Brzezinski: Obama Will Face “Imminent” Foreign Policy Problems

Trilateral Commission co-founder and top Obama advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told CNN yesterday that Barack Obama would be faced with “imminent problems” in the context of foreign policy once he takes office, echoing prophetic warnings made recently by Joe Biden, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright. Read more

“A Second 9/11″: An Integral Part of US Military Doctrine

For several years now, senior officials of the Bush administration including the President and the Vice President have intimated, in no certain terms, that there will be “a Second 9/11″. Read more

Shock & Awe: Bi-Partisan Beltway Terrorists Launch Economic 9/11 on the American People

You’ve seen the news. You know the score. The House of Representatives has now completed the economic terrorist attack inflicted on the American people by the nation’s elite.

The bailout bill - or as Arthur Silber more rightly terms it, the “Extortion Bill” - is already law, thanks to the Democrats in Congress, and to Barack Obama, who spent the day working the phones and twisting arms to make sure the $700 billion bonanza for the filthy rich passed without any more of the hiccups that held it up earlier this week. Read more

Klein: Bush admin creats crises to ‘enrich themselves and their friends’

On Thursday’s edition of The Colbert Report, bestselling author Naomi Klein argued that the Bush Administration creates crises in order to “enrich themselves and their friends,” drawing parallels between the torture of prisoners and the economic bailout being provided to Wall St. by US leaders. Read more

Max Keiser: U.S. Dollar Collapse Worth Less Than Toilet Paper

Read more

35 Years After Original 9/11: New Transcripts of Kissinger’s Role in Chilean Coup

When Henry Kissinger began secretly taping all of his phone conversations in 1969, little did he know that he was giving history the gift that keeps on giving. Now, on the 35th anniversary of the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed military coup in Chile, phone transcripts that Kissinger made of his talks with President Nixon and the CIA chief among other top government officials reveal in the most candid of language the imperial mindset of the Nixon administration as it began plotting to overthrow President Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected Socialist. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in a phone call following Allende’s narrow election on September 4, 1970, according to a recently declassified transcript. “I am with you,” Helms responded.

The “telcons”–telephone conversations transcripts made by Kissinger’s secretary from audio tapes that were later destroyed–captured for posterity all of Kissinger’s outgoing and incoming phone calls during his tenure as national security advisor and secretary of state. When Kissinger left office in January 1977, he took more than 30,000 pages of the transcripts, claiming they were “personal papers,” and using them, selectively, to write his memoirs. In 1999, my organization, the National Security Archive, initiated legal proceedings to force Kissinger to return these records to their rightful owner–the government. At the request of Archive senior analyst William Burr, telcons on foreign policy crises from the early 1970s, including four previously unknown conversations on Chile, were recently declassified by the Nixon Presidential library.

‘THE BIG PROBLEM TODAY IS CHILE’

September 15, 1970, when Richard Nixon ordered the CIA to “”prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him,” has been considered, the starting point of the covert operations that eventually helped topple the socialist government, until now. According to the transcripts, however, Nixon and Kissinger set in motion plans to roll back Allende’s election three days earlier on September 12. At noon on that day, Kissinger called Helms to schedule an urgent meeting of the “40 Committee”–an elite group that oversaw covert operations. And approximately 35 minutes later, in the middle of briefing Nixon on a major terrorist hijacking/hostage crisis in Amman, Jordan, Kissinger is recorded as telling the President: “The big problem today is Chile.”

The transcript of their conversation, kept secret for 35 years, reveals just how focused the U.S. president became on overseeing the effort to block Allende. In that call, Nixon demanded to see all instructions being sent to U.S. ambassador Edward Korry in Santiago; indeed, he ordered that the State Department be alerted that “I want to see all cables to Chile.”

“I want an appraisal of what the options are,” Nixon told Kissinger. When Kissinger told him that the State Department’s position was to “let Allende come in and see what we can work out,” Nixon immediately vetoed the idea: “Like against Castro? Like in Czechoslovakia? The same people said the same thing. Don’t let them do that.”

