Know your BFEE: Robert Gates did more than keep the doors open at BCCI

[Octafish]

The 109th Congress will try their damndest to ramrod the nomination of Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. We should do all we can to spread the word on the fellah in order to stop the Republicans. Like Congress itself, Gates is one of the major reasons we’ve gotten into the mess we’re in today.



Here’s why Gates is unqualified. First off, he’s a traitor. Robert Gates helped sink Jimmy Carter’s presidency—while he was a CIA liaison as a member of the National Security Council staff. Gee. What a nice spot to help spy, let alone sabotage, hostage negotiations, campaign debates and who knows what else.

He’s also a liar. Gates told Congress that the Soviet Union was ready to crust the United States militarily and economically. The presstitutes parroted the lie until the Soviets collapsed in 1989.

Gates is a poster child for the Bush Family Evil Empire. From what we know:

October Surprise
Team B Soviet Threat Analysis
Iran-Contra Treason
Iraqgate Treason
Murder Inc.
Spying on America
BCCI

Robert Gates is a scion of the Military Industrial Complex. He appears to have been born for the job, judging by how much his masters have profited from war. As a trusted, made man of the BFEE, Gates knows there’s more than a national cemetery full of skeletons residing in the closets of the Bush family and the global elites they serve.

We must make sure the 110th Congress knows that. Otherwise, more Americans, Iraqis and innocent people will die for Bush’s lies.



To begin discussion, a sample of what is known:

Bush administration’s Trojan Horse gift to America and the Democrats:

Former CIA Director and Iran-Contra insider Robert Gates

by Larry Chin

Global Research, November 9, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca

With the Democrats and Democratic Party voters euphoric over a purported election victory, and a possible “change of course” in Iraq, the Bush administration quietly added poison to the Democrats’ celebration champagne by dredging up former CIA Director and Iran-Contra participant Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

The “war on terrorism” will not only continue, it will expand and deepen with Gates heading the Pentagon.

Who is Robert Gates?

Robert M. Gates was the CIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He became CIA Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) in 1986, and moved up to Acting Director of Central Intelligence (ADCI) that same year. In 1991, George H.W. Bush nominated Gates to head the CIA (as Langley’s DCI).

As a protégé of the infamous William Casey, and as both deputy director and director of the CIA, it goes without saying that Robert Gates was involved in every geopolitical crime and cover-up of the Reagan-Bush and George H.W. Bush era.

The encyclopedic list includes Iran-Contra, CIA narcotics trafficking, criminal covert operations, the infamous October Surprise, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce (BCCI) scandal.

CONTINUED…

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20061109&articleId=3784

Gee. That doesn’t sound like a very honorable person. That sounds like a crook.



For a legal perspective, let’s get the verdict of a former Federal judge, the special prosecutor charged with investigating the crimes of Iran-Contra, Lawrence E. Walsh:

Lies, Cover Ups and Slanted Intelligence

Robert Gates and Iran/Contra

By LAWRENCE E. WALSH
CounterPunch November 8, 2006

The day after Clair George's arraignment, we turned to Robert Gates. The Senate intelligence committee's hearings on his appointment to head the CIA were scheduled to begin within a few days. Craig Gillen and I met the committee's chairman, David Boren, and ranking minority member, Frank Murkowski, and staff counsel in Boren's office. Reiterating what I had already told Boren, we said that two questions had not been answered satisfactorily: Had Gates falsely denied knowledge of Oliver North's Contra-support activities? Had Gates falsely postdated his first knowledge of North's diversion of arms sale proceeds to the Contras?

SNIP…

The committee singled out William Casey as the culprit in Iran/Contra and suggested that Gates had been largely bypassed in matters related to it. As Senator Murkowski (R-AK) put it: "What's coming out is a better understanding of the management style of Casey, and the compartmentalization. There are numerous instances where senior CIA officials were bypassed on projects that were worked by the director and his designees solely."

Senator John Chaffee (R-RI) said that Casey had not run a typical bureaucracy: "Bill Casey ran the outfit in a manner that jump-charged the command Chains of command in diagrams didn't fit with Bill Casey."

This view was contradicted by Thomas Polgar, a decorated former CIA officer and later a Senate committee staff member. Polgar testified that Gates had been Casey's creation and had not been "compartmentalized" out of sensitive information.

Fiers testified that Gates was an exceptionally gifted operator and that his meteoric rise had aroused jealousy among some older colleagues. Fiers said that Gates was very smart, very capable, although "sort of on the make." According to Fiers, Gates had understood "the universe" of the Contra-supply operation-that it had been run out of the White House, with North as the quarterback-but had not been given extensive detail.

Charles Allen told the committee of his efforts to warn Gates about the diversion of the arms sale proceeds to the Contras. After testifying that Gates had appeared irritated, Allen said, "My personal fears were that somehow this initiative had gotten off the track, and that it might have gone even higher to the Oval Office."

Richard Kerr, who was now the deputy director of the CIA under William Webster, confirmed Allen's story. In addition to relaying the information to Gates, he had told another CIA officer of Allen's concern. As I watched the hearings, I felt certain that Gates would not have brushed off these alarming reports if he had not already known about the diversion. He simply had not wanted to be told by a new witness.

I also disbelieved Gates's testimony about President Reagan's December 5, 1985, retroactive finding purporting to authorize the CIA's facilitation of the November 1985 Hawk missile shipment to recover the Iranian hostages. In the high-level meetings at the CIA a few days after the Hawk shipment, Casey's deputy John McMahon had announced that Reagan had signed the finding. But Gates told the committee that he had forgotten about the finding by November 1986, when he supervised the preparation of Casey's testimony for his appearances before the House and Senate intelligence committees. The CIA's then former general counsel, David Doherty, however, told the senators that he had handed Gates a draft of the finding only a day or so before Casey gave his misleading testimony.

CONTINUED…

http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh11082006.html

Wow. There’s a heckuva lot more there there.



Not OT; Unlike most of their colleagues, Former Sen. Bradley and Former Sen. Metzenbaum have a lot to be proud of.

Now here’s something to remember: History has a way of influencing the present and determining the future.

So, when Gates says he’s seen it all, he’s right. Heck, he’s painted the friggin’ picture.

Ask him about his portrait of Osama bin Laden:

Robert Gates Promoted and Financed Osama Bin Laden

by LondonYank
Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 12:45:40 AM PST

Robert Gates made Osama Bin Laden what he is today. This is not exaggeration. By funding Osama Bin Laden's operations, training camps, weaponry and political influence from 1979 (even before Russia invaded Afghanistan), Robert Gates personally gave us our principal enemy in the "War on Terror".

More frighteningly, all of Robert Gates' support to Osama Bin Laden ran through Pakistan's ISI. ISI has been linked to training and funding the 9/11 bombers, the London bombers, the Madrid bombers, the Bali bombers and the Delhi bombers but is strangely immune from official Washington scrutiny.

I really wonder which side Robert Gates thinks he's on. With a 30 year history of pomoting and financing state and non-state terrorism, I doubt it is the side of the peace and prosperity of the American people and bringing our troops home safe.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/9/34541/0328

It takes all kinds, they say.



Robert Parry chronicled the October Surprise and Iran-Contra and did work worthy of a dozen Pulitzer Prizes.

What did telling the Truth cost him? His job.

The Secret World of Robert Gates

By Robert Parry
November 9, 2006

Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family’s inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.

The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers – three key areas that relate to his future job.

Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director – and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.

If Bush’s timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates’s past.

Fifteen years ago, Gates got a similar pass when leading Democrats agreed to put “bipartisanship” ahead of careful oversight when Gates was nominated for the CIA job by President George H.W. Bush.

CONTINUED…

Some things are more important than money. Parry’s stuff is pure gold.



The late Sen. Paul Wellstone had some reservations about Mr. Gates, way back when.

Rumsfeld’s Replacement The Robert Gates File

Iran-Contra figure, regime-change enthusiast, alleged intelligence manipulator -- meet Robert Gates, the man who’s poised to be the next Secretary of Defense.

James Ridgeway
November 09 , 2006

WASHINGTON—While Donald Rumsfeld was Ronald Reagan’s errand boy to Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s, Robert Gates, the man named yesterday to succeed him as Secretary of Defense, was at the very heart of the American intelligence apparatus, actively planning and carrying out covert operations in Central America and the Middle East.

SNIP…

According to Robert Parry, a reporter who has closely tracked this period in the CIA’s history, during this time the Reagan administration was “pressing the CIA to adopt an analysis that accepted right-wing media reports pinning European terrorism on the Soviets. The CIA analysts knew that these charges were false, in part because they were based on ‘black’ or false propaganda that the CIA itself had been planting in the European media. But the ‘politicization’ tide was strong.” And Gates, he writes, led an effort to implicate the Soviets in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. “In 1985, Gates closeted a special team to push through another pre-cooked paper arguing that the KGB was behind the 1981 wounding of Pope John Paul II. CIA analysts again knew that the charge was bogus, but could not block the paper from leaving CIA.”

Critics have long thought Gates was heavily involved from the very beginning in putting together and implementing the secret Iran-Contra war. In his book, “Firewall: The Iran/Contra conspiracy and Cover-Up,” Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, wrote that he was skeptical of Gates’ repeated denials of having been aware or involved with the details of the Iran-Contra operations with Oliver North. According to the National Security Archive’s chronology of the day-by-day happenings in Iran-Contra, on October 1, 1985 the CIA’s National Intelligence Officer, Charles Allen, informed then deputy director Gates of his suspicion that funds were being diverted to the Contras. Gates, for his part, has insisted he first learned of the diversion one year later. “Whenever questioned, Gates had always claimed that he had first learned of Allen's concern about the diversion on the day after Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua on October 5, 1986,” writes Walsh, referring to the lone survivor on board a CIA cargo plane that was shot down over Nicaragua while on a mission to supply the Contras. “Gates said that he and Allen had then reported this to Casey, who told them that he had just received much the same information from another source.’’

In blunt terms, Walsh thought Gates was a liar. It was only for a lack of evidence that he eventually gave up trying to indict him.

In November 1991, years after Iran-Contra messily unraveled, the Senate deliberated on the nomination of Gates to succeed William H. Webster as the next director of Central Intelligence. Democrats, including former Senator Tom Daschle, Jay Rockefeller, and the late Paul Wellstone spoke forcefully, vowing to vote against the nominee. “Robert Gates became the Deputy Director of the CIA in April, 1986, after a meteoric rise in the Agency,” Wellstone said. “His confirmation hearings provided ample and credible evidence that, as the Deputy Director, he repeatedly skewed intelligence to promote the world view of his mentor and his boss, William Casey. Analysts specializing in the Soviet Union, Latin America, Africa, and scientific affairs, came forward--some at risk to their careers in the agency--to provide examples. The record further strongly suggests that Robert Gates supported--passively or actively--terribly misguided or illegal covert operations, including the diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras obtained through the sale of arms to Iran. He also had a hand in hiding some of the details of these covert operations from Congress. Lastly, the record showed that Robert Gates crossed the line from independent intelligence-gathering into high-profile policymaking when he gave speeches advocating an unyielding line toward the Soviet Union and deployment of a star wars missile defense system.”

