Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3164462https://www.momsrising.org/http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... cyber-war/http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/1 ... tor-238356FBI agents group endorses 911 cover up specialist Mike Rogers for FBI director
05/13/17
The FBI Agents Association on Saturday backed former lawmaker and FBI agent Mike Rogers to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey.
FBIAA President Thomas F. O’Connor said in a statement that Rogers, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "exemplifies the principles that should be possessed by the next FBI Director."
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/14/linds ... d-the-fbi/Lindsey Graham: ‘I Think It’s Time For An FBI Agent To Lead The FBI’
1:43 PM 05/14/2017
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged President Donald Trump to nominate an FBI agent to lead the FBI on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.
“I think it’s time for an FBI agent to lead the FBI,” Graham told host Chuck Todd. “When you talk about a new person to lead the FBI, how about an FBI agent who is above reproach?”
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140 ... rial.shtmlFormer FBI agent Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'
from the is-he-insane? dept
Rep. Mike Rogers apparently just can't help but spin wild and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Fresh off his latest attempt to argue that Ed Snowden is a Russian spy -- an argument debunked by just about everyone, including his Senatorial counterpart Dianne Feinstein -- it appears he's now decided to pick up the ridiculously insane thread kicked off (purposefully) last week by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, hinting that journalists who reported on Ed Snowden are somehow "accomplices" who can be prosecuted.
During a House Intelligence Committee in which many members (from both parties) angrily criticized the intelligence community, Rogers continued to do everything possible to defend them, including pushing the bogus argument that Glenn Greenwald "sold stolen goods" in questions to FBI director James Comey:
REP. ROGERS: You -- there have been discussions about selling of access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places. Mr. Comey, to the best of your knowledge, is fencing stolen material -- is that a crime?
DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: Yes, it is.
REP. ROGERS: And would be selling the access of classified material that is stolen from the United States government -- would that be a crime?
DIR. COMEY: It would be. It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a news-gathering and news promulgation function, but in general, fencing or selling stolen property is a crime.
REP. ROGERS: So if I’m a newspaper reporter for -- fill in the blank -- and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?
DIR. COMEY: Right, if you’re a newspaper report and you’re hocking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime.
REP. ROGERS: And if I’m hocking stolen classified material that I’m not legally in possession of for personal gain and profit, is that not a crime?
DIR. COMEY: I think that’s a harder question because it involves a news-gathering functions -- could have First Amendment implications. It’s something that probably would be better answered by the Department of Justice.
REP. ROGERS: So entering into a commercial enterprise to sell stolen material is acceptable to a legitimate news organization?
DIR. COMEY: I’m not sure I’m able to answer that question in the abstract.
REP. ROGERS: It’s something we ought to think about, is it not?
DIR. COMEY: Certainly.
REP. ROGERS: And so if there are accomplices in purveying stolen information, shouldn’t we be concerned about that?
DIR. COMEY: We should be concerned about all the facts surrounding the theft of classified information and its promulgation.
REP. ROGERS: Hmm. And interesting that over the -- again, the Munich Conference, where we had individuals tell us that in fact there are individuals who are saying to be in possession of this information who are eager to sell this information to other news organizations, would that be a legitimate exercise on behalf of a reporter?
DIR. COMEY: That’s a question -- now you’re getting from the general to the particular. I don’t want to talk about the case in particular because it’s an active investigation of ours.
REP. ROGERS: It’s an active investigation for accomplices brokering in stolen information?
DIR. COMEY: We are looking at the totality of the circumstances around the theft and promulgation.
Glenn Greenwald is not named, but that's clearly who they are targeting. A few folks have brought up the ridiculous charges of him "selling" the Snowden leaks to news organizations, but that's clearly bullshit. Greenwald has been doing freelance journalism work for a while. Publications pay him in the same way they pay any freelancer. He's not selling any documents at all -- and in fact has shared many of the documents with multiple publications for their own reporting activities.
It's pretty clear that Rogers is continuing his desperate, despicable and downright McCarthy-like arguments in an attempt to create chilling effects and to protect his friends in the intelligence community. You'd think that someone who is supposed to uphold the Constitution would respect the freedom of the press, but Rogers seems to be actively trying to stifle it -- just like his staff did to me last year, when they lied about me and told reporters that they could sue me for defamation.
Rogers has shown time and time again that he's little more than a lumbering bully who will do pretty much anything to protect his friends in the intelligence community, even if that means trampling all over the Constitution. Rogers can push these claims as much as he wants. I think it's unlikely that the DOJ would go anywhere near charging a reporter with "selling stolen goods" in a case like this, because they know that argument would almost certainly fail. That means the only reason Rogers is doing this is to try to scare off people with bluster and threats. Thankfully, most of the people that's targeted at actually understand the law and the Constitution, and take such threats as clear suggestions that they're on the right track. It all makes you wonder, just what does Mike Rogers want to keep hidden so badly?
