Suspicious death of two FBI agents creates controversy

Mon May 27, 2013
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/27/305627/death-of-fbi-agents-creates-controversy/

Two well-trained Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who were involved in the killing of a Boston bombing suspect have suspiciously died.

The FBI said in a statement that 41-year-old Christopher Lorek and 40-year-old Stephen Shaw were killed on May 17 as they fell out of a helicopter into water during a training mission off the coast of Virginia Beach.

US officials have blamed bad weather for the tragedy but some have questioned the credibility of the official account, considering it a cover-up.

They say the agents’ death adds to the suspicious death of a friend of the Boston bombing suspect, Ibragim Todashev, who was killed in his own apartment by an FBI agent.

Lorek and Shaw were part of the bureau's Critical Incident Response Group and were both members of the team investigating the Boston Marathon bombings in mid-April.

“You could always take it as one of an endless group of coincidences. We have so many [of them], when you look at the Boston investigation that these two individuals were involved in, everything had the stamp of CIA and FBI on it, from the first steps,” Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, told Press TV.

“What we have in the US is that we don’t report, we don’t have the least free press here. There are powerful dissident elements within our military, intelligence services and government that are under the control of... I’ll call them organized crime on a worldwide basis. If you refer to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of narcotics and trillions of dollars worth of financial crimes, it is simply organized crime, it is the understatement of all time,” he added.

The incident has reminded many of the dramatic death of top US commandos in Afghanistan, who lost their lives three months after their involvement in the alleged killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.

On August 6, 2011, the helicopter of the Navy SEAL Team VI was shot down in Afghanistan.

The families of Navy SEAL members have blamed the government for the tragedy, saying the shooting down of the helicopter and the subsequent cover-up was planned by the government.

They said that US President Barack Obama turned the SEALs group into a Taliban target after the administration revealed they had conducted the bin Laden raid.

The families also claimed Taliban militants had received leaked information from the US government regarding the landing site of the commandos’ helicopter.

Moreover, the SEAL Team VI members were reportedly flown to the landing site with a Vietnam-era Chinook helicopter rather than with their customary Special Forces choppers.

“There is absolutely nothing that is credible about that; this is not a mission they would have been on, this is not a helicopter they would have been on,” Duff pointed out.

FBI Spiked Chechen Jihadi Investigation

Palast reports from Kazakhstan
Greg Palast from Vice.com
Friday, 3. May 2013

[Astana, Kazakhstan]  Following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, I received documents marked “SECRET” from the files of the FBI’s Washington field office. The information in those files will make you sick.

When the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, I grabbed those FBI files – and a plane for Kazakhstan, bullying cameraman Rocco D into joining me.  [Rocco, no fool, won’t let me print his full name.]

After we landed, word came that two Kazakh teens, friends of the bombers, had been arrested by Boston police and, yesterday, charged with hiding evidence of the bombers’ guilt.

Here in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, televisions everywhere run endless loops of the bombs going off at the Boston Marathon, the screams, the blood, the victims... and the questions.

And first question: How do a couple of wholesome Call-of-Duty-playing American kids get the idea they should murder and mangle their neighbors to avenge the Muslims of Chechnya—whom the victims probably couldn’t find on a map?

The second question: How did America’s trillion-dollar intelligence apparatchiks wave off warnings from Russia about one of the bomber’s connections to the Chechen militants?

The answer regarding the intelligence failure is, to paraphrase the famous journalist Yogi Berra:  it’s amazing what you don’t see when you don’t look.

And that’s related to the how young Muslim-Americans came to kill other young Americans over Chechnya.

According to the secret memo, long before the Boston bombing, even before the September 11 attack, the FBI shut down an investigation of a group that ran a summer camp in Florida for America’s Muslim teenagers.

No, we shouldn’t be spying on Islamic campers. However, besides the usual swimming and soccer, these youngsters were encouraged to join the Chechen jihad. The kiddies were treated to videos praising Chechen bombers (who seized a school and hospital then killed their hostages). The group also produced an educational film praising, “that compassionate young man, Osama bin Laden”.

Hey, it was a family affair.  Camp Jihad was run by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), whose operation just outside Washington DC was directed in the US by a man the FBI called “ABL” – Abdullah Binladden, Osama’s brother.

When the Kazakh friends of the Boston bombers were arrested, I went back to that “SECRET” memo. It fell into my hands in November 2001, just two months after that “compassionate young man” Osama killed thousands in my office building (I once worked at the World Trade Center).

Why would my own government spike an investigation that might have saved lives in New York in 2001 [and in Boston in 2013]?

My producer at BBC Television called the FBI.  They did not deny the authenticity of the secret documents.  Well, then, if the US government has evidence someone may be illegally recruiting killers for Chechnya (as well as the Bosnia war), why in the world would you shut down the investigation and hide the findings?

The official answer was even more chilling than the secret memo itself.  The spokesman told us at BBC:

"There are lots of things only the intelligence community knows and that no one else ought to know."?
Well, what else are we not supposed to know?

We got the answer on November 9, 2001, when I received a call at BBC's Newsnight desk in London from a US intelligence agent via a “clean” phone. The spook confirmed that, beginning as early as 1995, the CIA and other US spy agencies were told to stand down from investigating the bin Laden family in both the US and in France.

Several insiders repeated the same story: US agencies turned a blind eye to the bin Laden-terrorist-Chechen-jihad connection out of fear of exposing the US government’s half-assed—and half-illegal—support for these terrorists.

Our government gave ABL a pass (and safe passage back to Saudi Arabia) because Presidents Clinton and Bush were more than happy that our Saudi allies were sending jihadis to Afghanistan, then, via WAMY, helping Muslims to fight in Bosnia then, later, giving the Russians grief in Chechnya.

The problem is that terrorists are like pigeons – they come home to roost.  As Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who provided crucial help to our investigation, told me, “It would be unseemly if [someone] were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been on the payroll of the CIA… What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing, career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials.”

It’s utterly unlikely the young Boston bombers were on the CIA payroll, but it’s more than likely the elder brother’s connections here in Central Asia could be traced back to US-protected killers of years past.

The sleight-of-hand to keep public eyes off the US juicing Chechen terror is almost fun to watch. There’s surprisingly little official scrutiny of the media’s new heart-throb, Ruslan Tsarni, the bombers’ uncle. The Washington Post, praising Uncle Ruslan’s “I LOVE AMERICA” schtick, noted,

“[Ruslan’s] performance will be sewn into the rotation of TV news from here on out. Later, on MSNBC, Tom Ridge spoke highly of the message of ‘promise and hope’ sent by Tsarni.”

I would venture to guess that this was not the first time Mr. Ridge, first director of the US Department of Homeland Security, had heard Ruslan’s messages given Ruslan’s founding the Congress of Chechen International Organizations and his lucrative work here in Kazakhstan as a USAID contractor and oil industry lawyer.

There is zero—and I mean zero—evidence that Uncle Ruslan or the CIA hired these two sad-ass kids in Boston to blow up their neighbors. The point here is that the FBI is too concerned about making sure that “no one else ought to know” about our government plays footsie with terrorists—and too unconcerned about the blow-back that blows up in Boston.

Greg Palast investigated terror attacks on the US for BBC TV.

Readers can download Bush Family Fortunes, Palast’s BBC documentary, without charge, at www.gregpalast.com/bffdownload/

Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

The Doppel Gäng

Adam Gorightly’s Transmissions From A Dying Planet
March 1, 2013
http://thehighersidechats.com/adam-gorightlys-transmissions-from-a-dying-planet-5

To follow is a piece that appeared in a recent issue of Paranoia Magazine http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/ as well as my latest book, Happy Trails to High Weirdness.

http://www.amazon.com/Happy-Trails-High-Weirdness-Conspiracy/dp/1475098855/thekonformist

It concerns yours truly, in addition to a couple recent THC guests, Kenn Thomas http://www.steamshovelpress.com/ and Andy Colvin.

The Doppel Gäng

Over the last decade, I’ve become aware of several alleged doppelgänger sightings that have occurred at UFO, Conspiracy and New Age conferences. Doppelgängers, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the German word for a double, or more aptly, an evil twin; an entity of seemingly paranormal origins, usually regarded as a harbinger of misfortune or bad luck. Conversely, what have been perceived as doppelgängers may actually be spooks of a more prosaic origin; i.e. covert intel spies infiltrating events where UFOs and government conspiracies are discussed and exposed.

Much like COINTELPRO, the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program of the late-60s/early-70s that used agent provocateurs to infiltrate and sabotage radical activist groups, perhaps that is the design behind these doppelgänger sightings: To monitor individuals involved in the paranormal-conspiracy research scene, as well as to disrupt and undermine said activities with skullduggery and mindphuckery.

My first inkling of this apparent paranormal-conspiratorial doppelgänger phenomena came courtesy of long time correspondent, the psychic and playwright Eugenia Macer Story, when she commented to me—via email several years ago—about her curious encounter with an Adam Gorightly doppelgänger at a late-90s East Coast New Age conference. What this all means, then and now, remains a continuing enigma, whether this alleged Gorightly double sighting was actually some sort of paranormal happening, an alphabet soup spy in disguise, or something more mundane and explainable.

