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Monday, October 27 2008 - Research/Evidence
The Assassinations of the 1960s as “Deep Events”

October 17, 2008
by Peter Dale Scott

For over two years now I have been speaking and writing about what I call deep events. I mean by deep events the traumatic and unexpected episodes that recur periodically in US history and alter it, nearly always for the worse. These deep events can never be properly analyzed or understood, because of an intelligence dimension which results in a socially imposed veil of silence, both in the government and in the Mainstream Media.

The more that I look at these deep events comparatively, ranging over the past five decades, the more similarities I see between them, and the more I understand them in the light of each other. I hope in this paper to use analogies from the murder of JFK and 9/11 to cast new light on the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.1

I began this analysis in 2006 by comparing the JFK assassination with 9/11. I drew attention to over a dozen similarities, of which today I will be focusing on only four:

1) the remarkable and puzzling speed with which those in power identified what I call the designated culprits (Lee Harvey Oswald and the 19 alleged hijackers),

2) the self-incriminating trail allegedly left by the culprits themselves -- such as the bundle that James Earl Ray is said to have conveniently left in a doorway on his way to his car. Oswald was said to have carried a flagrantly falsified draft card identifying himself with the name A.J. Hidell, thus consolidating a link between himself and the Mannlicher-Carcano which had been ordered under that name.2 Even more spectacularly, Mohamed Atta was said to have left one rental car in the Boston airport, filled with boxcutters and other incriminating items; he then allegedly rented a second car and drove to Maine, where he packed bags with still more self-incriminating material.3

3)the CIA's withholding of relevant information about the designated culprits from the FBI, thus leaving the culprits free to play their allotted roles in Dallas and later on 9/11. I will say more about this.

4) the role of drug-trafficking in both JFK and 9/11 -- and indeed in virtually every major deep event since JFK, specifically including MLK, RFK, Watergate, the Letelier assassination, and Iran-Contra.

This hypothesis of an underlying continuity and similarity between JFK, 9/11, and intervening deep events suggests that we should look for some continuing and hostile force within our society to help explain them -- and not, as we have been encouraged, to blame them uniquely on external forces -- such as either Castro (in the case of Oswald) or angry Middle Eastern Muslims (in the case of 9/11). I want to suggest that this continuing force, though involving elements from the CIA and other intelligence agencies, should be sought primarily in the CIA's interface with mob elements, and particularly with what I have called the CIA's global drug connection.4


Oswald's and Sirhan's Alleged Self-Incriminating Behavior at Rifle Ranges

Let me now look comparatively at JFK, MLK, and RFK -- the three major assassinations of the 1960s. I shall deal first with a few local similarities which when taken together suggest plotters with a similar modus operandi behind all these plots. In all three cases there is evidence of trickery in linking the designated culprit to the gun he is supposed to have used. In the case of first Oswald and then Sirhan, the culprits are alleged to have made life easier for investigators by traveling to rifle ranges, in each case at least twice, and then impressing themselves indelibly in the memories of witnesses by aggressively drawing attention to their weapons.

This is what Malcolm H. Price told the Warren Commission about "Oswald" at the Dallas rifle range:

the first time that I saw this person was in September, ....I have heard that he couldn't drive, but he was driving that day...and he came down and inquired if there was anyone who could sight a scope, a telescope on a rifle, and I told him that I could, and he said, well -- he had one that he had mounted and boresighted but it hadn't been fired on a range....And he fired three shots and he scored bull's eye with all three -- a very tight pattern. (10 WH 370, emphasis added)

For various reasons the Warren Report rejected this testimony. However there was independent corroboration of Price's story. At least five other witnesses claimed to have seen Oswald at a rifle range; and one of them, Sterling Wood, established in conversation with Oswald that Oswald was firing a "6.5 Italian carbine" with a "four-power scope." (26 WH 368). A witness from the Irving Sports Store, Dial Ryder, supplied a purported work ticket with the name Oswald on it, which was an order to have a rifle "mounted... and boresighted" (WR 315).5 Yet another witness, Mrs. Edith Whitworth, told the FBI that she had directed Oswald to Ryder's store (26 WH 701; cf. WR 316).

I have argued that all this was concatenated false testimony, to support the early notion, later rejected, that Oswald had killed Kennedy with a gun he had used earlier in the Soviet Union.6 The more we believe that the Warren Commission was right to reject this concatenated testimony, the more the rejected stories constitute evidence of a conspiracy.

Similarly we find concatenated evidence, some of it apparently false, concerning Sirhan Sirhan and his unusual ammunition at rifle ranges near Los Angeles. Repeatedly Sirhan is said to have talked obsessively with fellow-shooters about his use of high-velocity Mini-mags for target shooting -- the type of bullet whose casings were extracted from the gun he used at the Ambassador Hotel. Sirhan allegedly told Ronald Williams, "These Mini-mags are real good. You should get some of these."7 Sirhan advised another shooter, David Montellano, "that the mini-mags he was firing cost more, but they were hollow points and spread out more upon impact."8 Michael Saccoman "stated that Sirhan brought him over some bullets. They were 'mini mags.' Hollow points extremely high velocity."9

As in the case of Oswald, there was abundant, almost over-determined corroboration for these claims. Michael Saccoman said Sirhan told him he had bought his mini-mags at the Lock Stock N' Barrel store. Larry Arnot at Lock Stock N' Barrel confirmed that a sales slip for mini-mags found in Sirhan's car (along with an empty box of hollow point mini-mag bullets) was in his handwriting.10 In addition, Everett C. Buckner, the owner of one range, allegedly said he sold Sirhan "a box of fifty .22 caliber Imperial Brand long-rifle mini-mags, made by Canadian Industries of Montreal."11

Sirhan's use of hollow point high velocity mini-mags (unusual for target practice, as Saccoman pointed out) was important to establishing that his bullets created Kennedy's wounds. Sirhan's gun was a .22 caliber pistol; only a hollow point round could have answered the vital question, "Could a .22 round have mushroomed enough to created a 2 cm wide hole?"12

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald was impersonated at one rifle range, and Malcolm Price saw a "resemblance" when the Commission staff showed him a picture of Jack Ruby's assistant Larry Crafard.13 It is possible that on at least one occasion Sirhan was also impersonated at one range. William Marks

identified Sirhan from a police mug shot but described him as twenty to thirty years old, six foot to six foot two, and 215 to 225 pounds, with brown hair. This was at least eight inches too tall, double Sirhan's weight, and the wrong hair color.... Officer Harry Starr [the only other witness] provided the same description.14

In both cases, the identity of the witnesses is interesting. Two witnesses of Oswald at the rifle range15 were employees of the Great Southwest Corporation, the company which after the assassination provided Marina Oswald with first a suspicious manager, and then an even more suspicious lawyer.16 The two witnesses just cited who identified Sirhan were both police officers from Corona, a suburb of Los Angeles.

In the case of Oswald, I believe the consensus today is that the man married to Marina never visited a rifle range at all, but was impersonated. It is harder to draw the same conclusion about Sirhan Sirhan, because of his unambiguous testimony under oath at the trial that he did visit the San Gabriel Rifle Range on June 4, and on June 1 or 2 did purchase a box of mini-mags at the Lock Stock N' Barrel.17

But Sirhan's self-incrimination at his trial cannot be taken at face value. For a subsequent examination of 38,000 empty shells from where he allegedly shot at a rifle range never identified one that had been fired from Sirhan's revolver.18 On this matter, as on so many others, we have to deal with evidence that Sirhan was programmed to speak and behave in such a way as to make himself appear falsely to be a killer.


The Accused and Their Attorneys: More Self-Incrimination

This draws our attention to odd ways in which both Oswald and James Earl Ray also allegedly acted to incriminate themselves, even after they had been arrested. Oswald, virtually everyone now agrees, was not a Communist; yet there are multiple reports that after he was arrested, he helped depict himself as a Communist, by asking for the well-known Communist lawyer John Abt to represent him as his attorney.19 Analogously, James Earl Ray (according to those who have interrogated and investigated him at length) was not a racist; yet he strengthened the media depiction of himself as a racist (which was used to convict him) by asking two notorious racist attorneys, Arthur J. Hanes Sr. and J.B Stoner, to represent him.20

In both cases the evidence for this odd self-incrimination is both abundant and problematic. In the case of Oswald, ABC News reported that Oswald "leaned into ABC microphones and said he would like to contact a Mr. Abt of New York City to serve as his attorney."21 In all, "Six public officials, three newsmen, a Dallas lawyer, an acquaintance of Oswald and even his own mother indicated that Oswald specifically asked for Abt."22 Yet we have no direct evidence of Oswald requesting this, despite his TV appearances after the assassination.

In the case of Ray, we have Ray's statement in his book that in England, after his arrest, he himself wrote a letter to Arthur Hanes, asking Hanes to represent him.23 It was some time later that, through the intervention of his brother Jerry, Ray acquired the attorneys Richard J. Ryan of Memphis, allegedly the head of Governor Wallace's presidential campaign in Tennessee, and J.B. Stoner.24

One striking common denominator between all three murders is that in each case defendants were disastrously represented by lawyers who had previously represented mob figures. Jack Ruby was convicted after being represented by Melvin Belli, who earlier had represented both Mickey Cohen and Cohen's protégé, the stripper Candy Barr who was a friend of Jack Ruby.25 After his conviction Ruby was briefly represented by Percy Foreman, who previously had represented the Dallas Mafia chieftain Joseph Civello.26 (Foreman quit after only four days.)27 Foreman would later replace Hanes as Ray's attorney and be responsible for railroading him.28 Finally, Sirhan Sirhan was outrageously "defended" by Russell Parsons,29 who had earlier represented Los Angeles mob figures Mickey Cohen, Herbert "Happy" Meltzer, and Joseph Sica (Meltzer and Sica were both notorious narcotics traffickers).30 Parsons was eventually replaced by Grant Cooper,31 after Cooper finished defending one of those found guilty, along with mob figure John Roselli, in the notorious Friars Club gambling case.32

Recently Ray's brother, John Larry Ray, has written that Ray was instructed to engage Hanes as his attorney.33 James Earl Ray himself, in testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and later in his book Who Killed Martin Luther King?, has indicated that his attorneys were chosen for him by others, including "Raulston Schoolfield, the ousted criminal judge who had interceded on my behalf by asking attorney Robert Hill to represent me."34 Although Ray does not say this, Schoolfield was ousted from office after it was shown he had been bribed to dismiss charges against a corrupt Teamster official in Hoffa's camp.35

Ralston Schoolfield is not mentioned by John Larry Ray, yet this curious aside from James corroborates John Larry's suggestive (and I believe important) observation:

Persons around Jimmy Hoffa figure into James's case more than once. Jimmy Hoffa's lawyer, Z.T. Osborn, would end up "committing suicide" after he agreed to represent my brother James.36 How did James make Osborn's acquaintance, and who would send my brother Jerry to ask for Osborn's assistance? It was none other than St. Louis Steamfitters Local Union #562 boss Larry Callanan, right-hand man to [St. Louis crime figure Frank] Buster Wortman [close to Hoffa's attorney Morris Shenker, "one of the Mob's leading lawyers in the U.S."].37

James Earl Ray himself suggested to an HSCA investigator in 1977 that they look into all of these figures (apart from Wortman).38

Without getting into too many details in this short paper, James Earl Ray's testimony and book hinted that his case had become intertwined in a complex fashion with the pressures being brought in 1967-71 on Edward Grady Partin, Attoney General Robert Kennedy's chief witness in the conviction of James Hoffa for jury tampering.39 In two books I have made the same suggestion about both the JFK case and more particularly the Garrison investigation of it. Walter Sheridan's labyrinthine narrative of Hoffa's efforts to overturn his conviction (The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa) is once again, as in the JFK case, the best reference work for understanding the relevance of figures in Ray's background like Ralston Schoolfield, Z.T. Osborn, and (a name I shall refer to shortly) Joseph Oster.

The role of both Ray and Sirhan in facilitating their own convictions is striking. In the case of Sirhan it can be attributed to his apparent openness to hypnotic suggestion, both before and after his arrest. But similar questions have now been raised about James Earl Ray, by his brother John.40


Relevant Allegations of Hypnosis from Unreliable Narrators

Indeed, given the general agreement that Sirhan Sirhan was somehow programmed or hypnotized to become a "Manchurian candidate," it is arresting that both Oswald and Ray also had men in their background alleged to be interested in hypnosis. One cannot discuss this feature without noting that the men making these allegations were notoriously unreliable narrators. Indeed one must note that in this milieu, on the fringes of both intelligence and the underworld, one is forced to deal with a multitude of witnesses -- such as Gerry Patrick Hemming in the case of Oswald -- who unquestionably were both part of the larger scene and notoriously unreliable in their accounts of what happened.41

David Ferrie, who had known Oswald when the latter was a teenager in the Civil Air Patrol, had studied hypnosis and practiced it on youths whom he knew.42 Ferrie, an eccentric, was also said to be "a bishop of the Orthodox Old Catholic Church of North America."43 (Dr. William J. Bryan, who is some researchers' candidate to have been the man who hypnotized Sirhan, was also an ordained priest in the Old Roman Catholic Church.)44

The truth about Ferrie is unfortunately occluded by clouds of unreliable narration. The same is even more true of his alleged friend, Jules Rocco Kimble, a man who first talked to New Orleans DA Jim Garrison about Ferrie and then was suspected of having been "Raoul," the supposed handler who gave directions to James Earl Ray. However a professional Canadian reporter by the name of Andy Salwyn found witnesses who placed Kimble in Montreal in the summer of 1967, at the same time as Ray, and he provided this information in a detailed report to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation, we can now read this RCMP report online.45 In it, we find the following words attributed to Kimble's Montreal girlfriend, Marcelle Mathieu:

He also told me that he would hypnotize people and that he helped a doctor curing people with it. I told him not to try it on me. He told me that he was studying psychology at McGill University, but I found out this wasn't true either.46

