Read the transcript of Ron Suskind's taped interview with former ranking CIA officer Rob Richer, now posted at Suskind's website: http://www.ronsuskind.com/...   It reconciles what both Suskind and Phil Giraldi have been saying about the Iraq forgery letter.  They agree on all main points.

The earlier media accounts emphasized Suskind's narrative that George Tenet handed the forgery down the CIA chain of command.

In a published comment, Phil Giraldi (former head of CIA counter-terrorism) said, no, the point of origin of the letter was Cheney's office, and the actual forgery was done by Feith's shop at the Pentagon, OSP. See, http://www.amconmag.com/...

Read the following -- the whole thing -- everyone is in agreement, the written order came "from downtown" on cream-colored White House letterhead.

Now, read this:

How BioPort (with Ivin's help) Grabbed a a Billion Dollar Monopoly on Anthrax Vaccine

There's an important, unnoticed backstory in the death of Bruce Ivins, the biotoxins scientist who is now blaimed for the anthrax attacks that followed 9/11.

Can’t go into all the details here, but Ivins was involved in anthrax vaccine development for three companies, Bioport/Emergent, Coley, and VaxGen. There seems to have been a recent struggle between two of them, BioPort/Emergent and VexGen, for a lion's share of $5.6 billion in federal biodefense contracts. The third company, Coley, licensed its vaccine additive to the losing company, VaxGen, in March 2007.

Vaxgen lost its federal contract later in 2007, and in May 2008 was bought out by Emergent.

That leaves BioPort/Emergent the sole approved provider of anthrax vaccine. There are some vexing historical details about BioPort that I won’t go into here that you should be aware of. If you're not, see, http://whatreallyhappened.com/... ; http://www.freepress.org/... .

MORE below

The Senate and House leadership (majority AND minority leadership, and heads of both Intel Committees) were in on warrantless wiretapping from 2003 on, just as they were briefed about new torture doctrine long before it was revealed in the media.  Like the CIA’s "enhanced interrogation techniques", FISA violations went on for years with the Congressional leadership's knowledge before the public learned about it.
 
Under present law, without change, that makes some very powerful Senators and House leaders – along with White House figures and telco executives -- criminally and civilly liable, and subject to years of being named in law suits and, possible indictment.  They know this, and so should you.

The push for amnesty is pure CYA, all the way around. That's why the senior members are now pushing for telco amnesty, while the incumbent President will sign it, knowing that the next one – President Barack Obama -- has vowed not to.

MORE BELOW . . .

The New York Times is trying to sell the story that Iran was the primary client of the A.Q. Khan nuclear network, and received miniaturized warhead designs. http://www.nytimes.com/...

That is about as accurate as Judith Miller's stories that Iraq had WMDs.

The fact is, as James Risen told us, by the late 1990s Iran caught on to the fact that Khan's network operated as a CIA front.  A failed effort to transfer bogus warhead designs to Iran was code-named Operation Merlin.

The Agency had a major role in creating and nurturing A.Q Khan's nuclear program.  It was originally part of the 1976 deal that CIA Director George H.W. Bush made with Princes Kamal Adham and Turki al-Faisal, co-heads of Saudi external intelligence, the GID. In exchange for Saudi funding of U.S. intelligence operations banned by the Democratic Congress since the Church Commmittee hearings, the Agency looked the other way as the Saudis implemented their own covert operations around the world, including Pakistan's bomb program, influence operations and financial frauds inside the U.S., which included BCCI and the S&L scandals.

MORE below . . .  

I.  Background:  GOP Foreign Influence Peddling

Senator John McCain has proved to be Jack Abramoff’s best friend.  

As Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 2005-2007, McCain was instrumental in suppressing evidence of Jack Abramoff’s role in directing illegal foreign payoffs to ranking members of the Republican Party.

McCain also did a big favor for Abramoff’s principal partners in crime, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, identified in the 2006 Committee report as key players in the Choctaw Indian and Marianas Island scandals. Not one of the principal witnesses in the matter were compelled to publicly testify by McCain's panel.  The Committee also sequestered 99 percent of the documents it received, and these remain locked away, unseen by the public, in Senate files.

But there’s much more to the scandal than the Indian tribes rip-off McCain did disclose. The strand that runs through all the Abramoff-McCain relationship is foreign money – many, many millions – that Jack, Grover and Ralph funneled to GOP leaders from some of the world’s worst bad guys as part of a foreign influence-peddling operation.

FOLLOW MORE DIRTY GOP MONEY below . . . .

Part 2:  McCain’s 30-Years of Service to Saudi Bank Raiders and Junk Bond Kings

Beginning tomorrow, the McCain campaign will bombard you with all the noble details about how John McCain is the "reform" candidate for President.  Obama, they will tell you, is all about "change you don't want."

