What The Kennedy Assassination Records Reveal: Uncontrollable Incompetence

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Imagine Harvey Weinstein wielding a "top secret" stamp to block any exposure of the uncomfortable truth and you have the FBI, CIA and NSA.

One way to interpret the intelligence community"s reluctance to let all the Kennedy assassination archives become public is that the archives contain evidence of a "smoking gun": that is, evidence that the intelligence agencies of the United States of America were complicit in the assassination of the President.

I think the agencies fear something larger: exposure of their gross incompetence, their "cowboy" recklessness and their disavowal of elected-civilian control. Their fear of this exposure is based on one simple fact: nothing"s changed since 1963. They were unaccountable and incompetent then, and they remain unaccountable and incompetent now. The only difference is their funding has greatly increased.

We rarely get an insider"s glimpse of the intelligence community"s pettiness, hubris and incompetence. The Ministry of Propaganda is tasked with showing the NSA, CIA, FBI, et al. as super-competent, super-dedicated, and focused on defeating evil (which is always presented as unambiguously evil, i.e. anti-American.)

Although it"s 30 years old, I still recommend this account of a top MI5 (U.K.) officer, SpyCatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer.

I"ve read many books on the intelligence community, but few (if any) reveal the inter-agency rivalries and bad blood that (as far as I can tell) still exist beneath a formal veneer of co-operation. The CIA and FBI were always envious of the NSA"s SigInt (signal intelligence, i.e. eavesdropping), and so they"ve attempted to create their own versions, with laughably incompetent results in the case of the FBI"s "Russians stole the election" inquiry.

The CIA was also envious of the Pentagon"s Black Ops capabilities, so they created their own Black Ops division as well as SigInt capabilities. They also horned in on the FBI"s monopoly on domestic spying in the 1970s; they wanted it all, and chose to create their own versions of the competing agencies.

Unfortunately for the nation, their petty rivalries, general incompetence and penchant for political vendettas, coups, assassinations, patsies, fall-guys, and other "cowboy" recklessness is vividly revealed by the Kennedy archives.

Rather than protect the nation, these unaccountable and uncontrollable agencies have endangered the nation behind their Iron Curtain of secrecy, a convenient cloak which masks their hubris, incompetence, pettiness and complicity in cover-ups of the truth that cannot be revealed to the American public lest it embarrass the powerful.

Imagine Harvey Weinstein wielding a "top secret" stamp to block any exposure of the uncomfortable truth and you have the FBI, CIA and NSA. Forget the smoking gun, look at the complicity in the cover-ups of incompetence and gross errors of judgment: no conspiracy or tin-foil hat required.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

Trump Blocks Full Release Of JFK Assassination Records After Last Minute CIA Push

With much of America clicking furiously all day Thursday on the website of the National Archives, hoping to be among the first to catch the release of thousands of previously unseen JFK Assassination records, the U.S. government was in danger of missing the deadline to release the trove of previously classified records from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, "adding an unexpected twist to a saga already rife with rumors and conspiracies" according to NBC.

Caving to lobbying pressure by intelligence agencies, Trump announced he would not order the release of the full tranche of records, instead following last-minute recommendations of his national security agencies that some of those records be redacted, White House officials said. During a call with reporters, White House officials explained that while some 2,800 JFK records will be released today, the publications of the remaining records has been postponed for 180 days to give agencies more time to figure out what they want redacted. By late Thursday afternoon, the memo specifying which material the CIA, State Department and other agencies still want to keep under wraps had yet not made it to Trump’s desk, intel officials told NBC News.

“There’s a mad scramble going on in the executive branch to get this done,” one official said.

As CBS adds, the delay requests – some of which were registered a couple of months ago and some more recently -  come from agencies throughout the government including the CIA and FBI. Some of the worry seems to center around documents created in the 1990"s, when the congressional committee was crafting the legislation setting Thursday as the release date. Officials told CBS News there is concern the documents may reveal sources and operations from the near past and include current people or operations. Of particular concern, according to officials, are names in the documents.

CBS News" Chip Reid interviewed JFK scholar Larry Sabato, at the University of Virginia"s Miller Center, who said he had been told that "at least most of it will not be released Thursday because not just the CIA, but apparently other agencies, unnamed -- I assume the FBI is one -- are appealing."

 

Sabato says that the CIA wants some of the names in the documents redacted, and some of the paragraphs they say reveal the names of sources or methods used by the CIA.

In any case, the reason behind the delay remains a mystery. As CNN"s Jim Acosta notes, senior administration officials declined to discuss the contents of the files that will be released, including whether they contain evidence of a conspiracy surrounding Kennedy"s death.

I asked officials whether there were any signs of a conspiracy in secret JFK files. Officials on call with reporters would not comment. https://t.co/mz1TxXceEk

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 26, 2017

Trump will issue a memo to heads of intelligence agencies saying "the American public expects and deserves its government to produce as much access as possible to the John F. Kennedy assassination records. "I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted" on the records, the memo will say. The President will also note that law enforcement and foreign affairs agencies have requested that certain records remain redacted.

"I have no choice" but to keep those records under wraps, the memo will say. In his memo, Trump will order intelligence agencies to re-review their reasons for keeping the records redacted, and to report back in 180 days.

What will remain classified?

According to CNN, officials said the sensitive information that will remain redacted for now relates to "intelligence and law enforcement" details. That includes the identity of individuals involved in the investigation into the assassination and their roles as informants to law enforcement, a senior administration official said.

It also includes information about foreign partner organizations that were involved in the investigation, the official said.

"The President heard those justifications from the agencies that requested the continuing postponement and he acknowledged that information ... requires protection," the official said. Agencies requesting continued redaction of certain documents will need to submit a report to the archivist by March 12, 2018, explaining why those documents meet that standard, the White House said.

Documents determined to not meet those standards will need to be released by April 26, 2018.

Trump"s decision to keep some documents secret is likely to keep conspiracy theories alive, fueling those who have long questioned official conclusions about the assassination and argued that the government has helped cover up the truth.

High-Ranking CIA Agent Blows Whistle On The Deep State And Shadow Government

Authored by Aaron Kesel via ActivistPost.com,

A CIA whistleblower, Kevin Shipp, has emerged from the wolves den to expose the deep state and the shadow government which he calls two entirely separate entities.

“The shadow government controls the deep state and manipulates our elected government behind the scenes,” Shipp warned in a recent talk at a Geoengineeringwatch.org conference.

Shipp had a series of slides explaining how the deep state and shadow government functions as well as the horrific crimes they are committing against U.S. citizens.

Some of the revelations the former CIA anti-terrorism counter intelligence officer revealed included that “Google Earth was set up through the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and InQtel.” Indeed he is correct, the CIA and NGA owned the company Google acquired, Keyhole Inc., paying an undisclosed sum for the company to turn its tech into what we now know as Google Earth. Another curious investor in Keyhole Inc. was none other than the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel run by the CIA according to a press release at the time.

Shipp also disclosed that the agency known as the Joint Special Ops Command (JSOC) is the “president’s secret army” which he can use for secret assassinations, overturning governments and things the American people don’t know about.

FBI warrantless searches violate the Fourth Amendment with national security letters, which Shipp noted enables them to walk into your employer’s office and demand all your financial records and if he or she says anything about them being there they can put your supervisor in jail or drop a case against themselves using the “State’s Secret Privilege law.”

“The top of the shadow government is the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency,” Shipp said.

