Sunday, November 06, 2011

The Israeli-Occupied Hearing on Alleged Iranian FBI inspired Terror, via a botched attempt to hire a Mossad-trained Mexican drug cartel thug...

The Israeli-Occupied Hearing on Alleged Iranian FBI inspired Terror, via a botched attempt to hire a Mossad-trained Mexican drug cartel thug..., it doesn't get any better than that....


By Maidhc Ó Cathail

In the wake of the much-heralded FBI sting that supposedly foiled a dastardly plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard elite Qods Force – involving a bumbling, failed used-car salesman’s botched attempt to hire a reportedly Mossad-trained Mexican drug cartel – to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a crowded but fictitious Washington D.C. restaurant, a duly alarmed U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security convened an urgent hearing on “Iranian Terror Operations on American Soil.” As evidence of Tehran’s supposed threat to the Homeland, the Committee heard testimony from “expert witnesses” who could best be described as propagandists for Israel. Commenting on the partisan line-up, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations remarked, “If it wasn’t so serious, it would be satire.”

Among the five witnesses, two were from “conservative” think tanks closely aligned with the Israel lobby, while a third represented a supposedly more “progressive” pro-Israeli position. The first think-tanker to speak was Reuel Marc Gerecht, who cited his authority on the subject to explain away the Hollywood B-movie nature of the ludicrous murder-for-hire plot. “I might make a slight digression and just say all intelligence services aren’t as good as you think they are. And the Iranians are no exception. They make a lot of mistakes,” claimed the former Middle East specialist in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. “So do not, for a moment, buy the argument from those who said it cannot be because this is too sloppy. This is the nature of the game. This is how it is done.” Gerecht, currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, went on to advocate an escalation of “the war and terror” [sic] against a supposedly emboldened Iran. “If they think they can get away with it, they will push forward, and they did get away with it,” he asserted. “Now, the only way that I would argue that you are going to stop that type of mentality and attitude is that you have to convince them that you will escalate. You don’t want to run away from that word, you want to run towards it.” In a July 19 report on the funding of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Eli Clifton observed that “its hawkish stance against Iran … is consistent with its donors’ interests in ‘pro-Israel’ advocacy.”

Next up was Dr. Matthew Levitt. “It is too early to tell what the consequences of Iran’s assassination plot may be,” he told the hearing, “but there should be no doubt the plot lays bare the myth that sufficient carrots – from offers of dialogue to requests for an emergency hotline to reduce naval tensions in the Gulf – can induce the regime in Tehran to abandon its support for terrorism, part with its nuclear weapons program, or respect human rights.” Instead, Dr. Levitt recommended applying the sticks of diplomatic pressure, pressing regional bodies to expel Iranian diplomats, building an international consensus against Tehran, military pressure, customs controls, financial pressure, and coordination with European and other allies “to allay their fears over the possible unintended consequences” of the latter. Levitt is the director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism & Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank created by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to “do AIPAC’s work but appear independent.”

In his testimony, Dr. Lawrence J. Korb counselled against military action, recommending instead that “[t]he Obama administration should use the Iranian plot to convince our allies to recommit themselves to enforcing the current sanctions on Iran.” Concluding by saying that “Iranian aggression toward the United States cannot be tolerated,” the Center for American Progress senior fellow advised the hearing that “it is important that the U.S. response to the Iranian plot furthers our long-term goals: deterring Iranian aggression and protecting U.S. national security.” Dr. Korb’s stated concern for American national security, however, has to be weighed against the two decades the former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration has devoted to working for the release of Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli agent who “did more damage to the United States than any spy in history.”

Sandwiching the testimony by the three think tank fellows were two former U.S. military officers known to be supportive of the hawkish Israeli line on the Middle East. Hyping Iran as “our number one strategic enemy in the world,” retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane suggested “we put our hand around their throat right now.” In 2007, Keane co-authored with Frederick Kagan the American Enterprise Institute-sponsored policy paper entitled “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq” which proposed the so-called “surge” beloved of America’s Israel partisans. Retired Marine Corps Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, who has been echoing all the standard Israeli propaganda against Tehran ever since the 1983 attack on the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit in Beirut under his allegedly negligent command, didn’t hesitate to blame Iranian-backed Hezbollah for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. The U.S. ambassador to Argentina at the time, however, has said, “To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [of Iranian responsibility]. They never came up with anything.”

During the hearing, the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Peter King, called for all Iranian diplomats at the UN to be “kicked out” of the United States for spying. That evening, his provocative statement was given traction through a live interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who apparently just wanted to know “what’s goin’ on here?” The sincerity of Blitzer’s seemingly ingenuous concern about Iranian espionage on American soil is undermined somewhat by the fact that he was once editor of Near East Report, AIPAC’s bi-weekly newsletter, before serving 17 years with the Jerusalem Post, during which time he authored a sympathetic book on Jonathan Pollard. The title of that “slick piece of damage control” – Territory of Lies – would be a fitting description for the Israeli-occupied hearing on alleged Iranian terror....

CIA monitors Facebook, Twitter: Five million tweets a day...LOL



CIA monitors Facebook, Twitter: Five million tweets a day...LOL

Based in an anonymous industrial unit close to CIA headquarters, a unit of the agency, dubbed the “vengeful librarians”, scour Facebook, Twitter and more for real-time intelligence.

The Associated Press this morning reports an exclusive, explaining how the White House can receive real-time updates on a situation on the ground, leading up to a revolution, predicting crime and disorder, or the ‘mood in the air’ shortly after the death of Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency on a daily basis, out of an “anonymous industrial park in Virginia”, follows over 5 million tweets by users on the ground.

The ‘Open Source Center’, manned by a team the agency affectionately dubs the “vengeful librarians”, also trawls other social networking sites like Facebook, along with Internet chat rooms; all the way down to newspapers and anything that anyone can contribute to openly.

Along with the vast resources of the agency, the real-time information from an angry blog post to a tweet sent from a BlackBerry, location-based data is gathered and tied to a made phone call to collect as much information as possible. This gives those in the highest offices of the U.S. government a specific picture of a certain place, at a certain time, to predict when an event that may cause national instability, diplomatic harm or suchlike could occur.