Dogs Shot by Police
https://www.facebook.com/DogsShotbyPolice/https://signalscv.com/2017/05/12/fbi-ag ... be-ensues/FBI agent shoots dog near Golden Valley, Bureau probe underway
By JIM HOLT AND AUSTIN DAVE - May 12, 2017, 8:10 pm
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-agent-pu ... 30316.htmlFBI agent in Puerto Rico accused of kicking neighbor's dog
5/ 2, 2017
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico
An FBI agent in Puerto Rico has been accused of kicking his neighbor's Yorkshire terrier in the head.
Police said Tuesday that 46-year-old Timothy Boruff was charged with animal abuse and posted a $500 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court May 17.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... t-pet.htmlOff-duty FBI agent shot and killed dog while a grandmother was walking him in a park | Daily Mail Online
Daily Mail › uk › news › article-2888743
Dec 27, 2014 - Off-duty FBI agent shot and killed dog while grandmother walked it in a park so he could protect his own pet. Carol Feldhaus was in a park in Glen Burnie, Maryland,
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-ameri ... ce-n757826NEWS MAY 11 2017, 10:00 AM ET
Scientist Formerly Accused of Spying Sues Alleging FBI Agent Falsified Evidence
An FBI special agent knowingly made false statements and kept evidence from federal prosecutors who brought — but later dropped — charges against a Chinese-American physics professor accused of spying, a recent lawsuit alleges.
Xiaoxing Xi, 59, argues in papers filed in federal court Wednesday that lead case agent Andrew Haugen told prosecutors Xi's dealings with colleagues in China were "for a sinister and illicit purpose," even though Haugen allegedly knew they were "legitimate normal academic collaborations."
Image: US-CHINA-SPY-CHARGES
Sherry Chen (L), a US federal government worker, and Xiaoxing Xi, chair of the Physics Department at Temple University, speak about the dropped charges against them of spying for China, during a press conference in Washington, DC, September 15, 2015. Prosecutors dropped charges of spying for China against Xi last week and against Chen earlier this year. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
An indictment handed up in May 2015 by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania accused Xi of sharing information with counterparts in China about a pocket heater, which Xi bought in 2004 for use in his superconductor research, court papers said.
He was charged with four counts of wire fraud in what prosecutors said was an effort to help the Chinese become "world leaders of the superconductivity field."
But the government dropped its case in September 2015 after Xi and his attorney gave a presentation to investigators a month earlier, according to court papers.
RELATED: Feds Will Not File New Espionage Charges Against Physics Professor
According to Xi's lawsuit, the only thing the physics department's interim chair at Temple University in Philadelphia discussed in emails with those colleagues was technology he himself had invented and published — not the pocket heater.
And that, the suit contends, was a fact Haugen knew before Xi was ever indicted.
"It was obvious to anyone who looked carefully that Professor Xi had not sent any information about the technology that he was charged with unlawfully sharing," one of his attorneys, Jonathan Feinberg, told NBC News.
An excerpt of a lawsuit by Xiaoxing Xi alleging that an FBI special agent falsely informed federal prosecutors that Xi was a "technological spy for China."
The FBI declined to comment on the lawsuit citing pending litigation. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A naturalized citizen born in China, Xi is among several Chinese-American scientists who in recent years have had federal criminal indictments dismissed before heading to trial.
Last May, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, among others, called on the Justice Department to investigate whether race, ethnicity, or national origin played a role in bringing espionage charges against Asian Americans, including Xi and hydrologist Xiafen (Sherry) Chen.
RELATED: Petition Demands Apology for Chinese-American Scientists Previously Accused of Spying
Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles said in a statement Wednesday that it supported Xi's lawsuit, calling his prosecution unjust.
"In reality, the federal government had sought to criminalize Professor Xi for routine academic research that was not secret or unlawful in any way," the statement reads.
Xi's arrest came in the early morning hours of May 21, 2015, while at home with his family, court papers said. Not fully dressed, Xi answered the door after hearing loud, urgent knocks. Awaiting him on the other side were armed federal agents, some with a battering ram, court documents said.
Xi's wife and two daughters, the youngest age 12 at the time, were held at gunpoint as a handcuffed Xi was led away, his lawsuit claims.
Agents at the FBI's Philadelphia field office fingerprinted Xi, took his mugshot, and made him give a DNA sample, court papers said. Xi was also interrogated for two hours, allegedly being told the reason for his arrest only after the questioning ended, his suit said.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which took custody of Xi, ordered him to strip naked and performed a visual body cavity search, according to court papers.
