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Overview
Cannabis: Old medicine with new promise for neurological disorders
Gregory T Carter1* & Patrick Weydt2
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Marijuana is a complex substance containing over 60
different forms of cannabinoids, the active ingredients.
Cannabinoids are now known to have the capacity for
neuromodulation, via direct, receptor-based mechanisms at
numerous levels within the nervous system. These have
therapeutic properties that may be applicable to the
treatment of neurological disorders; including antioxidative,
neuroprotective, analgesic and anti-inflammatory
actions; immunomodulation, modulation of glial cells and
tumor growth regulation. This article reviews the emerging
research on the physiological mechanisms of endogenous
and exogenous cannabinoids in the context of neurological
disease.
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Over the past few decades there has been widening interest in
the viable medicinal uses of cannabis [1]. The National
Institutes of Health, the Institute of Medicine and the Food
and Drug Administration have all issued statements calling
for further investigation [1-3]. The discovery of an
endogenous cannabinoid system with specific receptors and
ligands has led the progression of our understanding of the
actions of cannabis from folklore to valid science. It now
appears that the cannabinoid system evolved with our species
and is intricately involved in normal human physiology,
specifically in the control of movement, pain, memory and
appetite, among others. The detection of widespread
cannabinoid receptors in the brain and peripheral tissues
suggests that the cannabinoid system represents a previously
unrecognized ubiquitous network in the nervous system.
Dense receptor concentrations have been found in the
cerebellum, basal ganglia and hippocampus, accounting for
the effects on motor tone, coordination and mood state [4,5].
Low concentrations are found in the brainstem, accounting
for the remarkably low toxicity. Lethal doses in humans have
not been described [5-7].
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Marijuana is a complex plant, with several subtypes of
cannabis, each containing over 400 chemicals [8,9].
Approximately 60 are chemically classified as cannabinoids
[5,9]. The cannabinoids are 21 carbon terpenes, biosynthesized
predominantly via a recently discovered deoxyxylulose
phosphate pathway [10]. The cannabinoids are lipophilic and
not soluble in water. Among the most psychoactive is '9-
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in
dronabinol (Unimed Pharmaceuticals Inc) [9]. Other major
cannabinoids include cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol
(CBN), both of which may modify the pharmacology of THC
or have distinct effects of their own. CBD is not psychoactive
but has significant anticonvulsant, sedative and other
pharmacological activity likely to interact with THC [8]. In
mice, pretreatment with CBD increased brain levels of THC
nearly 3-fold and there is strong evidence that cannabinoids
can increase the brain concentrations and pharmacological
actions of other drugs [11].
Two endogenous lipids, anandamide (AEA) and 2-
arachidonylglycerol (2-AG), have been identified as
cannabinoids, although there are likely to be more [12]. The
physiological roles of these endocannabinoids have been only
partially clarified but available evidence suggests they
function as diffusible and short-lived intercellular messengers
that modulate synaptic transmission. Recent studies have
provided strong experimental evidence that endogenous
cannabinoids mediate signals retrogradely from depolarized
postsynaptic neurons to presynaptic terminals to suppress
subsequent neurotransmitter release, driving the synapse into
an altered state [12]. In hippocampal neurons, depolarization
of postsynaptic neurons and the resultant elevation of calcium
lead to transient suppression of inhibitory transmitter release.
Depolarized hippocampal neurons rapidly release both AEA
and 2-AG in a calcium-dependent manner. In the
hippocampus, cannabinoid receptors are expressed mainly by
GABA-mediated inhibitory interneurons. Synthetic
cannabinoid agonists depress GABA release from
hippocampal slices [12]. However, in cerebellar Purkinje cells,
depolarization-induced elevation of calcium causes transient
suppression of excitatory transmitter release [13]. Thus
endogenous cannabinoids released by depolarized
hippocampal neurons may function to downregulate GABA
release [12,13]. Further, signaling by the endocannabinoid
system appears to represent a mechanism enabling neurons to
communicate backwards across synapses in order to
modulate their inputs.
There are two known cannabinoid receptor subtypes;
subtype 1 (CB1) is expressed primarily in the brain, whereas
subtype 2 (CB2) is expressed primarily in the periphery
[4,14]. Cannabinoid receptors constitute a major family of G
protein-coupled, 7-helix transmembrane nucleotides, similar
to the receptors of other neurotransmitters such as
dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine [4,5]. Activation of
protein kinases may be responsible for some of the cellular
responses elicited by the CB1 receptor [15].
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As we are developing an increased cognizance of the
physiological function of endogenous and exogenous
cannabinoids it is becoming evident that they may be
involved in the pathology of certain diseases, particularly
neurological disorders. Cannabinoids may induce
proliferation, growth arrest or apoptosis in a number of
cells, including neurons, lymphocytes and various
transformed neural and non-neural cells [16-21]. In the CNS,
most of the experimental evidence indicates that
cannabinoids may protect neurons from toxic insults such as
glutamatergic overstimulation, ischemia and oxidative
damage [22-26]. The neuroprotective effect of cannabinoids
may have potential clinical relevance for the treatment of
neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson's disease,
cerebrovascular ischemia and stroke. Both endogenous and
exogenous cannabinoids appear to have neuroprotective
and antioxidant effects. Recent studies have demonstrated
the neuroprotective effects of synthetic, non-psychotropic
cannabinoids, which appear to protect neurons from
chemically induced excitotoxicity [23-25]. Direct
measurement of oxidative stress reveals that cannabinoids
prevent cell death by antioxidation. The antioxidative
property of cannabinoids is confirmed by their ability to
antagonize oxidative stress and consequent cell death
induced by the powerful oxidant, retinoid anhydroretinol.
Cannabinoids also modulate cell survival and the growth of
B-lymphocytes and fibroblasts [23-25,27].
The neuroprotective actions of cannabidiol and other
cannabinoids have been examined in rat cortical neuron
cultures exposed to toxic levels of the excitatory
neurotransmitter glutamate. Glutamate toxicity was reduced
by both CBD (non-psychoactive) and THC [26]. The
neuroprotection observed with CBD and THC was unaffected
by a cannabinoid receptor antagonist, indicating it to be
cannabinoid receptor-independent. CBD was more protective
against glutamate neurotoxicity than either ascorbate (vitamin
C) or D-tocopherol (vitamin E) [26].
Cannabinoids have demonstrated efficacy as immune
modulators in animal models of neurological conditions
such as MS and neuritis [19]. Current data suggests that the
naturally occurring, non-psychotropic cannabinoid, CBD,
may have a potential role as a therapeutic agent for
neurodegenerative disorders produced by excessive cellular
oxidation, such as ALS, a disease characterized by excess
glutamate activity in the spinal cord [28].
It is not yet known how glutamatergic insults affect in vivo
endocannabinoid homeostasis, including AEA, 2-AG, as
well as other constituents of their lipid families, Nacylethanolamines
(NAEs) and 2-monoacylglycerols (2-
MAGs). Hansen et al used three in vivo neonatal rat models
characterized by widespread neurodegeneration as a
consequence of altered glutamatergic neurotransmission
and assessed changes in endocannabinoid homeostasis
[29]. A 46-fold increase of cortical NAE concentrations and
a 13-fold increase in AEA was noted 24 h after
intracerebral NMDA injection, while less severe insults
triggered by mild concussive head trauma or NMDA
receptor blockade produced a less pronounced NAE
accumulation. In contrast, levels of 2-AG and other 2-
MAGs were unaffected by the insults employed, rendering
it likely that key enzymes in biosynthetic pathways of the
two different endocannabinoid structures are not equally
associated to intracellular events that cause neuronal
damage in vivo. Analysis of cannabinoid CB1 receptor
mRNA expression and binding capacity revealed that
cortical subfields exhibited an upregulation of these
parameters following mild concussive head trauma and
exposure to NMDA receptor blockade. This suggests that
mild-to-moderate brain injury may trigger elevated
endocannabinoid activity via concomitant increase of
anandamide levels, but not 2-AG, and CB1 receptor
density [29].
Panikashvili et al demonstrated that 2-AG has an important
neuroprotective role [30]. After closed head injury (CHI) in
mice, the level of endogenous 2-AG was significantly
elevated. After administering synthetic 2-AG to mice
following CHI they found a significant reduction of brain
edema, better clinical recovery, reduced infarct volume and
reduced hippocampal cell death compared with controls.
When 2-AG was administered together with additional
inactive 2-acyl-glycerols that are normally present in the
brain, functional recovery was significantly enhanced. The
beneficial effect of 2-AG was dose-dependently attenuated
by SR-141716A (Sanofi-Synthélabo), an antagonist of the
CB1 receptor [30]. Ferraro et al looked at the effects of the
cannabinoid receptor agonist Win-55212-2 (Sanofi Winthrop
Inc) on endogenous extracellular GABA levels in the
cerebral cortex of the awake rat using microdialysis [31].
Win-55212-2 was associated with a concentration-dependent
decrease in dialysate GABA levels. Win-55212-2-induced
inhibition was counteracted by the CB1 receptor antagonist
SR-141716A, which by itself was without effect on cortical
GABA levels. These findings suggest that cannabinoids
decrease cortical GABA levels in vivo [31].
Sinor has shown that AEA and 2-AG increase cell viability
in cerebral cortical neuron cultures subjected to 8 h of
hypoxia and glucose deprivation. This effect was observed
at nanomolar concentrations, was reproduced by a
non-hydrolyzable analog of anandamide, and was unaltered
by CB1 or CB2 receptor antagonists [32]. In the immune
system, low doses of cannabinoids may enhance cell
proliferation, whereas high doses of cannabinoids usually
induce growth arrest or apoptosis [27,33,34].
In addition, cannabinoids produce analgesia by modulating
rostral ventromedial medulla neuronal activity in a manner
similar to, but pharmacologically distinct from, that of
morphine. Cannabinoids have been shown to produce an
anti-inflammatory effect by inhibiting the production and
action of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and other acute phase
cytokines. These areas are discussed in great detail in a
recent paper by Rice [35].
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There is now accumulating in vitro evidence that glia
(astrocytes and microglia in particular) have cannabinoid
signaling systems. This provides further insight into the
understanding of the therapeutic effects of cannabinoid
compounds. Glial cells are the non-neuronal cells of the
CNS. In humans they outnumber neurons by a factor of
about 10:1. Because of their smaller average size they make
up about 50% of the cellular volume of the brain. Glial cells
of the CNS fall into three general categories: astrocytes,
oligodendrocytes and microglia. Schwann cells and the less
well-recognized enteric glia are their counterparts in the
peripheral nervous system. Glia are ubiquitous in the
nervous system and are critical in maintaining the
extracellular environment, supporting neurons, myelinating
axons and immune surveillance of the brain. Glia are
involved, actively or passively, in virtually all disorders or
insults involving the brain. This makes them logical targets
for therapeutic pharmacological interventions in the CNS.
Astrocytes are the most abundant cell type of the CNS. They
express CB1 receptors, and take up and degrade the
endogenous cannabinoid anandamide [36,37]. The
expression of CB2 receptors in this population appears to be
limited to gliomas and may be an indicator of tumor
malignancy [38]. Two recent studies suggest that some of the
anti-inflammatory effects of cannabinoids, such as the
inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) and TNF release are mediated
by CB1 receptors on astrocytes [39,40].
The most recent therapeutic role for cannabinoids in the
CNS evolved from the discovery that cannabinoids
selectively induce apoptosis in glioma cells in vitro and that
THC and other cannabinoids lead to a spectacular
regression of malignant gliomas in immune-compromised
rats in vivo [41,42]. The mechanism underlying this is not yet
clear but it appears to involve both CB1 and CB2 receptor
activation [42,43]. A recent study comparing the
antiproliferative effects of cannabinoids on C6 glioma cells
suggests the involvement of vanilloid receptors [44].
Microglia are the tissue macrophages of the brain. In
variance from other immune tissue but in accordance with
their place in the CNS microglia appear to lack CB2
receptors and have been shown to express CB1 receptors
on protein and RNA levels [45]. Similar to their effect on
peripheral macrophages, cannabinoids inhibit the release
of NO and the production of various inflammatory
cytokines in microglia [46-48]. Interestingly, the inhibition
of NO release seems to be CB1 receptor-mediated, whereas
the differential inhibition of cytokines is not mediated by
either CB1 or CB2 receptors, suggesting as yet unidentified
receptors or a receptor-independent mechanism.
Irrespective, the potential of cannabinoids to modulate the
immune response of microglia must be considered when
interpreting the effects of cannabinoids on inflammatory
processes such as a mouse model of MS or future
experiments on brain tumors in immunocompetent
animals [49].
Nothing is known of the effects of cannabinoids on
oligodendroglia. In the light of the clinical and
experimental evidence suggesting the beneficial effects of
cannabinoids in MS, investigations in this direction appear
promising [49,50].
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A growing number of strategies for separating the
sought-after therapeutic effects of cannabinoid receptor
agonists from the unwanted consequences of CB1 receptor
activation are now emerging. However, further
improvements in the development of selective agonists and
antagonists for CB1 and CB2 receptors are needed. This
would allow for the refinement of cannabinoids with good
therapeutic potential and would facilitate the design of
effective therapeutic drugs from the cannabinoid family.
Customized delivery systems are also needed; as the
cannabinoids are volatile, they will vaporize at a
temperature much lower than actual combustion. Thus
heated air can be drawn through marijuana and the active
compounds will vaporize and can easily be inhaled.
Theoretically this removes most of the health hazards of
smoking, although this has not been well studied. Recently,
pharmacologically active, aerosolized forms of THC have
been developed [51]. This form of administration is achieved
via a small particle nebulizer that generates an aerosol
which penetrates deeply into the lungs.
From a regulatory perspective, the scientific process should
be allowed to evaluate the potential therapeutic effects of
cannabis, dissociated from the societal debate over the
potentially harmful effects of nonmedical marijuana use.
This class of compounds not only holds tremendous
therapeutic potential for neurological disease but is also
confirmed as having remarkably low toxicity [52-54].
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2010-08-13T17:25:00.001-07:00

August 13-15, 2010 -- Special Report: The Story of Obama: All in The Company Part I

WMR has discovered CIA files that document the agency's connections to institutions and individuals figuring prominently in the lives of Barack Obama and his mother, father, grandmother, and stepfather.

