldn't respond when he tried to speak to him. Carlisle's demeanor, he said, prompted him to enter the house, where he found the four bodies -- three men shot in the head, one in the chest.

When he left the house and saw Carlisle again, he said, Carlisle told him, "It wasn't me."

Weemer and Nelson had been scheduled to be the prosecution's star witnesses in Nazario's trial, but they refused to testify despite a warning from the judge that they could be sent to jail for contempt of court.

The two asserted their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination even though the judge promised them that their testimony would not be used against them in their upcoming courts-martial at Camp Pendleton. Larson had jailed both Marines earlier this year for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

He released them when he decided that additional time behind bars would not persuade them to testify.

Last week, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jerry Behnke, the lead prosecutor, told Larson that Nelson had refused a plea bargain offered by military prosecutors. The deal, he said, would include dropping the murder charge, a guilty plea to dereliction of duty and a promise to cooperate with federal and military prosecutors. Under the deal, Nelson could remain in the Marines, Behnke said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-marine27-2008aug27,0,2972286.story

Oily Ted Stevens Wins Republican Primary in Alaska

By WILLIAM YARDLEY
August 28, 2008

Senator From Alaska Wins Republican Primary

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska won the Republican primary in his home state on Tuesday, soundly defeating six Republican challengers less than a month after he was indicted by a federal grand jury for concealing more than $250,000 in gifts from an oil services company.

The victory for Mr. Stevens, 84, means he now moves to a tough general election campaign against Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, who easily won the Democratic primary on Tuesday and leads the senator in polls. Mr. Stevens enters the general election also having to prepare for his trial, which is scheduled to begin in late September.

Mr. Stevens, who has been in office for 40 years and is revered for bringing home billions of dollars in federal spending, had received 63 percent of the vote with 61 percent of precincts counted.

"People have been voting for Ted for 40 years and their inclination is to keep doing it," Dave Cuddy, a former state lawmaker who finished a distant second to Mr. Stevens, said in a phone interview several hours before the polls closed. ...

Full story

Obit.: Charles A. Nuzum, 85; Led FBI's Probe Of 1972 Break-In at Watergate Complex

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
www.washingtonpost.com
August 23, 2008; Page B06

Charles A. Nuzum, 85, the FBI agent who was in charge of the agency's investigation into the Watergate burglary, died Aug. 2 at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital because of an accidental fall. He lived in Tallahassee.

Mr. Nuzum oversaw the probe into the June 17, 1972, break-in at Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate office complex when he was chief of the FBI's bankruptcy, antitrust and wiretapping unit. The investigation, run from the FBI's Washington field office, uncovered the connection of the White House to the burglary, and the burglary to a wide-ranging set of crimes, undertaken to punish the perceived political enemies of the Nixon administration.

Mr. Nuzum would report the team's findings daily to his superiors, including Robert Gebhardt, the assistant director of the FBI's investigative division. Gebhardt would send the reports to Mark Felt, the agency's associate director. Felt passed on the information to the FBI's acting director, L. Patrick Gray. Mr. Nuzum's name and his initials are on many of the key memos of the period.

"Charlie was an outstanding supervisor," said Gebhardt, now retired and living in Southern California. "We had many sleepless nights and coffee-filled mornings . . . because there were obstacles to the investigation. He knew it, and he knew it was one of the biggest cases the FBI ever had."

Two of the obstacles were in the chain of command. Unbeknown to the agents or almost anyone else, Felt was a source for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who with Carl Bernstein was covering the scandal for the newspaper. Their articles about some of the FBI team's findings gave the administration fits and prompted a search for leaks by the leaker himself.

Gray, who was awaiting nomination and confirmation to the FBI's top job, later acknowledged that he had been sharing FBI interviews of Watergate suspects with the White House. The Nixon administration repeatedly tried to stop the FBI's investigation.

Mr. Nuzum was born in Bourbon County, Kan., and his family moved to Florida while he was a child, settling in St. Petersburg. Mr. Nuzum was attending St. Petersburg Junior College when World War II started.

