September 23, 2023

Same thing happened to Jose Padilla.

The CIA's favorite form of torture

If the Bush administration forces the CIA to drop "tough" interrogation techniques like waterboarding, the agency will probably fall back on a brutal method that leaves no physical marks.

By MARK BENJAMIN
Salon, June 7, 2007

According to news reports, the White House is preparing to issue an executive order that will set new ground rules for the CIA's secret program for interrogating captured al-Qaida types. Constrained by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which contains a strict ban on abuse, it is anticipated that the order will jettison waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques.

But President Bush has insisted publicly that "tough" techniques work, and has signaled that the CIA's secret program can somehow continue under the rubric of the Military Commissions Act. The executive order will reportedly hand the CIA greater latitude than the military to conduct coercive interrogations. If waterboarding goes the way of the Iron Maiden, what "tough" techniques will the CIA use on its high-value detainees?

The answer is most likely a measure long favored by the CIA -- sensory deprivation. The benign-sounding form of psychological coercion has been considered effective for most of the life of the agency, and its slippery definition might allow it to squeeze through loopholes in a law that seeks to ban prisoner abuse. Interviews with former CIA officials and experts on interrogation suggest that it is an obvious choice for interrogators newly constrained by law. The technique has already been employed during the "war on terror," and, Salon has learned, was apparently used on 14 high-value detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay.

A former top CIA official predicted to Salon that sensory deprivation would remain available to the agency as an interrogation tool in the future. "I'd be surprised if [sensory deprivation] came out of the toolbox," said A.B. Krongard, who was the No. 3 official at the CIA until late 2004. Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written extensively about the history of CIA interrogation, agrees with Krongard that the CIA will continue to employ sensory deprivation. "Of course they will," predicted McCoy. "It is embedded in the doctrine." For the CIA to stop using sensory deprivation, McCoy says, "The leopard would have to change his spots." And he warned that a practice that may sound innocuous to some was sharpened by the agency over the years into a horrifying torture technique.

Sensory deprivation, as CIA research and other agency interrogation materials demonstrate, is a remarkably simple concept. It can be inflicted by immobilizing individuals in small, soundproof rooms and fitting them with blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. "The first thing that happens is extraordinary hallucinations akin to mescaline," explained McCoy. "I mean extreme hallucinations" of sight and sound. It is followed, in some cases within just two days, by what McCoy called a "breakdown akin to psychosis."

Continues…

https://www.salon.com/2007/06/07/sensory_deprivation/

Ancient history we’ve seen.

September 22, 2023

Today's GOP: A MOBCO Production

The Mafia’s President: Nixon and the Mob

by Don Fulsom

Unbeknownst to most people even now, the election of 1968 placed the patron saint of the Mafia in the White House. In other words, Richard Nixon would go on to not only lead a criminal presidency; he would be totally indebted to our nation’s top mobsters.

By 1969, thanks in large part to his long-time campaign manager and political advisor Murray Chotiner, a lawyer who specialized in representing mobsters, Nixon had participated in secret criminal dealings for more than 20 years with sketchy figures such as Mickey Cohen, Mob financial guru Meyer Lansky, Teamsters union chief Jimmy Hoffa, and New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. And with Chotiner as one of his key behind-the-scenes advisors in the White House, Nixon’s ties to the Mafia didn’t end there. The Mafia’s President reveals a mind-blowing litany of favors Nixon exchanged with these sinister characters over decades, ranging from springing Jimmy Hoffa from prison to banning the federal government from using the terms “Mafia” and “La Cosa Nostra.” Drawing on newly released government tapes, documents, and other fresh information, The Mafia’s President by Don Fulsom offers a carefully reported, deeply researched account of Richard Nixon’s secret connections to America’s top crime lords. Read an excerpt of The Mafia’s President below.

SNIP...

At the same time, Roughhouse Rothman was now funneling money from Santos and other ousted Havana casino owners into a paramilitary anti-Castro organization in Miami. Called the International Anti-Communist Brigade, it was headed by none other than future Watergate felon Frank Sturgis.