But Nixon cautioned: “We don’t want a big story leaking out that we are trying to overthrow the Govt.”

Secretary of State William Rogers, who Nixon and Kissinger largely excluded from deliberations over Chile, was similarly sensitive to such a story leaking out. Indeed, the transcript of his conversation with Kissinger two days later underscored just how concerned the State Department was to the possibility that Washington might get caught trying to undermine Chile’s electoral democracy. In their September 14th discussion, Rogers accurately predicted that “no matter what we do it will probably end up dismal.” He also cautioned Kissinger to cover up any paper trail on U.S. operations “to be sure the paper record doesn’t look bad.”

“My feeling–and I think it coincides with the President’s–is that we ought to encourage a different result from the [censored reference],” Rogers conceded to Kissinger, “but should do so discretely so that it doesn’t backfire.” Their conversation continues:

Kissinger: The only question is how one defines ‘backfire.’

Rogers: Getting caught doing something. After all we’ve said about elections, if the first time a Communist wins the U.S. tries to prevent the constitutional process from coming into play we will look very bad.

Kissinger: the President’s view is to do the maximum possible to prevent an Allende takeover, but through Chilean sources and with a low posture.”

The next day, during a 15 minute meeting at the White House attended by Kissinger, Nixon instructed CIA director Helms that Allende’s election was “not acceptable” and ordered the agency to “make the economy scream” and “save Chile,” as Helms recorded in his notes. The CIA launched a massive set of covert operations–first to block Allende’s inauguration, and, when that failed, to undermine his ability to successfully govern. “Our main concern in Chile is the prospect that [Allende] can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success,” Nixon told his National Security Council on November 6, 1970, two days after Allende took office.

‘THAT CHILEAN GUY MIGHT HAVE SOME PROBLEMS’

So far, the declassification of Kissinger’s telcons has not yielded much evidence of phone discussion on Chile as CIA operations to destabilize Allende evolved over the next several years. But at 11am on July 4, 1973, Kissinger’s clandestine tape recorder captured another previously unknown conversation with President Nixon. Two weeks after an aborted coup in Santiago, Nixon phoned Kissinger from his summer home in San Clemente, California, to chat about Allende and the prospects that he might be soon overthrown.

Nixon: You know, I think that Chilean guy might have some problems.

Kissinger: Oh, he has massive problems. He has definitely massive problems.

Nixon: If only the Army would get a few people behind them.

Kissinger: And that coup last week - we had nothing to do with it but still it came off apparently prematurely.

Nixon: That’s right and the fact that he just set up a Cabinet without any military in it is, I think, very significant.

Kissinger:. It’s very significant.

Nixon: Very significant because those military guys are very proud down there and they just may - right?

Kissinger: Yes, I think he’s definitely in difficulties.

Only ten weeks later, the military did move to overthrow Allende in a bloody coup on September 11, 1973. On September 15, Nixon called Kissinger again. They commiserated about what Kissinger called “the bleeding [heart] newspapers” and the “filthy hypocrisy” of the press for focusing on the Chilean military’s repression and the condemnations of the U.S. role. In this telcon–which was declassified in May 2004–Nixon noted that “our hand doesn’t show on this, though.” “We didn’t do it,” Kissinger replied on the issue of direct involvement in the coup. I mean we helped them. [Deleted] created the conditions as great as possible.”

As Kissinger told the President: “In the Eisenhower period we would be heroes.”

You can see all the new Kissinger documents at www.nsarchive.org

Huffington Post | Peter Kornbluh | Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Why People Who Question the Anthrax Attacks Won’t Question 9/11

I think I’ve figured out why many people who question the government’s explanation for the anthrax attacks don’t question the official story about 9/11.

