Pond Declassified

The Pond: The Audio Play!

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:44:37 GMT

COMING IN 2010....NO FILM, NO PLAY EVER CAME CLOSE!

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER....

THE STORY YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW, IS ABOUT TO BE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

THE POND

The CIA vs Joseph McCarthy

Written, Produced and Directed

By Michael Flores

An audio play coming soon! THE POND is the shocking true story of Joseph McCarthy based on declassified CIA and KGB files! Told in a modern day old time radio format!

The secret deal with Japan

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:38:29 GMT

Teddy Roosevelt's Secret Deal with Japan: An Interview with James Bradley

By Aaron Leonard

Mr. Leonard is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to HNN. For more information please visit his website at www.aaronleonard.net

James Bradley author of �Flags of Our Fathers� and �Flyboys� has just published The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War. HNN contributor Aaron Leonard recently sat down with him in New York to discuss the book.

Unlike Flags of Our Fathers -- with its iconic American flag raising on Mt. Suribachi -- this book shows the planting of the U.S. flag on foreign soil in quite another way. How did you come to write this?

My dad was one of the guys who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. When I was nine years old we were studying history. My Dad came home one night, and I said, �Dad your on page 94 of my history book. My teacher said you�re a hero and she wants you to come and talk to my class.� My father looked at the photo and gently closed the book. He�s talking to a nine year old, so he said, �James I can�t come and talk to your class I forgot everything,� that was often his excuse. Then he looked at my eyes as if wanted to imbed an idea in my little 9-year-old brain for the rest of my life, and said, �I want you to always remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys that did not come back.�

After writing two books about World War II in the Pacific, I now know there are a lot of guys that did not come back. Not only Americans, but millions of Asians. So I began to think about the source of this war. What was going on? What historical forces took my Dad from Wisconsin out to the tiny little island of Iwo Jima, six hundred miles south of Tokyo. How did that happen?

The explanation we are given is Pearl Harbor. Because of [the Japanese attack on] Pearl Harbor we fought Japan. But when you look at Pearl Harbor, its very interesting, Pearl Harbor was not an invasion of the United States. The Japanese didn�t hit Pearl Harbor to continue to California. They hit Pearl Harbor to go the other way. They wanted to expand in Asia, that was the Japanese game. They hit Pearl Harbor so we would not stop their expansion in Asia. That was the disagreement. That was the problem.

My Dad did not fight in Iwo Jima to protect his mother in Wisconsin from the Japanese. He fought in Iwo Jima to protect Burmese mothers and Vietnamese mothers, where the Japanese were expanding.

So I thought if Japanese expansion was the problem, what�s the source? What�s the root of this? When did Japan first expand and what was the American view on this? What did the officials of the time think about this?

I found that in the summer of 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched the largest delegation to Asia in U.S. history. I had a sense that this was a large delegation and wondered what they did out there? In the summer of 2005 -- one hundred years later -- I followed in the wake of this imperial cruise. I was shocked by what I found. That�s how the book came about.

It�s interesting what you�re saying about Pearl Harbor being the Japanese asserting their domination, but to what degree was this the US really asserting its domination. For example in this book you write about how the US came to control the Philippines --- and what comes through is a very brutal imperialist domination. To what degree was this the U.S. taking charge of that region?

In this book I don�t so much write about Pearl Harbor, I only bring it up to say, what was the source of this explosion? Every divorce has a first kiss, I was looking for that first kiss...and I found that in the summer of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt -- the Nobel Peace Prize Committee didn�t know, the Senate didn�t know -- agreed to a treaty where America and Japan would walk hand in hand onto the Asian continent to take it over. And Japan needed Korea as a springboard for that plan. Roosevelt in a secret treaty agrees to give Korea to Japan. He lights the match on this situation that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would later deal with in World War 2.

Somebody said to me, �Mr. Bradley, you�re saying Theodore Roosevelt caused Pearl Harbor?� Well, you know, history�s not that simple, but the problem in WW2 in the Pacific was Japan expanding, where did that begin? It began in July 1905 and the most famous man in the world, the man who was supposedly the honest broker between Japan and Russia said its fine with me. Why? Roosevelt thought that America could have its big stick in north Asia.

The Columbia professor, who I cite in the book, says the great question of the 20th Century is going be whether Asia is Anglo-Saxon or Slav. Because the Chinese, they are a declining race. So Roosevelt looked at Asia with a theoretical lens, with theories that told him China was going to crumble like an old barn. More vigorous countries were going to move into that territory. The three countries that Roosevelt saw this being were Britain, the U.S., and Japan. His theories told him that Japan was an ascending race, China was a descending race. America was going to put its bet on Japan and he calculated incorrectly that Japan would listen to America and only expand so far. Roosevelt�s minister to Beijing wrote [to the effect that] definitely Japan jumping into Korea, that will be the far extension of the Japanese empire, we can be sure.