President Obama's own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world's most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation. Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro, Obama's stepfather, at the East-West Center in 1965. Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia in 1965 to serve as a senior army officer and assist General Suharto and the CIA in the bloody overthrow of President Sukarno.

Barack Obama, Sr., who met Dunham in 1959 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, had been part of what was described as an airlift of 280 East African students to the United States to attend various colleges -- merely "aided" by a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, according to a September 12, 1960, Reuters report from London. The airlift was a CIA operation to train and indoctrinate future agents of influence in Africa, which was becoming a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union and China for influence among newly-independent and soon-to-be independent countries on the continent.

The airlift was condemned by the deputy leader of the opposition Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) as favoring certain tribes -- the majority Kikuyus and minority Luos -- over other tribes to favor the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), whose leader was Tom Mboya, the Kenyan nationalist and labor leader who selected Obama, Sr. for a scholarship at the University of Hawaii. Obama, Sr., who was already married with an infant son and pregnant wife in Kenya, married Dunham on Maui on February 2, 1961 and was also the university's first African student. Dunham was three month's pregnant with Barack Obama, Jr. at the time of her marriage to Obama, Sr.

KADU deputy leader Masinda Muliro, according to Reuters, said KADU would send a delegation to the United States to investigate Kenyan students who received "gifts" from the Americans and "ensure that further gifts to Kenyan students are administered by people genuinely interested in Kenya's development.'"

Mboya received a $100,000 grant for the airlift from the Kennedy Foundation after he turned down the same offer from the U.S. State Department, obviously concerned that direct U.S. assistance would look suspicious to pro-Communist Kenyan politicians who suspected Mboya of having CIA ties. The Airlift Africa project was underwritten by the Kennedy Foundation and the African-American Students Foundation. Obama, Sr. was not on the first airlift but a subsequent one. The airlift, organized by Mboya in 1959, included students from Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland.

Reuters also reported that Muliro charged that Africans were "disturbed and embittered" by the airlift of the selected students. Muliro "stated that "preferences were shown to two major tribes [Kikuyu and Luo] and many U.S.-bound students had failed preliminary and common entrance examinations, while some of those left behind held first-class certificates."

Obama, Sr. was a friend of Mboya and a fellow Luo. After Mboya was assassinated in 1969, Obama, Sr. testified at the trial of his alleged assassin. Obama, Sr. claimed he was the target of a hit-and-run assassination attempt after his testimony.

Obama, Sr., who left Hawaii for Harvard in 1962, divorced Dunham in 1964. Obama, Sr. married a fellow Harvard student, Ruth Niedesand, a Jewish-American woman, who moved with him to Kenya and had two sons. They were later divorced. Obama, Sr. worked for the Kenyan Finance and Transport ministries as well as an oil firm. Obama, Sr. died in a 1982 car crash and his funeral was attended by leading Kenyan politicians, including future Foreign Minister Robert Ouko, who was murdered in 1990.

CIA files indicate that Mboya was an important agent-of-influence for the CIA, not only in Kenya but in all of Africa. A formerly Secret CIA "Current Intelligence Weekly Summary," dated November 19, 1959, states that Mboya served as a check on extremists at the second All-African People's Conference (AAPC) in Tunis. The report states that "serious friction developed between Ghana's Prime Minister Kwame NNkrumah and Kenyan nationalist Tom Mboya who cooperated effectively [emphasis added] last December to check extremists at the AAPC's first meeting in Accra." The term "cooperated effectively" appears to indicate that Mboya was cooperating with the CIA, which filed the report from field operatives in Accra and Tunis. While "cooperating" with the CIA in Accra and Tunis, Mboya selected the father of the president of the United States to receive a scholarship and be airlifted to the University of Hawaii where he met and married President Obama's mother.

An earlier CIA Current Intelligence Weekly Summary, Secret, and dated April 3, 1958, states that Mboya "still appears to be the most promising of the African leaders." Another CIA weekly summary, Secret and dated December 18, 1958, calls Mboya the Kenyan nationalist an "able and dynamic young chairman" of the People's Convention party who was viewed as an opponent of "extremists" like Nkrumah, supported by "Sino-Soviet representatives."

In a formerly Secret CIA report on the All-Africa Peoples Conference in 1961, dated November 1, 1961, Mboya's conservatism, along with that of Taleb Slim of Tunisia, are contrasted to the leftist policies of Nkrumah and others. Pro-communists who were elected to the AAPC's steering committee at the March 1961 Cairo conference, attended by Mboya, are identified in the report as Abdoulaye Diallo, AAPC Secretary General, of Senegal; Ahmed Bourmendjel of Algeria; Mario de Andrade of Angola; Ntau Mokhele of Basutoland; Kingue Abel of Cameroun; Antoine Kiwewa of Congo (Leopoldville); Kojo Botsio of Ghana; Ismail Toure of Guinea; T. O. Dosomu Johnson of Liberia; Modibo Diallo of Mali; Mahjoub Ben Seddik of Morocco; Djibo Bakari of Niger; Tunji Otegbeya of Nigeria; Kanyama Chiume of Nyasaland; Ali Abdullahi of Somalia; Tennyson Makiwane of South Africa, and Mohamed Fouad Galal of the United Arab Republic.

The only attendees in Cairo who were given a clean bill of health by the CIA were Mboya, who appears to have been a snitch for the agency, and Joshua Nkomo of Southern Rhodesia, B. Munanka of Tanganyika, Abdel Magid Shaker of Tunisia, and John Kakonge of Uganda.

Nkrumah would eventually be overthrown in a 1966 CIA-backed coup while he was on a state visit to China and North Vietnam. The CIA overthrow of Nkrumah followed by one year the agency's overthrow of Sukarno, another coup that was connected to President Obama's family on his mother's side. There are suspicions that Mboya was assassinated in 1969 by Chinese agents working with anti-Mboya factions in the government of Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta in order to eliminate a pro-U.S. leading political leader in Africa. Upon Mboya's death, every embassy in Nairobi flew its flag at half-mast except for one, the embassy of the People's Republic of China.

Mboya's influence in the Kenyatta government would continue long after his death and while Obama, Sr. was still alive. In 1975, after the assassination of KANU politician Josiah Kariuki, a socialist who helped start KANU, along with Mboya and Obama, Sr., Kenyatta dismissed three rebellious cabinet ministers who "all had personal ties to either Kariuki or Tom Mboya." This information is contained in CIA Staff Notes on the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, formerly Top Secret Umbra, Handle via COMINT Channels, dated June 24, 1975. The intelligence in the report, based on its classification, indicate the information was derived from National Security Agency intercepts in Kenya. No one was ever charged in the assassination of Kariuki.

The intecepts of Mboya's and Kariuki's associates are an indication that the NSA and CIA also maintain intercepts on Barack Obama, Sr., who, as a non-U.S. person, would have been lawfully subject at the time to intercepts carried out by NSA and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

In Part II, the history of Stanley Ann Dunham and Madelyn Dunham in CIA activities in Southeast Asia will be revealed.

2010-08-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

August 11, 2010 -- CIA "anticipated" collapse of IAEA in 1981

A CIA memorandum from the CIA's Special Assistant for Nuclear Proliferation Intelligence, dated December 8, 1981, states that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the bane of neo-conservatives during the George W. Bush administration, maintained a record of "sustained and proven failure of its safeguard and control functions in contrast its promotional activities." The CIA memo to the Chairman of President Reagan's National Intelligence Council came at the same time the CIA was undermining efforts to control nuclear proliferation by its Afghanistan mujaheddin war partner Pakistan, as well as Israel.

The CIA memo states that an "anticipatory paper" should be prepared on the "disintegration of the IAEA." One paragraph in the formerly Secret memo has been redacted by the CIA.

The CIA memo was written some six months after the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear Tammuz 1 reactor at Osirak on June 7, 1981 and as the Abdul Qadeer Khan network centered in Pakistan was beginning to engage in large-scale clandestine procurement of nuclear materials for Pakistan's, and later, North Korea's, Iran's, Libya's, and Saudi Arabia's, nuclear weapons programs.

The CIA memo states that the "Paks have encountered [problems] in the construction of the Kahuta plant," the chief nuclear weapons development facility in Pakistan.

The CIA's "anticipation," almost wishful thinking, that the IAEA would collapse lends credence to the belief of former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers that the CIA was actively engaged in countenancing nuclear proliferation. In 2005, Lubbers told the Dutch National Radio program Argos that the CIA prevented the Dutch intelligence service (then BVD, now AIVD) from arresting Khan so that Khan's network could be followed. Lubbers said, "Under the influence of the so-called Cold War, all 'western' intelligence services were ordered around by the CIA, and were told to back off so the CIA could follow Khan's spy activities." Lubbers added that the CIA told their Dutch counterparts,"Just let him go, we'll follow him and that way get more information." As Prime Minister, Lubbers tried to get the United States to shut down Khan's operations in 1986 but was told the U.S. "did not want to interfere." Lubbers, who is also a member of the Bilderberg Group, served as Dutch Prime Minister from 1982 to 1994. In 1981, Lubbers was a parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party,

The CIA memo was written after CIA director William Casey brought his friend and GOP fundraiser Max C. Hugel into the agency in January 1981. Casey shocked agency rank-and-file officers when he eventually named Hugel as Deputy Director for Operations. Hugel resigned in mid-1981 after allegations of improprieties with his stock portfolio. However, there was much more to the Hugel story. On January 26, 2006, WMR reported: "CIA director William Casey's deputy director for operations Max Hugel, a confidant of Casey who was forced to resign from the CIA over suspicions that his close ties to Israel made him a security risk, an agency move that infuriated Wolf Blitzer, then a reporter for the Jerusalem Post and an employee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Hugel was associated with two Sun Myung Moon-linked organizations - Potomac and Andromeda.

The CIA's interest in seeing the demise of the IAEA would have played into the hands of the Israelis. As far back as the Nixon administration, the United States had tried to pressure Israel into signing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but it was to no avail. Israel consistently stated that since it was not a nuclear power, there was no need to sign the NPT. In a New York Timesarticle of July 18, 1970, Hedrick Smith reported that the Richard Nixon wanted the Israelis to sign the NPT but the Israelis were concerned about verification procedures and feared that its "scientific and conventional military installations will be subjected to international inspections."

When IAEA Secretary General Mohammed ElBaradei was subjected to an onslaught of criticism from the neocons, the CIA memo provides evidence that the IAEA was a target of the pro-Israeli elements in the CIA and the embryonic future neocons peppered throughout the Reagan administration as early as 1981.

Today, Israel and its crushing lobby that exercises extreme influence over the Obama administration, has sought to undermine the authority of the IAEA by seeing to it that the United States and European Union applied crippling unilateral sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

And "The Lobby" continues to pour scorn on the IAEA, echoing the CIA's and its internal Israel cheerleaders in 1981. In an article in the Winter 2009 issue of InFocus Quarterly, a publication of the Jewish Policy Center, Barak M. Seener the Greater Middle East Section Director for the Henry Jackson Society of the U.K. wrote, "The IAEA has, over time, lost sight of its original mission. Rather than performing technical studies to assess the nuclear capacity of states and leaving the political considerations to the United Nations Security Council, the IAEA has strayed into the business of international politics."

As can be seen from the CIA memo on 1981, the IAEA has been a convenient scapegoat for the CIA, Mossad, and others to conduct clandestine nuclear proliferation with a crippled IAEA available to blame.

2010-08-09T07:28:00.001-07:00

August 9, 2010 -- Details revealed about Obama's former CIA employer and the agency's ties to its "journalists"

After a reporter for the Washington Star-News was outed as a covert CIA agent in 1973 after a report was commissioned by then-CIA director William Colby on the CIA's use of journalists abroad as agents, Colby revealed that the CIA would continue to use journalists for "small, limited-circulation specialty publications, such as certain types of trade journals or commercial newsletters." Colby's statement, which appeared in the New York Times on December 1, 1973, appears to describe the CIA's later relationship with Business International Corporation (BIC), the company for which Barack Obama worked as an editor after he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

Colby's revelations in 1973 that the CIA would continue to employ journalists working for "small, limited-circulation specialty publications, such as certain types of trade journals or commercial newsletters" coincides with what the son of BIC founder Eldridge Haynes, Elliott Haynes, revealed in an interview reported in the December 27, 1977, New York Times about the nature of the CIA's longtime relationship with BIC. The younger Haynes stated that BIC "provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960." The same article revealed that the CIA had one agent devoted to liaison with the press who worked out of the CIA's Manhattan office at 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, across from the United Nations.

WMR reported on BIC's structure and mission in a February 24, 2009, report. In a December 19, 1971 article in the Boston Globe by Dan Pinck, titled "Is everyone in the CIA?" it is alleged that US Agency for International Development (USAID) officers was a "reasonably accurate accounting of certain leading operatives and associates of the CIA." President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro worked for USAID in rural Java in Indonesia. Pinck's article was a review of a 1968 book, "Who's Who in the CIA" published in Berlin.

