Supplanting the United States Constitution: War, National Emergency and "Continuity of Government"

http://www.nogw.com/cia.html

http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/echelon.htm

Supplanting the United States Constitution: War, National Emergency and "Continuity of Government"

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a81cogexercises

By Peter Dale Scott

Global Research, May 19, 2010

In July 1987, during the Iran-Contra Hearings grilling of Oliver North, the American public got a glimpse of “highly sensitive” emergency planning North had been involved in. Ostensibly these were emergency plans to suspend the American constitution in the event of a nuclear attack (a legitimate concern). But press accounts alleged that the planning was for a more generalized suspension of the constitution.

As part of its routine Iran-contra coverage, the following exchange was printed in the New York Times, but without journalistic comment or follow-up:

[Congressman Jack] Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Both North’s attorney and Sen. Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the Committee, responded in a way that showed they were aware of the issue:

Brendan Sullivan [North's counsel, agitatedly]: Mr. Chairman?

[Senator Daniel] Inouye: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that?

Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.[1]

But we have never heard if there was or was not an executive session, or if the rest of Congress was ever aware of the matter. According to James Bamford, “The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed.”[2] (Key individuals in Congress were almost certainly aware.)

Brooks was responding to a story by Alfonzo Chardy in the Miami Herald. Chardy’s story alleged that Oliver North was involved with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in plans to take over federal, state and local functions during a national emergency. This planning for “Continuity of Government” (COG) called for “suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law.”[3]

To my knowledge no one in the public (including myself) attached enough importance to the Chardy story. Chardy himself suggested that Reagan’s Attorney General, William French Smith, had intervened to stop the COG plan from being presented to the President. Seven years later, in 1994, Tim Weiner reported in the New York Times that what he called “The Doomsday Project” – the search for “ways to keep the Government running after a sustained nuclear attack on Washington” –had “less than six months to live.”[4]

To say that nuclear attack planning was over was correct, But this statement was also very misleading. On the basis of Weiner’s report, the first two books on COG planning, by James Bamford and James Mann, books otherwise excellent and well-informed, reported that COG planning had been abandoned.[5] They were wrong.

Mann and Bamford did report that, from the beginning, two of the key COG planners on the secret committee were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the two men who implemented COG under 9/11.[6] What they and Weiner did not report was that under Reagan the purpose of COG planning had officially changed: it was no longer for arrangements “after a nuclear war,” but for any "national security emergency." This was defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: “any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.”[7]

In other words extraordinary emergency measures, originally designed for an America devastated in a nuclear attack, were now to be applied to anything the White House considered an emergency. Thus Cheney and Rumsfeld continued their secret planning when Clinton was president; both men, both Republicans, were heads of major corporations and not even in the government at that time. Moreover, Andrew Cockburn claims that the Clinton administration, according to a Pentagon source, had “no idea what was going on.”[8] (As I shall explain later, this sweeping claim needs some qualification.)

The expanded application of COG to any emergency was envisaged as early as 1984, when, according to Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan,

Lt. Col. Oliver North was working with officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency . . . to draw up a secret contingency plan to surveil political dissenters and to arrange for the detention of hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens in case of an unspecified national emergency. The plan, part of which was codenamed Rex 84, called for the suspension of the Constitution under a number of scenarios, including a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.[9]

Clearly 9/11 met the conditions for the imposition of COG measures, and we know for certain that COG planning was instituted on that day in 2001, before the last plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. The 9/11 Report confirms this twice, on pages 38 and 326.[10] It was under the auspices of COG that Bush stayed out of Washington on that day, and other government leaders like Paul Wolfowitz were swiftly evacuated to Site R, inside a hollowed out mountain near Camp David.[11]

What few have recognized is that, nearly a decade later, some aspects of COG remain in effect. COG plans are still authorized by a proclamation of emergency that has been extended each year by presidential authority, most recently by President Obama in September 2009. COG plans are also the probable source for the 1000-page Patriot Act presented to Congress five days after 9/11, and also for the Department of Homeland Security’s Project Endgame -- a ten-year plan, initiated in September 2001, to expand detention camps, at a cost of $400 million in Fiscal Year 2007 alone.[12]

At the same time we have seen the implementation of the plans outlined by Chardy in 1987: the warrantless detentions that Oliver North had planned for in Rex 1984, the warrantless eavesdropping that is their logical counterpart, and the militarization of the domestic United States under a new military command, NORTHCOM.[13] Through NORTHCOM the U.S. Army now is engaged with local enforcement to control America, in the same way that through CENTCOM it is engaged with local enforcement to control Afghanistan and Iraq.

We learned that COG planning was still active in 2007, when President Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD 51). This, for the sixth time, extended for one year the emergency proclaimed on September 14, 2001. It empowered the President to personally ensure "continuity of government" in the event of any "catastrophic emergency." He announced that NSPD 51 contains "classified Continuity Annexes" which shall "be protected from unauthorized disclosure." Under pressure from his 911truth constituents, Congressman Peter DeFazio of the Homeland Security Committee twice requested to see these Annexes, the second time in a letter signed by the Chair of his committee. His request was denied.

The National Emergencies Act, one of the post-Watergate reforms that Vice-President Cheney so abhorred, specifies that: “Not later than six months after a national emergency is declared, and not later than the end of each six-month period thereafter that such emergency continues, each House of Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether that emergency shall be terminated” (50 U.S.C. 1622, 2002). Yet in nine years Congress has not once met to discuss the State of Emergency declared by George W. Bush in response to 9/11, a State of Emergency that remains in effect today. Appeals to the Congress to meet its responsibilities to review COG have fallen on deaf ears.[14]

Former Congressman Dan Hamburg and I appealed publicly last year, both to Obama to terminate the emergency, and to Congress to hold the hearings required of them by statute.[15] But Obama, without discussion, extended the 9/11 Emergency again on September 10, 2009;[16] and Congress has continued to ignore its statutory obligations. One Congressman explained to a constituent that the provisions of the National Emergencies Act have now been rendered inoperative by COG. If true, this would seem to justify Chardy’s description of COG as suspension of the Constitution. Are there other parts of the Constitution that have been suspended? We do not know, and the Chair of the Homeland Security Committee has been told he cannot find out.