Shipp expressed that the CIA was created through the Council on Foreign relations with no congressional approval, and historically the CFR is also tied into the mainstream media (MSM.) He elaborated that the CIA was the “central node” of the shadow government and controlled all of other 16 intelligence agencies despite the existence of the DNI. The agency also controls defense and intelligence contractors, can manipulate the president and political decisions, has the power to start wars, torture, initiate coups, and commit false flag attacks he said.

As Shipp stated, the CIA was created through executive order by then President Harry Truman by the signing of the National Security Act of 1947.

According to Shipp, the deep state is comprised of the military industrial complex, intelligence contractors, defense contractors, MIC lobbyist, Wall St (offshore accounts), Federal Reserve, IMF/World Bank, Treasury, Foreign lobbyists, and Central Banks.

In the shocking, explosive presentation, Shipp went on to express that there are “over 10,000 secret sites in the U.S.” that formed after 9/11. There are “1,291 secret government agencies, 1,931 large private corporations and over 4,800,000 Americans that he knows of who have a secrecy clearance, and 854,000 who have Top Secret clearance, explaining they signed their lives away bound by an agreement.

He also detailed how Congress is owned by the Military Industrial Complex through the Congressional Armed Services Committee (48 senior members of Congress) giving those members money in return for a vote on the spending bill for the military and intelligence budget.

He even touched on what he called the “secret intelligence industrial complex,” which he called the center of the shadow government including the CIA, NSA, NRO, and NGA.

Shipp further stated that around the “secret intelligence industrial complex” you have the big five conglomerate of intelligence contractors – Leidos Holdings, CSRA, CACI, SAIC, and Booz Allen Hamilton. He noted that the work they do is “top secret and unreported.”

The whistleblower remarked that these intelligence contractors are accountable to no one including Congress, echoing the words of Senator Daniel Inouye when he himself blew the whistle on the shadow government during the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987.

At the time Inouye expressed that the “shadow government had its own funding mechanism, shadowy Navy, and Air Force freedom to pursue its own goals free from all checks and balances and free from the law itself.”

Shipp further added that the shadow government and elected government were in the midst of a visible cold war.

So who is Shipp and is he credible as a whistleblower, does he have credentials for the CIA? Aim.org wrote:

Shipp held several high-level positions in the CIA. He was assigned as a protective agent for the Director of Central Intelligence, a counterintelligence investigator, a Counter Terrorism Center officer, a team leader protecting sensitive CIA assets from assassination, a manager of high-risk protective operations, a lead instructor for members of allied governments, an internal staff security investigator, and a polygraph examiner. He was tasked with protecting the CIA from foreign agent penetration and the chief of training for the CIA federal police force.  Mr. Shipp functioned as program manager for the Department of State, Diplomatic Security, and Anti Terrorism Assistance global police training program.  He is the recipient of two CIA Meritorious Unit Citations, three Exceptional Performance Awards and a Medallion for overseas covert operations.  He is the author of From the Company of Shadows–CIA Operations and the War on Terrorism.

Shipp noted he was working with former NSA whistleblower William Binney but didn’t state what the two were working on together. Shipp is highly credible and may just be the highest level whistleblower. This leak is huge. He has been previously mentioned in the New York Times for blowing the whistle on the mistreatment of him and his family when they were put in a mold-contaminated home. He is also mentioned in a WikiLeaks cable during the GiFiles that I was able to dig up. Is this the beginning of whistleblowers coming forward to end the shadow government and deep state? You can watch Shipp’s full explosive presentation below.

Bombshell Report Catches Pentagon Falsifying Paperwork For Weapons Transfers To Syrian Rebels

A new bombshell joint report issued by two international weapons monitoring groups Tuesday confirms that the Pentagon continues to ship record breaking amounts of weaponry into Syria and that the Department of Defense is scrubbing its own paper trail. On Tuesday the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) produced conclusive evidence that not only is the Pentagon currently involved in shipping up to $2.2 billion worth of weapons from a shady network of private dealers to allied partners in Syria - mostly old Soviet weaponry - but is actually manipulating paperwork such as end-user certificates, presumably in order to hide US involvement.

The OCCRP and BIRN published internal US defense procurement files after an extensive investigation which found that the Pentagon is running a massive weapons trafficking pipeline which originates in the Balkans and Caucuses, and ends in Syria and Iraq. The program is ostensibly part of the US train, equip, and assist campaign for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, a coalition of YPG/J and Arab FSA groups operating primarily in Syria"s east). The arms transfers are massive and the program looks to continue for years. According to Foreign Policy"s (FP) coverage of the report:

The Department of Defense has budgeted $584 million specifically for this Syrian operation for the financial years 2017 and 2018, and has earmarked another $900 million of spending on Soviet-style munitions between now and 2022. The total, $2.2 billion, likely understates the flow of weapons to Syrian rebels in the coming years.

But perhaps more shocking is the following admission that Pentagon suppliers have links with known criminal networks, also from FP:

According to the report, many of the weapons suppliers — primarily in Eastern Europe but also in the former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Ukraine — have both links to organized crime throughout Eastern Europe and spotty business records.

The sheer amount of material necessary for the Pentagon program — one ammunition factory announced it planned to hire 1,000 new employees in 2016 to help cope with the demand — has reportedly stretched suppliers to the limit, forcing the Defense Department to relax standards on the materials it’s willing to accept.

It is likely that the organized crime association is the reason why the Pentagon has sought to alter its records. In addition, the sheer volume of weaponry continuing to ship to the Syrian battlefield and other parts of the Middle East means inevitable proliferation among unsavory terror groups - a phenomenon which has already been exhaustively documented in connection with the now reportedly closed CIA program to topple the Syrian government. The associations and alliances among some of the Arab former FSA groups the DoD continues to support in the north and east remains fluid, which means means US-supplied weapons will continue to pass among groups with no accountability for where they end up.

One of the authors of the OCCRP/BIRN report, Ivan Angelovski, told Foreign Policy that, “The Pentagon is removing any evidence in their procurement records that weapons are actually going to the Syrian opposition." The report is based on internal US government memos which reveal that weapons shipment destination locations have been scrubbed from original documents. 

Falsified and altered Pentagon procurement documents (Click to enlarge):

Is an EUC (End User Certificate) still an EUC if it doesn"t include an end user?

Balkan Insight, which is hosting the original investigative report: "Seven US procurement documents were whitewashed to remove reference to "Syria" after reporters contacted the Pentagon to enquire about whether the exporting countries – Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia – had been informed of the destination."

The fact that Foreign Policy, which is the foremost establishment national security publication in the world, would admit that the Pentagon"s Syria weapons procurement program is tied to East European organized crime is itself hugely significant. At this point the evidence is simply so overwhelming that even establishment sources like FP - which itself has generally been pro-interventionist on Syria - can"t deny it.

FP further reports that the Pentagon program "appears to be turbocharging a shadowy world of Eastern European arms dealers." And adds further that, "the Pentagon is reportedly removing documentary evidence about just who will ultimately be using the weapons, potentially weakening one of the bulwarks of international protocols against illicit arms dealing."

Map/Infographic produced as part of the OCCRP/BIRN report, itself confirmed by Foreign Policy magazine. Notice the map denotes that prior CIA weapons went directly to Idlib province (northwest, section in green) and the Golan border region (south). Both of these areas were and continue to be occupied by al-Qaeda (in Idlib, AQ"s Hay"at Tahrir al-Sham). In Idlib specifically, analysts have confirmed genocidal cleansing of religious minorities conducted by AQ "rebels" directly assisted by CIA weapons.