The Boston Globe article states the CIA had a massive presence in Third World nations, including 32 agents in Nigeria, 24 in Ethiopia, 71 in Hong Kong, 8 in Uganda, 132 in South Vietnam, 14 in Ghana, 42 in Chile, and 90 in Mexico. Dunham Soetoro, who worked for USAID at the time the "Who's Who in the CIA" was published, was also employed by the Ford Foundation and Asian Development Bank. This fits with what the Boston Globearticle stated was the common use of non-official cover (NOC) officers abroad. One of the tactics of USAID operatives in Indonesia was the smuggling of aid staples to Indonesian generals so they could buy the loyalties of local village elders against Sukarno and the Communist Party of Indonesia.

President Obama has never explained his mother's role, if any, in the CIA's smuggling operation carried out through USAID. However, Obama has snubbed his nose at the memory of the Indonesians killed by Suharto's CIA-supported troops by restoring U.S. training contacts with the Indonesian Red Berets, the KOPASSUS special forces. As President, Obama has done nothing to alleviate the blocks placed by the previous Bush administration on Freedom of Information Act requests for CIA and other agency files on CIA and USAID human rights violations.

In addition, the article stated that among NOCs used by the CIA were agents working abroad for Time, Life, Forbes, Newsweek, the New York Times, CBS News, AFL-CIO, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bankers Trust, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, US News and World Report, First National City Bank, Westinghouse, NBC News, RCA, Gulf Oil, Standard Oil Company, Bank of America, Litton Industries, and Kimberly-Clark Corporation of Canada. The article also reported "the directors of Asian and Russian research centers at leading American universities" worked for the CIA abroad. President Obama's mother and father, Barack Obama, Sr., met at a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in Manoa in 1959.

Pinck, who served as an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer in China and later wrote a book about his experiences, wrote in the Boston Globe that USAID officers operating as CIA agents abroad included Dan Mitrione, who served in Brazil and Uruguay from 1960 to 1970 under USAID cover.

Mitrione's actual job was providing counter-insurgency training to Brazilian and Uruguayan security forces, which reportedly included training police in the use of torture. Mitrione was kidnapped and executed by Uruguayan Tupamaro guerrillas in 1970. Mitrione reportedly used homeless people as torture training subjects. The homeless were disposed of after they served their purpose.

In Indonesia, USAID, for whom Obama's mother worked, was primarily involved in infiltrating the labor unions and student movements to ferret out Communists. Indonesian army officers, like Obama's father-in-law, would target Communist leaders for execution. It was in central Java, where Obama's mother worked for USAID in the late 1960s, where Suharto began his anti-Communist massacres in 1965, two years before Obama and his mother arrived in Indonesia. Soon, knife-wielding paramilitaries working for Suharto murdered entire families in east Java, Bali, Aceh, the Celebes, and Borneo. The CIA's chief of clandestine activities in Southeast Asia, including the CIA's support for Suharto's massacre of Communists, was William Colby, who would later insist on keeping intact the agency's relationship with niche journalists working for companies like BIC. In 1983, one of those journalists was Barack Obama, Jr.

In October and November 1981, while Obama was supposedly studying at Columbia University after his unexplained activities in 1980 and 1981 in Indonesia and Pakistan, the CIA held a major seminar titled "Third World Intelligence," according to a formerly Secret CIA document. The seminar attendees included CIA director William Casey, Assistant Marine Corps Commandant General Paul X. Kelley, the Director of the CIA's Office of Near East South Asia [name redacted], a representative of the CIA's Office of Soviet Analysis [name redacted], the chief of operations of the National Security Agency's G Group [name redacted], the Deputy Director of the CIA's Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis [name redacted], the NSA's Signals Intelligence National Intelligence Officer (SINIO) for the Middle East [name redacted], and the CIA National Intelligence Officer [name redacted]. In 1981, as the CIA was making a major push into South Asia, Obama was staying in Karachi, Jacobobad, Lahore (where his mother was working), and Hyderabad.

During the late 1970s, the CIA was activley recruiting on campuses across the United States, including University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at San Diego, and New York University. Obama entered Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979, but his activity there is sketchy.

The ties that bind: Obama, BIC, UN, Franco, Juan Carlos, and Suharto. Who else would a CIA-groomed future president have links to?

In a September 14, 1978, memorandum from CIA deputy director for administration John F. Blake to senior CIA staff on Freedom of Information and Privacy Act requests, it is stated the second-most prevalent requests to the CIA for information was the "CIA's past and present relationships with academia." Blake wrote "the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for National Security Studies have encouraged such requests." Interestingly, the fourth most prevalent requests, according to the Blake memo were those dealing with "past programs of the Agency in the field of drug and behavioral control experimentation."

In his book, Dreams from My Father, Obama does not even mention BIC as the company he went to work for after graduating from Columbia in 1983. However, BIC had, for years, been a conduit to leaders, fascist, communist, and democratic, around ther world. The main business of BIC appears to be opening up nations, regardless of political leanings, to U.S. business investments. CIA files contain a translated article from the Paris periodical, "Marches Tropicaux et Mediterraneen," dated September 26, 1980. The article states that Mozambique's Marxist President, Samora Machel, offered the assurance to the representatives of Business International Corporation, an American company, that 'Mozambique, as a socialist country, is well-organized enough to work with private enterprise, multinational or not, by preserving the principle of mutual advantage.'"

A BIC brochure issued in the mid-1970s is testament to the influence the CIA front company had around the world. It is the same world of extraordinary global access that Barack Obama was introduced to in 1983.

The brochure states: "BI held more than 50 government roundtables over the past 19 years, including:

Africa H.I.M. Haile Selassie and 87 ministers and officials of 33 countries and multinational organizations (Addis Ababa 1969)

Andean Bloc(2) President Lleras of Colombia; authorities, business and labor leaders of six Andean Bloc countries (1968, 1972)

Argentina(2) President Frondisi and Ongania and their cabinets (1958, 1966)

Australia(2) Prime Ministers Holt and Whitlam and their cabinets (1967, 1973)

Brazil (3) Presidents Kubitschek, Castello Branco, Medici and their cabinets (1956, 1965, 1970)

Canada Prime Minister Pearson and his cabinet (1963)

Colombia President Valencia and his cabinet (1964)

EEC & EFTA(4) Presidents Hallstein, Rey and Mansholt and other members of the EEC Commission; Secretary General Figures and other EFTA officials (1960, 1963, 1968, 1972)

France(2) Prime Minister Pompidou and his cabinet; Prime Minister Chaban-Delmas and his cabinet (1963-70)

Germany (2) Vice Chancellor Erhard and Federal Chancellor Brandt and their cabinets (1963, 1973)

Hungary Prime Minister Jeno Fock and his cabinet (1969)

India Prime Minister Nehru and his cabinet (1961)

Indonesia (2) President Suharto and his cabinet (1968, 1972)

Italy (2) Prime Ministers Zoli and Colombo and their cabinets (1958, 1970)

Japan (3) Prime Ministers Kishi and Sato and their cabinets (1959, 1965, 1971)

LAFTA & CACM (2) Executive Secretary Sola and other members of the LAFTA Secretariat; Secretary General Delgado and other CACM officials (1963, 1969)

Mexico President Lopez Mateos and his cabinet (1962)

Poland Prime Minister Jaroszvicz and members of the Council of Ministers

Romania President Ceausescu and members of the Council of Ministers

Spain (2) Generalisimo Franco and his cabinet (1962, 1967)

Sweden Prime Minister Palme and his cabinet (1971)

USSR (2) Premier Kosygin and his cabinet and more than 250 government officials and Soviet industrial managers (1964, 1971)

United Kingdom (3) Prime Ministers Macmillan, Wilson and Heath and their cabinets (1961, 1966, 1972)

United Nations Secretary-General U Thant; heads of 22 principal UN organizations (1967)

United States (15) Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and/or their cabinets year by year

Venezuela President Leoni and his cabinet (1967)

Yugoslavia President Tito and members of the Federal Executive Council (1968)

BIC also promoted the future leadership of Spain of then-Prince Juan Carlos. It is noteworthy that Obama's wife and daughter were recently feted at the royal resort in Mallorca of now-King Juan Carlos. Obama remained in the United States. The following is what Business International's Executive Briefing of October 31, 1975, had to say about Juan Carlos:

"The consensus in Spain is that Prince Juan Carlos is inheriting a good administrative organization and that his appointment as Chief of State will put an end to the political uncertainty which has plagued Spain in recent years. Franco's departure from the political scene will speed up the introduction of democratic reforms and reopen the doors for negotiations with the European Economic Community.

The new king will have 'supreme power of administration,' but he will have less power than Franco had. So to ensure his position, Juan Carlos may hold a referendum to get majority approval of the reforms he intends to introduce. For the present, he may also keep Carlos Arias Navarro as prime minister and name a 'Cabinet of National Union,' incorporating some representatives of opposition groups (excluding the communists), members of the current establishment, and a sprinkling of technocrats. Thus far, everything points in Juan Carlos' favor. Since his designation as successor to Franco a year ago, he has gained in popularity and has the support of the Catholic church and the army, especially the new generation of officers."

BIC apparently had good insight into the future plans for Juan Carlos, especially since Franco did not die until a few weeks after the Madrid report was written by the firm's Spain correspondent. Franco died on November 20, 1975. Juan Carlos acceded to the Spanish throne on November 22, 1975. Juan Carlos had been named the next ruler of Spain in 1969, two years after BIC held a meeting with Franco. The BIC report ignored the fact that the original Spanish Republic, overthrown by Franco with the help of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, still had support among many Spaniards, especially in Catalonia and the Basque region. Until 1977, a Spanish Republican government-in-exile existed in Paris and was recognized by Yugoslavia, the USSR, and Mexico.

Obama's former employer maintained close relations with foreign leaders, Suharto of Indonesia and Franco and Juan Carlos of Spain. Suharto was closely linked, through Obama's step-father Lolo Soetoro, to young Obama in Jakarta while Juan Carlos continues to be close to the Obama family. None of these relationships are found in Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father."

2010-08-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

August 6-8, 2010 -- Obama accuser Larry Sinclair monitored by uniformed security at informal National Press Club discussion group

On August 4, author and former Florida congressional candidate Larry Sinclair was invited to discuss his allegations against President Barack Obama before a discussion group of members of the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Sinclair, who wrote a book titled, "Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder," is being sued for $30 million, along with his book distributor, and book sellers Books-a-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com by one-time proprietor of the website Whitehouse.com, Dan Parisi who claims allegations in Sinclair's book are defamatory.

Sinclair believes the suit, using the $600/hour law firm of Patton & Boggs is being orchestrated with the backing of the Obama White House.

At an informal journalistic study group panel at the National Press Club held on August 4, a uniformed security guard was present during the three-hour dinner meeting with Sinclair. The action was, according to some long-serving members of the organization, unprecedented. At the conclusion of the meeting, the security guard and press club staff insisted Sinclair had to be escorted by security from the premises of the press club. Furthermore, an attempt by this editor to take a photograph of Sinclair in the public lobby for WMR was denied based on the orders of the National Press Club president, Alan Bjerga of Bloomberg News, and Bill McCarren, the general manager.

In early 2008, Sinclair appeared in a Youtube video describing two 1999 sexual encounters with then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama. On June 18, 2008, Sinclair reiterated his allegations at a National Press Club news conference. After the press conference, one in which Sinclair was ill-served by amateurish public relations advisers, he was arrested by Washington Metropolitan Police on a warrant issued by the office of Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the son of then-senator Joseph Biden, who, at the time, was on Obama's short list of vice presidential running mates. Obama announced that Biden was his running mate on August 23, 2008. Just a few weeks before Sinclair's news conference at the press club, Obama had clinched enough delegates to wrest the Democratic nomination from his chief rival, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.

After his imprisonment in Washington and transfer to Delaware, the Delaware Attorney General's office decided to decline prosecution of Sinclair over past money order forgery charges in Wilmington due to lack of evidence. Sinclair has alleged the National Press Club was fully aware of Washington police plans to arrest him after his news conference but not before they secured $8000 for the rental of the press club venue.

Contrary to information available at the time of his arrest, Sinclair had already spoken to reporters for the Chicago Tribune and New York Post on the allegations of past gay sex and drug use on the part of Obama, however, both papers declined to follow up on the story. WMR has learned that Obama's chief political adviser, David Axelrod, who once worked for the Chicago Tribune, personally interceded with his old paper to back off the allegations by Sinclair and others and ensured the story was killed.

Sinclair also revealed that he had a number of discussions with representatives of the Clinton campaign beginning in January 2008 and continuing up to the time of his press conference in Washington. WMR has also learned that Axelrod allegedly told members of the Clinton campaign during the height of the Democratic primary battle, "We know Sinclair and we will destroy him and hang him on Hillary Clinton."

WMR, at the time of Sinclair's news conference, felt there was not any substantial evidence to consider the veracity of Sinclair's claims. However, as a result of the trial of ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and the pogrom launched by the Obama White House against senior current and former members of the Congressional Black Caucus, WMR has been informed by reputable sources that there is merit to Sinclair's allegations and some of his allegations were verified during a recent WMR investigation conducted in Chicago.

WMR has asked the president of the National Press Club a series of on-the-record questions about why a uniformed security guard was present at the dinner session with Sinclair and whether the National Press Club had any communications, oral, written, or electronic, with White House staff, including Axelrod, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, press secretary Robert Gibbs, or Patton & Boggs, prior and subsequent to Sinclair's meeting with the journalists on August 4.