The report goes on to suggest that the White House, courtesy of the intelligence gathered from the vast array of resources at their disposal, from the publicly-available content provided by citizens and journalists alike, “saw the uprising in Egypt coming”, but they did not know exactly when it would strike.

The facility was set up as a recommended action based on the report by the 9/11 Commission, with many working from the ‘industrial unit’ to U.S. embassies around the world, in a bid to get closer to the action on the ground.

Intelligence services rely on those speaking the specific dialects of difficult-to-understand languages, often those who grew up in the area and emigrated, or those with family still in the region, along with those with a vast array of degrees in specific subjects to formulate guidance based on the intelligence presented to them.

While many have suspected for some time, with the rare utterance of admittance, that the most clandestine intelligence services around the world monitor Facebook and Twitter, blogs and other content on the web, the report explains how “Facebook and Twitter… have become a key resource for following a fast moving crisis”.

By following messages, Facebook status updates and tweets from Bangkok during the recent uprising, journalists were hampered by the rioting and the army moving in, with traditional media slowing to a trickle. Citizen journalism, therefore, was the prime target for the agency, allowing dozens of ‘reporters’ to be honed in on to provide valuable, real-time information on the ground....LOL


NED and Its NGOs Equal CIA Subversion....

THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY OF US

B. RAMAN

The post-Watergate enquiries into the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US exposed details of its covert political activities in other countries in order to promote US foreign policy objectives. Amongst such activities were the secret funding of individuals, political parties and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) favourable to US interests and funneling of money to counter the activities of those considered anti-US.

After taking over as the President in January, 1977, Mr.Jimmy Carter banned such activities and imposed strict limits on the CIA’s covert operations in foreign countries. During the election campaign of 1980, Mr.Ronald Reagan used effectively against Mr.Carter the argument that the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate decline of the US under Mr.Carter was due to the emasculation of its military and intelligence apparatus.

After his election in November, 1980, and before his taking-over as the President in January, 1981, Mr.Reagan appointed a transition group headed by the late William Casey, an attorney and one of his campaign managers, who was to later take over as the CIA Director, to recommend measures for strengthening the USA’s intelligence capability abroad.

One of its recommendations was to revive covert political activities. Since there might have been opposition from the Congress and public opinion to this task being re-entrusted to the CIA, it suggested that this be given to an NGO with no ostensible links with the CIA.

The matter was further examined in 1981-82 by the American Political Foundation’s Democracy Programme Study and Research Group and, finally, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was born under a Congressional enactment of 1983 as a “non-profit, non-governmental, bipartisan, grant-making organisation to help strengthen democratic institutions around the world.”

Though it is projected as an NGO, it is actually a quasi-governmental organisation because till 1994 it was run exclusively from funds voted by the Congress (average of about US $ 16 million per annum in the 1980s and now about US $ 30 million) as part of the budget of the US Information Agency (USIA). Since 1994, it has been accepting contributions from the private sector too to supplement the congressional appropriations.

Thirty per cent of the budgetary allocations constitute the discretionary fund of the NED to be distributed directly by it to overseas organisations and the balance is distributed through what are called four “core organisations”—the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI).

In 1994, the NED set up two other organisations called the International Forum for Democratic Studies (IFDS) and the Democracy Resource Centre (DRC), both largely funded by the private sector.

Since its inception, the NED and its affiliates have been mired in controversy in the US itself as well as abroad. Amongst its strongest supporters in the US is the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC, a conservative think tank, which played an active role in influencing the policies of the Reagan and Bush Administrations.

It brought out two papers on the justification for the NED, when questions were raised in the US on the continued need for it after the collapse of the communist regimes of East Europe. In the first paper of July 8,1993, (Executive Memorandum No. 360) it described the NED as “an important weapon in the war of ideas” and said:” The NED has played a vital role in providing aid to democratic movements in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Vietnam and elsewhere….. Communist dictatorships still control China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. Moreover, ex-communists masquerading as nationalists continue to dominate several of the Soviet successor states. The NED can play an important role in assisting those countries in making the turbulent transition to democracy….. Local political activists often prefer receiving assistance from a non-governmental source, as aid from a US government agency may undermine their credibility in the eyes of their countrymen.”

In the second paper of September 13, 1996, (Executive Memorandum No.461), it said:”The NED advances American national interests by promoting the development of stable democracies friendly to the US in strategically important parts of the world. The US cannot afford to discard such an effective instrument of foreign policy at a time when American interests and values are under sustained ideological attack from a wide variety of anti-democratic forces around the world…The NED has aided Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement in Poland, Harry Wu’s human rights efforts in China and independent media outlets in former Yugoslavia. Russian political activists affiliated with the NED also played a major role in President Boris Yeltsin’s re-election campaign against the reinvigorated Communist Party earlier this year…. The NED is a cost-effective way to encourage captive nations to liberate themselves without committing the US to a prohibitively risky and costly military crusade to free them from communism.”

Testifying before the Sub-committee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives on March 13,1997, Mr.Carl Gershman, President of the NED, said: ” I just want to say that the Endowment’s work is based upon a very, very simple proposition. And that is, where there are people who share our values, where there are people who might be called the natural friends of America, then it is our obligation to help those people in some way.”

Amongst the critics of the NED are Ms. Barbara Conry, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute of Washington D.C. and Mr. Ralph McGehee, stated to be a former CIA official.

In a paper of November 8,1993(Foreign Policy Briefing No.27), Ms.Conry said: “NED is resented (abroad) as American interference; it is often further resented because it attempts to deceive foreigners into viewing its programmes as private assistance…. On a number of occasions, NED has taken advantage of its alleged private status to influence foreign elections, an activity that is beyond the scope of AID (Agency For International Development) or USIA and would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation….. What finally drew public attention to NED’s meddling in foreign elections was an aborted attempt to provide opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro with $ 3 million in funding for her 1989 election campaign against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The plan was abandoned after it was determined that NED’s charter, which expressly forbids campaign contributions, would be violated. In the end, the money was channeled to programmes that aided Chamorro indirectly rather than through direct campaign contributions.”

