Maryland Family Files Lawsuit Against Federal Government, Claims CIA was Responsible for the Death of Their Father and Lied About Its Involvement, Says Gilbert LLP

Herald Online
Gilbert LLP

Dr. Frank Olson

Eric and Nils Olson, the victim's sons, claim that Dr. Olson had a crisis of conscience about continuing his research into the use of biological weapons and mind control techniques after witnessing extreme interrogations in which the CIA committed murder using the biological agents that he had helped to develop.  Shortly afterwards, the lawsuit alleges, CIA officials drugged Dr. Olson with LSD and then took him to New York under the pretense of psychiatric treatment by a CIA doctor who turned out to be an allergist.  Plaintiffs claim that Dr. Olson was given alcohol and sedatives, and then was thrown from the thirteenth floor of the New York hotel room he was sharing with his CIA colleague.  Instead of apprehending those responsible and telling the Olson family the truth, the family says, the CIA closed ranks and dissembled, embarking on a multi-decade cover-up that continues to this day.

Dr. Olson plunged to his death from the window of a thirteenth floor hotel room in New York City on Thanksgiving weekend in 1953.  The circumstances of Dr. Olson's death were substantially similar to the "contrived accident" described in detail as "the most effective ["secret assassination"] technique" in a covert CIA manual published that same year.  Indeed, as Dr. Olson lay crumpled and dying on the street, his CIA colleague did not run down to his aid.  Nor did he call the police.  Instead, the complaint alleges, a person in Dr. Olson's room made a phone call.  The hotel operator overheard one party say "Well, he's gone."  The person on the other end responded simply "That's too bad."

Following Dr. Olson's death, the United States informed his widow and three children that Dr. Olson had died in a terrible accident and due to his disfigurement, they should not view the body.  Both statements, the lawsuit alleges, were outright lies.  In the ensuing years of question and doubt, the family suffered at every conceivable level.  Mrs. Olson descended into chronic alcoholism and her sons were raised in part by their father's ex-CIA colleague, who repeatedly abused them sexually, the complaint says.  Throughout, the government's cover-up and lies continued.

In 1975, after post-Watergate scrutiny of federal intelligence abuses, the United States was forced publicly to acknowledge having drugged Dr. Olson with LSD.  Once again, instead of telling the truth and bringing Dr. Olson's murderers to justice, the government came up with a new explanation:  Dr. Olson's death now was not an accident after all, but the result of an LSD-related suicide.  The family's unanswered questions lingered, however, with repeated requests for full disclosure and the truth.  In 1995, Eric and Nils Olson had their father's body exhumed and an autopsy performed. The autopsy found a previously undisclosed wound consistent with a blow to the head.  The New York District Attorney's Office reopened its investigation into Dr. Olson's death, ultimately reclassifying the official cause of his death from "suicide" to "unknown."

In spite of repeated attempts by Dr. Olson's family to obtain a full accounting from the CIA of its responsibility for his murder, the lawsuit alleges, the CIA has compounded their grief by failing to disclose all information related to his death – an omission confirmed by former CIA Director William Colby in a message to one of Dr. Olson's sons several years before Colby's own death under suspicious circumstances.  The decades-long cover-up allegedly extended to high-ranking White House officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, at the time chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, and, Dick Cheney, his deputy chief of staff.

As recently as February 2011, the CIA refused to produce files that the Olson family requested.  The agency continues to claim that it has given the family "a complete and accurate presentation of what happened to Dr. Olson."  "That is just not the case," said Eric Olson.  "The evidence shows that our father was killed in their custody.  They have lied to us ever since, withholding documents and information, and changing their story when convenient.  We were just little boys and they took away our lives – the CIA didn't kill only our father, they killed our entire family again and again and again." he stated.
"It's unfathomable that our own government could stand by as its agents, operating on United States soil, killed an American citizen in cold blood, destroyed his family, and then allowed those directly responsible to walk away without so much as a blemish on their personnel files.  Instead of putting its energy and resources into doing what is right, the United States – including this Administration – has sought to bury this and hide the truth from Dr. Olson's only surviving relatives and from the American people." said Scott Gilbert, lead counsel and founder of Gilbert LLP.

"We need to put an end to this story of murder and deceit; it is time to do what is right.  And our job is to ensure that happens." he added.