Xi was released after posting $100,000 in bond, though a judge required that he turn over his passport and restricted his travel to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, his lawsuit said.
He was told he faced up to 80 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted, according to court papers.
The four-count indictment alleged that Xi violated an agreement he had signed in 2006 with a company claiming ownership of the pocket heater he had bought two years earlier. Xi promised in that document not to "reproduce, sell, transfer or otherwise distribute" the device "to any third party," his lawsuit said.
That was a condition for Xi to lease and use the pocket heater in his research for a 12-month period, according to court documents.
The physical components of that particular device were not trade secrets or protected by federal law from being disclosed, the court filing said.
The wire fraud charges were based on emails in 2010 between Xi and colleagues in China. But, as Xi maintains, details of the pocket heater were never brought up in those electronic communications.
"They addressed completely different devices — in fact, devices that professor Xi had himself invented, which had nothing to do with the STI pocket heater," Feinberg said.
That was among the evidence Xi and his attorney presented to prosecutors, who ultimately dismissed the charges on Sept. 18, 2015, court filings said.
Xi's lawsuit accuses Haugen of making a number of false statements that led to what Xi calls a malicious prosecution. Among them, that Xi sent diagrams and photographs of the pocket heater to colleagues at universities in China, and that Xi bought the device with the intent of violating the non-disclosure agreement he had signed.
The lawsuit claims Xi's equal protection and due process rights were violated, and that he was subjected to unlawful search and seizure. He is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys' fees.
Xi has since returned to work at Temple University, Feinberg said. He added that Xi was never told what caused the government to be suspicious of his conduct in the first place.
"There's no question that these charges left a very, very distressing impression upon him," Feinberg said. "He is constantly watching his back, concerned that someone may misinterpret his normal academic collaborations."
Additional defendants could be tacked on to the lawsuit if it's discovered that other agents were involved, Feinberg said.
The FBI itself was not named in the complaint since the agency can not be sued under federal law, he noted.
But Feinberg added, "At some point, it is likely that we will bring claims against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act. That's an issue that we'll be addressing in the weeks and months
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3162073NYPD tech charged with attacking, hurling death threats at daughter
Saturday, May 13, 2017, 8:51 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3165148Former FBI Director James Comey spotted at musical in first public outing since being fired
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, May 14, 2017, 6:09 PM
Former FBI Director James Comey made his first public appearance since getting fired by President Trump by attending a musical on Saturday.
Comey and his wife, Patrice, enjoyed the matinee performance of “Fun Home” — a musical about a lesbian cartoonist who explores her sexuality and struggles with the suicide of her gay father – at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. The coming-of-age musical won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015.
Barbara Whitman, one of the show’s lead producers, told The New York Times that the Comeys purchased tickets some time ago.
The show had such an impact on the Comeys that “they were wiping away the tears as they came backstage to meet the cast,” Whitman told the Times.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Disturbi ... 8/Y/M.htmlDISTURBING CLAIM – FBI INTERROGATED FORMER SENATOR FOR WANTING “28 PAGES” DECLASSIFIED
Published: May 9, 2016
While extremely disturbing, I can’t say the following is particularly surprising.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is criticizing the Obama administration as having tried to strong-arm a former senator who is pushing to declassify 28 pages of the 9/11 report dealing with Saudi Arabia.
He recounted how Rep. Gwen Graham (D-Fla.) and her father, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.), were detained by the FBI in 2011 at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. The message from the agents, according to the Grahams, was to quit pushing for declassification of the 28 pages.
The FBI “took a former senator, a former governor, grabbed him in an airport, hustled him into a room with armed force to try to intimidate him into taking different positions on issues of public policy and important national policy, and the fact that he wasn’t intimidated because he was calm doesn’t show that they weren’t trying to intimidate him,” Sherman said in an interview with The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper.
This actually makes perfect sense. As I highlighted in last year’s post, The New York Post Reports – FBI is Covering Up Saudi Links to 9/11 Attack:
Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers. He says the al-Hijjis’ “urgent” pre-9/11 exit suggests “someone may have tipped them off” about the coming attacks.
Graham has been working with a 14-member group in Congress to urge President Obama to declassify 28 pages of the final report of his inquiry which were originally redacted, wholesale, by President George W. Bush.
“The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” he said, adding, “I am speaking of the kingdom,” or government, of Saudi Arabia, not just wealthy individual Saudi donors.
Sources who have read the censored Saudi section say it cites CIA and FBI case files that directly implicate officials of the Saudi Embassy in Washington and its consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks — which, if true, would make 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war by a foreign government.
This is Your Government: Protecting the criminals from the people.