He served as a pilot in the Army Air Forces and flew a B-24 on 33 missions from a base in Italy. His military awards included the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal and Purple Heart.

He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1948 and joined the FBI in 1954. He worked as an accountant in Kansas City, Mo., and New York before moving to Washington in the 1960s.

After his retirement in 1975, he returned to Florida and became a state beverage division chief in the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. At the time of his retirement in 1983, he was president of the National Conference of State Liquor Administrators.

He was also a member of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.

Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Joy L. Nuzum of Tallahassee; two children, Charles Nuzum Jr. of Lafayette, La., and Denise Perrino of Falls Church; five grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082202743.html

Son of Rap Producer Dr. Dre Found Dead; Andre Young Jr. was 20

Young had been out with friends the night before his mother found him unresponsive. Determination of the cause of death has been deferred until test results are in.

By Andrew Blankstein and Chris Lee
Los Angeles Times
August 26, 2008

Rap impresario Dr. Dre's 20-year-old son was found dead over the weekend in his Woodland Hills home, coroner's officials said.

Andre R. Young Jr. had been out with friends the night before and was discovered in his bed by his mother at 10:24 a.m. Saturday, Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said.

"She found him unresponsive and called paramedics," Winter said, adding that an autopsy had been completed but that determination of the cause of death was deferred pending the outcome of a "gamut of tests, including toxicology."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-me-dreson27-2008aug27,0,3967959.story

Boston Area Radio Personality & CIA Psyop Specialist Enjoying his Retirement

" ... [Sean] Casey was on the radio for more than 40 years, spending five of those years overseas as a CIA subcontractor during the early ’90s. He was involved in psychological operations during Operation Desert Storm, presenting the United States and allied forces in a positive light to the Iraqi people ... "

Continued: Longtime Boston area radio personality enjoying his retirement
www.patriotledger.com

Defense Intelligence Agency "Seeking" Mind Control Weapons

by Tom Burghardt

A new report from the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (NRC) argues that the Pentagon should harvest the fruits of neuroscientific research in order to enhance the "warfighting" capabilities of U.S. soldiers while diminishing those of enemy personnel.

The 151-page report issued by a 16-member blue ribbon commission, "Cognitive Neuroscience Research and National Security," was quietly announced in an August 13 National Academy of Sciences Press Release.

Commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon spy shop, the study asserts that the U.S. intelligence "community" must do a better job following cutting-edge research in neuroscience or as is more likely, steering it along paths useful to the Defense Department. According to the NRC,

A 2005 National Research Council report described a methodology for gauging the implications of new technologies and assessing whether they pose a threat to national security. In this new report, the committee applied the methodology to the neuroscience field and identified several research areas that could be of interest to the intelligence community: neurophysiological advances in detecting and measuring indicators of psychological states and intentions of individuals, the development of drugs or technologies that can alter human physical or cognitive abilities, advances in real-time brain imaging, and breakthroughs in high-performance computing and neuronal modeling that could allow researchers to develop systems which mimic functions of the human brain, particularly the ability to organize disparate forms of data. ("National Security Intelligence Organizations should Monitor Advances in Cognitive Neuroscience Research," National Academy of Sciences, Press Release, August 13, 2008)

Unlocking the secrets of the brain is projected as the next growth industry for the military, academia and corporate grifters hoping to land huge Pentagon contracts. As defense analyst Noah Shachtman reported in Wired, the "Army has given a team of University of California researchers a $4 million grant to study the foundations of "synthetic telepathy." Unlike "remote viewing" research funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency between 1972 and 1996, variously known as "Grill Flame," "Sun Streak" and finally, "Star Gate" before the plug was pulled, the Army-U.C. Irvine joint venture are exploring thought transmission via a brain-computer mediated interface.

Recently New Scientist reported on a series of bizarre experiments at the University of Reading in the UK. Researchers there have connected 300,000 disembodied rat neurons suspended in "a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics" to 80 electrodes at the base of the growth medium. As journalist Paul Marks informs us, the "rat neurons have made--and continue to make--connections with each other." The voltages sparked by the firing cells are displayed on a computer screen.