In May 1973, Santos Trafficante demonstrated the closeness of his special longtime bond with President Richard Nixon—and the unique inside information he had on the Watergate scandal—when he privately disclosed to a friendly Washington law firm that the break-in at Democratic headquarters was “ordered by Nixon personally.” The Mafia godfather said Nixon was “terrified” that the Democrats might have evidence of his prior role as organizer of the effort to assassinate Fidel Castro. (Nixon never even told the Warren Commission of those plots, or of his prior relationship with—of all people—Jack Ruby, the killer of alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Trafficante additionally claimed that Nixon had dispatched the CIA’s chief of security, Sheffield Edwards, to Florida in late July 1960 to assure Trafficante that the vice president was indeed the organizer of the Castro murder plans. The Florida Mob boss made these revelations to investigators for prominent DC attorney F. Lee Bailey—who once represented Trafficante, and who was then defending Watergate burglar James McCord.

The godfather’s disclosures about Nixon’s role in the Watergate scandal, and in earlier efforts to kill Castro, were not made public until recently. One of Bailey’s investigators, Daniel Sheehan, revealed them in his memoirs, and in college lecture halls where he taught as a professor. Sheehan says Trafficante reported that Nixon used a secure “scrambler” phone to get Howard Hughes on board in the Castro murder scheme—adding that Hughes then chose his own right-hand man, Robert Maheu, to help coordinate the effort.

CONTINUED...

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/mafias-president-nixon-mobsters-in-cuba/

September 21, 2023

Trump is Putin's only hope.

When making an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war, demented deviant warmongers chose Trump. Ask Kim Jong Un.

September 20, 2023

Trump and Meadows joked about Covid on plane after Biden debate, book says

Martin Pengelly in Washington
The Guardian, September 20, 2023

Donald Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows joked about the then US president having Covid on Air Force One after the first debate with Joe Biden in 2020 – an event at which Trump was not tested but three days before which, Meadows later confessed, Trump had indeed tested positive.

On the flight, on 29 September 2020, Trump speculated about his health, saying he thought his voice had sounded “a little bit off” at a rally in Duluth, Minnesota. But he also said he did not want the media to “accuse me of something ridiculous, like having Covid”.

Meadows “laughed and promised him that we would handle it if it happened”.

“We” referred to Meadows and Cassidy Hutchinson, the chief of staff’s closest aide who has now written a memoir, Enough. The book, which describes Hutchinson’s journey from Trump loyalist to key witness in the January 6 inquiry, will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.

In December 2021, the Guardian obtained a copy of Meadows’s own memoir, The Chief’s Chief. In that book, Meadows revealed that Trump tested positive for Covid three days before debating Biden but disregarded the test after another came back negative and then, despite showing worsening symptoms, carried out public events including the debate and a reception for bereaved military families.

Continues…

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/trump-meadows-joked-covid-plane-125209584.html

Murderous bastards, as well as traitors.

September 19, 2023

Laughing during prisoner torture.

Makes him eminently qualified to run Saudi Arabia.

September 19, 2023

Inslaw/PROMIS software theft was very, very good to fascists worldwide.

The INSLAW Octopus

Software piracy, conspiracy, cover-up, stonewalling, covert action: Just another decade at the Department of Justice

by Richard L. Fricker
Wired, Jan. 1, 1993

Excerpt...

Edwin Meese was apparently quite taken with PROMIS. He told an April 1981 gathering of prosecutors that PROMIS was "one of the greatest opportunities for [law enforcement] success in the future." In March 1982, Inslaw won a $9.6 million contract from the Justice Department to install the public domain version of PROMIS in 20 US Attorney's offices as a pilot program. If successful, the company would install PROMIS in the remaining 74 federal prosecutors' offices around the country. The eventual market for complete automation of the Federal court system was staggering: as much as $3 billion, according to Bill Hamilton. But Hamilton would never see another federal contract.

Designed as a case-management system for prosecutors, PROMIS has the ability to track people. "Every use of PROMIS in the court system is tracking people," said Inslaw President Hamilton. "You can rotate the file by case, defendant, arresting officer, judge, defense lawyer, and it's tracking all the names of all the people in all the cases."

