Tag: assassinations

Ecuador presidential candidate assassinated: Fernando Villavicencio is shot dead while leaving a political rally less than two weeks before the vote

Gunmen in Ecuador shot dead presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio as he was leaving a rally on Wednesday night, with less than two weeks to go until a bitterly contested election.

Footage shared on social media showed Villavicencio, 59, being escorted out of the rally venue at 6:20pm local time and into a waiting car. He was climbing into the back seat when gunfire rang out. The windows did not appear to be bulletproof.

One suspect was shot dead in crossfire with security services, the country’s attorney general said, adding that nine people were injured – among them a female candidate for the National Assembly and two police officers. 

Last week Villavicencio, a former journalist known for tackling corruption, said he and his team had been threatened by the leader of a gang linked to drug trafficking. 

In May, announcing his candidacy, he declared that he intended to ‘take on and defeat the mafias which have coopted the state and have society on its knees.’

He was behind at least two other candidates, but had been gaining support in recent days, and was seen as the toughest candidate on organized crime.

General Manuel Iniguez, a deputy commander of the Ecuadoran national police, said a police officer was also injured in the attack, which happened outside a college in the north of Quito.  The hit men launched a grenade toward Villavicencio’s group, but it did not explode.

He was taken to a nearby clinic and pronounced dead in hospital. Shocking video showed the moment he arrived, slumped in a wheelchair and pushed by men in army fatigues. They tried to lift him out the wheelchair and up the steps but were unable to do so, and wheeled him up the ramp as a medical employee rushed out.

The country’s President, Guillermo Lasso, confirmed the assassination of Villavicencio and suggested organized crime was behind his slaying. He later declared a state of emergency in response to the killing. 

Keep reading

JFK Documents Reveal Assassin’s CIA Monitor Was Reuben Efron, a Jewish Spy

For decades, armchair analysts scrutinizing the mysteries of the President John F. Kennedy assassination have fixated on whom, exactly, opened his future assassin’s mail while he was under CIA surveillance.

As the conspiracy theory went, that person would have understood Lee Harvey Oswald’s relationship with the Soviet Union and thus could unlock new information about a possible Communist plot against Kennedy — or a U.S. government plot to obscure his true killer.

Last month, a new document dump in the ongoing declassification of Kennedy documents revealed the identity of the CIA screener: one Reuben Efron, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania.

The New York Times was the first to report Efron’s identity. “And that means — what, exactly?” the newspaper asked in its report. “A tantalizing clue to unraveling a complicated conspiracy that the government has sought to cover up for decades? Additional proof that the C.I.A. knew more about Oswald than initially acknowledged? Or a minor detail withheld all this time because of bureaucratic imperatives irrelevant to the question of whether Oswald was the lone gunman on the fateful day?”

A deep dive into Efron’s Jewish identity does not answer those questions. But it does reveal that Efron not only worked as a spy but had a deep knowledge of the spies in Jewish tradition.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has confirmed that Efron spent time living in Israel before dying on Nov. 22, 1993 — 30 years to the day after Kennedy’s assassination. While there, he contributed five articles in the 1970s to the Jewish Bible Quarterly, a World Zionist Organization-affiliated publication based in Jerusalem, that channeled his expertise in espionage.

“Rahab and her premises were under surveillance of a counterintelligence team of the king of Jericho who soon established that the two men visiting Rahab were actually Israelite spies,” he writes in one of the essays, referring to a Jericho courtesan who, according to the Book of Joshua, assisted the Israelites in preparing to rout the Canaanites. Efron called Rahab “a prototype of a Mata Hari,” the World War I-era exotic dancer-turned-spy.

Keep reading

Declassified CIA Files Form Bizarre Link Between JFK Assassination and UFOs

“You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think it’s suspicious.”

Newly declassified U.S. government files from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are leading some to form a bizarre link between the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and flying saucers. The extraordinary connection comes after President Joe Biden recently cleared formerly top-secret documents to “provide a fuller understanding” of JFK’s murder.

The assassination has been pored over for decades, but one document has revealed the previously redacted name of a CIA official, Reuben Efron, who intercepted Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail in the months before the tragic shooting on Nov. 22, 1963.

However, Efron is named in another file, dated Oct. 15, 1955, which details a bizarre sighting of “flying saucers” while on a train trip through the Soviet Union. The official CIA document says the “reported sighting of unusual aircraft in USSR” was made by “three reliable US observers.”

The excerpt from a cable received from the U.S. Air Force reveals these individuals as Efron, Senator Richard Russell, and a Lt. Col. E. U. Hathaway. Senator Russell would later sit on the Warren Commission, which was tasked with investigating the JFK assassination.

The description of the incident in the “Trancaucasus Region” details “two mound and circular unconventional aircraft resembling flying discs or flying saucers were seen taking off almost vertically one minute apart.”