Eugenia, it should be noted, is not only “psychic” in title, but one of those rare and genuine psychics I’ve encountered, who are few and far between, tuned into hidden frequencies and wavelengths that us “normals” hardly ever hear or see, our third eye vision impeded by the veil of “reality.” Eugenia is one of those unique souls who can lift that veil, upon occasion, and see beyond. I recall quite profoundly, during the late-90s, visiting a medical specialist in San Francisco regarding certain neurological problems I was then experiencing. Later, when I returned home and checked my email, I discovered a synchronistically psychic message from Eugenia which informed me that at the very moment I was entering the medical facility in San Francisco, Eugenia was stepping on to subway train when an image of yours truly suddenly appeared in her mind with the words: “San Francisco.” Of course, Eugenia—all away across the country on the East Coast—had no way of knowing that I would be traveling to San Francisco on this matter.

These are the type of synchronistic events that occur when one wanders into the mystic sphere of Eugenia Macer-Story, who due to her psychic abilities may have unconsciously summoned that aforementioned Gorightly doppelgänger well over a decade ago.

*   *   *

Parapolitical researcher Kenn Thomas recently shared with me a rather curious photo taken at the 2003 Laughlin UFO Conference. The photo in question purportedly showed Kenn with a lady fan—whom he’d previously met at other conferences—and it was this lady that forwarded said photo to Kenn, unaware of the fact that Kenn had not attended the Laughlin Conference in ’03. The individual in the photo indeed bore a striking resemblance to Kenn: The same beard, same hair color and male pattern baldness, not to mention the name tag of “Kenn Thomas.” Kenn, of course, was stymied upon receipt of this perplexing photo.

“So what’s this all about,” Kenn asked. “Someone impersonating me? To what end? Sell books under my name? Collect data on fans who come up to the table for the FBI? Multiple Oswalds? Multiple me’s?!?!”

Invoking the name “Oswald” certainly summons some of the strangest specters that have inhabited conspiracy lore: namely the multiple Oswald impersonators running around New Orleans and Dallas prior to the Kennedy assassination, portraying Oswald as a loony tune communist sympathizer, with the intent of later setting him up as an assassination patsy. In reality, Oswald might have been a U.S. intelligence operative who got double-crossed by his intelligence agency handlers, ostensibly set up to take the rap for the crime of the century.

An example of such shenanigans occurred at a Dallas, Texas shooting range between November 9 and 21, 1963, when someone calling himself “Oswald” was seen by several eyewitnesses taking pot shots at other peoples’ targets and making an incredible nuisance of himself.

It should be noted that in the Marines, Oswald was a mediocre shot, whereas his doppelgänger was an expert marksman, hitting bull’s eyes with relative ease. From these actions, it would appear that this individual was going out of his way to draw attention to himself, to show that he (Oswald) was an out-of-control gun-wielding wacko with a damn good aim.

The Warren Commission, in all its wisdom, determined that the gun-wielding wacko in question was not Oswald, because the real Oswald was at another location when the shooting-range incident occurred. Just the same, the Warren Commission never answered—or even entertained the question—of exactly who this mysterious marksman was.

After the assassination, the shooting range witnesses remained convinced that it was Oswald who they’d seen, even though the Warren Commission concluded that this was physically impossible, unless Oswald was in two places at the same time.

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison contended that one of these alleged Oswald doppelgängers was none other than Kerry Thornley, the subject of my 2003 book, The Prankster and The Conspiracy.

http://www.amazon.com/Prankster-Conspiracy-Thornley-Inspired-Counterculture/dp/193104466X/thekonformist

In the late-50s, Thornley had served with Oswald in the Marines and was, in fact, writing a book about Oswald three years prior to the Kennedy assassination, which later many researchers found quite curious. This past association led Garrison to suspect that Thornley was among a cabal of alphabet soup spooks that created a false history to portray our boy Lee as a commie symp with an itchy trigger finger. In the parlance of the intelligence community, this is known as “sheepdipping.”

Garrison contended that the infamous photos of Oswald—with a rifle in one hand and a copy of the communist newspaper The Daily Worker in the other (as well as a pistol holstered at his side)—had somehow been fabricated by Thornley and other accomplices at Oswald’s empty Dallas apartment, after Oswald and his family had moved out. In a second photo, Oswald once again held the rifle along with a copy of The Militant, another leftist magazine.

After his arrest, when these photos were presented as evidence of his guilt, Oswald insisted that they’d been doctored, and claimed that he knew how the photographic alterations had been made. Oswald angrily charged: “That is not a picture of me; it is my face, but my face has been superimposed—the rest of the picture is not me at all, I’ve never seen it before… someone took a picture of my face and faked that photograph.”

At the time of Garrison’s JFK investigation (circa 1967-68), Kerry Thornley adamantly denied allegations that he was one of these notorious Oswald doubles. However, less than a decade later—and after ingesting some rather potent LSD—Thornley experienced an epiphany of sorts as buried memories began to surface of his unwittingly involvement in a JFK assassination conspiracy. Afterwards, Thornley burrowed down even deeper into this conspiratorial rabbit hole, and came to believe that Robert Anton Wilson, of all people, had been his CIA handler and brainwasher. Oddly enough, Thornley claimed that “…Wilson was murdered and replaced by a double on orders from Gerald Ford.”

As Thornley peered ever deeper into this conspiratorial abyss, an increasingly bizarre picture began to emerge. Eventually Thornley arrived at the conclusion that he’d been “wired” (or implanted with a mind control device) during his service in the Marines. Later, Thornley came to believe that this insidious mind zap had started much earlier, perhaps even before birth, and that he was a product, of what he termed, a “German breeding experiment”; an experiment that presumably used both he and Oswald as human guinea pigs.

In time, Thornley even came to suspect his own parents were Axis spies who had cut a deal with Nazi Occultists conducting these eugenics experiments, the ultimate purpose of which was to create a Manchurian candidate. However, Thornley claimed he became “what they call a mutant, because I didn’t turn out to be a racist…. I wasn’t turning out to be the good Nazi they hoped I would be.”

As Thornley told SteamShovel Press editor Kenn Thomas in a 1991 interview:

“It’s been indicated to me… that I am the son of Admiral Dönitz, and this is one of the reasons I’ve been getting all this attention over the years… and they refer to Oswald as my “brother,” and your brother is someone who comes from a breeding experiment. I’ve heard him referred to many times in Cant Language as my brother…

I thought it all started when I met Oswald in the Marines, but the more I’ve investigated, the more I’ve tried to piece it together, the more I’ve realized it had to start earlier than that…. They weed people out in the breeding experiments. They pick two of them, and they kill one of them… they take two of them, and they observe them for a number of years, then they get rid of one of them, and that’s what I think they were doing with me and Oswald.”

Legend has it that Admiral Dönitz was the “secret Führer,” as documented in the book Dönitz: The Last Führerby Peter Padfield. In this regard, stories of secret Nazi outposts in Antarctica abounded, including tales of Nazi flying saucers levitating in and out of the Hollow Earth. Many of these rumors suggested that Hitler was alive and well, but maybe in reality it was Admiral Dönitz fulfilling the aforementioned role of secret Führer in the frozen remoteness of Antarctica.

*   *   *

It was during the Retro UFO 1 Convention, in 2006, that I first met my good friend and fellow Fortean collaborator, Skylaire Alfvegren. Curiously enough, the following year at Retro UFO 2, I could swear I saw Skylaire once again, but was presumably mistaken. (Or perhaps not.)

Midway through a lecture by long time UFO contactee, Rev. Robert Short, a young lady—who for all the life of me appeared to be the splitting image of Skylaire—seated herself across the room to take in Rev. Short’s loquacious lecture on Contactee lore. A couple times I tried to catch her eye with one of those nods-of-the-head and lift-of-the-brow “Hi’s,” but to no avail, and I began to question myself whether or not it was actually Skylaire seated across the room. Finally I caught her eye and she smiled back with recognition, it seemed, although shortly after left the building before Rev. Short’s lecture concluded. Later, I looked for “Skylaire” outside on the Integratron grounds but she was nowhere to be found, which seemed rather odd that she would appear/disappear like that without speaking to me.

Afterwards, I took a jaunt out to Giant Rock (about a ten minute drive from the Integratron) to down a late afternoon beer amid the towering wonder of that ancient monolith of UFO Contactee lore. On my drive there—as I bounced over the ever present washboards in the road—I saw a car in the distance coming my way, stirring up the desert dust in its passage, behind it a wispy plume trailing high into the air.

As our cars passed one another, like the requisite ships in the night (it was day, however, albeit late in the day as shadows began to creep in along the desert floor) I once again saw Skylaire’s supposed doppelgänger, alone by herself behind the wheel of the car, on what covert business, I can only imagine.