In answer to the questions about contact between the National Press Club on one hand and either the White House or Patton & Boggs on the other, Bjerga, in an email to WMR, stated there was no contact. As far as the security guard present during the dinner session, Bjerga responded, "We have hired security guards in the past in an abundance of caution when the National Press Club has reason to believe a disturbance may be possible because of an individual's presence in the facility. Given that Mr. Sinclair was arrested the
last time he was at the National Press Club, it was not unreasonable to request
monitoring in this situation. Should a similar situation present itself in the future, the same practice would be followed."

Larry Sinclair under the National Press Club logo and sign outside the club after being escorted by a security guard from the premises. Press club responds that they were expecting a "disturbance" -- but from where? The White House is two blocks away from the above location.

However, when Sinclair was arrested at the Press Club in June 2008, it was not as the result of a disturbance during his news conference but was pursuant to a "flight from justice" warrant issued by the US District Attorney for the District of Columbia based on a request from Delaware Attorney General Biden, whose father was already on Obama's short list for the vice presidential nomination. The Delaware charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence. There was no reason to believe that a "disturbance," as described by Bjerga, was imminent on August 4 on the part of any of the dinner attendees, including the speaker. However, it was clear that the constant surveillance of the dinner attendees by club staff was an attempt at intimidation.

Since he first made his revelations about Obama in early 2008, Sinclair has been consistent in his story about twice engaging in drug use and oral sex with Obama in Chicago in 1999. Given the fact that one of Chicago's major newspapers devoted time to investigating the story, as well as yet-to-be-released phone call record information gathered by Chicago police as evidence proving Sinclair's conversations with Trinity United Church of Christ choir director Donald Young before his brutal murder on December 23, 2007, the story about Obama's secret life style refuses to go away. The tabloid, The Globe, has been on the story and Young's mother, Norma Jean Young, recently told the paper that her late son and Obama had a relationship and she believes her son was murdered to protect Obama. Mrs. Young said she also fears for her own life.

Obama's recent solo visit to Chicago, where he spent his 49th birthday on August 4 with "friends" and campaigned for the U.S. senate campaign of his friend Alexi Giannoulias, a campaign that Obama previously shunned, while First Lady and daughter Sasha vacationed in Spain has some in the White House press corps asking about marital problems between the president and his wife. Press secretary Gibbs is maintaining the stance that the Spain vacation was pre-planned months before and everything is fine between the first couple. WMR has previously reported that any mention of Obama's questionable past by White House press corps members has resulted in threats of immediate cancellation of press credentials and loss of access.

2010-08-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

August 4, 2010 -- Obama's mother, father, grandmother, and step-father point to president's CIA pedigree

WMR previously reported on President Obama's more than one year employment by a CIA front operation, Business International Corporation, Inc. (BIC) of New York after his graduation from Columbia University in 1983.

However, the State Department's recent revelation in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that the pre-1965 passport files of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, were destroyed in the 1980s, has re-ignited suspicions that Obama's mother worked for the CIA under non-official cover (NOC) cover in Indonesia while married to Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo, a retired colonel in General Suharto's CIA-backed ranks. Soetoro and Dunham married in 1965 after meeting at the University of Hawaii. That same year, the CIA-backed Suharto launched an anti-Communist coup that saw leftist President Sukarno eventually ousted from power and up to one million suspected Communists, including many ethnic Chinese Indonesians, massacred by government troops. Obama recently lifted a ban on U.S. military support for the Indonesian Red Beret KOPASSUS special operations forces imposed after the unit committed human rights abuses in East Timor in the late 1990s. The 12-year ban, imposed by the Clinton administration, was maintained by the Bush administration.

In 1967, Dunham moved with six-year old Barack Obama to Jakarta. In 1966, as Suharto consolidated his power, Colonel Soetoro was battling Communist rebels in the country. Dunham moved back to Hawaii in 1972, a year after Obama left Indonesia to attend school in Hawaii, and she divorced Soetoro in 1980. Soetoro was hired by Mobil to be a liaison officer with Suharto's dictatorship. Soetoro died in 1987 at the age of 52. Ann Dunham died in 1995, also at the age of 52. Obama, Sr. died in an automobile accident in Kenya in 1982 at the age of 46. Obama, Sr. attended the University of Hawaii courtesy of a scholarship arranged by Kenyan nationalist leader Tom Mboya. Obama and Dunham married in 1961, however, Obama, at the time, had a wife back in Kenya. Obama and Dunham officially divorced in 1964, the same year Dunham married Soetoro.

Obama, Sr. met his old friend Mboya, the Kenyan Minister of Economic Planning and Development shortly before Mboya was gunned down by an assasin in Nairobi in 1969. Kenya's autocratic president Jomo Kenyatta was viewed as being behind the assassination of Mboya, a would-be rival for the presidency. Mboya was 39 when he was assasinated. Obama, Sr. testified at the trial of Mboya's accused assasin and shortly thereafter, Obama, Sr. was the target of an attempted hit-and-run assassination attempt.

Files released by the State Department on Dunham's name-change passport application lists two dates and places of marriage to Soetoro: March 5, 1964, in Maui and March 15, 1965, in Molokai -- almost a year's difference. In her 1968 passport renewal application, Barack Obama's name is listed as Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah). In passport renewal and amendment applications filed from Jakarta, Dunham uses two different names: Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro and Stanley Ann Soetoro.

Dunham again applied for a passport from Jakarta in 1981 while working for the Ford Foundation. Her New York-based boss at the time was Peter Geithner, the father of Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Dunham also worked in rural villages in Java for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was and remains notorious for conducting CIA operations around the world.

Ann Dunham and President Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr., a native of the British colony of Kenya, met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in 1959. The teaching of Russian in Hawaii, which hosted a number of US military bases and intelligence operations is significant since a Russian language class during the height of the Cold War would normally attract a majority of U.S. intelligence professionals.

At the time Dunham met Obama, Sr. at Russian-language class at the University of Hawaii, the CIA was engaged in major covert operations in Asia, including attempted assassinations of Asian leaders. In an August 1975 article in Penthouse by former New York Times reporter Tad Szulc reported on two high-level planned CIA assassinations that were turned down by the 'highest levels' at the White House in the late 1950s: '. . . senior CIA officials proposed the assassination of Indonesian President Sukarno as part of a broader plot to overthrow his left-leaning government. At least one American pilot, employed by the CIA, was captured by Sukarno's forces during the coup attempt. To kill Sukarno, the CIA, according to intelligence sources, planned to fire a shell from a ceremonial 105-mm cannon in front of the presidential palace while Sukarno spoke from a balcony.' The CIA finally succeeded in ousting Sukarno in 1965, with the help of Barack Obama's step father.

Szulc also wrote: "In 1958, a plot was concocted to kill China's Premier Chou En-lai during a visit to Rangoon, Burma. This was at the beginning of the Soviet-Chinese split, and apparently the CIA reasoned that Chou's death would aggravate the developing split. The notion was that Chou was a moderate and thus posed an obstacle to a possible Soviet-Chinese confrontation. Furthermore, intelligence sources said, the CIA planned, by the dissemination of 'disinformation' through intelligence channels, to lead the Chinese to believe that Chou was killed by the Russian KGB. This murder plot, which was also stopped by Washington, provided for a Burmese CIA agent to place untraceable poison in a rice bowl from which Chou was expected to be eating at a government dinner in his honor. This particular kind of poison, intelligence sources said, would have acted within forty-eight hours and there would be no trace of it if an autopsy were performed. The plan was countermanded at the last moment."

As WMR previously reported, "At the same time he was attending Occidental [College in Los Angeles, 1979-81], Obama, using the name Barry Soetoro and an Indonesian passport issued under the same name, traveled to Pakistan during the U.S. buildup to assist the Afghan mujaheddin. WMR has learned from informed sources in Kabul that Obama has been extremely friendly, through personal correspondence on White House letterhead, with a private military company that counts among its senior personnel a number of Afghan mujaheddin-Soviet war veterans who fought alongside the late Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Masood.

In 1981, Obama spent time in Jacobabad and Karachi, Pakistan, and appeared to have an older American 'handler,' possibly a CIA officer. WMR previously reported that Obama also crossed the border from Pakistan and spent some time in India. At the time of Obama’s stay in Pakistan, the country was being built up as a base for the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency by President Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and later by President Reagan’s CIA director William Casey. Obama has suspiciously refused to release his transcripts from Occidental or Columbia University and he has remained cagey about his post-Columbia employment with BIC."

In early 2008, when employees of The Analysis Corporation, a CIA contractor headed up at the time by Obama's current deputy national security adviser John O. Brennan, a former CIA official, were illegally accessing Obama's State Department passport files, WMR reported: "An informed source has told WMR that Obama’s tuition debt at Columbia was paid off by BIC. In addition, WMR has learned that when Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and his adoptive father Lolo Soetoro, the 20-year-old Obama, who was known as ‘Barry Soetoro,’ traveled to Pakistan in 1981. He was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani Sindhi who became acting President of Pakistan after the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008. WMR was told that the Obama/Soetoro trip to Pakistan, ostensibly to go ‘partridge hunting’ with the Soomros, related to unknown CIA business. The covert CIA program to assist the Afghan mujaheddin was already well underway at the time and Pakistan was the major base of operations for the CIA’s support."

WMR also reported: "Dunham Soetoro was in Indonesia when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Barack Obama visited Lahore, Pakistan, where his mother worked as a 'consultant,' in 1981. According to a declassified Top Secret CIA document titled 'Worldwide Reaction to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan,' dated February 1980, Indonesia became a hotbed of anti-Soviet students demonstrations after Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan. The report states, 'Indonesian students have staged several peaceful demonstrations in Jakarta and three other major cities. They have also demanded the recall of the Soviet Ambassador because of remarks he made to a student delegation on 4 January and have called for a severance of Soviet-Indonesian relations.'”

Obama's mother was in Lahore as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, perfect a perfect NOC job at the time the CIA, under William Casey, was beefing up its covert presence in Pakistan to battle the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, known to Obama as "Toot," began working for the Bank of Hawaii in 1960, a year after her daughter met Obama, Sr. and in 1970 she became one of the first female bank vice presidents. Madelyn Dunham retired from the bank in 1986. It is suspected that the Bank of Hawaii acted as a financial vehicle for CIA operations in Asia and the South Pacific.

The Bank of Hawaii has, according to published reports, been linked to a number of CIA-connected operations in the Asia-Pacific region, including links to the Indonesian Lippo Group and Mochtar Riady's contributions to the presidential re-election campaign of Bill Clinton; American International Group (AIG) -- bailed out by Obama; the CIA's Nugan Hand Bank in Australia; another CIA-influenced bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and an affiliate bank in the Cook Islands, Commercial Bank of Commerce Cook Islands, Ltd. (CBCCI) in Rarotonga -- which in the 1980s were funneling money to South Pacific islands to counter Soviet influence in the region; the USAID officer in Suva, Fiji, William Raupe, who was actually a CIA official cover agent; global bullion trader Deak International; European Pacific investments; and a CIA front company in Honolulu called Bishop Baldwin Rewald Dillingham Wong (BBRDW), Ltd., which maintained financial and political links to Asia-Pacific leaders, including Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India, Suharto in Indonesia, the Sultan of Brunei, the chiefs of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service -- which acted on behalf of the CIA in South Pacific small island states, and maintained slush fund accounts in the Cayman Islands, the Cook Islands, Spain, and South America. The CIA cut-out, which took over the assets of the collapsed Nugan Hand Bank in Australia, also used actor Jack Lord, from Hawaii 5-0 fame, on its promotional material as a way to "open doors" and maintained close links with the US Pacific Command based in Hawaii.

In the 1960s, the Bank of Hawaii began opening up branches all over the Pacific: Palau, Guam, Yap, Ponape, and Kosrae. It also bought the Bank of American Samoa and the First National Bank of Arizona and had gained significant, if not fully controlling, financial stakes in the Bank of New Caledonia, Bank Indosuez in Vanuatu, National Bank of the Solomon Islands, Bank of Queensland, Bank of Tonga, and Bank Indosuez Niugini in Papua New Guinea, Bank Paribas Polynesia. The Bank of Hawaii also opened up branches in Suva, Saipan, and Tokyo. By the time Madelyn Dunham retired in 1986, the bank was also deeply connected to John Waihee, the first Native Hawaiian governor ot Hawaii, elected in 1986. The CIA's BBRDW and an affiliate, Canadian Far East Trading Corporation, also maintained close links with Waihee and Governor George Ariyoshi.

When Barack Obama graduated from the private Punahou High School in Hawaii in 1979 and transferred to Occidental College in Los Angeles, Eugene Welch was the CIA's station chief in Hawaii. Punahou High School was also the alma mater of another US Senator, Hiram Bingham III of Connecticut, who was said to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones, the movie character popularized by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. At the time, the CIA was engaged in a major recruiting campaign, including on college campuses, after Admiral Stansfield Turner, the CIA director, was ordered by President Jimmy Carter to clean up the agency after previous scandals.

The CIA's Hawaii-based Asia-Pacific financial operation appears to have been the brain child of retired CIA deputy director for intelligence Ray S. Cline, a proponent of the CIA's paying pro-American strongmen around the world large sums of cash to ensure their loyalty, including Mobutu Seso Seko of Zaire, King Hussein of Jordan, Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, General Lon Nol of Cambodia, the Shah of Iran, Suharto, and Marcos. Helping to assist these operations was Madelyn Dunham who was in charge of the Bank of Hawaii's secretive escrow account business. During her grandson's presidential campaign in 2008, Madelyn Dunham refused all media interview requests. She died in Hawaii two days before her grandson was elected president. With the death of Toot, the early chapters of the life of Barack Obama, Jr, his father, mother, and step-father also went to the grave.

