Clinton administration violated international law - shoot down of civilian airplanes
11 December 2008: Washington - Rep. Pete Hoekstra, senior Republican on the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives, told The Associated Press disclosed the following:
With the help of CIA spotters, the Peruvian air force shot down 15 small civilian aircraft suspected of carrying drugs, in many cases without warning and within two to three minutes of being sighted. These airplanes crashed in the jungle and the wreckage has not been or could not be examined to ascertain whether narcotics were aboard the aircraft. This is the first public disclosure of the number of planes shot down between 1995 and 2001 as part of the CIA’s Airbridge Denial Program.
The IG report said the CIA withheld from the National Security Council, Justice Department and Congress the results of multiple investigations that documented continuous and significant violations of aircraft interception procedures.
The CIA report said that in most of the shootdowns, pilots fired on aircraft "without being properly identified, without being given the required warnings to land, and without being given time to respond to such warnings as were given to land."
Comment: This appears to be the violation of CIA or US policy before it was OK to shoot down the suspected airplane. This does not get to the issue of it being a violation of US and International law to shoot at civilian airplanes or shoot them down.
CIA Director Michael Hayden said the report identified personnel by name those who misled Congress and obstructed a Justice Department investigation into whether criminal charges should have been filed in the case. The Justice Department ultimately decided in 2005 against filing charges.
April 23, 2001: The policy on the sharing of aerial tracking intelligence with Peru and Colombia was formulated in 1994, but not without a significant amount of debate within the Clinton administration. An American missionary and her infant daughter were mistakenly killed by gunfire from an alleged attempt to force down their airplane.
Both U.S. and international law preclude the use of weapons against civilian aircraft except in self-defense. The Clinton administration policy did not seek a solution to the international legal problems raised by the force-down policy, but rather sought “to reduce the [United States government’s] exposure to criticism that such assistance violates international law.”
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB44/
Former Governor Jesse Ventura stated that he had embedded CIA agents working covertly in high level positions of the Minnesota state government. Ventura also said that when these agents retired, their replacements were already chosen for him by the CIA.
Ventura exposes he was interviewed by more than 23 CIA agents during his term of office as Governor (1999). Despite the CIA's mission statement which states they are not to be operational within the Unites States,
Comment: Why didn’t Ventura just tell them to get the hell out of his capital building and that he didn't want to talk to them.
He says they only asked him about how he got elected.
Is it possible the CIA was afraid Ventura would expose the CIA covert operation? That is using the Minnesota State government as a front company to hide a CIA officer, and maybe a State employee who worked to sell Minnesota products overseas. So was this meeting conducted by the CIA to decide to trust Ventura , to read him onto this secret CIA program?
see video of Ventura interview:
http://52.thelastoutpost.com/video-4/police-state/cia-embedded-in-every-state-government.html
January 3, 2008 There actually was a Ventura meeting with the CIA in 1999. CIA Spokesman George Little confirmed the event in a written statement, but he offered few details.
Little said that "on occasion CIA officers meet with senior state government officials, as they did in this case, to discuss issues of mutual interest."
In response to a question about Ventura's claim, Little wrote, "I wouldn't think of CIA officers as being in state governments. They're federal employees."
Comment: It is the job of the FBI to collect national security intelligence inside the US and about foreign threats. There is no reason for CIA officers to be talking to any US persons inside the US.
There are times when the CIA must talk with one of their foreign human sources (spies) when and if they happen to travel into the US (for example, attending school or working temporarily within the US) . There are times when the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) needs to talk to US persons (citizens or legal resident) in the US. This is when the US person is spying for the CIA or DIA because he/she travels to foreign (threat) countries and return to the US.
But interviewing a Governor for foreign intelligence information is the job of the FBI.
Brewster Jennings & Associates was a front company set up in 1994 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a "cover" for its agents.
Undercover (none official cover) CIA operative Valerie Plame met with workers the nuclear industry, cultivated sources, and managed spies.
So a front company located within the US, is used to hid the true identity of none official cover (NOC) CIA officers (one not working say in the State Department or Other Government Agency cover job).
A spokeswoman for Dun & Bradstreet stated records list the company, at 101 Arch Street, Boston, Massachusetts, as a "legal services office," ( "consultant") which could mean a law firm, with annual sales of $60,000, one employee, and a chief executive identified as "Victor Brewster, Partner.