A very different picture of Theodore Roosevelt emerges in your book from what has been the popular currency. For example Edmund Morris� in his Roosevelt biography Theodore Rex describes Roosevelt�s racial views saying, �Blacks were better suited for service than suffrage; on the whole, they were �altogether inferior to the whites.� Yet Roosevelt believed (as most Americans did not) that this inferiority was temporary....�

In contrast to that rather generous characterization you write, �In 1894, Teddy had penned an article entitled �National Life and Character� in which he wrote that Blacks were �a perfectly stupid race� and it would take �many thousands years� before the Black became even �as intellectual as the [ancient] Athenian.�

Why this difference? What were Roosevelt�s racial views?

I don�t know how to answer that. It is not an interpretation. I went on a cruise, and shadowed the 1905 cruise, at that point Taft and Roosevelt are explaining to the United States through Presidential proclamations, messages, press conferences, what we�re doing in the Philippines, just like President Obama is going to explain what we�re doing in Afghanistan. They explained it in terms of racial theory. So I didn�t seek out the two term papers that President Roosevelt happened to write on race and highlight them in this book. I point out that the explanation given to the American public was based in racial theories that they were taught at Harvard and Columbia...

Could you talk more about what those theories actually were...

The theory was that civilization followed the sun and [it developed] in the Caucasus mountains, that�s why whites are caucasians. A white person is called a caucasian because scientists theorized in the 19th century that�s where they came from. They called themselves scientists, but they were scientists with no science, scientific methods had not been developed to be able explore the body and look at the genetic structure and such.

So they came up with theories that this Aryan race arose in the Caucasus, in fact Iran is a derivative of the word Aryan. The Aryan arose and their tribes went north, south, east and west. The ones who went south went to India, the ones who went east went to China. The theory is that China was a great civilization and India was a great civilization because of this Aryan injection of culture. But then the Aryan lost the whiteness of its seed by mating with Chinese and Indian females so the Aryan greatness was lost in those countries.

Then there was the tribe that followed the sun, that went west to what we know today as the German forests. They maintained the purity of their seed by killing everybody who didn�t look like them. This Aryan tribe in northern Germany became the Teuton. People sometime think I�m joking, but this is the political science theory of [places like] Columbia and Yale of the time. [According to these theories] the Teuton tinkered with what later would be constitutional democracy. They didn�t follow kings, they elected people among themselves and political theorists in the 19th century said, �ah the Teuton is the seed of American democracy.�

The Teuton that went south went to Italy and Spain, those societies became great. But then the Teuton mated with those Mediterranean women lost the whiteness of their seed. The Teutonic tribe that went west -- civilization followed the sun and the sun only moves west -- went to Britain. There were already other people there. They ethnic cleansed them all, they got rid of them all, they killed them all. The Teuton became the Anglo-Saxon, the Anglo-Saxon went west across the Atlantic.

In 1905 you had London and New York, two financial capitals. If you look at the globe almost all of it was controlled by the white race through colonization. The theory was that civilization had followed the sun and that the highest evolutionary product of this was the American... [On its terms] It makes sense, it makes logical sense.

How deeply did Theodore Roosevelt adhere to these theories? How much had he internalized them?

From our point of view it's as if these are distant theories, and maybe you could hold them. In our parlance we would say a person is choosing to be a racist or not. The word racist didn�t come into use until the 1930s. Theodore Roosevelt was not a racist, he subscribed to the racial theory that the editor of the New York Times did, that his entire cabinet did, that almost every educated person in the United States did. These were not some weird ideas off to the side. This was how the world worked. This is why Theodore Roosevelt explained the Philippines and Asia to America in terms of these racial theories. He was a politician trying to talk in the vernacular of the people.

The section in the book describing the U.S. war in the Philippines is among the starkest material. You open the chapter with a quote from a soldier who served there in 1902 saying, �The people of the United States want us to kill all the men, fuck all the women, and raise up a new race in these Islands.� Is that an accurate characterization of that war?

There�s no accurate portrayal...my father�s picture on Iwo Jima is not an accurate portrayal of the Battle of Iwo Jima. One soldier�s quote is not the accurate portrayal. Is that what that soldier believed the election of McKinley meant? Yes.

You talk about the use of the water cure in the Philippines -- a euphemism for water boarding (which itself is a euphemism for torture). I was surprised to see how integral it was as a tactic of the US military. The obvious question is, did it conjure up contemporary images when you discovered this?

It was history repeating. When I went out on this cruise [in 2005] water boarding was a very big news item in Iraq, in terms of CIA interrogation of prisoners. I got to the Philippines and I realized that that was America�s first attempt at nation building. A hundred years before I got there Theodore Roosevelt said, �Mission Accomplished.� There are still American troops fighting in the Philippines today.