As is pointed out in Truth at Last, a book by Ray's brother John Larry Ray, Kimble could have been referring to the CIA-assisted mind-control experimentation of Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute behind McGill University.47 The existence of this experimentation was still a closely guarded secret in 1967. John Larry Ray links this Kimble interest in hypnosis to James Earl Ray's undoubted and repeated visits to two hypnotists in Los Angeles, Mark Freeman and Xavier von Koss.48

The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) said Kimble was not in Montreal at the same time as Ray. To claim this, they ignored Salwyn's report (that it was "during the Summer of 1967") and relied instead on conflicting testimony from the dubious private eye Joseph Oster (Kimble "apparently did not visit Montreal until after Ray had left there in August 1967").49 When a government tribunal simply suppresses a claim because it conflicts with a second and more dubious one, our interest in the original claim should be strengthened. And in this case it appears that Salwyn was correct: an FBI report on Kimble seems to indicate that Kimble was already in Montreal by July 1967 ("at a Klan meeting on July eighteenth, sixtyseven, it was indicated that [REDACTED] [space for a six-letter name] fled state of Louisiana allegedly to Montreal, Canada.")50

Why do I say Oster was dubious? Because he had been part of the extensive effort to prevent Jimmy Hoffa from going to jail, by harassing Ed Partin, Robert Kennedy's chief witness against Hoffa.51 Oster had in fact personally arrested Partin on one occasion, on the basis of a complaint from a witness (Irby Aucoin) who also figured in the Garrison investigation.52 Oster, in short, was not at arm's length from the intelligence-mob realm which Kimble inhabited. In addition, Oster was a former partner of Guy Banister, suspected of controlling Oswald's pro-Castro leafleting in 1963. Oster's later partner was Milton Kaack, the former FBI Agent who in 1963 wrote a pre-assassination report on Lee Harvey Oswald, based on an interview which Oswald himself requested.53

I have a personal reason for my interest in CIA links to Manchurian candidates and assassinations. You may recall the Symbionese Liberation Army (S.L.A.) in the 1970s, the group led by "Cinque" or Donald DeFreeze. The S.L.A. first made headlines by murdering the superintendent of the Oakland School District, Marcus Foster; it subsequently kidnapped Patty Hearst and is said to have brainwashed her.54 As a convict, Cinque had participated in a behavior modification program in the California Medical Facility at Vacaville state prison; and that program's director, Colton Westbrook, subsequently applied to teach in my Department of English at UC Berkeley. The chairman asked me to peruse Westbrook's curriculum vitae; and I immediately noticed that while in Vietnam Westbrook had worked as a civilian employee of Pacific Architects & Engineers (PA&E). PA&E was a well-known cover for the CIA in Saigon, and I so notified the Chairman.55 Westbrook did not get the job.

Because of this experience I have noticed other veterans of behavior modification programs who became assassins. These include Mark David Chapman, the assassin of John Lennon, and Dennis Sweeney, the assassin of Allard Lowenstein (the only former Congressman ever to become involved in the topic of assassinations). Chapman had been treated at Castle Memorial Hospital for clinical depression; Sweeney had spent eight years in the Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center, New York's maximum security psychiatric hospital.


General Features of the Three Major Assassinations

Let us move now to an overview of these three assassinations. At first they were all quickly traced to mob figures, as David Scheim summarized a quarter century ago in his book, Contract on America.56 More recently they have been traced to US intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA.

In his new edition of Oswald and the CIA, John Newman writes that "someone in CIA counterintelligence...was harnessed to the [JFK] plot;" and he concludes that "we must now seriously consider the possibility that [James] Angleton was probably their general manager."57 In the case of MLK, Philip Melanson wrote that "the trail of conspiracy leads to elements of the U.S. intelligence community."58 In his new book, Who Killed Bobby?, Shane O'Sullivan devotes an entire chapter to the "intelligence connections" of the RFK case, and another to his thesis that Sirhan was a "Manchurian candidate," a "programmed assassin" of the type the CIA sought to develop in its program MK/ULTRA.59

Furthermore, all three books refer in one way or another to the activities of James Angleton, the CIA's Chief of Counterintelligence; and O'Sullivan in particular reports that both Angleton and J. Edgar Hoover "held photographs of Robert Kennedy's autopsy in their personal safes."60

The three major U.S. assassinations of the 1960s also have drug-trafficking in their background. In Deep Politics I wrote about how Jack Ruby was identified in 1956 as the man in Dallas who gave the "okay" for a "large narcotics setup operating between Mexico, Texas, and the East."61

James Earl Ray was said by some associates to have been interested in the sale of narcotics, while his traveling companion Charles Stein also had a narcotics background.62 (John Larry Ray writes that in 1967 James and Stein were involved together in a marijuana delivery from Mexico.)63 In addition, William Pepper has collected testimony from witnesses that the second gunman in the Martin Luther King assassination was hired and directed by a Mafia-connected produce dealer named Frank Liberto, now deceased. A confessed participant in the plot, Loyd Jowers, has said that his friend Liberto "was into a variety of illegal activities, including gunrunning, drugs, prostitution, and gambling" (emphasis added).64

In the case of RFK, Warren Hinckle and William Turner, in Deadly Secrets, suggested that Sirhan Sirhan "was a hired gun." Their chief evidence is the references in his extraordinary cryptic notebook to payments from a "Frank Donaruma," a convict dealing with race horses who (in their words) "had a rap sheet showing arrests in New York and Miami."65 In the actual LA Police Department records on the Sirhan case there is one page on Frank Donneroummas, saying: "Security check with a MUS Carpender through the Calif. Racing Assoc. shows that the subject has prior narcotic and petty larceny arrests in New York" (emphasis added).66


Aginter Press, the King and Letelier Assassinations, and Operation Condor

There are both intelligence and global drug connection aspects to James Earl Ray's ten-day visit to Lisbon in May 1968, shortly before his arrest. According to the HSCA, Ray "thought that he might be able to make contact with a white mercenary military group in the Portuguese capital, because of the colonial presence of Portugal in Angola."67 Ray's interest in becoming a mercenary seems to have been ongoing: back in December he had written to inquire about emigrating to Rhodesia, and on June 10 he was arrested as he was about to board a plane to Brussels; clearly he was aware that South Africa, Lisbon, and Brussels were the main points of contact for white mercenary activity in Africa.

To the best of my knowledge, there was just one mercenary group in Lisbon, Aginter Press, created in 1966, two years before Ray apparently contacted it. Aginter Press was a highly secret group which, according to an official Italian Senate Report, was "directly linked to the CIA and the Portuguese secret service, that specialized in provocative operations."68 Years ago I wrote about Aginter Press as part of a global "CIA-Mafia-Narcotics Connection" financed in large part by international drug trafficking.69

A few words about Aginter and one of its so-called "correspondents," the celebrated Italian assassin Stefano delle Chiaie, will illustrate about the importance of the global drug connection. Aginter supplied foot soldiers for the CIA's operations in Chile between 1970 and 1975, first in Patria y Libertad which prepared for the 1973 coup, and later with DINA, Pinochet's drug-financed intelligence agency.70

(A principal player in Patria y Libertad was Michael Townley, the leading architect of the Orlando Letelier assassination in Washington, who is also accused of involvement with the CIA murderers of Chile's General Schneider in 1970. Some see in the Schneider murder a possible connection to JFK's. To this day, Townley is thought of in America as a DINA agent, but in Chile as a CIA agent.71 I suspect he was both.)

Stefano delle Chiaie -- alias Alfa -- became a principal assassin for DINA, attacking, for example, a prominent Chilean Christian Democrat, Bernardo Leighton, in Rome. In 1982 he traveled to Miami with a leading Turkish drug trafficker, Abdullah Çatli, who was simultaneously a killer for the Turkish deep state and a veteran of the CIA's Gladio network in Turkey.72 The drug traffic through Turkey in which Çatli was prominent has been linked by researchers to a drug route from Afghanistan which at every stage was controlled by members or allies of Al Qaeda.73

Aginter Press had been founded in September 1966, less than two years prior to Ray's visit, by veterans of the French Secret Army Organization (OAS) -- an anti-de Gaulle faction that enjoyed contacts with Angleton in the CIA. By 1968 Aginter was dispatching mercenaries to many parts of the world. Specifically, they were sent to Guatemala, which in 1968 was in the midst of a massive CIA-assisted terror campaign, in which former CIA Cubans and U.S. Green Berets were also involved. (Some 50,000 people are estimated to have been killed by 1971.)74 One of these Aginter operatives, an American by the name of Jay Sablonsky (or Salby), reached Guatemala in 1968 on a false Guatemalan passport, issued by Guatemala's Montreal consulate.75

Montreal was thus a liaison point for Aginter, and this may explain Ray's brief return there from Toronto in April or May of 1968.76 Melanson located in Toronto the so-called "fat man" who on May 2, 1968 -- six days before Ray's arrival in Lisbon -- delivered a package to Ray in Toronto addressed to Ray's alias of Ramon Sneyd. The "fat man" (to whom Melanson gave the pseudonym of William Bolton)77 told Melanson that the package was a letter "about a job in Portugal and it showed that he had help." Bolton further "asserted that there was 'big money' behind Ray."78 (Melanson was the first person to interview Bolton, who expressed fear during the interview: "within several weeks of my surprise confrontation with him, he precipitously left his job and his residence in eastern Canada.")79

The CIA was conducting surveillance on Martin Luther King, and its copious King records treated King as a dangerous domestic threat to U.S. national security.80 One interview in 1965 reported the belief of a redacted informant (probably Roy Wilkins) that

somehow or other Martin Luther KING must be removed from the leadership of the Negro movement....[REDACTED] feels that unless the Negro leaders, other than KING, are informed and are capable of intelligent maneuvering, the Communists or Negro elements who will be directed by the Communists may be in a position to, if not take over the Negro movement, completely disrupt it and hence cause extremely critical problems for the Government of the United States.81

There has been much recent attention paid to Marrell McCollough, a companion of Martin Luther King who was on the balcony where and when King was shot. By all accounts McCollough was an undercover agent for the Memphis Police Department with a military background, who later went to work for the CIA.82 William Pepper collected testimony from Loyd Jowers that he had been part of the plot to murder King; and that McCollough (who has admitted he knew Jowers) was a co-conspirator in the murder plot.83

Lieutenant Manuel Pena and Sergeant Enrique "Hank" Hernandez, the two veterans of the Los Angeles Police Force who had the most day-to-day control of the RFK assassination investigation, both had CIA connections through their training for and participation in police operations in Latin America. Pena had reportedly left the LAPD for a "special training unit" at CIA's Camp Peary base in Virginia.84

Pena "also built up strong connections with Interpol: a senior official in the Mexican government was his 'number one connection into Latin America,' and he'd make frequent trips down there."85 Both Oswald and Ray also visited Mexico prior to the events for which they were arrested, and in both cases after the preparations for implicating them had clearly begun. Senior Mexican officials, notably the future Mexican Minister of Government Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, also falsified records at the behest of the CIA in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald.86 His agency, the Mexican Federal Security Directorate (DFS), had been involved throughout its three decades of existence in drug trafficking.87

The CIA also had a representative in the interrogation of Oswald. This was Harry D. Holmes, who was in the final Oswald interview, and may have choreographed the length of it so that Oswald and Ruby would meet in the DPD basement. Holmes was a Postal Inspector, but Postal Inspectors in cities with the CIA's mail-opening program (HT/LINGUAL) had CIA clearances; indeed, Postal Inspectors were in charge of HT/LINGUAL.88


A New Analysis of the King Assassination, Based on Two Other Deep Events

I wish now to propose a new hypothesis about the MLK case which is based on a striking similarity between it, JFK, and 9/11. I am talking about the prior designation of a culprit whose name or names existed in intelligence files, and could be counted on to embarrass a wide spectrum of the US Government into cover-up of the deep event for which he was blamed. The name I am talking about in the MLK case, however, is not that of James Earl Ray, but of his alias, Eric S. Galt.

Let me begin with a word or two about the dubious detective work on JFK and 9/11. Less than fifteen minutes after President Kennedy's assassination, the height and weight of Kennedy's alleged killer was posted.89 Before the last of the hijacked planes crashed on 9/11, the FBI told Richard Clarke that they had a list of alleged hijackers.90 In both events, there are reasons to suspect that the information about the alleged suspects came from prior information in intelligence files.

In the case of Oswald, within 15 minutes of the assassination and long before Oswald was picked up in the Texas Theater, Inspector Sawyer of the Dallas police put out on the police radio network, and possibly other networks, a description of the killer -- "About 30, 5'10", 165 pounds."91 This height and weight exactly matched the measurements attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald in Oswald's FBI file, and also in CIA documents about him.92

The announced weight was, however, significantly different from Oswald's actual weight, 131 pounds, as recorded by the Dallas police after his arrest.93 More importantly, there is no credible source for the posted measurements from any witness in Dallas. (The witness said to have spotted him, Howard Brennan, failed to identify Oswald in a line-up.)94

I conclude that the measurements were taken from existing files on Oswald, rather than from any observations in Dallas on November 22. If so, someone with access to those files may have already designated Oswald as the culprit, before there was any evidence to connect him to the crime. If not, how could the determination have been made within 15 minutes?

A similar situation pertains to the alleged hijackers on 9/11. For example, shortly afterwards men in Saudi Arabia complained that "the hijackers' 'personal details'" released by the FBI -- "including name, place, date of birth and occupation -- matched their own."95 One of them, Saeed al-Ghamdi, claimed further that an alleged photograph shown on CNN (of an alleged Flight 93 hijacker with the same name) was in fact a photograph of himself. He speculated "that CNN had probably got the picture from the Flight Safety flying school he attended in Florida."96

If the above information is accurate, then the details posted by the FBI and CNN about the alleged hijackers cannot have derived from the events of 9/11, with which the survivors in Saudi Arabia would appear to have been uninvolved. Once again this leaves the strong possibility that the details were taken from existing files, rather than from empirical observations on September 11.97

Some of the hijackers, like Lee Harvey Oswald, may have been in CIA files for a special reason: because the CIA had an operational interest in them. I wish to suggest that in an analogous way U.S. security files also contained information on another person of interest to them: the man whose identity was assumed by Ray, Eric S. Galt.