CONTINUED…

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2006/11/Gates%20Files.html

So, I’d like it a heckuva lot better if the 110th Congress decided to take a real long look into Mr. Gates’ past and his character. Our nation’s future depends on it.

[Virginia Dare]

1. I won't rest peacefully at night with him in charge...

just as dangerous as Rumsfeld, just a different kind of dangerous.

Octafish!

:yourock:

[Octafish]

18. 'Good Government' before 'Bi-Partisanship'

To me, a real patriot is one who wants to do what's best for his country and countrymen. That doesn't often include making war.

Odd how fast those interested in making money off of war are to call themselves "patriot."

Revisiting Iran-Contra: The Nomination of Robert Gates

November 10, 2006
Ivan Eland

Most of official Washington has long believed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld needed to be sacked. Unfortunately it took a major Republican loss at the polls to finally prompt George W. Bush to cut loose a key player from his inner circle.

The removal of Rumsfeld signals that Bush is listening to the voters and elected officials. However, the nomination of Robert Gates—a Bush family crony and former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) under his father’s administration—to replace Rumsfeld will only create new problems for the president.

President Ronald Reagan had to withdraw Gates’ nomination for DCI in 1987 because of Gates’ involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. By 1991, after the heat had died down on the whole affair, President George H.W. Bush re-nominated Gates for the post, and he was confirmed.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Iran-Contra affair was worse for the republic than the Watergate scandal. The Nixon administration’s illegal spying and dirty tricks on political opponents and misuse of law enforcement and intelligence agencies were bad. But the Reagan administration’s evasion of a congressional ban on assisting the Nicaraguan Contras (the Boland Amendment) was a knife in the heart of the greatest power the Congress has under the checks and balances of the Constitution—the power of the purse. Illegal activities get more media and law enforcement attention than unconstitutional actions, but the unconstitutional ones are, by far, the most harmful to the country.

SNIP...

Gates’ role in ignoring Congress’s specific ban on assisting the Contras—one of the most dangerous threats to constitutional government in American history—should not be dismissed as merely “old news.” Apparently, the media and the Democrats are so relieved about getting rid of Rumsfeld that they appear to be doing just that. In a November 9, 2006 article, the Washington Post touted Gates’ extensive government experience, brilliance, bipartisanship, and pragmatic, consensus-building management style, but included only one sentence in Gates’ biography about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. The newspaper also cites praise for Gates from retired Senator Sam Nunn, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose questions led to the withdrawal of the first Gates CIA nomination in 1987. The Post quoted Nunn as complimenting Gates’ “ability to work closely with Congress on a bipartisan basis,” and noted that he “has a well-deserved reputation on both sides of the aisle for competency and integrity.”

Integrity in the nation’s capital apparently includes looking the other way when unconstitutional acts are being committed—even when those actions threaten the balance of power between government branches and the decentralized system of governance which makes America unique.

CONTINUED...

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1850

Thanks for giving a damn, Virginia Dare. We got a darn good chance of getting the whole kit'n'kabboodle of 'em thrown in Leavenworth. And they know it, too. The trick is in getting the truth to the good people in the Pentagon and the rest of the government.

[blm]

2. Thanks for doing this - you'd think people would GET by now how relevant it all is

to everything going on today. At this point, I think it's because knowing the truth and admitting its significance also means acknowledging TOP Dems were involved in the coverup. They'd prefer the anti-corruption Democrats just go away and leave them to the fantasy goodness of their favored Democratic leaders.



Democrats, the Truth Still Matters!
By Robert Parry
(First Posted May 11, 2006)

Editor's Note: With the Democratic victories in the House and Senate, there is finally the opportunity to demand answers from the Bush administration about important questions, ranging from Dick Cheney's secret energy policies to George W. Bush's Iraq War deceptions. But the Democrats are sure to be tempted to put the goal of "bipartisanship" ahead of the imperative for truth.

Democrats, being Democrats, always want to put governance, such as enacting legislation and building coalitions, ahead of oversight, which often involves confrontation and hard feelings. Democrats have a difficult time understanding why facts about past events matter when there are problems in the present and challenges in the future.

Given that proclivity, we are re-posting a story from last May that examined why President Bill Clinton and the last Democratic congressional majority (in 1993-94) shied away from a fight over key historical scandals from the Reagan-Bush-I years -- and the high price the Democrats paid for that decision:

My book, Secrecy & Privilege, opens with a scene in spring 1994 when a guest at a White House social event asks Bill Clinton why his administration didn’t pursue unresolved scandals from the Reagan-Bush era, such as the Iraqgate secret support for Saddam Hussein’s government and clandestine arms shipments to Iran.

Clinton responds to the questions from the guest, documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, by saying, in effect, that those historical questions had to take a back seat to Clinton’s domestic agenda and his desire for greater bipartisanship with the Republicans.

Clinton “didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people,” Sender told me in an interview. “He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”

Clinton’s relatively low regard for the value of truth and accountability is relevant again today because other centrist Democrats are urging their party to give George W. Bush’s administration a similar pass if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress.

Reporting about a booklet issued by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council, the Washington Post wrote, “these centrist Democrats … warned against calls to launch investigations into past administration decisions if Democrats gain control of the House or Senate in the November elections.”

These Democrats also called on the party to reject its “non-interventionist left” wing, which opposed the Iraq War and which wants Bush held accountable for the deceptions that surrounded it.

“Many of us are disturbed by the calls for investigations or even impeachment as the defining vision for our party for what we would do if we get back into office,” said pollster Jeremy Rosner, calling such an approach backward-looking.

Yet, before Democrats endorse the DLC’s don’t-look-back advice, they might want to examine the consequences of Clinton’s decision in 1993-94 to help the Republicans sweep the Reagan-Bush scandals under the rug. Most of what Clinton hoped for – bipartisanship and support for his domestic policies – never materialized.

‘Politicized’ CIA

After winning Election 1992, Clinton also rebuffed appeals from members of the U.S. intelligence community to reverse the Reagan-Bush “politicization” of the CIA’s analytical division by rebuilding the ethos of objective analysis even when it goes against a President’s desires.

Instead, in another accommodating gesture, Clinton gave the CIA director’s job to right-wing Democrat, James Woolsey, who had close ties to the Reagan-Bush administration and especially to its neoconservatives.

One senior Democrat told me Clinton picked Woolsey as a reward to the neocon-leaning editors of the New Republic for backing Clinton in Election 1992.

“I told that the New Republic hadn’t brought them enough votes to win a single precinct,” the senior Democrat said. “But they kept saying that they owed this to the editors of the New Republic.”

During his tenure at the CIA, Woolsey did next to nothing to address the CIA’s “politicization” issue, intelligence analysts said. Woolsey also never gained Clinton’s confidence and – after several CIA scandals – was out of the job by January 1995.

At the time of that White House chat with Stuart Sender, Clinton thought that his see-no-evil approach toward the Reagan-Bush era would give him an edge in fulfilling his campaign promise to “focus like a laser beam” on the economy.

He was taking on other major domestic challenges, too, like cutting the federal deficit and pushing a national health insurance plan developed by First Lady Hillary Clinton.

So for Clinton, learning the truth about controversial deals between the Reagan-Bush crowd and the autocratic governments of Iraq and Iran just wasn’t on the White House radar screen. Clinton also wanted to grant President George H.W. Bush a gracious exit.

“I wanted the country to be more united, not more divided,” Clinton explained in his 2004 memoir, My Life. “President Bush had given decades of service to our country, and I thought we should allow him to retire in peace, leaving the (Iran-Contra) matter between him and his conscience.”

Unexpected Results

Clinton’s generosity to George H.W. Bush and the Republicans, of course, didn’t turn out as he had hoped. Instead of bipartisanship and reciprocity, he was confronted with eight years of unrelenting GOP hostility, attacks on both his programs and his personal reputation.

Later, as tensions grew in the Middle East, the American people and even U.S. policymakers were flying partially blind, denied anything close to the full truth about the history of clandestine relationships between the Reagan-Bush team and hostile nations in the Middle East.

Clinton’s failure to expose that real history also led indirectly to the restoration of Bush Family control of the White House in 2001. Despite George W. Bush’s inexperience as a national leader, he drew support from many Americans who remembered his father’s presidency fondly.

If the full story of George H.W. Bush’s role in secret deals with Iraq and Iran had ever been made public, the Bush Family’s reputation would have been damaged to such a degree that George W. Bush’s candidacy would not have been conceivable.

Not only did Clinton inadvertently clear the way for the Bush restoration, but the Right’s political ascendancy wiped away much of the Clinton legacy, including a balanced federal budget and progress on income inequality. A poorly informed American public also was easily misled on what to do about U.S. relations with Iraq and Iran.

In retrospect, Clinton’s tolerance of Reagan-Bush cover-ups was a lose-lose-lose – the public was denied information it needed to understand dangerous complexities in the Middle East, George W. Bush built his presidential ambitions on the nation’s fuzzy memories of his dad, and Republicans got to enact a conservative agenda.

Clinton’s approach also reflected a lack of appreciation for the importance of truth in a democratic Republic. If the American people are expected to do their part in making sure democracy works, they need to be given at least a chance of being an informed electorate.

Yet, Clinton – and now some pro-Iraq War Democrats – view truth as an expendable trade-off when measured against political tactics or government policies. In reality, accurate information about important events is the lifeblood of democracy.

Though sometimes the truth can hurt, Clinton and the Democrats should understand that covering up the truth can hurt even more. As Clinton’s folly with the Reagan-Bush scandals should have taught, the Democrats may hurt themselves worst of all when helping the Republicans cover up the truth.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

[Octafish]

23. We ignore the past at our future's peril.

Members of the BFEE are complicit in mass murder.



They've done it overseas.

Parry's documented the story.

Ronald Reagan’s Last Secret

By Robert Parry

There are two ways to write a biography, just as there are two ways to judge a person's life.

One is to examine what the person did: the good left behind and/or the damage inflicted. The other is to search for the why behind the actions, a key that unlocks the inner self.

SNIP...

But more significant than Morris's pop psychology is what he does and doesn't report about the conservative icon's actions as a political leader.

SNIP...

In December 1981, a U.S.-trained battalion of the Salvadoran army stormed into the village of El Mozote. The next morning, the army began a systematic slaughter of nearly 1,000 villagers. The massacre started with the men who were beheaded and shot.

