Tag: cia

Detailed Report Exposes CIA-Backed ‘Zero Units’ In Afghanistan

In 2019, reporter Lynzy Billing returned to Afghanistan to research the murders of her mother and sister nearly 30 years earlier. Instead, in the country’s remote reaches, she stumbled upon the C.I.A.-backed Zero Units, who conducted night raids — quick, brutal operations designed to have resounding psychological impacts while ostensibly removing high-priority enemy targets.

So, Billing attempted to catalog the scale of civilian deaths left behind by just one of four Zero Units, known as the 02, over a four year period. 

The resulting report represents an effort no one else has done or will ever be able to do again. Here is what she found:

  • At least 452 civilians were killed in 107 raids. This number is almost certainly an undercount. While some raids did result in the capture or death of known militants, others killed bystanders or appeared to target people for no clear reason.
  • A troubling number of raids appear to have relied on faulty intelligence by the C.I.A. and other U.S. intelligence-gathering services. Two Afghan Zero Unit soldiers described raids they were sent on in which they said their targets were chosen by the United States.
  • The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency acknowledged that the units were getting it wrong at times and killing civilians. He oversaw the Zero Units during a crucial period and agreed that no one paid a consequence for those botched raids. He went on to describe an operation that went wrong: “I went to the family myself and said: ‘We are sorry. … We want to be different from the Taliban.’ And I mean we did, we wanted to be different from the Taliban.”
  • The Afghan soldiers weren’t alone on the raids; U.S. special operations forces soldiers working with the C.I.A. often joined them. The Afghan soldiers Billing spoke to said they were typically accompanied on raids by at least 10 U.S. special operations forces soldiers. “These deaths happened at our hands. I have participated in many raids,” one of the Afghans said, “and there have been hundreds of raids where someone is killed and they are not Taliban or ISIS, and where no militants are present at all.”
  • Military planners baked potential “collateral damage” into the pre-raid calculus — how many women/children/noncombatants were at risk if the raid went awry, according to one U.S. Army Ranger Billing spoke to. Those forecasts were often wildly off, he said, yet no one seemed to really care. He told Billing that night raids were a better option than airstrikes but acknowledged that the raids risked creating new insurgent recruits. “You go on night raids, make more enemies, then you gotta go on more night raids for the more enemies you now have to kill.”

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Nixon Threatened to Reveal the CIA’s Involvement in the Kennedy Assassination

A stunning, long-overlooked Nixon Watergate-era tape shows Richard Nixon warning CIA Director Richard Helms that he knows of CIA involvement in the murder of John F. Kennedy- “I know who shot John.”

This shocking new tape depicts Nixon increasingly besieged by Watergate but unaware that at least four of the Watergate burglars were still on the CIA payroll at the time of the break-in, and that the CIA had thus infiltrated the burglary team. Recently declassified documents reveal that Watergate Special Prosecutor Nick Akerman was aware of both the CIA’s advance knowledge and involvement in the break-in — but said and did nothing.

Hear the tape

Senator Howard Baker, the Republican Leader on the Senate Watergate Committee and his counsel Fred Thompson himself, a future U.S. Senator from Tennessee, like Baker, stumbled on the CIA’s deep advanced knowledge and direct involvement in the Watergate break-in. Baker and Thompson both knew that at least four of the Watergate burglars were on the CIA payroll at the time of the break-in and that through CREEP Security Director James McCord, had infiltrated the burglary team. Senate Watergate Committee Chairman Sam Ervin stoutly refused to allow Baker and the Committee Republicans including Edward J. Gurney of Florida the right to publish a Minority Report which noted this stunning information regarding the CIA.

Nixon deeply distrusted the CIA because he knew that President Eisenhower had ordered the agency to give top secret briefings to both Nixon and Kennedy after both were the certain nominees of their parties. Nixon was sore that Kennedy utilized the information in their debates, attacking Nixon for being “soft” on communist Cuba, knowing full well that Nixon had chaired a working group as Vice President overseeing preparations for the “Bay of Pigs” invasion. Nixon, of course, could not reveal this upcoming attempt to topple Castro in the details.

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FBI reveals it uses CIA and NSA to spy on Americans

The FBI revealed how the bureau uses the CIA and National Security Agency to probe the private lives of Americans without a warrant in its updated rulebook, which is the first version made public since the Obama administration. 

The handbook, rewritten in 2021, confirms a decade-old leak showcasing the bureau’s collaboration with the CIA and NSA for FBI probes that may involve surveillance without court orders against people not accused of any crimes. Such probes are known as “assessments” at the FBI.