*   *   *

The nature of all these queer doppelgänger incidents was only magnified in 2009 during my attendance of Conspiracy Con 9 in Santa Clara, California. After arriving at the event venue, and checking in at the hotel’s front desk, a man in his mid-fifties approached me asking about the whereabouts of some “books.” Having not a clue as to these missing books, or even who this fellow was, I replied to that effect, and he responded with a puzzled look. As his wife appeared at his side, I added, “Maybe my doppelgänger has your books,” which appeared to confuse him even more. His wife giggled: “He means a double,” she explained to her stupefied hubby, who I later discovered was none other than Roger Tolces, a speaker at the event, known for his expertise in the war against covert mind control weaponry; the developer of electronic equipment that disables, apparently, microwave mind control harassment devices and the like.

Afterwards, I picked up conspiracy researcher and Mothman experiencer Andy Colvin at the San Jose Airport, then returned back with him to the hotel. In the parking lot, as we were taking out our bags from the back of my truck and shootin’ the breeze, I noticed a peculiar squirrel scampering across the parking lot; a black squirrel to be precise, which is a rarity in California, and in fact it was the first time I had ever seen one of these critters, and commented on this to Colvin, who quickly whipped out his iPhone and snapped a fast photo of this peculiar scampering critter. Later, upon closer examination of said photo, we noticed across the parking lot, behind a tennis court fence, a man dressed in white apparently monitoring our activities, and so thereafter we referred to this shadowy figure as the Man In White (MIW). And much like the doings of those infamous MIBs, both of us came to suspect that this shadowy MIW might have been surveilling us during our attendance at Conspiracy Con 9. When discussing these circumstances later, Colvin somehow connected this mysterious MIW to the sighting of my own elusive doppelgänger, although the precise details of Colvin’s conspiratorial connections elude me at the moment.

Colvin, it should be noted, has had his own series of apparent doppelgänger appearances and, in fact, has had reports of doppelgängers in every place he has ever lived.

Says Andy, “I always had people coming up and saying that they had seen or talked to me in some other area of the city where I normally didn’t go, in situations I wouldn’t be in. Sometimes they could pinpoint more about him, like where he worked, but by the time I would hear of this and check it out, he had moved on. A couple of times, the guy had waited on the witnesses at a restaurant. One of those was in Los Angeles… (My friend) Harriet saw my doppelgänger in far-flung places, like Mexico and Turkey. Those happened in 1999 and 2000…

“In Austin, TX, where I lived for many years, there was even another ‘Andy Colvin’ who looked exactly like me. The guy actually went by the same name. But I could never find him. The stories were all just vague enough, or came too late, for me to meet my doppelgänger…”

The Aryan Republican Army and the OKC Bombing

The Aryan Republican Army, Elohim City, and the OKC Bombing
by Charles Richardson (nom de plume)
------------------------------------------------------------
"When they (the FBI) find out what I've  really  been  doing
the past two years, they'll really be surprised."
--Pete 'Commander Pedro' Langan, '96

THE ARYAN REPUBLICAN ARMY
=========================
In 1984, Robert Jay Matthews died in a shootout with  police
on Whidby Island, which is located just  off  the  coast  of
Washington state. Matthews was the  leader  of  a  far-Right
wing  group  calling  itself  The  Order.  This  group   was
responsible for a number of bank and armored  car  robberies
in  the  Pacific  Northwest, netting them almost $4 million.
In other  exploits,  Order  members  bombed  synagogues  and
assassinated Alan Berg, a Jewish radio  talk  show  host  in
Denver. The group ended with the death of Matthews  and  the
imprisonment of other members. [2]

A new and disturbing terrorist sect, similiar in  nature  to
The Order, has emerged in the United States. It  is  modeled
after the 'The Order' and The Irish Republican Army  and  is
adopting  the  IRA  structure  of  impenetrable  underground
cells. Calling itself the Aryan Republican Army,  the  group
represents  the  most  paramilitary  and  radical   of   the
American  neo-Nazi  movement.  It  is   committed   to   the
overthrow  of  the  US  government,  the  extermination   of
America's  Jews,  and  the  establishment   of   an   "Aryan
Republic"  on  the  North  American  continent.   "We   call
ourselves the Aryan Republican Army because in some  of  our
tactics, and  some  of  our  goals,  we  have  modeled  the
organization after the successful and yet  undefeated  Irish
Republican Army," said Commander Pedro [1], in  a  self-made
video titled  ``The  Aryan  Republican  Army  Presents:  The
Armed Struggle Underground.'' [4] In the video, Langan  also
advocates that "Federal buildings may have to be bombed  and
civilian loss of life  is  regrettable but expected."

The FBI discovered this terrorist cell by  accident  earlier
this year while investigating a string of 18 bank  robberies
in the Mid West. [1] The bank bandits made off with  upwards
of $500,000 before the FBI caught on to  them.

With a tip from a confidential informant, the FBI  was  able
to pinpoint one of the bank  robbers,  Richard  Lee  Guthrie
Jr., member  of  the  Aryan  Republican  Army.  Guthrie  was
arrested on  Jan  15,  1996.  Two  days  after  his  arrest,
Guthrie told FBI agents they could find co-conspirator  Pete
"Commander Pedro" Langan in a duplex at  585  Reinhard  Ave.
on the South Side. On Jan 18, 1996,  agents  surrounded  the
house and arrested Langan after a brief shootout. [2]

Guthrie struck a  plea  bargain  with  the  authorities  and
fingered Scott Stedeford, Kevin McCarthy, and Aryan  Nations
leader Mark Thomas, as accomplices in  the  bank  robberies,
all of whom have since been arrested by the authorities.

McCarthy plead guilty  to  three  robberies  and  agreed  to
testify against the others, while  Stedeford  was  convicted
of bank robbery in Iowa in November 1996 (and  faces  thirty
years in prison). Langan was convicted  in  Columbus,  Ohio,
on February 10, 1997. Richard Lee Guthrie was  found  hanged
in his jail  cell  shortly  after  he  struck a plea bargain
and fingered the other Aryan accomplices.

Mark Thomas was brought up on charges by a Grand  Jury.  The
Grand Jury indictment says Thomas  "recruited  young  people
at his residence....to rob banks and commit other crimes  on
behalf of the Aryan Republican Army," [3]

Thomas has since said he believed McCarthy,  a  skinhead  he
once described as a son, was an accomplice in  the  Oklahoma
City bombing. He said Richard Guthrie told him  as  much  in
July 1995.

"His exact words were: 'Your young Mr. Wizard took  out  the
Murrah Building,'" Thomas said. [3]

On February 18, 1997,  Thomas  plead  guilty  to  conspiracy
charges of plotting seven  (of  twenty-two)  bank  robberies
and using the funds  to  further  the  cause  of  the  Aryan
Republican Army.

Also arrested on Jan 30, 1997 in connection  with  the  case
was Michael Brescia of Philadelphia. Typical of  the  gang's
robbiers, authorities say, was  a  bank  heist  in  Madison,
Wis., on Aug. 30, 1995. Brescia carried a black-powder  pipe
bomb into a Bank One branch  and  threatened  customers  and
employees with a 9mm pistol, and proceeded to rob  the  bank
of $9,845. [4] Internet postings and a civil  suit  by  some
survivors of the bombing have accused Brescia  of  being  an
accomplice in the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Aside from robbing  banks,  the  terrorist  cell  stockpiled
weapons  and  ammunition,  and  had  every  opportunity   to
orchestrate  a  terrorist  bombing.  The  FBI   captured   a
shoulder-fired   rocket   launcher,    Semtex    explosives,
hand-grenade canisters, 11 pipe-bombs,  and  an  arsenal  of
guns.  "These  people  had  a  support  system.   They   had
safe-houses  and  very  good  false  documents,"  said  Mike
Reynolds,  senior  intelligence  analyst  at  the   Southern
Poverty  Law  Centre,  which  monitors  Right-wing  violence
across  the  country.  "They  were  clearly  preparing   for
something beyond bank  robberies." [1]   Among  other  items
seized from a storage locker belonging to the group was  the
Irish Republican Army handbook, a terrorist manual known  in
Ireland as the Green  Book,  along  with  an  assortment  of
books on the Irish struggle including A  Little  History  of
Ireland by Seamus MacCall and cassette  tapes  of  a  Gaelic
language course. [1]

ELOHIM CITY - BASE OF OPERATIONS
================================

Elohim City is a 400-acre  compound  located  near  Muldrow,
Oklahoma, about thirty-five miles northwest of  Fort  Smith,
Arkansas. It  was  founded  in  1973  by  Robert  Millar,  a
Canadian who preaches  that  white  Anglo-Saxons  are  God's
chosen people,  non-whites  are  descendants  of  pre-Adamic
species lower than whites, and Jews  are  Satan's  children.
Two dozen of Millar's  34  grandchildren  reside  at  Elohim
City, making up about a quarter of the resident  population.
Elohim City is considered a hotbed  of  terrorist  activity.
Members of the Aryan Republican  Army  used  the  seperatist
compound as a base of operations in  the  years  before  the
bombing.