Late last month we featured the story of Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, who was fired from her job after being interrogated by national intelligence officials for exposing the same Pentagon arms network which is the subject of the latest OCCRP/BIRN investigation. At the time, Al Jazeera was the only major international outlet which covered the story, which confirmed that Bulgarian agents interrogated Gaytandzhieva and "tried to find out her sources." An anonymous source had leaked a large trove of internal government files connected to the arms trafficking to the East European-based Trud Newspaper journalist, which was the basis of her reporting. The newest investigation released Tuesday appears to include some of the same documents, also confirmed by Gayandzhieva. 

Read the full OCCRP/BIRN investigation here.

Read Zero Hedge"s original coverage of the Pentagon"s Balkan arms pipeline here.

The American People Are The Number One Target: "They Are Tightening The Screws"

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.com,

A little more than a week ago it was announced that Whole Foods was bought by Amazon.com for just under $14 billion.  One of the major problems with this is that Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon has deep ties with the CIA and the Federal government.

Wal-Mart being fully in the government’s pocket and now Whole Foods brought under thumb as well, how much longer before Kissinger’s “Food as a Weapon” principle is brought to bear?  A good article was just released by Jon Rappaport entitled Buy your food from the CIA: Amazon buys Whole Foods, that is worth reading.

As if that connection is not nefarious enough, there is more: it appears a new cloud technology is being produced for the CIA from…you guessed it…none other than the CIA, as is excerpted here:

The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The Details About the CIA’s Deal with Amazon,” - www.theatlantic.com    6/17/17

Guess the data center that ran taxpayers billions that is in Utah is not enough, nor the fusion centers in every state.  Did you like “…a new era of cooperation and coordination…” between the friendly agencies?  And all to “avoid intelligence gaps,” just for your protection, right?

Wrong.

They are tightening the screws, little by little, while they refine all the control mechanisms and place that security web over their number one target: the American people. 

They are taking control of the food supply incrementally.  Water?  Yes, here in Montana, the state just sent out a form for property owners to declare their water rights…as the CKST (Confederated Kootenai &Salish Tribes) Water Compact was passed into law in Montana in 2014.  Actions will be taken within the next two years.

As enumerated in other articles, Montana kicked in $3 million after the liberals in the state House and Senate, as well as the liberal governor, Bullock (D, MT) signed the water compact into law.  The shortfall is $8 million, as the total state commitment was $11 million.  They are just waiting for the Senate to ratify this as a Federal treaty, and then they can (ostensibly on “behalf” of the Indian Tribes) place meters on everyone’s wells…off of the reservation…and “manage” the water on behalf of the Indian Tribes…enforced by DHS.

This is a small slice of the country as a whole.  They are following full speed ahead with the Agenda 21 Directive to take over everyone’s food, water, land…everything.  A war will surely enable them to throw the Executive Order 13603 into action to confiscate and control every resource in the United States, including human labor…slave labor, to be precise.  Incrementally they place these laws into effect, and the stultified public, thinking only of the next barbeque and fireworks party is dumbed down into inactivity.

There’s enough going on in the international arena that is capturing everyone’s attention, such as North Korea’s missile tests and threats, China’s aggressive South China Sea/Senkaku islands maneuvering, and the Syrian debacle unfolding with the U.S. ratcheting up the tough-talk of blaming Russia and Iran for any “Syrian chemical attack” that comes along.  Russia also just deployed a new satellite, and there is the possibility that in a televised broadcast, he sent out a message to “sleeper” agent in the West.  See the article by Stefan Stanford entitled Vladimir Putin sends message to ‘Russian Sleeper Agents’ in West as Russia Launches Top Secret Military Satellite.

“Hammer and Anvil” usually refers to a military maneuver to crush an enemy force between two friendly elements.  This maneuver is being employed here and now, as well: either crush the United States and enslave its people domestically, with an economic collapse or civil war, or just initiate a war with another country and enslave the citizenry afterward.  Either way, they are pushing their agenda forward each day.  It is just a matter of time to find out which of the two vehicles…international war or domestic tyranny…that they will employ to obtain their globalist and totalitarian objectives.

EXPOSED: CIA drug connection shows how they support USD and manipulate foreign markets

(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) – 6/26/2017 — Drugs have been a part of human society forever – however far back you go, humans have used drugs in one form or another; medicine, recreation, spirituality (Shamans of simple tribes often ate psychedelics).  In the world today there is an interesting schism between the puritan “America” and “Europe” about this issue – in Europe they consider drug addiction a health issue, and in places like Switzerland you can literally get strong narcotics like heroin from the Government.  In America it’s the opposite, there is an  exploding prison population for small non-violent offenses.  But as with many things in America there are lots of ironies and hypocrisies, America also has the highest per capita rate of users of legal pharmaceuticals ‘drugs’ – and is one of the only countries in the world where drug companies are allowed to advertise on TV (In Europe you won’t see commercials for Prozac, Viagra, or other questionably useful drugs).

As the CIA represents the main head of the octopus that controls America’s society on behalf of their Illuminati owners, it is only fitting that the CIA has its hand in the international drug trade.  It is also an interesting side note that since its early days the CIA has been interested in drugs for the use of interrogation, mind control, crowd control, and other purposes.  In fact there have been suggestions based on circumstantial evidence that the entire ‘hippie’ movement came straight out of a CIA drug lab vis a vis Tim Leary and other affiliated icons.

The inspiration of this article is the book and legend of Gary Webb, the book is Dark Alliance – a must read for any trader or investor.  Here’s a real blueprint how groups like the CIA manipulate markets.  While the story of Dark Alliance which was originally published in a small California regional newspaper the San Jose Mercury News.  The book is a great example of how to properly research a topic where its difficult to find information (in this case, because most of the CIA involvement was ‘secret’ and thus information was classified or destroyed, mostly).  In trading, information is also difficult to find – analysts can learn a great deal from reading this book and understanding how one investigative journalist broke open the biggest secret the CIA had in its closet of deep secrets:  The CIA was managing the international drug trade.  The book concludes with the impeccable logic of the agency and how they could be involved in such dastardly deeds.  When the topic was officially investigated it was discovered that the CIA had a secret legal agreement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) stating that through the CIAs business of spying, it was not their obligation to report illegal activities they witnessed to the DOJ (such as drug trafficking) as it may compromise their intelligence gathering.  And lo and behold, most of the CIAs international assets happened to be major drug kingpins like Manuel Noriega.  So based on this understanding, no employee of the CIA ever directly brought drugs into the USA, and likely never touched the operation directly.  It was CIAs job to provide logistic support, planes, pilots, operational instructions, airfields, needed gear, and most importantly – protection from prosecution in USA due to ‘national security.’  And there were side benefits to this operation.  They got to redirect funds from Central and South American cocaine to the fledgling contra revolution in Nicaragua which the US Congress didn’t want to continue funding.  They got to destroy the black community in South Central Los Angeles with the crack explosion (not only by health, but by using it as a tool to pass draconian laws).  They also could easily use the information on the drug trade to go after their enemies in Central America.  It seemed to be a win-win-win for USA.  And according to this secret agreement with DOJ it was all legal!