Internal CIA Evidence of Operational Interest in Oswald and the Hijackers

Let me now discuss evidence, from internal CIA records, about an operational CIA interest in first Oswald and later two of the alleged al-Qaeda hijackers, Nawaz al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. In 2001, as in 1963, the CIA withheld information about these people from the FBI, which ought categorically to have received it. The anomalies are extreme.

This is now easy to show in the case of Oswald. On October 10, 1963, six weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, CIA Headquarters sent out two messages about Oswald, a teletype to the FBI, State, and Navy, and a cable to the chief of the CIA's Mexico City station. Both messages contained false and mutually contradictory statements, and also withheld known facts of great potential importance.98 The teletype to the FBI withheld the obviously significant information that Oswald had reportedly met in Mexico City with a Soviet Vice-Consul, Valeriy Kostikov, who was believed by CIA officers to be an officer of the KGB, perhaps even a specialist in assassinations.99

CIA officer Jane Roman helped draft both messages. In 1995 she was confronted by two interviewers with irrefutable evidence that she had signed off on erroneous information about Oswald in the CIA cable to Mexico City. After much questioning, she finally admitted, "I'm signing off on something I know isn't true." One of the interviewers, John Newman, then asked her, "'Is this indicative of some sort of operational interest in Oswald's file?' 'Yes,' Roman replied. 'To me it's indicative of a keen interest in Oswald held very closely on the need-to-know basis.'" She later repeated, "I would think there was definitely some operational reason to withhold it [the information at CIA headquarters on Oswald], if it was not sheer administrative error, when you see all the people who signed off on it."100

Other CIA officers withheld important information from the FBI in January 2000, with respect to Khalid al-Mihdhar, who would later be identified as one of the al-Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001. The National Security Agency (NSA) overheard, on a Yemeni telephone conversation, information about a meeting in Malaysia which al-Mihdhar would attend, along with Tewfiq bin Attash, the mastermind of the fatal attack on the USS Cole.101 It notified the CIA but not the FBI. Meanwhile,

CIA leaders were so convinced about the potential significance of the al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, they not only set up surveillance of it, but provided regular updates to the FBI director [Louis Freeh], the head of the CIA [George Tenet], and the national security advisor [Samuel Berger].102

Once again, however, the regular FBI (as opposed to its director Louis Freeh) was not notified.

[Khalid al-Mihdhar's] Saudi passport -- which contained a visa for travel to the United States -- was photocopied [in Qatar] and forwarded to CIA headquarters. The information was not shared with FBI headquarters until August 2001. An FBI agent detailed to the Bin Laden unit at the CIA attempted to share this information with colleagues at FBI Headquarters. A CIA desk officer instructed him not to send the cable with this information. Several hours later, this same desk officer drafted a cable distributed solely within CIA alleging that the visa documents had been shared with the FBI.103

Lawrence Wright, reviewing this and other significant anomalies, reported in The Looming Tower the belief among FBI agents following bin Laden "that the agency was protecting Mihdhar and [his companion, the alleged 9/11 hijacker Nawaz al-] Hazmi because it hoped to recruit them," or alternatively that "the CIA was running a joint venture with Saudi intelligence" using al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.104 Wright himself speculated in a companion essay he wrote for The New Yorker that "The CIA may also have been protecting an overseas operation and was afraid that the F.B.I. would expose it."105

The CIA's concealing of information from the FBI about Oswald and the hijackers was necessary for the designated culprits to play their allotted roles in the deep events. In both cases the FBI later complained that the withholding of information was crucial in enabling the deep events to occur.106 It would be wrong to assume that the withholding of information, though deliberate, had the assassination and plane hijackings in mind. It is perhaps more likely that Oswald and al-Mihdhar were being protected by the CIA for some other operation -- possibly against Cuba (in the case of Oswald), or to penetrate existing al-Qaeda cells in the US (in the case of al-Hamzi and al-Mihdhar).

But someone in the CIA with knowledge of these sensitive files, and intent on a criminal deep event, could have used the sensitive identities of Oswald and al-Mihdhar as designated culprits in the plots, knowing that the CIA would be virtually coerced into cover-up because of the embarrassing manipulations of their files on these individuals.

How (and Perhaps Why) the Arrest of James Earl Ray Was Delayed

In a different way, I believe that the U.S. Government was embarrassed into cover-up again in the case of James Earl Ray in the MLK assassination. In saying this, I am not assuming that Ray himself had been of interest to the CIA, in the same way as Oswald and al-Mihdhar.107 But Eric S. Galt, the real man whose name was assumed early on by Ray as an alias, was an intelligence insider who was certainly the subject of a sensitive file. A sensitive file must have existed also for the Toronto policeman Ramon George Sneyd, whose name supplied a later Ray alias.

For these reasons I conclude that the MLK plot was structured to provoke governmental embarrassment by the skilled and knowledgeable selection of Ray's aliases, both before and after King's death. This would put someone inside intelligence, rather than the mob, at the center of the MLK plot.

It has long been recognized that the selection of Eric S. Galt as an alias for Ray could not have been made by Ray himself, but was a sophisticated choice by someone controlling Ray, of a man who was

1) roughly similar to Ray in physical characteristics, and even more similar after Ray underwent plastic surgery in 1967108

2) part of the national security establishment, because of the classified work he was doing for Union Carbide, both in Canada and the US, on proximity fuses.

As Philip Melanson pointed out, the real Galt "was the subject of a very detailed dossier. Whoever had access to it had all the information needed to use Galt's identity as a cover, to match Galt to Ray."109

A search for Eric S. Galt began on April 9 but increased on April 11, with the discovery of an abandoned white Mustang, thought to be the murderer's escape vehicle, which had been purchased under that name.110 But from the beginning, and even as late as the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigation a decade later, the awkwardness created by the name prevented its public use. "In fact, Ray's Alabama license, car registration, signature at the New Rebel Motel in Memphis, and assorted forms, letters, and coupons were all 'Eric S. Galt.'"111 But press reports about the search for the assassin used instead the name of someone who did not exist, "Eric Starvo Galt."112

The official account of how the real Galt was discovered and linked to the MLK case is that on April 18, 1968, only hours before the FBI would finally identify James Earl Ray as the real suspect, the Kansas City field office of the FBI notified Headquarters and the Memphis FBI that "Review of March, nineteen sixty-eight Toronto, Ontario, Canada telephone directory reveals a listing for one Eric Galt."113 With this dubious timing, the real Eric Galt was thus spared being an active suspect. (In a similar delay, the FBI only advised its field offices of the Toronto policeman Ramon George Sneyd on June 6, 1968, two days before Ray's arrest in London.)114

In the first edition of his MLK book, Melanson believed this unlikely story, writing that "What apparently saved the real Galt from being targeted as the prime suspect was the slothfulness of law enforcement."115 I believe on the contrary that it was the sensitivity of the Galt name, rather than slothfulness, that led to its remaining concealed until just before Ray would be proclaimed as the suspect.

Apparently, this same sensitivity induced even the HSCA in its Report to misrepresent the aliases used by Ray. It reported in 1978 that "When he rented an apartment or a room, bought a car, secured a driver's license...he did so as Eric Starvo Galt." (rather than "Eric S. Galt").116 In like manner the HSCA misrepresented the name in Ray's passport ("Ramon George Sneyd") as "George Ramon Sneyd."117

In his revised edition of his book, Melanson recognized for the first time that the real Galt's employment, in a security-cleared position at Union Carbide in the shadow of some of the United States' most secretive weapons research, meant that information about him "might [Melanson's word] have been accessible through federal computer searches."118

"Might" is far too weak a word; Galt's name would have been instantly available, I believe without a doubt. 1968 was a year of intense anti-war and civil rights disturbances, of massive surveillance of Americans by Army Intelligence, by the CIA through Operation Chaos, by the FBI, and even by the NSA. As Senator Sam Ervin later revealed in a set of Senate Hearings, by this time computerized files on civilians were being amassed and shared by all these agencies.

It is inconceivable to me that the name of Eric S. Galt had not turned up in a computer search almost immediately, whether from his security file, or from some other file such as an INS file, because of Galt's frequent crossing of the US-Canadian border.119 (One has to keep in mind that the FBI had no trouble locating and interviewing all kinds of unrelated Lowmeyers in America, in the wake of Ray's use of "Harvey Lowmeyer" as an alias, a name taken from that of a low-level criminal who had worked in a prison kitchen with Ray's brother, John.)120

I draw two conclusions from my assertion that that some branches of the US government knew early of the real Galt problem. The first is the delay in identifying Galt was not from slothfulness; the real Galt's existence was covered up to protect both Galt and the national security establishment from embarrassment. (In The Road to 9/11 I point to a similar cover-up to protect Ali Mohamed, a US-al Qaeda double agent who was the trainer of those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.)121 The second, more disturbing conclusion is that those plotting the MLK assassination were intelligence insiders: people who knew of Galt's sensitive situation, and exploited it in such a way as to ensure that the government would be embarrassed into covering up what really happened on those days.

This is a conclusion supported less by the specific evidence in the MLK case than on what are to me the striking analogies between it, the JFK and 9/11 cases -- namely, the selection from information on file of a sensitive identity as culprit, which would first impede investigation and later guarantee a cover-up.

This conclusion would suggest an intelligence component to the MLK assassination at a much higher level than previously noted facts that the CIA was collaborating with local police forces like that of Memphis, or that the CIA had Martin Luther King under surveillance. It also strengthens my strong suspicion that all of our major deep events, including JFK, MLK, and now 9/11, derive in large part from a common source.

On the surface these conclusions seem to point out a difference between the MLK case and the two Kennedy assassinations. In JFK and RFK, the designated culprits, Oswald and Sirhan, were apprehended almost immediately. The use of sensitive names, Galt and Sneyd, served in contrast to delay the apprehension of James Earl Ray for weeks. If Ray was also a designated culprit, why would he be protected in this fashion?

I can think of only one reason. June 6, 1968, the day that the FBI launched an all-points search for "Ramon George Sneyd," was also the day on which Robert Kennedy died of his wounds. Ray was then arrested two days later, appeasing the growing apprehension among some that assassins were now, with impunity, determining the future of America.

Philip Melanson has rightly drawn attention to the effective help provided Ray in the weeks prior to his arrival in London, contrasted with the breakdown in that help thereafter. His explanation for this breakdown is that "Ray had lost his lifeline and was desperate -- the unseen hand was gone:" Add he adds,

The question arises as to how a sophisticated assassination conspiracy clever enough to match Ray and Galt, kill King, and guide Ray through Toronto could be inept enough to allow him to be captured alive in London.122

Melanson's answer to his question is that "It is only in James Bond novels that operations always go smoothly."123

The alternative answer, to which I have come only recently, is that there was no ineptitude: Ray was meant to be captured, but only after this apparent feat of justice would counter the atrocity of Robert Kennedy's murder. In this way Ray's capture served to offset the popular anger and frustration which produced such violent days of rioting after the murder of Martin Luther King.

As I say, this is the only reason I can think of for a planned delay in the arrest of Ray as designated culprit. But of course this reason, if correct, would be still another corroboration of a single source behind the twin deep events of April 4 and June 5, 1968.