Plans drafted by a secret committee, including corporation heads not in the government, have provided rules that allegedly override public law and the separation of powers that is at the heart of the Constitution. Congress is derelict in addressing this situation. Even Congressman Kucinich, the one Congressman I have met, will not answer my communications on this subject.

Yet as I see it, the only authorization for the COG planning was a secret decision by President Reagan (NSDD 55 of September 14, 1982) which in effect federalized the counterinsurgency planning (called Cable Splicer), which he had authorized in California when governor there.

It is clear that the planning by Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in the last two decades was not confined to an immediate response to 9/11. The 1000-page Patriot Act, dropped on Congress as promptly as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had been back in 1964, is still with us; Congress has never seriously challenged it, and Obama quietly extended it on February 27 of this year.

We should not forget that the Patriot Act was only passed after lethal anthrax letters were mailed to two crucial Democratic Senators – Senators Daschle and Leahy – who had initially questioned the bill. After the anthrax letters, however, they withdrew their initial opposition.[17] Someone -- we still do not know who – must have planned those anthrax letters well in advance. This is a fact most Americans do not want to think about.

Someone also must have planned the unusual number of war games taking place on 9/11. COG planners and FEMA had been involved in war games planning over the previous two decades; and on 9/11 FEMA was again involved with other agencies in preparing for Operation Tripod, a bioterrorism exercise in New York City. [18]

Someone also must have planned the new more restrictive instructions, on June 1, 2001, determining that military interceptions of hijacked aircraft had to be approved “at the highest levels of government” (i.e. the President, Vice-President, or Secretary of Defense).[19] The Report attributes this order to a JCS Memo of June 1, 2001, entitled “Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects.” But the written requirements had been less restrictive before June 1, 2001, and I am informed that the change was quietly revoked the following December.

In The Road to 9/11 I suggest the change in the JCS memo came from the National Preparedness Review in which President Bush authorized Vice-President Cheney, together with FEMA, “to tackle the… task of dealing with terrorist attacks.”[20] Not noticed by the press was the fact that Cheney and FEMA had already been working on COG planning as a team throughout the 1980s and 1990s.[21]

As I wrote above, it is necessary to qualify a Pentagon official’s claim (to author Andrew Cockburn) that the Clinton administration had “no idea what was going on” in COG. Let me quote from my response to Cockburn’s book in my own, The Road to 9/11:

[Weiner’s] article persuaded authors James Mann and James Bamford that Reagan’s COG plans had now been abandoned, because “there was, it seemed, no longer any enemy in the world capable of . . . decapitating America’s leadership.” [22] In fact, however, only one phase of COG planning had been terminated, a Pentagon program for response to a nuclear attack. Instead, according to author Andrew Cockburn, a new target was found:

Although the exercises continued, still budgeted at over $200 million a year in the Clinton era, the vanished Soviets were now replaced by terrorists. . . . There were other changes, too. In earlier times the specialists selected to run the “shadow government” had been drawn from across the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans alike. But now, down in the bunkers, Rumsfeld found himself in politically congenial company, the players’ roster being filled almost exclusively with Republican hawks. . . .“You could say this was a secret government-in-waiting. The Clinton administration was extraordinarily inattentive, [they had] no idea what was going on.”

Cockburn’s account requires some qualification. Richard Clarke, a Clinton Democrat, makes it clear that he participated in the COG games in the 1990s and indeed drafted Clinton ’s Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 67 on “Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government.” But COG planning involved different teams for different purposes. It is quite possible that the Pentagon official was describing the Department of Defense team dealing with retaliation.

The Pentagon official’s description of a “secret government-in-waiting” (which still included both Cheney and Rumsfeld) is very close to the standard definition of a cabal, as a group of persons secretly united to bring about a change or overthrow of government. In the same era Cheney and Rumsfeld projected change also by their public lobbying, through the Project for the New American Century, for a more militant Middle East policy. In light of how COG was actually implemented in 2001, one can legitimately suspect that, however interested this group had been in continuity of government under Reagan, under Clinton the focus of Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s COG planning was now a change of government.[23]

Understandably there is great psychological resistance to the extraordinary claim that Cheney and Rumsfeld, even when not in government, were able to help plan successfully for constitutional modifications, which they themselves implemented when back in power. Most people cannot bring themselves even to believe the second, known half of this claim: that on September 11, 2001, COG plans overriding the constitution were indeed implemented. This is why the first two print reviews of The Road to 9/11, both favorable and intelligently written, both reported that I speculated that COG had been imposed on 9/11. No, it was not a speculation: the 9/11 Commission Report twice confirms that COG was instituted on the authority of a phone call between Bush and Cheney of which they could find no record. No record, I did speculate, because it took place on a secure COG phone outside the presidential bunker – with such a high classification that the 9/11 Commission was never supplied the phone records.

A footnote in the 9/11 Report says

“The 9/11 crisis tested the U.S. government’s plans and capabilities to ensure the continuity of constitutional government and the continuity of government operations. We did not investigate this topic, except as needed to understand the activities and communications of key officials on 9/11. The Chair, Vice Chair, and senior staff were briefed on the general nature and implementation of these continuity plans.[24]

The other footnotes confirm that no information from COG files was used to document the 9/11 report. At a minimum these files might resolve the mystery of the missing phone call which simultaneously authorized COG, and (in consequence) determined that Bush should continue to stay out of Washington . I suspect that they might tell us a great deal more.

What is the first step out of this current state of affairs, in which the constitution has in effect been superseded by a higher, if less legitimate authority? I submit that it is to get Congress to do what the law requires, and determine whether our present proclamation of emergency “shall be terminated” (50 U.S.C. 1622, 2002).