At the time Obama's mother and father met in Russian language class in Hawaii, the CIA was embarked on an aggressive covert campaign in Asia, one that involved starting a Soviet-Chinese war and aiming to assassinate Sukarno of Indonesia. The CIA was similarly involved in an aggressive covert war with the Soviets in Africa, vying for control of the continent's newly-independent states. In the world of the CIA there are no coincidences.

2010-08-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

August 3, 2010 -- Striking matches in Middle East tinderbox -- Pentagon and Israelis working together to trigger war

In the days before, during, and after Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen revealed the Pentagon has a military strike plan for Iran, part of that plan may have already been launched. WMR's Lebanese sources report that a number of recent provocations in the region are being viewed by regional intelligence agencies in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt as being launched by the United States Joint Special Operations Command in alliance with the Israelis.

The presence in Beirut last week of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) Michael Vickers has local intelligence sources believing the visit, timds just before a UN Report is expected to blame Lebanese Hezbollah for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, is part of a wider U.S. and Israeli program to destabilize the Middle East prior to a military attacki by one or both nations on Iran.

Intelligence sources point to a series of unexplained incidents in the region that have ratcheted up tensions. On July 28, the Japanese supertanker, M. Star, reported that it was damaged by an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman. Local Omani Coast Guard officials reported the ship was damaged by a "freak wave" generated by an earthquake in Iran. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, the owners of the ship, reported that the vessel, which docked in Fujairah, UAE, for repairs, was struck by an explosion from "external sources."

There were local reports that a submarine was responsioble for the explosion. However, the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain stated that no U.S. Navy ships were in the area. Israel, on the other hand, is known to have permanently stationed submarines in the Gulf.

On August 2, a series of Grad rockets were fired at the coastal tourist towns of Aqaba, Jordan and Eilat, Israel. A rocket fired into Aqaba landed outside the Intercontinental Hotel killed a Jordanian taxi driver and injured five others. A rocket fired into Eilat, on the other hand, landed harmlessly into a field. Two rockets splashed into the Red Sea and another landed in Jordan. Israel immediately blamed the attack on Hamas and said the rockets were fired from Sinai in Egypt. However, Hamas denied responsibility and Egypt said the rockets were not fired from its territory and that its heavy security presence in the peninsula detected no suspicious activity. Regional intelligence sources believe the rockets may have been a false flag provocation carried out by Israel and the United States with the cooperation of Jordanian intelligence. Suspiciously, Israel claimed the rockets were Iranian-made and were fired by "Global Jihadists."

Today, there was an outbreak of fighting between Israeli and Lebanese troops on the border. The shooting began after an Israeli patrol crossed into Lebanese territory and fired at Lebanese troops and civilians after the Lebanese attempted to repel the attack. Israel also reportedly disregarded warnings from UN peacekeepers to halt their movement into Lebanese territory. Three Lebanese troops and a journalist were killed in the Israeli attack.

The motivations for the Israeli border aggression may have been to seek a response from Hezbollah. Israeli bombing raids into Gaza this week are also seen as a move to seek a response from Hamas. The bombing raids were followed by the deadly rocket attack on Aqaba, an attack Israel blamed on Hamas.

The unexplained attacks on the supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz and the rocket attacks on Aqaba at the northernmost end of the Gulf of Aqaba, has increased worries about access to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aqaba through the Straits of Tiran. The U.S. Navy will undoubtedly use the fear to expand its presence in regional waters.

Yesterday also saw the bombing of a train in eastern Turkey's Erzincan province. Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas. No one was injured in the attack but eight freight cars derailed. The Turkish Intelligence Organization (MIT) has determined that since the break-down of relations between Turkey and Israel, Israeli commandos have been assisting PKK guerrillas in launching terrorist attacks in Turkey. The PKK attacks come from Iraq's Qandil Mountains, a stronghold of joint PKK-Kurdistan Regional Government-Israeli attacks on Turkey. Overall security for the mountainous region and the anti-Turkish operations conducted in it are overseen by U.S. special operations forces.

2010-08-02T23:55:00.001-07:00

August 2, 2010 -- U.S. hypocrisy on nuclear weapons proliferation -- when Washington looked the other way as another nation pursued nukes

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, revealed on "Meet the Press" on August 1 that the United States has on the table a military strike plan for Iran and strongly indicated that the Obama administration is prepared to use force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

However, the United States was not always so bellicose when a regime with which it had strategic and political links had secretly developed a nuclear weapons capacity.

After the fall of successive right-wing Argentine military regimes in 1983, the CIA revealed in a Secret report that Argentina stood on the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon by the end of 1984. The Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, which, respectively, backed a series of Argentine right-wing presidents and dictators, including Alejandro Lanusse, Juan Peron, Isabel Martinez de Peron, Jorge Videla, Roberto Viola, Leopoldo Galtieri, and Reynaldo Bignone, before Raul Alfonsin became the president of the center-left government in 1983, stood by idly as Argentina pursued nuclear weapons. The CIA's Secret report on Argentina's nuclear weapons capability was revealed by Jack Anderson in the Washington Post on December 12, 1983.

The CIA feigned surprise in 1983 when Admiral Carlos Castro Madero, the long-serving head of Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission, announced that Argentina possessed the technology to enrich uranium. Iran's similar capabilities have been used by the Bush and Obama administrations to suggest that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons. Yet, in 1983, there was hardly a peep about Argentina's nuclear weapons potential.

Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, was cooperating with Buenos Aires in Operation Condor, a covert Latin American intelligence sharing network aimed at tracking down and assassinating leftists and supporters of Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was killed in a CIA-inspired coup on September 11, 1973.

Rumors of Argentina's secret nuclear weapons program prompted Alfosin to state publcly during his 1983 election campaign to immediately dismantle a nuclear weapon if one was discovered to be in the possession of the Argentine military.

Unlike Iran, Argentina had not ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). In addition, it failed to ratify the Treaty of Tlateloco, which bans nuclear weapons in Latin America.

In 1983, the CIA "discovered" that Argentina likely had hidden weapons-grade plutonium, despite trade restrictions forbidding them from using imported nuclear fuel rods to reprocess them into plutonium. It was also believed that Argentina had secretly reprocessed or was on the verge of reprocessing fuel rods at the Ezeiza nuclear power plant.

In late 1983, a Reagan administration intelligence official denied Argentina had a nuclear weapons potential because it lacked a program to enrich uranium for weapons. Leading hawks in the Reagan administration, upset with President Jimmy Carter's commitment to human rights in Latin America, did not want to criticize Latin American dictatorships they saw as bulwarks against the Soviet Union and Cuba. Chief among Argentina's supporters was Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations, who even sided with Argentina against the United Kingdom during the 1982 Falklands War.

However, the National Security Agency's (NSA) intercepts of Argentina's military, intelligence, and diplomatic communications, on behalf of its British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) colleagues during the Falklands War yielded the intelligence on Argentina's nuclear weapons program. NSA's surveillance was conducted clandestinely from a NASA tracking station at Peldehue, just north of Santiago, the Chilean capital and from a classified listening post inside the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires.

Perhaps one main reason for the Argentine nuclear program not being viewed with hostility by Washington was the fact that the secret Argentine financing and procurement program was conducted through the aegis of the Italian right-wing network, the P-2 secret Masonic lodge and the Banco Ambrosiano,, for which the Vatican Bank was the major shareholder. Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Ambrosiano, was heavily involved in financing CIA covert operations in Latin America by supporting the Anastasio Somoza dictaorship in Nicaragua and, following its overthrow by the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan contras. The covert network that provided military technology, including nuclear know-how, to Argentina also involved P-2's Worshipful Master, Licio Gelli, and his affiliated P-2 lodge in Buenos Aires.

Calvi was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London on June 8, 1982, in what many suspected was a ritualistic murder conducted by the Freemasons. His personal secretary, Graziella Corrocher, allegedly jumped from her fourth floor Milan office window to her death after penning a suicide note in which she denounced Calvi. Before the suspicious deaths of Calvi and Corrocher, Gerard Soisson, the manager of the Luxembourg-based Clearstream transaction clearinghouse, was found dead in Corsica. In April 1982, Ambrosiano's deputy chairman, Roberto Rosone, narrowly escaped death from an assassin's bullet in Milan. His would-be assassin was shot by police and later identified as a member of Rome's leading Mafia syndicate.

Clearstream would later be at the center of a scandal involving covert payments to Nicolas Sarkozy's political campaigns. Soisson was responsible for moving Ambrosiano money to the bank's branch in Lima, Peru, Banco Andino, which was actually a brass plate operation, alomg with another branch in Nassau, Bahamas, that conducted their business in Luxembourg and Switzerland. Argentine covert weapons procurement was also facilitated by Banco Ambrosiano de America del Sud, based in Buenos Aires.

After Ambrosiano's collapse, some $1.2 billion was found to be missing. In 1978, Pope John Paul I, who had been pontiff for only 33 days, was found dead in a sitting position in his bed in Vatican City. John Paul I had been trying to clean up Vatican finances and had stumbled upon the P-2 and Banco Ambrosiano covert operations. It is believed by many that John Paul I was murdered by P-2 operatives intent on keeping the lodge's and bank's operations secret. No autopsy was ever performed on John Paul I.

Loans for Argentina's covert weapons procurement program were funded from a $250 million loan from the Vatican's Instituto per di Religione (IOR), or the Institute of Religious Works, the Vatican Bank. In addition, Gelli was a close friend of Juan Peron and top Argentine military officials. The Vatican's financing of Argentina's weapons program was also facilitated by the Banco Central Riserva, the Central Reserve Bank, of Peru. Calvi was also, conveniently, a personal friend of Peru's Finance Minister, Silva Rueta.

The fallout from the P-2 and Banco Ambrosiano scandal may have been involved in the 1981 attempted assassination of John Paul's successor, John Paul II. The convicted attempted assassin, Turkish national Mehmet Ali Agca, was affiliated with the Turkish Grey Wolves, which had close links with the CIA's stay-behind Gladio network in Turkey which, in turn, has morphed into the Ergenekon network. In 2005, Agca revealed that he had accomplices within the Vatican hierarchy and that one of them was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the Vatican Bank (IOR) president from Chicago who was deeply involved with P-2 and Banco Ambrosiano, and who was also implicated in the murder of Pope John Paul I. The CIA and P-2 ally Michael Ledeen, a notorious neo-conservative who supported Italian fascist causes while in Italy in the 1970s, attempted to link the attempted assassination of John Paul II to the KGB and Bulgarians.

CIA files contain an interesting WRC NBC-4 Washington news transcript dated February 6, 1983, as investigations of Banco Ambrosiano, the Vatican Bank, and their links to Latin America were well underway in Italy, the UK, Italy, Switzerland, the Bahamas, Luxembourg, and Peru. The covert U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras and the "discovery" of the Vatican covert financial support for Argentina's nuclear program were also ongoing. The WRC report stated: "BARBARA HARRISON: NBC News reports tonight that Vice President George Bush's visit to Rome includes a secret mission regarding the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II." The report states that Bush had "other orders from the White House" and that he was pushing for an Italian investigation into the Pope's attempted assassination "even if the trial leads directly to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov." The NBC report also stated that the CIA was leaking information on the Italian investigation of the attempted assassination in order to "discourage" the probe, adding, "reports of leaks from CIA officials flooded U.S. newspapers during the past week."

The Kremlin connection to the assassination attempt was later found to have been a CIA propaganda ploy crafted by Ledeen; Claire Sterling, author of a CIA- inspired propaganda book titled "The Terror Network" that blamed the USSR for most of the world's terrorist attacks; and Arnaud de Borchgrave, who later became the editor of the right-wing and Sun Myung Moon-funded Washington Times, a leading proponent of military aid to the Nicaraguan contras and other guerrilla groups around the world.

When nuclear proliferation benefited U.S.-backed dictatorships in Argentina and Pakistan, as well as Israel, the United States either turned a blind eye toward or aided and abetted in nuclear technology smuggling. With Argentina, the United States was implicated in a network run out of the Vatican that also supplied weapons to the contras. In Pakistan, the United States gave a "wink and a nod" to the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network so as to not jeopardize the CIA's arms pipeline to the Afghan mujaheddin during their war with the Soviets. Beginning with the Lyndon Johnson administration, the United States actively allowed Israel to smuggle nuclear weapons components to ensure Jewish votes and campaign contributions for incumbent administrations. In the case of Iran, the United States is willing to plunge the world into a major war in order to prevent a new member of the nuclear club.

2010-08-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

August 2, 2010 -- Fitzgerald's ploy in Rezko and Blagojevich trials was to avoid "the color purple"

After US Judge James Zagel repeatedly ruled against the calling or even mentioning of key defense witnesses and the playing in court of a significant portion of government wiretapped communications in the federal corruption trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, the case brought about by U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald, one of the most corrupt federal prosecutors in the United States, is now before the jury. During the trial, Zagel, a Ronald Reagan nominee, upheld almost every objection by the prosecution of defense questions as either irrelevant or argumentative, a clear indication that Fitzgerald, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Niewoehner and other members of his team were successful in their "judge shopping" for a tainted jurist. On its second day of deliberations, the jury requested a transcript of a segment of the trial from Zagel. In yet another unusual move, Zagel turned down the jury's request.

