Hip Hop Legend KRS-ONE On The Alex Jones Show talking about Barack Obama, The United States & Much More.
Taking on the issues of politics to pop culture from one pissed off citizen who has had enough. - tpoc
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
An Inconvenient Debt
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
-Thomas Jefferson
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Alex Jones Analysis of Barack Obama's Inaugural Speech
In full detail so make sure you have some time to watch this important analysis.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sex, Drugs, & The Inauguration Of Barack Obama.
First off let me begin by saying, congrats to this man becoming president. On that end I can say it in an unbiased way. What a progressive nation we've become right? I mean, A Black man elected President of the United States when only 30+ years ago, he wouldn't have been looked at twice!
If you sensed the irony in that statement, then you're sharper than the average. People voted and preach this line throughout the media and as the reason for voting for him without even knowing who the man is nor' know anything of his principals and stances on issues.
This infuriates me to no end to know that Obama supporters will claim they voted for change, get mad when you question if it was based on race, then when asked why, they can't give a solid reasoning behind their vote.
Of course, this is a generalization and by no means do I mean every single supporter as there may be one or two of you out there that have good reasons. I have yet to meet any of you.
Here is just one example of what I mean.
The infamous Howard Stern had one of his guys go out into the streets of Harlem during the primaries and switched the policies of McCain's with Obama's to see who would people vote for then:
Of course, this is just one example but it will give you a good idea.
* Note * Explicit Language *
There was a story that had come out and floated around the Internet ( but suppressed by the Main Stream Media ) where a man named Larry Sinclair came out and said he had done drugs and had sexual relations with the President.
For further followups and information, visit:
http://larrysinclair.org/
Aside from these videos, there is also the background factor. Many don't know, to this day, or don't care, If Obama is born here or not. Cases are still pending on the legitimacy of his presidency but of course, you won't find this in the media.
Here is a nutshell explanation into WHY his background is still in question with cases pending against him on it.
Is it now a little more clear for you?
A little upset?... Not yet?
Here is the Noam Chomsky On Obama's appointees, on who and what their view point will be on foreign policy, along with Barack Obama.
You might say " HEY, Israel is our ally! We gotta look out for our friends! "
If you are still saying that after the recent conflict in Gaza, then here is one for you ( ties into Obama )
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
A Fascist left & a Communist has entered.
Is this really change? Hardly...
I'm sure people didn't even pay attention and look beyond his articulate presentation of flat out saying " We need a civilian national force " in one of his speeches awhile back. You know who had this? Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union.
And the people applaud like a bunch of zombies, i mean come on seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people?!
And here is Rahm Emanuel ( Obama's Chief Of Staff ) on implementing a draft.
Through all this, some of you might say " Hey, The man isn't even doing anything or done anything yet, give him a chance! "
Yea well, sorry to tell you but, if a man says " I'm going to kill that guy " while holding a gun, chances are, he's killing somebody.
People better wake up and wake up fast. Snap out of this worship nonsense before what they know as the United States of America, is taken from underneath them without even knowing...
The sociology of Barack Obama ( A clip from the Alex Jones Show )
This is the United States Of America, A REPUBLIC, not a democracy nor any other form of government.
The constitution is to be defended by all enemies, foreign & DOMESTIC, remember that.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
A Conversation with David Sanger On Covert Operations. PT.1
I was going to give my own take today on the conflict in Gaza but just recieved this explosive video with David Sanger.
This is part 1 that was aired earlier tonight, part 2 will air tomorrow.
This conversation is mostly on Iran. What you should pay close attention to is what is said about the covert operations and discussions behind the scenes with the U.S. and Israel on things and how they went about it.
Now understand that from this, he speaks about how these countries, like Pakistan, Iran, Etc. all considering or having Nuclear capabilities or bombs to ONLY protect or deter their enemies or opponents.
Notice now, this has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE UNITED STATES.
Maybe he mentions it in his book but didn't in this program, Project Checkmate.
Here is former Marine & U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter on the Iranian Nuclear Problem for a little more depth into the program.
Sad how those in power can't comprehend why our foreign policy was suppose to be one of a humble taking, not that of a interventionists one.
This is part 1 that was aired earlier tonight, part 2 will air tomorrow.
This conversation is mostly on Iran. What you should pay close attention to is what is said about the covert operations and discussions behind the scenes with the U.S. and Israel on things and how they went about it.
Now understand that from this, he speaks about how these countries, like Pakistan, Iran, Etc. all considering or having Nuclear capabilities or bombs to ONLY protect or deter their enemies or opponents.
Notice now, this has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE UNITED STATES.
Maybe he mentions it in his book but didn't in this program, Project Checkmate.