For related articles, see:
Seymour Hersh – Saudi Government Paid Pakistan to Hold Osama bin Laden to Prevent U.S. Interrogation
Video of the Day – 60 Minutes Explores the Saudi Links to 9/11 Attacks
The New York Post Reports – FBI is Covering Up Saudi Links to 9/11 Attack
Must Watch Video – Congressman Thomas Massie Calls for Release of Secret 9/11 Documents Upon Reading Them
Two Congressmen Push for Release of 28-Page Document Showing Saudi Involvement in 9/11
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/schumer-rai ... i-nominee/May 14, 2017, 5:11 PM
Schumer raises possibility of stalling Trump's FBI nominee
WASHINGTON -- The Senate's top Democrat is raising the possibility his party may try to stall President Trump's FBI nominee until his administration agrees to have a special prosecutor investigate Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
https://www.cato.org/publications/comme ... lames-wacoSenator Schumer covers up murder by FBI agents at WACO
Fanning the Flames of Waco
September 8, 1999
On April 19, 1993, 26 children were killed at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Six years and one day later, 12 children were killed at Columbine High School. The Columbine murderers are dead, and the man who illegally supplied them a gun is facing a lengthy prison sentence. But those responsible for the deaths of the children at Waco remain at large.
If, as President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno claim, the federal government bears no responsibility for the deaths of the children at Waco, why has the federal government worked so hard, and with so much success until recently, to falsify the facts about what happened there?
The lies about how the fire started commenced while the building was still in flames. A Justice Department spokesman in Washington claimed that an FBI sniper using a rifle scope had seen a male Branch Davidian, wearing black Ninja-style clothes and a black hood, pour liquid on the floor behind a piano and then ignite it. The day after the fire, Jeffrey Jamar, the FBI’s special agent in charge at Waco, asserted that the agent saw a person “get down with cupped hands and then there was a flash of fire.”
At the criminal trial of the Branch Davidians in 1994, that story fell apart. FBI Special Agent Jack Morrison said that he could see, through a hole created by a tank, somebody bent or kneeling by an overturned piano. The man appeared to be washing his hands, although the sniper admitted on cross-examination that he could not see the man’s hands. The fire did not erupt while the man was in the sniper’s sight, though the sniper did see a fire shortly thereafter. However, pictures of the progress of the fire show that the area near the overturned piano (the front door) was not a starting point for any fire. No fire appears there until several minutes after the sniper’s observation. Photographs show no fire in that area while much of the rest of the building was in flames.
Attorney General Reno earned a congratulatory phone call from President Clinton the day after the fire because of her highly publicized acceptance of responsibility. She put the FBI in charge of investigating its own conduct at Waco. The resulting report was a sham and a cover-up. Although seven independent reviewers were appointed to examine the FBI report, the FBI withheld evidence from them, such as Branch Davidian leader David Koresh’s April 14 offer to surrender as soon as he completed his written interpretation of the Seven Seals from the Book of Revelation.
Today, Reno claims to be angry that the FBI has been caught lying about Waco for the last six years. This brings to mind Claude Rains’s line from Casablanca, “I’m shocked … shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”
The FBI lied to Janet Reno right from the start: they told her that CS chemical warfare agent is a mild irritant, even though much smaller doses than were used at Waco have killed children. On the day of the assault, the FBI flagrantly ignored her prior order to back off if there was any danger to the children. When she had initially rejected the FBI’s plan for a tank and chemical warfare assault on the Branch Davidians, the FBI told her that “Koresh was beating the babies.” In fact, FBI listening devices revealed no such thing.
Now Attorney General Reno’s response to new revelations about FBI lies is to order another FBI investigation of the FBI.
It is undisputed that while the FBI tanks were conducting the chemical warfare assault, the Branch Davidians spread kerosene in the building, intending to light it if the tanks entered the building. Starting a massive conflagration would have been consistent with Koresh’s apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible.
However, if federal agents bear no responsibility for the start of the fire and for the deaths of 76 people, why has the FBI covered up so much evidence for so long?
Recent revelations show that the FBI did fire pyrotechnic grenades — fully capable of starting a fire — during the attack on the Branch Davidian home. The FBI now claims that those grenades were launched six hours before the fire began. Yet if this “innocent” explanation is true, why did the FBI not tell the truth from the beginning?
Even if one takes the current FBI explanation at face value, it shows the federal government’s horrible disregard for the children. Although CS chemical warfare agent is banned from international warfare by a treaty that the United States has signed, the FBI used it against children and babies, knowing that those innocents would be unprotected by gas masks, since their faces were too small to fit them.
After the fire, the FBI bemoaned the failure of the Branch Davidians to take refuge in the underground tornado shelter, where the air remained cool and fresh. Yet the FBI now admits that the pyrotechnic grenades were launched at the very beginning of the assault as part of a systematic plan to keep anyone from fleeing to the shelter.
