An Interesting Story from Trump's Past Should Serve as a Warning to the CIA

by Nomad

In my pursuit of something new, I often go back to something old. In this case, to May 1991. I found an article written by the late Christopher Byron, a veteran financial writer of Wall Street and all of the 1990s shenanigans that went on. In this piece published in New York Magazine (May 1991), Trump plays only a cameo appearance.

The piece is, in fact, about a New York investigative agency, Kroll Associates. Based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City the firm had specialized in digging up dirt in the world of finance.

In the 1980s, corporations would consult Kroll regarding in investors, suitors and takeover targets. "with special attention to any perceived connections to disreputable organizations, suspicious business practices, personality and integrity issues, or any kind of corporate malfeasance " The CIA of Wall Street, you could say.

Its founder, Jules Kroll, recalled a short tale of his encounter with businessman Donald Trump. 

Byron wrote:

Donald Trump.. told me that he had once used Kroll for "a certain matter" and that the investigator's work had been "superb."

"You can quote me on that," said Trump.

A week or so later, however, Kroll himself supplied an unexpected reason for Trump's thumbs-up endorsement. According to Jules, Trump hired Kroll Associates four or five years ago to investigate whether Atlantic City's Plaza casino which Trump was negotiating to buy, had become "mobbed up."

"It was a tough assignment," said Kroll, shaking his head. "One of the people we interviewed was murdered three days after we spoke to him."

Government for Sale: An Interesting Discovery in the CIA Files on Donald Trump

by Nomad

Newly-released CIA files offer us a bitter look back at what we used to laugh at decades ago. A satirical op-ed piece is a timely reminder of how far we have come along the path to corporatocracy. And under Trump, it's likely to get a lot worse. 

When I heard the news that the CIA had just uploaded around 13 million formerly classified documents, I did what any inquisitive blogger would do. I hastily typed in Donald Trump's name in the site's search engine. What I found was, to put it mildly, not what I was expecting.
No, nothing scandalous, so don't get too excited. There is one rather peculiar find to report.

Among a few other items, there's a photocopied news clipping of a June 1985 article by the then-editor of the monthly, Harper's Magazine, Lewis Lapham.
This article's presence in the CIA file is very likely to do a very brief mention of the CIA head at the time, Bill Casey. As for the Trump reference, you'll have to be a little patient.

The piece itself is a tongue-in-cheek op-ed entitled "Putting the Government Up for Sale: Deals to Ponder." The crux of the article is pretty basic and is summed up in the first paragraph.

"Sooner or later, it will occur to somebody in the Reagan administration to put the federal government up for sale in a patriotic series of leveraged buy-outs. The deficit and the national debt would vanish as if in magician's smoke. The Dow Jones stock averages would gain 4000 points and everybody lucky enough to command the necessary lines of credit and political patronage would make a killing."

Here's the Intel Report that President-Elect Trump Didn't Want the World to See

by Nomad

Yesterday's blockbuster leak of a 35-page classified intelligence report has, at long last, emerged as President-elect Trump prepares to be sworn into office.

The report, disclosed by a site called BuzzFeed, seems to reveal the extent of the alleged Russian involvement with Trump's campaign.

The document, a dossier prepared by a former British intelligence officer hired by Mr. Trump’s political opponents, had been circulating among high-ranking politicians and some journalists since the fall. Intelligence officials recently presented a two-page summary of the allegations to Mr. Trump and President Obama, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The allegations, which could not be absolutely substantiated, appear to come from a variety of credible sources, in and out of the US government intelligence community.

The charges suggest that Russians were gathering highly damaging information about Donald Trump, of both a ("perverted") sexual and financial nature for over 5 years. 

Nevertheless, while the report raises a lot of questions about Trump and foreign manipulation of the election, nothing has been proved.  Many reputable new sources refused to print the report and since the advent of purposefully faked news sites, deniability has now been permanently built into any disclosure.

Why Trump's View on Intelligence Will Leave America Blind, Deaf and Dumb to its Enemies

by Nomad

Trump's Wilful Ignorance

On Sunday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) pointed out that President-elect Trump's denial that Russia interfered with the elections was "deeply damaging."