Let�s talk more about Theodore Roosevelt�s far East policy in the early 20th century laying the basis for World War 2. What�s the connection? There was forty years separating them from each other. How did what Teddy Roosevelt did in 1905 lay the basis for this horrific war in the 1940s?

People ask, �How could something that occurred in 1905 have repercussions forty years later? Well, Ken Burns just did a documentary on TV about the National Park system. Apparently if you walk into a national park you�re supposed to feel that Teddy Roosevelt had a lot to do with it a hundred years ago.

I have a friend who�s writing a book on Theodore Roosevelt�s helping to create American football. If you watch the Super Bowl this year, you�re watching something that Theodore Roosevelt influenced. What Theodore Roosevelt did not only reverberated forty years later but is still reverberating.

This is an important President at a fulcrum moment in history, 1905. Roosevelt says to the Japanese, I trust that you�re different than rest of Asia. My racial theories tell me this. You are more like Americans. We�ve got a problem in north Asia. China�s collapsing and we do not want the Russians to fill that void. Congress will not give me the troops I would like to use America�s big stick there in that beautiful rich part of north Asia. So what am I going to do?

So Roosevelt said to himself, I�m going to partner with the Japanese army and the British navy. The three of us are going to push back the Russians and take over China. He did not advocate liberty and freedom for China. You see the significance of that? He called the Portsmouth Peace Treaty negotiations, that sat down to negotiate their differences. They were dividing up a map of China and he didn�t invite China. There�s no repercussions of something like that? Hosting a peace conference dividing up China, China asking, �can we come� and Roosevelt saying, No! You�ve got nothing to say about the future of your country. Yeah, it has repercussions, I think still today.

I think that it is indisputable that the problem in WW2 that my Dad was sent to help extinguish was Japan going into Asia. They said in their declaration of war that the problem is Britain and America want to control Asia and we�re Asians, and we�re going to control it. Japan�s going to control it themselves.

Well it came to loggerheads, but in the beginning it was a progressive experiment. Theodore Roosevelt believed that an ascending race, the Japanese, would take on the White Man�s burden for the first time. No Asian country had industrialized. No Asian country had militarized. No Asian country wore Brooks Brothers suits. Most Asians were still wearing pony tails and robes. Roosevelt, a modern guy, a young guy, a theoretical guy, not knowing anything about Asia, saw in his wisdom... thought it was a wise move to ally U.S. interests to Japan in expanding to pick up the pieces of the Chinese empire. He never imagined that the thing he green-lit would later bite Franklin Roosevelt in the butt.

How much of this did you know before you started writing?

Zero.

Was it shocking to you? What kind of impact did it have?

It was kind of like an eery silence when you come across documented facts that have huge significance, that affected my life, my family�s life, and had been hidden for a century. I was amazed, often stunned.

There were surprises galore on this imperial cruise. I�m out in China and I stumble on the source of the wealth of FDR. I had no idea that grandpa Delano was the opium king of China. The wealth that supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came from drug dealing. I had no idea. To continually -- as you see in the book -- come across page after after page of things where you say, �I didn�t know that!�.... I got a degree in history, how come we�re not taught some of these facts that are laid on the cutting room floor?

I was surprised, I wasn�t just surprised, I was confused to the point that I didn�t know what [Teddy] Roosevelt was talking about when he talked about thousands of years, he would say this to the American public and Taft said this too in speeches, you can�t expect the Philippines to be doing well we have still have a problem we�ve got an insurgency we�ve got to keep troops there we�ve got spend money, because the Philippines does not have the thousands of years of experience that we do with self-government. Well thousands of years, I read that three times and thought the United States is about 100 years old at this point, where are the thousand of years he�s talking about? Does he mean like back to Greece? Roosevelt thinks Americans came from Greece? Then I realized that it was this racial theory when I went back to Harvard and Columbia and saw political science theory of the day.

What do you hope this book will accomplish?

I hope first of all people enjoy reading it. As a writer my job isn�t just to uncover facts it�s to make it assessable to the public. I hope this long-distance time is assessable. In other words, that it is an enjoyable read.

This is a multi-faceted book, with a lot of different elements to take away. A key thing for me is... it is interesting that the founding fathers designed a system and I think we need to follow that system closely. Congress is supposed to have oversight over treaties. Roosevelt just went around Congress in an unconstitutional move. He made a secret treaty. That had bad repercussions. It shows that maybe if we had the entire Senate looking at the treaty and debating, that is not such a bad thing. Secrecy in government is often a very big problem. The Founding Fathers wanted to shine the light of deliberation on agreements with foreign countries. Theodore Roosevelt wanted to do it in the dark.