Here's what needs to said about that:

From BCCI, to Milken’s Junk Bond Kings, to Jack Abramoff, Senator John McCain has long provided the All-American face to the dirty job of cleaning up after the looting of America.

Senator John McCain has made a career out of serving the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and covering up after its army of lobbyists, bagmen, and corrupt bankers.

The ugly details the corporate aren't yet willing to share with you, BELOW . . .

Exactly what does Hillary Clinton mean when she says, "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran"? Clinton told ABC, "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

But, what if Israel launches that first-strike -- or, Israel strikes Iran after some third-party provocation -- which is the more plausible scenario. What then, Madam Commander-in-Chief? Are we bound by your pledge to "obliterate" Iran, even if Iran doesn’t fire the first shot?

Is that the message we want to send to a country that started a preemptive war with its neighbors in 1967? And, by that, I don't mean Iran.

Did you think this through, Hill, or is that exactly what you want us to expect during the Hillary Clinton Presidency?

MORE

2002 Death of Long-Time Associate of Dr. David Kelly Raises New Questions

The UK Guardian revealed Monday that the US and Britain jointly ran a highly secret program to build radiological "Dirty Bombs".  A 2002 accidental detonation killed a British scientist, a long-time colleague of Dr. David Kelly, whose death a year later led to the major scandal over the British Government's role in the Iraq WMD deception.

Before the invasion, Dr. Steven Hatfill, the accused anthrax killer, had headed a parallel U.S. program to contruct "replica" Iraqi bioweapons trailers of the type which never existed in Iraq, but which the Bush and Blair governments used to justify the invasion.

Judy Miller was a key common figure in both the Kelly and Hatfill stories, one which also involves former Undersecratary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone and Gen. Petraeus in the fraudulent program to sell the world on the invasion of Iraq.  

Much more below . . .  

Greenberg Traurig (GT), a major GOP partisan law and lobbying shop, has been indicted on federal charges in the Marianas Islands sweatshop case.  The firm employed notorious political fixer Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff’s firm has a long history as a conduit for illegal foreign campaign contributions.  GT were Bush's Campaign Lawyers during the 2000 Florida Recount, and is now a major donor to HRC's presidential campaign, according to the lastest FEC data.

Greenberg Traurig and the Tan Family, who are the center of the Saipan sweatshop and prostitution scandal, have both made large HRC campaign contributions.

In a odd coincidence, GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain chaired the Senate Committee which investigated Abramoff.  As dengre has informed us, McCain's committee continues to withhold all but 8000 pages of the three-quarter of a million documents turned over to it.

This has the makings of a major presidential campaign blowup, if HRC gets the nomination.

MORE below . . .

It's worse than you think.

For the Congressional leadership, the threat of prosecution for 4 trillion warrantless wiretaps is more than enough to pass an immunity bill.  A self-immunization bill.  

But, nobody calls it a self-immunization bill.  All the better.

For the membership, the unspoken threat of retaliation by the senior leadership (against those who don't vote for immunity) suffices in more than enough cases to pass the self-immunization bill.  By about 60-30, with notable absences.

Blackmail of individual Senators by Bush-Cheney wasn't even necessary.

Self-Immunization?  Congress?  What am I going on about?

Clarification below . . .

Rome Tries and Fails to Occupy Persia (The Parthian War)(53 BC)

The only thing more vulgar than the abuse of historical analogy is the willful ignorance of history.  Such reckless disregard for what has come before is the very root of America’s disaster in the Persian Gulf.  As the Bush-Cheney Administration has shown, even what Byron called the "World’s Lords" can be brought to ruin in a startlingly short span, merely by the applied ignorance of history and geography, and an overextended and underdeveloped sense of imperial power.

Just look at the damage done by Crassus, the Dubya of Rome, when he tried to invade and occupy Persia in the last decades of the Republic.  His fatal gullibility as a leader, unwillingness to listen to diplomatic and military advise, led to an unprecedented defeat of Roman arms.  Worse still, he was so bad a commander that his recklessness led to the mutiny and split of his legions, fueling civil war, bringing the Republic to an end.

If Crassus is any indicator, this too will be Dubya’s legacy, with which we now have to deal.

Read this as history, but do not ignore it as warning.

BELOW . . .

Cofer Black Headed Unit Alleged to Torture Detainees and Withhold Pre-9/11 Warning Memo to FBI

In the Osama bin Laden story, a former CIA official with the unlikely name "J. Cofer Black" is the character who seems to pop up in the most interesting places.  

Indeed, Mr. Black is the one person at CIA who admits to having dealt with bin Laden, face-to-face, after the Soviets departed Afghanistan in the early 1990s.