An earlier polite, judiciously worded appeal to this effect failed. It may be necessary to raise the issue in a larger, albeit more controversial context: the scandal that a small cabal was able to supersede the Constitution, and Congress has failed, despite repeated requests, to do anything about it. I would hope that Americans concerned about this matter would raise it with all the congressional candidates in the forthcoming elections. At a minimum, candidates should promise to call for a full discussion of the proclaimed national emergency, as the law requires....

DR. STEFAN GROSSMANN worked alongside the great American Judge buster Sherman H. Skolnick and views that 9/11 was an inside job....

DR. GROSSMANN IS NOW UNDER ATTACK IN GERMANY....!

911_Science_Report_App_A (Bombing of the WTC)
Research - 911 - Analytical Forensic Report on the Bombing of the WTC
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32006911/911-Science-Report-App-A

911_Science_Report_App_B (WTC Fire Temperature Report)
Research - 911 - Analytical Forensic Report of the WTC Building Fires. There were no "hot raging fires" to melt or weaken steel, but 10 minutes after impact only smoldering local offices fires.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32007367/911-Science-Report-App-B

911_Science_Report_App_D (Insider Trading & Insurance Fraud AIG/Kissinger)
Research - 911 - Analytical Forensic Report of the multi-billion WTC Insurance Fraud AIG/Kissinger/Blackstone Group
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32007542/911-Science-Report-App-D

Thorn-Guliani - Phantom Flight 93
Research - 911 - Hard Investigative Journalism Plucking Apart Phantom Flight 93
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32007660/Thorn-Guliani-Phantom-Flight-93

Stephen Badhwar 911 By The Numbers Draft
Research - 911 - Five Pages of Numbers Contradict US Government
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32007838/Stephen-Badhwar-911-by-the-Numbers-Draft

All five items are pdf files and can be downloaded freely just by free registration.

The URLs as just published are shown under each document above, respectively.

Published Previously:

Filing of Judgment Day in German Court
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31757832/German-911-Case

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War. His book, Fueling America's War Machine: Deep Politics and the CIA’s Global Drug Connection is in press, due Fall 2010 from Rowman & Littlefield.

Notes

[1] New York Times, July 14, 1987.

[2] James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 74: “The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed. Rather than through legislation, it was created by Top Secret presidential fiat. In fact, Congress would have no role in the new wartime administration. ‘One of the awkward questions we faced,’ said one of the participants, ‘was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack. It was decided that no, it would be easier to operate without them.’” Cf. James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 145.

[3] Miami Herald, July 5, 1987. In October 1984 Jack Anderson reported that FEMA’s plans would “suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, effectively eliminate private property, abolish free enterprise, and generally clamp Americans in a totalitarian vise.”

[4] Tim Weiner, New York Times, April 17, 1994.

[5] Bamford, A Pretext for War, 74; cf. James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 138-45.

[6] Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 183-87.

[7] The provisions of Executive Order 12656 of Nov. 18, 1988, appear at 53 FR 47491, 3 CFR, 1988 Comp., p. 585, http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12656.html. The Washington Post (March 1, 2002) later claimed, falsely, that Executive Order 12656 dealt only with “a nuclear attack.” Earlier there was a similar misrepresentation in the New York Times (November 18, 1991).

[8] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy ( New York : Scribner, 2007), 88.

[9] Ross Gelbspan, Break-ins, Death Threats, and the FBI (Boston: South End Press, 1991), 184; cf. New York Times, November 18, 1991.

[10] 9/11 Commission Report, 38, 326; Scott, Road to 9/11, 228-29.

[11] Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11 (Washington: Department of Defense, 2007), 132.

[12] Scott, Road to 9/11, 238, 240-41.

[13] U.S. Department of Defense, “U.S. Northern Command,” http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/northcom.htm. Cf. John R. Brinkerhoff, PBS, Online Newshour, 9/27/02: “The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.” Brinkerhoff had earlier developed the martial law provisions of REX 84 in the Reagan era.

[14] Cf. Peter Dale Scott and Dam Hamburg , “To All Readers: Help Force Congress To Observe the Law on National Emergencies!!!,” 911Truth.org, March 24, 2009, http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090324183053848).

[15] Peter Dale Scott, "To All Readers: Help Force Congress To Observe the Law on National Emergencies!!!" (with Dan Hamburg), http.//www.truth.org, March 24, 2009, http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090324183053848#r7.

[16] White House Press Release, September 10, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Notice-of-continuation-from-the-president-regarding-the-emergency-declared-with-respect-to-the-September-11-2001-terrorist-attacks/. A press briefing by Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs the same day did not mention the extension.

[17] Cf. Time, Nov. 26, 2001: "While Daschle, the Senate majority leader, could have been chosen as a representative of all Democrats or of the entire Senate, Leahy is a less obvious choice, most likely targeted for a specific reason. He is head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is involved in issues ranging from antitrust action to antiterror legislation” [emphasis added]. See also Anthony York, “Why Daschle and Leahy?” Salon, November 21, 2001, http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2001/11/21/anthrax/index.html.

[18] Brian Michael Jenkins and Frances Edwards-Winslow, “Saving City Lifelines: Lessons Learned in the 9-11 Terrorist Attacks” (San Jose, CA: Mineta Transportation Institute, San José State University, 2003).

[19] 9/11 Report, 17; cf. fn. 101, 458.

[20] Houston Chronicle, May 9, 2001; Road to 9/11, 209.

[21] James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 139; James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doublesday, 2004).

[22] Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 144.

[23] Scott, The Road to 9/11, 186-87.

[24] 9/11 Commission Report, 555.

The Israeli Role in the Plundering of Iceland

May 21, 2010

9/11 - THE TRUTH IS OUT, inside job through and through....