In 1994, Michael Brescia  moved  to  Elohim  City  where  he
shared a one-story house behind the compound's  chapel  with
Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army lietenant and  head
of security at Elohim City. By the time Brescia left  Elohim
City in 1995, investigators  say,  he,  Stedeford,  Guthrie,
and McCarthy were active in the Aryan Republican Army. [4]

STRASSMIER -- HEAD OF SECURITY FOR ELOHIM CITY
==============================================

As of yet, Strassmier has not been identified  as  a  member
of the Aryan Republican Army, however, he was  friends  with
Brescia  and  various  members  of  the  Aryan  Underground.
According to Robert Millar,  "Strassmier  and  Brescia  were
buddies." In a phone interview with  John  Cash,  Strassmeir
said  he  liked  Brescia  because  ``he   had   a   lot   of
self-confidence'' and was ``a smart guy''.  [20]  Strassmier
also trained members of the Aryan Nations  at  Elohim  City,
and provided instruction in security measures. According  to
ATF Informant  Carol  Howe,  "Strassmeir  talked  frequently
about direct action against the U.S. government, he  trained
in weaponry, and he discussed assassinations,  bombings  and
mass shootings." [20]

Just Who is Andy the German?

Andreas Carl Strassmier is the son  of  Guenter  Strassmeir,
"the architect of German reunification" who was once  a  top
aide to German Chancellor Helmut  Kohl.  Andreas  Strassmeir
spent seven years in  the  German  army,  serving  with  the
Panzer Grenadiers and  an  elite  German  intelligence  unit
whose purpose was  to  feed  disinformation  to  East-German
Communist-bloc agents.

Strassmeir  told  the  London  Telegraph  that  "I've  never
worked for any U.S government  agency,  and  I've  not  been
involved in any intelligence operation  since  my  discharge
from the German army in 1988." But he acknowledged he  first
lived in the U.S. in 1989 because "I was hoping to work  for
the operations section of the DEA.  It  never  worked  out."
More revealingly, he noted that "the right-wing in the  U.S.
is incredibly easy to penetrate if you know how to  talk  to
them. Of course it's easier for a foreigner with an  accent.
Nobody would ever  suspect  a  German  of  working  for  the
federal government."

Strassmeir was assisted in his unsucessful attempts  to  get
jobs with the DEA or INS by  Vinvent  Petruskie,  a  retired
Air Force Colonel and (Strassmeir says) CIA agent  for  whom
Strassmeir arranged to buy used Boeing 747s from  Lufthansa.
Strassmeir received a social  security  number  in  1989  in
Virginia, and  obtained  a  Tennessee  driver's  license  in
1992, using a Knoxville address  provided  by  his  attorney
Kirk  Lyons.  In  1991  some  members  of  the  Texas  Light
Infantry Brigade, a citizen's militia,  followed  Strassmeir
to a federal building and observed him entering it at  night
using  the  key-pad. [20, 22]

After obtaining false documentation and a  drivers  license,
Strassmier was still  unable  to  find  a  job  (other  than
government  informant).  Because  Andy  could  not   legally
obtain a job,  and  because  of  his  apparant  intrests  in
'alternative lifestyles',  Andy  moved  to  Elohim  City  in
1993. At that time,  he  had  lived  in  the  United  States
illegally for five years.

Zara Patterson III, a long time  resident  of  Elohim  City,
summed up Strassmeir's intentions as equally ominous.  "From
the moment Andy got here (mid-August 1991) all he wanted  us
to do was illegal stuff. I had to keep telling Andy that  we
were defensive here... not offensive. I had to keep  telling
him that we didn't want any trouble with the Feds."

"I never saw anyone so eaten up with military stuff as  Andy
was," recalled Zara Patterson III. "I was  in  the  Marines,
but Andy was like nothing I ever  saw  before.  He  said  he
wanted to take over security and training here at EC, and  I
said fine. It was one less headache for me."

According to an FBI intelligence report, Strassmeir's  spent
his  time  at  Elohim  City  fortifying  and   operating   a
terrorist training facility.

A May 10, 1995 FBI investigative report says:

"Strassmeir is alleged to be a German citizen  whose  father
was a former member of  the  German  parliament.  Strassmeir
was a  member  of  the  German  military  and  according  to
sources the principal militia trainer at Elohim City."

"Strassmeir has an outstanding  federal  warrant  issued  by
the  Immigration  and  Naturalization  Service  (INS)  since
failing to leave this country in 1991.

"Strassmeir  is  alleged  to  train   platoon-sized   groups
consisting   of   approximately   30   to   40   individuals
approximately  every  three  months  at  the   Elohim   City
facility. These individuals  are  comprised  of  members  of
various militia groups throughout the United States."

"Additional documents reveal that  at  one  time  Strassmeir
was attempting to purchase a 747  aircraft  from  Lufthansa;
however the reason for the purchase is not reflected in  the
documents."

"Sources  have  advised  that  in  1992  Elohim   City   had
approximately 122 truck loads of concrete  transported  from
a  local  concrete  company.  Sources  have  indicated   the
existence of 'bunkers' and  weapons  storage  facilities  at
Elohim City."

In  a  Jan.  2,  1996  interview,   Strassmeir   admits   to
upgrading the Elohim City arsenal.

"They're pretty fully  equipped  over  there  (Elohim  City)
and I can take credit for that," he said. "They  never  even
had any real weapons there  until  after  Waco  (1993).  The
whole response was to Waco... they thought they  were  going
to be targeted."

Strassmier remained at Elohim City until the  Oklahoma  City
Bombing, at which time he  left  the  compound  with  fellow
Elomites Pete and Tony Ward. In a letter  to  the  McCurtain
Gazette from Strassmeir's attorney, Kurt Lyons,  Lyons  says
his client's sudden departure from the  U.S.  was  aided  by
members of Germany's elite counterterrorism unit, GSG-9.

Dennis  Mahon,  Tulsa  representative  of  the  White  Aryan
Resisitence, has named the Ward brothers as  being  possible
OKC Bombing accomplices. When shown an artist's sketch  done
by ABC News of the person that  a  witness  in  Kansas  said
used the name of Bob Kling, Mahon didn't  hesitate,  "That's
Pete Ward." [11]

"Ward," Mahon  explained,  "was  known  at  Elohim  City  as
'Andy's shadow'...Ward went everywhere  Strassmeir  did  and
is dumb as dirt."

THE FIRST PLOT
==============

"It has the potential, down the road, of being the most dangerous
group (Elohim City) in the country."

--Terry Nobles (former member of Covenant, Sword, Arm of the Lord)
Residents of Elohim City being  connected  with  plots  that
were intended to blow up the Murrah building did  not  begin
with  the  Aryan  Republican  Army.  On  April  19th,  1985,
exactly ten years before the bombing of the Murrah  building
the FBI and ATF raided members of James Ellison's  Covenant,
Sword, and Arm of the Lord group. Ellison is now married  to
Reverend Robert Millar's granddaughter and lives  at  Elohim
City.

The 1985 raid on Elohim City  became  a  siege  that  lasted
four  days  before  members  of  the  group  surrendered  to
authorities. After the  raid,  while  preparing  a  sedition
case against Ellison, U.S.  Assistant  attourney  Steven  N.
Snyder, in Fort Smith, Arkansas learned that a plot to  blow
up the building had existed as early as 1983.  [13]  Ellison
admitted in court that he had been involved  in  a  plot  to
bomb the Murrah Building. Another member of  conspirator  in
the 1983 bombing plan was  Terry  Nobles,  now  an  anti-neo
nazi activist. Nobles said "In 1983 we  cased  the  [Murrah]
building, and made plans to blow up that building." [23]

Richard Wayne Snell, another member of the Covenant,  was  a
co-conspirator with Ellison  and  Nobles.  Snell  has  since
been convicted and put to death for the murder  of  a  black
police officer and a businessman he believed to  be  jewish.
[14] Richard Wayne Snell was executed on April  19th,  1995.
The Denver  Post  reported  Arkansas  prison  official  Alan
Ables as saying that before Snell's execution on the day  of
the bombing he had "repeatedly predicted  that  there  would
be a bombing or explosion on the day of  his  death."  Snell
also  reportedly  "chuckled  and  laughed  as   he   watched
television coverage of the Oklahoma City disaster." [13]

THE KEHOE CONNECTION
====================

On July 17, 1997, a $20 million bond  was  set  by  an  Ohio
Judge for Chevie Kehoe, former resident of Elohim City. [27]

Kehoe was  detained  for  questioning  in  the  slayings  of
Tilly, Ark., gun dealer David Mueller his  wife  Nancy,  and
her  daughter,  Sarah  Elizabeth  Powell,   8.   The   three
disappeared in January 1996. Their  decomposed  bodies  were
dredged from the Illinois Bayou near Russellville, Ark. [15]

Kehoe is believed to have used a .223-caliber rifle,  stolen
from Meuller, when he  fired  26  shots  during  the  second
shootout with two Wilmington police officers at the  Clinton
Electrical and Plumbing Supply. The  reader  may  recognized
this shootout as it has  been  featured  on  primetime  tv's
'Cops', 'World's Scariest Police Shootouts', and  'PrimeTime
Live.'