The federal Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military for civilian law enforcement. Yet the Dallas Morning News reports that the U.S. Army’s Delta Force was “present, up front and close” on April 19, 1993. That revelation undermines earlier claims that only three Delta Force soldiers were at Waco in an “advisory” capacity.
The government claims that the FBI never fired a single shot at Waco, yet an FBI aerial film appears to show the distinctive pattern of machine gun fire coming from government posts at the rear of the Branch Davidian compound — on the one side of the building that television cameras could not see. Could it be that Delta Force, and not the FBI, was doing the shooting — making claims that the FBI did not fire a single shot literally true?
Congressional leaders are beginning new hearings on Waco. However, the 1995 Waco hearings were a disaster, with Republicans looking for administration appointees to blame and paying little attention to the malfeasance of career federal agents. Meanwhile, Democrats such as then-Rep. Charles Schumer succeeded in diverting attention away from crimes committed by government employees and toward the statutory rapes that David Koresh had perpetrated earlier. To his credit, Schumer, now a senator, was the first major Democrat to call for a new review of Waco.
If another round of hearings is to have any chance for success, it will be essential to have a small committee, to allow congressional staff to question witnesses, and not to impose time limits on how long a given witness may be questioned.
Even now, it is unclear who killed the children of Waco. More than ever, though, the recent unveiling of more FBI lies underscores the fact that the children died because of willful and knowing actions by our federal law enforcement professionals. Although the president shed crocodile tears over the 12 children at Columbine High School and now seeks partisan advantage by pushing for federal laws that could not possibly have prevented Columbine, he and his administration remain coldly indifferent to the 26 children at Waco. The day after the Waco fire, Clinton said, “I do not think the United States government is responsible for the fact that a bunch of religious fanatics decided to kill themselves.” But the children didn’t kill themselves. If the president and his attorney general really care about those 26 children, they will appoint outside investigators — not the FBI — to bring out the truth about what really happened on April 19, 1993.
David B. Kopel and Paul H. Blackman are the authors of No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It.
https://www.rt.com/usa/388341-bin-laden-son-revenge/Osama Bin Laden’s son ‘bent on avenging father’s death’ – ex-FBI agent
Published time: 14 May, 2017 15:55
Osama Bin Laden’s son ‘bent on avenging father’s death’ – ex-FBI agent
Osama Bin Laden’s son is set to become the new leader of Al-Qaeda and wants to exact revenge for his father’s death, according to an ex-FBI agent, who led the investigation into the terrorist group following the 9/11 attacks.
In an interview to be aired on CBS on Sunday, former agent Ali Soufan claims that letters seized in the raid in which Bin Laden was killed in 2011 indicate that his son will follow in his footsteps.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol ... 91401.htmlOsama Bin Laden Created by the US
. 'Bin Laden is a product of the U.S. spy agencies, according to an article in the Tribune de Genve by Richard Labviire, writer of the book Les dollars de la terreur, les etats Unis et les islamistes.
The first contact with Bin Laden was in 1979, when the new graduate from the Univ. of Jedah got in touch with the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey. With the help of the CIA and the U.S. Armed Forces intelligence services he began to organize in the early 1980s and network to raise money and to recruit fighters for the Afghan mujahidins that were fighting the Soviets. He did this from the city of Peshawar in Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan.
Part of these activities were financed with the production and sale of morphine, the base of heroin. This was the beginning of today Al Qaida (the base) network led by Bin Laden. Indeed the chickens are coming home to roost for the CIA and U.S. bosses.
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/07euro1.htmLONDON [IANS]: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here.
"I warned them that we were creating a monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on "Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia."
Harrison said: "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan." The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.
Harrison, who spoke before the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues was launched, told the gathering of security experts that he had meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being strengthened in Afghanistan. "They told me these people were fanatical, and the more fierce they were the more fiercely they would fight the Soviets," he said. "I warned them that we were creating a monster."
Harrison, who has written five books on Asian affairs and US relations with Asia, has had extensive contact with the CIA and political leaders in South Asia. Harrison was a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace between 1974 and 1996.
Harrison who is now senior fellow with The Century Foundation recalled a conversation he had with the late Gen Zia-ul Haq of Pakistan. "Gen Zia spoke to me about expanding Pakistan's sphere of influence to control Afghanistan, then Uzbekistan and Tajikstan and then Iran and Turkey," Harrison said. That design continues, he said. Gen.Mohammed Aziz who was involved in that Zia plan has been elevated now to a key position by Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Harrison said.
The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue, Harrison said. "The CIA still has close links with the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence)."
Today that money and those weapons have helped build up the Taliban, Harrison said. "The Taliban are not just recruits from 'madrassas' (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the Pakistani government)." The Taliban are now "making a living out of terrorism."