Here is former Marine & U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter on the Iranian Nuclear Problem for a little more depth into the program.
Sad how those in power can't comprehend why our foreign policy was suppose to be one of a humble taking, not that of a interventionists one.
Labels:
Charlie Rose,
Foreign Policy,
Iran,
Israel,
Scott Ritter
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Ultimate Peter Schiff Montage 2002 to 2009
I came across this video earlier tonight and definitely saw it being worth the post.
I will be posting on current events tomorrow and my take on the Gaza conflict.
Anyway, without further or due, here is the Montage...
Enjoy...AND LEARN!
I will be posting on current events tomorrow and my take on the Gaza conflict.
Anyway, without further or due, here is the Montage...
Enjoy...AND LEARN!
Friday, January 9, 2009
Noam Chomsky VS. Alan Dershowitz 2005 Palestine/Israel Debate
Usually I'd post a film for the weekend to watch but I couldn't find the right movie to best fit with the current conflict in Gaza. So, I decided to post this debate between Noam Chomsky & Alan Dershowitz at Harvard University.
You can click their names for more info or watch the first clip of many in this post to hear a nutshell detail on who each person is.
Let me point out, Adam Dershowitz is a staunch supporter of Israel and a known watchdog for AIPAC, The Israel Lobby.
Point being, Alan is what the Zionist would be defined and seen as and Noam Chomsky would be how the more traditional Jews are. Although, Noam doesn't come off as religious to me but I mean it in speaking for the logical form and not so much as the biased side of Israel is always right and it's because I'm Jewish.
You will make your own judgement and I always encourage you to but pay attention to the two. Alan tends to fluff people up and make them look as holy men ( Example: Ariel Sharon is a man of peace ) when that has nothing to do with the facts of what was done, being done, and heading. Point of that, when you fluff up you distort what the point is suppose to be and have the viewer to say " wow they are nice guys why would this guy be opposed "
It's a psychological game really but enough of that.
Enjoy and see you next weekend!
- TPOC
* Clips are, of course, in order from top to bottom *
You can click their names for more info or watch the first clip of many in this post to hear a nutshell detail on who each person is.
Let me point out, Adam Dershowitz is a staunch supporter of Israel and a known watchdog for AIPAC, The Israel Lobby.
Point being, Alan is what the Zionist would be defined and seen as and Noam Chomsky would be how the more traditional Jews are. Although, Noam doesn't come off as religious to me but I mean it in speaking for the logical form and not so much as the biased side of Israel is always right and it's because I'm Jewish.
You will make your own judgement and I always encourage you to but pay attention to the two. Alan tends to fluff people up and make them look as holy men ( Example: Ariel Sharon is a man of peace ) when that has nothing to do with the facts of what was done, being done, and heading. Point of that, when you fluff up you distort what the point is suppose to be and have the viewer to say " wow they are nice guys why would this guy be opposed "
It's a psychological game really but enough of that.
Enjoy and see you next weekend!
- TPOC
* Clips are, of course, in order from top to bottom *
Labels:
Alan Dershowitz,
Debate,
Foreign Policy,
Israel,
Middle East,
Noam Chomsky,
Palestine
Ron Paul: We Need To Look At History, Hamas Was Created By Israel.
I won't say any more, listen for yourself.
Dr. Paul before the house earlier today.
Notice how the house went dead silent after Paul speaks.
And people wonder why supporters of this man are so passionate.
* UPDATE 12:36 P.M. Congressman Dennis Kucinich Speaks Before The House On Israel's War Crimes On The Record! *
Dr. Paul before the house earlier today.
Notice how the house went dead silent after Paul speaks.
And people wonder why supporters of this man are so passionate.
* UPDATE 12:36 P.M. Congressman Dennis Kucinich Speaks Before The House On Israel's War Crimes On The Record! *
Thursday, January 8, 2009
As The Conflict In Gaza Continues...
Being that I haven't posted for the past few days I felt I should make up for it in this post ( and one following tomorrow evening with a film )
I'm not going to candy coat and speak in the " professional " form because many of you are already filled in somewhat on the conflict so I'll just start to throw in my two cents.
The way the conflict seems to be going isn't well. And I mean that for the civilians being caught in the crossfire.
You'd say " Oh but Hamas threw rockets first " which has come out recently that, that wasn't the case.
You can view a timeline leading upto the Gaza conflict here.
There was a video recently from a program called " The Young Turks ". It's a fairly liberal program which I'm not too in favor of at times cuz of their political viewpoints and takes on some issues but that's my own personal thing.
In this clip, the host Cenk Uygur goes into a great amount of detail on the conflict and how it came about, with some added notes.