Specifically:

• 9/11 involved much greater loss of life. While 5 people died in the anthrax attacks, close to 3,000 died on 9/11

• None of us have seen gruesome images of the victims of the anthax attacks. But we all watched horrific images of 9/11: planes slamming into buildings, people jumping out of the Twin Towers, the Towers collapsing . . .

• 9/11 was the first attack on the U.S. by “foreign terrorists”. As such, it was the point at which America took the fork in the road away from traditional notions of liberty, justice and the Geneva Convention and towards the “war on terror”

9/11 and the anthrax attacks - and the government’s “investigation” into both - were actually very similar in many ways (as I will show in a later essay).

Many people can see how ridiculous the government’s case against Dr. Bruce Ivins as the “sole culprit” is. With 5 dead and no gruesome images, and occuring after the “war on terror” was already underway, the anthrax attacks are something that people can think about rationally.

But many people are so traumatized by the thousands of deaths, the overwhelming and horrible images, and the unique status of 9/11 as the day when “we were attacked and everything changed”, that they are still in shock and still trying to suppress the fear and pain. They simply will not allow themselves to honestly and fully investigate 9/11, but are still reacting out of primal emotions.

George Washington’s Blog | Monday, August 18, 2008

Flashback: Operation Northwoods

US PLANNED FAKE TERROR ATTACKS ON CITIZENS
TO CREATE SUPPORT FOR CUBAN WAR

From BODY OF SECRETS, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following.
Scanned and edited by NY Transfer News.

…In [Joint Chief's chair] Lemnitzer’s view, the country would be far better off if the generals could take over. [JFK assassination legend has it some general presided over the fudgy JFK autopsy. --Mk]

For those military officers who were sitting on the fence, the Kennedy administration’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion was the last straw. “The Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the dike,” said one report at the time. “President Kennedy was pilloried by the super patriots as a ‘no-win’ chief . . . The Far Right became a fount of proposals born of frustration and put forward in the name of anti-Communism. . . Active-duty commanders played host to anti-Communist seminars on their bases and attended or addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere.”

Although no one in Congress could have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.

According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.

Operation Northwoods Click images for full sized scans

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.

The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public’s memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to Kennedy’s inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the United States “could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable.” What he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president.

Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy’s failure to authorize their plan, and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to invade.

The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on February 26, 1962. Concerned that General Lansdale’s various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn.

As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly “go soft” on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to launch any attacks against Americans or their property Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against Castro. “World opinion, and the United Nations forum,” said a secret JCS document, “should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.”

Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer financed homes and limousines.

One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America’s virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, “the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic.]”

This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, “by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans.” Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn’s possible death as a pretext to launch a war.

Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving Lemnitzer and the Chiefs to begin devising new plots which they suggested be carried out “within the time frame of the next few months.”

Among the actions recommended was “a series of well coordinated incidents to take place in and around” the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing “friendly” Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them “start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base with damage to installations.”

The suggested operations grew progressively more outrageous. Another called for an action similar to the infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a similar plan. “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” they proposed; “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” they wrote. “The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.

We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). . . . We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized.”

Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings:

*”Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”

*”Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican [Republic] Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. ‘Cuban’ B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with ‘Cuban’ messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and ‘Cuban’ shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional provocation.”

*”Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba.”

Among the most elaborate schemes was to “create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.”

Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception:

An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.

From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a “May Day” message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.

Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the decade of shoot downs that had just taken place.

In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962, Lemnitzer went over last-minute details of Operation Northwoods with his covert action chief, Brigadier General William H. Craig, and signed the document. He then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's office. An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba.

Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over Cuba. About a month after submitting Operation Northwoods, they met the "tank," as the JCS conference room was called, and agreed on the wording of a tough memorandum to McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future," they wrote. "Further, they see no prospect of early success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime."

Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of Communism in general and Castro in particular "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of general war" he continued. "They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action." However; what Lemnitzer was suggesting was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled police state. "Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba," he wrote. "Continued police action would be required."

Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the United States. They also recommend that such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably before the release of National Guard and Reserve forces presently on active duty.”

By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer’s former staff officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was putting the military in an “embarrassing rut.” But Lemnitzer replied, “I am the senior military office–it’s my job to state what I believe and it’s his [McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove.” “McNamara’s arrogance was astonishing,” said Lemnitzer’s aide, who knew nothing of Operation Northwoods. “He gave General Lemnitzer very short shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general almost stood at attention when he came into the room. Everything was ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir.’

Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Republican right, to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer’s Cuba chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred. Promoted to major general, he spent three years as chief of the Army Security Agency, NSA’s military arm.

Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation Northwoods, all details remained hidden for forty years. Lemnitzer may have thought that all copies of the relevant documents had been destroyed; he was not one to leave compromising material lying around. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier General David W Gray, Craig’s predecessor as chief of the Cuba project within the JCS, to destroy all his notes concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions during that period. Gray’s meticulous notes were the only detailed official records of what happened within the JCS during that time. According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a congressional investigation and therefore wanted any incriminating evidence destroyed.

With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to lie to Congress. When asked, during secret hearings before a Senate committee, if he knew of any Pentagon plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he did not. Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had been developed since. The consummate planner and man of details also became evasive, suddenly encountering great difficulty in recalling key aspects of the operation, as if he had been out of the country during the period. It was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer to be fired. “We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” he said. “We direly need a new chairman, as well as new members.” No one had any idea of Operation Northwoods.

Because so many documents were destroyed, it is difficult to determine how many senior officials were aware of Operation Northwoods. As has been described, the document was signed and fully approved by Lemnitzer and the rest of the Joint Chiefs and addressed to the Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it went beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general is not known.

Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning “pretext” operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of .n American neighbors. This would give the United States military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba’s adversary and get rid of “A contrived ‘Cuban’ attack on an OAS [Organization of Americas] member could be set up,” said one proposal, “and the attacked state could be urged to ‘take measures of self-defense and request ice from the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost certainly obtain necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba.”

Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then blaming Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war Castro. The report noted, “Any of the contrived situations de above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation.”

The report even suggested secretly paying someone in the Castro government to attack the United States: “The only area remaining for ration then would be to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo.” The act suggested–bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack American military installation–was treason.

In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a the White House proposing “a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime.” In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war “[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident,” said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots.

One idea involved sending fighters across the island on “harassing reconnaissance” and “show-off” missions “flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action.” “Thus,” said the plan, “depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance.” About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest.

Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.

In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military’s star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.

It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America’s long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.

Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation.” One need only replace “Guantanamo Bay” with “Tonkin Gulf,” and “Cuba” with “North Vietnam” and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit.

Book epigram:

“The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on the right track.” –Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director, NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997

What Really Happened | Saturday, August 16, 2008

America’s Israeli-Occupied Media

Fort Detrick Scientist: Ivins Innocent, FBI Worse Than KGB!

By Kevin Barrett and Rolf Lindgren, http://www.barrettforcongress.us

If elected, I will call for an immediate all-out congressional investigation of the anthrax attacks as well as the 9/11 attack they were so obviously linked to. In fact, I hope that by the time I reach Congress, a no-holds-barred investigation of FBI misconduct in the anthrax affair will have already brought down this lying, murdering administration.

A growing legion of skeptics, including more and more mainstream journalists, say the government’s case against suicided anthrax fall-guy Dr. Bruce Ivins has more holes than a Dunkin’ Donuts factory. World Net Daily reports that Ivins passed two lie detector tests, and that a comparison of his handwriting with the handwriting on the anthrax letters shows that he wasn’t the one who scrawled “Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great” on the toxic missives.

