Tag: cia

Mike Pompeo’s Revealing Hudson Institute Speech

Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave a speech at the Hudson Institute last week that’s probably worth taking a look at just because of how much it reveals about the nature of the US empire and the corrupt institutions which influence its policies.

Pompeo is serving as a “Distinguished Fellow” at the Hudson Institute while he waits for the revolving door of the DC swamp to rotate him back into a federal government position. The Hudson Institute is a neoconservative think tank which has a high degree of overlap with the infamous Project for the New American Century and its lineup of Iraq war architects, and spends a lot of its time manufacturing Beltway support for hawkish agendas against Iran. It was founded in 1961 with the help of a cold warrior named Herman Kahn, whose enthusiastic support for the idea that the US can win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was reportedly an inspiration for the movie Dr Strangelove.

A think tank is an institution where academics are paid by the worst people in the world to come up with explanations for why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid, which are then pitched at key points of influence in the media and the government. “Think tank” is a good and accurate label for these institutions, because they are dedicated to controlling what people think, and because they are artificial enclosures for slimy creatures.

Pompeo’s speech is one long rimjob for the military-industrial complex which indirectly employs him. He repeatedly sings the praises of the weapons that are being poured into Ukraine, two of them by name: the Patriot missile built by Raytheon and the Javelin missile built jointly by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, both of whom happen to be major funders of the Hudson Institute. He repeatedly decries the “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” and excoriates the Biden administration for failing to control the world’s fossil fuel resources aggressively enough in its efforts to “prostrate itself to radicals.”

Pompeo, easily ranked among the most fanatical imperialists on the entire planet, hilariously says that “China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of imperialism.” He decries a “genocide” in Xinjiang and repeatedly implies that China deliberately unleashed Covid-19 upon the world, calling it “the global pandemic induced by China.” He repeatedly claims that Vladimir Putin is trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union.

Along with praise for NATO and for the various anti-China alliances in the Indo-Pacific, Pompeo names “Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan” as “the three lighthouses for liberty” which those alliances must work to support militarily. You will notice that those three “lighthouses” just so happen to be the hottest points of geostrategic conflict with the top three opponents of the US empire: Russia, Iran, and China.

But there are a couple of things Pompeo says which have some real meat on them.

“By aiding Ukraine, we undermined the creation of a Russian-Chinese axis bent on exerting military and economic hegemony in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East,” Pompeo says.

“We must prevent the formation of a Pan-Eurasian colossus incorporating Russia, but led by China,” he later adds. “To do that, we have to strengthen NATO, and we see that nothing hinders Finland and Sweden’s entry into that organization.”

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Watergate at 50: Revelations From Newly Declassified Evidence

“The one duty we owe to history,” said Oscar Wilde, “is to rewrite it.” By this admirable standard, no non-fiction writer of the 20th century fulfilled his duty to history – to the record of our times – more fully, more brilliantly, than Jim Hougan.

When Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA was first published by Random House in November 1984 – more than a decade after the resignation and pardon of Richard Nixon – it presented such a large volume of new and revelatory information about a subject so widely considered exhausted that the book was greeted with the staggered astonishment typically reserved for apparitions.

“If even half of this is true,” wrote J. Anthony Lukas in the New York Times Book Review, “Secret Agenda will add an important new dimension to our understanding of Watergate.” Lukas’ was an important voice. A Pulitzer Prize-winner, he had covered Watergate for the New York Times Magazine and wrote Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years in 1976. This critically acclaimed book was the first comprehensive account of Watergate. “But,” Lukas added, “it may be months before reporters can sort through this material, check Mr. Hougan’s sources and decide which of these revelations is solid gold, which dross.”

Now, 40 years after Secret Agenda appeared, the verdict is in. While some of Hougan’s analytic conclusions have come under challenge – including by me, an avowed acolyte of the author – the wealth of new facts and documentation he presented has stood the test of time. Where once it seemed impossible to reckon with the contribution Secret Agenda made to Watergate, it is now impossible to reckon with Watergate, even after the release of thousands more tapes and documents, without reference to Hougan.

Introducing his findings, Hougan described Secret Agenda as “an attempt to correct the record … and to suggest avenues of further investigation.” Several authors over the ensuing decades, including me, took him up on that challenge, and a couple of epic lawsuits unfolded, with the result that the book’s central thrusts were only strengthened.

Reckoning with Secret Agenda is hardly an academic matter. If Hougan and the other Watergate revisionists are correct, then the scandal that toppled Richard Nixon from power was about much more than a third-rate burglary attempt, the wiretapping of the opposing party, or even a series of covert crimes ordered by a paranoid president. Secret Agenda and its progeny force us, instead, to conceive of Watergate as a Cold War-era power struggle between a duly elected president and the national security state, with Nixon as much a victim in the affair as he was a perpetrator. In a time when legions of Americans believe in the existence of a “deep state,” getting the history of Watergate right takes on new urgency.