During the last few years of his CIA career, Cofer Black had an extraordinarily focused, unusual assignment. Until he retired from CIA in late 2002, Cofer Black was one of the few officers within the clandestine service with a real subject matter expertise.   Black’s specialty was Usama bin Laden, "UBL", as he’s known in U.S. intelligence circles.

From 1999 until May 2002, Black was in charge of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center, at which some historic decisions and catastrophic failures took place.  

While Chief of Station in Sudan in the early 1990s, Black oversaw CIA contact with UBL; al Qaeda flowed in a straight line through Cofer Black to 9/11 and to the present day privatization of intelligence as Vice Chairman of Blackwater, LLC, and as Mitt Romney’s advisor on national security.

[UPDATED] –  With White House knowledge, the CIA destroyed tapes of interrogations that showed detainees being subjected to interrogation techniques that alter recollections, erase memories, and coerce false confessions, methods banned by the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.

The NYT reports today that four lawyers to the President and Vice President met with Agency officials to discuss plans to destroy the torture tapes. See, http://www.nytimes.com/...

Abu Zubaydah was one of several "high-value" al Qaeda detainees subjected to oxygen deprivation during torture, continuous sensory bombardment, long periods of sleep deprivation, and other techniques shown to induce psychosis, memory loss, and extreme psychological confusion and vulnerability to the suggestions of interrogators.

The use of torture based on banned Cold War "brainwashing" techniques effectively rendered such interrogations legally useless and made those tortured unfit to credibly testify in any subsequent proceedings to what they had once known.  This outcome was not unforeseeable when the White House authorized waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation."

The ongoing controversy over the destruction of CIA torture tapes raises several more unanswered questions.  The answers call into question the very basis of the Bush Administration’s so-called Global War on Terrorism.

These are questions about selection. Who and why, and why not others?

Why were four particular "high-value" detainees water boarded?  But, why weren’t the other 11 who were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques", and why were these 15 tortured out of the nearly 100 prisoners the CIA acknowledges it has held in secret custody around the world?  What characteristics or experiences do they have in common?

MORE below . . .

A pattern of torture and memory erasure is at the heart of the mistreatment of prisoners in George W. Bush's Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).  Indeed, torture is not so much about extracting information from terrorists, the actual result is to reduce the mental capacity of prisoners so that the false history created by the Administration and its stenographers in the corporate media can never be corrected.

MORE below ...

Newsweek reports today that the White House pressured the CIA to erase tapes recording the interrogations of two key, related al-Qaeda figures, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahom al-Nashiri.  Harriet Miers, President Bush’s personal lawyer, was the principal White House negotiator with the CIA on how to manage emerging public awareness of torture during these interrogations.

What the American people aren't being told, yet, is that waterboarding effectively erased the memories of an al-Qaeda leader in custody -- and possibly several other major figures involved in planning attacks -- who knew the details of what the CIA had learned in advance about al-Qaeda training and planning for 9/11.

MORE . . .

Re: the CIA torture tape erasure.

The corporate media and Congress have finally focused on a story that casts doubt on the official version of 9/11.  They're telling you that the reason the CIA erased the videotapes of the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, a key al-Qaeda figure, was to protect the identity of the CIA interrogators.  The second reason offered, which you may have heard, is Gerald Posner's account that Zubaydah confessed to naming five prominent Saudi and Pakistani leaders, including the head of Saudi intelligence and the top General in the Pakistani Air Force, who knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance.  Four of these five died shortly thereafter, except the Saudi Intel Chief, Sheikh al-Turki, who was later welcomed by the Bush Administration as the Saudi Ambassador to Washington.

Now, here's the third reason: Abu Zubaydah was a key Al-Qaeda figure in the CIA's Chechnya operation, which involved several of the 9/11 hijackers.  He was in a position to know about the relationship of the 9/11 Hamburg cell with the CIA.

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"Game over, turn off the X-Box, put on your pajamas, and go to your rooms."  In effect, that’s what the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. Intelligence Community just told George Bush, Dick Cheney and Ehud Olmert, who in recent months have been banging pots, jumping up and down on furniture, and starting small fires around the house as they play-act scenes from  "Nuke Iran (and Syria, Too).  The Home Version 3.0".  

If you really want to understand the timing of the release December 4 of the new Iran NIE, you need to understand that the CIA and Pentagon are sick and tired of cleaning up these messes – this is the third time the Fire Dept. has been called -- created by the neocons in the Persian Gulf, most recently the Israeli Air Force attack September 6 on Syria, which quite rightly has been taken as a threat of preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.  This was just spinning out of control.  Enough.

There was that mention last time by the Fire Lieutenant about notifying Child Protective Services.  Hon, someone’s at the door, can you get that?

Find out who's at the door below the fold . . .