Welcome to the "brave new world" of neural prosthetics and the militarists who are exploiting science and technology for new weapons applications.

Declaring that emerging technologies such as brain imaging and cognitive and physical enhancers are "desired by the public," NRC avers "such forces act as strong market incentives for development." But as Rick Weiss cautions on the Science Progress blog,

But even more interesting to me is the report's discussion of the emerging market in brain-targeted, performance-degrading techniques. Some experiments, it turns out, suggest that magnetic beams can be used to induce seizures in people, a tempting addition to the military's armamentarium. More conventionally, as scientists discover new chemicals that can blur thinking or undermine an enemy's willpower, and as engineers design aerosolized delivery systems that can deliver these chemicals directly to the lungs (and from there, the brains) of large groups of people, the prospect of influencing the behavior of entire enemy regiments becomes real. ("Minding Mental Minefields," Science Progress, August 15, 2008)

The use of so-called calmative agents as non-lethal weapons are already under development. As Antifascist Calling reported last month in "The Calmative Before the Storm," the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) are carrying out experiments into what it euphemistically calls "Human Effects Research" and developing an "Advanced Total Body Model for predicting the effects of non-lethal impacts."

Apparently the DIA has taken this a step further and will now explore the possibility of creating aerosolized pharmacological agents that can disrupt and perhaps influence, the mental functioning of targeted populations abroad, enemy soldiers or dissenting citizens here in the United States.

Neil Davison, a researcher with the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre (BDRC) at Bradford University in the UK, wrote an important 2007 study, "'Off the Rocker' and 'On the Floor': The Continued Development of Biochemical Incapacitating Weapons." Davison examined the historical differentiation made by weaponeers between "off the rocker" agents such as LSD, PCP and psilocybin in their allegedly weaponized forms versus "on the floor" agents such as sedatives, opiate analgesics and anesthetic chemicals.

During the "golden age" of the CIA and U.S. Army's quixotic search for "mind control" agents during the 1950s and 1960s, researchers were seeking a reliable mechanism that would unlock the secrets of the mind--and gain control over witting or unwitting subjects--for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of unethical experiments were carried out on psychiatric patients, civilians and soldiers. The results were subsequently suppressed on grounds on "national security."

While the majority of CIA MKULTRA files were ordered destroyed by former Agency Director Richard Helms in 1973, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held landmark 1977 hearings and issued a report, "Project MKULTRA, The CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification." As Senator Ted Kennedy discussed in his opening remarks,

Some 2 years ago, the Senate Health Subcommittee heard chilling testimony about the human experimentation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations." ...

We believed that the record, incomplete as it was, was as complete as it was going to be. Then one individual, through a Freedom of Information request, accomplished what two U.S. Senate committees could not. He spurred the agency into finding additional records pertaining to the CIA's program of experimentation with human subjects. ... The records reveal a far more extensive series of experiments than had previously been thought. Eighty-six universities or institutions were involved. New instances of unethical behavior were revealed.

The Central Intelligence Agency drugged American citizens without their knowledge or consent. It used university facilities and personnel without their knowledge. It funded leading researchers, often without their knowledge. (emphasis added)

While the CIA's MKULTRA project and related Army ventures carried out at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, may have failed to develop specific agents that could be wielded as a "mind control" weapon, the research did result in the development of abusive interrogation techniques that can only be characterized as torture.

As Antifascist Calling queried in "Neuroscience, National Security & the 'War on Terror'," "If behavioral psychology was handmaid to the horrors perpetrated at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and CIA transnational 'black sites,' what new nightmares are in store for humanity when advances in neuroscience, complex computer algorithms and a secretive national security state enter stage (far) right?"

Apparently horrors of the "mind control" variety, particularly when it comes to applications for ever-newer and more insidious interrogation/control techniques to be used on "enemy combatants" or dissenting malefactors in the heimat.