ENDNOTES

1 In writing this paper I have been helped immeasurably by the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, http://www.maryferrell.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. This comparative approach is now made much easier by the addition of MLK and RFK files to the existing JFK collection. As there is far more research to be done, I am hoping that some younger researcher will take advantage of this new opportunity.
2Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 259, 260.
3Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008), 350-51.
4Peter Dale Scott, "Deep Events and the CIA's Global Drug Connection," Global Research, September 19, 2008, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... leId=10095" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
5New York Times, November 29, 1963; 20 WH 27-29; 22 WH 544.
6Scott, Deep Politics, 268-70, 284.
7LAPD Microfilm, Volume 53, p. 181.
8LAPD Microfilm, Volume 76, pp. 508-09.
9LAPD Microfilm, Volume 60, p. 341; cf. Shane O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?: The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy (New York: Union Square Press, 2008), 215-16.
10LAPD Microfilm, Volume 76, p. 497.
11Robert Houghton, Special Unit Senator (New York: Random House, 1970), 114. This version of what Buckner said in the authorized official account of RFK’s murder is quite different from the LAPD report of Buckner’s statement: that on June 4 he sold Sirhan “some .22-caliber hollow points, however he is not sure of the brand” (LAPD Microfilm, Volume 108, p. 107).
12John Hunt, “Robert Kennedy's Headwounds, Part 1: The Case for Conspiracy,” JFK Lancer Productions & Publications: http://www.jfklancer.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
13Scott, Deep Politics, 284, 291; 26 WH 370-72, 10 WH 375.
14O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?, 108. Cf. LAPD Microfilm, Volume 86, pp. 605-06.
15Charles Camplen and James F. Dale, Great Southwest Warehouse, 26 WH 371-72.
16Scott, Deep Politics, 283-91.
17Trial of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, Vol 18, 5150-54.
18O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?, 108, 217.
19Interviewed by the Warren Commission, Abt testified that he was besieged by “press, radio, and TV reporters” on November 23, but that he was never approached by Oswald, or anyone representing him (10 WH 116).
20Arthur J. Hanes, Sr., a supporter of George Wallace, had defended three Ku Klux Klansmen accused of murdering Viola Liuzzo, after her participation in a civil rights march in Selma. J.B. Stoner, a founder of the National States Rights Party, was a suspect in many bombings, and was “under indictment in 1978 for the 1958 bombing of a Birmingham church” (HSCA, Report, 381).
2124 WH 810 ABC News, WFAA, Fort Worth, Nov. 23, 1963.
22Timothy Cwiek, “John J. Abt: Did Oswald Ask For Him?,” The Third Decade, Volume 3, Issue 1, 1.
23James Earl Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King? The True Story by the Alleged Assassin (New York: Marlowe & Co), 107: “From Wandsworth I wrote letters asking two well-known attorneys – F. Lee Bailey of Boston and Arthur J. Hanes, Sr. of Birmingham, the only two prominent lawyers for whom I could remember a city and state location – if they would consider representing me when I returned to the United States.”
24Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King?, 138; John Larry Ray and Lyndon Barsten, Truth at Last: The Untold Story Behind James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Guilford, CN: Lyons Press, 2008), 147 (Wallace campaign).
25Melvin M. Belli and Allen P. Wilkinson, Everybody's Guide to the Law (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), xlv (Cohen); Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 233 (Barr).
26FBI 44-24016-1319 (not seen); cited by A.J Weberman, http://ajweberman.com/nodules2/nodulec29.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Cf. William Pepper, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (London: Verso,2003), 57.
27Seth Kantor, The Ruby Cover-Up (New York: Zebra Books, 1978), 290.
28Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993), 208-10.
29Parsons agreed with the prosecution that there was no evidence of conspiracy in the case, and that Sirhan had acted alone. Likewise in his closing arguments Parsons ignored the conflicting evidence and spoke as if Sirhan's guilt was unchallengeable (William Klaber and Philip Melanson, Shadow Play: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy, the Trial of Sirhan Sirhan and the Failure of American Justice [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997], 137, 246-48).
30Kefauver Hearings, 10, 715 (Cohen, Meltzer), 888 (Sica); Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1973), 238 (Sica). Cf. Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 141-45 (Meltzer and Ruby associates).
31For example, Cooper stipulated that Sirhan had been at the rifle range as claimed by Marks and Starr, despite their dubious testimony. In general, he assumed from the outset that Sirhan was the real and sole assassin of RFK, steadfastly refusing to look at the evidence that Sirhan was too far away to have fired the lethal shot: “a week into the case, he was already colluding with the prosecution and floating plea bargains” (O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?, 109, 211, 212).
32O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?, 189-91. It was when he was facing conviction and deportation from the Friars Club case that Roselli went to Jack Anderson with his information about the CIA-mafia plots to kill Castro.
33Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, 81, cf. 91.
34Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King?, 156.
35Walter Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), 52, 104.
36John Larry Ray and Barsten draw attention to a number of questionable deaths in the MLK case, including those of Z.T. Osborn (p. 156), Judge Preston Battle (who they claim was about to grant James Earl Ray a new trial, p. 135), the journalists Bill Sartor and Louis Lomax (both researching the case, pp. 158-59), and the mob figure John Paul Spica (a former prison-mate of James Earl Ray called by the HSCA to testify, p. 79).
37Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, 96; David E, Scheim, Contract on America: The Murders of John and Robert Kennedy (Silver Spring, MD: Argyle Press, 1983), 377 [Shenker]. John Larry Ray writes that in 1968 he tried to obtain the services of Shenker for his brother, and that it was Shenker who put him in touch with Percy Foreman (Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, 127). Larry Callanan’s immunity from prosecution after generous donations to the Democratic Party was the subject of a scathing exposé in the Wall Street Journal, May 2, 1968; cf. Percival E. Jackson, Dissent in the Supreme Court (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), 462.
38HSCA MLK Appendix 10, 1-7.
39Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King?, 154; HSCA MLK Appendix 10, 579; cf. Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, 95-96.
40Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, 22-26, 56-59, 85-86, 103-04, etc.
41/sup>For Hemming, see Scott, Deep Politics, 89, 91, etc.
42HSCA Report, Appendix, Volume X, 106.
43John S. Craig, “David Ferrie’s Web of Intrigue,” Dealey Plaza Echo, II, 3, p. 13; Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985), 263-64.
44O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?, 398. Bryan had hypnotized the famous Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, whose name appears inexplicably in Sirhan’s notebook of automatic writing, apparently written while he too was under hypnosis (O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?, 399-400).
45HSCA Administrative Folder U9, RCMP Report on Salwyn President John F. Kennedy -- Murder of -- Assistance to the F.B.I. NARA #124-10369-10060. Cf. Philip H. Melanson, The Martin Luther King Assassination: New Revelations on the Conspiracy and Cover-Up, 1968-1991 (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1991), 44-46.
46HSCA Administrative Folder U9, Volume XII, p. 155; NARA #124-10369-10060.
47Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, 85.
48HSCA, MLK, Appendix, Vol. XIII, p. 199; Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, 100, 103-04.
49HSCA Report, 392, 663.
50/sup>FBI MURKIN file, Section 59. Teletype from Director to Legat, Ottawa, 18 Jun 1968, 7.
51Walter Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa, 440-42; Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection (Palo Alto, CA: Ramparts Press, 1977), 66.
52Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa, 442; cf. Scott, Crime and Cover-Up, 66.
53Scott, Deep Politics, 25

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FBI Director sets out critical infrastructure challenges

In a speech at the WMD Directorate/Interpol International Law Enforcement Critical Infrastructure Symposium, FBI Director James B. Comey has given his views on the critical infrastructure challenges facing the US.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-prob ... d=24591147" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI Probing Lost IRS Emails as DOJ Sets to Defend Its Investigation

Jul 16, 2014, 6:48

Amid a flurry of Republican calls for a special prosecutor

see link for full story


http://www.vice.com/read/the-fbi-shut-d ... orkers-717" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The War on Sex Workers Escalates

Jul 17 2014

Protesters mocking cops and their crackdown on sex work at a 2010 rally. Photo via Flickr user Steve Rhodes

When I logged in to Facebook on June 26, I was immediately confronted by dozens of screenshots of a notice with FBI and IRS seals indicating that MyRedBook had been seized. I typed in the URL myself and got the same message, at which point my stomach dropped. For the uninitiated, MyRedBook was an extensive network of public and private forums offering escorts a place to advertise, be reviewed, blacklist bad clients, screen new ones, and generally support one another in an often solitary and isolating business. Most importantly, MyRedBook was probably the largest adult advertising venue in Northern California, and the only venue to offer free ads.

A few years ago, Craigslist shut down its erotic-services section after Melissa Farley lied to Congress about the average age of entry into prostitution being 13 and the Women’s Funding Network falsely told lawmakers that underage prostitution advertised on the site was exploding and had increased by 64.7 percent in a period of six months. That, too, left me reeling. Craigslist had made it easy to post explicitly about the experiences I wanted to have and fish for compatible gentlemen—suddenly I was faced with advertising only my availability to meet up at an hourly rate. Discussions of compatibility or expectations could land me in jail, and were blocked by advertising sites. What if my new customers wanted services I didn’t want to provide?

Some of my friends were left in much worse positions. One was unable to get a credit card or bank account, and with no one in her life she could confide in and borrow a credit card from (which would make them, legally, her pimp or sex trafficker), she quickly turned to working on the streets to make her rent.

“I can’t believe this is happening again,” I texted another friend who lives in San Francisco. “I hope people aren’t going to end up walking the street.” I stared at my bookshelf and tried to rearrange the titles into poems to occupy my mind. My phone buzzed.

“Of course it’s going to happen. It’s probably happening as we speak.”

I turned back to Facebook in search of information. Abeni, a nonprofit that provides services to those in the sex trade, including domestic sex trafficking victims, posted: “In the wake of [the RedBook seizure], we know some will be making hard choices about how to proceed and which calls to book. We urge you to up your game, listen to your gut, and don't skimp on the steps you take to keep yourself safe. Don't forget to check in and out, research your dates if possible and to consider apps like KiteString if needed. For those who have little or no choice about the work they are engaging in, we urge you to stay as connected as possible to the advocates and friends you have.”

I chatted with Meg Munoz, Abeni’s director, and she explained that MyRedBook was “a huge asset when it came to survivors we knew and were following. It was actually a huge asset in helping us work with a survivor to set up an emergency relocation."

Rumors flew about minors or pimps who could have been using the site, attracting the ire of the FBI. “How are the cops going to find trafficking victims now that there’s nowhere for them to advertise?” many reasonable people wondered. It seemed those arrested were only charged with money laundering and something related to the Mann Act, which apparently prohibited an alleged prostitute from placing an ad on MyRedBook in order to facilitate transporting themselves across state lines for immoral purposes. That part made me extra angry. Almost ten years ago there was a man in my extended network of sex-worker friends who repeatedly flew women to his state to rape them. That clearly seemed to be transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes, but the FBI didn’t seem to agree and declined to press charges. As usual, law enforcement refused to use laws supposedly designed to protect women to actually protect women, and instead was using them against us.

The seizure of MyRedBook came on the heels of a cross-country sweep in which the FBI arrested 168 victims, 281 pimps, and more than a thousand sex workers. That’s right: Somehow, the FBI managed to find 1.67 pimps per victim. In some cities, the FBI found several pimps and no victims. These sweeps are called Operation Cross Country, a part of Project Innocence Lost. When I first heard about it, I thought Innocence Lost must be a barely legal porn site, but it turns out it’s actually a thing where the government hunts you down if you’ve misplaced your innocence.

A reporter from Truthout spoke to several FBI agents who were evasive about the number of sex workers arrested and what happened to the minors who were “recovered.” Last week, the FBI national office did not return calls from VICE.

Five days after MyRedBook was seized, US senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Mark Kirk of Illinois introduced the SAVE Act. The bill, intended to crack down on the sex trafficking of children, would entirely eliminate online “adult advertising,” including advertisement of legal adult services. It would make having a website that “facilitates or is designed to facilitate” adult advertising “to facilitate commercial transactions” a federal crime. The Center for Democracy and Technology and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have criticized the bill for its broadness and potential effects on free speech.

I can’t claim to be an expert in constitutional law. But what I do understand is that the elimination of online advertising would send many sex workers back to the dark ages of street work. To avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement, workers would jump too quickly into the cars of customers they haven’t screened, with no time to negotiate payment or services before finding themselves in a small space equipped with child-safety locks in the company of a strange man. If it passes, this bill will be the cause of so much unnecessary violence toward sex workers—people who are often unable to report crimes committed against them without being arrested themselves.

Nine days after the SAVE Act was introduced, a member of my local community was arrested and charged with seven felony counts of sex trafficking. She’s not accused of force, fraud, coercion, or any kind of abuse. Instead, the troopers allege that she provided online marketing of women for “customers of the sex trafficking trade,” maintained a place of prostitution, and was in possession of 31 independent contractor agreements. Online marketing, associating with one another, and safe, shared indoor work spaces provide a higher level of security for people in the sex trade—but taking measures to increase safety is called sex trafficking these days.

couple of reads



1st read


http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/friendsw ... l?mode=jqm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Lutheran South teens attend FBI workshop

August 4 2014
Lutheran South teens attend FBI workshop

Lutheran South Academy sophomores Trevor Bishop and Grace Psencik show off their certificates after attending the FBI Teen Academy hosted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Houston. During the all day workshop at the Houston headquarters of the FBI, Grace and Trevor worked with Patricia Villafranca, FBI Special Agent who is the Congressional Affairs and Community Coordinator for the Houston Division of the FBI. Throughout the day, FBI agents shared their experiences on topics like Civil Rights/Hate Crimes, Internet Use, Computer Security, Gangs, Ethics in the Business World, Gun Safety, and proper behavior during a routine traffic stop. Grace and Trevor were nominated to attend this workshop by their LSA World Geography teacher, Mr. Archie Buchman. Approximately 30 students from across the Houston area were invited to attend.



2nd read plus bonus 3rd read

FBI. agent Edward Rodgers decides to have sex with his 3 daughters
starting when they were 6 months old through their teens.
Rodgers never charged with these crimes.
NY Times conveniently forgets to mention age of victims when dad first penetrated them.
Times forgets to mention Rodgers was in charge of FBI Child Abuse program.




http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/18/arts/ ... abuse.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


TVWeekend; And Still More About Child Abuse



Published: March 18, 1994






If child abuse should ever be made boring, television would be the obvious culprit with its glut of talk shows, news essays and movies endlessly poking at the unsettling subject. Latest entry: "Ultimate Betrayal" on CBS on Sunday. It's not that the film itself is objectionable; it's just that the topic of child abuse has become the unfortunate victim of media overload. As with the atrocities in Bosnia, sadly enough, extensive exposure invites emotional paralysis.

"Ultimate Betrayal" is based on a true story, although, in familiar television flimflammery, certain events and characters have been fictionalized. In May 1990, two adult sisters claiming severe childhood abuse sued their father in the Denver courts. The father, Edward J. Rodgers Jr., refused to appear in court. He was a former F.B.I. agent who had become a Colorado authority on child abuse. The sisters, supported by their two other sisters but angrily denounced by their two brothers, were awarded $2.3 million in compensation and the case led to a proposal for a Child Abuse Accountability Act to change statute-of-limitations rules. It is currently before the United States Congress.

Sharon (Marlo Thomas), the oldest of the Rodgers sisters, goes along with a plan for a court case because, she says, "I just want my dad to face up to what he did -- to the others." It's quickly apparent that Sharon is in denial about being abused herself. All of the sisters, including Susan (Mel Harris), Beth (Kathryn Dowling) and Mary (Ally Sheedy), have had their adult lives badly damaged by childhood experiences. Exposing the brutal truths may salvage their futures.


also see


http://www.headwatersproductions.com/pr ... icle5.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


THE DENVER POST - Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire
May 17, 1990
Sisters win sex lawsuit vs. dad $2.3 million given for years of abuse


Two daughters of former state and federal law enforcement official Edward Rodgers were awarded $2.319,400 yesterday, after a Denver judge and jury found that the women suffered years of abuse at the hands of their father.

The award to Sharon Simone, 45, and Susan Hammond, 44, followed testimony of Rodgers’ four daughters in person or through depositions, describing repeated physical abuse and sexual assaults by their father from 1944 through 1965.

Rodgers, 72, who became a child abuse expert after retiring from the FBI and joining the colorado Springs DA’s office, failed to appear for the trial. But in a deposition taken in March, Rodgers denied ever hitting or sexually abusing his children.

He admitted that he thought of himself as a "domineering s.o.b. who demanded strict responses from my children, strict obedience." But it never approached child abuse, Rodgers said. "Did I make mistakes? Damn right I did, just like any other father or mother..."