The revelations will fuel critics who have long accused the FBI of abusing its national security surveillance powers.

The FBI’s partnership with U.S. intelligence agencies that are focused on foreign threats is expected to get intense scrutiny from the new Republican-run Congress. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee are digging into how intelligence agencies target Americans. Plans include a new panel to examine the weaponization of the federal government against U.S. citizens.

New information about the FBI’s work with other federal agencies and state and local officials is included in the 906-page rule book authored during the Trump administration and revised under President Biden. The bureau published the updated Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide online after rejecting requests to make it public.

The words CIA and NSA are unredacted in section 20.2 of the 2021 rule book, while the full details of the section remain hidden from public view. A leaked 2011 copy of the FBI’s rule book without redactions obtained by The Intercept shows that section 20.2 covers name trace requests, which involve formal FBI requests for other agencies to conduct searches of their records regarding subjects of interest.

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JFK Murder: Evolving Strategies for Damage Control

After 60 years, establishment figures are increasingly voicing the belief that government agencies and officials might have at least covered up critical information about the assassination plot to kill President John F. Kennedy. And one major interpreter of history is even going so far as to suggest a key governmental entity took delight in JFK’s demise. 

Nonetheless, they’re still behind the curve of public opinion. And even in their new posture, they appear to be playing a game of denial. 

Most Americans don’t buy the official story of one disgruntled loner coincidentally  securing a job along an as-yet-undetermined presidential motorcade route, then, once the route information was public, deciding spontaneously to bring a rifle and thereby altering the course of history.

And most people who have studied the copious research done over the years are even more sure that it’s hooey. (As was a 1970s panel, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded there was seemingly some kind of conspiracy involving more than one person). That’s why at least some of us keep on digging. 

After Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, swung public opinion on the issue in the early 1990s, Congress unanimously mandated that the government find and release all documents on the assassination. By 2017, a quarter-century later, all the documents were supposed to be out. But delays dragged on as federal agencies sought more time to review, redact, or outright withhold documents that might somehow breach individuals’ privacy or harm national security. 

Still, more documents have slowly emerged, and finally, in December, the National Archives and Records Administration (“Archives”) let loose online another pile of faint, eye-straining documents related to the Kennedy assassination — 13,173 of them. The agency says that pretty much everything covered by the JFK Records Act of 1992 is now out, except a handful of papers protected by other laws involving IRS documents or those protected by rules around judicial proceedings like grand juries. 

The commercial media’s reaction to this “final” release was, with one notable exception, pretty much what you would expect.

Oswald did it alone. Nothing to see here folks, move right along.

Oswald did it alone. And here’s more proof that he did it.

Oswald did it alone. The CIA has been hiding things, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the assassination.

The exception: Oswald alone pulled the trigger — but maybe others were involved.

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CIA’s Deadly “Strategy of Tension” to Destroy Russia

On Monday, the Russian Federation Engels airbase in the Saratov region, nearly 400 miles from Ukraine, was attacked for a second time since the beginning of Russia’s SMO.

“Russia’s Defense Ministry said the incident took place in the early hours of Monday, and three servicemen were killed by debris at the Engels airbase, which houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine in the 10-month-old war,” reports the Associated Press.

There have been a number of attacks inside Russia—in Kursk, the city of Bryansk, the village of Staraya Nelidovka in the Belgorod region, and the military airfields at Dyagilevo in the Ryazan region, in addition to Engels.

The attacks on gas infrastructure occurred prior to Russia announcing it would resume deliveries to Azerbaijan via the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

The corporate war propaganda media has attributed the attacks to Ukraine. However,  according to the Daily Express, Jack Murphy, described as a former “US Army Special Operations operative,” said last week

that NATO and US intelligence agencies have been running agents inside Russia, directing them to target critical infrastructure in a bid to create “chaos.” Shopping centres, gas pipelines and fuel depots have all suffered damage across Russia in recent months with Mr Murphy pointing to a CIA-directed campaign of covert “sabotage.”

On his website, Murphy writes the “campaign involves long standing sleeper cells that the allied spy service has activated to hinder Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by waging a secret war behind Russian lines.”

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Biden Protects CIA By Withholding 5,000 Critical Documents on JFK Assassination

On December 15, President Joe Biden released nearly 1,500 documents on the JFK assassination, but withheld 5,000 critical documents.

The move was not surprising given Biden’s long track record going back to his days on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of rubber-stamping CIA operations and helping the CIA to cover up its crimes.

Under the 1992 President John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act, the U.S. government was supposed to release all documents about the assassination in 2017.