Has there been any controversy in advance of the book? This is taking on some sacred cows?

I think we�ll see [what the reaction will be]. I wrote a non-fiction book, its heavily heavily footnoted. The facts are there.

The NY Times said, �The author of Flags of Our Fathers takes a startling look at what besotted Theodore Roosevelt biographers preferred to ignore. That Roosevelt�s dismissive racial attitudes lead him to make disastrous long-range foreign policy miscalculations in the Pacific and Asia.� That�s pretty strong.

There are forty pages of notes, I want them corrected immediately [if any errors are found]. If anyone can read that book and not come to the conclusion that Theodore Roosevelt made a secret deal with the Japanese over a period of two years -- and was acting as an agent -- its in his own handwriting. So I�m not speculating or trying to connect dots that aren�t there. It�s him bragging about he�s keeping all this secret. Its� him saying that the Chinese and the Japanese are different races. ITs Theodore Roosevelt saying that the Japanese are playing our game. I didn�t say it. His words are there, he said, �the Japs are playing our game.� He thought he succeeded.

What are you working on now?

I�m thinking about looking at FDR and China, WW2.

http://hnn.us/articles/121083.html

Operation Mockingbird

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:41:00 GMT

OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD: HOW CIA CONTROLLED THE PRESS

Posted by Lew Rockwell at June 16, 2008 07:36 PM
Writes Charles Burris: "Wendy McElroy's article today, 'The Media versus the State,' was very interesting reading, but I would like to challenge the fundamental assumption at the root of the piece.

"Rather than viewing the actions of CBS News against Senator Joseph McCarthy (as portrayed in the award-winning film Good Night and Good Luck) as a heroic case of the mainstream news media working against state power, I believe it was precisely the opposite.

"The destruction of McCarthy and his populist crusade against the elites governing America was a triumph of the most powerful forces of the National Security State.

"George Clooney's film does not delve into Joe McCarthy's preliminary investigation of CIA covert activities and how CBS chairman William Paley, Fred Friendly, and Edward R. Murrow were part of the Agency's Operation Mockingbird to provide deflection and cover of Agency's 'family jewels of the day.

"CBS News president Sig Mickelson (1954-61) was liaison to the CIA. Because of his frequent communications, Mickelson even had a direct private phone line installed to the Agency.

"I would suggest reading chapter ten, 'Things Fall Apart: Journalists,' in Hugh Wilford's new book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How The CIA Played America, for background on these crucial events. It outlines how the Columbia Broadcasting Service was closely connected to the Central Intelligence Agency during this period.

"CIA director Allen Dulles, CBS chairman William Paley, and CBS board director Senator Prescott Bush were intimate associates in various sociopolitical networks of the northeastern seaboard establishment found in Washington and New York during the days of the early Cold War.

"Whether they would meet in their private clubs, at the Harold Pratt House of the Council on Foreign Relations, or in Wall Street corporate and bank board rooms, these old birds of a feather flocked, connived, schemed, and conspired together.

"For more on the mainstream news media and the CIA, see Wikipedia on Operation Mockingbird.

"And see also the classic Rolling Stone article, 'The CIA and the Media,' by former Washington Post investigative journalist Carl Bernstein which is discussed in detail in The Mighty Wurlitzer.

"There is much more to Joe McCarthy, the CIA, and 1950's America than found in a Hollywood film treatment or presented by 'court historians' annoited by the MSM.

"As with much other conventional establishment history, Americans have been lied to and bamboozled yet again. Its time for yet more 'revisionism' on this topic. And libertarians should lead the way."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/021561.html

Check out the last paragraph here:
In 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."[3]

Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."[4]

In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s.[5] According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".[6]

In 1977, Rolling Stone alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone Magazine to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times).[7] According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.[8]

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known left-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor).[7]
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of communism. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell.[9]

According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (See: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (See: Operation PBSUCCESS).[10]

Thomas Braden, head of the International Organizations Division (IOD), played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. Many years later he revealed his role in these events:

"If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe�a Labour leader�suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty thousand dollars, he's working well and doing a good job - he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody... There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war�the secret war.... It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the first. Journalists were a target, labor unions a particular target�that was one of the activities in which the communists spent the most money."[11]

[edit] Part of the Directorate of Plans
In August 1952, the Office of Policy Coordination and the Office of Special Operations (the espionage division) were merged to form the Directorate of Plans (DPP). Frank Wisner became head of this new organization and Richard Helms became his chief of operations. Mockingbird was now the responsibility of the DPP.[12]

J. Edgar Hoover became jealous of the CIA's growing power. He described the OPC as "Wisner's gang of weirdos" and began carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to Joseph McCarthy who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also gave McCarthy details of an affair that Frank Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent.[13]