Front companies were used during the CIAs planning and training for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and during the Reagan years to supply the Contras with equipment and training within the US.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/03/jessecia
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Former FBI agent turned whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, has claimed that a senior official in the U.S. State Department tipped off a foreign contact to a CIA investigative cover during an investigation into a nuclear spy ring.
Edmonds reveals that the official told one of the CIA's foreign contacts in 2001 that Brewster Jennings & Associates -- a firm that existed with little more than a name and telephone number -- was a cover for the U.S. government. Brewster Jennings was also a front for former CIA agent Valerie Plame -- wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson -- who was publicly outted in 2003 by White House officials.
From the Sibel Edmonds interview:
"One group of Turkish agents who had come to America on the pretext of researching alternative energy sources was introduced to Brewster Jennings through the Washington-based American Turkish Council (ATC), a lobby group that aids commercial ties between the countries. Edmonds says the Turks believed Brewster Jennings to be energy consultants and were planning to hire them.
But she said: “He [the State Department official] found out about the arrangement . . . and he contacted one of the foreign targets and said . . . you need to stay away from Brewster Jennings because they are a cover for the government.
“The target . . . immediately followed up by calling several people to warn them about Brewster Jennings.
“At least one of them was at the ATC. This person also called an ISI person to warn them.” If the ISI was made aware of the CIA front company, then this would almost certainly have damaged the investigation into the activities of Khan. Plame’s cover would also have been compromised, although Edmonds never heard her name mentioned on the intercepts. Shortly afterwards, Plame was moved to a different operation."
A State Department official vehemently denied Edmonds' claims, calling them "both false and malicious.”
Comment: If Plame none official cover at this front company was blown, why did the White House blow the fact she was a CIA officer?
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Edmonds_Brewster_Jennings_outted_in_2001_0127.html
January 6, 2008: A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, a former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office. Toward the end of 2001, Edmonds was asked to translate some of the thousands of calls that had been recorded by this operation, some dating back to 1997.
Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.
However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.
“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.
The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.
The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.
They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.
In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.
The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.
Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”
The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.
Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.
Edmonds says packages containing nuclear secrets were delivered by Turkish operatives, using their cover as members of the diplomatic and military community, to contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.
Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI.
Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”
The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.
Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.
“The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information,” she said.
“The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”
One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing US defense information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat.
“He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,” she said.
Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone anywhere. The FBI monitored Turkish diplomats who were selling copies of the information to the highest bidder.
Edmonds said: “Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers.”
In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”
The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations. Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.
In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.
One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.
She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act. She was able to discuss the case with The Sunday Times because, by the end of January 2002, the justice department had shut down the programme.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece
Who wants to get rid of Net Neutrality?
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies -- including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner -- want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all.
They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video -- while slowing down or blocking their competitors.
These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services -- or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls -- and leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.
The big phone and cable companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to gut Net Neutrality, putting the future of the Internet at risk.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
44% of Americans believe in ghosts
More Americans Believe in the Devil, Hell and Angels than in Darwin's Theory of Evolution
That is, those who believe in Darwin's theory of evolution (47%), in creationism (40%).
Who believe in ghosts (44%), UFOs (36%), witches (31%), astrology (31%), and reincarnation (24%).
Catholics are more likely than Protestants to believe in Darwin's theory of evolution (by 52% to 32%), ghosts (by 57% to 41%), UFOs (by 43% to 31%), and astrology (by 40% to 28%).
Slender majorities of all adults believe that all or most of the Old Testament (55%) and the New Testament (54%) are the "Word of God." However, only about a third of all adults (37% and 36%) believe that all of these texts are the word of God.
These are some of the results of The Harris Poll(R), a new nationwide survey of 2,126 U.S. adults surveyed online between November 10 and 17, 2008 by Harris Interactive(R).
"Conspiracy" just means, more than one person being involved in something.
Genuine Conspiratorial Politics, what is that?
News and View you don't have to Lose, news emails, I summarized news items. If you really are interested in the subject, I recommend you go to the link or web address (orgininal source). http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.
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My ON-LINE book SOME UNKNOWN HISTORY OF THE U.S. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SomeUnknownUSHistory/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmptyDemocratCaucusWA/
and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmptyCaucusDemocratsUSA
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