Before continuing, let’s un-muddy the waters about key points on this issue.  An investigation found that no CIA employee was found bringing illicit narcotics into USA.  That’s probably true.  In “Dark Alliance” there is no suggestion that the CIA itself was bringing drugs into the country.  The drug kingpins such as Norwin Meneses, Danilo Blandon, and others – were simply protected as ‘assets’ – the CIA not only looked the other way, they stopped other US Government investigators from uncovering anything substantial.  Several instances where the drug operations were discovered by DEA, FBI, and others – turned into a situation where they were instructed to cease the investigation and if they did not, the individual was targeted.

So how is all this connected to the markets?  The CIA is a fairly large organization, 20,000 employees working in the US and in practically every country in the world.  Their operations are vast, just to name a few not commonly known but public CIA operations, they are active angel and seed investors in Silicon Valley and have even created a budding DC based VC community that develops technology with primarily intelligence and military applications (such as face recognition).  The most absurd example of a CIA project was when they hired psychologist BF Skinner to train pigeons to aid in missile guidance systems:

One of the most seemingly preposterous military programs of all time occurred during WWII, when famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner was enlisted by the government to try and train pigeons for use in a missile guidance system. At the time, Skinner was known as one of the major practitioners of operant conditioning, a system that used reward and punishment as a means of controlling behavior. With these ideas in mind, Skinner placed a series of specially trained pigeons inside missiles. A camera on the front of the missile recorded its flight path, which was then projected on a screen for the pigeon to see. The birds were trained to recognize the missile’s intended target, and they would peck at the screen if it was drifting off course. This information was fed to the weapon’s flight controls, which would then be changed to reflect the new coordinates. Skinner was originally given $25,000 to get the project up and running, and he actually managed to make some minor progress with it. But government officials were never quite able to get past the obvious absurdity of the program, and it was eventually shut down.   .. and another one “Acoustic Kitty”

Most people wouldn’t think of the common house cat as being a potential master of espionage, but the CIA sure did. In the 1960s, American intelligence is said to have spent over $20 million on “Acoustic Kitty,” a top-secret project that used cats as recording devices. The project took a group of specially trained cats and surgically implanted microphones, antennae and batteries into their tails, and then set them loose near the Russian embassy. The idea was that an unassuming cat would be able to stride right up to groups of communist officials and listen in on their conversation, which it could then beam back to agents with its sophisticated radio equipment. The plan was eventually put into action, but the first cat sent into the field was supposedly run over by a taxi before it could make a recording, and operation ‘Acoustic Kitty” was abandoned shortly thereafter.

Why did we use this ridiculous example?  Because it is a known project, that the CIA was using Pigeons to guide missiles – it’s not so hard to believe they provided drug traffickers with the logistic and legal support needed to bring Cocaine into USA (and many other activities).  For more absurd CIA programs see this article.

But the primary role of the CIA, is that of intelligence gathering and analysis which puts them right in the middle of the information war – and the battlefield is the financial markets.  As we explain in our book Splitting Pennies Understanding Forex – the only thing that backs the US Dollar are bombs.  Basically, the US Military, and in this case the CIA primarily, protects the US Dollar globally.  If you look at any foreign CIA operation it’s all about one thing: money.  Cuba became an enemy only after the communist government nationalized US owned businesses there (effectively, seized).  You can literally overlay a global map of CIA activity which is negatively correlated with Coca Cola and McDonald’s sales (which are all denominated in US Dollars).  And by the way, that is the connection to the CIA and FX – wherever there’s a foreign market, there is the CIA.  They fight for market domination of the US Dollar (and the US corporations and culture that comes with it) no different than a major US corporation competes for market share.  But their ‘client’ is one single entity: The US Government (and US Citizens, but rich ones).  They are protecting capitalism at the front lines – fighting communism while making a few dollars along the way – what could be more American than that?  They use the same playbook as they’ve developed internally for most of their operations – thus, by understanding the Contra-Cocaine operation one can understand any operation.  They aren’t really so different.

Here’s a document that shows how the CIA has been supporting the US Dollar, regarding Gold markets (bear in mind, this document is dated 1970, one year before Nixon created the free floating FX regime we use today, which means the US Dollar was pegged to Gold).  CIA support of US Dollar and USD interests is implied; that’s at the core of what they do – it is their doctrine.  Intelligence gathering, is the tactical level and Communism, and other threats to the USD global hegemony are strategies.  And relatively speaking, they do a good job.  The USD has never been used so widely around the world, the US stock market has enjoyed a bull run never seen before in history.  All the crap in the news and investigations into their drug operations are really an irrelevant side issue – what the CIA was created for, they succeed.

Probably, let’s hope this is not the case, probably – there wasn’t a CIA plot to bring Cocaine into America and turn it into crack and flood the black community.  These were all convenient circumstances to achieve what they wanted operationally – fund a covert war and at the same time make a little money and use the issue to ruin their local enemies.  Central America has few natural resources to speak of without sophisticated mining and/or manufacturing operations to tap them; in other words, there isn’t any ‘oil’ to exploit, as in the middle east.  The one thing that is easy to grow and is more valuable than any other naturally growing substance, is Coca (when refined into Cocaine).  And as explained in the book, before it was realized that it could be turned into crack – Cocaine was the habit of the Elite themselves, due to price and the fact that you could literally continue working while you were high on the powder (such as Wall St. traders during the trading session).  So while it seems extreme, and the crack epidemic of Los Angeles is clearly a huge social problem – it isn’t really surprising that the CIA was involved in such profitable business.  Similar circumstantial evidence suggests that a similar operation was run in Afghanistan, a land where the Poppy plant grows wild.  George H.W. Bush’s CIA nickname was George “Poppy” Bush.  Like “Grandpappy” right?  In the book Gary Webb claims that Pablo Escobar had a photo of “Poppy” standing in front of a huge pile of cash and cocaine, but the photograph never surfaced and he was killed shortly after making this statement about the photograph (it may be another funny coincidence).

In conclusion – this book is a must read for any trader or investor: Dark Alliance.  Also it’s a must read for any lawyer – as this is a unique situation where you have a hidden hand protecting defendants in Federal cases with ‘national security’ – silencing witnesses (with gag orders) and other mechanisms not common in district courts.

To get a full picture of how the financial world REALLY works, check out Splitting Pennies.

Trump's Bombing of Syria: Continuation of a Policy Which Started Only 3 Years After Syria Became an Independent Nation

The CIA backed a right-wing coup in Syria in 1949, a mere 3 years after Syria became an independent country.

Clark University History professor Douglas Little notes:

Recently declassified records… confirm that beginning on November 30, 1948, [CIA operative Stephen] Meade met secretly with Colonel Zaim at least six times to discuss the “possibility [of an] army supported dictatorship.” [“Cold War and Covert Action: The United States and Syria, 1945-1958,” Middle East Journal, Winter 1990, p. 55]

***

As early as 1949, this newly independent Arab republic was an important staging ground for the CIA’s earliest experiments in covert action.

The CIA secretly encouraged a right-wing military coup in 1949.

The reason the U.S. initiated the coup? Little explains:

In late 1945, the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) announced plans to construct the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line (TAPLINE) from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterra- nean. With U.S. help, ARAMCO secured rights-of-way from Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Syrian right-of-way was stalled in parliament.

In other words, Syria was the sole holdout for the lucrative oil pipeline.

(Indeed, the CIA has carried out this type of covert action right from the start.)

In 1957, the American president and British prime minister agreed to launch regime change again in Syria. Historian Little notes that the coup plot was discovered and stopped:

On August 12, 1957, the Syrian army surrounded the U.S. embassy in Damascus. Claiming to have aborted a CIA plot to overthrow neutralist President Shukri Quwatly and install a pro-Western regime, Syrian chief of counterintelligence Abdul Hamid Sarraj expelled three U.S. diplomats ….