The discovery of large amounts of Super-Thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center is solid scientific proof that the government and media version of 9-11 is nothing but a pack of treasonous lies. The evidence indicates that the Twin Towers were exploded using sophisticated nano-composite forms of Thermite and cutter charges. Thanks to the Internet, the truth about 9-11 is out and understood by millions of people across America and around the world.

Although it may come as an unpleasant surprise to some, it is a proven fact that the same network of Zionist Jews is behind the false-flag terrorism of 9-11 and the huge financial crimes of the past few years. Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, for example, the disgraced former CEO of the fraudulent A.I.G., is a member of this criminal network. The first airplane flew directly into the secure computer room of Marsh McClennan (MMC), a Greenberg-owned company (headed by his son Jeffrey) on 9-11. Another Greenberg-owned company, Kroll Security, was responsible for security at the World Trade Center.

Maurice Greenberg is involved in both 9-11 and the A.I.G. bail-out.

I have pointed out these connections in "The Architecture of Terror: Mapping the Network Behind 9-11", a key chapter of my book, Solving 9-11 – The Deception that Changed the World:

Kroll Associates was responsible for "revamping security at the World Trade Center after the 1993 terrorist bombing," Douglas Frantz of the New York Times reported in 1994. This is a crucial point because those who controlled security at the WTC are prime suspects in the demolition of the Twin Towers. It was directly into the computer room of Marsh (Kroll) USA in the North Tower that the first plane struck -- or was precision-guided -- on 9-11. The light orange flame and whitish smoke that exploded out of the burning computer room of Marsh USA are indicative of a Thermite reaction. Burning jet fuel produces darker orange flames and blackish smoke.

John O'Neill, the former chief of counterterrorism with the FBI, who had investigated Al Qaida, was the head of security for the World Trade Center complex, and was reportedly killed on his first day of work - on 9-11. O'Neill had been appointed to this position by the managing director of the Kroll security company, Jerome M. Hauer. Evidently, Kroll continued to manage security for the WTC complex from 1993 until 9-11.

The first plane flew directly into the secure computer room of Greenberg's Marsh McClennan Company. The explosions and white smoke that accompanied the crash are indicative of Thermite having been preplaced in the computer room.

Later, Maurice Greenberg's fraudulent insurance company A.I.G. was the key player in the Bush-Obama bail-out of 2008-2009, receiving more than $180 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds. Much of the taxpayer money paid out to A.I.G. was then distributed to equally criminal private investment banks like Goldman Sachs, whose profits from dodgy financial schemes/instruments had been insured by A.I.G. Fear tactics were employed as the U.S. taxpayer was robbed while being told that the bail-out of the network of financial criminals was for the public good.

We then find the same Zionist criminal network behind the Bernard Madoff scam in which tens of billions of dollars disappeared into thin air. The fact that Madoff's business partner Sy Syms was also a director of a private Israeli bank called Israel Discount Bank (New York), a bank with a documented history of money laundering and a branch in Switzerland, did not seem to interest Lev Dassin, the Zionist prosecutor. Most remarkably, Dassin, the prosecutor of Madoff, failed to even file charges of conspiracy in a financial criminal case in which more than $26 billion is reported to have disappeared.

Behind all of these mega-crimes we find one common denominator: a network of individuals connected to Israeli intelligence, the Mossad. The Israelis are well known to have a penchant for audacity. Seemingly immune from prosecution, the Mossad's crimes have only become more audacious. The evidence of Israeli involvement in these crimes is clear and indisputable. The only reason the Israelis get away with their outrageous crimes is because there is no political will to prosecute them.

PLUNDERING ICELAND

The looting of much of the wealth of Iceland is one such mega-crime in which we find Israelis involved at the highest level. The First Lady of Iceland, Dorrit Moussaieff, is an Israeli Jew, which adds a significant wrinkle to the whole plot.

The Israeli Dorrit Moussaieff is the "fabulously wealthy socialite wife of the President of Iceland." So why did a "fabulously wealthy" Israeli Jew marry the president of a small Nordic nation in the North Atlantic?

Iceland recently arrested several former executives of the former Kaupthing bank, the largest Icelandic bank involved in the collapse of the Icelandic economy in the fall of 2008. Kaupthing and a couple other banks were responsible for the looting of much of the wealth of Iceland (and other nations). Two of the former executives of the bank were recently held in solitary confinement to facilitate the Icelandic investigation.

Iceland's special prosecutor is investigating a number of former Kaupthing executives for alleged market manipulation and forgery. Before its collapse, Kaupthing lent more than $12 billion in shady deals that were "if not illegal, completely unethical," Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said. When Kaupthing, Glitnir Bank, and Landsbanki Islands collapsed in October 2008 they had amassed debts equivalent to 12 times Iceland’s gross domestic product. After taking control of the three banks, the government was forced to seek a $4.6 billion International Monetary Fund-led loan to stay afloat. If an intelligence agency of a foreign government were involved in bankrupting Iceland, a member of NATO, it should be considered an act of war.

Kaupthing's loan book (leaked on the Internet) shows that around one third of its $20 billion in corporate loans went to a small elite connected to the bank's owners and management. One of Kaupthing's owners and the bank's largest debtor when it collapsed is an Iraqi-Iranian Jew named Robert Tchenguiz (pronounced like Genghis, as in Khan). The bank's leaked loan book shows that Tchenguiz borrowed some $3 billion from the bank to finance his private investments. Tchenguiz and his brother Vincent are London-based business tycoons. Robert was an owner of Kaupthing as one of the largest shareholders in Exista, a company that was the largest shareholder of the bank.

Robert Tchenguiz - "I can't comment on what Hrediar did or didn't do. It is very difficult for me to discuss this. I don't know why he was arrested. I don't know anything about the case."

Tchenguiz siblings Vincent and Lisa

Tchenguiz claims that he lost everything with the bank's collapse. "I lost all my money with the collapse of Kaupthing and I am suing the bank so I have to watch what I say," he said recently. High-profile "losers" like the Tchenguiz brothers, who lose billions of dollars, are typical of Mossad financial scams. Like Bernard Madoff, the Tchenguiz brothers claim to have lost billions of dollars, but where did the money really go?