Harrison said the UN Security Council resolution number 1333 calls for an embargo on arms to the Taliban. "But it is a resolution without teeth because it does not provide sanctions for non-compliance," he said. "The US is not backing the Russians who want to give more teeth to the resolution."
Now it is Pakistan that "holds the key to the future of Afghanistan," Harrison said. The creation of the Taliban was central to Pakistan's "pan-Islamic vision," Harrison said. It came after "the CIA made the historic mistake of encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan," he said. The creation of the Taliban had been "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," he said. "Pakistan has been building up Afghan collaborators who will sustain Pakistan," he said. (IANS)
More On The Taliban And Other "Monsters" Of The CIA:
For more details on the CIA's role in creating the Taliban, and dozens of other terrorist organizations around the world, refer to the latest issue of COAT's magazine, Press for Conversion!.
This issue (#43) is on the theme: "A People's History of the CIA: The Subversion of Democracy from Australia to Zaire." It is available (full-text) at our web site <http://www.ncf.ca/coat/>
Anatomy of a Victory: CIA's Covert Afghan War
By: Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992
"In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II."
A specially equipped C-141 Starlifter transport carrying William Casey touched down at a military air base south of Islamabad in October 1984 for a secret visit by the CIA director to plan strategy for the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Helicopters lifted Casey to three secret training camps near the Afghan border, where he watched mujaheddin rebels fire heavy weapons and learn to make bombs with CIA-supplied plastic explosives and detonators.
During the visit, Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that they take the Afghan war into enemy territory -- into the Soviet Union itself.
Casey wanted to ship subversive propaganda through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union's predominantly Muslim southern republics. The Pakistanis agreed, and the CIA soon supplied thousands of Korans, as well as books on Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan and tracts on historical heroes of Uzbek nationalism, according to Pakistani and Western officials.
"We can do a lot of damage to the Soviet Union," Casey said, according to Mohammed Yousaf, a Pakistani general who attended the meeting.
Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to sharply escalate U.S. covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western officials.
Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet empire.
Eight years after Casey's visit to Pakistan, the Soviet Union is no more. Afghanistan has fallen to the heavily armed, fraticidal mujaheddin rebels.
The Afghans themselves did the fighting and dying -- and ultimately won their war against the Soviets -- and not all of them laud the CIA's role in their victory. But even some sharp critics of the CIA agree that in military terms, its secret 1985 escalation of covert support to the mujaheddin made a major difference in Afghanistan, the last battlefield of the long Cold War.
How the Reagan administration decided to go for victory in the Afghan war between 1984 and 1988 has been shrouded in secrecy and clouded by the sharply divergent political agendas of those involved. But with the triumph of the mujaheddin rebels over Afghanistan's leftist government in April and the demise of the Soviet Union, some intelligence officials involved have decided to reveal how the covert escalation was carried out.
The most prominent of these former intelligence officers is Yousaf, the Pakistani general who supervised the covert war between 1983 and 1987 and who last month published in Europe and Pakistan a detailed account of his role and that of the CIA, titled "The Bear Trap."
This article and another to follow are based on extensive interviews with Yousaf as well as with more than a dozen senior Western officials who confirmed Yousaf's disclosures and elaborated on them.
U.S. officials worried about what might happen if aspects of their stepped-up covert action were exposed -- or if the program succeeded too well and provoked the Soviets to react in hot anger. The escalation that began in 1985 "was directed at killing Russian military officers," one Western official said. "That caused a lot of nervousness."
One source of jitters was that Pakistani intelligence officers -- partly inspired by Casey -- began independently to train Afghans and funnel CIA supplies for scattered strikes against military installations, factories and storage depots within Soviet territory.
The attacks later alarmed U.S. officials in Washington, who saw military raids on Soviet territory as "an incredible escalation," according to Graham Fuller, then a senior U.S. intelligence official who counseled against any such raids. Fearing a large-scale Soviet response and the fallout of such attacks on U.S.-Soviet diplomacy, the Reagan administration blocked the transfer to Pakistan of detailed satellite photographs of military targets inside the Soviet Union, other U.S. officials said.
To Yousaf, who managed the Koran-smuggling program and the guerrilla raids inside Soviet territory, the United States ultimately "chickened out" on the question of taking the secret Afghan war onto Soviet soil. Nonetheless, Yousaf recalled, Casey was "ruthless in his approach, and he had a built-in hatred for the Soviets."
An intelligence coup in 1984 and 1985 triggered the Reagan administration's decision to escalate the covert progam in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. The United States received highly specific, sensitive information about Kremlin politics and new Soviet war plans in Afghanistan. Already under pressure from Congress and conservative activists to expand its support to the mujaheddin, the Reagan administration moved in response to this intelligence to open up its high-technology arsenal to aid the Afghan rebels.
Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujaheddin rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.
The move to upgrade aid to the mujaheddin roughly coincided with the well-known decision in 1986 to provide the mujaheddin with sophisticated, U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Before the missiles arrived, however, those involved in the covert war wrestled with a wide-ranging and at times divisive debate over how far they should go in challenging the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Roots of the Rebellion In 1980, not long after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan to prop up a sympathetic leftist government, President Jimmy Carter signed the first -- and for many years the only -- presidential "finding" on Afghanistan, the classified directive required by U.S. law to begin covert operations, according to several Western sources familiar with the Carter document.
The Carter finding sought to aid Afghan rebels in "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan through secret supplies of light weapons and other assistance. The finding did not talk of driving Soviet forces out of Afghanistan or defeating them militarily, goals few considered possible at the time, these sources said.
The cornerstone of the program was that the United States, through the CIA, would provide funds, some weapons and general supervision of support for the mujaheddin rebels, but day-to-day operations and direct contact with the mujaheddin would be left to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. The hands-off U.S. role contrasted with CIA operations in Nicaragua and Angola.
Saudi Arabia agreed to match U.S. financial contributions to the mujaheddin and distributed funds directly to ISI. China sold weapons to the CIA and donated a smaller number directly to Pakistan, but the extent of China's role has been one of the secret war's most closely guarded secrets.
In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II.
In the first years after the Reagan administration inherited the Carter program, the covert Afghan war "tended to be handled out of Casey's back pocket," recalled Ronald Spiers, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, the base of the Afghan rebels. Mainly from China's government, the CIA purchased assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines and SA-7 light antiaircraft weapons, and then arranged for shipment to Pakistan. Most of the weapons dated to the Korean War or earlier. The amounts were significant -- 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983, according to Yousaf -- but a fraction of what they would be in just a few years.
Beginning in 1984, Soviet forces in Afghanistan began to experiment with new and more aggressive tactics against the mujaheddin, based on the use of Soviet special forces, called the Spetsnaz, in helicopter-borne assaults on Afghan rebel supply lines. As these tactics succeeded, Soviet commanders pursued them increasingly, to the point where some U.S. congressmen who traveled with the mujaheddin -- including Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Tex.) and Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) -- believed that the war might turn against the rebels.
The new Soviet tactics reflected a perception in the Kremlin that the Red Army was in danger of becoming bogged down in Afghanistan and needed to take decisive steps to win the war, according to sensitive intelligence that reached the Reagan administration in 1984 and 1985, Western officials said. The intelligence came from the upper reaches of the Soviet Defense Ministry and indicated that Soviet hard-liners were pushing a plan to attempt to win the Afghan war within two years, sources said.
The new war plan was to be implemented by Gen. Mikhail Zaitsev, who was transferred from the prestigious command of Soviet forces in Germany to run the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the spring of 1985, just as Mikhail Gorbachev was battling hard-line rivals to take power in a Kremlin succession struggle. Cracking the Kremlin's Strategy
The intelligence about Soviet war plans in Afghanistan was highly specific, according to Western sources. The Soviets intended to deploy one-third of their total Spetsnaz forces in Afghanistan -- nearly 2,000 "highly trained and motivated" paratroops, according to Yousaf.
In addition, the Soviets intended to dispatch a stronger KGB presence to assist the special forces and regular troops, and they intended to deploy some of the Soviet Union's most sophisticated battlefield communications equipment, referred to by some as the "Omsk vans" -- mobile, integrated communications centers that would permit interception of mujaheddin battlefield communications and rapid, coordinated aerial attacks on rebel targets, such as the kind that were demoralizing the rebels by 1984.
At the Pentagon, U.S. military officers pored over the intelligence, considering plans to thwart the Soviet escalation, officials said. The answers they came up with, said a Western official, were to provide "secure communications [for the Afghan rebels], kill the gunships and the fighter cover, better routes for [mujaheddin] infiltration, and get to work on [Soviet] targets" in Afghanistan, including the Omsk vans, through the use of satellite reconnaissance and increased, specialized guerrilla training.
"There was a demand from my friends [in the CIA] to capture a vehicle intact with this sort of communications," recalled Yousaf, referring to the newly introduced mobile Soviet facilities. Unfortunately, despite much effort, Yousaf said, "we never succeeded in that."
"Spetsnaz was key," said Vincent Cannistraro, a CIA operations officer who was posted at the time as director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council. Not only did communications improve, but the Spetsnaz forces were willing to fight aggressively and at night. The problem, Cannistraro said, was that as the Soviets moved to escalate, the U.S. aid was "just enough to get a very brave people killed" because it encouraged the mujaheddin to fight but did not provide them with the means to win.