Joseph McCarthy also began accusing other senior members of the CIA as being security risks. McCarthy claimed that the CIA was a "sinkhole of communists", and claimed he intended to root out a hundred of them. One of his first targets was Cord Meyer, who was still working for Operation Mockingbird. In August, 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The Federal Bureau of Investigation added credibility to the accusation by announcing it was unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance". However, the FBI refused to explain what evidence they had against Meyer. Allen W. Dulles and Frank Wisner both came to his defense and refused to permit an FBI interrogation of Meyer.[14]

Joseph McCarthy did not realize what he was taking on. Wisner unleashed Mockingbird on McCarthy. Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson, Walter Lippmann and Ed Murrow all went into attack mode and McCarthy was permanently damaged by the press coverage orchestrated by Wisner.[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

FDR's Last Secret

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:02:35 GMT

For decades what FDR died from, and when he knew he had it has been hidden from the public. FDR may have died more than 60 years ago, but these questions still matter. Not only does presidential health�and the public's right to know about it�remain a controversial issue, but in Roosevelt's case, the lies in question, if true, changed history. As neurologist Steven Lomazow and journalist Eric Fettman point out in a book coming out this January, FDR's Deadly Secret, widespread knowledge of Roosevelt's cancer would have prevented him from running in 1944 and thus likely altered the shaping of postwar Europe. Would over 200 million have been turned over to Stalin? A man named Dewey opposed that. Would atomic bombs have been used on Japan? A man named Dewey opposed that. Would the Cold War have begun with Russia in such a powerful position? Would spies and espionage agents been allowed to remain in government?

http://www.slate.com/id/2236504/pagenum/all/

Dancing On The Berlin Wall

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:52:06 GMT

Hundreds of thousands of German women raped during and after the war by Russian troops with our knowledge. Hundreds committed suicide in front of our Embassy and Consulates rather than be sent back to East Germany. Over 190 shot and injured trying to climb over the wall. All disappeared. 200 killed trying to climb over the wall. While many in America cheered Russia on, a brave few risked being called anti-communist and anti-socialist to speak out against the horror. In the end, the guns couldn't stop people from dancing on the wall.

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

McCarthy and Fort Hood

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:11:04 GMT

THE PROBLEMS McCARTHY TRIED TO EXPOSE ARE WITH US STILL

As many of you know, I was the first blogger to deal with the CIA revelations on Joe McCarthy. I have also spoken on the topic. One of the reasons I covered the story was not just because the mainstream media was incapable of dealing with the story, but I said and wrote that the U.S. military and Intel remained today as then, unable to deal with espionage and spy activity. That until we dealt with the core issues Joe and The Pond raised the problems would go go on. And now this......

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fort-hood-shooter-contact-al-qaeda-terrorists-officials/story?id=9030873

The Shadow Of Stasi

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:27:12 GMT

Stasi files still cast shadow, 20 years after Berlin Wall fell

By Sarah Marsh

BERLIN (Reuters) - For decades, Joachim Fritsch struggled to understand why he was being denied access to higher education and passed over for job promotions again and again.

Then he got hold of a 400-page file East Germany's dreaded secret police had compiled on him. The Stasi had arrested him back in the mid-1950s when he was just 17 years old and branded him a "provocateur" for failing to produce his identity card.

The arrest left an indelible mark on his record, leading the Stasi to watch him closely and thwart repeated attempts by Fritsch to get on with his life.

"I was absolutely overwhelmed when I read my files," the 73-year-old told Reuters, poring over copies of his personal file in his small flat on the 10th floor of an east Berlin high rise. "You enter your past hesitantly, step by step."

Fritsch is one of hundreds of thousands who have read their Stasi files. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the government agency set up to oversee them is still inundated with requests and has a two-year backlog.

Founded in 1950, the Stasi was one of the most repressive police organizations in the world. It infiltrated almost every aspect of life in East Germany, using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent.

Millions of Germans worked for the Stasi and provided reports on friends, family, colleagues or lovers. The files, which would stretch for 112 km (70 miles) if laid out flat, were opened up to the public in 1992, exposing a web of betrayals.

The plan was to keep the Stasi archives open for around 10 years -- enough time, officials thought, for everyone who was spied on to get to their file and close that chapter of history.

But thousands of people, mainly from former East Germany, are still applying every month. In the first half of 2009, applications were up nearly 11 percent on 2008.

"We have had more applications this year because of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall," said Martin Boettger, who heads a regional branch of the Stasi archives in Chemnitz, formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt.

"Many films and books are being made, events are being held, so it is in the public consciousness," said Boettger, whose own file contains 3,000 pages, detailing even the most trivial facts of his life and branding him a "religious fanatic."