That denial flies in the face of the verdicts of all 16 government intelligence agencies and at least three private security firms which have independently investigated the security breaches.

Schiff told ABC’s “This Week.”

“For the president-elect to continue to give the Russians deniability is deeply damaging to the country.”

Here we have a President-elect rejecting the findings of a majority of government intelligence agencies which have suggested that his victory owes a lot to  illegal interference from a foreign government.

As of last week, U.S. intelligence officials stood by their allegation of Russian tampering. In fact, senior U.S. intelligence officials now believe with "a high level of confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.

Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence reportedly came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.
Trump is adamantly refusing to accept that.

Only a decade ago (or perhaps less) these events would have been unthinkable. Today, the people who have long considered themselves red-blooded patriots and loyal Americans are numbly silent when it comes to the Manchurian candidacy of Donald Trump.
Who'd have thought it possible?

Schiff, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said  

“By attacking the intelligence community basically, it’s going to make it that much more difficult for the current president to make attribution, for the American people to understand what they really need to about Russian involvement in our elections.

There's another dilemma facing the incoming president. By repudiating the work of intelligence agencies, charged with gathering, collating and analyzing vital information in defense of the nation, Trump has essentially shot himself in the foot. 

In times of crisis, President Trump will have to rely on the findings of these very same agencies that he has declared incompetent and untrustworthy.

Bust: How Republicans Lost the War on Drugs 3/5

by Nomad

In past installments in this series on America's war on drugs, we examined Nixon and Ford. Now we turn to the Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
Deeply entrenched distrust for the president within the CIA would prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.

Part 3. Where the Rational Met Reality

Carter's Way

The 70s were a time of reformation after the hectic and often frightening social shakeups of the 60s. Watergate and the subsequent Church Senate Committee Investigations had opened up the heart of the political system and most Americans were appalled at the grimy business of running the country and managing the world.

What was needed was a complete overhaul starting at the top. Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian, peanut farmer with the down-home Georgian accent seemed to be the style of leadership the country demanded.
And so in 1976, against all expectations, The Waltons moved into the White House.

The white middle class conservative values of "dominant social order" were being re-evaluated, questioned and challenged in a variety of ways.

The extreme conservative opinion, typified by white frustration, tainted with bigotry and, simplistic, backward views of the world,  was being mocked weekly on television shows like All in the Family and other programs. It is no surprise then that the failed drug policy should once again come under greater scrutiny.

In some ways, President Carter did, in fact, pick up where President Ford had left off. And as we mentioned in the previous post, that new direction had already been sabotaged. While marijuana was now being considered harmless and non-addictive, cocaine was added to the same category. (We should take a closer look at the possible reason for this.) In any case, this coupling, for whatever reasons, proved to be a major blunder.

Both, under President Ford's directive, were now to receive far less attention from law enforcement. Meanwhile the focus was concentrated on the heroin trade. 

Progress combating the illegal import of heroin too was hampered. That had much to do with the CIA and its antagonism toward Carter and all he represented. 

It was common knowledge that high level intelligence officials in the agency had no great love for Carter. Perhaps it was to be expected since President Carter had campaigned as an outsider who was coming to Washington to clean the mess that the Church Committee had revealed.

Bust: How the Republicans Lost the War on Drugs 2/5

by Nomad

In Part 1 of this series we examined how  and why President Nixon declared his war on illegal drugs. However, the public learned the moral crusade was being led by a president with dubious moral qualifications.

In the second part of the series we carry on the story with the Ford Administration's efforts to make sense of Nixon's policy.  

That wasn't going to be easy.

Part 2. The Flaw and the Irony 

Ford's Challenge 

In 1974, with a hearty arm wave from the doors of a helicopter, disgraced President Richard Nixon bid farewell to power. The anti-drug warrior was immediately replaced on August 9, by America's first and only unelected president, Gerald Ford. (In less than a year, Ford had gone from congressman  to vice-president to president.)