Zagel was adamant in not having sitting Democratic politicians aligned with Obama and his chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel brought up during the trial by the defense. Off limits were President Obama, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Obama advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, and powerful Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan. Plans by the defense to call Obama, Emanuel, and Jarrett were stymied by Fitzgerald and the White House. If convicted, Blagojevich could face as much as 415 years in prison.

The final days of the court room proceedings saw Zagel threaten Blagojevich's defense attorney Sam Adam, Sr. with conempt if he dared mentioned the names Antoin "Tony" Rezko or Stuart Levine to the jury. Rezko and Levine were two powerful Chicago businessmen who lavished huge sums of money and favors on Illinois politicians, including Obama and Blagojevich. In the trial of Rezko and Levine, the government argued that in return for political contributions and favors, Blagojevich and his associates attempted to steer state pension funds and other state money to interests in which they had a financial interests. Levine, a Republican, had been appointed to the Illinois Teacher's Retirement System and Illinois Hospital Facilities Planning Boards by Blagojevich and his predecessor, Governor George Ryan, also convicted and jailed as a result of Fitzgerald's prosecution.

The government's investigation of Levine and Rezko was code-named Operation Board Games by the FBI. The investigation also involved Blagojevich's campaign fundraiser Christopher Kelly and Blagojevich's first term chief of staff Alonzo "Lon" Monk. Monk was portrayed as someone who was willing to lie for the prosecutors in return for a prison sentence of two years as opposed to a maximum of twenty years. Kelly, died from what was determined to be a drug overdose last September. Even though Kelly had been stabilized at Oak Forest Hospital, he died after being transferred to Stoger Hospital in Chicago. Among the last people who saw Kelly before he died were reportedly a police officer and an unidentified "grey-haired man." Kelly was to be called as a witness in the Blagojevich trial by the prosecution.

First identified as potential witnesses for the prosecution, and then for the defense, neither Rezko nor Levine were called as witnesses during the trial. WMR has learned that to call either Rezko and/or Levine would have potentially exposed the jurors to the importance of the Purple Hotel in the overall discussion of Chicago's seamier political scene. The Purple Hotel, which is now closed and slated for demolition, was a one-time meeting place for men-only drug and sex parties in suburban Lincolnwood. WMR has learned that the Purple Hotel weekday afternoon parties were attended by Rezko, Levine, and Obama. The Purple Hotel had previously been connected to the murder of Teamsters pension fund mobster Allen Dorfman, who was gunned down in the parking lot of the Purple Hotel in 1983. Dorfman's killers were never identified.

Although Fitzgerald originally planned to call Rezko, who has been held in solitary confinement in the Chicago metropolitan detention facility since June 2008 pending assignment to a federal prison, and Levine as witnesses for the prosecution against Blagojevich, he suddenly changed his plans. Blagojevich's team rested their case without calling any witnesses, including Rezko and Levine.

On April 1, 2008, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on the day-long parties at the 293-room Purple Hotel: "Daylong, drug-fueled parties at the Purple Hotel in Lincolnwood and sometimes in Springfield. Snorting crystal meth and 'Special K.' Stuart Levine, the star witness at businessman and political fund-raiser Tony Rezko's corruption trial, told jurors Monday the drugs would make him 'euphoric' and lower his inhibitions as he partied all night with five other men. 'I would stay out all night,' said Levine, testifying that he hid his behavior in order to deceive my family.'"

Purple Hotel at the corner of Touhy and Lincoln, and just off Interstate 94, in Lincolnwood, was reportedly the scene of gay sex and drug parties attended by Obama and two potential key Blagojevich trial witnesses -- Rezko and Levine -- whose testimony was suppressed by Fitzgerald's prosecution team and Judge James Zagel.

An informed source has told WMR that the Purple Hotel parties not only involved drug use but gay sex, adding that crystal meth and ketamine, or Special K, are frequently used by gays while engaged in sexual trysts. And, in what could be a bombshell that would throw into question Zagel's impartiality in trying Blagojevich, there are reports that male members of the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, the court that is trying Blagojevich, may have been in attendance at the Purple Hotel gay sex and drug parties. Once a prime spot for wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs, the Purple Hotel quickly went to seed and there were complaints of mold and other unsanitary conditions in the hotel. The property is currently at the center of a legal battle between the village of Lincolnwood and the hotel's owner, Donald Bae, the owner of Village Resorts, Inc., to repair the hotel or demolish it.

During Rezko's trial presided over by U.S. Judge Amy St. Eve, Fitzgerald's team was keen on not tying Obama, then a candidate for president who was locked in a tight race with Hillary Clinton, to the Purple Hotel parties attended by Levine and Rezko at the Purple Hotel. St. Eve was nominated for the federal bench by George W. Bush in March 2002.

St. Eve was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois until 2001. Prior to that stint, St. Eve was the Associate independent counsel for the Whitewater Independent Counsel's Office in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and helped to investigate President Bill Clinton and prosecute former Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker. Fitzgerald became U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois ion October 24, 2001. President Obama decided to keep Fitzgerald, a George W. Bush appointee, in his present office.

Previously, WMR reported that Obama and Emanuel were members of Man's Country, a gay bath house in uptown Chicago.

2010-07-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

July 30 -August 1, 2010 -- Bush's ambassador to eastern Caribbean protected Stanford operations

Mary K. Ourisman, the Texas-born socialite wife of Maryland car dealer Mandy Ourisman, helped provide diplomatic and legal cover for jailed former Stanford International Bank chief Allen Stanford, according to Stanford insiders who spoke to WMR. Mary Ourisman was George W. Bush's ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean States, which include Antigua and Barbuda, the headquarters for Stanford's one-time global banking and financial services empire that collapsed in 2009 after it was discovered to be a Ponzi scheme. Stanford is in prison in Texas and has been refused bail as a flight risk -- Stanford is also a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda. He is scheduled to go on trial in January 2011, conveniently two months after the congressional election in November. Stanford's campaign contributions fell into the coffers of congressional members of both Democrats and Republicans.

However, as WMR previously reported, Stanford International Bank also became a replacement for the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) as a vehicle for drug money laundering and other covert operations on behalf of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Mary Ourisman, a political fundraiser for Bush and other GOP candidates and a close friend of former First Lady Laura Bush, became U.S. ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean States in 2006. In her job, Ourisman ensured that Stanford's financial operations in Antigua and Barbuda, as well as in two other Caribbean nations where she was credentialed as ambassador, St. Kitts-Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, were protected from federal regulators.

To provide even more protection for Stanford's money laundering ans other covert operations, Stanford showered GOP and Democratic senators with large campaign contributions, including $83,000 for John Cornyn of Texas and $950,000 for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and particularly, Bob Menendez of New Jersey. Menendez, who maintains close connections to the Cuban exile community in Florida and new Jersey and its CIA veteran operatives, has refused to investigate the Stanford fraud on behalf of its victims and has tried to block any Senate investigation of Stanford's links to the CIA and top government officials, Democratic and Republican.

It is also noteworthy that Texas was the only U.S. state to have entered into a financial regulatory agreement with Antigua. The Texas Department Banking and the Antigua and Barbuda International Financial Sector Regulatory authority signed the agreement on July 26, 2001. More amazingly, the agreement was signed while Antigua was subject to a U.S. Treasury advisory warning of potential fraud.

Ourisman sat idly in Bridgetown, Barbados as Antigua's Attorney General, Errol Cort, who had also been Stanford's personal attorney on the island, changed the island nation's money laundering laws to the benefit of Stanford and his CIA overseers, without a peep from any of the regulatory agencies in Washington. Cort, who is now the National Security Minister of Antigua and has used his position to make things uncomfortable for Stanford fraud investigators traveling to the island, also served on the board of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, which took over Stanford's Bank of Antigua after Stanford empire collapsed in 2009. Stanford had become a political kingpin in Antigua, exercising influence over the previous Lester Bird government and its successor, the present Baldwin Spencer government -- without any interference from Ourisman in Barbados or the State Department.

Even today, Antigua's ambassador to the United States, Debra-Mae Lovell, the wife of Antigua's corruption-tainted Finance Minister Harold Lovell, spends most of her time in Washington acting as a public relations flack for Antigua and ridiculing the former Stanford investors who were defrauded by the Ponzi scheme -- a scheme facilitated by a corrupt Antiguan government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, more concerned about the continuation of U.S. military basing rights on Antigua, has warmly embraced Ambassador Lovell and members of her government and has lavished hundreds of millions of dollars of aid on Antigua.

The bodies have piled up among those who were most familiar with Stanford's operations. On February 25, 2009, WMR reported, "No one will ever know just how Charlesworth Shelley Hewlett, who ran CAS Hewlett & Company out of a small office sandwiched between fish and chips shops on South Bury Road in Enfield in north London, came to be the accountant for Allen Stanford's $50 billion financial empire that included Stanford International Bank (SIB). That is because Mr. Hewlett, known as a quiet gray-haired man to those who had offices in his north London office block, died 'peacefully' a few weeks before the Stanford scandal hit the front pages. Hewlett was 73 but no one knows the reason for Hewlett's death." Hewlett also maintained an office on St. John's Street, in St. John's, the capital of Antigua.

Stogniew, who headed a one-man company in Florida, Stogniew and Associates, provided risk analysis services for Stanford. Stoniew produced a flimsy three-page risk analysis report for Stanford in 2003. It mostly consisted of disclaimers. Gerry Stogniew, who founded his company in 1980 and resided in Seminole, Florida, died in July 2008. The firm was taken over Stogniew's daughter. Oddly, the professional staff for Stogniew and Associates are only listed by their initials. Federal Election Commission records indicate Stogniew donated to the campaigns of George H. W. Bush in 1987 and Florida Republicans Bill McCollum in 1999 and Katherine Harris in 2005.

Allen Stanford and Mary Ourisman shared more than an interest in protecting Stanford International Bank from nosy regulators: they were both born in the small Texas town of Mexia, Ourisman in 1946 and Stanford in 1950. The town's other "famous" celebrity: the late Anna Nicole Smith, who died from a suspected lethal drug overdose in Hollywood, Florida in 2007.

2010-07-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

Sir Josiah Stamp quotes:

Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.

2010-07-28T19:37:00.001-07:00

"It's Fun to Shoot Some People"

Psychotic Morons

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

The recently sacked US commander in Afghanistan, McChrystal, was a special forces freak who was complicit in or actually caused the cloak-and-dagger deaths of an unknown number of people. He and his knuckle-dragging rabble were and are unaccountable to either man or morality. They kill at will.

McChrystal came to recent notice because his juvenile bar-room insults about his superiors were made public. This was one thing McChrystal couldn’t slime his way out of, but in the past he proved himself genius quality when defending himself after being deceitful.

Mary Tillman, the mother of Corporal Pat Tillman who was killed in what was eventually called a ‘friendly fire’ tragedy in Afghanistan, wrote a book called ‘Boots on the Ground by Dusk’ which provides insight as to how some members of the US military covered up unpalatable truth and cast aside all principle. McChrystal figured big in this sordid saga.

At the time of Pat Tillman’s death on April 24, 2004, McChrystal was the head of Special Operations in Afghanistan. He approved the award of a Silver Star to Tillman for heroism.

There was no doubt that Pat Tillman, a mega-tough football star and a really great guy, was a hero. He stood up in a hail of machine gun fire from a bunch of panic-stricken, ill-trained, incompetent US soldiers and bellowed at them to stop shooting at their own comrades. But they carried on firing and shot him dead.

Rumsfeld’s Pentagon needed a national hero in 2004. It wanted a story to deflect domestic and world attention from the Abu Ghraib torture revelations that were hitting the media. Some of the hideous treatment of scores of Iraqis by a bunch of slavering US psychotics had been recorded for posterity (although we haven’t seen half the repulsive pictures because politicians, including Hillary Clinton, forbade release of the worst ones), and Washington was desperate to deflect attention from the horrible disclosures.

The cock-and-bull story about special forces’ gallantry in the so-called ‘rescue’ of Jessica Lynch in Iraq was a squalid invention conjured up to grab headlines, in which it succeeded, and the death of Pat Tillman presented a similar opportunity. His Silver Star citation read in part that “Corporal Tillman put himself in the line of devastating enemy fire,” which was a trumped-up yarn concerning an own-forces’ clash that everyone involved knew had happened. And McChrystal was promoted major general nine days after his Corporal was killed.

Eventually, when it was no longer possible to maintain deceit, there had to be an inquiry, so McChrystal appeared in front of the usual smug and supportive bunch of politicians who hung on his words and didn’t give him the tongue-lashing he deserved. Senator McCain asked him about the falsified award recommendation and McChrystal replied that

“Now, what happens, in retrospect, is – and I would do this differently if I had the chance again – in retrospect they look contradictory, because we sent a Silver Star that was not well-written. And although I went through the process, I will tell you now I didn't review the citation well enough to capture – or I didn't catch that if you read it you could imply that it was not friendly fire.”

This was insolently confusing nonsense. Apart from the fact that in his ignorance he meant ‘infer’ rather than ‘imply’, the statement that the citation was “not well-written” was devious and intended to draw attention from the fact that it was a lie from beginning to end.

The Silver Star is awarded to a member of the US Army who has displayed gallantry “in action against an enemy of the United States while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force.”

Was McChrystal unaware of the terms of the award recommendation that he signed? Is it possible he didn’t know that the American victim of killing by US soldiers, however gallant he had been, did not meet the criterion of being involved in “conflict with an opposing foreign force”?

The man is a lying charlatan, unlike an unfortunately honest senior officer in the US army in recent times, one Major General Mario Taguba, who was tasked to investigate the sadistic atrocities at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

General Taguba was ordered to head the investigation because his senior officers and the Pentagon thought he would be compliant. He wasn’t one of the Club. He was of Philippines origin (his father fought at Bataan, survived the ensuing Death March, and escaped captivity to fight again; a true hero), and achieved general rank by displaying great competence. But competence isn’t enough in the US military system. Or in any country’s military system.