What this means is that PROMIS can provide a complete rundown of all federal cases in which a lawyer has been involved, or all the cases in which a lawyer has represented defendant A, or all the cases in which a lawyer has represented white-collar criminals, at which stage in each of the cases the lawyer agreed to a plea bargain, and so on. Based on this information, PROMIS can help a prosecutor determine when a plea will be taken in a particular type of case.

But the real power of PROMIS, according to Hamilton, is that with a staggering 570,000 lines of computer code, PROMIS can integrate innumerable databases without requiring any reprogramming. In essence, PROMIS can turn blind data into information. And anyone in government will tell you that information, when wielded with finesse, begets power. Converted to use by intelligence agencies, as has been alleged in interviews by ex-CIA and Israeli Mossad agents, PROMIS can be a powerful tracking device capable of monitoring intelligence operations, agents and targets, instead of legal cases.

At the time of its inception, PROMIS was the most powerful program of its type. But a similar program, DALITE, was developed under another LEAA grant by D. Lowell Jensen, the Alameda County (Calif.) District Attorney. In the mid-1970s, the two programs vied for a lucrative Los Angeles County contract and Inslaw won out. (Early in his career, Ed Meese worked under Jensen at the Alameda County District Attorney's office. Jensen was later appointed to Meese's Justice Department during the Reagan presidency.)

CONTINUES...

https://www.wired.com/1993/01/inslaw/

Can you believe it's been 30 years already? Seeing the state of the nation, yes.

September 18, 2023

Fiends

What makes them tick? Whatever brings them riches and power.



Go back to when Jimmy Carter was president -- oil prices had finally started to come down when the US allowed the exiled pariah Shah entry for medical treatment and Iran allowed its "students" to take over the US embassy and hold hostage every US citizen they could grab. And, just like that, oil prices shot up.

Same thing for Gulf War I and Gulf War II. The oil in the ground -- "the world's largest petroleum reserves" -- instantly shoot up in value, too. Imagine the joy of the bankers in Switzlerland and the croupiers in Monaco.

September 17, 2023

Little NAZI unleashed the kraken to publicly torture private citizen.

Garrett Ziegler, The Trump Staffer Who Let The Kraken Loose In The White House

By Josh Kovensky
Talking Points Memo, July 29, 2022

Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Patrick Byrne marched into the White House on Dec. 18, 2020 for what some have described as the most insane meeting of the Trump presidency.

They made it into the Oval Office in part thanks to a low-level White House staffer named Garrett Ziegler.

A right-wing opposition researcher, Ziegler, 26, at the time of the Kraken meeting held a job in Peter Navarro’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. But that doesn’t quite do him justice. Apart from helping Flynn, Powell, and Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO, gain access to the White House, Ziegler has spent the past 18 months alternately trying to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election, spreading documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop, and boosting QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories. He’s created a website and a foundation that hosts the laptop’s contents, and runs a Telegram channel on which he frequently posts lurid excerpts from the computer.

Politico described Ziegler’s effort as a “holy war.” He approaches his crusade with remarkable zeal. Ziegler has spent months on Telegram surfacing emails, videos, and images out of an archive of more than 120,000 records, which he claims to have received from Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik.

Continues…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/garrett-ziegler-trump-white-house

September 17, 2023

Nixon-Kissinger approved CIA destroying democracy in Chile.

“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” — Henry Kissinger

What they coup overseas they will coup at home.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University has the receipts:

The Chile Documentation Project

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/chile-documentation-project

September 16, 2023

REVERSE-BIAS: How the FBI protected Donald Trump

FBI SA Johnathan Buma investigated both Hunter Biden and Rudy Giuliani when Dimdonnie wanted to frame innocent private American citizens. Guess who the FBI bosses lifted more than a finger to investigate? The author of the op-ed below suggests where Gym Jordan and his Congressional colleagues will find evidence of a weaponized DoJ.

I post this stuff because it seems AWOL from coverage in broadcast news cough CIABCNNBCBSFakeNoiseNutworks cough Corporate McPravda.