About Gilbert LLP

Gilbert LLP is a Washington, DC-based law firm focused on strategic risk and litigation consulting and on insurance recovery. The firm's clients include business entities, debtors and creditors in bankruptcy matters, trusts and committees formed in such cases, law firms, accounting firms and other professional organizations, non-profits and individuals.  Gilbert LLP also has a very robust public service practice.  For more information about Gilbert LLP, visit www.gotofirm.com.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/11/28/4446342/maryland-family-files-lawsuit.html#storylink=cpy

A lawsuit filed today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to hold the CIA accountable for its involvement in the death of Dr. Frank Olson, a bio-weapons scientist and covert CIA officer who worked at the United States Army's "Special Operations" laboratory at Camp Detrick, Maryland in the early 1950s.A lawsuit filed today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to hold the CIA accountable for its involvement in the death of Dr. Frank Olson, a bio-weapons scientist and covert CIA officer who worked at the United States Army's "Special Operations" laboratory at Camp Detrick, Maryland in the early 1950s.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/11/28/4446342/maryland-family-files-lawsuit.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/11/28/4446342/maryland-family-files-lawsuit.html#storylink=cpy

A lawsuit filed today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to hold the CIA accountable for its involvement in the death of Dr. Frank Olson, a bio-weapons scientist and covert CIA officer who worked at the United States Army's "Special Operations" laboratory at Camp Detrick, Maryland in the early 1950s.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/11/28/4446342/maryland-family-files-lawsuit.html#storylink=cpy

Why Is President Obama Sending 12, 000 U.S. Troops To Libya?

Countercurrents
Cynthia McKinney

It is with great disappointment that I receive the news from foreign media publications and Libyan sources that our President now has 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in Malta and they are about to make their descent into Libya.

For those of you who have not followed closely the situation in Libya, the resistance to rule of the National Transitional Council is strong. The National Transitional Council (NTC) cast of characters has about as much support on the ground as did Mahmoud Abbas before the United Nations request for Palestinian statehood or Afghanistan's regal-looking but politically impotent Hamid Karzai or for that matter, George W Bush after eight years. The NTC not only has to contend with a vibrant, well-financed, grassroots-supported resistance, but the various militias of the NTC are now also fighting each other. I believe this “sociocide” of Libyan society, as we previously witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan before it, is part of a carefully crafted plan of destabilization that ultimately serves U.S. imperial interests and those of a Zionist state and its US agents who are bent on Greater Israel's suzerainty over huge swaths of Arabic-speaking populations. Pakistan is also on the list for neutering in Muslim and world affairs, saddled with its own unpopular civilian leadership that finds itself in the hip pocket of the United States for survival, often getting sat upon by its fiscal guarantor.

The “Arab Spring” has sprung and the indelible fingerprints of malignant foreign financed operations must be erased if the people are to have a chance to truly govern themselves. Unfortunately, these foreign-inspired organizations are present and operating in just about every country in the world. The threat is ever-present like sleeping cells–all that is needed is that the right word to “activate” be given. Both Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez can write tomes on the impact of the National Endowment for Democracy in the political life of their countries.

In other words, those who create the chaos have a plan and in the midst of chaos, they usually are the ones who will win. Those who wrote the plan of this chaos were affiliated with the Project for a New American Century–read A Clean Break if you already haven't. General Wesley Clark told us of the plan to invade and destroy the governments of seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. “These people took control of the policy in the United States,” Clark continues. He concludes, “This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and . . . collaborators from the Project for a New American Century: they wanted us to destabilize the Middle East.” Richard Perle, Bill Kristol publicize these plans and “could hardly wait to finish Iraq so they could go into Syria,” Clark goes on. “The root of the problem is the strategy of the United States in this region. Why are Americans dying in this region? That is the issue,” he finishes.

Now, from Libya, reports are that even while the Misrata rebels (NATO allies responsible for the murder of hundreds of Libyans, including Moatessem Qaddafi) attempted to scale the petroleum platforms in Brega (an important oil town in Libya), they were annihilated by the Apache helicopters of their own NATO allies. A resistance Libyan doctor-become-journalist reported yesterday that all of the petroleum platforms are occupied by NATO and that warships occupy Libya's ports. Photographs show Italian encampments in the desert with an announcement that the French are to follow. Another news outlet reports that Qataris and Emiratees are the engineers now at the oil plants, turning away desperate Libyan workers.

While long lines exist for Libyan drivers to get their gas, foreign troops ensure the black gold's export. Libyans lack enough food and the basics, the country has been turned upside down, and contaminated with uranium while the true number of dead and unaccounted for remains high and unknown. Thousands of young Libyans, supporters of the Jahamiriya, languish under torture and assassination in a Misrata prison where a humanitarian disaster is about to unfold because Misrata rebels want to kill them all and have already attacked the prison once to do so. An urgent appeal to contact the International Red Cross was issued yesterday to help save the lives of the prisoners. And finally, Black Libyans continue to be targeted for harassment and murder in Libya by US/NATO allies on the ground. Teaching hate, given the images of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan released yesterday, urinating on Afghani dead bodies, is not a difficult thing to do, it would seem. Videos are posted of Black Libyans being beaten, whipped, threatened, harassed, and humiliated. These videos remind me of the antebellum South–reminiscent of the days of slavery and The Confederacy. So, when I use the word “descend” to describe U.S. anticipated actions, I mean just that: U.S. troops are about to descend into the hell on Earth created by their President and the leaders of other countries who approved of, aided, or participated in the death of Libyan-owned society. A report from last night indicates that one militia, fearing other militias even invited foreigners in to protect them.