TIME TO FACE PAST MORE HERE:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59S17520091029?sp=true

THE REVENGE OF AYN RAND

Huffington Post is a left of center publication on the net which surprised me twice in one week. First it gave 2 books on Rand foot stomping great reviews. This would be enough to stun me - except that the 2 books are written by progressive liberals and are pro- Rand. But wait, there's more! The Huffington Post actually called on liberal book clubs to read her novels!

That threw me for a loop. For years when I brought up her name liberals and leftists responded with a hatred far beyond their hatred of talk show hosts like Glenn Beck. They would dismiss her work out of hand, claiming to have read it. However I learned long ago that a good test if someone has actually read what they are attacking is to simply quote a central part of the writing- if they respond with threats or shocked anger they haven't read the subject they are attacking. Conservatives also disliked her, condemning her atheism and pro- abortion stances. Something however has happened that I doubt even she could forsee.

Ayn (pronounced like PINE or MINE) escaped Russia and went to Hollywood carrying with her a first hand knowledge of the failure of socialism. To her horror, she met Americans who loved Stalin and felt the gulags, secret police and forced famines were small prices to pay for free health care and a world of "justice". Gradually she began to create a philosophy that was pro- free market and pro- capitalism. At a time when the New York Times hailed Stalin and Time made the socialist Hitler man of the year she was as welcome at Hollywood parties the way the plague was welcomed by Europe. When Hitler and Stalin signed their peace pact socialists worldwide hailed Hitler as the new breed of socialist and this made her angry. That anger would find its way into her books. Left wing critics, busy hailing Hitler and Stalin were appalled at her rejection of national and international socialism. Didn't she want a world of "justice", too?

Her anger and philosophical quest would lead to a dogmatic approach to counter the dogmatism of the left- but she was also against corporate welfare and big business cutting their own throats to get special deals from governments. In THE FOUNTAINHEAD one villain is a self made man who builds a newspaper empire- by catering to the masses. For conservatives and liberals alike, her views rubbed people the wrong way. She created her own world and philosophy- at a time when women weren't supposed to be philosophers. Her fans became as dogmatic in taking on socialists of all kinds as they were and she'd go toe to toe against the welfare state.

She had no way to know that Hitler and Stalin had attacked 11 ships, sinking them and killing all onboard during their peace pact. That fact wasn't discovered until a year ago in KGB documents. Had it been known in the late 1930's we would have fought both of them, and I assure you supporters of both would have faced far worse than the "McCarthy era" at war's end. Lucky for them, we didn't know.

Dismissed by the right, despised by the left, Ayn kept speaking, writing- and her books kept selling. ANTHEM, THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED never really left the public. The books hailed freedom in ways no other novels did, perhaps because Ayn had seen both the socialist and capitalistic state. It took a foreigner from a different land to point out what made America great and what could make it greater. The reviews were caustic, the hatred far beyond what Beck faces, but the books kept selling.

Today socialism is almost gone. China knows it needs a free market. Cuba allows people to have cell phones. The people of central Europe rose up against their leaders and let them know the free health care wasn't worth the millions dead. You can measure the failure of any government by the amount of socialism it has. When Europe declined to do mass bailouts, many were stunned when the socialist government of Sweden told SAAB cars there would be no bailout. Sweden, Germany, England, France all warned us we would prolong the recession with bailouts - we chose the socialist solution of the 30's. Today those nations have recovered, while we must now back up the trillions of dollars we printed not backed by goods or labor. Today even socialists warn that socialist economics don't work.

So Ayn Rand sells again. ATLAS SHRUGGED and THE FOUNTAINHEAD are being read by people who want to find out what works and what doesn't. Only this time, even the left is looking at her with new eyes.

Trotsky: Behind The Myth

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:40:55 GMT

John Gray
BEHIND THE MYTH
Trotsky: A Biography
By Robert Service (Macmillan 624pp �25)

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Trotsky has always been something of an icon for the intelligentsia, and it is not hard to see why. He fitted the perception that dissenting intellectuals like to have of themselves. Highly cultured, locked in struggle with a repressive establishment, a gifted writer who was also a man of action, he seemed to embody the ideal of truth speaking to power. The manner of his death solidified this perception, which has shaped accounts of his life ever since.

Trotsky was a charismatic leader whose appeal extended across the political spectrum. When Trotsky was on the run from Stalin, H L Mencken offered to give him his own library (Trotsky refused because he did not want to be indebted to a reactionary). The Bishop of Birmingham signed a petition on Trotsky's behalf, and he was invited to become rector of Edinburgh University. Maynard Keynes tried to secure asylum for him in England, a campaign supported even by the power-worshipping Stalin-lover Beatrice Webb. Literary notables like Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy joined the chorus of adulation. A hero-martyr in the cause of humanity, Trotsky deserved the support of every right-thinking person.