As I pointed out in the Madoff scam, the missing billions probably went to secret Zionist-controlled bank accounts, for example at the Swiss branch of Israel Discount Bank where Madoff's friend and business partner Sy Syms (a.k.a. Seymour Merinsky) was a long-time director. In the Tchenguiz case, the Israeli partner-in-crime was probably his father, Victor, whose original surname is reported to be Kedourie Molaaem, and who has lived in Israel since at least 2003.

Victor Tchenguiz, an Iraqi Jew from Baghdad, has evidently worked with the Israeli Mossad for decades, and was reported in the British press in 2003 to be "the brains" behind the Tchenguiz business empire: "One reason that Victor Tchenguiz was long supposed to be the brains behind Rotch was that his Ferrari-driving sons didn't seem to spend much time at their desks," Conal Walsh wrote in the Observer of May 25, 2003.

The Tchenguiz kids, Vincent, Lisa, and Robert are well known for living high on other people's money. As the Observer noted in 2003: "The [Iranian Jewish] community is also legendary when it comes to shopping and partying. One reason that Victor Tchenguiz was long supposed to be the brains behind Rotch was that his Ferrari-driving sons didn't seem to spend much time at their desks."

About the Israeli connection with the Tchenguiz family, Walsh wrote:

Victor Tchenguiz, 80 and now living in Israel, is a larger-than-life figure who apparently traded in his original surname of Kedorie for Tchenguiz, Persian for 'Genghis', in honour of the great Mongol warlord.

An Iraqi-born Jew, he reportedly fled Baghdad to avoid persecution in 1948, landing in Iran and swiftly becoming a favourite of the Shah. How Victor did this is unclear - Robert has hinted that he married well - but by the Seventies he was jeweller to Iran's royal family and, it has been reported, in charge of the royal mint. When the Shah was deposed in 1979, Victor fled to London, with his fortune seemingly intact.

The British press seems to be quite clueless about Victor Tchenguiz's high-level connections to the Shah of Iran and how he got there, as Chris Blackhurst wrote in his MT interview with Robert Tchenguiz:

Somehow, despite being a foreigner, Victor became a member of the Shah's inner circle, becoming the royal jeweller and also head of the country's mint. The family were in the elite of Iranian society - the children were pupils at the International School in Tehran and the sons went to university abroad - Robert to Pepperdine in California.

Then the Shah fell. Victor moved the family to London, again displaying enormous dexterity by managing to bring their money over as well.

While the press reports are quite sketchy, the name suggests that the Tchenguiz family may originally be Iranian Jews, perhaps named Molayem (i.e. soft), which would fit the unusual "Molaaem" spelling of the family name. Although Victor and Violet met in Baghdad, they were married in Iran after a very short courtship, apparently in 1955 according to a 2009 interview with their daughter Lisa. There would be no reason for Iraqi Jews to be married in Iran if they did not have family there:

Lisa's own parents, who are both Iraqi Jews by origin, had a semi-arranged marriage. Her father spotted her mother walking beside the canal in Baghdad, and introduced himself to her father at a café. Several coffees later, the deal was done. 'My mother was at home when her mother came in and told her that she was having an engagement party the following week.' The couple 'dated' for five days, heavily chaperoned, then married in Iran.

Fifty-four years later, they are still together and, says Lisa, happily so.

It is well known that the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, played a key role in supporting the Shah of Iran and his secret police, the SAVAK, as the Wikipedia article on the Mossad notes:

Prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79, SAVAK (Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service was created under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957 to protect the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing the dissidents (especially Leftists). After security relations between the United States and Iran grew more distant in the early 1960s which led the CIA training team to leave Iran, Mossad became increasingly active in Iran, "training SAVAK personnel and carrying out a broad variety of joint operations with SAVAK."

As the Jew who headed the Iranian mint and served as court jeweller for the Shah, Victor Tchenguiz would have worked closely with the Mossad. The Mossad connection would explain why Victor lives in Israel while his "billionaire" children and grandchildren all live in Britain. Why would Victor leave his family and home to retire in a country where he has never lived? The evidence suggests that Victor is indeed "the brains" behind the looting of Iceland and probably needed to be in Israel - close to his Israeli partners-in-crime - to pull off the mega-heist.

(To be continued...)

Sources and Recommended Reading:

"Robert Tchenguiz: I lost everything with Kaupthing", by Jóna Ann Pétursdóttir, Pressan (Iceland) May 7, 2010

http://www.pressan.is/News/ReadIcelandicNews/robert-tchenguiz-i-lost-everything-with-kaupthing---i-dont-know-what-hreidar-did-wrong

"Persian playboy goes shopping", by Conal Walsh, The Observer, May 25, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/may/25/theobserver.observerbusiness6

"The Tchenguiz sister", by Lydia Slater, London Evening Standard (U.K.), May 15, 2009
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23691957-the-tchenguiz-sister.do

Wikipedia article on Mossad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad

Rahm "MOSSAD" Emanuel bought House seat with wads of Hollywood cash

http://just-another-inside-job.blogspot.com/2005/06/wiki-page.html

http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2010/05/senior-bbc-mideast-correspondent-heres.html

WRIGLEYVILLE, CHICAGO, IL -- Rahm "MOSSAD" Emanuel bought House seat with wads of Hollywood cash...

Here in the midst of blue collar sports bars a stone's throw away from the fabled Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, one does not get the impression that the 5th Congressional District was ever a place where someone like Rahm Emanuel could win a congressional seat...

However, informed sources in the district, which was represented by Emanuel prior to his becoming President Obama's chief of staff, have told WMR that Rahm Emanuel "bought" the House seat with a heavy infusion of out-of-state campaign cash, primarily from deep-pocketed Hollywood sources.