Then, came the women -- many of whom were gang-raped before execution. Finally, there were the children who were clubbed to death or burned alive in buildings that were set ablaze.

When American reporters disclosed the massacre, Reagan administration officials falsely denied the facts and Reagan's allies in the press sought to destroy the careers of the journalists who filed the reports.

After the massacre was disclosed, Reagan assured Congress that the Salvadoran government was making a “concerted” effort to respect human rights and was “achieving substantial control over all elements of its own armed forces.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/112599a.html

These are the actions of the BFEE.

St. Ronny Reagan was just a figurehead for their dirty wars and dirty work.

Those who ignore these truths don't believe they'd like to do it at home.

[blm]

24. What they KNOW but won't acknowledge is that it took certain Democrats they admire

to help with the continuation of the coverup.

And now they are cheerleading for the NEXT coverup Dem administration.

[thingfisher]

32. U.S.-trained battalion of the Salvadoran army ...

trained at the infamous School of the Americas. Judging by their actions one must ask what manner of training they received. Apparently the Geneva Conventions were not covered.

[thingfisher]

31. Very well said.

Americans should be fed up with the coddling of such crimnality in our government. It is galling to have the same thugs being brought back into government time after time after time without ever answering for their misdeeds and crimes. The Bush family certainly relies on a network of trusted factotums to inhabit various key positions to aid in the concealment of their crimes and misdemeanors. Lets not let them continue in this practice.

[blm]

33. They are already pushing a new crop of coverup Dems into the fore thru the media

and pushing away any serious anti-corruption Democrat who would get taken seriously the same way.

[grizmaster]

3. kicked, recommended, bookmarked and much appreciated

I've been trying to explain to people who this worm is. Great work at bringing the facts together.

[Octafish]

38. CIA Started by NAZI Sympathizers and Staffed by NAZIs...

I know this is old hat for you and many DUers.
What gets me is how few outside of DU know any of this.
It may be that our history books need to be updated.

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1547206&mesg_id=1547206


“Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951” - Federal Documents

http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2

http://100777.com/node/585


Averell Harriman, Allen Dulles and Prescott Bush helped arm the NAZI regime in the years before World War II. They even kept at it through 1942.

http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas5.htm


After the war, Allen Dulles became the #2 man at CIA, the straw-boss. He helped enlist tons of NAZIs in the fight against the godless Communists. In the process, oddly enough, he brought in tons of Soviet agents who'd already infiltrated the NAZIs.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=15727


Great resource: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm

Bush-Nazi Links

http://elandslide.org/display.cfm?id=319

Thanks for giving a damn, grizmaster. I hate the NAZIs for millions of reasons. One of them was my grandfather's best friend.

[Gregorian]

4. It's unfathomable that people like this are not in prison.

Without a media, nobody knows this stuff. There is a criminal world that has gone unnoticed.

Kerry knows. I expect a fire fight in the Senate. I expect no less than a chorus of shrill voices.

So far it's been a group of bland go along nothings. I want FIRE!

There's a problem with an extended history of ignorance. When does one wake up? And the criminals behind the curtain have grown to a huge size of international thugs. I think everyone is afraid to speak out.

It's time to call cops.

[Beam Me Up]

5. And Democrats don't want to impeach the Bush gang.

Gee, I guess us law abiding citizens are just shit out of luck. Isn't it obvious that if you let people get away with murder and treason they're going to take that as a PASS to continue their criminality? Who is going to stand up to these people--this criminal class? Who is going to hold them accountable?

[blm]

6. Kerry knows and that's why coverup Dems work with BushInc to keep him out

of the oval office. They know if there is one Democrat who is certain to make opening the books on BushInc a priority, it's John Kerry - since it can only be done from the bull pulpit of the presidency, they are determined to keep him from getting there.

[DemReadingDU]

7. Bookmarked, K&R!

wow, the Google finds the things I'm sure they'd thought had been forgotten

[OzarkDem]

8. I worship at the altar of Octafish

Thank you again, for such great research! I love reading your posts.

[mod mom]

9. I agree-always a wealth of knowledge!

[Octafish]

21. Ray McGovern: Robert Gates-Gate

Here's something from someone who knows something:

Robert Gates-Gate

by Ray McGovern
Published on Saturday, November 11, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

Full disclosure: I am in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s debt for TV notoriety on May 4, when my impromptu questioning of him elicited denials easily shown to be false. I have known Robert Gates, whom the president has picked to succeed Rumsfeld, for 36 years, starting when Gates was a journeyman analyst in CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy branch which I headed.

As the occupation of Iraq chews up a more and more of our troops, President George W. Bush has jettisoned “stay the course” in favor of “necessary adjustments.” This week he showed how quickly he can adjust to the mid-term election results when he jettisoned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, barely a week after telling reporters Rumsfeld was doing a “fantastic job” and that he wanted him to stay on for the next two years.

It had been clear for weeks that the election would be a referendum on the war in Iraq and that Republican losses would be substantial. And Rumsfeld and Bush saw a mutual need to avoid the acute political embarrassment that would inevitably attend Rumsfeld’s grilling by congressional committees chaired by Democrats. Besides, who better to try to blame for the “long, hard slog” in Iraq than the fellow who not only coined the expression but made it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rumsfeld may even have been willing to acquiesce reluctantly in serving as scapegoat for the Iraq fiasco. He would have seen merit not only in avoiding another acrimonious tangle with Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), but also in helping Bush project an image of flexibility and decisiveness in the face of the post-election sea change in Congress. And one cannot rule out possible pangs of conscience for the horrific human cost resulting from his supreme arrogance and his susceptibility to the illusory strategic dreams of “the crazies”—the so-called “neo-conservatives” whom President George W. Bush brought back to Washington.

Neo-Conservatives Eat Their Own

Former allies are the most prominent among the legions now denouncing Rumsfeld. The abandonment is enough to pin down even an old wrestler like Rumsfeld. Perhaps the most unkindest cut of all came from longstanding supporter “Cakewalk-Ken” Adelman who, like other neo-conservatives, have turned mercilessly on their old, now discredited friend and colleague. In an interview for David Rose’s “Neo Culpa” in Vanity Fair, Adelman comes across as feeling jilted.

“We’re losing in Iraq... I’ve worked with three times in my life. I’ve been to each of his houses in Chicago, Taos, Santa Fe, Santo Domingo, and Las Vegas. I’m very, very fond of him, but I’m crushed by his performance. Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don’t know. He certainly fooled me.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1111-22.htm

You're welcome, OzarkDem. But, please, no worship. I'm just a regular Joe.

I do have Faith, though. And that means that no matter what the BFEE does, they can't hurt me.

[Solly Mack]

10. Much appreciated,Octafish

I'm to the point I laugh derisively when people who ask "how?" and "why?" America got to be in this sorry state...maybe it's because the exact same government criminals keep popping back up in government - because they always get away with their crimes.

[Octafish]

43. Original Sin of St Ronny Reagan...

From Robert Parry and Amy Goodman, here's how the Gates helped the evil turds from 1980.

These traitors still haunt America more than 26 years later...

Defense Secretary Nominee Robert Gates Tied to Iran-Contra Scandal and the Secret Arming of Saddam Hussein

EXCERPT...

ROBERT PARRY: Well, when we were doing the Iran-Contra investigations, one of the mysteries was when it really started, and we were able to trace it back initially to 1984, when there were these contacts between some Iranians and some Israelis and some former CIA people, which sort of led to the scandal that we knew at the time. But as we went back, we learned that there the shipments of weapons did not begin in 1985, as we had first thought, but really back in 1981. So we had to look at some of these issues of these allegations that were sort of longstanding from some people who had sort of been in the intelligence world that there had been earlier contacts, that during the 1980 campaign, when 52 Americans were being held hostage in Iran and Jimmy Carter was trying desperately to get them out, that the Republicans went behind his back, first to get information, but also then to make contacts with the Iranians directly.

And the evidence on this has built up over time. We now have a lot of documents. We have some records from that period. We have statements from former Iranian officials, including the former Iranian president, Banisadr, the former defense minister, the former foreign minister, all of whom saying that they had these dealings with the Republicans behind the scenes. So, as we went back through that, the evidence built up that there had been these earlier contacts and that Bob Gates was one of the people involved in them.

Gates, at the time, had been assigned to the National Security Council for Jimmy Carter and then had become the executive director -- executive assistant to Stansfield Turner, the CIA director. So he was in a key spot. And he was also, though, developing these close ties to some of the Republicans who were about to come into power. So, as these investigations were sort of picked up on in the early 1990s, there was a real effort to sort of put it aside. There was not much stomach left for this investigation, which was headed at that point by Lee Hamilton, who had been the House Intelligence Committee chairman at one point. He kind of had missed the early part of Iran-Contra. He was then put on the Iran-Contra investigation and kind of bought into the cover-up and the cover stories that were used. And then he was made head of this task force on the so-called October Surprise case and behaved similarly. He didn’t really want to push it very far.

And one of the interesting things, which probably should be looked at now, is that after -- because the Gates hearings were in 1991. He denied pretty much everything, but there’s evidence that’s come out since then that he’s never really been confronted with, including a remarkable report that the Russian government prepared at Hamilton's request in January of 1993, in which the Russian government went back through their KGB files on what they knew about these contacts with Iran, and they reported to Lee Hamilton on January 11, 1993, that in fact these contacts with the Republicans had occurred, the Soviets at that point had intelligence on it, and that Bob Gates was one of the people involved in it. That report was never released by Hamilton. It was put in the unpublished files of this investigation, and I discovered it a couple years later. So you have that kind of evidence that’s important.

And on the Iraq side, you have a very important document that has not gotten much attention, which was an affidavit prepared by Howard Teicher, who had been an NSC official for Ronald Reagan, in which he describes Gates’s role in getting secret weapons to the Iraqis. This affidavit was filed in connection with a criminal case that was then underway in Florida in 1995. But these issues have never been really confronted to Gates. There were earlier allegations that he has denied. Some of the witnesses were dismissed. But now there’s more information that he’s never been presented with. And one of the points --

CONTINUED... WITH AUDIO...

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/1444242

Thanks for all you and yours do, Solly Mack. If enough Americans -- good Americans in the Pentagon, CIA, FBI and throughout the government and Corporate McPravda -- learn the truth, it's lights out for the BFEE. Every day, we move a little bit closer.

[wildbilln864]

11. Wow! Excellent Research as usuall Octafish!

Keep up the good work. Sooner or later the mainstream public must be made aware of the extent of criminals running our government. PNAC being the main one in my mind.

By the way, Octafish, did you see the cspan-2 program titled "911 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak out"? It was very good.Peter Dale Scott's research was very damning.
I believe it is a most important book!

[Octafish]

45. Gates helped cover up CIA-Oswald Connection.

I can't stand the pecker for so many reasons:

Gates' roots run deep in Wichita

BY TIM POTTER
The Wichita Eagle

EXCERPT...