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Western Officials Admit Ukraine Is Crawling With CIA Personnel

In an article titled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say,” anonymous western officials inform us of the following through their stenographers at The New York Times:

As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.

Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.

The revelation that the CIA and US special forces are conducting military operations in Ukraine does indeed make a lie of the Biden administration’s insistence at the start of the war that there would be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine, and the admission that NATO powers are so involved in operations against a nuclear superpower means we are closer to seeing a nuclear exchange than anyone should be comfortable with.

This news should surprise no one who knows anything about the usual behavior of the US intelligence cartel, but interestingly it contradicts something we were told by the same New York Times not three weeks ago.

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Fmr CIA Director Summoned by Judge Over Claims US Plotted ‘At Highest Level’ to Execute Julian Assange

Last year, media reported that US officials had allegedly discussed the possibility of assassinating Julian Assange during his stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017. The alleged plot presupposed kidnapping the WikiLeaks founder from the diplomatic mission or capturing him if he tried to escape.

Mike Pompeo, the former US secretary of state, has been summoned by a Spanish court to testify over claims the US had plotted “at the highest level” to assassinate WikiLeaks whistleblower Julian Assange, reported The Telegraph.

Judge Pedraz had sent a request to US authorities to call Pompeo as a witness, a spokesman for Spain’s National Court was cited by The Telegraph as saying, adding that, “There has been no reply as yet.”

Judge Santiago Pedraz, of Spain’s National Court, is leading a probe into whether Spanish security firm UC Global spied on Assange while providing security for the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The Australian citizen had sought refuge at the embassy in 2012 in order to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape charges, which he denies. The whistleblower remained there until April 2019, when Ecuador’s new government revoked his asylum.

Lawyers representing Assange in Spain, including the former judge Baltasar Garzón, have accused Washington of “orchestrating” the espionage effort targeting the whistleblower. The claim that UC Global placed microphones and cameras in the embassy to spy on Assange’s private conversations and meetings.

The legal moves involving Mike Pompeo come as part of a petition filed by Aitor Martínez, one of the lawyers representing Assange in the proceedings against UC Global. In addition to summoning Pompeo, Judge Pedraz is also seeking to question William Evanina, a former US counterintelligence official who is said to have confessed to viewing security camera footage and audio recordings from inside the Ecuadorian Embassy.

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Some “UFO Abductions” Were Simulated Psychological Warfare Experiments, Says Dr. Jacques Vallée

Dr. Jacques Valée is an academic who holds a masters degree in astrophysics and a Ph.D., in computer science. He co-developed the first computerized map of Mars for NASA in 1963. The subject of UFOs first attracted his attention as an astronomer in Paris, and he subsequently became a close associate of J. Allen Hynek, who headed the US Air Force’s investigation into the UFO phenomenon, known as Project Blue Book.

Valée is one of the foremost researchers of the UFO phenomenon. He as been investigating it for decades. With governments around the world now acknowledging the phenomenon after years of ridicule, it would be encouraging for them to work with researchers like Valée. This, unfortunately, does not happen.

In one of his latest books, Forbidden Science 4, he shares a record of his private study into unexplained phenomenon between 1990 and the end of the millennium, during which he was traveling around the world pursuing his professional work as a high-technology investor. It’s a bit of a diary, documenting his experiences and encounters/meetings as he tries to examine and explore the phenomenon.

In an entry dated Thursday 26 March 1992, Vallée writes:

“I have secured a document confirming that the CIA simulated UFO abductions in Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) as psychological warfare experiments.”

If this is true, it’s quite concerning. Reading this line from his book triggered me back to earlier in his book when he mentions one of many conversations he’s had with Ron Blackburn, a former Colonel in the US Air Force.

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Supreme Court Tortures the Constitution Again

The Supreme Court ruled in March that Americans have no right to learn the grisly details of CIA torture because the CIA has never formally confessed its crimes. The case symbolizes how the rule of law has become little more than legal mumbo-jumbo to shroud official crimes. And it is another grim reminder that Americans cannot rely on politically approved lawyers wearing bat suits to save their freedoms.

In 2002, the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian radical, in Pakistan and falsely believed he was a kingpin with al Qaeda. The CIA tortured him for years in Thailand and Poland. As Justice Neal Gorsuch noted, the CIA “waterboarded Zubaydah at least 80 times, simulated live burials in coffins for hundreds of hours,” and brutalized him to keep him awake for six days in a row. The CIA has admitted some of the details of the torture, and Zubaydah’s name was mentioned more than a thousand times in a 683-page Senate report released in 2014 on the CIA torture regime. But the Supreme Court permitted the CIA to pretend that the case is still secret.