Thomas Gresham, Rodger’s former attorney, withdrew from the case recently after being unable to locate his client. Rodgers recently contacted one of his sons from a Texas town along the Mexican border. Gresham said his last contact with Rodgers was on April 24.

The sisters reacted quietly to the verdict, and with relief that their stories of abuse had finally been told.

"I feel really good that I’ve gone public with this,"Hammond said. "I am a victim, the shame isn’t mine, the horror happened to me. I’m not bad.
"My father did shameful and horrible things to me and my brothers and sisters. I don’t believe he is a shameful and horrible man, but he has to be held accountable," Hammond added.

The lawsuit deeply divided the Rodgers family, with Rodgers’ three sons questioning their sister’s motives.

Immediately after the verdict, son Steve Rodgers, 37, reacted angrily, yelling at his sisters in the courtroom.

Later, Rodgers said he loves his father and stands by him. He said his sisters had told him their father had to be exposed the way Nazi war criminals have been exposed.

"In a way I’m angry with my father for not being here. But I’m sympathetic because he would have walked into a gross crucifixion," Rodgers said.

Steve Rodgers never denied that he and his siblings were physically abused, but disputed that his father molested his sisters.
Before the jury’s award, Denver District Judge William Meyer found that Rodger’s conduct toward Simone and Hammond was negligent and "outrageous."

Despite the length of time since the abuse, the jury determined the sisters could legally bring the suit. The statute of limitations for a civil suit is two years, but jurors determined that the sisters became aware of he nature and extent of their injury only within the last two years, during therapy.

The jury then determined the damages, finding $1,240,000 for Simone and 1,079,000 for Hammond.

The sisters had alleged in their suit filed last July that Rodgers subjected his seven children to a "pattern of emotional, physical, sexual and incestual abuse."

As a result of the abuse, the women claimed their emotional lives had been left in a shambles, requiring extensive therapy for both and repeated hospitalizations of Hammond, who was acutely suicidal. Simone developed obsessive behavior and became so unable to function she resigned a position with a Boston-based college.

Despite the judgment yesterday, Rodgers cannot be criminally charged. the statue of limitations in Colorado for sexual assault on children is 10 years.
Rodgers, who worked for the FBI for 27 years, much of it in Denver, became chief investigator for the district attorney’s office in Colorado Sp;rings. during his employment at the DA’s office from 1967 until 1983, he became a well-known figure in Colorado Springs, and lectured and wrote about child abuse both locally and nationwide.

He wrote a manual called " A Compendium -- Child Abuse by the National College of District Attorney’s," and helped put together manuals on child abuse for the New York state police and a national child abuse center.

Any smart criminal justice consumer would know FBI Director's
Comey skill set lays in torturing people not FOIA requests, eh?

What the hell is a ding?


see link for full ding

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/06/2 ... p=/99/200/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Judge dings FBI for response to inmate’s FOIA request


August 6, 2014


WASHINGTON — A federal judge has slapped the FBI, or maybe just laughed at it, for making “transparently implausible” arguments while resisting a prison inmate’s Freedom of Information Act requests.

The feds, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg wrote, in what sounds like a state of near-incredulity, argued that the “FOIA request need not be disclosed because they reside on two CDs and a thumb drive.”

That’s right. The FBI seemed to say that information was exempt from disclosure because of the medium it was stored on.

The FOIA requests came from Gregory Bartko, currently serving the fourth year of a 23-year prison term for conspiracy, mail fraud, and selling unregistered securities. He’s seeking documents concerning the federal prosecutor who got him convicted. The FBI and the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility released some, but not all, of the documents Bartko wanted.

In his 21-page decision published Tuesday, Boasberg allowed Bartko’s FOIA pursuit to continue. Of particular note was his flat dismissal of part of the government’s argument for withholding the CDs and thumb drive.

“The Bureau’s rationale seems to be that the electronic media in question are not ‘records’ for FOIA purposes because they are physical items that were presented to prosecutors as evidence,” Boasberg wrote. “Why this reasoning would exclude CDs that hold documents in digital form but not, say, the printer paper that will eventually hold this Opinion is beyond the Court.”

“In any case,” Boasberg went on, “no sophistry is necessary here, as Congress, with commendable technological foresight, amended FOIA in 1996 to cover records ‘maintained by an agency in any format, including an electronic format.’”

FBI not only shirking responsibility, but decency


Wednesday, March 12, 2008




Just how low will the U.S. Department of Justice sink to put a shine on the putrid sneaker that is the FBI in Boston? A couple of days ago inside a federal courtroom we found out.

Patricia Donahue had taken the witness stand to recall the moment in May of 1982, when she learned her husband, Michael, had been slaughtered on the Boston waterfront. The father of three young sons had just offered to drive a friend, Brian Halloran, home from a bar on Northern Ave.

The blizzard of gunfire that consumed these two men was the handiwork of a local monster named James “Whitey” Bulger, who acted on a crucial tip supplied by his FBI protector, John Connolly. What Michael Donahue never knew was that Brian Halloran had been targeted for extinction the moment he came to the FBI seeking sanctuary in exchange for testimony about Bulger’s role in another murder.

Donahue, who was 32, had planned to follow his dream of opening a bakery when he became collateral damage in a gangland hit sanctioned by the FBI. His 62-year-old widow, Patricia, did not come to court seeking to convince a judge of the righteousness of her grievance. For US. District Court Judge Reginald C. Lindsay has already ruled that the FBI was responsible for this massacre. What Patricia Donahue tried to do was place a value on the husband she lost and the years that were stolen.

Seeking to both discredit and diminish Patricia Donahue’s request for $2.2 million, Andrew Kaplan, a young Department of Justice mouthpiece, directed Donahue’s attention to a single line in her deposition. In the presence of Judge Lindsay and the absence of a jury, Kaplan asked Donahue to read the line aloud.

In line No. 21 of her deposition, Patricia Donahue recalled moving her three boys from Dorchester to Randolph because there were too many painful memories and too many “black” strangers moving in.

The government’s intention was obvious as well as crude: If Andrew Kaplan couldn’t discredit Patricia Donahue’s claim on the merits, then he would damn well try to embarrass Michael Donahue’s widow before a federal judge who happens to be black.

In trying to hold a fig leaf over the FBI’s criminal history in Boston, the DOJ’s hack lawyers have assumed the role of cheesy defense sharks, or even worse, those pinstriped whores who are paid to smother the sins of corporate arrogance and greed.

The DOJ is wasting more taxpayer money trying to wear down those who’ve been victimized by the FBI’s treacherous union with Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi than it would take to settle.

But there is a much deeper sin here. Jim Wilson once worked as a government lawyer. As lead counsel to the House Government Reform Committee, Wilson immersed himself in the hundreds of thousands of documents that framed the rancid story of FBI corruption in Boston. He now believes our Department of Justice and its legion of solicitors has thoroughly lost its way in this Byzantine case.

“The function of our Department of Justice,” Wilson was saying yesterday, “is to insure, above all else that people respect the rule of law. Their function is not to act purely as defense lawyers.”

And yet, just about everything they’ve done in this case so far has caused people to lose respect for the rule of law. Employing all these defense tactics and strategies in an attempt to beat back these victims simply makes the DOJ look morally bankrupt.

The mortal sin is too large. And human wreckage left behind in the wake of a morally bankrupt crime-fighting strategy spans generations. The people Whitey Bulger killed with the aid and assistance of G-Man John Connolly live on in their wives and children. Trying to embarrass them in court won’t diminish the injustice done to them.

As you already know very,very special FBI agent Fitzgerald is running for Governor of Ohio...

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion ... /13940083/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So how did FitzGerald get to work for 10 years?


Ed FitzGerald has been questioned about a meeting with a female Irish delegate and his lack of a license to drive.

This business concerning Democratic candidate for governor Ed FitzGerald gets more and more interesting. The revelation a former FBI agent can get lost in the wee hours driving an Irish delegate made me smile. If his wife bought his story, then so be it.

I do question how this man made it to work for the 10 years he wasn't legally licensed. Was he part of a passenger-only carpool, or did he believe the laws concerning a valid driver's license didn't apply to him?

couple of reads


let god sort out the truth
http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2014/08 ... nges.html/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

New FBI Director says corruption cases like John Wiley Price probe get review in Washington at highest levels
By Kevin Krause
[email protected]
2:22 pm on August 11, 2014

FBI Director James Comey speaking at the Dallas FBI field office on Monday

FBI Director James Comey said Monday that investigations of public corruption like the current one involving Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley


2nd read
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/0 ... 68284.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

to question Comey on why he concurred with a 2005 opinion from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that justified the use of some enhanced techniques, including waterboarding, in some circumstances.

Comey said that although at least one memo from the Office of Legal Counsel explained how the use of the interrogation techniques could be legally justified, he had continued to raise questions about whether the United States should be using them.

"Maybe the most important thing I did on this topic as deputy attorney general was force - try to force and fight for a discussion about whether this was the kind of thing we ought to be doing as Americans," Comey said.

When pressed by several senators who asked why he had approved a memo that said enhanced interrogation techniques could be justified under law if used one at a time, Comey said the law was vague and could be so interpreted.

FBI crime family Capo do capo reminds made members
about the Code of Omerta . A crime family cannot exist without it.
see. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/inde ... grass.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sens. Ron Wyden and Chuck Grassley seek protections for FBI whistleblowers
Grass.Wyd.collage.png
U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) want the president to release a report on protections for FBI whistleblowers. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file; Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News)

on August 12, 2014 at 6:32 PM, updated August 12, 2014 at 6:34 PM

A pair of veteran U.S. Senators complained Tuesday to the president that a report on the effectiveness of whistleblower protections for FBI personnel is more than a year overdue -- and they want to see it.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) pointed out in a letter to President Obama that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was to deliver a report to him by April 8, 2013, assessing the FBI's regulations for protecting whistleblowers.

Holder delivered the report in June, but it has not yet been released, they wrote.

"Whistleblowers play a critical role in holding the government and its employees accountable," Wyden wrote in a joint news release with Grassley. "The FBI has had special rules for its own employees for decades that desperately need to be updated. It's important for the Justice Department to explain whether they will fix this on their own, or if Congress needs to step in."

Grassley wrote that the FBI has to change its mentality to rid itself of waste, fraud and abuse.

"The FBI has a history of whistleblower retaliation, often shunning whistleblowers to basement offices without cause and giving them little or no work," he wrote. "It's disturbing to see the trend continue in the most recent allegations of a new retaliation method called Loss of Effectiveness orders being used against whistleblowers at the agency."

Here's the letter:
August 12, 2014
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
When the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 prohibited certain personnel practices in the FBI, it instructed the Attorney General to prescribe regulations against reprisal (5 U.S.C. § 2303). Further, it stated that the President should provide for the enforcement of the section in a manner consistent with section 1206 of the Civil Service Reform Act, which established the Office of Special Counsel. Instead, no action was taken until 1997, when President Clinton issued a memorandum on April 14 delegating these responsibilities to the Attorney General. Now, seventeen years later, effective procedures for protecting whistleblowers at the FBI are needed more than ever.
On October 10, 2012, you issued the Presidential Policy Directive 19 (PPD 19), entitled "Protecting Whistleblowers with Access to Classified Information." Section E of PPD 19 mandated that the Attorney General deliver a report to you within 180 days assessing the efficacy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regulations for deterring prohibited personnel practices, as well as ensuring enforcement of those regulations and describing any proposed revisions which would increase their effectiveness.
This 180 day period passed on April 8, 2013, and the report was not delivered at that time. However, we understand that as of June 2, 2014, the Attorney General finally delivered the report.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is currently studying the effectiveness of the Justice Department's mechanism for investigating retaliation in the FBI as well. In addition to having the findings of the GAO study, Congress also needs to know wh

Comey's specialty is torture expanding the FBI Toolkit, eh?

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/yee-fbi ... id/588870/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



FBI Agent Accused of Misconduct in California Politics Probe

Thursday, 14 Aug 2014
One of the primary FBI agents investigating California state Sen. Leland Yee was removed from the probe and reprimanded for financial misconduct, according to a court filing from one of the other defendants in the case.

Government concerned of rising anti-government violence



http://www.examiner.com/article/governm ... t-violence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

:see link for full story

August 16, 2014

A document was recently leaked from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis shows a growing concern that an increase in anti-government violence over the next year may be coming, Kerry Picket reported on Thursday.

The report, prepared by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) and the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center with coordination with FBI, stems from recent acts by the federal government against citizens.

The most notable includes the Cliven Bundy’s Bunkerville standoff in Nevada with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that occurred earlier this year when the agency attempted to seize Bundy’s cattle but backed off when militia groups showed up.

The seven page report, titled, “Domestic Violent Extremists Pose Increased Threat to Government Law Enforcement” dated, July 22, 2014, said, “After years of only sporadic violence from violent domestic extremists motivated by anti-government ideologies, I&A has seen a spike within the past year in violence committed by militia extremists and lone offenders who hold violent anti-government beliefs. These groups and individuals recognize government authority but facilitate or engage in acts of violence due to their perception that the United States Government is tyrannical and oppressive, coupled to their belief that the government needs to be violently resisted or overthrown.”

Interestingly enough, although the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents occurred in the 1990’s, the report only outlines various incidents dating from 2010 to 2014, a year after President Obama was first elected, that include incidents of the Alaska militiamen case, the Waffle House plot in Georgia, the LAX shooting, as well as the Las Vegas shootings.

Meanwhile, federal government interference under the Obama administration has also risen since he was elected in 2008.

The numerous scandals plaguing the Obama administration, attacks against Christians and members of the Tea Party, land grabs, unconstitutional presidential executive orders, millions who have lost homes, their retirements, and employment, and 77 million Americans are in debt collections, may be fueling the rise in anger against the federal government.

The DHS report can be downloaded here.

http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post ... st11147810" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


She's credited with cracking case of agent accused of working for mob
WABC Eyewitness News' N.J. Burkett

(New York -WABC, June 16, 2006) - Police are looking into an alleged attack on a witness in the case against Lindley Devecchio. The former FBI agent is accused of supplying information to a mobster, information that lead to several murders.