Syrian counterintelligence chief Sarraj reacted swiftly on August 12, expelling Stone and other CIA agents, arresting their accomplices and placing the U.S. embassy under surveillance.

***

More importantly, Syria also had control of one of the main oil arteries of the Middle East, the pipeline which connected pro-western Iraq’s oilfields to Turkey.

***

The report said that once the necessary degree of fear had been created, frontier incidents and border clashes would be staged to provide a pretext for Iraqi and Jordanian military intervention. Syria had to be “made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments,” the report says. “CIA and SIS should use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

***

The plan called for funding of a “Free Syria Committee” [hmmm … sounds vaguely familiar], and the arming of “political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” within Syria. The CIA and MI6 would instigate internal uprisings, for instance by the Druze [a Shia Muslim sect] in the south, help to free political prisoners held in the Mezze prison, and stir up the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus.

Newly-declassified CIA documents show that in 1983, the CIA drew up plans to pressure the Syrian government by using Iraq, Israel and Turkey as proxies:

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf -- through closure of Iraq"s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. Iraq, perceived to be increasingly desperate in the Gulf War, would undertake limited military (air) operations against Syria with the sole goal of opening the pipeline. Although opening war on a second front against Syria poses considerable risk to Iraq, Syria would also face a two-front war since it is already heavily engaged in the Bekaa, on the Golan and in maintaining control over a hostile and restive population inside Syria.

Israel would simultaneously raise tensions along Syria"s Lebanon front without actually going to war. Turkey, angered by Syrian support to Armenian terrorism, to Iraqi Kurds on Turkey"s Kurdish border areas and to Turkish terrorists operating out of northern Syria, has often considered launching  unilateral military operations against terrorist camps in northern Syria. Virtually all Arab states would have sympathy for Iraq.

Faced with three belligerent fronts, Assad would probably be forced to abandon his policy of closure of the pipeline. Such a concession would relieve the economic pressure on Iraq, and perhaps force Iran to reconsider  bringing the war to an end. It would be a sharp blow to Syria"s prestige and  could effect the equation of forces in Lebanon.

***

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further.

Recently-declassified CIA documents show that in 1986, the CIA drew up plans to overthrow Syria by provoking sectarian tensions.

Neoconservatives planned regime change in Syria once again in 1991 and again in 2001.

And as Nafeez Ahmed notes:

According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business,” he told French television: “I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.”

Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials, confirmed that as of 2011, US and UK special forces training of Syrian opposition forces was well underway. The goal was to elicit the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”

Indeed.

A leaked communication shows that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2012:

The best way to help Israel deal with Iran"s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.

***

What Israeli military leaders really worry about -- but cannot talk about -- is losing their nuclear monopoly.

And high-level American and Turkish officials say that Turkey supplied Sarin gas to Syrian rebels in 2013 in order to frame the Syrian government ... to provide an excuse for regime change.

Indeed, the U.S. has carried out regime change in the Middle East and North Africa for six decades.

More Dangerous Than The NSA? The Massive Spy Agency You Haven't Heard Of

Authored by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org,

If you’re one of the countless Americans who was distraught to learn of the revelations made by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, the mere idea that there might be yet another agency out there - perhaps just as powerful and much more intrusive -  should give you goosebumps.

Foreign Policy reports that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA, is an obscure spy agency former President Barack Obama had a hard time wrapping his mind around back in 2009. But as the president grew fond of drone warfare, finding a way to launch wars without having to go through Congress for the proper authorization, the NGA also became more relevant. Now, President Donald Trump is expected to further explore the multibillion-dollar surveillance network.

Like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), the NGA is an intelligence agency, but it also serves as a combat support institution that functions under the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

With headquarters bigger than the CIA’s, the building cost $1.4 billion to be completed in 2011. In 2016, the NGA bought an extra 99 acres in St. Louis, building additional structures that cost taxpayers an extra $1.75 billion.

Enjoying the extra budget Obama threw at them, the NGA became one of the most obscure intelligence agencies precisely because it relies on the work of drones.

As a body of government that has only one task — to analyze images and videos captured by drones in the Middle East — the NGA is mighty powerful. So why haven’t we heard of it before?

The Shadow Agency That Sees It All

Prior to Trump’s inauguration, the NGA only targeted the Middle East or whatever spy satellites orbiting the globe captured. As far as most of us knew, the agency refrained from pointing its ultra-high-resolution cameras toward the United States. That alone may be why the NGA has been able to stay out of scandals for the most part.

But under Trump, things may look much worse — as if spying on countless people abroad weren’t enough.

Recently, for instance, he gave the CIA the power to wage covert drone warfare, shielding important information on such operations simply by allowing the agency to carry out missions without first seeking authorization from the Pentagon.

Now, Trump might as well move on to NGA, hoping to boost “national security” by turning the agency’s all seeing eyes toward American soil.

As the president hopes to get more money for defense, many have speculated whether he will start to use drones at home, especially since he has already suggested he supports agencies like the NSA based on his desire to target “terrorists.” There’s nothing that implies he wants to slow down the surveillance state.  The White House has expressed its desire to renew Obama-era spying powers — even as the president battles critics who deny his claims that his conversations were intercepted at the same time foreign nationals were under surveillance in 2016.

A partially redacted March 2016 report released by the Pentagon revealed that drones had already been used domestically on about 20 or fewer occasions between 2006 and 2015. Though some of these operations mostly involved natural disasters, National Guard training, and search and rescue missions, quotes from an Air Force law review article found their way into the report. In it, Dawn M. K. Zoldi wrote that technology designed to spy on targets abroad could soon be used against American citizens.

“As the nation winds down these wars,” the report explains, and ”assets become available to support other combatant command (COCOM) or U.S. agencies, the appetite to use them in the domestic environment to collect airborne imagery continues to grow.”

Up until 2015, oversight was so loose that the capabilities provided by the DOD’s unmanned aircraft system weren’t under scrutiny by any other agency. Without statutes that specify the rules such federal government agencies should follow, watchdogs find it hard to keep track. But would it be any better if there were an agency or a branch of the same government overseeing what the government itself is doing?

The short answer is no.

NGA Has A Precedent, And Trump May Want To Explore It

As fears grow that Trump will revamp the NGA, domestic stories of police departments using drones to spy on locals are also resurfacing.

Some of the most highly publicized instances involved Baltimore and Compton, where police departments deployed aerial surveillance technology without issuing a warrant or seeking authorization from local or state lawmakers.

With a precedent already set, the president might as well ignite a new fight in his continued efforts to fight a war against an imaginary, impossible-to-target enemy. After all, he’s not a stranger to scandals and likely wouldn’t feel overwhelmed one bit if he decided to turn the country’s ultra-high definition cameras toward its citizens.

What could help to put an end to his plans might be exactly what helped halt President George W. Bush’s attempts at setting up spy satellites domestically. In 2007, Bush’s Department of Homeland Security set up an agency known as the National Applications Office with the goal of establishing direct spy satellite stakeouts in America. Thankfully, Congress stepped in and cut off the agency’s funding.

But with Americans seldom showing any interest for important violations of privacy or even basic human rights here and abroad, it’s easy to see how this massive spying agency could end up getting a carte blanche to do whatever it wants once Trump realizes he has the power to order it done. After all, who will pressure Congress to stop him?