According to the NRC and the corporate-academic grifters involved in the research, cognitive warfare should be sold as a "more humane" method of advancing imperialist objectives. As the report baldly states, the equation "pills instead of bullets" will be the preferred marketing technique employed for "selling" the program to the American people. As anthropologist Hugh Gusterson wrote,

The military and scientific leaders chartering neuroweapons research will argue that the United States is a uniquely noble country that can be trusted with such technologies, while other countries (except for a few allies) cannot. They will also argue that these technologies will save lives and that U.S. ingenuity will enable the United States to dominate other countries in a neuroweapons race. When it is too late to turn back the clock, they will profess amazement that other countries caught up so quickly and that an initiative intended to ensure American dominance instead led to a world where everyone is threatened by chemicalized soldiers and roboterrorists straight out of Blade Runner. (The militarization of neuroscience," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 April 2007)

But as the world looked on in horror at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, this "uniquely noble country" guided by "ethical principles," resorted to repugnant methods such as sensory deprivation, near drowning and "self-inflicted pain" techniques (short-shackling and the like) to achieve control over defenseless prisoners.

As the NRC would have it, academics in thrall to corporate funding and state agencies staffed by war criminals now expect us to believe that "ethics" will guide those exploring pharmacological methods to obtain more insidious means to subjugate humanity.

Weiss reports that the NRC notes in its report, the motivation, or lack thereof, to fight, is of great concern to Pentagon bureaucrats and policy makers. "So one question," for military-corporate-academic funded research "would be, 'How can we disrupt the enemy's motivation to fight?' Other questions raised by controlling the mind: 'How can we make people trust us more?' 'What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain?' 'Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?'...As cognitive neuroscience and related technologies become more pervasive, using technology for nefarious purposes becomes easier."

But as is usual with all such screeds, the psychoanalytic theory of projection comes in handy when deciphering the monstrous intent of Pentagon weaponeers. It is all-too-clear whether we are discussing nuclear, biological, chemical or contemporaneously, cognitive weapons that Western proponents of preemptive war, always couch their acts of violent imperialist aggression in purely defensive terms.

In this light, Freud and his followers have defined projection as a form of defense in which unwanted feelings are displaced onto another person, and where aggressive impulses then appear as a threat from the external world. In the case of corporate defense and security grifters, their militarist pit bulls and the academic sycophants who fuel their deranged "cognitive warfare" fantasies, the other--a nation, a dispossessed class or a bogeyman such as "international terrorism"--are always the external harbingers of apocalyptic death and destruction, when in reality such fantasies are wholly reflective of their own desire to aggressively dominate and plunder other nations.

Therefore, the NRC maintains, and note the ideologically-skewed reference to the eternal verities of "the market," the Holy Grail of capitalism in its hyperimperialist phase:

The fear that this approach to fighting war might be developed will be justification for developing countermeasures to possible cognitive weapons. This escalation might lead to innovations that could cause this market area to expand rapidly. Tests would need to be developed to determine if a soldier had been harmed by a cognitive weapon. And there would be a need for a prophylactic of some sort. (NRC, op. cit.)

Who, pray tell, is driving this "escalation" and counting on academia to produce "innovations" in "this market area"? One might also quite reasonably inquire: Who profits?

As Christopher Green, the chairman of the NRC investigative panel championing neuroweapons research avers in a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Big Pharma is global. Drug discovery research is both ponderous (not as much as arms control, however) and increasingly beyond the control of governments and the public. The development of cognitive enhancers and anti-aging aides during the next two decades (the time needed for drug discovery to become successful) will be...ethically worrisome. But it will be beyond opprobrium. Drugs will be developed and marketed, and not necessarily under the auspices of traditional Western controls and good laboratory practices. ("The potential impact of neuroscience research is greater than previously thought," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 July 2008) [emphasis added]

While Green claims he is opposed to developing drugs "with safe and efficacious properties for military use," the NRC study, after all, was funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency, hardly a "neutral party" when it comes to "enhanced interrogation techniques" and other horrors of this horrible system!

One must also dissect the linguistic formulations and assumptions deployed by those advocating this line of research. By referring to neuroweapons production as a "market area," those contemplating unleashing devilish pharmacological forms of warfare on unsuspecting populations behave, in you'll pardon the pun, as if they were brainstorming the release of a new video game or suite of luxury condominiums in an American city "ethnically cleansed" of its urban poor!