Our sources tell us that she was found unconscious in a supermarket parking lot early this morning. She is now at Lutheran Hospital in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. We're told she's conscious and in stable condition.

She is an informant credited with cracking the case against an FBI agent accused of working for the mob. The agent is Lindley Devecchio, one of the FBI's top mob-busters, now under indictment for murder.

Investigators say he tipped off the Colombo crime family, allowing them to rub out four rival gangsters in the 1990s. Today prosecutors and detectives rushed to Lutheran Hospital after learning their key informant in the case was in the emergency room.

Angela Clemente later told them she was nearly strangled by an unidentified man in a shopping center in Bensonhurst.

Investigators said that Devecchio's indictment back in March was a direct result of Ms. Clemente's successful efforts to get prosecutors to reopen the murder case. At the time his attorney's denied the allegations.

Angela Clemente has complained to authorities that she has been threatened and harassed in the past. This would appear to be the first incident of violence directed against her.

She is recovering in a hospital room under NYPD guard tonight. There is no word so far on a possible suspect in this case.

couple of reads

bonus

FBI Crime Lab Supervisor Dr. Fred Whitehurst & OKC Bombing

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X4gYtqzV97Q" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1st read



http://abc11.com/news/convicted-killer- ... in/274816/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Convicted killer Jeffrey MacDonald seeks new trial, again


Thursday, August 21, 2014
Former Fort Bragg doctor Jeffrey MacDonald filed a motion Thursday seeking a new trial in the murder of his wife and children more than 40 years ago.

In the filing, MacDonald claims there is new evidence to support a new trial.

"The defense learned of the existence of handwritten lab notes that revealed numerous blond synthetic hairs, up to 22 inches in length, had been found in a hairbrush in the kitchen of the MacDonald home following the murders," according to court documents.

"These hairs could not be matched to any known items in the MacDonald home," the documents went on to say. "The analyst who testified as a government witness at the trial never mentioned finding these long blond synthetic hairs. Synthetic hairs possibly coming from a wig would have been powerful corroborating evidence of intruders as Dr. MacDonald's consistent accounts of the evening included a female intruder who appeared to be wearing a wig with long blonde hair."

The court filing claims FBI agent Michael P. Malone submitted a false affidavit claiming the hairs were from a doll, not a wig.

MacDonald, who was convicted in 1979 in the murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters in 1970, has tried numerous times to get a new trial, each time being denied.



2nd

2 reads

http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/2 ... /14369535/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



FBI chief calls Islamic terror group 'savages'
9NEWS.com-5 hours ago
DENVER - FBI Director James Comey says Islamic State extremists who executed journalist James Foley are "savages" and that the agency is ...


2nd read


http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/some-ex ... executions" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Some Examples of Post-Furman Botched Executions | Death ...
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/some-ex ... executions" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
NOTE: The cases below are not presented as a comprehensive catalogue of all botched executions, but simply a listing of examples that are well-known. There ...

The question you now gotta ask is:
" do FBI agents now have weapons grade plutonium"?



see link for full story

http://www.summitdaily.com/news/1270719 ... ret-former" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Ackland: Secrecy never went away at Rocky Flats


June 6, 1989: In a dramatic, unprecedented raid on a federal nuclear facility, more than 70 U.S. agents burst into the sprawling Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver seeking evidence of environmental crimes involving radioactive plutonium. Led by FBI special agent Jon Lipsky, the raid was kept secret from Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and the area’s congressman, David Skaggs. Afterward, Romer angrily said, “It jars me to the bone that judgments we have made in Colorado about Rocky Flats may have been made on bad information.”

June 7, 2014: I am among several people backstage at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities — not far from the now dismantled Rocky Flats plant — with Romer, Skaggs and Lipsky. The two former officeholders had just met the former FBI agent for the first time. All were about to participate in a public discussion marking the 25th anniversary of the raid.

The backstage conversation was fascinating and somewhat tense, and it was recorded secretly, most likely by one of the participants. The recording was then given to a journalist.

Skaggs said later that he was surprised to learn that the conversation had been covertly recorded. “It’s ironic,” he said, “that in the context of an event that was designed to introduce retrospectively some transparency into the events of 1989, there was this opaque aspect of a secret taping.”

This odd recording incident suggests how secrecy — in various forms — grips Rocky Flats even now, 25 years after the plant stopped making plutonium bombs used to detonate U.S. thermonuclear weapons.

Former plant workers, who had “Q” clearances for top-secret nuclear work, legitimately can’t talk about weapons details. Members of a federal grand jury from the early 1990s have been prevented by grand jury rules — upheld in court — from revealing testimony or their full 1992 report, though you can find the report on the Web. Some people worry that information still kept secret might affect public health and the environment.

In the meantime, after a $7.5 billion cleanup, most of the roughly 10-square-mile Rocky Flats site has been designated a national wildlife refuge. And though many studies of the effects of Rocky Flats on worker and public health and the environment have been conducted, experts agree that science can’t resolve all of the questions. People in nearby communities continue to wonder aloud whether radiation or toxic chemicals from the plant caused illnesses or deaths among friends or relatives.

The uncertainties about Rocky Flats sometimes get confused with deliberately withheld information. And evidence, uncertainty and risk are weighed differently by different individuals and groups. For example, activists often see danger in the unknowns while land developers usually dismiss any risks.

“Part of what is constantly being played out is the feeling that there are secrets,” says Dorothy Ciarlo, a Boulder psychologist and oral historian who has studied secrecy at the facility. People think that “if we just burrow enough we can find out — wh

Was FBI Director Louis Fresh a principal architect in creating 911?
In creating OKC bombing? In creating TWA Flight 800
Missle attack? Waco?

Yep...
why do you think he needs bodyguards?

2. reads

1st read
material from recent 911 investigators conference call
1. Discussion with Niels Harrit


9/11 researcher Niels Harrit, answered questions from participants about the evidence that thermite and some type of explosive(s) were used to bring down the towers. Questions were raised about the nuclear theory, the burned cars around the towers, and whether testing has been done to detect different types of explosives (in addition to thermitic material) in the WTC dust.

Harrit mentioned a book about the WTC dust called Dust, the Insider Story of its Role and the September 11 Aftermath by Paul J. Lioy (forward by Thomas Kean, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission) – pointing out that the book does not even mention the presence of iron microspheres in the WTC dust.

Dwain Deets also mentioned a video of the demolition of Building 7 from the south side, and Niels and others requested the link. The video can be downloaded here: http://houston911truth.us5.list-manage2 ... 91763ac879" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2. Announcements


David Schlesinger offered a pdf file that looks at the laws of Isaac Newton and how they relate to 9/11: http://houston911truth.us5.list-manage1 ... 91763ac879" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The call began at 4 p.m. EST and adjourned at 5:20 p.m. EST/1 p.m. to 2:20 p.m. PST

You can hear an audio recording of this teleconference in its entirety here: http://houston911truth.us5.list-manage2 ... 91763ac879" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



2ndread

Ex-FBI chief's condition remains mystery after crash


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /14708779/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh takes questions after holding a news conference at The Westin in Philadelphia in July 2012. Freeh was involved in a car accident in Vermont on Monday, Aug. 25, 2014.

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Former FBI Director Louis Freeh remained hospitalized Wednesday, two days after he crashed his SUV in southern Vermont.

Freeh, 64, of Wilmington, Del., was admitted under armed guard to the intensive care unit of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., after the 12:15 p.m. EDT crash Monday on Vermont 12 in Barnard.

The bureau put the armed protection in place because of Freeh's past work on terrorism while serving as FBI director from 1993 to 2001, the authorities said.

The special protection was established by the FBI in cooperation with New Hampshire State Police.

The Vermont State Police initially said Freeh was seriously injured in the crash. The agency said Wednesday there is no indication Freeh's car was tampered with. The cause of the crash remains under investigation, but the police did say Tuesday there was no evidence that drugs or alcohol were a factor in the wreck.



Police: Alcohol, drugs not factor in ex-FBI chief's crash

Because of the nature of the single-car crash, the state police accident reconstruction team was not called in, said Lt. William Jenkins, station commander at the Royalton barracks.

An unidentified FBI agent, believed to be off-duty, happened to be among the first people at the crash scene, police said.

Representatives of the FBI in Boston refused Wednesday to transfer phone calls to Special Agent Vincent Lisi, who supervises four New England states, or any of his five assistant special agents in charge.

The extent of Freeh's injuries and how long he will be hospitalized remains unknown.


Ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh seriously hurt in car crash

A spokesman for Dartmouth-Hitchcock said Wednesday the hospital was still not in a position even to confirm that Freeh was at the facility. As part of the hospital admission process, patients are asked whether they wish to keep their admission a secret or to authorize the minimum standard release of information.

Freeh founded Freeh Group International Solutions, a consulting group with offices in Washington; Wilmington, Del.; and New York. Nobody answered the phones at the three offices Wednesday.

Freeh was southbound on a rural stretch of Vermont 12 in Barnard in a 50-mph zone when he drove his 2010 GMC Yukon off the left side of the road, striking a mailbox and bushes before coming to rest against a tree, the police said. Barnard is about an 80-minute drive southeast of Burlington, Vt.

see link for full story



Racism treaty committee calls on Obama administration to explain black prisoners


http://www.examiner.com/article/racism- ... -prisoners" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


August 30, 2014

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued its “Concluding Observations” on Aug. 29 over United States progress to end racism. The report, prepared for the United Nations, requests the American government to account for COINTELPRO prisoners who remain incarcerated.

In a nod to diplomacy, reference to the COINTELPRO counterintelligence program was dropped from the report to the United Nations, however, the problem of prisoners was addressed. “The Committee requests the State party to provide, in its next periodic report, detailed information on…the current status of political activists from the Civil Rights era who reportedly continue to be incarcerated."

The Jericho Movement, which filed a complaint with the Committee, has said that nineteen Black Panthers remain in prison following unfair trials. A shadow report to the Committee from the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination contained a priority list of prisoners whose cases needed urgent attention which named among others the Omaha Two, Edward Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice).

“Many of today's political prisoners were incarcerated as a direct result of COINTELPRO's activities, namely, they were targeted because of their political beliefs and/or actions,” said the shadow report. “Unlike those convicted and sentenced for similar crimes, political prisoners were given much harsher sentences and subsequently routinely denied parole.”

“Another victory, a more sturdy building block!” emphasized Efia Nwangaza who submitted the shadow report on a failure of the United States government to address COINTELPRO abuses. Nwangaza thanked New York Jericho Movement activist “Anne Lamb for her indispensable support, without which this landmark achievement would not have been possible.”

“Among other things, the USA must provide information regarding incarcerated COINTELPRO/Civil Rights era political activists, political prisoners, to the UN Human Rights Council,” said Nwangaza. Thus far Barack Obama has been silent on the plight of victims of COINTELPRO during his presidency.

The Omaha Two were Black Panther leaders targeted by Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover. After the Aug. 17, 1970 killing of a policeman by a bomb ambush, Hoover directed FBI agents to put the crime on Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa. Hoover ordered the withholding of a FBI Laboratory report on the identity of the anonymous caller who lured Patrolman Larry Minard, Sr. to his death to make a case against the two Panther leaders.

Although the Omaha Two and other COINTELPRO cases are state prosecutions, the Obama administration is now being asked to explain what it has done to correct the abuses under J. Edgar Hoover. The Jericho Movement has urged a presidential review of all cases involving those imprisoned as a result of COINTELPRO.

WOW! pictures from the 50's. 60's. 70's
showing tanks and armored car vehicles
used against Amerikan Citizens.
Not to worry.
Only if you were black, eh?



click link to see pictures

http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/08/30/foggy- ... on-unrest/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Foggy Memories Obscure Forebears of Ferguson Unrest
Print This Post Print This Post
By Bob Hennelly on Aug 30, 2014
Life magazine cover about the Newark Riots.

Life magazine cover about the Newark Riots.

Collective amnesia about past eruptions of racial conflict has left Americans with a false sense that what happened in Ferguson is somehow new. But the only thing new is the technology. The attitudes on display are sadly familiar.

Forty-seven years ago, the African-American population of New Jersey’s largest city took to the streets after a violent encounter between white police officers and an unarmed black man. While the body count in Newark—26 people dead and 1,500 injured—was far greater than in the recent disturbances in Ferguson, Missouri, the parallels between the two tragedies are too clear to be ignored.

After the terrible events of July 1967, New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes was faced with the same formidable challenge that Missouri Governor Jay Nixon faces now: How to avert future eruptions along the racial fault line that has undermined the American experiment in democracy since before the nation was founded.

“Newark and Ferguson are absolutely linked,” says Paul McLemore, a front-line witness to the five days of rage that shook not just Newark and New Jersey but the entire nation. McLemore, the first African-American to become a New Jersey State trooper, was the only black trooper in Newark during what the media of the day called “the riots.” He later became a civil rights attorney and recently retired as a municipal court judge. Looking back at Newark through the lens of Ferguson, he told WhoWhatWhy: “Very little has changed between the police and the community over all these years. We still have a very deep divide along racial lines.”

***

The parallels are numerous:

In both Newark and Ferguson, a mostly African-American population was policed by an overwhelmingly white police force that reported to a white political power structure.

In both communities African-American families were struggling economically. Neighborhood tensions were exacerbated by a sky-high youth unemployment rate.

In both places the powers-that-be made a last-minute effort to promote a black man from within the ranks of law enforcement in hopes of placating a distrustful black population.

And in both Newark and Ferguson an aggressive response by the authorities to an initial incident triggered the prolonged period of civil unrest.
Violence in Newark Riots

Violence in Newark Riots

Racial tensions had been percolating in Newark for months before the summer of 1967. As the national civil rights movement gained momentum, the city’s black community was becoming more assertive. Heavy-handed land use decisions by the white municipal power structure, such as the decision to locate a new medical school in the heart of the black community, displacing long-time residents, generated organized push-back. African-Americans felt they were being taken for granted by the white politicians they had supported for a generation and had little tangible to show for their loyalty.