Cenk mentions a recent event that had happened with the attack on the U.N. vehicle that was providing aid to the Palestinians. Crazy, I know, here is the article.
Now, the way I see it: Hamas might not win militarily against Israel but they are winning in the reputation department. The world seems to be opposing Israel on all corners.
Here is a list of U.N. Violations committed by various nations, pay close attention to the detail of violators.
UN Resolutions being violated by countries other than Iraq.
Now you might say " big deal " but it actually is a very big deal. Israel has made itself ( since it's creation ) to be this beacon of peace in the middle east, with the Arab nations being the evil ones for hating them for so long. Now, it seems the tables are turning to the light of truth, and it's about time.
I'm not going to candy coat and speak in the " professional " form because many of you are already filled in somewhat on the conflict so I'll just start to throw in my two cents.
The way the conflict seems to be going isn't well. And I mean that for the civilians being caught in the crossfire.
You'd say " Oh but Hamas threw rockets first " which has come out recently that, that wasn't the case.
You can view a timeline leading upto the Gaza conflict here.
There was a video recently from a program called " The Young Turks ". It's a fairly liberal program which I'm not too in favor of at times cuz of their political viewpoints and takes on some issues but that's my own personal thing.
In this clip, the host Cenk Uygur goes into a great amount of detail on the conflict and how it came about, with some added notes.
Cenk mentions a recent event that had happened with the attack on the U.N. vehicle that was providing aid to the Palestinians. Crazy, I know, here is the article.
Now, the way I see it: Hamas might not win militarily against Israel but they are winning in the reputation department. The world seems to be opposing Israel on all corners.
Here is a list of U.N. Violations committed by various nations, pay close attention to the detail of violators.
UN Resolutions being violated by countries other than Iraq.
Now you might say " big deal " but it actually is a very big deal. Israel has made itself ( since it's creation ) to be this beacon of peace in the middle east, with the Arab nations being the evil ones for hating them for so long. Now, it seems the tables are turning to the light of truth, and it's about time.
Labels:
Foreign Policy,
Gaza,
Hamas,
Israel,
Middle East
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
UPDATE
I Haven't been posting this week when the biggest stories are on the burner but I will post a massive post tomorrow and friday on the Events. Trust me it will be worth the wait.
From Gaza to the Commi Obama lol
All the best
- TPOC
From Gaza to the Commi Obama lol
All the best
- TPOC
Friday, January 2, 2009
Israel Vs. Hamas ( Palestine ) The Fire That Now Burns.
For those of you that haven't been following the news, the current conflict happening in the world is one that has been going on long before a lot of us were even born. The conflict in the middle east between Israel & the Palestinians. Some might say " It's Hamas " to be more direct but they do represent, of what is to be considered, the state of Palestine.
Media reports in the U.S. claim Israel is defending their right to defend their own country and people because Hamas launched rockets into their cities first. Meanwhile in other new agencies, it is said that Hamas is retaliating to what Israel has done for many many years: consistently breaking U.N. resolutions.
Of course, any country has a right to defend itself against it's enemies but what is going on here is a slaughter, not a battle.
You fight on a battlefield, not people's homes. You attack bases, you don't attack mosque's.
In 8 years since Hamas has been in control:
Only 10 Israeli's have died and since these air strikes, 420 Palestinians have died and over 2,000 have been injured.
You might wonder, Why the U.S. says one thing while the world says another. Well, if you haven't been following or watching the films I have posted, I suggest you use the search box and type in " Film " and look for AIPAC. That's one reason.
A few others:
Israel gets roughly about 3 billion dollars in aid from the U.S.
The weapons they use are given by the U.S.
Most of the politicians and corporate heads are Zionists
I can write out a laundry list for you but maybe later.
I want you to take a look at this video piece below that goes into great detail on how the media likes to favor Israel many times over anyone else in the world. Where the truth lies and where the lies lie.
Below is a film that will break down into detail, why the media acts the way they do, shows what they want to show, and lets you to believe, Israel is a beacon of purity when it hides over 400+ nuclear missiles & has the worst human rights violations record in the world.
Peace, Propaganda & The Promise Land.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?
By Ray McGovern
In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors—the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.”
Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”
As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest—not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.
Three of the seven—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”
When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”
That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that “nobody is above the law,” there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs—no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further “preliminary investigation.” What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA’s destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of “high-value detainees.”
Durham had scarcely been heard from when Holder added to Durham’s job-jar the task of conducting a preliminary investigation regarding the CIA torture specialists. These are the ones whose zeal led them to go beyond the already highly permissive Department of Justice guidelines for “harsh interrogation.”