Emanuel's 2002 congressional campaign was largely funded with Hollywood money. Limousine money poured into district where most people take the elevated train and most constituents will be found at Cubs games at Wrigley Field and not at the Joffrey Ballet.

Moreover, WMR has learned that the Hollywood campaign donations were principally steered into Emanuel's 2002 Democratic primary campaign by Ari Emanuel, Rahm's super-agent brother. In the past, it was reported that the funding for Emanuel's congressional campaign came, in part, from the $16.3 million he made as a managing director for the Chicago office of the investment firm Wasserstein Perella and as a board member of the scandal-plagued Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, also known as Freddie Mac.

Flush with Hollywood money, courtesy of super-agent brother Ari, Emanuel defeated Nancy Kaszak in the primary amid allegations that Rahm was nothing more than a carpet-bagger who also had dual loyalties to Israel as a veteran of the Israel Defense Force during Operation Desert Storm. Emanuel went on defeat Republican candidate Mark Augusti in the general election.

There is a general sense that Emanuel has every major Democratic political leader in Chicago toeing the Obama-Democratic Leadership Council party line and any attempt to criticize either Obama or Emanuel will result in extreme political retaliation.

However, running for mayor of Chicago, where politics is, as one seasoned poll put it, a "contact sport," may be an uphill climb for even the foul-mouthed, take no prisoners Emanuel. Emanuel's opponents will dig deep into his background and his time as a member of the board of Freddie Mac. Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board between 2000 and 2001 when the firm misrepresented profits by inflating them to deceive investors. Emanuel pocketed $380,000 in stocks and options thanks to the scam.

However, we may never really know how much Emanuel profited from his stint with Freddie Mac because of what WMR can now report is more than one suspicious death involving Freddie Mac's top financial executives. In April 2009, David Kellerman, Freddie Mac's chief financial officer who was assisting law enforcement personnel in investigating fraud at the firm, was found hanging in the basement of his Fairfax, Virginia home. A Freddie Mac source told WMR that Kellerman's death was followed by the suspicious death of a Freddie senior economist who was killed in an unreported bicycling hit-and-run incident near his northern Virginia home. The source requested WMR not to publish the name of the deceased executive in order to protect the privacy of his family. One of the areas of expertise of the economist, who held a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was commercial lending by Freddie Mac.

WMR can also report that some Windy City Democrats point out that the only Chicago business that has picked up from Obama's "stimulus" program is the plywood industry for window coverings for squalid houses in his former South Chicago neighborhood.

Bells tolling for humanity: BP oil catastrophe, Times Square bomb plot, and the folly of imperial oil agenda

http://www.the7thfire.com/9-11/9-11_Index.html

http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/jalilbahar/bps-caspian-disaster

Bells tolling for humanity: BP oil catastrophe, Times Square bomb plot, and the folly of imperial oil agenda By Larry Chin May 17, 2010,

Faced with the end of the age of oil and systemic collapse, the leaders of the Anglo-American empire have engaged in increasingly violent and transparently futile zero-sum games to salvage what is left of a corrupt governmental and economic milieu.

Empire in crisis

From the BP-Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, crashing stock markets, and the bloody consequences of manufactured wars, it's clear that the empire has lost control of its own criminal system.

As Michael C. Ruppert wrote in his 2004 book Crossing the Rubicon:

There are many factors that the rulers of the American empire now have to manage as they read their own delusional map of the world. They have to:

• Apportion dwindling resources among competitors, some of whom possess nuclear weapons;
  
  
• Maintain and expand their control over enough of the oil and gas remaining to ensure their global dominance and maintain order among the citizens of the Empire;
  
  
• Simultaneously manage a global economic system, made possible by hydrocarbon energy that is collapsing and in which the growing population is demanding more things that can only be supplied by using still more hydrocarbon energy;
  
  
• Acknowledge that they cannot save their own economy without selling more of these products;
  
  
• Control the exploding demand for oil and gas through engineered recessions and wars that break national economies;
  
  
• Hide the evidence that they are systematically looting the wealth of all the people on the planet---even their own people---in order to maintain control;
  
  
• Maintain a secret revenue system to provide enough off-the-books capital for military advantage; improving their technological posture, and funding covert operations;
  
  
• Repress any dissent and head off any exposure to their actions;
  
  
• Convince the population that they are honorable;
  
  
• Kill off enough of the population so that they can maintain control after oil supplies have dwindled to the point of energy starvation.”

Never has this agenda, its tragic consequences and ultimate futility, been more obvious than with the unprecedented events of the past weeks.

BP-Deepwater Horizon: an “extinction event”

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the resulting oil super spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst man-made disaster, and the largest and most heinous act of environmental destruction in history.

This floating super-bomb remains completely out of control, spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf, spreading in directions that cannot be predicted, becoming exponentially worse by the second. It threatens to dwarf the entire Gulf of Mexico, the entire southern and southeastern coast of the United States and Mississippi River, and is poised to spread into all of the world’s oceans. Wildlife, human life, industries, economies and livelihoods, all potentially face permanent damage and destruction. It is even possible that the Gulf will be rendered impossible to navigate.

What is certain is that this catastrophe, made possible by the oil agenda of the Anglo-American empire -- will continue to kill for generations, potentially rendering the entire Gulf of Mexico a dead zone.

For weeks, BP, government officials, and the corporate media have been engaged in a massive cover-up, lying about the unspeakable actual scale of the disaster, and lying about its clean-up and containment efforts. According to a spokesperson for Greenpeace, there has never been a successful response to an oil spill, and that what BP is doing at present is nothing but “response theater.” All attempts to contain the geyser -- each of them a series of failed experiments and theories -- have been futile and ineffective.

BP’s use of toxic chemical dispersants has been, at least in part, an attempt to obscure the visual horror of the spill from news cameras. The highly toxic dispersants themselves have further added to the toxicity of the spill, without actually removing any of the oil.