In a statement of January 19,1996, Mr.McGehee described the post-1991 activities of the NED as “political action operations targeting China and Cuba.” Another NGO of the US has said: ” NED engages in much of the same kinds of interference in the internal affairs of foreign countries, which were the hallmark of the CIA. The NED has financed, advised and supported in many ways selected political parties, election campaigns, unions, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, even guerillas in Afghanistan and, in general, organisations and individuals which mesh well with the gears of the globalised-economy machine…. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, and also founded the Centre for Democracy, one of NED’s funding middlemen, was quite candid when he said in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” The NED, like the CIA before it, calls what it does supporting democracy. The governments and movements whom the NED targets call it destabilisation.”

Initially, the NED’s activities were directed mainly against the communist regimes of East Europe, but, subsequently, it started combating the communist parties in multi-party democracies of West Europe too. In the 1980s, when the late Francois Mitterrand was the French President, an NED report showed an expenditure of US $ 1.5 million “to promote democracy in France.”

There was an uproar in France when the French press discovered that part of this amount had been given by the NED, through the FTUI, to the National Inter-University Union of France, allegedly a right-extremist and xenophobic organisation, in an attempt to use it to defeat communist candidates in the elections to the National Assembly. Embarrassed by the controversy, the Reagan Administration dissociated itself from the NED activities in France.

After the collapse of the communist regimes of East Europe, the NED has been focussing its activities against the communist regimes of Cuba, Vietnam, China and North Korea and the Myanmarese military regime and against the resurgence of the communist parties in East Europe due to the economic difficulties there.

Its activities relating to China are of two kinds: Those, which are legitimate in the Chinese perception such as training of local village officials in the holding of elections, training of local business executives in better management practices, advice on the drafting of economic reform legislation etc and those, which are legitimate in the US perception, but interference in internal affairs in the Chinese view, such as support to political dissidents, human rights activists and Tibetan exiles and projection of Taiwan as a democratic model worthy of emulation.

The first type of activities is carried out by workers of organisations affiliated to the NED, either based in China or visiting the country and the second by off-shore offices of the NED, which were located in Hong Kong before its reversion to China in June, 1997, and which were thereafter reportedly shifted to Australia since the ASEAN countries would not host them. Finding Australia not a convenient place, the NED has reportedly been eyeing India as a possible base for its activities directed against China.

Beijing has reasons to be concerned over what it considers as the illegitimate activities of the NED. Of the 28 NGOs of Asia funded by the NED, 14 focus on China, four of them of Tibetan exiles, five on Myanmar, two on Cambodia, and one each on Vietnam and North Korea and the remaining five on the Asia-Pacific region as a whole.

In his testimony of March 13,1997, before the House Sub-committee on International Operations and Human Rights, Mr.Gershman said:” There has been a doubling of resources spent in Asia (primarily China, Burma and Cambodia) and a tripling of resources for the Middle East. There were also dramatic increases in Central Asia and the former Yugoslavia…While the discretionary programmes and those of our affiliated labour institute support the activities of various pro-democracy networks, among them Human Rights in China, the China Strategic Institute, the Laogai Research Foundation, and the Hong Kong based activities of labour activist Han Dongfang, IRI and CIPE have targeted opportunities created by the official reform policy in the areas of local elections and economic modernisation.Additional grants support the democracy movements in Hong Kong and Tibet and,through the International Forum, we have highlighted the role of Taiwan as an Asian model of successful democratisation.”

The trans-border activities of the NED against the Myanmarese military regime seem to be directed mainly from Thailand and India. This is evident from a testimony given by Ms.Louisa Coan, NED’s Programme Officer for Asia, before the House Sub-committee on Asia and the Pacific on September 17,1997.

She said: “NED has been able through its direct grants programme to support the dissidents, to support the democracy movement of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, particularly through assistance to the groups along the borders in Thailand and in India, including twice daily radio programming through the Democratic Voice of Burma (author’s comment: based in Scandinavia), newsletters, underground newspaper, underground labour organising, particular programmes to foster inter-ethnic co-operation and unity among the opposition forces in support of Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for tripartite dialogue and national reconciliation.”

It is not known whether New Delhi was aware of the India-based activities of the NED against the Yangon regime.

Before the recent visit of the US President, Mr.Bill Clinton, to India, the NED headquarters in Washington issued the following press release: “Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced on Tuesday March 14 that the US and India will launch a joint non-governmental initiative called the Asian Centre for Democratic Governance during President Clinton’s upcoming trip to South Asia.

“Jointly organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the NED, the Centre will be based at CII’s offices in New Delhi, The Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training, an affiliate of the Indian Parliament, will partner with the CII in implementing the activities of the Centre.”

The press release said the expenditure on the initiative would be shared by the CII and the NED.

It is an interesting case of an important member of the Clinton Cabinet, announcing on behalf of a self-proclaimed NGO of the US funded by the Congress, a non-governmental initiative in collaboration with a non-governmental Indian business organisation with which an office of the Indian Parliament would also be associated.

This launching was duly done at New Delhi.

There are three likely implications of this unusual venture:

* Possibility of misunderstanding with China which might interpret it as directed against it and its presence in Tibet.

* Impropriety in co-operating with an American organisation working against the present Government at Yangon, which has normal diplomatic relations with New Delhi and has been co-operating in counter-insurgency measures in the North-East.

* The presence in Indian territory, with official blessing, of an organisation, which aims to wipe out communism as a political and ideological movement all over the world and which might utilise its presence to undermine the Indian communist movement. NED has never criticised the Indian Communist parties, but a reading of the past statements of those in the US supporting the NED would indicate that they hold communism and democracy as incompatible.

The US has also announced the association of India as co-sponsor with a forthcoming conference of “communities of democracies ” in Poland being funded by the Stefan Batory Foundation of Poland, set up by George Soros in 1998, to counter the resurgence of communism in East Europe, and the Freedom House of the US.