***

On July 12, 1967, police pulled over John W. Smith, an African-American cab driver, for what started out as an alleged traffic violation. Police contend Smith cursed at them when they encountered him and that when the police went to take Smith into custody he assaulted them. According to the police, they got Smith into their squad car but when they got to the precinct they maintain Smith continued to resist. This time, passersby who witnessed the altercation heckled the police, demanding that they take the handcuffs off Smith.

Large crowds formed outside the precinct house where Smith was held. Community leaders demanded to see him and when they were granted access, they discovered he needed immediate medical attention. Smith was sent to the hospital for treatment for a skull injury and broken ribs. By 7 p.m. the next day, Smith was released to his lawyer but the damage was done. Word on the street was that Smith had been fatally beaten.

Over the next 24 hours, the Newark Police Department tried to keep a lid on a very dynamic situation. Cab drivers were mobilized to protest the treatment of their colleague, community members were protesting police brutality, and street conditions were deteriorating. Police were being pelted by debris and looting started to break out.
A victim of the Newark Riots

A victim of the Newark Riots

It wasn’t until 2:20 a.m. on the third day that Newark Mayor Hugh Addonizio called Governor Hughes to ask for the State Police and National Guard to be deployed to his city.

McLemore was ordered to report to the New Jersey State Police barracks at Hightstown in his riot gear. According to media accounts, fires were burning out of control in the central city. He joined a caravan of state police cars with hundreds of trooper heading up the New Jersey Turnpike, lights flashing. “The guys with me were just ecstatic, like they were going off to war,” McClemore says of the white troopers he rode with. “We got to where the Newark airport is. You could see Newark’s skyline and all you could see was smoke and flames. I thought `Lord, what is going to happen here?’”

“When we drove through the central district of Newark things had gotten so bad——Newark police community relations had deteriorated so much, people were out on their porches applauding us. `Hooray! The troops have arrived. Everything will be fine. They will restore order.’ Black folks were welcoming the troops in.”
This welcoming attitude did not last long. Within days, Governor Hughes ordered the National Guard and the New Jersey State Police out of Newark. “When we left there,” McLemore says, “we were like a dog with its tail between its legs. People threw piss at us.”

What accounted for the New Jersey State Police and the National Guard’s precipitous fall from community grace?

The Lilley Report

The tragic details are laid out in an official account compiled by “The Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorder.” This document, known as the Lilley Report after its chairman, then AT&T President Robert D. Lilley, has slipped into undeserved obscurity.

In fact, the Lilley Report can serve as a model for anyone hoping to understand the troubles in Ferguson and other racially divided communities.
Armored personnel carrier in Newark

Armored personnel carrier in Newark

In August of 1967, a month after Newark burned, Governor Hughes convened a blue-ribbon panel of religious, political, and legal leaders and charged them with generating “a realistic analysis of the disorders….and practical proposals” to help prevent a recurrence of the unrest.

“They were not a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals,” says McLemore. “They came out with a very strong indictment of how the State Police and National Guard actually made a bad situation worse.”

***

Over months of investigation, the panel took sworn testimony from more than 100 witnesses ranging from the Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police to Amiri Baraka, a poet and playwright whose activism had made him a frequent target for the local police. The Commission also heard from John W. Smith, whose arrest was the flashpoint for events that would haunt Newark for decades.

After speaking with scores of Newark store owners and residents, the Commission concluded that members of both the police and the National Guard, motivated by racial prejudice, had used “excessive and unjustified force” on Newark residents, and had specifically targeted African-American-owned businesses for destruction. “These raids resulted in personal suffering to innocent small businessmen and property owners who have a stake in law and order and who had not participated in any unlawful act. It embittered the Negro community as a whole when the disorders had begun to ebb,” concluded the Commission.

Perhaps the most volatile issue raised by the breakdown of order in Newark was that of sniper fire.

Phantom Snipers

During the days of unrest law enforcement and the National Guard claimed that they were fired on by snipers, whose shots led to the deaths of a Newark police detective and a Fire Captain responding to a fire call. While not outright rejecting this claim, the Lilley Report noted the doubts of Newark’s own Police Director at the time, Dominick Spina: “A lot of the reports of snipers was due to the, I hate to use the word, trigger-happy Guardsmen, who were firing at noises and firing indiscriminately, it appeared to me, and I was out in the field at all times.”

McLemore’s own experience shows how indiscriminate shooting by the police and National Guard resulted in dangerous “friendly fire” exchanges. He recalls walking in a patrol formation at dusk when a street light came on and a Newark cop on patrol with him reflexively shot it out, prompting another patrol to blindly return fire in his direction. “It was the Keystone Cops. You had a situation where the National Guard and police were shooting at each other.”

Out of the 26 fatalities during the five days of unrest, 23 (including a number of innocent bystanders) were from gunshot wounds. The Lilley report estimated that the National Guard and N.J. State police fired some 13,000 rounds in all. No total was available for the local police, who reported killing people, seven “justifiably” and three “by accident.”

***

What makes the Lilley Report required reading today is not just its detailed summary of what happened during the five days of civil unrest in Newark. Like the Kerner Commission, which then-President Lyndon Johnson created to look into the issue of urban unrest on a national scale, the Governor’s Select Commission took pains to place the 1967 disturbances in historical perspective.

The 200-page Lilley Report cast a critical eye on the City of Newark’s economic and political power structure. It identified a widening gap between the white-dominated municipal government and the overwhelmingly black electorate the city’s leaders were supposed to serve. It documented how African-American businesses and local contractors were systematically excluded from public contracts, and it characterized the pervasive corruption of Newark’s officialdom by quoting the words of one informant: “There is a price on everything in City Hall.”

Among the statistics the report laid out to describe Newark’s endemic poverty: the city had the highest maternal and infant mortality rate in the nation and the highest rate of tuberculosis infection, and it ranked ninth out of 302 American cities in severity of air pollution.

If further confirmation of the Lilley Report’s jaundiced view of Newark’s elected leadership were needed, not long after the report was released the city’s Mayor Hugh Addonizio was indicted and convicted on multiple corruption charges at a trial that linked him to organized crime.

Ignoring History

In contrast to the thoughtful, judicious Lilley Report, post-Ferguson analysis has so far failed to dig much deeper than perceived flaws in police tactics Legal scholar Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, a professor at John Jay College, says the current level of discourse around the issues raised by Ferguson is sadly diminished by the media’s short attention span. “You can’t get into a deeper conversation about race and the law with four people sharing a three-minute panel format.”

Rutgers Professor Clement Price, Newark’s official historian and one of the nation’s foremost authorities on black history, is more blunt. The analysis requires looking at St. Louis and white flight from an anthropological perspective, he said.

For Price, a common thread of enduring discrimination and resulting alienation from the political system links the Newark of 1967 and the Ferguson of 2014: “They’re predominately black towns but you would not know it from walking into City Hall, the Police Station or the Fire Department.”
State Police on patrol in Newark

State Police on patrol in Newark

Even today, in both Newark and Ferguson, African-American homeowners are in the midst of a foreclosure crisis that continues to undermine their neighborhoods. While economists proclaim the end of the Great Recession, 54 percent of mortgages in Newark are underwater, with the homeowner owing the bank more than the property is worth. In Ferguson, nearly half the households are underwater.

And yet the fate of the original Lilley Report, and of President Johnson’s Kerner Commission, shows that investigations by themselves can have no effect without the political will to act on their findings.

Two Societies

In 1968 the Kerner Commission warned the country that “our nation” was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—-separate and unequal.” The Commission placed much of the blame for urban unrest on systemic white racism. It called for a massive Marshall Plan-like approach to improve economic conditions in African-American communities.

Dr. Martin Luther King hailed the Kerner report as a “physician’s warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life.” But the report failed to gain traction with President Johnson, who was wholly pre-occupied with the Vietnam War. In April of 1968, after King’s assassination, rioting broke out in over 100 American cities. Yet Johnson still rejected the Kerner Commission’s recommendations. And of course, the Lilley Report failed to get the attention it merited.
Newark Riots. Credit: Blackpast.org

Newark Riots. Credit: Blackpast.org

The bizarre images of Ferguson police confronting civil disobedience with Army surplus heavy weaponry may have no direct historical antecedents. But focusing on what is superficially unique, as all too many reporters do, creates a kind of a Narcissism of Now that cuts us off from the lessons of our own history.

Today, tanks and automatic rifles; yesterday, police dogs and fire hoses.

Yes, we have been here before, and with a much higher body count. And we will be here again unless we stop pretending that the racial divide in Obama’s America is a thing of the past.

"The man who tortures "


Welcome to James Comey's Crime Family Hood boys and girls.

Today's word especially created for us by Jimmy "the waterboarder"

is "investigative publicity"

Can you say " investigative publicity" boys and girls?

With apologies for ripping off Mr Rogers
see
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh2MSiU7gDU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;






http://ticklethewire.com/2014/09/02/fbi ... -triumphs/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI Turns to Propaganda in Faux News Report to Pump Up Triumphs
By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI is promoting itself using a faux journalism report on the radio that is intended to sound like a real new agency, the Daily Signal reports.

One new cast begins, “In a move demonstrating the FBI’s valuable role of protecting national security, Director James Comey creates a separate Intelligence Branch…”

Instead of using a real news anchor, the FBI is using a public affairs specialist.

The program is called “FBI This Week” and is aired regularly on the radio.

“[T]he programs that we produce are ultimately designed to aid and assist the public in protecting itself against crime,” says Susan McKee, the FBI’s chief of investigative publicity and public affairs.

see link for full story or google title

http://harveyandlee.net/FBI/FBI.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Manipulated, Fabricated, and Disappearing Evidence

by John Armstrong


In 1996, thirty-three years after the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the FBl's top scientists, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, disclosed that the FBI crime lab had fabricated evidence in the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings. In April, 1997 an expose in The Wall Street Journal suggested that the F.B.I.'s bad habit of cooking evidence to help convict people with fraudulent scientific testimony may have been even more extensive than acknowledged in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Bromwich. This is nothing new. Following the assassination of President Kennedy the FBI manipulated, altered, and fabricated evidence relating to HARVEY Oswald and LEE Oswald's backgrounds in order to identify him as the “lone gunman," and it is fairly easy to show why and how this was done.

One of the FBI's first objectives in the assassination of President Kennedy should have been to determine whether or not other members of government were targeted by friends and associates of Oswald or members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. After Lincoln's assassination in 1865 government authorities focused their attention on possible co-conspirators who were soon identified, arrested, and brought to justice. After the events of 9/11 senior government officials were moved to safety in case a broader attack against the United States was in progress. According to Vice President Cheney, “I got on the telephone with the President, who was in Florida, and told him not to be at one location where we could both be taken out.” Mr. Cheney kept President Bush flying in the air on 9/11 while he and his wife Lynn left on a helicopter for a secure and still undisclosed location.

But after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 the FBI did not launch an investigation to determine if other senior government officials were assassination targets. They did not launch an investigation to determine if Oswald had accomplices, but within 24 hours were preparing a written report to show that he acted alone. They did not launch an investigation to determine if Oswald visited Mexico City and attempted to secure visas to Cuba and the Soviet Union (they finally began investigating Mexico City in March, 1964). And they did not launch an investigation to determine the possibility of foreign involvement. How could FBI director Hoover, whose priority had always been to protect the reputation of the Bureau, risk criticism by not conducting these investigations? The answer was likely because Hoover knew, as early as 1960 when HARVEY Oswald was in Russia and LEE Oswald was in the USA, that both young men worked for the CIA. And on 11/22/63, when HARVEY Oswald was accused of assassinating President Kennedy, Hoover probably knew or strongly suspected involvement by the US government agency who created the two Oswald's.

In early 1960, while (HARVEY) Oswald was living in Russia, Hoover notified the State Department that someone was using Oswald's birth certificate. As the Bureau began receiving reports about a “LEE Oswald”, who was in the USA and connected with anti-Castro Cubans, there is good reason to believe that FBI Director Hoover learned about the CIA's “Oswald project”. After HARVEY Oswald returned to the USA with his Russian wife and child in 1962 the FBI began monitoring his activities. In the months preceding the assassination the FBI was actively investigating Oswald's alleged visit to Mexico City. A month before the assassination FBI agent Milton Kaack reviewed (LEE) Oswald's birth records in New Orleans, while Dallas based FBI agent James Hosty was leaving notes for Oswald by placing them under the door to his apartment. Shortly after the assassination it was obvious that Hoover knew a great deal about about Oswald. At 4 p.m., less than 3 hours after President Kennedy was assassinated, Hoover told Attorney General Robert Kennedy that (LEE) Oswald "went to Cuba on several occasions, but would not tell us what he went to Cuba for." This conversation occurred only an hour after (HARVEY) Oswald's arrest.