Green and his acolytes claim that "battlefield commanders of all nations hold sacrosanct the right to determine the applications" of weapon deployments that may cause "collateral damage" to civilian noncombatants. Therefore, Green argues that "if governments or scientists were to try to develop a system to pre-screen neuroscientific cognitive manipulators, which would be HIPAA approved and tested, and robust in its core science, success would be as likely as it was with mines and cluster-bombs--meaning not likely." Translation: full-speed ahead!

While the NRC allege that their approach to monitoring neuroweapons research is "ethical," the committee ponders whether "the concept of torture could also be altered by products in this market. It is possible that someday there could be a technique developed to extract information from a prisoner that does not have any lasting side effects."

Other than the hollowing-out of one's personality and the unique traits that make us human, that is. "Paging Winston Smith, white courtesy telephone!"

While Nazi theories of Aryan superiority may have been displaced by a uniquely American ultranationalist, though no less predatory utilitarian praxis, behind the glittering technological promises trumpeted by today's biotech weaponeers lurk the same murderous mental constructs that guided Indian hunters and slave traders of yore.

Only this time, we're all Manchurian candidates.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Original headline: Defense Intelligence Agency Seeking "Mind Control" Weapons

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9931

Updated: White nationalist Web sites fired-up with conversation about alleged Obama assassination plot

By TODD A. HEYWOOD
www.michiganmessenger.com
8/25/08

As news began to build about an alleged plot to assassinate Sen. Barack Obama, the white nationalist Web site Stormfront.org saw 20 posts in two hours.

The early posts expressed shock that police and federal authorities had not immediately accused white nationalists of the crime.

Then, as word began to leak out that at least two of the four suspects arrested were wearing jewelry and tattoos associated with the white nationalist movement, posters on Stormfront.org immediately began to claim distance from the accused, calling the four arrested in the plot “morons” and distancing themselves from the alleged perpetrators.

Below is an example of a post that was since deleted from Stormfront.org:

…it doesn’t hurt to make our positions clear of what we accept for our ranks to distance ourselves a little. Particularly since all of the typical stereotypes are in play. You know. Us “Nazis” are druggies, which brings up images of lacking education and living in trailers as a result. I certainly think there is a little embellishment going on.

The above post was written by Stygian at 10:38 p.m. As this post was being written, Stormfront.org removed the thread about the arrests.

The story of the alleged plot is continuing to unfold in Denver, but here is what is known thus far. Aurora Police pulled over Tharin Gartrell, 28, for undisclosed traffic violations.

Police found weapons in Gartrell’s rented vehicle, including a rifle which has been described as a “sniper’s rifle.” Police went to a hotel, and then to a second hotel following the arrest of Gartrell.

Upon arrival at the second hotel, officers knocked on the door of a hotel room, and the suspect inside jumped out the window, six stories down to a awning, breaking his ankle. Police arrested him a short time later.

Denver station CBS 4 is reporting a total of four arrests have been made in the case. Also, the television station is reporting that the plotters were “going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a … rifle sighted at 750 yards.”

Citing a law enforcement source, CBS 4 reports that one of the arrested individuals was asked if he was there to kill Obama, and that the suspect “responded affirmatively.”

UPDATE: Our sister site The Colorado Independent reports that law enforcement officials are now downplaying the four arrests, and that agencies ranging from federal to local announced a joint press conference for Tuesday afternoon.

http://www.michiganmessenger.com/3023/white-nationalist-websites-fired-up-with-conversation-about-alleged-obama-assassination-plot

Obama Assassination Plot

" ... Sources say he was wearing a ring with a swastika. ..." " ... The three belonged to the white supremacist group Aryan Nation, said Victor Ross, police chief in Glendale, a suburb of Denver ... "

Aug 25th 2008
by TMZ Staff

A Denver TV station is reporting authorities may have foiled an assassination plot against Barack Obama, and there's talk the suspects may be members of a white supremacy group.