Rewarding Impunity

Why is President Obama's attorney general handing out prizes for sweeping torture under the rug?

Foreign Policy
David Cole

On Oct. 17, Eric Holder handed out the Justice Department's annual awards for distinguished service to a slew of department employees. Featured at the top of the awards announcement were the men and women who successfully prosecuted 10 New Orleans police officers for killing innocent civilians in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and a U.S. marshal who risked his life to protect a victim from a violent fugitive during the fugitive's capture. But buried at the bottom of the list -- the 13th of 14 "distinguished service awards" -- was a more unusual awardee: Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham. Durham and his team received the award not for bringing anyone to justice, but for declining to hold accountable anyone in the CIA for its brutal interrogations of detainees at secret prisons, or "black sites," in connection with President George W. Bush's "war on terror."

"In order to conduct the investigations," the citation reads, "the team had to review significant amounts of information, much of which was classified, and conduct many interviews in the United States and at overseas locations."

There's no question that Durham worked hard for a long time, and that the investigation was complex and substantial. After all, more than 100 men were "disappeared" into the CIA's black sites for extended incommunicado detention and interrogation. Because the CIA prisons were a secret, everything that happened there is classified, complicating investigation still further. And because the investigation itself is secret, we can't know precisely what evidence Durham considered, what roadblocks he faced, what judgment calls he made.

But here's what we do know. Many of those "disappeared" into the CIA's black sites were tortured and/or illegally subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for example, were waterboarded 83 and 183 times, respectively. They and other detainees were stripped naked, doused with water, beaten about the face and stomach, slammed into walls, deprived of sleep for days on end, forced into painful stress positions, and confined in small dark boxes for hours at a time. And these were just the "authorized" torture tactics, given a green light by a secret memo written in August 2002 by John Yoo and Jay Bybee from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and specifically okayed by President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, among others.

We also know, thanks to the CIA's own Inspector General, that CIA interrogators in the black sites went beyond even the illegal brutality authorized by high-level officials. One detainee was threatened with a handgun and a power drill. A mock execution was staged next to a detainee's cell. Interrogators threatened to kill the children of another detainee if he didn't tell them what they wanted to know.

We also know that in 2005, CIA higher-up Jose Rodriguez ordered the destruction of videotapes of two of those interrogations, shortly after the Washington Post revealed the existence of the CIA secret prisons where the interrogations took place, and while the tapes were under request from several courts and a Senate committee looking into charges of abuse.

Durham cleared everyone in the CIA of accusations of wrongdoing. Does he deserves a medal for that? Maybe so, but then there are a few other recipients the attorney general left out. Surely John Yoo and Jay Bybee deserve medals for making the interrogations possible in the first place, by issuing a memo that Jack Goldsmith, director of the Office of Legal Counsel after Bybee, has called a "get out of jail free card." Goldsmith himself, along with his successors as OLC heads under Bush -- Daniel Levin and Steven Bradbury -- also deserve medals for secretly allowing the torture tactics to continue even after the administration rescinded the initial memo when the Post published it. Tellingly, the Bush administration could not publicly defend, even for a moment, what everyone had signed off on in secret; but Goldsmith, Levin, and Bradbury ensured, in subsequent secret memos and authorizations, that the CIA's illegal program could go on.

The Last War Crime Debuts At Cannes - But Censored In US.

Nation of Change
Jeanine Molloff

During this summer of Occupy and subsequent police brutality, the subject of torture is hotly denounced by protesters and conveniently ignored by candidates. Like that ostrich diving head first into the sand of political expediency–Americans want to focus on the alleged debt crisis or gay marriage–anything that absolves us from the messy subject of tortures committed in our names by the Bush/Cheney administration and which continue under Obama to the present day. The entire Bradley Manning debacle speaks volumes to this accusation.

In spite of strong evidence identifying Dick Cheney as the mastermind behind this torture regime–the subject remains taboo, both in the ‘news’ business and in Hollywood–that is until Hollywood executives watched trailers for the anti-war documentary–The Last War Crime.

Written, produced and directed by a new talent known only as ‘The Pen,’ this film documents the torture protocol ordained by the Bush-Cheney administration. Since it first circulated a trailer on the web; it has been heavily censored and cyber attacked. You Tube has removed it at intermittent intervals and MTV (which is owned by Viacom) has refused to sell air time for a commercial.

Apparently, there are some things that Viacom won’t accept money for—namely any film or story which exposes the regular torture ordered by Vice-President Cheney. Curious about this documentary and the blatant censorship–(I couldn’t download it)–I contacted the artist aka The Pen. Here is the interview.