Conservatives in the Reagan administration and especially in Congress saw the CIA as part of the problem. Humphrey, the former senator and a leading conservative supporter of the mujaheddin, found the CIA "really, really reluctant" to increase the quality of support for the Afghan rebels to meet Soviet escalation. For their part, CIA officers felt the war was not going as badly as some skeptics thought, and they worried that it might not be possible to preserve secrecy in the midst of a major escalation. A sympathetic U.S. official said the agency's key decision-makers "did not question the wisdom" of the escalation, but were "simply careful."
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, and national security adviser Robert D. McFarlane signed an extensive annex, augmenting the original Carter intelligence finding that focused on "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces, according to several sources. Although it covered diplomatic and humanitarian objectives as well, the new, detailed Reagan directive used bold language to authorize stepped-up covert military aid to the mujaheddin, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.
New Covert U.S. Aid The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, according to Yousaf -- as well as what he called a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels. At any one time during the Afghan fighting season, as many as 11 ISI teams trained and supplied by the CIA accompanied the mujaheddin across the border to supervise attacks, according to Yousaf and Western sources. The teams attacked airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads, the sources said.
CIA and Pentagon specialists offered detailed satellite photographs and ink maps of Soviet targets around Afghanistan. The CIA station chief in Islamabad ferried U.S. intercepts of Soviet battlefield communications.
Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it. Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the firing site.
The new efforts focused on strategic targets such as the Termez Bridge between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. "We got the information like current speed of the water, current depth of the water, the width of the pillars, which would be the best way to demolish," Yousaf said. In Washington, CIA lawyers debated whether it was legal to blow up pylons on the Soviet side of the bridge as opposed to the Afghan side, in keeping with the decision not to support military action across the Soviet border, a Western official said.
Despite several attempts, Afghan rebels trained in the new program never brought the Termez Bridge down, though they did damage and destroy other targets, such as pipelines and depots, in the sensitive border area, Western and Pakistani sources said.
The most valuable intelligence provided by the Americans was the satellite reconnaissance, Yousaf said. Soon the wall of Yousaf's office was covered with detailed maps of Soviet targets in Afghanistan such as airfields, armories and military buildings. The maps came with CIA assessments of how best to approach the target, possible routes of withdrawal, and analysis of how Soviet troops might respond to an attack. "They would say there are the vehicles, and there is the [river bank], and there is the tank," Yousaf said.
CIA operations officers helped Pakistani trainers establish schools for the mujaheddin in secure communications, guerrilla warfare, urban sabotage and heavy weapons, Yousaf and Western officials said.
The first antiaircraft systems used by the mujaheddin were the Swiss-made Oerlikon heavy gun and the British-made Blowpipe missile, according to Yousaf and Western sources. When these proved ineffective, the United States sent the Stinger. Pakistani officers traveled to the United States for training on the Stinger in June 1986 and then set up a secret mujaheddin Stinger training facility in Rawalpindi, complete with an electronic simulator made in the United States. The simulator allowed mujaheddin trainees to aim and fire at a large screen without actually shooting off expensive missiles, Yousaf said. The screen marked the missile's track and calculated whether the trainee would have hit his airborne target.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of such training and battlefield intelligence depended on the mujaheddin themselves; their performance and willingness to employ disciplined tactics varied greatly. Yousaf considered the aid highly valuable, although persistently marred by supplies of weapons such as the Blowpipe that failed miserably on the battlefield.
At the least, the escalation on the U.S. side initiated with Reagan's 1985 National Security Directive helped to change the character of the Afghan war, intensifying the struggle and raising the stakes for both sides. This change led U.S. officials to confront a difficult question that had legal, military, foreign policy and even moral implications: In taking the Afghan covert operation more directly to the Soviet enemy, how far should the United States be prepared to go?
http://yournewswire.com/fbi-jason-chaff ... -politics/FBI Insider Reveals Why Jason Chaffetz Is Being Forced Out Of Politics
May 1, 2017
Jason Chaffetz is retiring from politics because the Rothschild's threatened his children's lives, according to an FBI insider.
Jason Chaffetz is retiring from politics because elite Democrats, working on behalf of the financial industrial complex also known as the Rothschild’s central banking scam, threatened his children’s lives, according to an FBI insider.
Chaffetz effectively ended his career as an uncompromised politician when he pushed through the bill to audit the Federal Reserve, the FBI insider explains.
“You don’t go after the Fed. Nobody goes after the Federal Reserve and gets away with it.”
In March Chaffetz was credited with doing “the impossible” and pushing a bill through Congress ordering an audit of the Federal Reserve.
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/l ... story.html Meet the Malibu lawyer who is upending California's political system, one town at a time