The Freedom House was founded in the 1940s “to strengthen free institutions at home and abroad”. It played an active role in carrying on a psychological warfare (psywar) against the troops of the USSR and the late President Najibullah in Afghanistan during the 1980s through the Afghanistan Information Centre set up by it, allegedly with CIA funds. The offices of this centre at Peshawar in Pakistan trained the Afghan Mujahideen groups and Pakistani organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (formerly known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar) and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, presently active in Kashmir, in techniques of media management and psywar.

Since 1983, part of the funds voted by the Congress to the NED are funneled to the Freedom House, which also gets contributions from the private sector. The Freedom House focuses its activities on media and communications and, according to a 1990 study by the Interhemispherique Resource Centre of the US, more than 400 journalists in 55 countries were collaborating with the Freedom House in its activities against communist parties and regimes.

Before going ahead with these projects, there is an urgent need for an examination of the implications of our collaboration with such organisations from the point of view of our national security and political stability.....




Friday, November 04, 2011

The world of Barney Frank: "blowing away" taxpayers' money on Wall Street....


The world of Barney Frank: "blowing away" taxpayers' money on Wall Street....


November , 2011 -- Barney Frank operates a gay intimidation and Wall Street lobbying operation...

White House finds it difficult to tamp down Obama's "preferences."
December , 2011 -- Obama's best friends in Washington....


WMR was preparing to go to press with a story about President Obama's closest friends and advisers in Washington when Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) announced that he was foregoing another re-election bid and was leaving the Congress. On November 28, the White House announced "This country has never had a Congressman like Barney Frank, and the House of Representatives will not be the same without him."

While it's not easy to read the minds of the White House spinmeisters, the announcement is odd. But perhaps not so odd when considering the story we were about to run. WMR has learned from members of Washington's wealthy and very pro-Obama gay community, centered in Georgetown and in the DuPont Circle area, that Obama's closest friends and advisers are almost exclusively gay males and that the president prefers their company and advice over heterosexual politicos and Democratic Party stalwarts.

While Frank was unusual in the general history of the House, he certainly was not the only gay male member of Congress -- Gerry Studds, Larry Craig, Bob Bauman, and Mark Foley are testament to that fact. But to suggest or infer that Frank is in the same league as Sam Rayburn, Nicholas Longworth, Joseph Cannon, Joseph Martin, or Carl Albert is a very big stretch of the imagination.

Obama was attending Harvard Law School when the Massachusetts congressman was in the news for hiring his lover, Stephen Gobie, as his staff driver, and who was later discovered to be running a call boy service from Frank's Capitol Hill townhouse. However, if Frank's hero status among Washington's gay community is all that one cares about in writing his congressional career epilogue, it can be understood why Obama, who seeks the counsel and friendship of Washington's gay Democrats, would be so inclined to heap praise upon Frank.

There is also a political consequence attached to Obama's sexual predilections. Top Obama advisers, including re-election campaign chief David Axelrod, have made the decision that they do not want to run against any Republican who has a whiff of sex scandals in their background -- and that includes Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry. The Obama advisers know that if sex becomes an issue in the general election, their candidate will face some tough questioning if the campaign heads into the gutter. Therefore, the favorite GOP candidates for Obama's team are the two ostensibly squeaky-clean Mormons, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Neither Romney nor Huntsman, who served as Obama's ambassador to Beijing, are expected by the Obama team to take the low road in the sexual dirt department, especially considering Romney's tepid pro-civil union stance as governor of Massachusetts.

Today, November 30, President Obama is in mid-town Manhattan to attend a small and intimate fundraiser to celebrate the passage of New York's gay marriage law. Small may be the crowd but not the ticket prices, which range from $10,000 to $35,800 per head....


Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has, according to well-placed congressional sources, used his office to hire openly gay staffers with the ultimate intent of later forcing them into senior staff positions for incoming Democratic freshmen members of Congress. The operation, which has resulted in a steady increase in the number of gay and intimately-connected staffers in the House of Representatives, resembles the 2006 GOP House scandal, in which page sex scandal investigation target Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) was linked to a number of gay male staffers in his own office and those of ex-Representative Tom Reynolds (R-NY)and ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Frank is not stranger to impropriety in his gay relationships. In the mid-1980s, Frank was reprimanded by his House colleagues for fixing the Congressional parking tickets for and not telling the truth about a gay escort named Paul Gobie. Gobie was also using Frank's Capitol Hill residence to operate a gay escort service. Efforts to censure and expel Frank from the House were led by Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID), who, in 2007 as a U.S. Senator, would be arrested by a Minneapolis airport police officer for trying to solicit gay sex in a men's restroom.

WMR has also discovered evidence that Frank hired a male staffer having an arrest record for molesting two underage teen males in New York state. It is believed that Frank maintained a relationship with the staffer until an incoming freshman Democratic House member was forced to hire the Frank staffer as his own chief-of-staff. Soon, the new member's chief-of-staff began dealing with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Frank's staff to ensure the new member, who did not support President Obama's health care initiative, would be engulfed in a carefully contrived and engineered scandal and be forced from office.

Frank, the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, has also been embroiled in a conflict-of-interest in having one of his ex-gay staffers become a top lobbyist for Wall Street. Frank's committee has oversight over Wall Street and Frank was involved in approving government bailout funds for Goldman Sachs and other "too-big-to-fail" Wall Street firms.

November , 2011 -- "Which office do I go to ... to get my reputation back?"


"Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?" Those were the words of former Reagan Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan after he was acquitted on fraud charges on May 25, 1987.

Those same words and their attribution to Donovan appear on a t-shirt given to former Democratic U.S. Representative Eric Massa by a legal team representing the office of U.S. House Employment Counsel after their determination that Massa, a retired U.S. Navy Commander, did not sexually harass male members of his staff. Massa experienced a stormy resignation from Congress and a hasty departure from Washington after unsubstantiated rumors surfaced that he had engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with his male staffers. The rumors, as shall be described, emanated from a closely-connected group of gay congressional staffers on the Hill, many of whom once worked for openly gay Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, the chief overseer over Wall Street firms.