JM : What are you hoping this film will accomplish in terms of genuine political change?

The Pen:” The Last War Crime Movie is about indicting Cheney for torture. And isn’t that something billions of people want to see? They say sometimes life can imitate art. But first we felt it was important that we retrace our country’s steps as to how torture was used to get the false intelligence to sell us on a war with Iraq. The real story of how this happened has been buried under an avalanche of pseudo history. They want people to forget the Downing Street minutes and the foreknowledge that the British had that Cheney and Bush were determined to invade Iraq, even if they had to “fix the facts around the policy” to do so. They want to obliterate the memory of the flimsy legal arguments in the torture memos. So we dig out all the true facts, and put them on the big screen, together with an entertaining narrative story about what it would have been like if justice had already prevailed.

NationofChange is a 501(c)3 nonprofit funded directly by our readers. Please make a small donation to support our work.

The people who committed these war crimes believe they can escape accountability by changing the way people think, by selling the American people on the idea that torture was a great thing that got us wonderful intelligence to protect us. But the only people making these arguments are the torturers themselves and their propaganda advocates. All other percipient witnesses confirm the opposite, which we knew already, that torture does not even work, and that any actionable intelligence they got was obtained before they started torturing people. So part of the mission of this movie is to counter their ongoing lies initiative, to change the way people think back to the truth, and then we can have good policy change, which is political change.

JM : Do you expect more interference, and if so–in what form?

The Pen: Based on what we have run into already, the attempted YouTube censorship (which we forced them to reverse after more than 7,000 direct protests), the rejection of the ad submitted to MTV (Viacom Inc.), it is clear that we are encountering serious censorship interference from the very beginning. Obviously we are telling a story that certain people don’t want heard. The American people believe that we have free speech. It was on that justification that the Supreme Court said in the Citizens United decision that the gloves were off, and that corporations with unlimited war chests should be permitted to flood our political process with money favoring their point of view. But now we see that the other side of that bargain was a fraud, that these same corporations believe they can discriminate against points of view they disagree with. So for the actual people, we find that even if we have the money, we cannot even BUY “free” speech.

This is not a tolerable situation. Must we generate thousands of protests every time we want to run an ad when it is rejected for political reasons?

Colin Powell: U.S. was set for war with Iraq before his U.N. speech

Yahoo
Jeff Stacklin

The George W. Bush Administration was set on going to war with Iraq even before Colin Powell made his infamous 2003 weapons of mass destruction pitch to the United Nations, writes the former secretary of state in his new book, "It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership."

It might be Powell's biggest revelation in the book, which details the experiences and lessons learned during his career as a soldier, a four-star general and secretary of state.

Powell writes in one chapter in which he discussed his address to the U.N. that war "was approaching," reports the Huffington Post, which obtained an advanced copy of the book slated for a May 22 release.

"By then, the President did not think war could be avoided," Powell writes. "He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met--and never would meet--to discuss the decision."

Powell refers to the address to the U.N. as a "blot." It was during that address that he appealed to the international body to support the United States because the country--albeit, erroneously--believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, notes a Bloomberg report on the book.

The speech and the facts surrounding the speech serve as a lesson to business leaders on the importance of staying skeptical and following their intuition, Powell writes.

"Yes, a blot, a failure will always be attached to me and my UN presentation," the former U.S. secretary of state writes. ... "I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem. My instincts failed me."

Powell points a finger at Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, the former vice president's chief of staff, as the ones responsible for providing the inaccurate information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, the Huffington Post reports.

In the book, Powell notes the weapons of mass destruction case "was a disaster."

"I learned later that Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, had authored the unusable presentation, not the NSC staff. And several years after that, I learned from Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice that the idea of using Libby had come from the Vice President, who had persuaded the President to have Libby, a lawyer, write the 'case' as a lawyer's brief and not as an intelligence assessment."

Powell, though, takes credit for rejecting continued appeals from Cheney to add "assertions that had been rejected months earlier to links between Iraq and 9/11 and other terrorist acts," according to the Huffington Post report.

Confronting The VP May Be Impolite. Is It A Crime?

NPR
Nina Totenberg

Steven Howards, left, with wife,
Deborah Andrews, and son,
Koby Howards, at his attorney's
office in Denver on Oct. 3, 2006.
Howards asserts he was wrongfully
arrested without cause after
expressing a negative opinion
to Vice President Dick Cheney in 2006.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case involving the arrest of a Colorado man who was thrown in jail after telling Vice President Cheney in 2006 that the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq were "disgusting."

Environmental consultant Steven Howards is suing the Secret Service agents who arrested him, contending that the arrest violated his First Amendment rights because it was nothing more than retaliation for the views he expressed to the vice president. The case pits the need for protecting public officials against the rights of citizens to express their views to the people elected to represent them.

What makes this case doubly fascinating is the fact that even the Secret Service agents involved in the arrest do not agree on what happened. The agents who actually saw the encounter testified they saw no threatening action.