KUSA-TV claims three men are in custody after a routine traffic stop in Aurora (near Denver) turned up two rifles, high-powered scopes, ammo and meth. The man in the car led authorities to a hotel where another suspect jumped out of a fourth floor window in an attempt to escape. ...

Story developing..

http://www.tmz.com/2008/08/25/obama-under-fire/
•••••••
Plot to Kill Obama: Shoot From High Vantage Point

Written By Brian Maass
Aug 25, 2008

E-mail DENVER (CBS4) ― CBS4 has now learned at least four people are under arrest in connection with a possible plot to kill Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges.

CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass reported one of the suspects told authorities they were "going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a ... rifle … sighted at 750 yards."

Law enforcement sources tell Maass that one of the suspects "was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama. He responded in the affirmative."

The story began emerging Sunday morning when Aurora police arrested 28-year-old Tharin Gartrell. He was driving a rented pickup truck in an erratic manner according to sources.

Sources told CBS4 police found two high-powered, scoped rifles in the car along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and methamphetamine. One of the rifles is listed as stolen from Kansas.

Subsequently authorities went to the Cherry Creek Hotel to contact an associate of Gartrell's. But that man, who was wanted on numerous warrants, jumped out of a sixth floor hotel window. Law enforcement sources say the man broke an ankle in the fall and was captured moments later. Sources say he was wearing a ring with a swastika, and is thought to have ties to white supremacist organizations.

A third man -- an associate of Gartrell and the hotel jumper was also arrested. He told authorities that the two men "planned to kill Barack Obama at his acceptance speech."

That man, along with a woman, are also under arrest.

The Secret Service, FBI, ATF and the joint terrorism task force are all investigating the alleged plot.

The U.S. Attorney in Denver has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday afternoon.

CBS4 will have new details on this developing story at 10pm.

http://cbs4denver.com/investigates/assisination.plot.obama.2.802827.html
•••••••
U.S. Probes Firearm Suspects in Denver Days Before Obama Speech
By James Rowley and Jonathan D. Salant
www.bloomberg.com
Aug. 26, 2008

... The three belonged to the white supremacist group Aryan Nation, said Victor Ross, police chief in Glendale, a suburb of Denver where one of the suspects was arrested. The other two were arrested in Aurora, another suburb.

"We don't usually have that number of Aryan Nation people here,'' Ross said. "It was suspicious to us. We turned everything over to the federal authorities.''

'No Credible Threat'

FBI spokeswoman Kathleen Wright said federal authorities had opened a drugs and weapons investigation in connection with the arrests. The U.S. attorney's office in Denver said in a brief statement that federal charges were anticipated.

Troy Eid, the U.S. attorney for Colorado, said "federal law enforcement is working hand-in-glove with the Aurora Police Department.''

He added: "We're absolutely confident there is no credible threat to the candidate, the Democratic National Convention, or the people of Colorado.''

The rifle with a scope was reported stolen from Goodland, Kansas, Dudley said. The rifles were found along with a quantity of methamphetamines in the rental truck, which had not been leased to the driver, Dudley said.

Dudley said none of the three suspects in custody had a fixed home address, which was ``another cause for alarm.'' One was being held on outstanding warrants with bond worth more than $1 million.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton declined comment. "We don't talk about security issues,'' he said.

The incident was the second this month involving a threat to Obama, who is seeking to become the first black president.

Raymond Hunter Geisel, 22, was arrested in Miami Aug. 2 and charged with threatening to kill Obama, according to the U.S. Secret Service and court records. Geisel allegedly made the threat during a class he was taking to become a bail bondsman, and a search of his truck and his hotel room turned up weapons.