As the carefully-engineered "scandal" began to spell the end of Massa's term as a House member, Massa recalled how then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel confronted him, naked, in the shower of the House gym, after Massa's first eight weeks in office. Emanuel berated Massa for not supporting President Obama's health care bill, poking Massa in the chest with his finger. It turns out that Emanuel, a former House member, spent every morning hanging around the House gym's showers. Massa, just hours away from resigning his seat, told a radio interviewer that Emanuel was "the son of the devil's spawn," adding, "he is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive . . . ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C."

At the time, Massa believed that it was his opposition to "Obamacare" that made him a target of Emanuel. However, WMR has learned that the effort to scandalize Massa had even deeper roots, roots that made the first-term congressman a problem for the power structure embedded in Washington, Wall Street, and Jerusalem.

Massa was a one-time aide to NATO military commander General Wesley Clark but had to retire from the Navy medical reasons having been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Massa fully recovered from the cancer and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House against GOP incumbent Randy Kuhl in 2006. In 2008, in a re-match in a Democratic year, Massa narrowly defeated Kuhl in the traditionally conservative Republican district, long dominated by its chief employer, Corning Glass, and its owners, the Houghton family. In fact, Kuhl's predecessor was Amo Houghton, scion of the Corning owners, but a dying breed in the GOP -- a social liberal and fiscal conservative. It was by adopting such a political brand that helped Massa best Kuhl for the normally Republican seat in 2008. It also helped that Clark and former president Bill Clinton campaigned for Massa. Not forthcoming with campaign help was Emanuel and his Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee money. Emanuel never supported Massa's bid for the House.

However, Massa's success resulted in a number of hidden agendas confronting him from the outset. Massa opposed natural gas "fracking" in his state of New York, not popular with the powerful oil and gas lobby; raised the red flags of treasonous behavior with top Pentagon brass as it became known that General David Petraeus, the commander of CENTCOM and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was meeting with top GOP officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, to plot out a run for the White House in 2012 against Petraeus's own Commander-in-Chief; and opposed the Wall Street bailouts and pocket-lining inherent with Obama's stimulus package and health care program.

But as much as his opposition to Obama, the gas industry, and the machinations of Petraeus may have placed him in jeopardy, it was Massa's meeting with one of his constituents, in the far northern reaches of his 29th District, in Rochester, that spelled his doom, as many similar stances in the past have resulted in a trail of destroyed political careers, from Secretary of Defense James Forrestal to Senators Charles Percy and J. William Fulbright, and Representatives Paul Findlay, Pete McCloskey, James Traficant, and Cynthia McKinney.

In a carefully unpublicized meeting, Massa met with John Hrankowski, a survivor of the unprovoked and wilfull 1967 Israeli attack on the National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence collection ship, the USS Liberty and the chief promoter of the USS Liberty Memorial in Rochester, a landmark that was vigorously opposed by Jewish groups and the Israeli Lobby. Hrankowski died in March but the memorial in honor of the 34 US Navy and NSA personnel killed by Israeli aircraft strafing and torpedo boats, as well as the rest of the crew, lives on, despite the concerted efforts by many American Jews and the Israel Lobby to obliterate the memory of the ship from history.

Already considered by the House leadership, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, whose sister was once the executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as not in lockstep with the Obama and Emanuel agenda, Massa was targeted in a campaign by a powerful group that is only whispered about on Capitol Hill -- the "Lavender Mafia," a group of openly and closeted gay staffers with close links, including past employment, with the office of Barney Frank.

Upon winning his seat in 2008, Massa was forced by the House Democratic leadership to accept as his chief-of-staff a gay Frank staffer, Joe Racalto, a one-time intern and driver for Frank who was brought into Frank's office by Robert Raben, a former Frank counsel and now the head of the Raben Group, which counts some of Wall Street's top firms as clients, firms over which Frank has oversight authority.

After Massa met with Hrankowski, a person described as Massa's "AIPAC overseer," approached him and asked why he had met with the former Liberty crewman. There was an obvious leak in Massa's office. Soon, Racalto began conspiring with Frank's chief of staff to undermine Massa with a contrived sex scandal. Massa's "salty" Navy language around his office began to be twisted into "sexual harassment" issues, including later charges by Racalto that he had been harassed by Massa.

In a Closing Argument made by House Office of Compliance attorneys Gloria Lett, Victoria Botvin, and Randall Robertson, it is stated: "Racalto never once alleged that he had been sexually harassed by Massa, and never once reported or complained about anyone that he had been sexually harassed . . . In short, this sexual harassment action is just one more of Racalto's strategic attempts to unjustly enrich himself through a calculated and manipulative series of lies." Helping Racalto in his "legal defense fund" is none other than Raben, the Wall Street lobbyist.

WMR has also learned from 29th District sources that Racalto maintained a relationship with Massa's announced GOP challenger, Tom Reed, at the same time that Racalto served as Massa's chief of staff. Reed, who was the mayor of Corning and is married with children, had been implicated in an attempt to conduct a sexual foursome after meeting two of Massa's female staffers in a Corning bar. Whether Racalto used this information to cut a side deal for future favors from Reed is not known but it is clear that a relationship developed between Massa's chief of staff and his Republican challenger.

There is little doubt that Massa faced two formidable but hidden oppoents: Rahm Emanuel, who never supported Massa's bid for the House, and Karl Rove, the GOP's rottweiler on keeping Democrats out of safe GOP districts. But could Emanuel and Rove have worked together, through people like Frank, Reed, Racalto, and others, to topple Massa? Such a scenario is likely considering that Rove's 2012 candidate, Mitt Romney, is benefiting from the sex scandal meltdown of pizza magnate Herman Cain. There are reports that some of the sexual dirt on Cain originated with Rahm Emanuel, now the mayor of Chicago, placing Rove and Emanuel in the same sty of political mud.

However, blackmailable information is the stock-in-trade for the "Lavender Mafia." New York Democratic Representative Bernard Higgins, who is married and represents the Buffalo area 27th District, has not been thrown out of Congress, even though congressional sources report that Higgins shares a bed in a Washington apartment with a male staffer.