In contrast, the agent who made the arrest, Virgil Reichle, accused the others of covering up, and some of Reichle's fellow agents have testified that he asked them to change their reports to match his. All have acknowledged that if any of these accusations is true, it would amount to a crime under federal law.

If there would have been some threat to the vice president, I would have been down in the pavement when the interaction occurred, not arrested ten minutes later.

- Steven Howards, arrested after an encounter with Vice President Cheney

Most of what happened that day in 2006 is no longer in dispute. Steven Howards had just dropped off his eight-year-old son at a piano lesson in Beaver Creek, Colo., when he saw Vice President Cheney standing in the open shopping area near the ski lift, shaking hands and talking to people.
"I walked up to him and told him that I thought his policies in Iraq were disgusting, and I walked away, and then I left and picked up my child at piano camp," says Howards.

About ten minutes later, Howards was back in the area, but had become separated from his son. The agents, who didn't know Howards had lost track of his son, said they saw him looking anxious.

Agent Reichle of the Denver office went over to Howards and asked if he would answer a few questions about his conversation with Cheney. Howards said no and told Reichle that if he didn't want people accosting Cheney, he should "keep Cheney out of public places."

"The Secret Service agent got furious," Howards says, adding that he quickly found himself handcuffed "with my hands behind my back and I was being charged with felony assault of the vice president."

Dick Cheney cancels Toronto visit over security concerns

Former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has cancelled a Canadian speaking appearance due to security concerns sparked by demonstrations during a visit he made to Vancouver last fall, the event promoter said Monday.

Cheney, whom the protesters denounced as a war criminal, was slated to talk about his experiences in office and the current American political situation at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on April 24.

However, Ryan Ruppert, of Spectre Live Corp., said Cheney and his daughter Elizabeth had begged off via their agent.

"After speaking with their security advisers, they changed their mind on coming to the event," Ruppert said.

"(They) decided it was better for their personal safety they stay out of Canada."

Last Sept. 26, Cheney's appearance in Vancouver was marred by demonstrators who blocked the entrances to the exclusive Vancouver Club.

The activists, who at one point scuffled with police, called for Cheney's arrest for war crimes and booed guests as they arrived at the $500-a-ticket dinner.

One man was arrested for choking a club staff member.

Ruppert said the "thugs" put everyone at risk and forced Cheney to remain inside the club for seven hours until police were able to disperse the protesters and deem it safe for him to leave.

"It was a complete disaster for them because it's a major security issue," he said.

The upshot, he said, is that discussion over American policy on such issues as Guantanamo Bay or the Iraq war is being silenced.

"You lost that conversation because you're talking about a group of thugs," Ruppert said.

"It's a real sad story because it really overshadows what the peaceful protesters, who often have very legitimate points, would be doing and saying."

Those who bought tickets to the Cheney event can either get a full refund or exchange them for an appearance by free-speech activist, Mark Steyn.

"It's incredibly disappointing for us," said Ruppert, who was planning for as many as 5,000 people to attend the Cheneys' talk.

"We were very excited about this event."

Rupert did not say how many tickets had already been sold at prices ranging from $79 to $595.

Cheney critics accuse him of endorsing the use of water boarding and sleep deprivation against detainees while serving in former president George W. Bush's administration.

Before the Vancouver event, Human Rights Watch urged the federal government to bring criminal charges against Cheney, accusing him of playing a role in the torture of detainees.

Don Davies, the NDP immigration critic, also argued that Cheney should not have been allowed into Canada.

Cheney has vigorously defended interrogation techniques on the grounds they saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Are Obama's Efforts to Justify Drone Warfare Aimed at Iran?

Der Spiegel
Thomas Darnstädt, Marc Hujer and Gregor Peter Schmitz

On a recent Monday afternoon, US President Barack Obama was sitting in the White House, participating in a live video chat with handpicked Internet users. They were discussing relatively superficial issues, such as what a blessing it is to have daughters and whether Obama could be convinced to perform a little dance on camera. But then, in the middle of this innocuous banter, "Evan from Brooklyn, New York" appeared on the screen wanting to know about the drone war. Isn't the president overstepping moral and legal boundaries, Evan asked, when he has potentially innocent people killed at the touch of a button?

Until now, speaking openly about America's drone war in Pakistan was practically a breach of secrecy for members of Obama's administration. Indeed, his staff has made great efforts to avoid even using the word "drone." But, on this Monday in late January, the president didn't seem to mind using the taboo word repeatedly. The goal of the drone war -- the use of remote-controlled, unmanned aircraft armed with powerful precision weapons -- is to eliminate the leaders of al-Qaida, the president said without hesitation. No one should be concerned about the legality of such action, he said, adding that the drone program was kept on "a short leash."