The Watergate investigation- as it turned out- was just the beginning of the government's distress. If the new president was calling for a "Time of Healing" it was soon clear that some people were not going to let the house cleaning end with Nixon. 

In January 1975, the Church committee, an independent investigation was established by Senate and continued the post-Watergate housecleaning. The target was no longer the president and his staff but CIA and claims of grievous misconduct, The committee's investigation pulled back  the cover on such things as assassination attempts against foreign leaders, covert attempts to subvert foreign governments and the FBI and CIA’s efforts to infiltrate and disrupt organizations here at home. (That's just the short list.) 

Senator Church, after reviewing the evidence of widespread abuse by the FBI, CIA, IRS and NSA, called the intelligence agencies "rogue elephants."

The investigation dragged on throughout most of Ford's time in office, and involved testimony from highest levels in the intelligence community. 

Under those circumstances, any attempt to restore the stability of the nation was going to be a challenge. Nixon's drug war was just another example of the general chaos in government of that time. And much of the problem, the confusion, centered on the policy stance on marijuana.

Obama vs. The Cheneys: A Question of American Values

by Nomad

When President Obama admitted that the CIA had, in the years after 9/11, committed torture, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice-president blasted the president, calling him an "utter disgrace." The interrogators, she said, were "patriots" and "heroes."

She failed to understand that the torture debate wasn't a matter of patriotism. It was a question of American values and what America stands for.

The Unseen Trap

In itself it was a fairly obvious thing to say. Last Friday, President Obama admitted that the CIA had committed torture. But what was surprising was his use of the pronoun "we." 

After handing over a report to Congress about an investigation into “enhanced interrogation techniques," President Obama said the CIA had “tortured some folks” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

What gives? I wondered. Presumably he was referring to the CIA during the Bush administration. If he were attempting to show solidarity with the CIA then it seemed a politically dangerous and needless thing to say. Indeed, many headlines from the so-called liberally-biased media simply read "We tortured folks, says Obama."

Now it is clear what he was doing: It was a bait for conservatives.

In short order, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, erupted with indignation about Obama's remarks. The venue was, predictably enough, Sean Hannity's show on Fox News.  

Hyperbole, like you never saw.

"..This president is an utter disgrace. He’s got a situation where... you’ve got crises erupting around the world."

A classic non-sequitur and a distraction. Obama wasn't there to talk about the problems of the world and she knew it.  Cheney, (Liz , that is) went on to say:

“And he is expending more time, more energy, more passion, more aggressive activity in targeting and going after patriots, heroes. CIA officers and others who kept is safe after 9/11."

Of course, Cheney's explosive rhetoric is aimed at dividing Americans, a lame attempt to stoke fears one more time. The Cheney apples do not fall far from the tree.

Additionally, there is a very real question about the accuracy of her allegation. Did torture actually keep anybody safe, either in the short or long term?

That's a statement that requires Cheney to prove and she is clearly not willing to attempt it. However, the unreleased U.S. Senate report, according to one source, is purported to conclude that the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques following 9/11 attacks was ineffective and yielded no critical intelligence. 

That's bad news for the Cheney family.

Actually, President Obama never said that enhanced interrogation didn't save lives. He said only that these techniques were contrary to our values. Perhaps the moral question -which is what the president was referring to- is simply not something a daughter of Mr. Dick Cheney could possibly grasp.

Not in a million years.

And that is the trap that Obama set and the one into which Liz Cheney - clearly speaking in defense of her father's policies- unwittingly tumbled. It is a question of values, a question whether the ends justify the means. 

Just because we can find a rationale for doing it and a legal means to escape second-guessing, does it make it right? 

Before PRISM: The Curious History of the US World-Wide Surveillance Network- Part One

by Nomad
Recently many people seemed altogether mortified, shocked and angry when whistle-blower Edward Snowden, former contract employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) supplied both the Washington Post and The Guardian details about two top- secret surveillance operations.