In a series of e-mails obtained by WMR, it is clear that Massa was the subject of unsubstantiated rumor mongering and that rumors served as the basis for The Washington Post's exaggerated reporting on Massa's "alleged" conduct beyond the use of "salty language." In one e-mail, dated March 9, 2010, from the Post's Carol Leonnig to Racalto, she states "we will be reporting that allegations [emphasis added] involving Cong. Massa involved far more than 'salty language," based on numerous allegations of a pattern of physical sexual harassment of male staffers in his office and groping." However, there was never any formal complaints about such behavior from Massa's staffers, including his own chief of staff who only filed charges after Massa's resignation, charges that were rejected by the House Office of Compliance's counsels.

As far as "salty language," Massa's language was no more "salty" than that used by fellow Navy veteran Senator John McCain, whose foul mouth in the Congress is legendary, and the equally "salty" Baltimore longshoreman's language from Senator Barbara Mikulski.

In an e-mail, dated March 4, 2010, from Scott Brown, a reporter for WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, to Racalto, it is stated that Hoyer's office was informed about Massa's alleged activities on February 8 and that Massa's staff, again according to Hoyer's office, had notified the Ethics Committee within 48 hours. Brown said that before Politico reported on the Ethics Committee probe, Massa said he was unaware of it. Racalto was allowing the manufactured scandal to grow legs of its own. In another March 4, 2010, e-mail, Raymond Hernandez of The New York Times, wrote Racalto: "In the email you sent last night, you said that there has been no formal complaint filed with the Ethics Committee. That is at odds with the statement released by Majority Leady [sic] Steny Hoyer. Could you explain this inconsistency? In addition, you said that Mr. Massa had not been contacted by the committee. But it is my understanding that representatives of the committee visited his office yesterday. Has the congressman or any person on his staff been contacted by the committee?"

Racalto's response to Hernandez: "Congressman Massa has not been contacted by the Committee on Official Standards and Conduct. It is obvious that Congressman cannot comment on a matter about which he has been given no information and I am unable to comment because there is no formal complaint to comment on."

Then, Racalto, adds in a statement worthy of the Kremlin during the Cold War, "Congressman Massa is retiring for health reasons."

On February 26 and 27, Racalto was in e-mail communication with Frank's chief of staff Maria Giesta. It was clear that Racalto and Giesta were conspiring to bring the unsubstantiated allegations against Massa to a head and the role of Frank's office in undermining Massa cannot be emphasized more. After all, the only thing that Frank is more committed to than gay rights is support for Israel and Frank had the means, via his Lavender Mafia, and the desire to see Massa dumped from the House.
Click here for an unusual e-mail exchange between Giestra and Racalto.

Maria E. Giesta,
Chief of Staff and Staff Director
Congressman Barney Frank

to Racalto:
By the way honey do you have some extra Viagra

Racalto to Giesta: Sorry, fell asleep - yes I do.

Giesta to Racalto: I hope you're OK
I need one of you spare it [
another e-mail from Giestra requests a Dr. Patel's phone number.]

Racalto to Giesta: At airport - have a mtg with lawyers at 11

Giesta to Racalto: Where are you going?

Racalto to Giesta: I'm meeting with attorneys in nyc - I want to make sure we are all set legally (if this investigation goes formal)

Then, on March 7, Giesta tips her hand on Frank's role in Massa's "scandal" in an e-mail to Racalto:

Giesta to Racalto: Make sure you get your severence [sic] before going postal on Massa. [Congressional sources have told WMR that in mid-March 2010, Racalto promised to all Massa staffers who levelled sexual harassment charges against Massa that they would receive $300,000 each.] [Racalto also falsely represented to Massa's campaign committee that he was due $40,000 as a "campaign management fee," which Massa denies was authorized. The media spin was that the $40,000 was some sort of "hush money."]

On February 26, there was the following from Giesta to Racalto: Hi. I can definitely loan you some money - no problem.

On February 22, Racalto was, according to his House e-mail, negotiating a $50 - 60,000 job with AIDS Community Resources.

On February 26, in a harbinger of what would befall Massa, Giesta sent another e-mail to Racalto:

Well it looks like Patterson [sic] is not going to run for Governor - good news!!

[The reference is to New York Democratic Governor David Paterson, who succeeded Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after another contrived sex "scandal."]

Massa is now unemployed in Corning and wonders if he can hold on to his house. He muses while raking leaves on his lawn how much more of a difference he could make if he were able to speak during House "special orders" on the problems of Wall Street and the outrageous behavior of Washington politics that puts special interests first and citizens at the bottom of the priority list. However, in a city of deception and perfidy, there is no office where Massa can go to get his reputation back.

Meanwhile, for Frank, his staffers, and the congressional "Lavender Mafia," the Viagra, crystal meth, and booze continue to make for a gay old time....
Ellen Brown's Web of Debt is essential reading (and she actually made all this financial stuff really interesting)

http://www.webofdebt.com/

I also consider these documentaries to be required viewing for all Americans who want to understand what's going on and get this country back:


Money as Debt


The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America



"The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole...Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world's money..." THE MONEY MASTERS is a 3 1/2 hour non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumulate wealth. With the formation of the privately-owned Bank of England in 1694, the yoke of economic slavery to a privately-owned "central" bank was first forced upon the backs of an entire nation, not removed but only made heavier with the passing of the three centuries to our day. Nation after nation, including America, has fallen prey to this cabal of international central bankers"


The Secret of Oz - Winner, Best Docu of 2010



This version finally cuts several bogus quotes which have festered in the monetary reform literature for decades.
The world economy is doomed to spiral downwards until we do 2 things: outlaw government borrowing; 2. outlaw fractional reserve lending. Banks should only be allowed to lend out money they actually have and nations do not have to run up a "National Debt". Remember: It's not what backs the money, it's who controls its quantity....




“I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government,” Jewish columnist Joel Stein wrote in the Los Angeles Times in December 2008. “I just care that we get to keep running them.”
Mr Stein’s reckless candor in admitting that the Jews ran America was to cost him his job at the LA Times.
If Americans have lost their country to organized Jewry, they lost it slowly and imperceptibly. Indeed, most Americans remain unaware that their country no longer belongs to them. They fervently believe they still live in a democracy. This was a takeover not without precedent, however. It had happened to Germany. It had happened to Russia. It has now happened to America.