This has never been a terribly plausible view of the man who welcomed the ruthless crushing of the Kronstadt workers and sailors when they demanded a more pluralist system of government in 1921, and who defended the systematic use of terror against opponents of the Soviet state until his dying day. Introducing a system of hostage-taking in the Civil War and consistently supporting the trial and execution of dissidents (Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, liberal Kadets, nationalists and others), Trotsky never hesitated to endorse repression against those who stood in the way of communist power. This much has long been clear, but the full extent of Trotsky's role in building Soviet totalitarianism has not been detailed - until now.

Rigorously researched, covering Trotsky's education and upbringing, his life as an �migr� before the revolution, his time as a military leader, his losing battle with Stalin, his women, his life as an exile and his assassination, Robert Service's new biography discloses a man very different from the one celebrated by bien pensants. The author of distinguished biographies of Lenin and Stalin, Service is eminently qualified to set Trotsky in his historical context. Here Service surpasses himself, and produces a life that is genuinely revelatory. Trotsky's lifelong effort to distance himself from his Jewish background - 'The workers are dearer to me than all the Jews,' Service reports him saying - is carefully and sensitively examined. There is an interesting discussion of Trotsky's attempt to fashion a distinctive philosophical position for himself (despite having a commendably unorthodox interest in Freud, he was no more successful than Lenin in this regard). The book is rich in telling detail. The young Trotsky liked to dominate the independent-minded women revolutionaries in his circle, and to this end studied carefully Schopenhauer's The Art of Controversy, a guide to debating tricks. Trotsky was 'an intellectual bully', Service writes, who 'relished wounding his opponents'. None of this is flattering to Trotsky, but Service is always scrupulously balanced. The result is a powerfully demystifying biography of one of the most heavily mythologised figures of twentieth-century history.

Western historians have largely accepted Trotsky's self-serving account of his opposition to Stalin's policies and methods, but the differences between the two leaders were more limited than has been commonly believed. Trotsky favoured moving quickly to central planning and collective farming, and shared Stalin's view of the need to isolate the kulaks (richer peasants). Far from being more liberal than Stalin, during the New Economic Policy (NEP) he blamed Stalin for sheltering Menshevik economists. It was Trotsky who pushed ahead with the 'militarisation of labour', which imposed army-style discipline and punishment on Soviet workers. Hailed as an apostle of cultural freedom because of his interest in the arts, Trotsky believed as much as Stalin did that culture must be assessed (and policed) in terms of its political correctness. Trotsky's influential essay Literature and Revolution, Service writes, 'was essentially a work of political reductionism. When all is said and done, it was Trotsky who laid down the philosophical foundations for cultural Stalinism.'

It is often claimed that Trotsky's superiority was in his analysis of the European situation. In fact his views on international affairs were far-fetched in the extreme. It is true that he grasped the threat posed by Nazism more clearly than Stalin. Even so, he shared Stalin's vulgar-Marxist interpretation of Hitler as a 'tool of German finance-capital', never acknowledging the high levels of mass support Hitler had achieved among the German working class. Right up to his assassination in August 1940, Trotsky believed Europe was on the brink of proletarian revolution. When Nazi power was at its height he was still talking seriously of a revolt of German workers against Hitler and claiming that Finnish peasants would welcome Stalin as their liberator.

Trotsky may have seen the Nazi danger, but if his analysis of events had been accepted Nazi Germany would never have been defeated. Throughout the catastrophes of the 1930s he was consistently hostile to liberal democracy. In October 1939 he was praising the Comintern for remaining neutral in the European war. In July 1940 he wrote that the Trotskyite Fourth International should join the Comintern, refuse to support Britain against Germany and oppose American entry into the conflict. What was needed was 'a people's referendum on the war', which would reveal to American workers 'the futility of their democracy'.

There is something ludicrous in the spectacle of Trotsky scorning the futility of democracy at a time when Hitler had almost extinguished it in Europe. But it is of a piece with an entire life of self-deception. As Service writes, Trotsky 'had matchless self-righteousness'. In The Revolution Betrayed (written in 1936) he admitted that the Soviet Union was like Hitler's Germany, a totalitarian state. He never admitted any responsibility for bringing the Soviet version of totalitarianism into being. But along with Lenin he had created the system that Stalin inherited and used for ends with which Trotsky generally sympathised.

Inhumanly ruthless in his dealings with non-Bolsheviks and at the same time thoroughly inept in his relations with Stalin, Trotsky was too vain and self-deceiving to merit the status of tragic hero accorded him by Western admirers. Undoubtedly he was courageous, and it can hardly be denied that he was a key player in some of the formative conflicts of the last century. But in the end it is impossible to see him as other than an absurd figure, a fantasist seeking to found a paradise who helped build a hell on earth. Had Trotsky prevailed in his struggle with Stalin, would the world today be in better shape - or would it actually be worse? It is a question Robert Service does not answer. But he has given us the best biography of Trotsky to date, and there seems little reason why anyone should write another.