According to this frightening analysis by an experienced expert, what is visible on the surface, already the size of the state of Maryland may be as little as 20 percent of the actual scale of the spewing manmade volcano of toxic sludge being reported. Gigantic emissions of natural gas threaten to deplete the oxygen of the water in the Gulf.

The unprecedented amount of oil bursting out -- perhaps as much as four barrels of oil per second -- also raises questions about the actual size of the reservoir itself. Quoting the same analysis: “This is an out of control volcano of oil spewing up with 70,000 psi behind it, from a reservoir nearly the size of the Gulf, with an estimated trillions of barrels of oil and gas tucked away. It is this deposit that has me reminding people of what the Shell geologist told me about the deposit. This was the quote, ‘Energy shortage . . . , Hell! We are afraid of running out of air to burn.’ The deposit is very large. It covers an area off shore something like 25,000 square miles. Natural Gas and Oil is leaking out of the deposit as far inland as Central Alabama and way over into Florida and even over to Louisiana almost as far as Texas. What we are seeing now could be small compared to what may yet unfold if things break apart, as they can do under such circumstances. If this thing blew, it could be like the Yellowstone Caldera, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it.

“That would be an extinction event.”

Leaked memos suggests that government officials were aware of a potential for a nightmare scenario. Will it simply be “allowed to happen” as the days, weeks and months pass?

BP, Halliburton and Transocean -- notorious icons of “disaster capitalism” -- enjoy long and enduring ties to the world governments, and their worldwide oil strategies.

Both the Bush-Cheney and Obama administrations, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) directly involved with allowing BP to operate Deepwater Horizon in reckless fashion, sheltering BP from regulatory requirements. This despite the fact that BP has a history of recklessness and disaster known throughout the energy industry.

The case implicates Dick Cheney and the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), Cheney’s secret “energy task force,” which may have provided BP and other oil giants with the license to “fast track” into production without proper safeguards, and without proper regard to potential catastrophic spills or permanent environmental damage.

What, if any, punishment will BP face for turning the entire Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone; for threatening all of humanity? A series of useless hearings in which corrupt and feckless members of Congress help the directors of BP, Halliburton and Transocean maintain their innocence, conceding “mistakes”? Fines? Promises that “it will never happen again” while an apocalypse is happening?

Transocean has in fact, already profited from the disaster. The corporation was just paid $401 million in insurance, while petitioning to cap its liability for the disaster.

The economic cost alone can potentially bring down a world economy already teetering on the brink of collapse. Oil prices will be disrupted for decades.

It is bitterly ironic that the Deepwater Horizon, which just weeks ago was viewed as the empire’s last greatest hope, will instead serve as its suicide.

Yet, even as the mega-volcano of toxic sludge relentlessly dwarfs more geography over the coming weeks and months, the empire’s leaders still refuse to stop.

The Obama administration has granted 27 new waivers to big oil companies since the BP explosion, allowing them to engage in yet more drilling and exploration, without proper environmental review -- in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Kerry-Lieberman energy bill, pushed through Congress in recent days, establishes yet more offshore drilling around the country, along with “clean coal” (a fraud and myth, perpetrated by the coal industry, that Congress and the Obama administration continue to push).

More “war on terrorism” for more oil

As an unintended oil calamity unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, the planned oil chaos in the Middle East and Central Asia continues.

It is not clear if the foiled Times Square bombing was an attempted act of “real” terrorism or revenge, a false flag incident, a military-intelligence double or triple cross carried out by competing intelligence agencies, or a complete fabrication.

While the specifics of the case against alleged bomber Faisal Shahzad remain in the hands of deceptive US officials and law enforcement, the foiled plot provides the Obama administration with a twofold propaganda bonanza. The administration now has the pretext with which it can expand the “war on terrorism” into Pakistan, Waziristan and Iran, and further strengthen the foothold on the largest remaining oil and gas supplies of the Middle East and Central Asia. It was also a “wag the dog” diversion from the BP cataclysm in the Gulf of Mexico and crashing world stock markets.

Shazad’s connections to the CIA and MI6 raise immediate suspicions: “A man arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Times Square car bombing attempt who had traveled with accused bomber Faisal Shahzad is a member of a terrorist organization that is controlled by British MI6 and the CIA.

“Jaish-e-Muhammad, the group now emerging in connection with the Times Square incident, was founded by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the 9/11 bagman who delivered $100,000 from the United Arab Emirates to Mohammed Atta at the behest of General Mahmud Ahmed, then head of the ISI. Mahmud Ahmed, the man who ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to bankroll the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, was meeting with Republican Congressman Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham in Washington DC on the morning of 9/11. In the days before and after the attack, Ahmed also met with CIA Head George Tenet as well as current Vice-President Joe Biden, then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“In a report on Jaish-e-Muhammad’s involvement in the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was investigating the ISI, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Pakistani government, ‘Believe that Saeed Sheikh’s power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA.’”

Other suspicious factors include the presence of Special Forces immediately on scene, and the “mysterious white men” captured on video initially believed to be part of the bomb plot. According to an early CNN report, “a video obtained from a tourist in the area shows a person apparently running north on Broadway, while another video shows a balding man with dark hair removing a shirt and putting it in a bag before walking out of view of the camera, which was inside a restaurant.”

Regardless of how the Times Square bombing case develops, “war on terrorism” is a perpetual covert operation designed to justify perpetual war, and endless new resource conflict.

As noted in Michel Chossudovsky’s America’s “War on Terrorism,” “the significant development of ‘radical Islam’ in the wake of September 11, in the Middle East and Central Asia, is consistent with Washington’s hidden agenda. The latter consists of sustaining rather than combating international terrorism, with a view to destabilizing national societies . . .” Virtually all of the world’s “Islamic terror” fronts -- Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc.---are manipulations by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI (a branch of the CIA) and nurtured for years with US government support.

The US government has been funding Taliban militants, and buying off defectors of various tribal factions, at the same time as Washington decries the “resurgent” Taliban.