Obama has been receiving Secret Service protection since May 2007, the earliest date that any presidential candidate has gotten a security detail since the practice was instituted following the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9NjBTFaaInY&refer=home

Re Project Anthrax & the Cover-Up - Stephen Hatfill, the Selous Scouts & the Previous Anthrax Mailings in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe

This letter from "A Rhodesian" is angry - but that's fine, because it's over an issue that I was aware of and have been meaning to explain. Actually, I understand the writer's rage and would feel the same way in his place - that is, if I also adopted a position of knee-jerk denial concerning Stephen Hatfill's checkered residence in Rhodesia:

"Steven Hatfill was never in the Rhodesian SAS you can go to their website and you will see his name in the roll of dishonour. ... Get your facts right before bursting into print with absolute nonsense." - A Rhodesian

As explained in "Project Anthrax & the Cover-Up," Hatfill WAS in Rhodesia and worked in academia - these details in his resumé were not fabricated and they have been confirmed by the NY Times - sent there on the recommendation of a neo-Nazi. Hatfill boasted that he ran with the Selous Scouts, who were, according to all evidence, responsible for maiing anthrax spores to black areas in Zimbabwe, leading to an outbreak that was devastating to BLACKS exclusively. The SS denies any connection to Hatfill - but they also deny participation in the anthrax outbreak and many other atrocities.

This is not the reason why I'm certain that Hatfill was telling the partial truth, however - one of whom wrote to inform me directly that he doesn't remember a Stephen Hatfill.

I don't doubt it. Hatfill worked in labs on bio-chemical and medical projects, as he did later at Ft. Detrick, and there was no reason for him to have any contact whatsoever with foot soldiers. The SS vets who disavow knowing Hatfill are telling the truth.

Example: Why should James Bond necessarily have personal knowledge of the lab technicians who concocted his sleeping-gas cologne?

The sensitivity of his work ensured that he kept it under wraps and spun cover stories, told half-truths.

Please consider, as I did in writing the story: It is far too "coincidental" that Hatfill, who WAS in the area where the first round of anthrax mailing occurred in Africa, should move on to an identical mass murder scenario in the US. ... and have no role in either.

Hatfill was telling the partial truth about his "work" in Rhodesia. But he couldn't very well talk about his participation in prior anthrax mailings, could he? So he slanted a few facts, and this strikes me as far more plausible than the insistence of Rhodesian operatives that he wasn't one of them. Hatfill was a lab tech, so they had no reason to deal with him directly.

- AC

Protesters: We're Being Treated like Prisoners

" ... Cohen and his wife, Barbara, each wore a red inverted triangle similar to the type political prisoners in Nazi Germany were forced to wear. ... "

By JUDITH KOHLER
ap.google.com
Aug. 25, 2008

DENVER (AP) — A small group of protesters marched to the demonstration zone outside the Democratic National Convention, complaining they are being treated like political prisoners.

Members of the protest group Recreate 68 Alliance visited the fenced-off zone for the first time on Monday and vowed not to return because they oppose the limits on where they can demonstrate.

Protesters derisively call the 47,000-square-foot zone the "Freedom Cage." It's separated from the parking lot around the convention hall by metal fences atop concrete barriers, about 700 feet from the Pepsi Center, where the delegates start gathering Monday night.

"We're being treated by the city of Denver and the Secret Service like political prisoners, like pariahs," said Recreate 68 organizer Mark Cohen.

Cohen and his wife, Barbara, each wore a red inverted triangle similar to the type political prisoners in Nazi Germany were forced to wear.

"We're going to stay here for just a couple of minutes to state our disgust with this abomination, the way the city and Secret Service are tearing the Constitution of the United States to shreds and then we will leave," Mark Cohen said.

Another protester, Holly Heiman, 40, of Green Mountain Falls, said she wanted to show her opposition to what she believes is an oppressive government that won't change no matter who is elected.

Elsewhere, about 100 people rallied at Civic Center Park in downtown Denver to draw attention to people they consider to be political prisoners in the U.S., including American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who's serving a life sentence for killing two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

The turnout for protest marches was lower than expected, however, and that led authorities to reopen some Denver traffic lanes sooner than planned on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. About 12 blocks along two busy streets reopened at around noon on Monday (local time), instead of 3 p.m. as planned. Authorities say they could remain open for the duration of the convention if marches can be accommodated safely.

The Joint Information Center, an emergency-response command set up by the city for the convention, cites "low attendance and parade participation" for the change.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hksHDv1i55R2qYI6dkmMm10uxZ0AD92PJKS80