Keep reading

Ukrainian plot to assassinate RT editor-in-chief thwarted – FSB

Russian law enforcement has thwarted assassination plans targeting RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak, which were prepared by Ukrainian intelligence, the Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced.

In a statement on Saturday, the agency declared that, together with the Interior Ministry and the national Investigative Committee, an unspecified number of “neo-Nazis from the Paragraph 88 group who were gathering information at the work and home addresses of Simonyan and Sobchak” had been arrested.

Those detained were caught carrying out reconnaissance on Friday in Moscow and Ryazan Region, according to the FSB.

During the operation, law enforcement personnel seized a Kalashnikov assault rifle, 90 cartridges, rubber hoses, knives, brass knuckles, and handcuffs, the FSB said. Officials added that “computers with information confirming criminal intentions” were also found.

Keep reading

The Achilles’ Heel Of The JFK Assassination

The autopsy that the U.S. national-security establishment conducted on President Kennedy’s body has always been the Achilles heel of the assassination. That’s because the autopsy was fraudulent. But because the military “classified” the autopsy, forcing enlisted personnel to sign secrecy oaths and threatening them with court martial or criminal prosecution if they ever revealed what they saw or did, the military was able to cover up much, but certainly not all, of its autopsy fraud for decades. That cover-up came to a screeching halt during the 1990s during the term of the Assassination Records Review Board.

When I began delving into the JFK assassination many years ago, I naturally read lots of books. Gradually, I became convinced that the assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation orchestrated and carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment. I became convinced that it was no different in principle from other regime-change operations, especially ones that involved state-sponsored assassinations based on “national security,” such as those operations that targeted Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadegh, Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, Chilean Gen. Rene Schneider, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz.

But I was trained as a lawyer. My professional career began as a trial attorney. I practiced law for 12 years. I tried both civil and criminal cases in both state and federal courts. These consisted of both jury and non-jury trials.

While I became convinced that the Kennedy assassination was, in fact, a regime-change operation, I also believed that I could never walk into a courtroom and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard of proof required in a criminal case. I didn’t think that any of the assassination researchers had provided sufficient evidence to meet that burden. After many years of studying the assassination, I still believe that to this day.

To be sure, there are lots of suspicious aspects to the assassination, such as the so-called magic-bullet theory. But for me, all those suspicious aspects, while convincing me of criminal culpability, were still not enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Thus, in my opinion, those who cry “Conspiracy theory!” when one focuses on what happened in Dealey Plaza are essentially saying, “You don’t have enough evidence to convict the national-security establishment of this offense beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Not so, however, with the autopsy. Once I came to the realization that the military establishment had conducted a fraudulent autopsy, it was “game over” and “case closed” for the national-security establishment.

The fraudulent autopsy is the “back door” that establishes beyond a reasonable doubt criminal culpability of the national-security establishment in the Kennedy assassination.

Keep reading

Declassified JFK Documents Reveal Swedish Man Predicted JFK’s Assassination, 10 Days Beforehand Said ‘Within Two Weeks President Kennedy Would Be Assassinated on a Trip Among His Own People’

On June 27th, the Biden administration released 1,103 documents pertaining to JFK’s assassination in accordance to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.

Despite releasing some documents the Biden admin ultimately decided to postpone releasing all of the classified documents.

In the latest JFK file dump, a document that originated from the CIA revealed an American from New Jersey named Jay Albrecht who was residing in Stockholm, Sweden entered the US embassy in Stockholm on November 29th 1963 and asked to speak to an embassy officer.

After being arranged a meeting with an embassy officer, Albrecht told an officer that his former girlfriend Charlotte Aberg (Swedish citizen) told him that her boyfriend Karl-Erik Ridderstrale (Swedish citizen) said ‘Within two weeks President Kennedy would be assassinated while on a trip among his own people’.

Albrecht claimed Ridderstrale made these statements while drunk on November 15, 1963 just seven days before Kennedy’s assassination.

Albrecht later shared Ridderstrale was a “left winger and strong supporter of Fidel Castro.”

Keep reading

RFK Jr. Blasts Biden WH After It Makes ‘Midnight Announcement’: ‘What Are They Hiding?’

Democratic presidential challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to be a thorn in the side of the incumbent administration — but this time, the issue at hand is a particularly personal one.

In a blistering Twitter tirade, Kennedy blasted the clandestine way President Joe Biden and his administration had decided and announced that it would “be maintaining secrecy indefinitely” on certain records related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, Robert’s uncle.

Kennedy took to his personal Twitter account Sunday and did not mince words when he tore into what he called a “midnight announcement”.

“It’s not about conspiracy – it is about transparency,” Kennedy tweeted Sunday. “In a midnight Friday night announcement the White House has delivered the bad news that President Biden will be maintaining secrecy indefinitely on some JFK assassination related records.”