Chevie Kehoe was assisted in the shootout  by  his  brother,
Cheyne Kehoe. Both brothers had spent time at  Elohim  City.
Robert Millar,  the  bearded  patriarch  of  this  so-called
"Christian Identity" compound, confirms  that  the  brothers
had  lived  at  Elohim  City,  along  with   four   of   the
Pennsylvania men indicted earlier this year in the ARA  bank
robberies. [16]

In recent news, The FBI is investigating claims by a  former
motel manager who says that  Chevie  Kehoe,  member  of  the
ARA, may have known months in advance of  Timothy  McVeigh's
plans to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building.

The FBI has interviewed the motel manager, who  said  Chevie
Kehoe showed up at the Spokane  motel  on  April  19,  1995,
about 45 minutes before the bombing, and said he  wanted  to
watch CNN. He reportedly was ecstatic when a  news  bulletin
reported the blast. [15]

The Spokesman Review newspaper in  Spokane  reported  Friday
that the hotel manager said Kehoe said "it was about  time''
after the explosion was reported. "Days before that, he  had
mentioned  to  me  that  there's  going  to   be   something
happening on the 19th and it's going to  wake  people  up,''
the manager told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.

ARA/ELOHIM CITY LINKS TO MCVEIGH AND FORITER
============================================

What makes this Aryan Army cell so menacing is  the  growing
body of evidence that its members were in contact  with  Tim
McVeigh, the prime suspect in the bombing  of  the  Oklahoma
federal building in April 1995.

McVeigh telephoned Andreas  Strassmier  at  Elohim  City  on
April 5,  1995,  just  minutes  after  reserving  the  truck
allegedly used in the bombing. [8,9]  On  October  12,  1993
McVeigh was stopped for speeding on  the  secluded  road  to
Elohim City. [10] Why did McVeigh call Elohim City to  speak
to Strassmier? What  was  McVeigh  doing  so  close  to  the
'patriot' community at Elohim City?

Even the spiritual leader of  Elohim  City,  Robert  Mollar,
has verified that Michael Fortier had visited  Elohim  City.
From an interview on KOKH-TV OKC, Robert  Mollar  was  asked
if Michael  Fortier  had  ever  been  to  Elohim  City.  His
response, "He might have been here for two or three days.  I
can't answer you. I would  think  it  would  be  before  the
bombing or shortly after. Right in that time frame." [6]

Confirming  Robert  Mollar's  testimony  is  Department   of
Alchohol Tobacco and Firearms Confidential Informant,  Carol
Howe. Among her  more  than  70  reports  to  the  ATF  were
warnings that two Elohim City  subjects  were  casing  three
Oklahoma federal buildings-- and preparing for a  subsequent
bombing. Howe  said  it  was  during  this  December,  1994,
period that Timothy McVeigh and Mike Fortier visited. [12]

"Sometime before Christmas a lot of guys  showed  up  at  EC
(Elohim City). One that I recall was Tim  (McVeigh),  who  I
only knew as Tim Tuttle. He was there with a  guy  who  used
the  name  Fontaine,  a  person  I  now  recognize  as  Mike
Fortier." [12]

Placing even MORE credence  to  this  theory  is  the  court
testimony of Michael Fortier. When  Nichols  Defense  Lawyer
Michael Tigar  asked  Fortier  "..you  said  that  you  were
fearful  of  reprisals  from  the  Aryan  movement  if   you
testified  against  Timothy  McVeigh;   correct?",   Fortier
answered in the affirmitive, "that is correct." [7]

In yet another strange turn  of  events,  Timothy  McVeigh's
sister said in a sworn statement dated  May  2,  1995,  that
Tim gave her (3)  $100.00  bills  and  asked  that  they  be
exchanged for 'clean money' because, her brother  said,  the
bills were "from a recent  bank  robbery  in  which  he  and
others had participated." [17]

Another confirmation  of  this  comes  from  Terry  Nichols.
While being  questioned  on  April  21st,  after  he  turned
himself in at the Kansas police station, Nichols  seemed  to
think that McVeigh was going to rob a bank. The  transcripts
of the FBI questionining indicate  something  very  peculiar
about Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh's April  16th,  1995
trip from Oklahoma City to Herington, Kansas.  Nichols  said
that on April 16th, Timothy McVeigh told him "You  will  see
something big in the future." Nichols asked, "What  are  you
going to do, rob a bank?" [18] What this does  indicate,  is
that Terry Nichols did wasn't aware  of  a  bombing  in  the
making,  but  he  was  familiar  with  McVeigh's  links   to
robbery. Why else would Nichols think of bank robbery  right
away, unless he was already familiar  with  McVeigh's  links
to such robbery?

Other circumstances include that when McVeigh  was  arrested
by State Trooper Charles Hanger, he had 2,000 cash  on  him.
[19] He hadn't had a job in six  months.  Later  information
revealed the the unemployed McVeigh had over $10,000  hidden
away in a number of  bank  accounts,  and  several  thousand
dollars stashed in storage units. [5]

In 1992, Catina Lawson,  who  lived  in  Herington,  Kansas,
remembers seeing  Strassmeir  along  with  Timothy  McVeigh,
whom she dated. Lawson recalled that  Strassmeir  "liked  to
dress in black, and he was real cold  and  arrogant--a  real
jerk." Two other witnesses, Larry and Cathy Wild,  say  they
saw and talked with Strassmeir at a lake north of  Herington
the week before the OKC bombing [21]

STRASSMIER, BRESCIA, MCVEIGH CELEBRATE
======================================

When he wasn't robbing banks and training  with  members  of
the  Aryan  Republican  Army,  Michael  Brescia   apparently
celebrated at a strip club or two.  Five  women  at  a  Lady
Godiva's of Tulsa have identified  Michael  Brescia  as  the
man they saw sitting with Tim McVeigh - and paying  for  the
drinks - on April 8, 1995, 11 days before the bombing. [1]

On  a  program  called  "The  Fifth  Estate,"  the  Canadian
counterpart to this  country's  "Sixty  Minutes,"  reporters
obtained  portions  of  a  security  video  taken  at   Lady
Godivas, the Tulsa Strip club. John Cash, of  the  McCurtain
Gazette has also followed up on this story  and  acquired  a
copy of the video tape.

The videotape  was  taken  in  the  dressing  room  of  Lady
Godiva's on the night of April 8, 1995. A dancer is  clearly
heard saying, "And he said,  'I'm  a  very  smart  man.'....
'You are?'.... 'Yes, I am.'....  'And  on  April  19,  1995,
you'll remember me for the rest of  your  life!'"  Laughing,
she  says,  "Oh,  really?"  "Yes  you  will,"  she  says  he
responded. [25] Smiling wide, the dancer starts to walk  out
of the dressing room where the security camera was  located,
then turns back to  the  other  girls  and  says,  "Weirdo,"
before returning out front. Today it can  be  revealed  that
from photographs, witnesses at the club identified  the  man
doing the bragging as  Timothy  McVeigh,  and  those  seated
with him as Michael Brescia,  and  his  former  Elohim  City
roommate, Andreas Strassmeir. [26] The  witnesses  from  the
topless club agreed to appear on that Canadian  TV  segment,
identifying the photos. [25] The FBI has reviewed a copy  of
the video from the club and has also  interviewed  the  same
witnesses featured in  the  CBC  program,  but  the  Justice
Department has made no official comment on what they  intend
to do with the evidence. Since then, one of  the  witnesses,
Shawn Tea Farrens, 23,  was  found  dead  in  her  apartment
(September 1996)
END OF ARTICLE
Footnotes:

[1] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The London Telegraph, Issue 564
[2] Robert Ruth, "Friend's Tip To FBI led to Arrests In Bank Bandits
Case", The Columbus Dispatch, 12-04-96
[3] John P. Martin, "Thomas Indicted in Bank Robberies", The Morning
Call, 01-31-97
[4] Mark Fazlollah, "Eagle Scout was soldier for far right", The
Philadelphia Inquirer, 02-28-97
[5] Lawrence Myers, Media Bypass, 06-95
[6] KOKC, Oklahoma City TV, Robert Mollar Interview, 04-02-97
[7] Terry Nichols Trial Transcripts
[8] Peter Annin and Tom Morganthau, "Blowing Smoke," Newsweek, 02-19-96
[9] Timothy McVeigh Trial, "Darryl Bridges" calling card exhibit
[10] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Did Agents Bungle US Terror Bomb?",
London Sunday Telegraph, 05-19-96
[11] John Cash, "Confessions of a Revolutionary", McCurtain Gazette,
04-01-97
[12] John Cash, "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold", McCurtain Gazette,
02/11/97
[13] Kelly Kurt, Monterey County (California) Herald, Associated Press,
05/20/95
[14] Reuters, 02-08-96
[15] Mark Jewell, "FBI investigating new lead in Oklahoma City Bombing",
Associated Press, 01-17-98
[16] William Jasper, The New American Magazine, 03/31/97
[17] Pierre Thomas, "McVeigh's Sisters Says he Robbed, Carried
Explosives", Washington Post reported in San Fransisco Chronicle,
07-19-95
[18] Patrick E. Cole, "What Nichols Revealed", Time Magazine, 10-06-97
[19] David Johnston, "Just Before He Was To Be Freed, Prime Bombing
Suspect Is Identified in Jail", New York Times, 04-22-95
[20] John Cash, "Strassmeir Helped Fortify, Arm Elohim City Bunkers",
McCurtain Gazette,  04-13-97
[21] Laura Frank,  "Oklahoma  Probe May Touch Tennessee," The
Tennessean, 06-30-96
[22] Orlin Grabbe, "Oklahoma City, Government-Paid Neo-Nazis, and the
FCC", http://www.taci.net/kalliste
[23] Chris Hansen, "City of Secrets", NBC Dateline, 05-30-97
[24] David Hoffman, "Family on Quest for Answers Meets Harassment,
Intimidation", The Washington Weekly, 04/21/97
[25] "The Fifth Estate", The Canadian Broadcasting Company, 10-22-96
[26] John Cash, "Is A Videotape From A Tulsa Topless Bar The "Smoking
Gun" In Oklahoma Bombing?", McCurtain Daily Gazette, 09-25-96
[27] The Militia Watchdog, http://www.militia-watchdog.com, 12-12-97
[28] Judy Thomas, Kansas City Star, Sunday, 03-17-96.

"I think there are other  people  out  there  and  suspicions
were probably made very early on that Tim McVeigh and  Terry
Nichols were who they were looking for, and  the  same  sort
of resources were not used to  try  to  find  out  who  else
might be involved."

--Nicki Deutchmann, Terry Nichols Jury Foreman

"Witnesses who saw  Timothy  McVeigh  with  John  Doe  2  or
other suspects  were  not  allowed  to  testify  before  the
Federal Grand Jury."

--Hoppy Heidelberg, OKC Bombing Federal Grand Jury member
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(c) 1997 Charles Richardson - (*) free to distribute nonprofit under the
condition that this file is not modified in any way and all notes and
sources are attributed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Believe nothing merely because you have been told it... Do not believe
 what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But
 whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind,
 conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings -- that
 doctrine believe and cling to and take it as your guide.
 -- Buddha

The Panther

Nelson DeMille
http://nelsondemille.net/books/panther.asp

Publication Date: October 16, 2012

Anti-Terrorist Task Force agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield have been posted overseas to Sana'a, Yemen—one of the most dangerous places in the Middle East. While there, they will be working with a small team to track down one of the masterminds behind the USS Cole bombing: a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative known as The Panther.

Ruthless and elusive, he's wanted for multiple terrorist acts and murders—and the US government is determined to bring him down, no matter the cost. As latecomers to a treacherous game, John and Kate don't know the rules, the players, or the score. What they do know is that there is more to their assignment than meets the eye—and that the hunters are about to become the hunted.

Petraeus: Murdoch wanted to bankroll campaign

David Petraeus claimed Rupert Murdoch wanted to bankroll his presidential campaign
Jon Swaine, Washington
04 Dec 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9722256/David-Petraeus-claimed-Rupert-Murdoch-wanted-to-bankroll-his-presidential-campaign.html

David Petraeus was urged to run for the US presidency by one of Rupert Murdoch's American lieutenants and told that the media tycoon would bankroll his campaign, it has emerged.

The former CIA director, who resigned last month after having an extramarital affair with his biographer, declined in order to protect his personal life. "My wife would divorce me," he said. "And I love my wife".

Mr Petraeus learned while commanding US forces in Afghanistan last year that Roger Ailes, the chairman of Mr Murdoch's Fox television network, wanted him to challenge President Barack Obama.

Mr Ailes, a key Republican powerbroker who worked for Richard Nixon, told Mr Petraeus that he should reject the job of CIA director – from which he resigned last month – and campaign for the White House.

"I thought the Republican field needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate," Mr Ailes told Bob Woodward, the veteran Washington Post reporter, who disclosed news of the talks.

Mr Ailes passed his message to Mr Petraeus through an emissary sent to interview him in Kabul 18 months ago for Fox News, Mr Murdoch's American news channel, which is beloved by US conservatives.

"I've got something to say to you directly from Roger Ailes," Kathleen McFarland, a national security analyst for the channel, told Mr Petraeus.

"He loves you and everyone at Fox loves you.

"He says that if you're offered chairman [of the joint chiefs of staff], take it," Ms McFarland continued. "But if you're offered anything else, don't take it, resign in six months and run for president".

Mr Petraeus was at the time the subject of fevered speculation among Republicans, who believed that he could return to the US as a respected war hero able to defeat Mr Obama in last month's election. The President's decision to make him CIA director was seen by some analysts as an attempt to sideline a potential political rival.

In their discussion, Ms McFarland added that Mr Ailes could resign from his role as Fox News chief to run a Petraeus 2012 presidential campaign. "Tell him if I ever ran," Mr Petraeus said, laughing, "but I won't, but if I ever ran, I'd take him up on his offer," adding: "He said he would quit Fox and bankroll it."

Challenged over whether Mr Ailes, who is paid about $20 million (£12 million) a year, would be wealthy enough to fund the campaign, Mr Petraeus said: "Maybe I'm confusing that with Rupert," adding: "Rupert's after me as well." Spokesmen for Mr Murdoch declined to comment.

Declaring "I love Roger, he's a brilliant guy", Mr Petraeus politely demurred and said he needed to focus on his home life after stepping down from commanding troops at war.

"It's never going to happen," he said. "My wife would divorce me. And I love my wife".

Referring to his home in Virginia, he added: "We have a beautiful house with his-and-hers bathrooms, believe it or not. I just want to live in it. I've never spent a night in it".

Mr and Mrs Petraeus, who have been married for 37 years, have retreated to their home to repair their relationship after he admitted having an affair with Paula Broadwell, who wrote his biography. The affair did not begin until some time after his comments to Ms McFarland.

Mr Petraeus resigned after it emerged the FBI was investigating the affair as part of an inquiry sparked by a complaint about threatening emails allegedly sent to a female friend of Mr Petraeus by Mrs Broadwell.

Done in by the PATRIOT Act

The Grand Irony of the Petraeus Sex Scandal
Dave Lindorff
Mon, 11/12/2012
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1424

There is a delicious irony to the story of the crash-and-burn career of Four-Star General and later (at least briefly) CIA Director David Petraeus.

The man who was elevated to the ethereal ranks of a General Eisenhower or Robert E. Lee by swooning corporate myth makers like the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin, the Washington Post’s David Iglesias, and the NY Times’ Michael Gordon, was never really that brilliant. It wasn’t his “surge” after all that quieted things down (temporarily) in Iraq; rather it was a deal to pay off the insurgents with cash to stand down until the US could gracefully pull out without the departing troops having to be shoot their way down to Kuwait in full retreat. As for his allegedly “brilliant” counterinsurgency policy of “winning hearts and minds,” we have already seen how well that has worked in Iraq, which is now basically a client state of Iran, and the writing is already on the wall in Afghanistan, where the US is almost universally loathed, with US forces spending most of their time looking out for Afghan soldiers who might turn their guns on their supposed ally and “mentor” American troops.

For a real measure of Gen. Petraeus, go to Admiral William Fallon -- that rare military leader who had the guts to tell President Bush and Cheney he would not allow an attack on Iran “on his watch,” thereby quite possibly saving us all from being at war with Iran years ago. Fallon, who at the time in 2007 was head of Centcom, the military command region covering the entire Middle East, once reportedly called, Petraeus, who was being put in charge of the Iraq theater, an “ass-licking little chicken-shit” -- to his face.

Anyhow, what makes the epic collapse of this consummate political general’s career so exquisite is that it was the post-9-11 spying capabilities of the FBI that allowed its agents to slip unannounced into the email of the General’s paramour, Paula Broadwell (a name that could have been selected by Ian Fleming!), and possibly into the general’s own email too, there to find the evidence, allegedly in the form of X-rated letters, of a covert adulterous relationship underway.

We now know that the FBI was alerted to this breach of decorum (if the illicit romance began while Petraeus was on active duty in Afghanistan, he could be prosecuted under the same rules that have led to the prosecution of many lower ranking offers: bringing ill-repute upon the military) and lack of judgement on the part of the head of the nation’s spooks, by a second woman, Jill Kelley, who was a volunteer military liaison and family friend of the Petraeus clan. Kelley’s closeness to Petraeus allegedly caused the jealous Broadwell to allegedly send threatening emails to her imagined rival, including one that told her to “stay away from my guy!”