What The New CIA Leaks Tell Us About The US Government

Authored by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org,

“The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.” – Murray Rothbard

WikiLeaks may have finally done what many small and anti-government advocates have only dreamed of. They exposed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for what it is: a bloated government bureaucracy that has grown much too large to be restrained.

According to the document dump released by Julian Assange’s whistleblower hub, this list of highly confidential information regarding the CIA emerged from the agency’s Center For Cyber Intelligence in Langley, revealing details on the agency’s “global covert hacking program.”

The CIA’s hacking effort has been so powerful and effective, the leaks show, that it includes the weaponization of exploits used against products such as the iPhone, Android phones, Samsung TVs, and Microsoft Windows. This means any of these devices can be used as spying mechanisms at any given time.

But perhaps most troubling is the revelation that the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal over time. That includes viruses, malware, trojans, malware remote control systems, and the previously mentioned weaponized exploits. In so many words, this means the U.S. government has handed over the key to the most intimate secrets of every single one of us to anyone with access to these lost tools. By allowing the CIA to grow so absolutely powerful, we also allowed the agency to be absolutely careless with our own lives.

What have we learned from this? That regardless of how detached we may seem from politics, its influence and power grows as we refrain from restricting it — even if most of those involved aren’t quite aware of the mechanisms that allow for this expansion.

As Austrian economist Murray Rothbard wrote in his pivotal essay, “Anatomy of the State,” the government is entirely wired to be “that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area.” This is not because there’s a conspiracy to ensure every subject lives solely to serve the state, but because government has no moral legitimacy.

In other words, government is only powerful because we, the individuals, have allowed it to have sole guardianship over our property — including self-ownership — and freedoms.

Once government has total control over every basic aspect of our lives, those within government see no boundaries. Why? Because the burden of self-censorship or even personal responsibility doesn’t lie with the individual any longer. Once the government employee crosses over, stepping into a world where he’s protected by an invisible authority, he is no longer a person who is led by the same morals that guided him before he assumed this position — he’s now a bureaucrat. And as such, he now knows he will no longer have to be accountable for his actions.

What does that have to do with the latest revelations on the CIA? When a lack of personal responsibility meets the always ravaging needs of the monopolistic State, the individual loses any sovereignty he has over his own life. The government worker becomes a thirsty member of the State, always looking for ways to undermine freedom while the so-called private individual becomes just another government enabler under its control.

The CIA has been careless with the tools it uses to spy on all of us, and whether or not we are guilty of committing crimes, it is clear that it has been equally careless with what it’s extracted from us over the years. This invites abuse from inside, which is what we saw happening within the National Security Agency (NSA) after Edward Snowden revealed the massive spying program sweeping our personal data (while also giving malicious elements outside of the CIA the same access to our personal communications).

We only have ourselves to blame for how out of control the CIA has become, and that’s because we have forgotten — or perhaps never known — that the government’s monopoly over our lives is granted, not warranted. Will the CIA leaks be the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Somehow, I highly doubt it.

When Spies Are Out Of Control

Authored by Gregory Clark via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The U.S. spy community - those nice people who told us they were certain the Iraq of President Saddam Hussein was holding weapons of mass destruction - have now made it known they are certain the Russian ambassador to the United States is Moscow’s top spy. But these people, even if they do not know much about WMD, must know what a top spy does. They do it themselves.

First, there is the messy and time-consuming job of finding information-loaded officials. Then there is the problem of maintaining contacts with those officials at secret rendezvous. So a senior ambassador, and former deputy Russian foreign minister, is able to do all this while going to cocktail parties, hobnobbing with the national elite, running a large embassy and studying the politics of the nation to which he is accredited?

I suggest U.S. top spies go back to doing their real work instead of inventing fairy tales.

I have seen the spies at work, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

On the Soviet side they were not a very attractive breed. Their idea of a hard day’s work was constant snooping on the few Russian-speaking foreigners in their midst and relentless interrogation of any Soviet citizen who spoke to a foreigner, together with the occasional attempt at blackmail or compromise.

In the process they created a generation of Western policymakers deeply prejudiced against their people and their nation. Not a bad result for their decades of hard work, especially since the Western hostility they helped generate guaranteed their continued employment till well into the future.

Almost all their successes were “walk-ins”— people who for money or ideology wanted to provide information. Those volunteers would probably have provided more if they were not disgusted by the crudity of the people they had to deal with.

Spies sent to work abroad were usually of better quality. But they always had cover, as private citizens or mid-rank embassy officials at best.

Much the same in reverse was going in the West. To some extent it is still going on. In Japan the spies are almost out of control. Even though Russia has granted Japanese diplomats there the freedoms now enjoyed by Western diplomats in Russia, the Japanese spies continue to behave as in Soviet days. Like dogs chasing a bone (according to one victim), they are so crudely persistent and obtrusive that even ordinary diplomatic work becomes impossible. And these “dogs”think this will help them get their Northern Territories back?

I once played host to a prominent Western critic of U.S. Vietnam War policies. Thuggish Japanese spies camped outside my apartment for days.

These people are not the suave, romantic James Bonds of film fantasy. For the most part they are what we used to call “second elevens”— a cricket analogy for people rejected for the top team. Failing to enter the diplomatic service they make do by joining a spy network. One result is a burning desire to get ahead by undercutting the “first eleven”diplomats and by using largely bogus information to get close to the people in power. Hence the WMD information failure and the Iraq disaster, opposed by most Western diplomats with Middle East experience.

When U.S. President Donald Trump visited the CIA headquarters in Washington he was upbraided for failing to respect a “sacred” memorial wall devoted to the 90-odd CIA officers who have died while on duty. Maybe he was looking for the wall devoted to the 900,000 or so Iraqis who died as a result of CIA failures. Even Trump had the sense to turn against that dreadful war.

I once worked for two years as a diplomat in the Soviet Union. On return to Australia I went through the usual spy-agency debriefing, partly because I had reported some KGB stunts against our embassy there. Suddenly the debriefer jumped to his feet waving a report which I had written saying that the Odessa hotel where I was staying was close to the local KGB headquarters. Leaning ominously over the table he demanded to know how I knew the KGB location. I had to educate this stalwart and grossly overpaid defender of Australian security that in Soviet Union the KGB was a public organization with a large brass plate on its buildings reading Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or Committee for Government Security.

Later, because I also spoke Chinese and had also opposed the Vietnam War, I was subjected to one of their stunts (our usual term for spy operations) to persuade me that a Soviet Embassy official wanted to meet me urgently. They made a bad mistake; the telephone operative they had employed spoke pre-revolutionary Russian (Australia has many White Russians, mostly people fleeing to China following the Russian Revolution). There was no way he could have been working for the Soviet Embassy. It seems that little detail passed completely over the heads of our Australian security interest defenders — the people who decide whether we can be trusted with secrets. Nor were they very happy when I was able publicly to expose the stunt.

The current anti-Russian hysteria in the U.S. media is fueled by similar ignorance. Various Trump officials and appointees are being persecuted relentlessly by leaks accusing them of talking to the Russian ambassador. But anyone who knows anything about diplomacy knows that such informal talks can be crucial to policymaking.

I admit to having joined secret talks with the premier and foreign minister of the Soviet Union in a fat-headed 1964 Australian attempt to have the Soviet Union join with the West in Vietnam to stop Chinese “aggression.” Because there were laws against revealing state secrets I sat on that important story for more than 20 years.