The Snowden evidence describes one operation which was an effort to collect data from Verizon about millions of phone calls. The other operation was called PRISM. In that operation, metadata was harvested from millions of Internet sites. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple were all apparently involved in the PRISM operation. 

Although both programs seem to have been overseen by Congress and a top-secret court, the extent of the operations came as a shock to a lot of people. 

One source describes PRISM like this:

“Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy.”

What PRISM does is to allow the NSA and the FBI to tap directly “into the central servers of nine leading U.S.Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.”

Who, the reporters and public asked, could have imagined that the United States government- for whatever reason- would engage in such violations of personal privacy? Conservative voters feel as though their worst fears about Big Government and about Barack Obama have been confirmed. Many stunned liberals are asking:Why would President Obama launch such an attack on our freedoms?

Perhaps the only truly shocking aspect of the recent whistle-blowing revelations is the fact that anybody should be shocked at all. People who have been paying attention should have known the extent of this type of surveillance.

Perhaps the only truly shocking aspect of the recent whistle-blowing revelations is the fact that anybody should be shocked at all. Everybody -those who were not sleeping-  should have known the extent of this type of surveillance. 

Much- but naturally not all- of the information about these operations had been made public a long ago. The American people (at those who were awake) were warned and chose to ignore the challenge to their civil liberties.. until now. 

The present anger – much of it unfairly directed at the Obama administration- comes a little late in the day. The evidence of these (and even more extensive and intrusive) electronic spying operations has been right under everybody's noses for over a decade. As we shall see in this report it is especially disingenuous for Republicans to bluster now.

The problem of the government’s covert spying on its own citizens began long before Obama, before Bush, Reagan or even before Nixon.

The Conspiracy Theory, 9-11, and Susan Lindauer

Susan Lindauer

by Nomad
Each of us has a personal limit as to what we are prepared to believe or not. Every religion, every news report and documentary and every conspiracy theory continually probes those limits of our capacity to believe.

The Theory of Conspiracy

The term, conspiracy theory, is nowadays used as a pejorative or dismissive term. 

Without any further discussion, a State Department official or a reporter might say with a smirk, "Well, you know what conspiracy theorists are going to say..."

Because aren't people who believe in conspiracy theories unbalanced or gullible or just plain ignorant? 

But the idea that there could be an alternative version of history is not something that strikes me as strictly incredible. Call it a conspiracy theory, if you will, but giving it that title doesn't make it any more or less invalid. As any scientist will tell you, not all theories are equal but then that's what makes them theories. Each of us has to weigh the evidence in our own minds, to measure it against our own personal sense of reality, and to accept or reject the unconventional hypothesis. 

The fact that the term, conspiracy theory, is used in this way, some would see, is a sign of the closing down of rational thought or the triumph of orthodoxy and dogma. After all, conspiracies do exist and the only way to determine their veracity is, of course, to speculate upon them. 

The Secret Problem with Jeb: Why Another Bush is not the Solution 2/2

by Nomad

In the previous post we examined the kind assistance Jeb Bush, gave a Cuban exile turned business and how that led to one of the largest Medicare frauds in American history. In this post, we will look into some other possible reasons why Jeb Bush (and his father) would have been so eager to help Recarey and his friends.

The Exiled Mobster

With Jeb Bush's help in overcoming certain Medicare regulations, Cuban businessman and Bush business partner Miguel Recarey was able to amass a fortune in a very short time. 

In exchange, he provided free and no-questions medical care to Nicaraguan right wing rebels, otherwise known as Contras. When the scheme collapsed, Bush and high level Bush administration officials successfully helped Recarey avoid prosecution and even had the kindness to give him a bonus for his services in the form of a hefty IRS check.
But Bush and company were not the only people involved in Recarey Medicare fraud. If he had friends in high places, Recarey also has important contact in the lower realms too.

Back in 1988, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sydney P. Freedberg of the Wall Street Journal, wrote of Miguel Recarey’s longstanding connection with Florida underworld boss Santo Traffincante, Jr. It was alleged by Miguel Recarey's associates that the medical company IMC was, in fact, financed by the Miami mafia don Trafficante.