By blaming Ivins, who was not Muslim, the government is admitting that the anthrax scare was a false-flag terror attack, presumably one designed to demonize Muslims and grease the skids for war and fascism. The anthrax attacks targeted Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, the two biggest obstacles in the path of the Patriot Act, and helped convince ordinary Americans who have mailboxes, but who don’t work in skyscrapers, that their lives were endangered by murderous Muslim madmen.

But was Ivins the real false-flag terrorist? RawStory reports that Ivins’ erratic behavior appears to have been the result of FBI stalking and persecution. As a Democrat, why would Ivins target Democratic leaders? And why would he want to make people afraid of Muslims? In short, where’s the motive?  The government’s claim that only Ivins had access to the anthrax used in the attack is falling apart, following reports that 16 labs had the strain of anthrax used in the attacks, which did not even originate at Fort Detrick. Though the FBI has threatened all currently employed Fort Detrick scientists, saying they will be fired if they speak to the media, one brave whistleblower isn’t afraid to tell the truth.

Today (August 9), I spoke with a PhD scientist who works at Fort Detrick.  The scientist knows Dr. Bruce Ivins very well and has worked with him for many years.

The scientist is an acquaintance of mine who I’ve known for about five years.

The scientist is a specialist in infectious diseases, including airborne diseases.

The scientist does not want their name given out.  The FBI has told all the scientists at Fort Detrick they cannot speak with the media or they will be fired.

[Its interesting to note that scientists at Fort Detrick can't exercise their first amendment rights, but the FBI can illegally leak confidential investigative information to the media.  Its also interesting that some of the info leaked to the media by FBI informants is not legitimate investigative material, but instead, material meant to character-assassinate Dr. Ivins.  It's also interesting that the FBI leakers can avoid detection, given the Patriot Act.]

The scientist’s eyewitness statements and expert opinions are based on personal knowledge, not media reports, and the scientist has hardly read any news articles about Dr. Ivins.  The scientist has heard media reports that have character-assassinated the good name of Dr. Ivins.  I will be sending some important news articles regarding the anthrax case to the scientist today.

The scientist’s political views tend to lean to the right side, while the views of Dr. Ivins tend to lean toward the left side.  This is based on the fact that the scientist tends to vote Republican or conservative Libertarian, while Dr. Ivins was a regular voter in Democratic primaries.  Therefore, the statements of the scientist have nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with the facts.

The scientist says that “Dr. Bruce Ivins is innocent and that all the scientists who worked with him know he is innocent.”

The scientists says that “Dr. Ivins didn’t have a motive to kill anyone”, and was instead, “dedicated to saving lives by making anthrax vaccines.”  “Dr. Ivins has 30 years of service in protecting human life.”

The scientist says that “Dr. Ivins did not make weaponized anthrax, did not know how to make weaponized anthrax, and did not have the equipment to make weaponized anthrax.”

The scientists says that this holds true for every scientist at Fort Detrick, “none made weaponized anthrax, none know how to make it, nor do any have the equipment to make it.”

The scientist says all the scientists at Fort Detrick have been harassed by the FBI.  The scientist says that the “FBI harassment has been totally awful and it’s disgusting the way the scientists were treated.”

The scientist says that “two doctors who came over from the Soviet Union and work at the facility think the FBI’s behavior is worse than the KGB.”

The scientist says that “Dr. Ivins was driven crazy and racked with fear from the FBI harassment which amounted to psychological torture.”

The scientist says the “FBI essentially murdered Dr. Ivins by driving him crazy.”

The scientist says that “Dr. Ivins innocent and doesn’t know who sent the anthrax.”

* * *

To hear authors Kevin Barrett and Rolf Lindgren discussing this article on Barrett’s radio show, go to http://mp3.wtprn.com/Barrett08.html and click on Sat., August 9 2008, hr. 2.

For more evidence that Bruce Ivins is innocent, see:

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/

http://www.911blogger.com/taxonomy/term/1531

http://www.anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/

http://www.barrettforcongress.us | Kevin Barrett and Rolf Lindgren | Sunday, August 10, 2008

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