The exchange marked the first time that Obama has spoken publicly about the secret drone program. What's more, he did so in such a casual and matter-of-fact way that one is left to wonder whether he realizes just how explosive his words actually are. As much as the Americans have gotten used to it, this war is a breach of taboo. Under CIA auspices, people around the world are being killed at the touch of a button, and those pushing the button have no compunction about not charging their targets with a crime or proving them guilty. It is a war that feels no obligation to play by the customary rules, a form of assassination that occasionally even targets American citizens.

Obama had actually come into office promising to end the "imperial presidency" of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose administration had claimed absolute power unlike anything seen since the Watergate scandal of former President Richard Nixon. Obama had promised to shut down the Guantanamo detention camp and put an end to torture methods that violate human rights. He had declared war on the secretiveness and the controversial wiretapping program of the Bush administration. His own administration was supposed to be more transparent, more open and more honest -- and less belligerent. Obama, the former professor of constitutional law, wanted to reintroduce America to the limits of the constitutional state.

Out Bushing Bush

Now that Obama has been in office for three years, it is abundantly clear that he has not made good on most of these pledges. Although he banned the torture practices of the previous administration, he has failed to abolish the indefinite detention of terror suspects. Guantanamo is still in operation, and detainees will continue to be tried there before military tribunals. Ironically, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who represents everything Obama once vowed to fight, has praised him for his fierce determination in waging the global war on terror.

Urging Obama to Stop Rush to Iran War

Consortium News

Exclusive: A torrent of war propaganda against Iran is flooding the American political scene as U.S. neocons and Israeli hardliners see an opening for another war in the Middle East, a momentum that ex-CIA analysts Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray urge President Obama to stop.

By Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray

President Obama needs to put an abrupt halt to the game of Persian Roulette about to spin out of control in the Persian Gulf. If we were still on active duty at the CIA, this is what we would tell him:
This informal memorandum addresses the escalating game of chicken playing out in the waters off Iran and the more general issue of what can be done to put the exaggerated threat from Iran in some kind of perspective.

In keeping with the informality of this memo and our ethos of speaking truth to power, we may at times be rather blunt. If we bring you up short, consider it a measure of the seriousness with which we view the unfolding of yet another tragic mistake.

The stakes are quite high, and as former intelligence analysts with no axes to grind, we want to make sure you understand how fragile and volatile the situation in the Gulf has become.

We know you are briefed regularly on the play by play, and we will not attempt to replicate that. Your repeated use of the bromide that “everything is on the table,” however, gives us pause and makes us wonder whether you and your advisers fully recognize the implications, if hostilities with Iran spin out of control.

You have the power to stop the madness, and we give you some recommendations on how to lessen the likelihood of a war that would be to the advantage of no one but the arms merchants.

If your advisers have persuaded you that hostilities with Iran would bring benefit to Israel, they are badly mistaken. In our view, war with Iran is just as likely in the longer term to bring the destruction of Israel, as well as vast areas of Iran — not even to mention the disastrous consequences for the world economy, of which you must be aware.

A Call for Peace: Say NO to America's Military Adventure

With the pace of war against Iran now thundering in all its fury, it is time to mobilize once again to demand peace

Global Research

Michael Carmichael's Talk to the Elders for Peace, Chapel Hill, N.C. on December 19th, 2011. 

Good afternoon. 

I am delighted to be here amongst all of you lovely people working together for peace. In fact, since we are the Elders for Peace, we are all veterans of the perpetual war against peace. Our side never wins, but we still keep working just the same. Never winning, because peace versus war is not a game. We are working for the survival of not only the human race, or even our tiny planet. In our time, when technology has finally led mankind to weapons of mass destruction of literally infinite power – the power to destroy in virtual simultaneity every form of life on earth, we are among the relatively few humans who have embarked on the mission in search of the key to survival of life as we know it. 

Today, we find ourselves inside the vortex of a gigantic conundrum – the United States of America. Our nation is the strongest military force in the history of the known universe. For the past century, we have been waging wars all over our tiny planet. 

The Great War, WWI was followed by WWII, a war that many believe was even greater. Both world wars catapulted our nation into the leading role of all the nations on earth. We are the richest, the most respected, the most reviled, the most envied, the most powerful nation among nations.

We are the most warlike nation. We must, therefore, be the most warlike people ever to have populated this planet. 

Over the past decade, our nation has prosecuted wars in the Middle East. A war of vengeance against Afghanistan. A war of cupidity against Iraq. Both wars have gone badly for America. While the final combat forces departed Iraq last week, more than 100,000 of our troops are still waging a twilight war in Afghanistan. 

But it is really worse than that, for our press, television and mainstream media do not reveal the truth to our people. We are already engaged in a third major land war in the Middle East, a war against Iran.

Before we examine the onrushing Iran War, let us review a few of the latest developments. 