Conspiracy theorists remember Gates as the man who, in 1992, released a 110-page file on Lee Harvey Oswald in an effort to clear the CIA of "this corrosive suspicion" that the agency was involved in the killing of President Kennedy in 1963. "The only thing more horrifying to me than the assassination itself is the insidious, pervasive notion that elements of my own government, including this agency, had something to do with it," he told a Senate committee in 1992.

SOURCE: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/15967865.htm?source=rss&channel=kansas_news

Thanks for giving a damn, wildbilln864. Missed the show, but I do know Peter Dale Scott's work. The guy helped document the (total) differences between President Kennedy and Johnson's Vietnam policies. In the process, Prof. Scott may have saved the Constitution.

[gordianot]

12. Who needs corporate broadcast media when you have Octafish.

I wonder if Kerry will resurrect his BCCI investigation now that the wolves are in the Hen House and Kerry has a majority seat.

[Octafish]

46. Robert Gates: 'The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International'

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was created by a Pakistani using Saudi petrobillions to finance the Pakistani bomb and bribe politicians the world over. The bank helped launder drug money and finance arms sales. The CIA and KGB kept accounts there, as did terrorists like Abu Nidhal and drug kingpins and BFEE toadies like Manuel Noriega. In the USA, BCCI secretly owned First American Bank -- headed by Democrat eminence gris Clark Clifford.

No wonder Mr. Gates called it the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" and helped divert attention from its seamier aspects -- bribing US Government officials. So it's really no wonder that few helped Sen. John Kerry investigate the outfit.

For those new to the subject:

The Subcommittee Investigation and the CIA

The Subcommittee's contact with the CIA regarding BCCI began in March, 1991, when staff learned from a Subcommittee source that the CIA had prepared a report concerning BCCI's criminality which was made available to Customs in late 1988. Cleared staff contacted the CIA's congressional liaison office to request a copy of the document. The staff was told that no such document had ever existed. Perplexed, staff contacted its source to determine whether he was certain that the material had been provided. The source referred staff to former Customs Commissioner William Von Raab, who confirmed the existence of the document. Staff contacted the CIA a second time, and informed the agency that a senior Reagan administration official had viewed the document. Again, the Subcommittee was told that no documents concerning BCCI had ever been created by the CIA.(1)

Staff then met with Von Raab, who revealed that not only had the CIA provided him with a briefing paper regarding BCCI, but that he obtained it through the offices of then-CIA assistant director Robert Gates, who referred to BCCI as "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals." Von Raab also advised the Subcommittee that Customs agents handling the C-Chase investigation of BCCI had discovered in the course of their work several BCCI accounts that were actually accounts held by the CIA. Von Raab told Subcommittee staff that his agents were told to cease their investigation of those particular accounts.(2) However, in an interview with Subcommittee staff, AUSA Mark Jackowski denied that he had ever uncovered any CIA involvement with the bank and Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller testified that "at no time ...has anyone from the CIA ... attempted to obstruct or interfere with the Department of Justice's investigation and prosecution of BCCI."(3)

On May 14, 1991, Senator Kerry wrote CIA Director Webster to again request the briefing paper on BCCI prepared by the CIA, as well as information on the CIA's own use of the bank. No reply was received in response to this letter from the CIA for over two months, during which BCCI was closed globally following its seizure in the United Kingdom by the Bank of England on July 5, 1991.

In the meantime, cleared staff requested a formal briefing from CIA staff concerning the CIA's knowledge of BCCI's activities. The CIA provided an oral briefing at its offices in June, 1991 at the "secret" level, consisting of very general information concerning BCCI's use by drug traffickers, material which was by then already largely a matter of public record. The briefer provided by the CIA to Congressional staff was unfamiliar with other basic information about BCCI, such as the names of BCCI's shareholders, including former Saudi intelligence chief Kamal Adham, the key figure in BCCI's secret takeover of First American, and the CIA's former principal contact in the Arab Middle East. Further, the briefer also appeared to be ignorant of the principal analytic documents concerning BCCI previously prepared by the CIA and disseminated to Executive Branch agencies, which contained this and other more important information about BCCI.(4)

On July 23, 1991, CIA director Webster replied to Senator Kerry's May 14 request by letter, admitting to the existence of two documents concerning BCCI, which were described as "extremely sensitive" and therefore restricted to being held by the Senate intelligence committee.(5) On reviewing these memoranda, Senator Kerry recognized that the earlier of the two documents, created in early 1986, contained startling information -- that the First American Bank in Washington was secretly owned by BCCI. The distribution list attached to the memorandum indicated that the CIA had communicated this information at the time to the Treasury Department. These was no indication that either Treasury or the CIA had ever advised the Federal Reserve, the primary regulator of First American, of this critical information.

Senator Kerry asked Judge Webster to declassify immediately the fact that the CIA had known as of 1986 that BCCI owned First American, and to begin the process of declassifying the entirety of both memoranda. On July 31, 1991, the CIA advised Senator Kerry that he could reveal the information concerning BCCI's secret ownership of First American, but no other information from the memos. The CIA had not yet acknowledged its own use of BCCI to the Subcommittee, or provided access to any other materials prepared by the CIA concerning BCCI.

When the single sentence from the 1986 memorandum was declassified, Senator Kerry supplied it immediately to the Federal Reserve, whose counsel expressed shock that the CIA, Treasury, State Department, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had possessed this information in 1986 and never provided it to the Federal Reserve.(6)

On August 2, 1991, with Congress in recess, acting CIA director Richard Kerr chose to provide the first public account of the CIA's involvement with BCCI at the National Press Club, to a group of high school students, who were not permitted to ask questions.

CONTINUED...

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm

Thanks for giving a damn, gordianot. It's taken decades, but the Truth will out these lying, thieving, murdering traitors eventually.

[happydreams]

13. K&R. Another great work Octafish. I would like to add

That the "skewing of intelligence" on Soviet military strength was a process that goes back at least to Rummy's "busy" speech in 1976 on a Soviet secret missile program that was later proven to be totally false.

It is documented in Adam Curtis's "The Power of Nightmares". Gates was probably involved in this propoganda campaign, if so it would make for fireworks during the confirmation process.

:hi:

[happydreams]

14. Here's a link:

...."Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War.

And these two men - 1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney - did this by claiming that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work.

The Soviet Union has been busy, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld explained to America in 1976. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they ’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing.

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.

But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good...."






http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1207-26.htm

[Karenina]

15. It's a bottomless pit of vipers...

:kick:

[thingfisher]

34. But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe

there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good...."

We Americans have been so easily duped, I guess thats why these thugs keep gettng more and more brazen about their activities. We must prosecute these people for their crimes. PERIOD.

[happydreams]

54. What is so damning about Curtis's film is

that he then goes on to show Rummy on Meet The Press with Russert where Russert shows the purported Al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan with reinforced bunkers something on the order of NORAD. Russert has diagrams and specs. He asks Rummy if indeed these bunkers are there and Rummy says: "You bet!". Again not one single shred of what Rummy said is true.

That bastard alone is largely responsible for bloating of the US Military Industrial Complex and the deaths of US troops in phony wars meant soley to keep the MIC coffers full.

[Octafish]

47. Rumsfeld tried to destroy JFK's nominee for Secretary of the Navy...

Thanks for the heads-up on that imporant info, Happydreams. These BFEE turds have done all they can to sink detente and any end to the Cold War and the arms race.

Here's some info from James Carroll's "House of War", courtesy of H20 Man:

Rummy's Fall on the Street Without Joy

Posted by H2O Man in General Discussion

In earlier essays, I have stated that there are members of the "invisible power elite" who, from time to time, step out from behind the curtain to take political positions that make them visible. One example I’ve used of this type of person is W. Averell Harriman. A more recent one would be James Baker III. Today we will look at another: Paul Nitze.

Chris Floyd has described Nitze as "a Wall Street blue-blood turned high-level bureaucrat who served several presidents …" John Kenneth Galbraith called him "a Teutonic martinet happiest in a military hierarchy." Let’s look beneath those compliments. Nitze was born in 1907 in Massachusetts, into a family of means. His family was in Munich at the beginning of WW1, and would later write about being impressed by the German population’s patriotic preparations for the war.

In the late 1920s, Nitze worked as an investment banker for a Chicago firm. He worked in Europe. Wikipedia notes that "upon his return, he heard Clarence Dillion predict the depression and the decline of the importance of finance." Around this time, he married the daughter of a Standard Oil financier and a NYS Congresswoman.

During WW2, Nitze began working in the federal government for James Forrestal. He was instrumental in not only creating the "Cold War" political policies for the United States, but also in charting the militarization of our economy for generations to come. This combination of his influence was perhaps best outlined in the secret National Security Document (NSC-68) that set the course for the United States from the Truman administration until today.

During the Eisenhower years, he served in positions outside of the administration, both in the Foreign Service Educational Foundation, and at the Foreign Policy Research and Advanced International Studies centers at Johns Hopkins University. This is the type of moving from the executive branch to university and related positions that one might note in the gentleman being nominated to replace Donald Rumsfeld today.

Speaking of Rummy, he plays a curious role in Nitze’s career. JFK had appointed Nitze to the position of assistant secretary of defense. As such, he played a role in the formative days of the administration, as we read in Arthur Schlesinger Jr’s "A Thousand Days," but then moves to the background. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, we find that he attended numerous important meetings, but that his advice to the President is exactly the opposite of what Kennedy decides to do to resolve the conflict without war. (See: "The Kennedy Tapes"; edited by May & Zelikow;Belknap Press; 1997)

In "House of War," James Carroll notes that , Failing to grasp how he alienated Kennedy, Paul Nitze had convinced himself that he would soon be promoted to the Pentagon’s number-two job. Sure enough, it opened up, but Kennedy named Nitze instead to the post of secretary of the Navy, a position on the margins of policymaking, a clear demotion. Humiliated, Nitze complained to the president, who essentially told him to take it or leave it." Carroll tells of how Nitze accepted the demotion, and almost was not confirmed.

A new republican congressman from Illinois was looking to make a reputation by attacking Nitze during the confirmation hearings. Donald Rumsfeld accused Nitze of being an advocate of disarmament, because he had attended a National Council of Churches meeting in the past. It is not clear if Rummy knew that then-secretary of state John Foster Dulles had given the keynote speech at that meeting. Carroll writes that although Rumsfeld would later try to befriend Nitze, the "wound of the insult would never quite heal." (See pages 280-1)

Nitze would go on to serve under LBJ, and republican presidents Nixon and Reagan. He would be involve in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) under Nixon, and an outspoken opponent of SALT II. As such, he did not consider even attempting to reduce the economic investment that the United States had in the arms race. Instead, he sought ways to promote new and more expensive weapons systems.