Today when the West is bent on equally fat-headed efforts to stop alleged Russian “aggression”(read the 2015 Minsk Two agreement if you want to know who really is the aggressor), talks with Moscow’s ambassador really are needed. And the spies who want to leak that information to embarrass their own government really should go to jail.

*  *  *

Gregory Clark served as first secretary at the Australian Embassy in Moscow, from 1963 to 1965.

Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich Warns Congress that CIA Wiretaps Are Real and It Happened to Him

Restive cerements of the left have given pard-like support for the CIA  -- believing the motives of the heralded agency to be only just and honorable, in  spite of all of the evidence suggesting otherwise. Hysterically, it was the left who"ve always been reticent about the motives of the CIA. According to a poll done by the WSJ/NBC, support for the CIA is soaring in recent months, alongside cognitive dissonance -- due to ephemeral dreams of deep state coups being plotted against the Trump regime.

Enter former liberal Congressman from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich (D) -- disclosing the fact that he was wiretapped in 2011 and only learned about it after the Washington Times let him listen to the surveillance tape. Let that sink in for a moment.

He went on to warn Congress that this is happening and they shouldn"t dismiss the notion that candidate Trump was being spied on, illegally or unethically, just because of their unwavering and irrational fealty to the vainglorious efforts of the CIA, the venerable nostrum for all of their sorrows and long lost dreams of a utopia --  dashed and cracked asunder by a populist movement blowing the hot coals of discord.

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

The Conflict Within The Deep State Just Broke Into Open Warfare

Via Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The battle raging in the Deep State isn"t just a bureaucratic battle - it"s a war for the soul, identity and direction of the nation.

When do the unlimited powers of the Intelligence/Security agencies threaten America"s domestic and global national interests? The CIA and its political enablers claim the agency"s essentially unlimited powers, partially revealed by Wikileak"s Vault 7, pose no threat to America"s interests, since they are intended to "defend" American interests.

This is the rationale presented by neocon CIA allies in both political parties: the CIA can"t possibly threaten America"s interests because the CIA defines America"s interests.

This is the wormhole down which civil liberties and democracy have drained. It is an extraordinarily defining moment in American history when the director of the FBI publicly declares that there is no such thing as "absolute privacy" in the U.S.

In effect, privacy is now contingent on the level of interest the Security State has in the private conversation/data. If we read the U.S. Constitution, we do not find such contingencies: civil liberties are absolute. Post-1790 presidents have temporarily mooted civil liberties in time of war, and the CIA-led camp of the Deep State has justified its unlimited powers by effectively declared "a state of war is now permanent and enduring."

So what"s left to defend if America has become the enemy of civil liberties and democracy, i.e. become a totalitarian state ruled by Security Services and their political henchmen and apologists?

I have long suggested that the tectonic plates of the Deep State are shifting as the ruling consensus has eroded. Some elements of the Deep State--what I call the progressive wing, which is (ironically to some) anchored in the military services-- now view the neocon-CIA (Security State)-Wall Street elements as profoundly dangerous to America"s long-term interests, both domestically and globally.

Is the Deep State Fracturing into Disunity? (March 14, 2014)

I have suggested that this "rogue Deep State" quietly aided Donald Trump (by subtly undermining Hillary Clinton"s campaign) as the last best chance to save the nation from the neocon"s over-reach that the Establishment"s Wall Street-funded leadership (Bush, Clinton, Obama, et al.) has overseen--including granting the CIA and its allies virtually unlimited powers unhindered by any effective oversight.

Does a Rogue Deep State Have Trump"s Back? (January 18, 2017)

This profound split in the Deep State has now broken into open warfare. The first salvo was the absurd propaganda campaign led by Establishment mouthpieces The New York Times and The Washington Post claiming Russian agents had "hacked" the U.S. election to favor Trump.

This fact-free propaganda campaign failed--having no evidence didn"t work quite as well as the NYT and Wapo expected-- and so the propaganda machine launched the second salvo, accusing Trump of being a Russian patsy.

The evidence for this claim was equally laughable, and that campaign has only made the Establishment, its propaganda mouthpieces and the neocon Deep State look desperate and foolish on the global and domestic stages.

The desperate neocon Deep State and its Democratic Party allies went to absurd lengths to undermine Trump via the "Boris ad Natasha" strategy of accusing Trump of collaborating with the Evil Russkies, even going so far as to briefly exhume former President G.W. Bush from deep-freeze to make a fool of himself, saying the Trump-Evil Russkies connection should be "investigated."

Now the rogue elements have launched a counterstrike--Vault 7. Here is one example of how quickly the CIA"s over-reach has been absorbed by the body politic:

I highly recommend reading Wikileak"s summary of Vault 7: Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed.

We now know that the CIA maintained a special program (UMBRAGE) to mimic Russia-based hackers and create false trails back to fictitious "Russian hackers." A number of highly experienced analysts who reviewed the supposed "Russian hacks" had suggested the "evidence" smelled of false trails-- not just bread crumbs, but bread crumbs heavy-handedly stenciled "this is Russian malware."

The body count from Vault 7 has not yet been tallied, but it wouldn"t surprise me if former President Obama and his team eventually end up as political casualties. Non-partisan observers are noting all this over-reach occurred on Obama"s watch, and it hasn"t gone unnoticed that one of Obama"s last executive orders stripped away the last shreds of oversight of what could be "shared" (or invented) between the Security Agencies.

Indeed, the entire leadership of the Democratic Party seems to have placed all their chips on the increasingly unviable claim that the CIA is the squeaky clean defender of America.

Vault 7 is not just political theater--it highlights the core questions facing the nation: what is left to defend if civil liberties and democratically elected oversight have been reduced to Potemkin-village travesties?

If there are no limits on CIA powers and surveillance, then what is left of civil liberties and democracy? Answer: nothing.

The battle raging in the Deep State isn"t just a bureaucratic battle--it"s a war for the soul, identity and direction of the nation. Citizens who define America"s interests as civil liberties and democracy should be deeply troubled by the Establishment"s surrender of these in favor of a National Security State with essentially no limits.

Americans tasked with defending America"s "interests" globally should be asking if a CIA/NSA et al. with unlimited power is detrimental to America"s soft and hard power globally, and toxic to its influence.

The answer is obvious: a CIA with unlimited power and the backing of a corrupt Establishment and media is more than detrimental to America"s soft and hard power globally--it is disastrous and potentially fatal to America"s interests, standing and influence.

Those of us on the sidelines can only hope that the progressive wing of the Deep State, the rogue elements who see the terrible danger of an unlimited National Security State, will succeed in undermining the powerful political support for this toxic totalitarian regime.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join Charles in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print). For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

CIA's Creator Came to Regret It ... Said the CIA Was a "Government All Its Own" Which Was Destroying Democracy

President Truman created the CIA.

He explained that it was solely an attempt to consolidate intelligence from many different intelligence agencies (page 285):

I needed … the President needed at that time a central organization that would bring all the various intelligence reports we were getting in those days, and there must have been a dozen of them, maybe more, bring them all into one organization so that the President would get one report on what was going on in various parts of the world. Now that made sense, and that"s why I went ahead and set up what they called the Central Intelligence Agency.

But in the 1970s, he told his biographer, Merle Miller (page 285):

I think [creation of the CIA] was a mistake. And if I"d know what was going to happen, I never would have done it.

***

Why, they"ve got an organization over there in Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many ways. And I think I"ve told you, one Pentagon is one too many.

Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don"t just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there"s nobody to keep track of what they"re up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they"ll have something to report on. They"ve become ... it"s become a government all of its own and all secret. They don"t have to account to anybody.