President Donald Trump delayed the full release twice and President Biden has now done the same—releasing only some documents while keeping records secret that are expected to be the most interesting to researchers.

The Biden administration’s excuse is that the JFK Records Act permits postponement of disclosure of information if this is considered “necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

But what harm could possibly derive from exposure of the truth behind the assassination of one of America’s most beloved leaders nearly 60 years ago?

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‘CIA is behind spate of explosions in Russia’: US Army Special Ops veteran claims intelligence agency and NATO ally are conducting sabotage missions

The CIA is combining with the spy service of a NATO ally in Europe to conduct covert sabotage operations inside Russia, according to new claims.

The clandestine campaign is behind many unexplained explosions and fires that have hit strategic or prominent facilities in recent months, says US expert Jack Murphy, an eight-year Army Special Operations veteran.

Separately other European intelligence services have allegedly been ‘running operatives into Russia to create chaos without CIA help’, as has Ukraine.

His claims follow as a new fire struck a shopping mall in Krasnodar region, in southern Russia, the latest in dozens of such incidents. It comes as Putin issued another chilling warning to the West on Christmas day.

In Ukraine today, air raid sirens have been going off around the country as some decide to move their Christmas day to avoid celebrating on the same day as Russia. 

Oil and gas facilities, railways, fuel depots, power plants and shopping malls have been hit across Russia by mysterious explosions, with rumours of sabotage.

‘The campaign involves long standing sleeper cells that the allied spy service has activated to hinder Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by waging a secret war behind Russian lines,’ said Murphy in a post.

‘The campaign is responsible for many of the unexplained explosions and other mishaps that have befallen the Russian military industrial complex since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.’

He cited anonymous US sources including three former intelligence and two military officials, and a sixth source ‘who has been briefed on the campaign’.

The CIA has denied the allegations.

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Dubious but unresolved: Newly declassified CIA memo takes on claim agency employed JFK assassin

Arecent release of declassified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy includes an internal CIA memo that skeptically relays — without ruling out completely — a report that the intelligence agency employed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Officially, Oswald acted alone in the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, firing at the presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. At the time, Kennedy was riding in an open-top convertible and sustained fatal gunshot wounds.

Oswald was apprehended shortly thereafter, but not before he also killed police officer J.D. Tippit while attempting to flee the scene. He was killed two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, whom authorities then arrested. Ruby was later convicted of Oswald’s murder.

Various conspiracy theories involving Kennedy’s death have persisted for decades, with many permeating popular culture. Sitcoms and video games such as “Seinfeld” and Call of Duty have alluded to claims that Oswald may not have acted alone.

Prominent among such theories is a notion that the CIA orchestrated Kenney’s death in retaliation for his removal of CIA Director Allen Dulles following the botched Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Though the claim of CIA involvement is commonly dismissed as a conspiracy theory, NARA’s declassification of documents has shed light on some potential links between Oswald and the CIA. It was already known that as a Marine Oswald was stationed at Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan in 1957. The base was also a hub for the CIA’s psychedelic drug research, and some have already suggested Oswald may have been a subject of the agency’s experiments, according to The Intercept.

However, one of the CIA documents NARA released this month acknowledged the possibility, albeit remote, that Oswald and the CIA had a more direct relationship, with the clandestine organization actually employing him. An internal memorandum from 1978 details repsonses within the CIA to a former finance clerk testifying before the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the agency employed Oswald while he was stationed in Atsugi.

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How CIA chief Bill Burns became Joe Biden’s top diplomat, leading crisis talks and blurring the line between spycraft and statecraft

When Russia ratcheted up tensions with hints it could use tactical nuclear weapons to turn the tide in Ukraine, President Joe Biden turned to his most trusted diplomat.

Bill Burns was dispatched first to Turkey last month, for meetings with his Russian counterpart, before arriving to a missile barrage in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The mission illustrates Burns’ unique role in the administration. Although he now heads the C.I.A., Burns is a career diplomat who has become Biden’s international fixer, dispatched to handle the trickiest geopolitical issues.

Critics say it comes with a cost, blurring lines between spies and the State Department.

‘As a diplomat you always trying to convince people you’re not stealing secrets,  you’re not trying to engage in those sorts of nefarious, 007 activities,’ said Brett Bruen, who was director of global engagement in the Obama White House.

‘Instead, you are genuinely building relationships and trying to establish trust.

‘For Bill Burns, not only to be appointed head of the CIA, but then to be carrying out tasks that are the purview of the State Department does really set off alarms.’ 

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