The initial reporting of the Times Square plot in the mainstream corporate media linked Shahzad to Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, brother of slain former Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

Subsequent reporting has been rife with conflicting information, from quotes of Mehsud promising new attacks on the US, denials, counter-denials, speculation, and confusion that becomes even more complicated when one traces recent events involving the Mehsuds and the Taliban going back two years.

Qari Zainuddin, Mehsud’s Taliban rival, was shot dead in late 2009. Zainuddin, who had split from Mehsud’s Taliban faction, was accused of being a top Al-Qaeda asset.

In early 2010, seven CIA agents were killed by militants supposedly avenging Baitullah Mehsud, who was believed by many to be an Al-Qaeda ally and a CIA asset, linked to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Other Pakistani men alleged to have direct connections to Shahzad have been arrested in Massachusetts Although it is “unclear whether they were witting accomplices or simply innocent money dealers,” the connection to Pakistan itself may prove enough to serve the purposes of war hawks in Washington.

The FBI has sent agents into Pakistan. The Obama administration and members of Congress, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, are, in typical post-9/11 fashion, complaining about “intelligence failures” and vowing yet more aggressive domestic security. The “certain” ties to Pakistan, Waziristan, Iran, etc. will be used as fodder towards the next military attack. .

The final hour

The signs are unavoidable and clear: the Anglo-American empire has run out of time, and oil, and humanity itself has paid the steepest cost.

From war and chaos, catastrophic financial meltdowns, or the mega-disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that could ultimately render all else moot, events are well beyond the empire’s ability to control or hide any of it.

Cyber Command Appointment Offers More Questions Than Answers

http://www.maskofzion.com/2010/10/wikileaks-is-zionist-poison.html

May 13, 2010 - http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/

Tim Stevens is a researcher in the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

The US Senate has finally and formally approved the appointment of General Keith B. Alexander as head of its new Cyber Command, a sign that the US is deadly serious about extending its warfighting capabilities to cyberspace. Although there is little argument with a sovereign nation developing structures and capabilities that enable it to defend against adversarial actions, the appointment prompts more questions than it provides answers.

Cyber Command was created in June 2009 by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, with the full backing of the Obama administration, and is intended to defend the US military against attacks, espionage and other actions in and through cyberspace that might impact negatively on US military assets. It is paralleled in civilian terms by the appointment of White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt last December, a position that also came out of last year’s Cyberspace Policy Review. President Obama has clearly signaled his intentions to treat cyberspace as a vital strategic asset, and is matched in this by the US military’s elevation of cyberspace to a warfighting ‘domain’ equal to land, sea, air and space.

Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) will answer to US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), the military command that oversees US nuclear and space operations, as well as information warfare and global military intelligence. It is designed to act in support of military operations abroad and homeland security requirements at home and its position as a command with global reach reflects the transnational nature of not only the threats the US perceives to its national interests but also the responses that might be required.

The Pentagon insists that Cyber Command is not a sign of the militarization of cyberspace, although the dictionary definitions of militarization might contradict this. If militarization is the ‘reduction to a military model or method’, then recent calls to re-engineer the Internet from senior establishment figures suggest that this would be desirable. If militarisation is ‘to subject to military domination’ then, again, CYBERCOM’s remit to, in part, undertake offensive military operations anywhere the US deems necessary also looks a lot like militarisation.

However, the US freely admits that this is as much a problem of law as it is about the projection of military power. In the recent Senate hearings, Alexander reiterated the need to subject cyber operations to the Standard Rules of Engagement to which all military actions are subordinate. In cyberspace, this might mean knowing from whence an attack originated, or who was responsible, not always the easiest evidence to acquire. The Pentagon has also not ruled out a physical military response to a cyber attack, although it concedes that there are legal questions that remain unanswered.

Not least of these is how cyber operations across national borders are dealt with by the laws of armed conflict and their reliance on principles such as proportionality, neutrality, distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and military necessity. In the battlespace of the global internet, it is hard to know what effects a retaliatory attack might have on another country, and on those citizens and companies that might rely on internet connectivity or other critical infrastructure. Although we can attribute significant accuracy to US military targeting capabilities, the sometimes wayward use of another bloodless combat fix―unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)―is unlikely to quell the unease that accompanies thoughts of more remote technologies in the hands of the world’s premier military power.

There are concerns too about the position of Cyber Commander itself. General Alexander is already director of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon’s foreign intelligence service. He will now ‘dual-hat’ as head of both the NSA and Cyber Command, an extraordinary concentration of intelligence-gathering and military potential. Although the NSA is meant to concern itself with external affairs, it was under Alexander’s watch that the NSA was caught wiretapping US citizens without warrants since 1995 and still does today daily, as well as FBI, CIA and many other UKUSA alliance agencies, DIA, MOSSAD, AMAN and others.... illegaly, in order to protect secrets of the inside JOB of 9/11 and more extra-judicial assassinations on a global scale, especially in Lebanon since January 24th 2002....

If these developments had occurred within a slightly less febrile environment than the recent public claims by senior figures that the US is in a cyberwar and losing it badly, then we could perhaps be more sanguine. As it stands, we have to wonder where this is all leading, and how the US will use its undoubted strength in this field, and to what ends. At present, it looks as if the US is building its hardware and capabilities, and the structures to deliver them, and is going to let the lawyers sort out the details afterwards....

Cryptome has been questioning the role of Wired in recent counterattacks on Cryptome. It appears that Wired is involved in an effort to undermine the credibility of Cryptome as a safe haven for material from whistle-blowers. Just before the latest WikiLeaks/DOD/CIA release, WikiLeaks/CIA/DOD was also under a 'sophisticated' cyberattack. Now Wired, out of all the things it could write about in the massive WikiLeaks/CIA/DOD release, is playing up the rather tenuous evidence, which of course could also be planted by the Pentagon, linking Iran to the war in Iraq. Wired.....is looking like a branch office of the American military and FDDC....