SOURCE: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/H2O%20Man/74

Thanks for giving a damn, Happydreams. It's great reading ya! Thanks also for making clear just how power mad and money hungry Rumsferatu, Sneer and the turds they slave for really are.

[happydreams]

55. I think that MSM

exposure of even a part of this is going to open up the whole tamale.

[bonito]

16. How many recess appointments will be made

This December I wonder.

[Octafish]

48. Gates and the Guns-for-Hostages Deal

Lots of recess appointments. Can they later be chimpeached?

The Guns for Hostages Deal

EXCERPT...

Parallel to this and secretly working on behalf of the Republicans, says Ben Menashe, were intelligence officers in the Carter administration who had worked with George Bush when he was CIA director from 1976 to 1977, including CIA director Stansfield Turner who Carter had replaced Bush with. The other two were Donald Gregg and Robert Gates, both of whom held prominent positions under Carter and later under Reagan.

In early 1980 two Republican campaign representatives approached Iran about striking a deal. One was Robert McFarlane. Ben-Menashe, in a recent sworn deposition for an ongoing federal case, stated that McFarlane had a "special relationship" with Israel since 1978.

According to Ben-Menashe, the other Republican representative was Earl Brian, a former secretary of health and welfare for California under Gov. Reagan who left public service in 1974 to deal arms to the Shah's Iran. Brian, says Ben-Menashe, was well connected to Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, who resigned the day after the American hostages were taken in Teheran but continued to play a prominent role in Iran's government. Both men, says Ben-Menashe, "worked very closely" with Gates, who at the time was an aide to CIA Director Turner.

In February 1980, McFarlane and Brian traveled to Tehran and met with Bazargan to arrange a series of meetings between Casey and representatives of Khomeini.

In August of 1980 and without Carter’s knowledge, a deal was struck between Casey, Gates et al and the Iranians, on one condition, that the hostages not be released before the November elections. Re-enter the Israeli government.

CONTINUED...

http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-040.html

Thanks for giving a damn, bonito.

I don't have a source at the moment, but I do remember hearing with my own ears and seeing with my own eyes Richard Allen, Reagan's first and short-serving National Security Advisor, tell McNeil-Lehrer Newshour listeners that "The Deal was off if the Iranians didn't let the little old lady go." He was referring to a woman who the Iranians had in a hospital who would not be released with the other hostages. Of course, neither McNeil or Lehrer asked him what that was about. I'll try and get deails on this thread somewhere.

[oasis]

17. Gates: Another rotten knave in the Bush enclave.(eom)

[Octafish]

50. Very rotten. Like Judge Lawrence Silberman, also greased by October Surprise

They make up some oily barrel, that BFEE...

Reprise of the October Surprise: Is the Worst Surprise Still to Come?

By Richard H. Curtiss
May/June 1991, Page 11
Special Report

EXCERPT...

It is here that the story of illegal dealings with Khomeini intermediaries by Reagan campaign officials begins. Bob Woodward and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post were the first to report that one such meeting took place in Washington, DC. It was held Oct. 2 at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel. Reagan campaign participants were Richard Allen, subsequently the Reagan administration's first national security adviser; Marine Lt. Col. Robert (Bud) McFarlane, then an aide to Senator John Tower but subsequently also a Reagan administration national security adviser; and Allen aide Lawrence Silberman, who apparently set up the meeting and who presently is a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals in the national capital. A shadowy Iranian Jewish arms dealer, Hushang Lavie, says he was the Iranian principal. Allen says he was not, but that he has forgotten the name of the Iranian they met. Silberman and McFarlane wouldn't discuss the matter with the "Frontline" producers. All three Americans maintain, however, that they have lost any notes they made during or after the meeting.

Sick and the "Frontline" producers say that long before the meeting in the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel there were others, starting in early March of 1980, involving Reagan campaign manager William Casey, a former OSS operative and, subsequently, Reagan's first director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Casey's first meeting was in Washington, DC's Mayflower Hotel with two Iranian arms dealers, Cyrus and Jamshid Hashemi. The brothers, who also were involved in the Iranian dealings with the Carter administration, said Casey made it clear he wanted to prevent Carter from gaining political advantage from freeing the hostages.

SOURCE:

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0591/9105011.htm

Thanks for giving a damn, oasis. Always glad to read ya.

[H2O Man]

19. Outstanding.

Thank you for putting together this important information fore DUers. I think that Gates is at least as bad as Rumsfeld in almost every way. And he is actually worse in significant areas.

[Octafish]

61. Rumsfeld went crazy from all the death. Gates doesn't care.

He's like he's the Kissinger of Wichita.

Gates Pushed for Bombing of Sandinistas

His 1984 memo called for 'hard measures' against Nicaragua.

by Julian E. Barnes
Published on Saturday, November 25, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Robert M. Gates, President Bush's nominee to lead the Pentagon, advocated a bombing campaign against Nicaragua in 1984 in order to "bring down" the leftist government, according to a declassified memo released by a nonprofit research group.

US President George W. Bush (R) listens as former CIA director Robert Gates speaks in the Oval Office of the White House. Gates, the man nominated by President George W. Bush to be the next US secretary of defense, recommended in the 1980s overt military action against Nicaragua, including air strikes and a naval quarantine of its ports, according to a document made public here. Photo:/AFP

The memo from Gates to his then-boss, CIA Director William J. Casey, was among a selection of declassified documents from the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal posted Friday on the website of the National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ .

In the memo, Gates, who was deputy director of the CIA, argued that the Soviet Union was turning Nicaragua into an armed camp and that the country could become a second Cuba. The rise of the communist-leaning Sandinista government threatened the stability of Central America, Gates asserted.

Gates' memo echoed the view of many foreign policy hard-liners at the time; however, the feared communist takeover of the region never materialized.

"It seems to me," Gates wrote, "that the only way that we can prevent disaster in Central America is to acknowledge openly what some have argued privately: that the existence of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Nicaragua closely allied with the Soviet Union and Cuba is unacceptable to the United States and that the United States will do everything in its power short of invasion to put that regime out."

Gates predicted that without U.S. funding, the Nicaraguan anti-communist forces known as Contras would collapse within one or two years. But he said that providing "new funding" for the Contras was not good enough. Instead, he advocated that the United States withdraw diplomatic recognition of the Sandinista government, provide overt assistance to a government in exile, impose economic sanctions or a quarantine, and use airstrikes to destroy Nicaragua's "military buildup."

CONTINUED, with LINKS to PDF of memo 'n' stuff...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1125-04.htm

Hmm. Lots of deceased people thanks to Gates and Casey and Bush and Reagan.



BTW: Thank you, H20 Man. Truly appreciate your Friendship.

[bobthedrummer]

20. Yes, Bobby Gates is a traitor and so are all of those that secretly

armed and encouraged real terrorists. This required financial institutions like BCCI and BNL and a lot of other "assets".

It's the BFEE and another long time member is Henry Kissinger and Kissinger Associates.

Your thread from 2003 is another great one for learning about these crimes and the criminals.
"Kissinger & BCCI spells BUSH & 9-11" started by Octafish
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x377323#top

Here are some more helpful links about Kissinger Associates/KA and their crimes.
"BCCI And Kissinger Associates"
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/20kiss.htm

The late Dem. from Texas, Henry Gonzalez (who wanted to impeach Poppy btw) had this read into The Congressional Record: "Kissinger Associates, BNL, And Iraq"
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1991/h910502g.htm

Why are these criminals and traitors still around, what hold do they have over those that have been aware of their treason for decades???

[blm]

25. Why are they still around? Because COVERUP Democrats let them maintain a powerbase

to grow stronger while they spent 8 years keeping the books closed for them.

[Joanne98]

27. Coverup Democrats. That is a good description....

[Octafish]

62. Iran-Contra was TREASON

Pure and simple, Reagan, Bush, Weinberger, Casey, Gates and the rest of the turds were trading with the enemy -- Iran, the hostage takers and the ones who bankrolled the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. They also -- contrary to Congress and the law -- engaged in an illegal war in Nicaragua. They also engaged in illegal drug-running to finance said war. That's just what we know. What they managed to keep hidden must be monstrous on an unimaginable scale.

Iran-Contra

aka Irangate

The Constitution contains a one-sentence definition of treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

If you're an American pondering whether to sell missiles to a foreign power with a proven history of sponsoring terrorism against the United States, you probably ought to think twice. It could reasonably be argued that this would be giving aid to an enemy of the U.S., and therefore expose you to a charge of treason. Seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it?

And yet this is precisely what President Ronald Reagan did. But did he get impeached? Nope. The American people decided that if the President was paving a road with his very best intentions, it didn't really matter where that road ultimately led. Who cares about a few broken laws? And in the wake of overwhelming public apathy, the whole affair was quietly set aside.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rotten.com/library/history/political-scandal/iran-contra/

It all fits together. Imperial pRetzelDunce. Young Kissinger. Domestic Authoritarian Agenda.

These are evil people who operate in secrecy. Left unchecked, they will apply what they do to other countries to the people of their own.

[blm]

63. Ever realize that if this stuff HADN'T been uncovered by Kerry then and no BCCI

either, that this country would by now be in its 12th year of New World Order as intended?

[Octafish]

65. Kerry was pretty much alone.

The rest of the DEMS protected the Establishment, corrupt as they are.

The great DUer gandalf put it together in an easy to archive format:

The Kerry/Brown BCCI report in 2 pdf files, ready for print-out

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1568810

Great threads in those days. Mighty threads.

[blm]

66. Too many still CHOOSE to ignore this elephant that will never go away no matter how

much they wish it would, just so they can go back to pretending that everything will be OK as long as a Democrat wins. Completely oblivious to the fact that there are different types of Democrats - those who serve the same agenda as BushInc and those who seek to expose BushInc.

[SpiralHawk]

22. K and r - on account of republicon corruption is so freakin VAST

eom

How unpatriotic and trasonous the neocons are....

[Octafish]

73. BCCI Boy: Bush administration’s Trojan Horse gift to America and the Democrats

Without computers and a network on the Internets, it'd be impossible.

Larry Chin's reporting would work in most any medium:

Bush administration’s Trojan Horse gift to America and the Democrats:

Former CIA Director and Iran-Contra insider Robert Gates

By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Nov 10, 2006, 00:52

With the Democrats and Democratic Party voters euphoric over a purported election victory, and a possible “change of course” in Iraq, the Bush administration quietly added poison to the Democrats’ celebration champagne by dredging up former CIA Director and Iran-Contra participant Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

The “war on terrorism” will not only continue, it will expand and deepen with Gates heading the Pentagon.

SNIP...

Gates and BCCI cover-up

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was the CIA’s legendary drug bank and money laundering nexus.