Good news 

1 – The United States is Pulling out of Iraq. The last combat forces departed from Iraq last week. 

2 – The United States is winding down our military operations in Afghanistan. 

3 – The United States is preparing to cut the military budget, and for the time being both principal parties appear to be engaged with this important idea. 

4 – Former President George W. Bush has been constrained to the confines of the USA by legal maneuvers that would swiftly lead to his indictment for violations of the Geneva Convention on Torture if he were to travel abroad. In recent months, Former President Bush was troubled by attempts to place him under arrest when he visited Canada very briefly, and he was forced to cancel his trip to Switzerland for fear of arrest for war crimes and torture. 

5 -- Certain Key Elements of our government, the White House, the Obama Administration and the Department of State, are resisting increasingly shrill demands for war against Iran, and at the same time they are fighting for the right to conduct diplomatic contacts with Iran against an ominous array of forces recently unleashed in Congress and beyond. 

Bad News 

1 - The War on Drugs is a multinational disaster with over 35,000 civilians killed in Mexico over the past five years. The War on Drugs is our most costly war and the most counterproductive. Little is being done to control it. Virtually nothing is being done to bring it to an end. 

2 - The Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) is moving inexorably toward war with Iran. 

3 - Technology is totally autonomous – it cannot be controlled. It cannot be managed. It cannot be suppressed. Technology in the hands of the MIC is advancing rapidly toward the robotification of war via drones for surveillance and targeted assassinations. This ominous trend in the technology of death will continue to gain momentum, and this dreadful development of technology is now unstoppable. Soon, we will be witnessing battlefields with many forms of robotic and cybernetic warriors – cyborgs – organisms with biological and cybernetic components. Cyborg assassins. Robotic assassins. The world of Terminator is racing rapidly toward us right now, and nothing whatsoever is being done to restrain it. 

4 - Mind Control, Mental Programming, Brainwashing and Perception Management have reached or exceeded Orwellian levels, and we are now moving confidently toward Huxleyian levels of totalitarian enslavement as vividly portrayed in Brave New World – a far more advanced dystopia than George Orwell’s Oceania, where torture was still applied to recalcitrant subjects. Brave New World programmed masses via propaganda, brainwashing and sensuality. Here are direct quotations from Aldous Huxley about the evolution of totalitarianism: 

It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past, and it can be done even more effectively now because you can distract them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda. . .

The nightmare of 1984 is destined to modulate into the nightmare of Brave New World – the change will be brought about as a result of a self-need for increased efficiency . . . 

Joshua Blakeney Explains the Likudnik Origins of the Global War on Terror on Local TV on Vancouver Island

We Will Never Pay, So Stop Harassing Us

Sott
Cindy Sheehan and Dede Miller

To: Whom it may concern in the Internal Revenue Service (hereafter known as IRS).

From: Cindy Sheehan, grieving mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04

From: Christy (Dede) Miller, grieving aunt of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04

RE: Recent Notices of Levy and SUMMONS to appear from the IRS to Cindy Sheehan

COPY: The American People

"How does it become a wo(man) to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that s/he cannot without disgrace be associated with it".

Henry David Thoreau

We recently have received your "Notice of Levy," and "SUMMONS."

Let us be clear why we are not paying your bill.

On April 04, 2004, three of your co-workers in the Military branch of the US government came to Cindy's home to inform us that her oldest son, Casey, had been "killed in combat in Iraq." After Cindy somehow pulled herself from the floor after falling there screaming, "NO, NO, NO!" the Grim Reapers in Army costumes didn't have much more to tell Casey's shocked and devastated family, except they asked Cindy for her Social Security number.

Let us go back a little farther than 04/04/04 - let us go back to September 11, 2001 when the US was attacked and over 3000 Americans were killed. There is much evidence that even if 9/11 was not "an inside job," there are many irregularities and lies in the "official story." Whatever happened that day, the tragedy was used to justify the illegal and supremely immoral invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan - and today, the current regime is still using the, "we were attacked on 9/11," meme to justify its crimes of aggression against, not only the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda, Yemen and Palestine (via the billions the US gives to Israel every year). Not to mention the outrageous attack on the people of Libya and recent assassination of Moammar Gaddaffi for the purpose of regime change to a more pro-U.S. corporate government.

Casey was only in the Army anyway because one of your colleagues in the Military branch lied to him and I think it's been pretty well proven that these wars embarked upon by the US were based on lies - but the confessed liars such as: Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and George Tenet, among others, are still roaming free and profiting off of the wars through unethical connections to the war machine, books and speaking engagements. There is also much evidence that these people and other Kleptocrats just take, take, take from us and have many, many loopholes that protect them from paying too much in income taxes from their ill-gotten gains.

Another example of a war profiteer not paying any taxes is General Electric. Not only does GE realize vast profits from these illegal and immoral wars of terror that are currently being waged all over the world, but it also profits off of the highly dangerous nuclear power technology that is poisoning the planet as we speak.