Durham, clearly, is proceeding with all deliberate speed (emphasis on “deliberate”). Someone has even suggested—I trust, in jest—that he has been diverted to the search for the money and other assets that Bernie Maddow stashed away.
In any case, do not hold your breath for findings from Durham anytime soon. Holder appears in no hurry. And President Obama keeps giving off signals that he is afraid of getting crosswise with the CIA—that’s right, afraid.
Not Just Paranoia
In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents. Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly. Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy. Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two.”
What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.
Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work. Nothing short of torching the Truman Library might conceivably help. But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.
In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.
The Washington Post published the op-ed on December 22, 1963 in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions. Other media ignored it. The long hand of the CIA?
Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”
The Truman Papers
Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”
In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’ forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it. With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.
Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower. When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.
Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces. In his notes Dulles explains that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”
Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents:”
“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict…What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead…and appeal for aid from the United States…
“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.
“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed,” added Schorr.
The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction. Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism—and, incidentally, get even.
In his op-ed of December 22, 1963 Truman warned: “The most important thing…was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.
Truman called outright for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)
On December 27, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.” Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”
Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:
With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”
Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging the substantive dog—a serious problem that persists to this day. For example, CIA analysts are super-busy supporting operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; no one seems to have told them that they need to hazard a guess as to where this is all leading and whether it makes any sense.
That is traditionally done in a National Intelligence Estimate. Can you believe there at this late date there is still no such Estimate? Instead, the President has chosen to rely on he advice of Gen. David Petraeus, who many believe will be Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election.
Fox Guarding Henhouse?
In any case, the well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a targeted domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’ warnings about covert action.
So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964 he spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.
No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”
No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.
A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it. In a June 10, 1964 letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”
Dulles and Dallas
Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly. So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction. My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, one or two not-yet-intimidated columnists were daring to ask how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission. Prescient.
Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet get some ink, and perhaps even airtime, and raise serious questions about covert action. Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud. The media had already shown how co-opted—er, I mean “cooperative”—it could be.
As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators—or journalists—tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.
Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up? The most up-to-date—and, in my view, the best—dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes.
In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors—the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.”
Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”
As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest—not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.
Three of the seven—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”
When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”
That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that “nobody is above the law,” there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs—no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further “preliminary investigation.” What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA’s destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of “high-value detainees.”
Durham had scarcely been heard from when Holder added to Durham’s job-jar the task of conducting a preliminary investigation regarding the CIA torture specialists. These are the ones whose zeal led them to go beyond the already highly permissive Department of Justice guidelines for “harsh interrogation.”
Durham, clearly, is proceeding with all deliberate speed (emphasis on “deliberate”). Someone has even suggested—I trust, in jest—that he has been diverted to the search for the money and other assets that Bernie Maddow stashed away.
In any case, do not hold your breath for findings from Durham anytime soon. Holder appears in no hurry. And President Obama keeps giving off signals that he is afraid of getting crosswise with the CIA—that’s right, afraid.
Not Just Paranoia
In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents. Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly. Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy. Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two.”
What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.
Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work. Nothing short of torching the Truman Library might conceivably help. But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.
In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.
The Washington Post published the op-ed on December 22, 1963 in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions. Other media ignored it. The long hand of the CIA?
Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”
The Truman Papers
Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”
In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’ forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it. With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.
Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower. When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.
Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces. In his notes Dulles explains that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”
Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents:”
“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict…What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead…and appeal for aid from the United States…
“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.
“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed,” added Schorr.
The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction. Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism—and, incidentally, get even.
In his op-ed of December 22, 1963 Truman warned: “The most important thing…was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.
Truman called outright for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)
On December 27, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.” Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”
Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:
With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”
Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging the substantive dog—a serious problem that persists to this day. For example, CIA analysts are super-busy supporting operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; no one seems to have told them that they need to hazard a guess as to where this is all leading and whether it makes any sense.
That is traditionally done in a National Intelligence Estimate. Can you believe there at this late date there is still no such Estimate? Instead, the President has chosen to rely on he advice of Gen. David Petraeus, who many believe will be Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election.
Fox Guarding Henhouse?
In any case, the well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a targeted domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’ warnings about covert action.
So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964 he spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.
No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”
No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.
A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it. In a June 10, 1964 letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”
Dulles and Dallas
Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly. So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction. My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, one or two not-yet-intimidated columnists were daring to ask how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission. Prescient.
Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet get some ink, and perhaps even airtime, and raise serious questions about covert action. Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud. The media had already shown how co-opted—er, I mean “cooperative”—it could be.
As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators—or journalists—tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.
Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up? The most up-to-date—and, in my view, the best—dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes.
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