In Defrauding America, Stich writes, “CIA Deputy Director Robert Gates stated in 1988 to the head of Customs, William von Raab, that BCCI stood for the ‘Bank of Crooks and Criminals International.’ But the CIA continued to deposit and launder funds in BCCI, covering up the criminal activities that would defraud people all over the world who had put their money into the bank.

“In the 1980s, US Customs Commissioner William von Raab unsuccessfully tried to get the Justice Department to act on the serious federal violations committed by BCCI.

“Raab testified to Senate investigators that in 1988 he told CIA Deputy Director Robert Gates of the drug money laundering at BCCI, and that Gates refused to proceed with the information.”

A tactical move

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1419.shtml

Good to read ya, SpiralHawk. Hope all continues well in The Dreamland.

[Joanne98]

26. Iran-Contra only have of it. He's a drug dealer too....

They're all drug dealers....

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Alliance-Contras-Cocaine-Explosion/dp/1888363932/ref=pd_sim_b_4/103-9141238-0492622

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (Paperback)
by Gary Webb "The night that I read the "Dark Alliance" series, I was so alarmed, that I literally sat straight up in bed, poring over every word..." (more)
Key Phrases: contra program, crack market, drug flights, Costa Rica, Los Angeles, San Francisco (more...)
(44 customer reviews)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
List Price: $24.95
Price: $16.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $8.48 (34%)




Availability: Usually ships within 4 to 6 weeks.
This item will arrive after December 22. For delivery after the 22nd, we recommend FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. See more on holiday shipping. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.





4 used & new available from $16.47


Also Available in: List Price: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover (Seven Stories Press 1st Ed) 24 used & new from $10.25




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Better Together
Buy this book with Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn today!
Buy Together Today: $28.84



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Customers who bought this item also bought
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn
Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina by Peter Dale Scott
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade by Alfred W. McCoy
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition by Peter Dale Scott
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' by Robert Parry
Explore similar items : Books (41) DVD (2)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One--the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about--without even looking for it. A simple phone call concerning an unexceptional pending drug trial turned into a massive conspiracy involving the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, L.A. and Bay Area crack cocaine dealers, and the Central Intelligence Agency. For several years during the 1980s, Webb discovered, Contra elements shuttled thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States, with the profits going toward the funding of Contra rebels attempting a counterrevolution in their Nicaraguan homeland. Even more chilling, Webb quickly realized, was that the massive drug-dealing operation had the implicit approval--and occasional outright support--of the CIA, the very organization entrusted to prevent illegal drugs from being brought into the United States.
Within the pages of Dark Alliance, Webb produces a massive amount of evidence that suggests that such a scenario did take place, and more disturbing evidence that the powers that be that allowed such an alliance are still determined to ruthlessly guard their secrets. Webb's research is impeccable--names, dates, places, and dollar amounts gather and mount with every page, eventually building a towering wall of evidence in support of his theories. After the original series of articles ran in the Mercury-News in late 1996, both Webb and his paper were so severely criticized by political commentators, government officials, and other members of the press that his own newspaper decided it best not to stand behind the series, in effect apologizing for the assertions and disavowing his work. Webb quit the paper in disgust in November 1997. His book serves as both a complex memoir of the time of the Contras and an indictment of the current state of America's press; Dark Alliance is as necessary and valuable as it is horrifying and grim. --Tjames Madison --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Michael Massing
...a densely researched, passionately argued, acronym-laden 548-page volume. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Alliance-Contras-Cocaine-Explosion/dp/1888363932/ref=pd_sim_b_4/103-9141238-0492622

Look how much used books are selling for. I hope this book isn't getting disapeered.

[blm]

28. Exactly - it all connects and why it was important for BFEE to get a Dem in office who

would continue the coverup for them. They knew alot more was coming out about them, so it would be important for them to get a trusted Democrat in office.

That worked out well for them.

[thingfisher]

35. The Dark Alliance stories and the subsequent

"necklacing" of Gary Webb for daring to expose such high crimes still keeps me seething inside. The actions of the mainstream media in abetting the vendetta against Webb's impeccably researched story surely discloses the power that the government can and does weild over the news media.

[blm]

57. And many Dems have no idea that it was Clinton administration who had Webb

taken down because this Bush crime was revealed on Clinton's watch, and he acted exactly as Poppy Bush needed. Discredit the source - get him marginalized by other reporters and downplay any evidence that supports the facts of the report.


Clinton worked harder for Poppy Bush than he ever did for Democrats.

[thingfisher]

68. I appreciate your candor.

It isn't often that anyone on DU dares say anything negative about Clinton.
I have never been a great fan of Bubba myself and also am aware of the shenanigans that went on under his watch. When push comes to shove the ruling elites will always close ranks to protect themselves. I am repulsed by Poppy and Bubba publicly displaying their close friendship as members of the former presidents club.

[blm]

78. I used to defend Clinton myself up til 2004 when I read his book and he said not one word

about BCCI, and I knew full well he was part of the coverup - there were still outstanding matters left that were extremely serious about the BCCI-terrorist network and Clinton would have been seen that report just as Bush2 was handed over the Hart Rudman Report on Global Terror.

Clinton close too many books for BushInc, and when you revisit what went down on the cIA drugrunning story that came out in 1995, there is only ONE place to lay full blame for the coverup and that is the Clinton WH.

Anyone who tries to defend him for that is an apologist more loyal to a PERSONALITY than to the constitution of this country or concern for its welfare.

Once 9-11 families wrap their brains around this story, do you think they would see Clinton any more innocently than Bush? These terror networks and their entire underlying purpose would have been exposed and weakened long ago.

[kineneb]

76. got my copy, and keeping it

great book, and true... lived in the SF Bay Area when this was happening...

[fooj]

29. This is enough for me.

First off, he’s a traitor.

IMO, that should be enough for anybody. It would be nice to have someone as DOD who ISN'T from the "inside circle" of the BFEE. Geesh...........

[Octafish]

70. Ray McGovern: 'Robert Gates is Rumsfeld Lite'

Hear ya about the traitor part. He's also a regular turd of the Military-Industrial Complex:

Stephen Hadley is Simply Lite

Robert Gates is Rumsfeld Lite

By RAY McGOVERN
CounterPunch November 30, 2006

Press reporting on information provided to the Senate by Robert Gates, President George W. Bush's nominee for the post of defense secretary, show Gates hewing closely to the rhetoric of his predecessor. Gates is shown to be more parrot than innovator in his responses to a questionnaire given him by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which takes up his nomination on Dec. 5.

None of this surprises those of us who for decades have watched Gates make career after career out of trimming his sails to the prevailing winds. No one should expect Gates to depart one iota from the position of the president, who repeated yesterday that there will be no troop pullout from Iraq "until the job is complete." In answering the senators' questions, Gates insisted that an early pullout would risk "leaving Iraq in chaos dangerous consequences both in the region and globally for many years to come."

No surprise either in Gates' strong endorsement of spending billions more on-and prematurely deploying-the missile defense system that was Rumsfeld's pet project and for an earlier version of which Gates saw fit to advocate, even while he was still CIA director. Even if the system can be made to work (and this has yet to be demonstrated), the it is of highly dubious utility in preventing the kinds of terrorist attacks that appear far more likely than a nuclear-tipped missile from a "rogue" state like North Korea or Iran-if they ever succeed in developing one.

Gates lumps the two together, saying, "North Korea and Iran continue to develop longer range missiles and are determined to pursue weapons of mass destruction." In attributing this intention to Iran, Gates demonstrates that he has lost none of his verve as master-practitioner of what we intelligence alumni call "faith-based intelligence." Among serious intelligence analysts, especially in the Department of Energy where the expertise lies, the jury is out on whether the evidence proves that Iran is embarked on a weapons-related nuclear program-and, if so, how soon it might have a deliverable nuclear weapon. And the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei also keeps saying existing evidence permits no hard and fast conclusions.

In prejudging that key issue, Gates has elevated the status of Iranian intentions, in Rumsfeldian parlance, from a "known unknown" to a "known known." In doing so, he has thrown in his lot with the so-called "neo-conservatives," whose record for accuracy in such judgments leaves much to be desired, and who-after a pre-election lull-have been revving up for another try at prevailing on the president to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Gates' position on Iran's nuclear weapons plans suggests he will not put up much resistance to importuning by Vice President Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives-not to mention the Israelis-that Iran's fledgling nuclear program must be nipped in the bud.

In what is known so far of the information in the completed questionnaire, Gates made one departure from long established White House policy. Very much in tune with the admonishment of his patron Jim Baker that talking directly with adversaries in not "appeasement," Gates implicitly criticized the anathema on negotiating with the likes of Syria and Iran, stressing that such talks could come "as part of an international conference" of the kind the Baker/Hamilton group is said to be suggesting.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern11302006.html

Thanks for giving a damn, fooj. We're almost to the tipping point.



Paraguay, here we come!

[mom cat]

30. Wonderful post. I am sending it to my senators! K&R and thanks!

[Octafish]

74. Robert Parry reminds us: 'Bob Gates Can Lock You Up Forever'

But wait, there's more...

Bob Gates & Locking You Up Forever

By Robert Parry
December 1, 2006

As the next Defense Secretary, Robert M. Gates will be in charge of a new star-chamber legal system that can lock up indefinitely “unlawful enemy combatants” and “any person” accused of aiding them. Yet, despite these extraordinary new powers, his confirmation is being treated more like a coronation than a time for tough questions.

Not since 2003 when Secretary of State Colin Powell wowed Official Washington with his United Nations speech on Iraq’s WMD has there been such an awed consensus about any public figure as there has been for former CIA Director Gates, who is almost universally praised for his intelligence, experience and down-to-earth style.

But there are serious unresolved questions about Gates’s past that the American people might want resolved before he is entrusted with the awesome new powers that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 puts in the hands of the Defense Secretary.

In 1991, for reasons mostly of political expediency and personal friendship, Gates’s last confirmation process for CIA director never got to the bottom of allegations linking Gates to some of the most serious national security scandals of the 1980s, including illegal involvement in arms deals with Iran and Iraq.

In his memoir, From the Shadows, Gates revealed why the inquiries were cut short when he thanked his friend, Sen. David Boren, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for shepherding him through the confirmation process.

“David took it as a personal challenge to get me confirmed,” Gates wrote.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/113006.html

Interesting how so many of the then-"connected" Democrats helped this guy along.

John Kerry, for the record, was not one of them.
Most importantly: You're welcome mom cat. Thank you for the kind words.

[Canuckistanian]

36. Gates Pushed for Bombing of Sandinistas

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112506B.shtml

Gates Pushed for Bombing of Sandinistas
By Julian E. Barnes
The Los Angeles Times

Saturday 25 November 2006

His 1984 memo called for "hard measures" against Nicaragua.
Washington - Robert M. Gates, President Bush's nominee to lead the Pentagon, advocated a bombing campaign against Nicaragua in 1984 in order to "bring down" the leftist government, according to a declassified memo released by a nonprofit research group.