It seems likely Kelley, in asking the FBI to put a halt to the threatening emails, would have been quick to point out that Broadwell was having an affair with Petraeus. In any event, once the FBI successfully go the telecom company she was using to allow them into Broadwell’s email, that would have been clear, and it would have been easy work to move on to the general’s own cache of love letters (in which he may have been referred to by Broadwell by what she told The Daily Show's John Stewart was his childhood nickname: "Peaches").

The CIA chief was thus done in by the Patriot Act and other assorted violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, all backed by Gen. Petraeus and his political promoters in Congress and the White House, as well as in the corporate media.

Of course, while we can enjoy this payback, and speculate on how it must be giving the shivers to many a philandering White House staffer and member of Congress, it should also be a warning to us all that the FBI, the CIA, and the myriad other intelligence agencies littering the US landscape, these days have virtually limitless ability to monitor our every email message, tweet and phone call.

Maybe we should invite the now humbled Petreaeus to become the poster child for a renewed battle to restore the Bill of Rights.

General Petraeus: “The Spy Who Loved Him”

Jon Rappoport

It's absurd to think the FBI just found out about CIA Director Petraeus' affair with Paula Broadwell, his biographer. The timing is too convenient.

The FBI knew about the affair some time ago and, under strict orders, kept their mouths shut until just after Election Day. If they hadn't, the scandal would have blown up during Obama's campaign run.

During the period the FBI knew about Petraeus' affair, they also knew he was completely vulnerable to blackmail. In FBI and CIA circles, to have done nothing about it is considered treasonous. Putting a gag on these FBI people had to been done by the White House.

The latest word is that Petraeus will not testify before Congress about what really happened in Benghazi. He "may be called" on the carpet at a future time, which could mean never.

His absence will help conceal details of the Chris Stevens murder and the build-up of US-sponsored terrorists in the Benghazi sector of Libya.

In fact, Petraeus' initial statements to Congress, behind closed doors on September 14, led legislators to believe that absurd film trailer was the cause of the "uprising" at the house where Stevens was attacked and killed. Was the General's ridiculous declaration made under orders from the White House, who had the blackmail goods on him?

Then, finally, on October 26th, Petraeus, perhaps fed up at how he was being used by the White House to provide cover for the president, stated: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need [in Bengazi]. Claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate."

In this whole scenario, we would be looking at a potential case of double blackmail. First by the White House, who knew of the affair sometime ago, and second, by whoever might have wrung CIA and military secrets out of Petraeus because they knew about his affair with Broadwell.

What does that make Paula Broadwell. In intelligence parlance, she would be a classic "honey trap."

By circumstance, by accident, or on purpose?

She has a long military background. A graduate of West Point, she directed counter-terrorism studies at Tufts University. She worked with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. She is no innocent.

She very well knew that, during the time of their extended affair, Petraeus was vulnerable to any number of blackmail vectors. This did not make her waver.

She knew this wasn't just some fling with a lieutenant colonel or even a run-of-the-mill general. Petraeus was head of all forces in the Afghanistan war. Then he was CIA director.

There are a lot of ways to write a biography that don't involve sleeping with the subject and opening him up to blackmail at a very high level.

People from both sides of the aisle in Washington are expressing deep sorrow that an American hero had to resign. What nonsense. They're building cover for Petraeus. They're intentionally avoiding the question of what compromises he may have agreed to during his peak military service and intelligence directorship.

In Afghanistan, Petraeus was Obama's choice to replace Stanley McChrystal, the general who blew his career during a Rolling Stone interview in which his men took pot shots at the president.

It is quite fair to ask whether Petraeus served as Obama's man in Afghanistan under the unspoken but implied threat that, if there were any kerfuffles, any deviations, any criticisms of the White House Afghan policy, Petraeus' affair would become public knowledge.

Despite claims by a friend that the affair with Broadwell began after Petraeus assumed leadership of the CIA, there is a strong possibility it started earlier, when Broadwell was "embedded" with the general in Afghanistan.

Was Paula Broadwell covertly working for the White House during her affair with Petraeus? Was she working for somebody else? Did she start out as an agent? Was she drawn into becoming one because she, too, as a married woman, was open to blackmail?

The public and the mainstream press, playing the part of "oh isn't this too bad but of course nothing really serious or weird or compromising could have happened here," doesn't want to know how the spy game is actually played. They'd rather watch Jeopardy and pop Zoloft.

"Two people, both married, couldn't resist a great passion. It happens. All of us make mistakes. We understand. Even great men can succumb. And she was obviously smitten. What a shame."

Yeah. Sure.

Petraeus, the man, is now a legitimate target for serious questions. If he entered into the affair, knowing full well the blackmail it opened him up to, what is he all about? Where have his loyalties resided?

Some starry-eyed people will think asking about this is "impolite," because, after all, "the man is an American hero." Nonsense.

Then we have questions about Petraeus' potential political career. The press went after him with all sorts of questions about what he might do in the 2012 election. The idea was out there. Could he run for president against Obama? Could he become the next Eisenhower?

If he had decided to make the move, he would have had a formidable number of supporters. But he adamantly said no. Was this a genuine expression of disinterest, or was Petraeus already compromised and under the thumb of the White House?

"All right, David, you're gone from Afghanistan now. You've retired from the Army. The hero returns. Don't get any ideas about running for president. You know what we know about you. By the way, the director of Central Intelligence is open. How would you like that job?"

"Oh no," people say. "This kind of thing would never happen."

Really? What kind of world do you think Washington is? The Peace Corp with martini lunches? The Unitarian Church with occasional brandies and cigars?

Remember Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's famous remark when she was asked about the devastation the US was wreaking in Iraq through its economic sanctions?

May 12, 1996, 60 Minutes. Lesley Stahl says: "We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price---we think the price is worth it."

Now that's the real world of Washington, once the PR people get out of the way.

Blackmail of a famous general, a director of the CIA? That's nothing.

A famous general falling under the power of blackmail? A general who knows some of the deep dark secrets about Dope Inc., the trillion-dollar opium growing operation in Afghanistan, a general whose troops have helped to restore the planting of the poppies there? A general who knows about the longed-for oil pipeline running through Afghanistan and the various persons whom it will benefit?

Could Petraeus have been a target for all manner of blackmail mounted by numerous parties?

Is the Pope Catholic?

The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com.

Were the Batman murders a covert op?

Friday, July 27, 2012
Jon Rappoport
http://www.naturalnews.com/036612_Batman_massacre_covert_op.html

(NaturalNews) The obvious way to begin an investigation is to look at the event itself for any obvious contradictions or unexplained details.

For example, in the Batman murders, we have two witnesses who were in the theater and implied there were accomplices.

One witness, Corbin Dates (aka Dayton), told Aurora news outlets a man sitting in the front row took a cell phone call and went to a side exit, propped the door open with his foot, and seemed to be signaling somebody. Ten to 15 minutes later, James Holmes appeared in full gear with weapons as the exit door swung open The other witness (no name as yet) stated that, during the massacre, a gas canister was thrown from a direction where Homes wasn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-fcD7pyfL8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4MW_qhAPAU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=Hoaiw2jrpmE&NR=1

Despite the statements of these apparent witnesses, Aurora Chief of Police Daniel Oates claims he is sure James Holmes acted alone.

But we need to back up. First of all, neither witness actually IDed Holmes. They IDed a man who was dressed in black from head to toe, wore a helmet, body armor, and a gas mask. Actually, no one has identified Holmes as the man in the theater. How could they? His face and body were covered and concealed.

How did the shooter get into the theater? Clad in black, wearing body armor, carrying several weapons, he buys a ticket and walks in with everyone else? Authorities suggest he came through a side door. If so, how did he know the door would be unlocked? After a few months of meticulous planning, he simply hoped it would be?

Watching these two witnesses being interviewed by TV news reporters is extremely frustrating. The reporters have their hands on potentially explosive information and they don't follow up. Nor do they press police for comments on the witness statements.

Nevertheless, from what we can provisionally surmise about the crime scene, there are huge gaps in the official scenario---if we can even call it a scenario.

Standing out above everything else is the fact that no one can ID Holmes as the shooter.

We are told by police that, after Holmes was done killing people in the theater, he exited a side door (the same door through which he had entered?), stood quietly, and surrendered himself to the authorities. This, too, is unclear. The police were already stationed at the exit door? Holmes waited until they arrived? Was he still holding weapons?

It's said he was calm. He gave himself up.

After killing scores of people and wounding others, the first-time shooter was calm? How could this be? Well, drugs would enter the equation. What drugs? Vicodin. Others? Where were these drugs obtained? Who wrote the prescriptions? Where is the doctor? Why have we heard nothing about a doctor? What, exactly, going back into childhood, is Holmes' pharmaceutical history?

If this was a true covert op, it would have been easy for a pro shooter to decimate the people in the theater, slip out the exit door with his accomplice or accomplices, where the patsy, Holmes, drugged, was waiting with other operatives. After dousing Holmes with gunpowder residue, the pros left the scene, disappeared into the night, leaving a pre-programmed Holmes there to confess to the crime and state that his apartment was rigged with explosives.

If this is how things happened, it would explain how Holmes, possessed of no apparent knowledge about constructing bombs, could have had his apartment wired with exotic devices. Holmes didn't put them together. The pros did.