Uh-oh, looks like Iceland hasn't escaped the clutches of the global banksters:

Keiser Report – Make Love, Not Debt


We discuss the new world order in which we’re all Greeks because we didn’t see the signs in 1969 – “Make Love, Not Debt.” In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Birgitta Jonsdottir, about the true state of transparency, banking and economy in the latest IMF poster child, Iceland.

with this comment: f**king IMF tentacles everywhere....


Wednesday, November 02, 2011

SADDAM HUSSAIN: As Deluded as Possible...as usual...


SADDAM HUSSAIN: As Deluded as Possible...as usual...
Hossein Alaei, veteran Sepah commander and an expert in strategic affairs, takes a look at the recently declassified documents on Saddam Hussein’s view of the Iran-Iraq war.






Last Tuesday, the US National Defense University released twenty pieces of confidential documents from Saddam Hussein’s archive, seized by the US Army following Baghdad’s occupation in 2003. What is eye-catching in these documents is Saddam Hussein’s misperception of events: especially his underestimation of Iranian military power before he waged a catastrophic war against his eastern neighbor. According to the documents, less than one week before the war, Saddam predicted that Iraqi forces massing at the borders would intimidate and shatter the morale of the Iranian army; he did not anticipate the Iranian Air Force’s ferocious response to the invasion and its precise bombardment of key structures, such as the Osirak nuclear plant south of Baghdad, which he believed to have been Tel Aviv’s job.

Saddam Hussein suffered an inflexible interpretation of the Iranian army’s power, as it was difficult for him to think outside the Cold War framework: for him, all countries were either allies of the US or the Soviet Union. With his bipolar mentality, Saddam pictured Iran as utterly dependent on US military support (equipment, training etc.), just as he himself relied upon the Soviet Union’s military aid. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, not only did Iran cut off all its military transactions with the US, but also seized the US embassy in Tehran, which eventually led to severance of diplomatic ties between the countries. Saddam Hussein believed that-- defanged after the Revolution-- the Iranian military forces could not withstand an Iraqi blitz. At that time, Iran found it extremely difficult to purchase military equipment (even spare parts) and weapons. Even Washington thought before the war that the Iranian jet fighters would stop functioning in the short run, as Iran presumably lacked the know-how to repair and maintain its US-manufactured F14s. With such analyses, common among the decision-makers, Saddam was encouraged to think of the Iranian military as feeble and dared to attack his neighbor to the east.

Many high-ranking commanders of the Army –the Shah’s pride and honor- had fled Iran at that time, and others who had decided to stay retired or faced a purge by the government. A broken-down military with a severely damaged hierarchy could not employ its military units to fight in a war.

The attempted Nojeh Coup-- staged by elements inside the Iranian military and what eventually forced a second wave of purges among its top brass-- also emboldened Iraq to wage the war, intended to satisfy its territorial, diplomatic and military ambitions. The Iraqi dictator’s sweet dreams were disrupted the day after he began the war by attacking Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, when a 140-jet fighter fleet took off from Iranian Air Force military bases and targeted critical Iraqi infrastructures, including its precious nuclear plant, Osirak. In less than a week, Saddam Hussein was convinced that the war would not proceed according to his desires, and hence hastily offered a ceasefire to stop the war unfolding in a way that could undermine his position.





Tuesday, November 01, 2011

CIA counter-attacking on exposure of Obama and family as CIA operatives...




The CIA's "Kincaid Kops"....


October , 2011 -- CIA counter-attacking on exposure of Obama and family as CIA operatives...


A Republican Party insider has tipped off WMR on a covert domestic "dirty tricks" operation by the CIA, working with a group of right-wing Republican pseudo-journalists, to tarnish WMR and, in fact, anyone who has appeared on the Russian news network, RT, as agents of the Russian government....

The dirty tricks operation is intended to allegedly expose "links" between this editor and the Russian government to financially and professionally harm WMR. The project by the CIA, using right-wing operatives like Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media (AIM) and
a group called America's Survival, funded through a myriad of right-wing non-profits, is to paint this editor as concocting the Obama's family's ties to the CIA to divert attention away from the meme that Obama and his family were Communists who took their orders from the Soviet KGB. The CIA, using ciphers like Kincaid, want to make it appear that Obama's and his family's "leftist views" mean that they could have never worked for the CIA in any manner. It should be noted that the Manhattan firm that Obama went to work at after graduating Columbia University in 1983, Business International Corporation, was a well-known CIA operation that sought to co-opt the left, from the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) to the Castro government of Cuba and the Kremlin leadership, itself....

Kincaid is said to be using an approach similar to that of GOP operative James O'Keefe of Project Veritas. Kincaid and his team are traveling around with video cameras and ambushing those on their target list. Having already confronted radio and TV commentator Thom Hartmann, whose program is aired by RT, the team is, according to our GOP insider, waiting to confront me with the question, "Are you an agent of the Russian government?" Hartmann has been asked the same question. The video tactic is similar to that used by O'Keefe and his colleagues against the housing rights group ACORN and in an attempt to infiltrate the office of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) in New Orleans.

Kincaid and his group are also trying to show links between financier George Soros, the Russian government, and RT. In fact, on October 27, Kincaid's group sponsored a news conference at the National Press Club on the "Soros Files." The amateurish nature of this CIA-funded psychological warfare operation was evident when I, after having attended a press conference by ousted State Department officer Peter Van Buren, poked my head into Kincaid's "Soros Files" conference. No one, with or without a camera in hand, seemed to recognize me. The CIA appears to be as idiotic as the amateurs they hire to do their dirty work....

Kincaid claims to have a major scoop in uncovering this editor's "Communist" background (all obtained by Google searches) and his relationship with RT. It may come as news to Mr. Kincaid and his merry band of confabulators but a check of RT's recent newscasts will show that I no longer appear as often as I once did. Although I was RT's first regularly appearing American commentator, appearing live at 12 noon Moscow time, and at the ungodly hour of 4 am Washington time, my normal appearances on the network now range from once to twice a month, and they are usually on RT Arabic. After moving to their new studios in Washington, DC, I appeared on RT's regular afternoon news feed from Washington three times a week, or when there was a breaking news story, such as the arrest of alleged Russian spies in the United States and a deadly nightclub fire in Russia.