The memo from Gates to his then-boss, CIA Director William J. Casey, was among a selection of declassified documents from the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal posted Friday on the website of the National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/

The above link doesn't work, so see this link about "Safe for Democracy:The Secret Wars of the CIA"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB208/index.htm

[Octafish]

83. Gates is Kissinger Jr

The only difference is, Gates doesn't have a German accent.

They both do whatever is needed by power for money and by money for power.

That means OIL.

Of course, neither turd has a conscience.

So that means "Let the bombing begin."

Kissinger, Unocal, Enron and Cheney

"In November 2001, the Washington Post examined the history of the Unocal pipeline in a story headlined 'How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as Terrorist Sponsor.' That story also mentioned Kissinger's role: 'Unocal appealed to the Taliban and received assurances that it would support a $4.5 billion project rivaling the trans-Alaska pipeline. The deal promised to be a boon for the Taliban, which could realize $100 million a year in transit fees.' But Unocal also needed U.S. backing. To secure critical financing from agencies such as the World Bank, it needed the State Department to formally recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's government. 'Unocal hired former State Department insiders: former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, former special U.S. ambassador John J. Maresca and Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.' Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born former Reagan State Department adviser on Afghanistan, entered the picture as a consultant for a Boston group hired by Unocal. Khalilzad and Oakley had dual roles during this period because the State Department also sought their advice. Khalilzad is now one of President Bush's top advisers on Afghanistan.' Which makes me wonder whether Kissinger should be asking questions -- or answering them."

Oh, Henry
Salon.com, 3 Dec 2002

"And an FBI source told The Enquirer: 'Enron and Unocal dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Afghanistan and the Taliban. The pipeline would relieve our dependence on Saudi Arabia -- and Enron would make billions."

Enron gave Taliban $millions
National Enquirer, 4 March 2002

"A captured Al Qaida document reveals that US energy companies were secretly negotiating with the Taliban to build a pipeline. The document was obtained by the FBI but was not allowed to be shared with other agencies in order to protect Enron. Multiple sources confirm that American law enforcement agencies were deliberately kept in the dark and systematically prevented from connecting the dots before 9/11 in order to aid Enron’s secret and immoral Taliban negotiations.... in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal. has confirmed that it was O’Neil who originally discovered the AL Qaida pipeline memo after the Embassy bombings in Africa."
What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11
John Loftus, Press Release, 31 May 2002

Kissinger Should Be Giving, Not Taking, Evidence At The 911 Inquiry

Kissinger, The Caspian Sea and Afghanistan

Some Questions About 911 That Should Be Put Directly To Kissinger Himself

"Armitage's Caspian knowledge is not second hand. In addition to his work for his own consultancy Armitage became a founding Director of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce in 1996 along with a formidable phalanx of captains from the oil industry including Unocal President John Imle. At the time the Chamber extended 'deep appreciation to the following companies which have contributed to its establishment: Amoco, BP America, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, Occidental, Panalpina, and Unocal.' Not too many internet start up companies there. Other interesting characters who have held positions with this innocuous-sounding oil industry funded organisation include: James Baker, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu, and Richard Perle ."

What Did Britain Know About 911?
Fight Smart, 28 Aug 2002

"The Caspian area is there to be exploited. Oil, natural gas. One pipeline was planned through the southern Balkans, the split-apart area formerly called simply Yugoslavia. Standing in the way was a strongman, Slobadan Milosevic, who took over more or less with the demise oflong-time dictator Marshal Tito who with an iron fist kept the ethnic and religious groups in check. Milosevic was once considered charming and popular. Toppling him started with the Henry Kissinger design of wrecking the Yugoslav banks. Kissinger & Associates have been a nest of clever snakes fronting for Big Oil and dictators and butchers worldwide. So, building on the natural friction between ethnic and religious groups in Yugoslavia, became the excuse for the U.S./British attack on the Belgrade government... If not so bloody and tragic, the whole event would be laughable... Who would rightfully dare prosecute the U.S./British leaders as war criminals? The International tribunals, made up of yesmen and cowards, are a dead letter. "

CONTINUED w/Lots o' links:

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/kissingerunocal.htm

Remember, DUers! Facts are not stupid things.

These turds have killed thousands if not millions for power.

And they don't care.

[Initech]

37. Any coincidence that Bush picked the one guy scarier than Donald Rumsfeld?

[nolabels]

51. This is good news, they are getting closer than ever to the core........

or rotten bottom of the barrel (however you want to look at it). The difference between then and now is they are much older slower and the rest of us are more plentiful and faster. Much like the many things are easy to predict with enough information they can only now try to buck the tide. With the advent of the Internet/P.C. revolution their days are numbered. I think the rest of us will soon have the upper hand no matter which way BFEE turns.

[blm]

64. Except now they have coverup Dems working with them -

you think Poppy and Clinton spend all that time together discussing charity work? If Clinton hadn't covered up so many outstanding matters reBush's crimes of office, we would never be suffering Bush2, 9-11, this Iraq war.

[Octafish]

86. No coincidence.

Team Evil

The War Last Time

By THOMAS POWERS
South Royalton, Vt.
November 30, 2006
NYT Op-Ed Contributor

THE chaotic war in Iraq is the great piece of unfinished business that will soon face Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. He will assume the difficult charge of halting the collapse of American strategy at a moment when the president’s freedom to maneuver has been curtailed by the election of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and by the free-for-all sectarian killing in Iraq.

Mr. Gates arrives at the Pentagon with no background in running the immense American military establishment, no broad political constituency, and no experience fighting or managing a big ground war. What he does bring is a survivor’s knowledge of how to push forward a controversial policy — President Ronald Reagan’s campaign against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s — and a history of close association with President Bush’s father. It was President George H. W. Bush who appointed Mr. Gates to his biggest job — running the Central Intelligence Agency.

Simple realism — totting up the Congressional votes the president can count on to back or oppose him — suggests that a turning point has been reached in Iraq. Getting in is over, and getting out is about to begin. I am reminded of a similar moment 41 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson was facing the bleak but imminent prospect of his South Vietnamese allies’ collapse in Saigon. The year was 1965, and Johnson had just been overwhelmingly re-elected president over Senator Barry Goldwater on the oft-repeated campaign pledge not to send American boys thousands of miles away to fight a war that Asian boys ought to fight.

Johnson’s advisers put it to him straight: Saigon was going to lose, Hanoi was going to win, and there wasn’t much time to waste. The choice was clear: lose the war or expand the war, find a formula of words to mask failure or send more troops and increase the bet on the table. Johnson chose to expand the war.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/opinion/30powers.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

The same turd mentality holds today. The odd thing is, there's a direct line between the turds who made Vietnam into a money-making quagmire. Their heirs and political descendants today also are doing their damndest to make an illegal war into a money-making quagmire.

[Megahurtz]

39. Wow. One leaves and here comes another

worst than the last, it seems. Isn't there any getting rid of these guys? :banghead:
There are so many, I fear we're doomed.:scared:
This is just way too big, and too deep.

It's all so clear when you follow the History of the BFEE. Rotton and evil to the core.

[bobthedrummer]

41. Truly evil, a culture of death- they are doomed and want to take many with them.

[leftchick]

40. Outstanding Octafish!

This is now in my Top Five Octafish BFEE Threads of all time!!

:yourock:

K&R


:hi:

[Octafish]

85. It's a Team Thing. A Secret Team. Here's Gates on ... Gates.

The guy's a jeenyus.

SNIP...

Below are extracts from Robert Gates' book, From the Shadows.

Gates, a former Director of the CIA, had little trouble clearing his
book through the CIA's Publications Review Board. In fact he received
documents from the CIA and the National Security Council to assist him
in writing the book -- a priviledge usually granted only non-critics.
We have little way of knowing where the CIA has impacted on the book's
details, or to what degree Gates selectively portrays events, since he is
infamous for distorting intelligence.

With that in mind, Gates' book provides information on covert
activities that in some cases is quite revealing and supported by
subsequent developments or independent reporting. He stresses the
CIA's use of the theme of "Human Rights Abuses," as a catch phrase used
to speed the downfall of the Soviet Empire. This is particularly relevant
today where all sorts of stories re target countries' human right abuses
flood our media. Many of these stories are written by groups funded by,
or presumed funded by, the U.S. government. Many such stories are picked
up by the U.S. media and given wide-spread domestic as well as
worldwide dissemination.

SNIP...

contragate

iran, nicaragua, 81-90 dci Gates portrayal of the events surrounding
iran-contra. "i believe the weight of evidence now...strongly supports the
conclusion that casey did not know about the diversion of funds from the
iran operation to the contras." Gates, r. (1996). From The Shadows 390-403

corporate interests

bush adm received advice of people like paul wolfowitz, steve halley of
defense, bob zoellick and dennis ross at state, and bob blackwell,
condoleeza rice, and richard haass at nsc - advice proved very influential.
Gates, r. (1996). From The Shadows 454

cover

66 Gates entered the air force under CIA sponsorship for a few weeks.
Gates, r. (1996). From The Shadows 19

66 Robert Gates joined the CIA in august 66 and then entered the air
force under CIA sponsorship. he went to air force officer training school
in texas in 10/66. after training he assigned to whiteman air force base.
he returned to d.c. in 1/68 and entered the career training program which
was six months instruction in writing intel reports, setting up meetings
with agents, dead drops, studying the USSR, learning about satellite
collection programs, the intel bureaucracy, and surveillance. Gates' cover
then was department of defense. Gates, r. (1996). From The Shadows 21-2

covert a

76-80 carter adm, contrary to reports, from outset turned to CIA for
covert ops. but found there was a lack of enthusiasm and a lack of boldness
and imagination in implementing carter's findings to counter USSR and cuban
aggression against the third world. brzezinski used nsc for covert action
and virtually all of these efforts have remained shielded from public view.
finding to promote democracy on grenada and to support resistance to the
gvt there. the senate intel committee expressed its strong displeasure. so
CIA ceased all covert ops directed at grenada. Gates, r. (1996). from the
shadows 143

CONTINUED...

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/RM/RM.gates

An evil jeenyus. But a jeenyus, nevertheless.



Thank you for the kind words, leftchick. Thanks also for your Friendship and giving a damn.

[Independent_Liberal]

42. K&R!

[Octafish]

88. A CIA Insider s View of Robert Gates

Here's the latest, from a guy who once was Gates' boss:

Lame Ducks, Hold That Nomination!

A CIA Insider s View of Robert Gates

By RAY McGOVERN
CounterPunch December 4, 2006

EXCERPT...