At Holmes' court appearance on Monday, he certainly looked drugged as he moved slowly in the courtroom and sat in his chair. If so, who gave him the drugs in jail?

Of course, huge gaps exist in Holmes' life story. We have no explanation for his transformation from a young eager science student into a blank-faced defendant in a mass-murder case. Had he ever been to see a psychiatrist? If so, what drugs were prescribed? Ritalin, which can cause violent behavior? Antidepressants, which can cause violent behavior?

Had he ever been enrolled in a clinical trial of an experimental drug? During his brief matriculation at the University of Colorado, Denver, had he been used in a neuroscience experiment? The web page for the University neuroscience department, where Holmes studied on a government grant, has been taken down.

One oddity about the investigation of the killings: the FBI presence is minimal. We don't know what the FBI is doing behind the scenes, but by contrast, in the 1999 Columbine massacre the FBI was all over the scene in a very visible way. They interviewed witnesses, processed evidence, and made public statements. Here, they're in the background. Why?

I offer one possible explanation. In Columbine, the FBI became a lightning rod for doubts and questions, and accusations of overlooking/suppressing evidence that would lead to more than two shooters. Here in Aurora, it's all local: "we have the killer, he's in jail, the case is proceeding, nothing to see, move along." This appears to be an intentional strategy. Keep it simple, don't stir up the populace.

We'll have to watch, as the disposition of the court case unfolds, to see whether the "simple" strategy is extended. Perhaps we'll have a guilty plea and a quick sentence. Or perhaps court-appointed psychiatrists will decide Holmes is incompetent to cooperate in his own defense, in which case he'll be remanded to a mental facility for a period of time, after which he'll quietly enter a guilty plea and be sentenced. But what does "incompetent" mean? Drugged into submission?

I believe there are specific items of evidence which, if known, would provoke new questions on top of the witness statements above. For example, was an older model (outdated) police car seen leaving the area of the theater after the shootings? What was the blood evidence on Holmes' clothing and shoes? Whose blood was it? Did it belong to victims inside the theater? Was Holmes, as he stood at the exit to the theater and surrendered himself, covered in more blood than he would have accumulated as a shooter? In other words, was he set up as the designated patsy?

And are there more witnesses in the theater who saw accomplices? If so, as in Columbine, they will, no doubt, be told by law enforcement to keep quiet. If there is a trial, will Corbin Dates and the other anonymous witness mentioned above be asked to testify? The chances are slim to none.

If the Batman murders are indeed a covert op, the motives behind it don't need much explanation. The UN Arms Trade Treaty, which has been under final discussions in New York since July 3rd, and is due to wrap up on July 27th, is a new step in the direction of gun confiscation, despite its announced aim of limiting only the export of weapons from one nation to another. Once the Treaty is signed, it will need senate ratification to go into effect and impact the 2nd Amendment. That ratification is the hard part for gun-control advocates. The tragedy at the Batman premier on July 20 could act as a pressure wave-front on senators to rubber-stamp the treaty.

Other motives to stage the shootings in Aurora? The manufacture of a consensus for massive "crime prevention," and that means the extended use of medical drugs to influence behavior and the brain toward the goal of passivity and conformity---with the victims ENJOYING IT. (See Soma, the drug of choice in Huxley's Brave New World.)

"Say something, see something" is only part of the picture. Creating a nation of snitches is certainly on the DHS's to-do list. But we are in the Century of the Brain. Researchers are eager to pawn off their discoveries for the development of technology that can literally limit behavior and thought. Behind the facade of "curing mental disorders," this is where brain research is heading. Free will and choice are considered flimsy outmoded notions that need to be cast aside, so the Brave New World can emerge. James Holmes becomes a classic case of a man whose brain needs "restructuring." The globalist technocrats want every inch they can win in the battle to convince the public that brain manipulation holds a promising future for the human race. Of course, their idea of the future is synaptic and neuronal control. Holmes is one more poster child for their chilling agenda.

Brad Garrett, a former FBI profiler and now an analyst for ABC News, is one of the prime go-to experts who deliver pronouncements on mass murderers. Garrett supplies the public perception of these killers.

Here are his off-the-shelf conclusions about James Holmes: "[Mass killers are] insecure, they start having, perhaps, dark thoughts that people are following them or that there are voices---auditory voices---that are directing them...some version of this happened to Mr. Holmes...the onset of whatever this chemical imbalance might be, it starts taking over, and he starts withdrawing..."

It's a well-recognized fact that there are no chemical or biological tests to confirm a diagnosis of any so-called mental disorder. The whole hypothesis of "chemical imbalance" as the basis for mental disease is just that, a hypothesis. Nevertheless, Garrett promotes it as if it's accepted science, and he doubles down by suggesting that Holmes was hearing voices directing his actions.

But psychiatric drugs (e.g., Ritalin, Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Haldol, etc.), used to curb mental problems, instead actually CAUSE patients to experience paranoia and hallucinations and withdraw---and plan and commit violence. It's the drugs. Garrett is providing cover to explain Holmes' actions as mental illness, when in fact he knows nothing about what Holmes experienced or why. If Holmes was, in fact, a mind-control subject, that is hidden behind psychobabble.

Garrett supplies exactly the kind of narrative that calls for "early intervention," prevention of crime throughout society before it occurs, which, in the hands of brain researchers, means chemical and other means of controlling "anti-social" impulses.

It is noteworthy that a young neuroscience student, Holmes, who was at one point studying "the biological basis of mental disorders," winds up as an accused mass murderer who is "obviously deranged" and "suffering from a chemical imbalance in the brain."

At this point, we go down the rabbit hole, and the pieces of the puzzle are strange and tantalizing.

A video has emerged of Holmes, at age 18, six years ago, lecturing to fellow attendees at a science summer camp at Miramar College in San Diego.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lotOPjLlbDU

Holmes explains he has been studying temporal illusions and subjective experience. A temporal illusion, he states, is the idea that you can change the past.

At the Cannonfire blog (http://cannonfire.blogspot.com) there are comic-book panels posted from what Joseph Cannon calls "the most famous passage in the most famous of all Joker stories, Alan Moore's 'The Killing Joke.'"

The Joker is asked: "I mean, what is it with you? What made you you the way you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob? Maybe brother carved up by some mugger...?"

The Joker replies: "Something like that happened to me, you know...I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another...if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha!"

James Holmes, at 18 years of age, said he was studying temporal illusion, "the idea that you can change the past," a feat the fictional Joker had obviously accomplished.

In the last ten years, the film that explored this subject---and Holmes' other interest, the subjectivity of experience---most deeply, through its treatment of dreams and the insertion of synthetic experience in the mind, was Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan, who of course also directed the recent Batman trilogy, including The Dark Knight Rises. In yet another version of changing the past, in 2000 Nolan directed Memento, which unraveled its story backwards, as a victim of anterograde amnesia, who can't store memories, tries to revenge his wife's murder by leaving clues for himself that will lead him to the identity of her killer.

Are we simply talking about a neuroscience student's (Holmes') interest in comics and films, or did he participate in experiments that attempted to alter his subjective view of the world and his own past?

For example, there is wealth of information about the criminal experiments conducted by Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. Ewan Cameron, who operated with funding from the CIA during the 1950s. Cameron ran MKULTRA Subproject 68, during which he used massive electroshocks, sensory isolation, drug-induced periods of sleep (7-10 days), and audiotapes of "re-patterning" commands to attempt to wipe out patients' pasts, their memories, their former subjective mindsets, their very personalities---in favor of recreating these patients as "new and improved people."

As a teen, Holmes interned at the Salk Institute in San Diego. Salk carries out studies using functional MRI, a technique of brain mapping that involves correlating read-outs with various mental activities. It's only speculation at this point, but somewhere along the line, did Holmes participate in such experiments, and were the results used to map regions of his brain for later inputs, so someone could achieve behavioral/thought control over him?

To even suggest Holmes may be a mind-control subject brings immediate criticism, to which I would offer this counter: why accept the scenario of the crime put forward by the Aurora police? Why do they deserve the benefit of the doubt? Why limit and narrow the investigation to their story?

Was law enforcement correct about the JFK and JFK and MLK assassinations? Was law enforcement correct about the Columbine massacre, in which 101 witnesses state they saw other shooters? Was law enforcement correct about the lone duo of plotters in the Oklahoma bombing? Was law enforcement correct about 9/11?

In all cases---no.

I'll tell you this. If the authorities really wanted to know what makes James Holmes tick (a prospect I strongly doubt), their best chance would be to send someone into his cell who could talk to him about Christopher Nolan, Inception, Memento, functional MRI, the TV series, Lost, which contained time-travel themes and was a show he and his friend, Ritchie Duong, used to watch together every week when they attended UC Riverside. Talk to Holmes about what he wants to talk about. Who knows what would eventually unravel?

It might be far more than the police wish to uncover.

Sources:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Nolan

About Jon Rappoport

The author of an explosive new collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.

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