That"s a very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it"s got to be put a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You see, the way a free government works, there"s got to be a housecleaning every now and again, and I don"t care what branch of the government is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things.

And when you can"t do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn secret, why, then we"re on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn"t have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don"t mix. And if what happened at the Bay of Pigs doesn"t prove that, I don"t know what does. You have got to keep an eye on the military at all times, and it doesn"t matter whether it"s the birds in the Pentagon or the birds in the CIA.

Similarly, President Kennedy said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds”.  But he was assassinated a month later.

Hat tip to Jeff Deist.

German Intelligence Clears Russia Of Election Interference

Submitted by Ray McGovern via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

After a multi-month, politically charged investigation, German intelligence agencies could find no good evidence of Moscow-directed cyber-attacks or a disinformation campaign aimed at subverting the democratic process in Germany. Undaunted, Chancellor Angela Merkel has commissioned a new investigation.

President Barack Obama talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G7 Summit at Schloss Elmau in Bavaria, Germany, June 8, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Last year, Berlin’s two main intelligence agencies, the BND and BfV (counterparts of the CIA and FBI) launched a joint investigation to substantiate allegations that Russia was meddling in German political affairs and attempting to shape the outcome of Germany’s elections next September.

Like the vast majority of Americans malnourished on “mainstream media,” most Germans have been led to believe that, by hacking and “propaganda,” the Kremlin interfered in the recent U.S. election and helped Donald Trump become president.

German intelligence agencies rarely bite the hand that feeds them and realize that the most bountiful part of the trough is at the CIA station in Berlin with ultimate guidance coming from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. But this time, in an unusual departure from past practice, analysts at the BND and BfV decided to act like responsible adults.

Whereas former CIA Director John Brennan prevailed on his analysts to resort to anemic, evidence-light reasoning “assessing” that Russia tried to tip the U.S. election to Donald Trump, Berlin’s intelligence agencies found the evidence lacking and have now completed their investigation.

Better still, the conclusions have been reported in a mainstream German newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, apparently because a patriotic insider thought the German people should also know.

Lemmings No Longer?

If BND President Bruno Kahl thought that his own analysts could be depended upon to follow their American counterparts lemming-like and find evidence – Curveball-style – to support the U.S. allegations, he now has had a rude awakening.

CIA Director John Brennan at a White House meeting during his time as President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser

When the joint investigation was under way with his analysts doing their best to come up with reliable evidence of Russian perfidy, Kahl had behaved like his BND predecessors, parroting the charges made by his CIA counterpart, that the Russians were fomenting uncertainty and instability in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

In a rare interview with the mainstream newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, on Nov. 28, 2016, Kahl went out on what he probably thought was a safe limb, denouncing subversive “interference” by the Russians (“as they did in the U.S.”). He was just a few months into his job and may have been naïve enough to consider what John Brennan said as gospel truth. (If he really is that gullible, Kahl is in the wrong profession.)

In the interview, Kahl played the puppet-doll Charlie McCarthy with Brennan in the role of Charlie’s ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Kahl told the Sueddeutsche that he agreed with the U.S. intelligence “assessment” that the Kremlin was behind the cyber attacks aimed at influencing the U.S. election.

He added: “We know that cyber attacks are taking place and that they have no purpose other than to produce political instability. … Not only that. The perpetrators are interested in delegitimizing the democratic process itself. … I have the impression that the outcome of the American election has evoked no sadness in Russia so far. …

“Europe is [now] the focus of these disruption experiments, and Germany especially… The pressure on the public discourse and on democracy is unacceptable.” Sound familiar?

Still, one might excuse the novice BND president for assuming his analysts would remember which side their bread is buttered on and follow past precedent in coming up with conclusions known to be desired by their masters in Berlin and the CIA.

So it must have come as an unwelcome surprise to Kahl when he found out that, this time, BND analysts would stand on principle and refuse to be as malleable as their Washington counterparts. His analysts could find no proof that the Kremlin was working hard to undermine the democratic process in Germany, and said so.

Worse still from the U.S. point of view, the two German intelligence agencies resisted the usual pressure from some senior leaders in Berlin (perhaps including Kahl himself) to jam whatever innocuous information they could find into the anti-Russian mosaic that Washington was constructing, a kind of Cubist version of distorted reality.

And So, a Do-Over

So, what do powerful officials do when the bureaucracy comes up with “incorrect” conclusions? They send the analysts and investigators back to work until they come up with “correct” answers. This turned out to be no exception. Absent evidence of hacking directed by the Kremlin, the Germans now have opted for an approach by which information can be fudged more easily.

CIA seal in lobby of the spy agency’s headquarters. (U.S. government photo)

According to the Sueddeutsche, “Chancellor Merkel’s office has now ordered a new inquiry. Notably, a ‘psychological operations group’ jointly run by the BND and BfV will specifically look at Russian news agencies’ coverage in Germany.” We can expect that any articles that don’t portray Vladimir Putin in a devil’s costume will be judged “Russian propaganda.”

For guidance, Merkel may well give the new “investigators” a copy of the evidence-free CIA/FBI/NSA “Assessment: Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election.” Released on Jan. 6, the report was an eyesore and embarrassment to serious intelligence professionals. The lame “evidence” presented, together with all the “assessing” indulged in by U.S. analysts, was unable to fill five pages; filler was needed – preferably filler that could be made to look like analysis.

And so, seven more pages were tacked onto the CIA/FBI/NSA Assessment, even though the information presented in them had nothing to do with the cause celebre of Russian hacking. No problem: The additional seven pages bore the ominous title: “Annex A: Russia – Kremlin’s TV Seeks To Influence Politics, Fuel Discontent in US.”

The extra pages, in turn, were then used to support the following indictment: “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.”

Did an Insider Leak?

It is not clear how the German daily Sueddeutsche acquired the conclusions of the joint investigation or even whether it has the full 50-page copy of the final report. The newspaper did make it clear, though, that it now realizes it was played by Kahl with his unsupported accusations last November.

Russian President Vladimir Putin answering questions from Russian citizens at his annual Q&A event on April 14, 2016. (Russian government photo)

From what the newspaper was told, the analysts seemed willing to give the boss what he had already declared to be his desired conclusion, but the evidence simply wasn’t there. The article quotes one security expert saying, “We would have been happy to give Russia a yellow card,” a soccer metaphor referring to improper conduct. A cabinet source lamented, “We found no smoking gun.”

Initially, the BND and BfV planned to release excerpts of their still classified inquiry, the Sueddeutsche reported, but it’s now not clear when, if ever, the full report will be released.

The day after the Sueddeutsche story appeared, some other media outlets reported on it – briefly. Newsweek and Politico gave the scoop all of three sentences each. Not fitting with the preferred “Russia-is-guilty-of-everything” narrative, it then died a quick death. I have been unable to find the story mentioned at all in major U.S. “mainstream media” outlets.

If Americans became aware of the story, it was probably via RT – the bête noire of the abovementioned CIA/FBI/NSA report condemning Russian “propaganda.” Can it become any clearer why RT America and RT International are despised by the U.S. government and the “mainstream media?” Many Americans are slowly realizing they cannot count on American network and cable TV for accurate news and are tuning in to RT at least for the other side of these important stories.

*  *  *

It was from a early morning call from RT International that we first learned of the Feb. 7 Sueddeutsche Zeitung report on Germany’s failed hunt for evidence of Russian electoral interference.