In 1963 virtually all of HARVEY and LEE's activities were controlled by their CIA handlers in the months leading up to the assassination. For example, LEE Oswald would not have approached Robert McKeown, a former gun-runner and close friend of Fidel Castro, and attempted to purchase rifles from him without orders (probably from the CIA's David Phillips). HARVEY Oswald, known to the Bureau since 1960, would not have become involved with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), photographed by FBI informants while handing out brochures, arrested, and interviewed on the radio by FBI informant and CIA contact Bill Stuckey without orders. Who would have given orders for HARVEY Oswald to become involved with the FPCC, and why? The orders probably originated with his CIA handlers (David Phillips, Mexico City), and were given to someone with close connections to the FBI, perhaps Guy Bannister in New Orleans (former SAIC of the FBI's Chicago office who was in frequent contact with Hoover). HARVEY may have been told that he could help the FBI by starting a local FPCC chapter and recruiting new members, while working for the Bureau as an undercover confidential informant. Oswald used Bannister's office for this venture and even stamped “544 Camp St.” (Bannister's address) on some of the FPCC brochures. Bannister's investigator, George Higgenbotham, told Bannister that he saw Oswald and another young man handing out FPCC leaflets in front of the Trade Mart. Bannister replied, “Cool it. One of them is mine.” Bannister told his secretary, Delphine Roberts, “He's with us, he's associated with this office.” Mrs. Roberts said, “I presumed then, and am now certain, that the reason for Oswald being there was that he was required to act undercover.” Oswald's leaf-letting was filmed by an FBI agent with a 35 mm camera. WDSU-TV cameraman Orvie Aucoin, an active FBI informant, filmed Oswald as he passed out leaflets. CIA agent William Gaudet watched Oswald hand out literature from his office in the Trade Mart. If Oswald was working undercover for the FBI this could explain why, after arrested in New Orleans, he spoke with FBI agent John Lester Quigley for an hour and a half. FBI security clerk William Walter told the HSCA that he saw several of Oswald's files in the FBI office in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The files were security and informant files designated with “105” or “134” classifications. Oswald may have thought his assignment as an undercover confidential informant was to identify and report Castro sympathizers to the FBI. But the real reason for the CIA to initiate (HARVEY) Oswald's undercover assignment was to have him working for the FBI on November 22, 1963. His employment with the Bureau virtually guaranteed that when Hoover learned that Oswald had been accused of assassinating President Kennedy, he would go into “cover-up mode” immediately. Hoover knew that HARVEY Oswald was working for the CIA when he “defected” to the Soviet Union. FBI agents had been monitoring Oswald since his return from the Soviet Union eighteen months earlier. And now, on the day President Kennedy was assassinated, HARVEY Oswald was not only a CIA asset but was also probably working undercover for the FBI. Hoover knew that Oswald did not shoot the President, and he knew there was no reason to believe Oswald had any co-conspirators. There was no reason to believe other US government officials were targets. There was no reason to believe there was any foreign involvement. But Hoover did know about HARVEY Oswald and LEE Oswald, and he knew that two “Oswald's” were unexplainable. Hoover's top priority was to locate and eliminate any and all records and documents relating to the second Oswald.

NOTE: We must remember that Oswald's brother, John Pic, was shown photos of HARVEY Oswald passing out FPCC literature in New Orleans. After looking at the photos John Pic told Warren Commission attorney Albert Jenner, “No, sir. I would be unable to recognize him.” Jenner responded, “As to whether he was your brother?” Pic replied, “That is correct.” Once again, John Pic refused to identify HARVEY Oswald as his brother.


John Pic told the Warren Commission he did not recognize this picture
of Harvey Oswald as his brother


Before HARVEY Oswald was even charged with the President's murder, Hoover began focusing attention on records and documentation related to “Lee Harvey Oswald's” employment as a teenager in New Orleans and his attendance at junior high schools in New York, New Orleans, and Ft. Worth. Acquisition, manipulation, and/or destruction of these records was paramount, and absolutely essential because they showed HARVEY Oswald and LEE Oswald in different locations at the same time. These records had to be confiscated and destroyed in order to hide the existence of two “Lee Harvey Oswald's”. This may be the only time in our nation's history when the FBI began investigating a murder by focusing on the teenage school and employment records of the accused assassin.

November 22. Jimmy Hudnell, a long time employee of Tuague & Co. in New Orleans remembered, “After listening to news about the assassination on the TV and radio (afternoon of 11/22/63) Mr. Tujague told us (employees), 'The FBI will probably be here soon, so you folks go home and I'll call you next week.'” LEE Oswald had worked at Tujague's from July, 1955 through July, 1956 (while HARVEY attended Warren Easton HS in 1955 and allegedly worked at JR Michaels and the Pfisterer Dental Lab in 1956). And in January, 1961 (while HARVEY was in Russia) LEE Oswald had approached Bolton Ford (New Orleans) and discussed purchasing trucks to send to Cuba. The purchaser was listed as “Friends of Democractic Cuba” and Gerard Tujague was the Vice-President. His friend Guy Bannister was one of the founding members and was on the Board of Directors. When FBI agents arrived at Tujague and Co. they confiscated all original employment records for LEE Oswald from July, 1955 through July, 1956.



That afternoon (11/22/63) the Dallas Police searched Oswald's rooming house (1026 N. Beckley) and Ruth Paine's garage (2515 W. 5th, Irving, TX), where the majority of evidence consisted of Oswald's personal possessions (225 items). Each and every item taken was initialed by the Dallas Police, listed on a handwritten inventory, and listed on a type-written inventory at DPD headquarters (WC-Stoval A, Stoval B, Turner 1). Around midnight all items were photographed on the floor of the Dallas Police station. The Dallas Police had jurisdiction to investigate the murder of JFK in Dallas, but their investigation had to be curtailed as soon as possible and turned over to the FBI.

Taxpayer funded FBI agents installed Jackie Presser as head of the Teamsters Union and allowed him to plunder the Teamster union
funds to destroy the union and give unions a bad name.

see link for full story

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-12-05/ ... _fbi-agent" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Ruling Favors FBI Agent in Presser Case
December 05, 1986

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Thursday threw out key evidence against a former FBI agent who was indicted on charges of lying to federal officials during their probe of Teamsters President Jackie Presser.

But the ruling had no immediate impact on prosecution of the Teamsters president, whose trial is expected to begin next spring.

Admission to Prosecutors

U.S. District Judge George H. Revercomb, climaxing a three-day hearing, ruled that government prosecutors improperly obtained self-incriminating statements from ex-agent Robert S. Friedrick.

Friedrick told the prosecutors earlier this year that he had lied when he said the FBI had authorized Presser to hire "ghost employees" at a Teamsters local as part of an effort to further Presser's role as an informant for the bureau.

As a result of Friedrick's admission, the Justice Department last May obtained an indictment of Friedrick for making false statements. The prosecutors also pressed charges against Presser and two union associates for allegedly misspending $700,000 in Teamsters Union dues to pay mob-related "employees" who performed no work for Presser's hometown union.

John R. Climaco, Presser's defense attorney, raised the "authorization" argument on Presser's behalf in 1985, when the Justice Department was first considering pressing charges against the Teamsters chief.

Justice Department investigators promptly questioned Friedrick about it, as well as two agents who had preceded Friedrick as Presser's handler in Cleveland. Friedrick and the others--Martin P. McCann Jr., now retired, and Patrick Foran, now assistant agent in charge of the FBI's Las Vegas office--supported Climaco's claim.

The statements of McCann and Foran are still being investigated by prosecutors.

In throwing out the self-incriminating statements of Friedrick, Revercomb said there was evidence that Friedrick believed he had been given limited immunity from prosecution by Justice Department lawyers, who months earlier had told him he would not be charged with any crime if he told them the truth.

"I do believe he was misled," the judge said.

Case May Be Dead

James I. Knapp, deputy associate attorney general, said, "We are strongly disappointed at the ruling and will consider an appeal."

Other department sources said the case against Friedrick is effectively dead--unless Revercomb's ruling is reversed.

However, prosecutors still are free to call Friedrick as a government witness against Presser if the Teamsters leader--as expected--claims at his trial next year that the FBI authorized his actions.

"I think we have won our case," William D. Beyer, Friedrick's lawyer, told reporters after the decision.

Friedrick, 43, was fired last August by FBI director William H. Webster, who said his dismissal was for administrative reasons and not because of the criminal charge

you do know what to do,eh?





http://www.defendingdissent.org/now/fal ... e-preview/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.enewspf.com/opinion/commenta ... rture.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Chicago Families Insulted by U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon Demand Justice for all Victims of Police Crimes and Torture

08 Sep 2014 05:28
—September 8, 2014. The Chicago Sun-Times announced, going into the weekend of September 5-7 that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon and FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Holley have stated that there is no "sweeping investigation of shootings by Chicago Police Officers".
This statement by the Feds was released a week after an attorney, representing cops, wrote to the Fraternal Order of Police warning that an FBI probe of the CPD was in the making.

Not only has the U.S. Attorney and the FBI denied the existence of a "sweeping investigation", they basically rule out the need for any. Fardon and Holley issued this rather shocking statement: "As Acting Assistant Attorney General Molly Moran stated today, there is no open pattern-and-practice civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department."

The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression presented (Wednesday, August 27, 2014) to U.S. Attorney Fardon a letter/complaint addressed to U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, signed by 65 victims of police crimes of murder and torture. This letter documents that there is in fact an "open pattern-and-practice of civil rights violations and crimes perpetrated by the Chicago Police Department".

Emmett Farmer, the father of Flint Farmer (who was murdered by a police officer while lying defenseless on the ground) was among the signers of the letter. Yet within the next 48 hours after it was presented we witness this shameless arrogance by representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice.

We live in a city, which is infamous for police torturing hundreds of innocent, young Black and Latino people, most of whom remain incarcerated, and where too many parents are still grief-stricken because their children were murdered by the police. Just two weeks ago, Roshad McIntosh, age 19, the son of Cynthia Lane, was gunned down by CPD on Chicago's West Side. Many eyewitnesses from the community have said Roshad was cooperating and surrendering to police before they executed him.
So why on earth in these circumstances would the U.S. Attorney and the FBI rush to a news conference to assure us that they are not investigating a pattern of civil rights violations and crimes committed by the Chicago Police Department?

This is unacceptable. This is an insult to the people of Chicago, to the victims and their families and to the numerous investigating reporters who have demonstrated an open pattern-and-practice of civil rights violations and police crimes.

see link for full story
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/surve ... m-theater/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Surveillance Reform Theater
by William A. Blunden / October 19th, 2014

Recently 60 Minutes aired a segment where FBI Director James Comey described how he threatened to quit as acting Attorney General back in 2004 rather than reauthorize warrantless wiretapping programs. He also described an old Hoover-era memo that he keeps on his desk as a reminder of what not to do. The memo is a request by J. Edgar Hoover to conduct “technical surveillance” on Martin Luther King Jr. The basic impression that 60 Minutes viewers come away with is that James Comey is a man who is “deeply skeptical of government power.”

This 20-minute biopic was likely timed in such a way as to prepare the public for Comey’s speech this past week at the Brookings Institution. Comey explained that in order to safeguard the public against terrorism he wanted U.S. companies to modify their encryption technology to offer a special backdoor for law enforcement. Strictly speaking Comey referred to this backdoor as a “front door,” but either way what he’s describing is a mechanism for the authorities to bypass encryption.

The concept of a secret golden key for authorities is a zombie idea from the 1990s. I’m talking about what’s known in cryptographic circles as “key escrow.” Under key escrow vendors create a built-in decryption password (also known as a decryption key) that’s held in escrow. When law enforcement agents supply a court order they can acquire the corresponding decryption key.

Key escrow died long ago and with good reason. This is because it’s impossible to create a backdoor that only the police can access. Once the escrow key finds its way out into the wild it can be utilized by crooks, spies, and oppressive governments for their own purposes. Key escrow puts everyone at risk.

In short, Comey suggests undermining digital security and privacy across an industry while concurrently asserting that he’s “looking for security that enhances liberty.”

This begs a question: why would the Director of the FBI knowingly advocate a strategy which is patently flawed? Does he assume collective amnesia? That thousands of security professionals have somehow forgotten the lessons of the past?

Good Cop/Bad Cop

Hi-tech companies need to keep quarterly profits strong and in order to do that they’ve got to manufacture the impression that they’re standing up for our civil liberties. As James Comey acknowledges encryption is a “marketing pitch.” A way to attract customers by distinguishing certain products from the rest. Government officials, many of them who end up working in the private sector after they leave office, are keenly aware of this.

By proposing to revive key escrow the FBI is essentially lending credibility to hi-tech companies, which come across as resisting the big bad government. Comey’s gambit makes it appear as though Silicon Valley is siding with users against intrusive government surveillance. Even though, despite marketing campaigns that plug encryption, the sad reality is that most hi-tech service providers don’t care one jot about user privacy. If anything hi-tech companies want to be able to collect as much data as possible because they can turn around and sell it. Government spies and online service providers have a lot in common.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the whole discussion of key escrow keeps the focus on overt back doors, allowing the ensuing public debate to sidestep conversations about existing covert back doors. Rest assured that the FBI has plenty of tools in their arsenal to foil encryption. It’s been this way for well over a decade. For example, do some homework on the Bureau’s Magic Lantern program. Or read up on how they snagged a Federal Cybersecurity Director on child pornography charges. The NSA, for instance, has a whole catalogue of “implants” that can be wielded to thwart encryption.

The Whole Snowden Spectacle

In addition to the mystifying resurrection of key escrow there are other signs that something is amiss. Specifically, in an early interview with the Guardian Ed Snowden declared:

I don’t want to be a celebrity, I don’t want to go somewhere and have people pay attention to me, just as I don’t want to do that in the media. There are much more important issues in the world than me and what’s going on in my life and we should be focusing on those.

And yet here we see Ed Snowden in a forlorn embrace with an American flag compliments of the techno-libertarians at Wired magazine. Then the Intercept covers how Ed is shacking up with his own pole dancing Miss Moneypenny as he stars in feature film and generally does his best to look like Tom Cruise. Avoiding the spotlight are we, Ed? Ahem.

Did you know that Julian Assange is coming out with his own line of apparel? There’s a discernable commercial aroma that’s begun to accompany all this noble whistleblowing. In the case of the Ed Snowden affair I smell a billionaire. These days the plutocrats are following the mandates of the Powell memorandum and entrenching themselves in American policymaking apparatus, forming their own news outlets and political movements.

There are reasons why President Truman regretted turning the CIA “into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.” Clandestine programs of subversion are antithetical to democracy. By spotlighting the messenger, witness Ed Snowden’s descent to celebrity status, elements in the media create a parade that leads society away from the unsettling repercussions of mass surveillance (i.e. the specter of state capture).

Denouement – Selling Snake Oil

As NSA documents trickled into the public arena a cry arose that “something must be done.” And so both politicians and executives are engaged in obligatory gestures of sham opposition and faux public debate, a choreographed mind-numbing performance aimed to placate Main Street rabble without threatening the intelligence agencies or their corporate overlords in the defense sector. The DNI’s recent report on Presidential Policy Directive 28 illustrates this.