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Judge suggests CIA may have illegally recorded Assange conversations, challenging extradition demands

Spanish media is reporting that a court order issued by Spanish High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz indicates that content of communications between Julian Assange and his lawyers may have been illegally recorded during the time he spent at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The order that the newspaper El Pais has seen names Spain’s Under Cover (UC) Global security company as handing over the information to CIA agents. That would have revealed the defense strategy of Assange, a whistleblower and journalist whom the US wants extradited from the UK on espionage charges, a request that has been granted and will be decided on within the next two months by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel.

If put on trial and found guilty in the US, Assange could be sentenced to 175 years in prison for revealing damning US military operations during the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and publishing it on the WikiLeaks website.

The Spanish court order is procedural in nature, sent by Jusge Pedraz to the UK as an explanation as to why the country’s authorities should allow him to take testimonies from Assange’s doctors and UK lawyers – one of whom is well known solicitor and human rights activist Gareth Peirce – who were the subject of spying at the embassy.

Legal sources have told El Pais that the extradition request could fall through for violating the right of defense if there is proof that US intelligence agencies managed to learn about Assange’s defense by illegally spying on his legal representatives and doctors. Spain gaining access to these individuals for the sake of obtaining witness testimonies would leave the British justice system “in an embarrassing situation,” some believe.

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How Monsters Who Beat Jews To Death in 1944 Became America’s Favorite “Freedom Fighters” in 1945—with a Little Help from their Friends at CIA

After the end of the Second World War, American intelligence immediately set about the work of rehabilitating the world’s fascists to fight the new war on Communism. From the transformation of the bloody “Devil of Showa” Nobusuke Kishi into the hand-picked Prime Minister of Japan, to Emil Augsburg, the architect of the Holocaust described as “Honest and idealist … enjoys good food and wine…unprejudiced mind…” by the CIA, it seems that Langley never met a fascist it couldn’t do business with.

Such was the case with Yaroslav Stetsko and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Stetsko spent the war in the shadow of Stepan Bandera but eventually Stetsko would far surpass his friend in terms of prominence. Before long, the monsters who had beaten Jews to death with hammers just years before became America’s favorite “freedom fighters” and took their business global.

The Principality of Yaroslav

“Therefore, I stand at the establishment of the extermination of the Jews and the expediency of transferring to Ukraine the German methods of exterminating Jews, excluding their assimilation…” —Yaroslav Stetsko

At the direction of Nazi war criminal Alfred Rosenberg, the Committee of Subjugated Nations was formed in 1943, with the idea to unite all anti-Soviet partisans under one banner. In reality, the bulk of its members were OUN soldiers, and its leader was the second-in-command of the OUN, Yaroslav Stetsko. CSN changed its name to the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations or ABN in 1946. The name ABN will be used for the sake of consistency.

Stetsko was a close friend of OUN-B founder Stepan Bandera. Like Bandera he was a militant anti-Semite equating Marxism with Judaism, while calling for the extermination of both. Even after the war, when his American bosses forced him to soften his public statements, he still called for an “ethnically pure” Ukraine, purged of Jews, Poles and Russians.

Stetsko believed that his own Galician Ukrainians were the direct descendants of the Rus, the Norse conquerors who eventually became the first Tsars under Rurik. These Nordic people were Stetsko’s master race, imbued with all the qualities you would expect.

On the other hand, Stetsko considered Russians to be Asiatic rather than European. Russians were seen as the descendants of the Mongols and Huns, making them naturally tyrannical, cruel and deceitful. Stetsko’s ideology would become the foundation on which modern Ukrainian fascists have built their movements. The parallels to Nazism are obvious enough that it is surprising to see this ideology find a home in the Wall Street Journal today.

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The NYT Acknowledges the CIA’s Big Lie for Gina Haspel

The  New York Times has finally acknowledged Gina Haspel’s direct involvement in the Central Intelligence Agency’s policy of torture and abuse.  On June 4, 2022, an article provided details of Haspel’s role as chief of the CIA base twenty years ago that was known for conducting the most sadistic acts of torture and abuse.  At her confirmation hearings to become CIA director in 2018, Haspel refused to answer any direct questions about her role in the policy of torture and abuse, which included the waterboarding of a Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.  The CIA stopped me from writing about Haspel’s role in my 2018 memoir, “Whistleblower at the CIA.”

As a result of CIA’s censorship, I joined a lawsuit with four former federal employees to end the government’s suppression of our writings on national security issues.  Last month, the Supreme Court allowed to stand a court ruling that denied our case, which had been presented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union.  The government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide secrets, but the CIA’s review system is opaque, exceeding legitimate security boundaries, and compromising free speech.  The Haspel case exposes the dangers of government censorship; the failures of the Senate’s confirmation process; and the CIA’s ability to avoid accountability for its transgressions.

At the closing of Haspel’s hearing, the chairman of the intelligence committee, Richard Burr (R/NC), told her that “you have acted morally, ethically and legally over a distinguished 30-year career.”  Surely the members of the committee knew of Haspel’s role in torture and abuse.  This would be particularly true for the senior Democrat on the committee, Diane Feinstein, who led the committee’s investigation of the CIA program.

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