Ambitious military officers have to display conformity and compliance if they want to succeed and go onwards and upwards. Adherence to shifting political thinking is essential for advancement, and in this they are helped by bands of sycophantic toadies whom they handpick for their staffs. The McChrystal mob of lickspittle flunkies were typical of the breed and told their boss what he wanted to hear, which, by chance of inverse intention, helped cause his well-deserved disgrace.

When the political spin doctors of Washington – or Berlin, London, Delhi, Moscow, Beijing, or any capital, indeed – dictate that a particular line is to be adopted by the military, then that Line is Law. It isn’t Constitutional legal law, of course; but it’s much more easily enforceable. And the penalties for ignoring the political party line are harsher than those awarded for what the rest of us might imagine to be graver crimes.

In May 2004 Major General Taguba produced his findings on the Abu Ghraib outrages, writing that “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.” He apportioned blame. So he was immediately posted to the Office of Reserve Affairs, which in any army is a professional graveyard.

He was then insulted face-to-face by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and humiliated by senior officers who jumped on the official bandwagon of Taguba-denigration, and told that he and his Report would be “investigated.” His treatment was proclamation to the entire military system that any officer who wants to rise to senior rank in the Profession of Arms should not upset the cradle of promotion by revealing uncomfortable truth. The cradle might rock (who remembers that great Broadway Show?), and truth can be manipulated.

In 2006 General Taguba was ordered to retire, and the army lost a loyal, decent, honorable and truthful officer. But the Pentagon doesn’t seem to want too many truthful officers who are loyal to the Constitution. It favors officers who are loyal to the Pentagon. Which brings us to General James Mattis, a Marine described by Defense Secretary Gates as “one of our military’s outstanding combat leaders and strategic thinkers.”

He was speaking of a man who in 2001 boasted that “The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan,” which is one of the most stupid comments made by any general in recent years. If Mattis, the supposed “strategic thinker”, believed his words about “owning” a part of the country would be a positive contribution to US policy as regards Afghanistan, then he is a fool. If he spoke without thinking, then he is a fool. But being a fool doesn’t affect promotion, so long as you go the Pentagon way ; and Mattis went onwards and upwards.

Then in 2005, when the Afghanistan quagmire was becoming deeper, Mattis spoke in San Diego about the war and how it should be fought. His words were recorded by CNN as

Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling . . . You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.

This stupid man has been placed in command of all troops in Afghanistan. His troops know he believes it is “fun to shoot some people” and who could blame them for acting accordingly, given such guidance? The stage is set for more of a “hell of a fun to shoot them”.

The insurgents’ propagandists know about Mattis, too. And they will spread the word that the new foreign occupation general thinks they have “no manhood”, which is the ultimate insult to a tribesman of any persuasion.

Although the consequences of the words of General Mattis can never be measured, it is obvious they are unbalanced to the point of being psychopathic. The man’s crass and barbaric tirade is not only alarming from the aspect of animal rabble-rousing, it demonstrates that the Pentagon appoints some extremely peculiar people to senior rank and command.

A person who believes that it is “a hell of a hoot” to kill people is seriously demented. The fact that such a person has been appointed to a major US military command is alarming, to put it mildly. But a country gets the military leaders it deserves. It’s a pity that some are psychotic morons.

Brian Cloughley’s website is www.beecluff.com

2010-07-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

Marilyn Monroe and

the Homeless Man

(a true story)

by Jack Kara, M.D.

In February 2009 we vacationed in Palm Springs, California and visited our daughters who live nearby. While there, my wife showed me an advertisement for a showing of Marilyn Monroe’s dresses. The advertisement was the famous picture of Marilyn’s dress blowing up from a street grate. Quickly I agreed to go. But when we got to the exhibit, I learned that there were no pictures of Marilyn wearing the dresses. It was only the dresses. Disappointed, I decided to skip the exhibit and waited for my wife outside on a bench in the sun.

The upscale view from the bench reaffirmed that this was one of the two very affluent, entertainment towns in California. Here, even the streets are named for show business stars. Next I observed the tourists who enjoy coming to this exhibit to admire and perhaps even fantasize about a woman who had everything—extraordinary beauty, fame, wealth, famous friends and famous boyfriends, and an expensive home. I then noticed that sitting quietly on a nearby bench was a man with a beard, wearing a black western hat, a brightly colored poncho, no socks, and tennis shoes. He appeared to be homeless, owning nothing but the small sleeping roll beside him.

I had always wanted to talk with a homeless person, but it was awkward trying to start a conversation. I tried this: “I’m waiting on this bench for my wife, but it is too hot over here in the sun. Can I sit on your bench in the shade?” He motioned me over. I sat down and started talking rapidly, so he would soon know I was not the police or someone to move him on. He quickly opened up and told me his name was Robert and some of his life story. Robert said he had been an “extra” in 52 movies but was now homeless. Then he said something that moved me from just being curious, to sympathy for him. He related that his parents divorced when he was three, and he never saw his father again. He said the only memory of his father was that he had painted the whole house green. At that time the family lived near the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. He said he used to have a picture of the family standing in front of a sign of the town’s name, but one could not see the first part of the town’s name. I asked him the last part of the town’s name. He said, “fries.” I told him: “Well, your family lived at Dumfries, VA.” He laughed and joked, “So that’s why we covered up the first part of the town’s name.”

I wondered why he hadn’t tried to find his father, but probably Robert thought the only way to find him would be to call telephone information, but that wouldn’t work because he did not know the city where his father now lived. I thoughtlessly suggested that he get on a computer and locate his father. Of course he had no computer or access to one. I was embarrassed that I had made this suggestion beyond his means. Then I had an idea. I told him I would search on my computer that evening and if I found his father, I’d come back to this same bench at 10 am tomorrow.

I did a computer search for his father and found two Edward James LaMoore’s. One was in Tampa, Florida and was 80 years old, which was about his father’s age. But the search site wanted a fee and my credit card information before they would supply the man’s telephone number. I tried a second internet phone service and they also wanted my credit card information. I was fearful of a credit card scam and reluctantly gave up on locating his father. Giving up so easily bothered me because I wanted to give Robert his father’s phone number, and he deserved to have it. I awoke in the middle of the night thinking of Robert and suddenly realized how to get his father’s telephone number without paying a fee or giving my credit card information. I could simply call 411 for Tampa, Florida on my cell phone and get his number.

The first thing the next morning I got the man’s telephone number using my cell phone and then called him. “What do you want?” the man said in a rough tone. I identified myself and said, “I’m looking for the Edward James LaMoore who was a Marine Supply Sergeant at Quantico Marine Base near Dumfrees, Virginia. “Yeh, that’s me,” he replied. I told him, “I met this nice man in Palm Springs who is your son, and Robert would like to say ‘hello’ to his father. Could Robert call you in an hour?” He answered, “No problem.”

So I drove into town arriving a little before 10 am. Robert was sitting on the same bench, but I parked half a block away from him. At that point I was afraid Robert might, because of resentment for being abandoned at age three, swear or yell at his father and ruin this once in a lifetime opportunity to reunite. So I hid in my car and wrote out a few suggestions for Robert to ask or tell his father. Then I walked to Robert and said: “I have located your father in Tampa, Florida, and I talked to him an hour ago.’ Robert’s eyes widened. “Your father said it is okay for you to call him.” I also showed him my talking points and said he could use or not use them. I suggested that he look them over a minute and then we’d call him.”

I dialed his father on my cell phone and handed the phone to Robert (picture above). He stayed with my script, asking about his father’s health, his work, did he remarry, have other children, etc. His father said his health was okay but he walked slowly; he had made a career out of the Marine Corps; he had never remarried; there were no other children; and he lived with just his old dog. Then Robert abandoned my script. I was standing about 15 feet away looking away from Robert but I could hear him talking on my cell phone. Robert said, “I was only 3 years old when you and Mom divorced and you left, but I remembered you painted the whole house, right?” His father must have asked what color because Robert laughed mightily and said “Green!” When the conversation was about over, Robert touchingly asked if his father minded if he called him again sometime. Robert said he might have to call collect because he was homeless. His father said calling was okay. Richard hung up happy, and said, “Thanks, Jack.” I had told him my name the day before and he had remembered it! Before leaving I gave Robert a long distance telephone card that had about 15 minutes remaining on it so he could call his father a couple more times.

A few days later the life-lesson of my first encounter with a homeless came to me. The lesson was--a few moments of kindness given to those who have so little from those who have so much can have a lasting impact on their life--and also an impact on the giver. I absorbed the lesson of this unique encounter, and it propelled me to attend a church meeting the next month on Affordable Housing. There I learned that the town where I had practiced medicine for 40 years had a homeless shelter. At that meeting I signed up to become a volunteer at that shelter.

I told this encounter with a homeless man to my daughter who lives in Hollywood, the other show business city in California. She also took to heart the lesson of the story and now does volunteer work for the homeless in Hollywood--where Marilyn Monroe enjoyed having a home and--wore the dresses in the display.

BP, LIBYA SIDESHOW.

2010-07-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

July 27, 2010 -- Release of Megrahi for BP oil concession in Libya was wrong reason for release: Megrahi had nothing to do with PanAm 103 bombing

Washington is yet to experience another "theater of the absurd" as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) prrpares to hold hearings on Scotland's decision to release Abdel Baset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison where he was serving a life sentence after being the sole person convicted of planting a bomb on board PanAm 103 in 1988, resulting in the crash of the plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Kerry's committee, under pressure from Israel's leading allies in the Senate, is trying to pressure Britain and Scotland to come clean on 2007 negotiations between Tony Blair's government and BP over which Megrahi's release from Scotland to Libya was discussed as a way to improve the oil giant's chances of landing lucrative oil deals with Colonel Qaddafi's government.

President Obama feigned anger on more than one occasion over Megrahi's release last August but a recent letter that surfaced from the U.S. embassy in London indicates that the Obama administration was quietly backing Megrahi's release with BP being the ultimate winner. The letter is further proof of BP's influence over the Obama administration, which was painfully obvious to the residents of the U.S. Gulf coast when Obama allowed BP to run the show in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig catastrophe.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has charged that Blair was and continues to be involved in secret negotiations with Libya and BP on the consummation of oil deals. Salmond has told the Senate committee to call Blair to testify about the former prime minister's secret dealings with Colonel Qaddafi's government. The Scottish govenrment denies having any contact with BP over Megrahi's release.

However, it appears that Obama had more than a passing interest in Megrahi's prison sentence in Scotland. On August 12, 2009, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London, Richard LeBaron, sent a letter to Salmond stating that while the U.S. was opposed to Megrahi's transfer to Libya, the United States would not be opposed to his conditional release on compassionate grounds to live in Scotland. LeBaron is a career Foreign Service officer who has mainly served in the Middle East, including a 2001 to 2004 stint as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv. In 1988, when PanAm 103 was bombed over Scotland, LeBaron served at the U.S. embassy in Tunis, a stone's throw from Malta, where Megrahi and his Libyan intelligence colleague were said to have arranged for a suitcase bomb destined for PanAm 103 to be placed on a feeder flight to Frankfurt and on to Heathrow in London for transfer to theill-fated Boeing 747 heading for New York. LeBaron would have been privy to classified U.S. embassy cables from Valletta concerning the investigation of Libya's intelligence operations in Malta, including the alleged Libyan involvement in the PanAm bombing.

Megrahi was reported to have been suffering from terminal cancer when he was released but his condition has reportedly improved since he has been in Libya. The Obama administration contends that it favored a release of Megrahi in Scotland so that he would not receive a "hero's welcome" in his native Libya, which, of course, he did upon his return last August. But, as the late columnist Jack Anderson reported, Britain's Tory government and Obama have reasons to insist on pushing the discredited story that Qaddafi was involved in PanAm 103's bombing.

On January 11, 1990, Anderson reported from Washington that "President Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher secretly agreed last spring to play down the truth about who blew up PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. After both leaders had intelligence reports pointing the finger at a terrorist hired by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Thatcher called Bush. In that comversation, they agreed that neither could stand the political heat of making the evidence public because both were impotent to retaliate."

Anderson's column continued, "Highly placed White House sources told us that the phone call took place about mid-March. By that time, both the British and U.S. intelligence services had followed the trail of evidence to terrorist Ahmed Jibril as the hit man who was paid by Iran to blow up the plane. The intelligence services had evidence that Khomeini and his successor, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, had approved the bombing."

It should be noted that Rafsanjani became a key backer of Mir-Hosein Mousavi, the failed presidential candidate who failed to unseat Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad last year. Ironically, Rafsanjani, a backer of the failed "Green Revolution," is now seen as a moderate by Washington and London. It is yet another reason to keep the Lockerbie heat on Libya.

Anderson's report stated, "The intelligence reports told Bush and Thatcher that Jibril went to Iran in July 1988 and struck the deal with Khomeini and Rafsanjani to blow up an American plane in retaliation for the accidental U.S. downing of an Iranian airliner earlier that month. When the intelligence reports began to leak last March, Thatcher called Bush to discuss their problem. She said no purpose would be served by making public the evidence against Iran because neither the United States or Britain could respond." Thatcher's knowledge that it was Iran that brought down PanAm 103 would cause trouble for her Tory heir, Prime Minister David Cameron, who, in 1989, was a young Conservative Party operative serving Thatcher. For Obama, the knowledge that the CIA was cognizant of Iran's role in PanAm 103 could spell trouble as more details emerge about Obama's own past with the CIA.