Although these facts will mean nothing to Kincaid and his knaves, there is one interesting aspect to Kincaid's screed that deserves a closer look. Although the right-wing wants everyone to wrongly believe that Soros, who is actually connected tightly to the CIA, is a secret Communist, he is, in fact, a front man for the Rothschild family. Soros is also a one-time collaborator, along with his father, of the German Gestapo in Hungary, an odd place for a Communist. However, Kincaid may have stumbled across something of merit in his scrutiny of Soros. Kincaid has accused RT of having links to Soros. Considering RT's newest lineup of Barack Obama cheerleaders like Hartmann and others, for example, Council on Foreign Relations operatives in New York City, who regularly appear on the network, there may be some truth to the allegations that Soros has somehow "bought in" to the network. RT is run by the RIA Novosti government-owned news agency in Moscow and it and Al Jazeera have gained the awkward admiration of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but only because they had been beating the United States and Hillary's Wall Street friends in the propaganda war. The change at Al Jazeera into an almost BBC-like compliant network has been stark.

Moscow and Russia are crawling with Soros operatives who are intent on blocking another presidential term for Vladimir Putin. Soros's NGO empire is the nexus of the CIA's media and education operations in eastern Europe and the former USSR, mostly through his de facto control of Radio Free Europe/Liberty/CIA... and Radio Free Asia. The possibility that journalist/operatives for Soros have wormed their way into RT cannot be discounted out-of-hand.

However, Kincaid can't have his story both ways. Either Soros is a Communist who is working with RT and a secretly Communist Russian government to bring about a Communist coup in the United States or he is a major CIA operative who is intent on expanding his huge media empire to completely swallow up RT, Al Jazeera, and anyone else who hosts criticism of Barack Obama and dares to reveal Family Obama's links to the CIA. The record speaks for itself. George Soros is the latter....

As for Kincaid and his camera crew, I am armed with a small can of shaving cream, which will be used with great delight on their camera lenses.....





Billions down a CIA, State Department and Pentagon rat hole.....


Billions down a CIA, State Department and Pentagon rat hole.....


October , 2011 -- State Dept. employee punished for writing the truth about fraud, waste, and abuse...


The U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimates that up to $60 billion was wasted in fraud, waste, and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the Commission has decided the American taxpayers cannot see the details of this fraud against them for twenty years, since the Commission has decided to seal its records until 2031. The reason they gave is the possibility of embarrassment.

Embarrassing State Department and other U.S. officials over the fraud and waste in Iraq was obviously the reason why the State Department has revoked the security clearance and suspended employment of twenty-three year veteran Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren. Van Buren was subject to intense retaliation by the State Department over the publication of his book, "We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People."

Van Buren, who was previously assigned to diplomatic outposts in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom, before being assigned to Iraq, witnessed first-hand the squandering of billions of dollars in U.S. cash in Iraq. In one case, the State Department decided to build a chicken processing plant in central Iraq. Local contractors were paid off in cash and a facility was built, but with no chickens. It turns out that while the local sheikhs were not interested in a chicken plant because their local way of preparing chicken dinner, grabbing a chicken from the yard and cutting its head off, was sufficient. However, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, decided that the chicken plant was essential because he bragged to a number of young female bloggers about the success of the chicken plant. It turns out that Odierno was more than happy to discuss his activities in Iraq with a number of young female bloggers.

When one of Odierno's female blogger friends decided to visit Iraq, Van Buren and his team were forced to buy up all the chickens they could find in the local area to feed Odierno and his female friend a locally-prepared elegant "chicken dinner from the plant." Odierno was promoted to Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army by President Obama.

The chicken plant was not the only waste of money. The State Department sank cash into beekeeping and pastry classes for Iraqi widows whose husbands were killed during the U.S. invasion and occupation. There was no accountability for the cash spent on such projects.

The State Department's $1 billion Baghdad embassy, the largest embassy in the world, was constructed by a dubious Kuwaiti engineering firm, with little or no accountability over the funds spent.

The State Department unsuccessfully sought to have Van Buren's book redacted after publication, a ploy successfully used by the Pentagon on Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's book on U.S. military special operations, "Dark Heart." The appearance of Van Buren's book cost him his security clearance. However, after Van Buren posted on
his website a video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chortling over the execution of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi -- she exclaimed "We came, we saw, he died" -- Van Buren was told he could not return to the State Department premises and he was to remain at home to await further instructions. In an October 27 news conference at the National Press Club, Van Buren described Mrs. Clinton's statement as "obscene" and "undiplomatic."

Van Buren described a draconian working environment at the State Department where employees are forbidden from accessing leaked State Department cables from WikiLeaks at work or even at home. Ironically, Van Buren said he and Private Bradley Manning, who remains jailed without charges for allegedly leaking the over quarter million State Department cables, were stationed together at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq. Van Buren said he doesn't recall meeting Manning while at the base but they may have very well crossed paths. Curiously, Van Buren said none of the State Department Diplomatic Security agents who grilled him were interested in whether he and Manning ever met in Iraq.

Taking pride in the fact that during his State Department career he was able to help U.S. citizens in distress in foreign countries, Van Buren cited the fact that now the United States kills its citizens in foreign countries by using drones.

Van Buren also fears the same reconstruction contract fraud that was rampant in Iraq will be repeated in Libya. U.S. reconstruction projects are carried out through large amounts of cash and, according to Van Buren, the system shouts out for fraud. He said there was no accountability for funds spent in Iraq and he understands from colleagues that the situation in Afghanistan is much worse. Van Buren described Bechtel and KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root) getting billions to build sewer systems and hospitals in Iraq that were never built. Van Buren is confident there will be a repeat in Libya. Looking down the road, Van Buren also sees Iraq reconstruction fraud situations occurring in Yemen and Somalia.

Van Buren has only been contacted by the staff at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Representative Ron Paul. No other members of Congress apparently care that tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been wasted in Iraq, are being wasted in Afghanistan, and will be wasted in Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, and Yemen...