For example, in January 1995, Howard Teicher, who served on President Reagan's National Security Council staff, submitted a sworn affidavit detailing the activities of Gates and his then-boss, CIA Director William Casey, in secretly providing arms to Iraq. This violated the Arms Export Control Act in two ways: ignoring the requirement to notify Congress; and providing arms to a state designated as a sponsor of terrorism.

It gets worse. To grease the skids for this dubious adventure, Gates ordered his more malleable subordinates at the CIA to cook up intelligence reports to provide some comfort to Reagan in acquiescing to these activities. A National Intelligence Estimate of May 1985 predicted Soviet inroads in Iran if the United States did not reach out to ''moderates'' within the Iranian leadership.

In addition, Gates' analysts were pressed to publish several reports beginning in late 1985 -- as HAWK anti-aircraft missiles wended their way to Tehran -- that Iranian-sponsored terrorism had ''dropped off substantially.'' There was no persuasive evidence to support that judgment.

As part of my official duties at the time, I took steps to make Gates aware of this a month before he wrote in articles in the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs magazine and our professional journal Studies in Intelligence that, ''No CIA publication asserted these things.'' I then tried in vain to get him to correct the record.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern12042006.html

Thanks for giving a damn, Independent_Liberal. We've getting the real rats scared.

[oldgrowth]

44. And Gates was on the board of directors of VoteHere

a strange little company that was the biggest elections industry lobbyist for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). VoteHere spent more money than ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia combined to help ram HAVA through. And HAVA, of course, was a bill sponsored by convicted Abramoff pal Bob Ney and K-street lobbyist buddy Steny Hoyer. HAVA put electronic voting on steroids.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/45174.html?1164123655

[Karenina]

49. Know your GATES!

[blm]

52. And we're supposed to believe Gore/Kerry lost - like Gates would let Kerry in the WH

to open the books on BushInc.

[Octafish]

90. PFIBN wrote about it on the OLD DU, February 2003

Great were the posters then, mighty pens theirs.

protect freedom impeach bush now (3810 posts)
Feb-22-03, 11:25 PM (ET)

Voting Machines tied to Cheney & Carlyle Group !!!!!!

LAWSUIT: Voting Machine Engineer Sues, Alleges Machine Design Flaws

Friday 2/21/2003

This afternoon, the disturbing issues surrounding voting machine security were racheted up another notch:

Dan Spillane, a voting machine test engineer, filed a lawsuit against his former employer, DRE touch-screen voting machine manufacturer VoteHere.

Georgia recently approved VoteHere's machines, and the military is considering them for overseas voting. The company does business also in Sweden and England, and appears to be manufacturing, or planning to manufacture, components for other voting machine companies.

Spillane alleges in his lawsuit that he reported over 250 errors in the system, including critical errors of "severity 1" which include errors that may prevent the machines from correctly registering the votes. He sought meetings with company officials to express concerns about system integrity flaws, and created logs and reports of such flaws.

His complaint indicates that VoteHere did not address the flaws, and that the VoteHere system was certified by independent testing labs despite known flaws. Just when the testing lab began its examination of system integrity, VoteHere fired Spillane.

VoteHere's board of directors includes former CIA director Robert Gates. VoteHere's Chairman is Admiral Bill Owens, who was senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney. Carlucci, of course, now heads the Carlyle Group and Cheney is Vice President.

retrieve a copy of the lawsuit early next week, case # 03-2-18779-85SEA, filed in King County, Washington. If possible we will post it later in the week at http://www.blackboxvoting.com

Bev Harris
http://www.blackboxvoting.com

Their heads weren't full of all this Cartesian dualism.

Back then, I was Oblomov. After the invasion, I changed my name and attitude.

Thanks for giving a damn, oldgrowth.

[bonito]

53. Bookmarked n/t

[dchill]

56. Just say NO to Bob Gates...

Hell,say NO to EVERYTHING until Jan. 3rd.

[Rex]

58. Any Dem who votes for Gates should be held accountable for it.

I expect the Repukers to hold onto Gates feet to lick the dirt off his shoes. That is a natural pose for Reps. Dems beware, you can read and do your own research on Gates (like Octafish did) so you have no excuses for voting for a traitor.

Gates MADE OBL what he is folks, that should land him a prison term (so should Iran/Contra or Hostage Gate, but I guess no one cares about facts).

[blm]

59. I am afraid many Dems will vote for him because Rumsfeld is SO bad and media will corner

them into it. Media has already been rehabbing Bush1 thugs for him, and in no snmall part thanks to Clinton's chumminess with the gang that makes them seem more reasonable and moderate but are STILL the reason all the current horrific events were set in motion long ago.

[bobthedrummer]

60. Like you and others have mentioned, there are "covering" Dems...

and "recovering" Dems, we need more Dems like Feingold, Kucinich, Boxer, Waxman to replace those that were "removed" by BFEE.

Gates is another criminal, liar and traitor-they're all over the place Kissinger, Meese, Poppy, Eagleburger all BFEE.

What kind of Democrats are on the Iraq Study Group, the cynically called "loyal opposition"-loyal to what restoring our government and Constitution or PAC's, special interests, and BFEE criminals and traitors???

[Jcrowley]

67. Kick

great research

[wildbilln864]

69. How about a...

kick?

[AntiFascist]

71. Kick !!

Great thread!

[AzDar]

72. Kick!! n/t

[truedelphi]

75. I am blown away! n/t

[bobthedrummer]

77. So it's another weekend, Poppy and the BFEE Torture AG took a run

down to Mexico to see the swearing in of another BFEE asset, the decider returned from Latvia and Estonia while the leaked Hadley memo caused the BFEE asset in civil war torn Iraq to symbolically snub his masters, Afghanistan opium production and the Taliban are doing even better than when Bobby Gates, 41, William Casey, Ronnie Reagan, Ollie North and their various international partners et al sold them weapons while they were selling drug cartels products--none of this has changed except geopolitically.

It's the same BFEE regardless-they've got to go.

Traitors, war profiteers, war criminals, terrorists, pimps and pushers, slavers, you name it-it's what they are all about--they have to go.

[blm]

79. Crystal clear to anyone who bothers to see it.

.

[fooj]

81. The BFEE must go!

[LSK]

80. thanks for the info

I have to admit, Im really in the dark regarding Iran-Contra. I guess I should be reading some Robert Parry.

[Octafish]

82. Parry's great. So was Gary Webb.

We still have Castillo, Levine and Berrellez:

DEA Agents Agree: CIA means Cocaine Importation Agency

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4061234

Kerry uncovered this stuff. How many Democrats lift a finger to help him turn over the rock that exposed all this?

[Hawkowl]

84. Screw 'em

The Dems shouldn't pass a goddamn thing to pass. The 109th Congress is OVER!! There is no political capital in allowing the Rethuglicans to get anything through. No chance at redemption. Go directly to fucking jail and do not pass go.

Gates needs to be roasted slowly over an open fire for several weeks of the new year.

[leesa]

87. His job is to keep our wars going. He will most definitely be approved.

Whether it's the bogus War on Communism, the bogus War on Drugs, or the bogus War on Terrorism. He will supply whatever each side needs to keep it going eternally.

It's what makes our economy hum, and every one of our elected representatives knows it.

[blm]

89. I think on this one, he wants withdrawal from Iraq - the way I see it they

are getting too much bad backlash and Bushboy's incompetence is ruining their plans. I see Gates as the way they intend to get out of Iraq over the next 12-18 months. Bushboy ruined it for them and likely set their plans back at least a decade.

In that sense, I won't mind if Gates is doing the job, but want him replaced immediately when a Dem takes office in Jan 2009.

They will likely need Bill Clinton or a Bill Clinton-type Dem to resurrect the original goal in some fashion.

[DemReadingDU]

91. The Google is a great invention!

Without The Google, I would still be in the dark about all these interesting pieces of history. Thanks to everyone who contributes to these threads.

[nolabels]

92. I never liked history in school

It seemed the curriculum was to drill thoughts in peoples head about why they should think a certain way instead of letting them explore them things that make it all so interesting. Corporations have corporatized academia and academia either can't tell that is what has happened or are too afraid to look at the evidence.

History is oh so important but narrow casting it will never work. I also hope the internet and google get more even more portable in the next few years. Two or three years ago listening to radio stations on the web was an iffy proposal but even just now it works so much better.

U.S. Senate Armed Services Full Committee Hearing on the nomination of Robert M. Gates to be Secretary of Defense

Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 6am to 3pm PST.

KPFK'S LISTEN LIVE STREAMING FORMAT - Shoutcast MP3
http://www.kpfk.org/

[bobthedrummer]

93. 21-0 for confirmation this afternoon, "fresh eyes" should have been

driven away by any reasonable group of United States Senators, but this is the BFEE's tentacles way up the unmentionables. We are now beyond the 21st Century's version of The Weimar Republic-this is BFEE's HOMELAND(TM).

Just take some time to review what so many said about Bobby Gates et al in this thread and the hyperlinks-is this what YOU voted for November 7th???????

The Iran/Contras with Henry Kissinger, Poppy et al return-it's still the BFEE despite the hollowness of the absence of Rumsfeld, Cambone, Goss, Bolton, and a lot of other "resignations"-these people are responsible for high crimes including treason and war crimes.

There is no excuse for this "confirmation"-who really cares about those tentacles up the unmentionables sucking every last drop of what used to be a representative democracy into the BFEE's digestive tract...Most of the posters in this thread and the hyperlinks care very much...How do you feel about "fresh eyes"????

[Octafish]

95. The BFEE LIED America into an another illegal and immoral war.

They certainly haven't done a single thing to get America out of it.

Things had better change in 2007.

My friend, bobthedrummer, Senator Webb will see to it.

As for what you wrote: I agree with every word. Thank you.

[lonestarnot]

94. Damn! To late to recommend! But not too late to keep kicked!

Thanks Fish!

[me b zola]

96. Outstanding work, Octafish

Sorry I got here too late to recommend. Hats off for another great thread! :thumbsup:

[bridgit]

97. Octafish, you know i'm down with these refreshers of yours...

:thumbsup: :hi:

[bobthedrummer]

98. A friendly reminder about the "new" SecDef

"Gates is Poppy's guy...datadump"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2665635

[Karenina]

100. In like Flynn

Bada-bing bada-:nuke:

[bobthedrummer]

101. "Constitution Takes a New Hit From Senators at Gates Hearing"

by Ray McGovern

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120706J.shtml

"Flynn" isn't Flint...

:hi:

[cap]

99. let him do his thing...

whoever has the position of Secretary of Defense right now has some very hard decisions to make... Gates looks like he will be a total slime ball. All we need to do is set up an investigation at the appropriate time to disclose all of his slimy activities and take him and the cabal out once and for all. I think he will be an excellent target for '08 presidential candidates. There is sooo much dirt on him to expose and by his own nature, he will create even more slime. The question is what dirt and when and how to expose this man in order to gain the maximum political advantage.