According to Anderson, "Bush knew that Khomeini had proved the undoing of Jimmy Carter and had nearly proved the undoing of Ronald Reagan. Carter lost an election because he couldn't get American hostages back from Iran, and Reagan suffered the biggest blow of his presidency when he tried to trade arms to Iran for American hostages." However, it was Bush, himself, who helped arrange to keep American hostages in Iran until after the November 1980 election, in return for secret weapons, and who also helped arrange the weapons-for-hostages in Lebanon deals that ultimately ended up as the "Iran-contra" scandal. In 1990, Bush, who was known to have designs on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, had to ensure there were no fingers pointing at Iran, who Bush had to keep neutral in a U.S.-Iraqi military confrontation over Kuwait. Bush could not afford to alienate Syria, Jibril's main backer, since Bush needed Syria in the coalition that would later attack Iraq.

WMR previously published a formerly SECRET Air Intelligence Agency message describing Iran's role in the attack on PanAm 103.

Anderson continued, "So Bush didn't argue when Thatcher suggested that they 'low-key' the findings -- say that the investigation was inconclusive and long-term. After the call, word was quickly passed to top officials conducting the PanAm investigation that they were not to make any off-the-record remarks implicating Jibril or Iran. In Britain, when the press speculated about possible perpetrators, investigators called the speculation 'wild' and 'irresponsible.'

U.S. intelligence sources who told us about the call said the decision was political cowardice. Thatcher, the 'Iron Lady,' earned her reputation in a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. But by last March, her popularity was on the wane and she didn't need to be embarrassed by Khomeini. Bush, still fighting his 'wimp' image, didn't want to face the ultimate calls for retribution."

And Cameron, inheriting the Tory leadership, doesn't want Thatcher to be shown as a liar and Obama, who has bent over backwards trying to placate the intelligence community, doesn't want to have to admit that the American people were subjected to yet another fraud courtesy of the boys at Langley.

July 28, 2010 -- The top secret Israeli-US program to establish "Al Qaeda"

2010-07-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

July 28, 2010 -- The top secret Israeli-US program to establish "Al Qaeda"

Press clips gathered by the CIA and discovered in the National Archives' stored CIA files point to an agency keenly interested in any leaks about the highly-classified CIA-Mossad program to establish Osama Bin Laden and the most radical elements of the Afghan Mujaheddin as the primary leaders of the anti-Soviet rebels in the 1980s.

WMR has pored through the CIA files and a complicated picture emerges of America's and Israel's top intelligence agencies, in cahoots with Saudi Arabia, establishing financial links and carve out intelligence programs to provide manpower and financial support to Bin Laden and his allies in Afghanistan. It was these very elements that later created the so-called "Al Qaeda," which the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook described as nothing more than a "database" of CIA front organizations, financial supporters, and field operatives. However, one component omitted by Cook in the Al Qaeda construct is the Israeli participation.

Thanks largely to the CIA station chief in Riyadh in 1986-87, millions of dollars from the Saudi government, particularly then-deputy Prime Minister Prince Abdullah, now King Abdullah, and wealthy Saudi businessmen were funneled to the most radical leader of the Afghan rebels, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, for whom militant southern Philippines Muslim rebels named their organization, the Abu Sayyaf group.

Accounting for only two percent of the mujaheddin guerrillas in the field in Afghanistan, Sayyaf's group began receiving hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of recruits from other countries, more than other six major mujaheddin groups fighting the Soviets. The tilt to Sayyaf was a result of the intercession of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Saudi intelligence, the CIA, and Mossad. Another key Saudi intermediary was Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who the Bush family has dubbed "Bandar Bush" because of his close links to the Bushes, and who was the Saudi ambassador to the United States on 9/11.

The Reagan White House's intermediary with Sayyaf's group during 1986 and 1987 was Michael Pillsbury, the Assistant Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who continues to serve as a Pentagon consultant. Eventually, with the urging of Salem Bin Laden, and his older brother Osama, the CIA gave the green light for Sayyaf to bring into Afghanistan a dedicated group of Arab fighters, recruited from countries such as Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries. Some of the Syrian volunteers were refugee survivors of Syrian President Hafez Assad's massacre of Sunni Muslims in Hama in 1982. Ironically, the first Arab training camp was established in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border and was known as Maasada, or the "Lion's Den." Masada is the site of the Roman siege of Jewish forces in 72 where the Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. Masada is Hebrew for "fortress."

Although the roles of Oliver North, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, Iranian Jewish interlocutor and con-artist Manucher Ghorbanifar in using the Israelis as a pass-through for weapons transfers to the Iranians are well-known, not much has been reported on Israel's role in providing financial and military assistance to Bin Laden's and Sayyaf's mujaheddin forces at Maasada in Afghanistan during the war with the Soviets.

The CIA kept articles, mainly written by Jack Anderson and Andrew Cockburn, on the highly-classified but leaked CIA-Mossad-Saudi operation. Two CIA front companies, Associate Traders of Vienna, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland, and Sherwood International Export Company, a license State Department arms broker with offices in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Miami, and London, arranged for 60,000 rifles, bought for $3.6 million from the Indian Defense Ministry in September 1983, to be shipped with a false end-user certificate for Portugal, to be shipped to "Any UK Port." In fact, the rifles were actually delivered to Saudi- and Pakistani-controlled mujaheddin forces in Afghanistan, including those controlled by Bin Laden and Sayyaf.

Sherwood also used what was believed to be a Mossad front, Shimon Ltd., registered in the Cayman Islands, to ship $1.8 million worth of Brazilian rifles to Nicaraguan contras in Honduras and Costa Rica. Again, a false end-user certificate was used, one that stated the ultimate destination of the Brazilian rifles was Baltimore. Another Israeli firm, Tahal Consulting, and the Israeli ambassador in San Jose, Costa Rica, David Tourgeman, were involved in providing further military logistics support to the contras in Costa Rica and Honduras.

Sherwood's Cayman Islands subsidiary Cromwell, Ltd., used the same registration agent in the Caymans that was used by Shimon Ltd. Shimon was discovered to have shipped $9.4 million in military equipment to Lagos, Nigeria, a shipment that was actually destined to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA guerrillas in Angola. Joint CIA-Mossad operations to send weapons to guerrilla groups in Asia, Latin America, and Africa was code-named KK MOUNTAIN by the CIA. The specific CIA-Mossad operation to transfer weapons to the Nicaraguan contras and other forces around the world during the 1980s was called Operation Tipped Kettle by the CIA. Among the recipients of Israeli expertise and weapons in Tipped Kettle were the Medellin drug cartel's death squads and Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. Tipped Kettle also involved the secret transfer of arms by Israel to Iran. Some of the key Israeli players in Tipped Kettle were Lt. Col. Amatzia Shuali; Noriega adviser Michael Harari; Amiram Nir, counterterrorism adviser to then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres; and former Mossad deputy director general David Kimche.

The money laundering for the arms shipments was conducted through the First National Bank of Maryland in Baltimore, which initiated the money transfers through off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and Panama. The ultimate destination of the funds was Switzerland, from where the weapons purchases were made without either the CIA's or Mossad's fingerprints. Tipped Kettle also involved the laudering of Saudi proceeds for the radical Sayyaf and Bin Laden mujaheddin groups through Swiss bank accounts.

Another firm used in Tipped Kettle was Bophuthatswana International Ltd., a joint CIA-Mossad front, with a "do business as" [DBA] name of B International, operating from an office on Madison Avenue in New York. The firm was listed by the Justice Department as a registered agent of the apartheid-era self-proclaimed Republic of Bophuthatswana, an entity only recognized by South Africa. Mossad also used other apartheid republics in South Africa, including Ciskei and Transkei, to mask their illegal weapons smuggling operations. Tipped Kettle also involved the apartheid regime of South Africa and the military dictatorship of Argentina. The network was also used to smuggle arms to Argentina during that nation's Falklands war with Britain.

CIA's Operation Tipped Kettle: The trinity of CIA, Mossad, and Saudi Arabia provided weapons and cash to Osama bin Laden and Rasul Sayyaf in Afghanistan during 1980s.

Now, some 25 years later, there appears to be another Mossad weapons smuggling operation, operating with a wink-and-a-nod from Langley, that has appeared in the Pacific Northwest.

An individual named Oliver King was arrested May 19 in Washington state. King, charged with weapons smuggling, was reported to be an Iranian-born citizen of Canada. However, King, 35, is a veteran of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and has alleged links to the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Agency, according to published press reports. According to a July 15 report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, King's McMinnville, Oregon gun shop partner said King told him he was an agent of Mossad. King earlier told an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that he was a veteran of the IDF.

The Post-Intelligencer reported that INTERPOL records consist of a rap sheet for King that includes convictions for fraud, assault, and weapons charges while living in Denmark. INTERPOL files also reveal that King has claimed phony degrees from the Danish Technical Institution. Seattle-based Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Roe has insisted that King was born in Iran, although his reported service in the IDF and Mossad would negate such a claim, unless King is an Iranian Jew. King is said to have been born Hamid Malekpour in Tehran.

King was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after he was tracked from the Canadian border to his associate's gun shop in McMinnville, called McMinnville Hunting and Police Supplies, and then to a rented storage unit in Ferndale, Washington, south of Blaine. The gun shop, located at 1000 Office Plaza on Highway 99 West, turned out to be an empty office. The Yamhill Valley News Register reported on May 24 that the gun store serves customers by appointment only. Local McMinnville and Yamhill County law enforcement officials were not aware of the federal investigation of the gun shop, which had failed to re-file for its Oregon state corporate license in February. The situation is reminiscent of local law enforcement seeing local criminal cases against Israeli art students and movers pre-empted by the FBI and other federal agencies before and after 9/11.

From the storage unit, ICE agents seized a sniper rifle, semi-automatic weapons, high-powered scopes, and ammunition from King's storage unit and car. King is said to have been a resident of Canada since 2003 but his firearm's dealers license was revoked by Canadian authorities because of suspicions he was smuggling weapons. King's firearms license in Canada was issued under the name Hamid Malekpour. ICE's arrest of King capped an investigation that lasted for over a year. A previous search of King's car at the Blaine, Washington border crossing in February 2009, yielded a resume that claimed King operated businesses in Switzerland, Denmark, and the United States.

An Iranian visa issued this year and two issued last year were found in King's passport, which was not due to expire until 2013. Subsequently, the passport was revoked for unknown reasons. King gave ICE agents conflicting stories on the reason for his last visit to Iran: consulting for an unnamed company, a hunting trip, and to visit relatives. After the questioning, King returned to his stated home in Vancouver, Canada. The similarities between King's operations and Operation Tipped Kettle are striking. In the subsequent months, King crossed the border to the U.S. 18 times and said he was visiting a post office in Blaine.

In March of this year, ICE agents witnessed King stop on the shoulder of Interstate 5 and witnessed him performing "counter-surveillance" tactics. On May 19, at the Blaine crossing, King produced a newly-issued Canadian passport, without the Iranian visas that appeared in his original passport. In fact, the new Canadian passport bore the issue date of May 19, the same day King was arrested. King was then arrested at a storage unit in Ferndale after he picked up several boxes from the McMinnville "gun shop." King claimed he was a "consultant" and that the guns did not belong to him but the owner of the McMinnville gun shop, a man named Amir Zarandi. When arrested, King denied being a Canadian citizen and said that he lived in Seattle. An BATF agent said King told him that he was a veteran of the Israeli army and that he was born in Israel.

King paid the rent for the gun shop with Canadian cashier's checks and no required federal firearms license logbooks or export licenses for weapons were found when federal agents searched the premises. Agents found no office equipment except for a single stool. Empty boxes from established weapons manufacturers and distributors were found in the shop. McMinnville Hunting and Police Supplies' actual owner said he met King at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and said King told him how he got around export controls to move ammunition from Iran to Israel. King also said he knew how to ship guns and ammunition via the Netherlands and Israel to Chile because Israel has no requirement for tracking such shipments. The owner reiterated that King told him that he worked for Mossad.

The Seattle PI also reported that Danish officials had a record of King being born in Germany, not Iran or Israel but also a huge rap sheet, including forgery, violence, assault, offenses against public authorities, fraud, extortion, and violations of Denmark's weapons laws. King's attorney, who recently withdrew from the case, said King had official contacts within the CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense prior to his arrest. Roe admitted that a search of King's computer turned up evidence on "foreign parties" operating in foreign countries. King has been indicted on charges of being an alien in illegal possession of firearms and ammunition and making false statements to federal officers. King remains in federal custody.

Aside from the Seattle P.I., most main stream media has been downplaying King's Israeli nationality, with KOMO-TV in Seattle reporting on May 26 that King was an Iranian with three Iranian visas in his Canadian passport. No mention was made of Israel. A recent report in the Seattle Times also made no mention of Israel or Mossad. However, Roe has convinced a federal judge to postpone King's trial, originally scheduled for August 9, because the government is seeking an additional indictment against King and others. Roe says the investigation is complex and involves witnesses in several other countries, including Iran, Denmark, and Canada. But curiusly, Roe did not mention Israel. King fits the profile of an Israeli Unit 269 or Sayeret Matkal agent, a special commando assigned by the IDF to agencies like Mossad to carry out special missions deep within foreign locations.

The King case has all the markings of a renewed Operation Tipped Kettle, with the govermnent dragging its feet on prosecution and the Israeli connection being buried by everyone, save the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As with the Israeli movers and "art students" detained before and after 9/11, a covert Israeli intelligence operation, involving Iran and U.S. security agencies is being swept under the carpet.