Kennedy appeared to be referencing a memorandum to executive-branch department and agencies released Friday from the White House.

The Biden release noted that “[i]n light of the recommendation for continued postponement of public release of information in the records identified in section 2(b) of this memorandum under the statutory standard, I hereby certify, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 5(g)(2)(D) of the Act, that continued postponement of public disclosure of that information is necessary to protect against identifiable harms to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and the conduct of foreign relations that are of such gravity that they outweigh the public interest in disclosure.”

For Kennedy, the claim that there is still “identifiable harm” related to releasing information about an event so long ago made no sense, and he reacted accordingly.

“The assassination was 60 years ago,” he wrote in one Twitter post. “What national security secrets could possibly be at risk? What are they hiding?”

Keep reading

More JFK Assassination Documents Released

The National Archives and Records Administration released thousands of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, meeting a Friday deadline set in a December memo by President Joe Biden.

NARA said on the JFK Assassination Records page on its website it worked in concert with agencies to jointly review the remaining redactions in 3,648 documents in compliance with the president’s directive. Between April and June, NARA posted 2,672 documents containing newly released information.

“At the National Archives, we believe in the importance of government transparency and the accessibility of information,” said Colleen Shogan, the 11th Archivist of the United States, in a statement. “The dedicated and detailed work completed by NARA staff and by our partners and stakeholder agencies is an excellent representation of how we can collaborate together to ensure that the maximum amount of information is made available to the American people, while we protect what we must.

“I have every confidence that the NDC’s [National Declassification Center] implementation of these plans offers a clear path forward for public transparency and the timely release of additional information as circumstances warrant.”

The largest block of more than 1,000 documents was released Tuesday. Some documents contain redacted information because of national security concerns, the Washington Examiner reported.

Keep reading

What in the World Happened at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978?

Iam Laurie Efrein Kahalas, survivor of the Peoples Temple. I never lived in Jonestown, but I held a key position in the States up through the time of the tragedy on November 18, 1978. I am also the author of the “In Plain Sight (IPS)” project, the documented deconstruction of the Port Kaituma airstrip massacre (where Leo Ryan was killed), which preceded the deaths at Jonestown. Hard to deconstruct what was accepted as “history” in just this single article, but the IPS project fills that out. 

I realize that, from out of the deep dark jungle, headlines ablaze. From them all the public retains to this day is “drink the kool-aid.” For years following, it was even “a bizarre murder/suicide ritual.” Twin tragedies: Congressman Leo Ryan murdered—a foremost CIA critic and sponsor of the Ryan Hughes amendment requiring the president to report all covert operations to Congress sent to investigate the People’s Temple in Guyana—and then close to a thousand deaths at Jonestown. Not just that you can’t have one without the other, but that the same party must have been guilty of both.

That was never true; but there was never any investigation, just blaring headlines. I was in D.C. personally a year after, when congressional aides admitted that they had the on-site NBC film footage (NBC had accompanied the congressman). But when I demanded that they blow up the faces and bring in survivors to identify the so-called “Temple killers,” they adamantly refused. Even though that would have been Burden of Proof 101, especially in the face of massively contradictory so-called “eyewitness IDs”! 

Keep reading

RFK Jr. Says He Must “Be Careful” The CIA Doesn’t Assassinate Him

During a discussion with Joe Rogan, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy junior admitted that he is putting his life in danger by speaking out about the assassinations of his uncle and his father, and that he “takes precautions” to ensure the CIA doesn’t kill him.

Rogan asked RFK Jr. what he thought would happen if he managed to get into office, to which Kennedy replied “I gotta be careful.” 

“I’m aware of that, you know, I’m aware of that danger. I don’t live in fear of it — at all. But I’m not stupid about it, and I take precautions,” he added.

Kennedy spoke about his Uncle JFK being “at war” with the military industrial complex, and asserted that the intelligence agencies were “trying to trick him” into launching military excursions into Cuba and Vietnam.

RFK Jr. again spoke about JFK eventually concluding that he must “shatter” the CIA “into a thousands pieces” and “scatter it to the winds.” 

“[JFK] learned very early on that the purpose of the CIA and the intelligence apparatus was to create a constant pipeline of new wars for them, for the military industrial complex,” Kennedy noted, adding that JFK was adamant that “it’s not the United States’ jobs to dictate what kind of governments other countries have.”

RFK Jr. continued, “in October of 1963 he heard that some of his Green Berets had been killed… and he said I want a total casualty list from Vietnam. His aide came to him and said 75 Americans have died, he said that’s too many and he signed that day a national security directive ordering all troops out of Vietnam… the first thousand over the next month and then the rest by the beginning of 1965, and um and then a month later he was killed.”

Keep reading