John Gray's most recent book is 'Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings' (Allen Lane).

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/gray_10_09.html

The CIA- Joe McCarthy Fights

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:04:14 GMT

THE SAD, TRUE STORY OF JOE McCARTHY

The CIA does not refer to the McCarthy era as the "red scare" or "witchhunt", they call it THE CIA- McCARTHY FIGHTS on their STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE site. They know better. In 2001, before 911 a family discovered boxes of Intel about the only truly secret Intel agency we ever had. The boxes were discovered in Virginia, and a call was placed to CIA in Langley. Agents were sent out to look at these classified documents about a group within CIA called THE POND. But there was a problem. No one at the agency had any knowledge of the group, and there was no record of the group.

One can only imagine what the agents thought as they sifted through the documents. The Pond was a private firm hired to find spies within the government, headed by one Jean (John) Grombach. It's most famous member had been Raoul Wallenberg who because he was not bound to Intel rules of the day rescued tens of thousands of Jews from death, at times being shot at as he passed passports out to people in cattle cars on trains. The State Department turned him into Stalin and he vanished. There was a reason McCarthy did not trust the State Department.

Grombach shifted from OSS (which he helped end by showing Truman a list of Russian agents within the group), to the State Department, Army and CIA. Less than 5 people in government knew what he was doing. One of his contacts was a rogue KGN head. He was being given the names of people worldwide being enlisted by the Soviets for spying. He went to the FBI, White House, OSS, Army and then CIA with the list. But there was a problem. FDR failed to act on the list. The FBI dropped the ball on Communist espionage during the war and after destroyed legal cases against spies by breaking the law while gathering evidence (a problem that still exists today).

Grombach was stunned when Alger Hiss was put in charge of security at Yalta. He couldn't believe the spies were advancing in their careers. So he made sure his list went to McCarthy. Contrary to almost 50 years of CIA black ops propaganda, McCarthy had nothing to do with the Hollywood 10, Loyalty Oaths, or just about everything people think of him for now. This was accomplished because 15 CIA agents were on the NY Times payroll and helped coin the term "McCarthyism" and all the others associated with him. But that's a different story.

McCarthy was in shock. He decided to go after the government for protecting spies involved in espionage against this county. He made it clear he was going after the Army, State Department, CIA and then the White House for answers. Dulles got a copy of the list and must have gone into shock. He recognized it as the legit list of Grombach and The Pond. He called kookie Angleton (he would later head CIA and place under house arrest over 100 CIA agents as suspected double agents and force feed them LSD and have them interrogated. Sounds like a bad trip to me. Turned out, they were all innocent and Angleton's top adviser was the double agent but that's a different story). Angleton was instructed to feed McCarthy a fake name or two through the Pond right before the Army hearings to shatter McCarthy's confidence. It worked.

McCarthy was nothing more or less than a patriot and a whistleblower. Anyone with that list would have been destroyed. Intel agents know they could have a really bad rep in public while doing great things, it comes with the territory. Aleister Crowley the so-called black magician was a British spy first under Reilly (the ace of spies) and then Ian Fleming (he even got to interrogate Rudolph Hess). But his public face was totally trashed. Still is. But he was in Intel. McCarthy was not. What was done to his name and career is shocking not just because CIA broke it's own charter to get him, but because he was an innocent man who was trying to protect his country. He was a Senator.

So how do I know all this? Some wild conspiracy website? No. The CIA admitted to all this and it is on their own website for anyone to read
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no3/article07.html

Why the press has never covered these admissions is anyone's guess. If you have a petition to have FDR taken off the dime and McCarthy and Grombach put on it, I'll sign it. Be seeing you.

Cuba's Nuclear Threat 1980's!

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:08:57 GMT

New York Times, September 22, 2009
Details Emerge of Cold War Nuclear Threat by Cuba
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
In the early 1980s, according to newly released documents, Fidel Castro was suggesting a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States, until Moscow dissuaded him by patiently explaining how the radioactive cloud resulting from such a strike would also devastate Cuba.
The cold war was then in one of its chilliest phases. President Ronald Reagan had begun a trillion-dollar arms buildup, called the Soviet Union �an evil empire� and ordered scores of atomic detonations under the Nevada desert as a means of developing new arms. Some Reagan aides talked of fighting and winning a nuclear war.
Dozens of books warned that Reagan�s policies threatened to end most life on earth. In June 1982, a million protesters gathered in Central Park.
Barack Obama, then an undergraduate at Columbia University, worried about the nuclear threat and later wrote as a student and a journalist about ways to avoid global annihilation.
The future president didn�t know half the danger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/22nuke.html