GE not only did not pay any taxes for the year 2010, it received a "1.1 billion dollar tax benefit" (according to CNN Money) for its tax filings in the U.S. How did GE do this when it made a 10.8 billion dollar profit in 2010? The company recorded a loss here in the U.S. of 408 million. GE is just one company or wealthy individual that has teams of lawyers and accountants to drive trucks through the loopholes the U.S. government legislates for them. Are you saying we owe more money than General Electric?

Well, our family recorded a loss in 2004 that is priceless. How can one put a value on a human being - an oldest child - a beloved nephew? Dozens of people who knew Casey are still feeling his loss in very profound and painful ways - Cindy grew his body in her body giving him the best nutrients she could for his health - she gave birth to him after 20 hours of labor on May 29th, 1979 - she loved him and nurtured him with the milk from her own body for 14 months - she sat up with him when he was ill - she helped him with his homework and Cindy sewed his Boy Scout patches on his sash and stood with him when he was awarded his Eagle Scout Award - she sobbed when he went to war and her life was over the day his was.

History Repeating Itself: U.S. Hawks Hover Over Iran

Global Research
William Echols

U.S. Government Already at War with Iran?

-Whether calls for war against Iran are meant to placate American allies in the Middle East who cannot stomach its supposed nuclear ambitions, are an attempt to reassert US dominance in the oil rich region, or are the last signs of a flagging empire lashing out in self-denial, those who are longing for it to be morning again in America might very well expedite its imperial twilight.

History seems to be repeating itself as the hawks who called for the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein are now rattling their sabers for war against Iran. But why are those who once called for a new American Century hopelessly stuck in a bygone era?

In a bellicose diatribe published in the latest edition of the Weekly Standard, senior editor William Kristol accuses Iran of having the blood of American soldiers on its hands. Claiming that “force” is the only language the regime understands, he proceeds to call on the US Congress to “consider authorizing the use of force against Iranian entities that facilitate attacks on our troops, against IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and other regime elements that sponsor terror, and against the regime’s nuclear weapons program.”

In an October 17 Foreign Policy initiative (FPI) Bulletin, executive director Jamie Fly toes the same line, proclaiming:

“Until now, the president has chosen to be the hapless victim of Iran’s machinations. It is time for President Obama to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and stand up to tyrants who kill Americans and threaten our interests.

"It is time to take military action against the Iranian government elements that support terrorism and its nuclear program. More diplomacy is not an adequate response.”

Speaking to Fox News on Monday, former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said it was “unfortunate” that Iran did not fear a possible military response in light of recent allegations of an Iranian assassination plot on US soil. Somewhat ironically, Bolton also described President Barack Obama’s recent decision to send 100 troops to stem off a humanitarian crisis in Central Africa as “damaging to our efforts to preserve our military budget.”

It is little wonder that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserts the latest accusations that Iran sought to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US was eerily reminiscent of the weapons of mass destruction claims which provided the casus belli for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"In the past the US administration claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They said it so strongly, they offered and presented documentation and everyone said 'yes, we believe in you, we buy it'," Ahmadinejad said in a live interview on Al Jazeera television.

Ahmadinejad’s cause for alarm might seem justified under the circumstances. Ever since George W. Bush’s January 29, 2002 State of the Union Address, wherein Iran (along with Iraq and North Korea) were labeled as the “Axis of Evil”, neo-conservative policy wonks and senior-level government officials have had the country in their sights. And much like Iraq, the case for war is as mercurial and adaptive as the public opinion it caters to.

Kristol for his part was one of the key proponents for regime change in Iraq, outlining the case in a 2003 book he co-authored entitled The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission. But his desire to effect regime change in the Middle East has earlier roots.

In a 1996 Foreign Affairs article, William Kristol, challenging what he believed was “a tepid consensus that accepts decline of US power in the world as inevitable,” called for a neo-Reaganite foreign policy which would pursue “benevolent hegemony” and “wield its authority unabashedly.”

By June 1997, William Kristol, along with several other prominent neo-conservatives who would have high-level administrative positions in the Bush administration (including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Elliot Abrams), not to mention his brother Jeb Bush, signed off on a statement of principles intended to usher in this halcyon era of American military strength and moral clarity. This statement of principles would come to define the Project for a New American Century.

The four key principles called for increased defense spending and force modernization, the strengthening of ties with democratic allies and the willingness to confront regimes hostile to American interests, the promotion of political and economic freedom abroad, and the “need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.”

Flashback: Why Mainstream Media Refuses to Report the West's Shocking New Colonialism

Information Clearing House
Anthony Wile

May 16, 2011 "The Daily Bell" --  To ask the question is to answer it. The Western mainstream media seems entirely controlled and beholden to globalist interests emanating in part from the City of London. Reports and exposes of neo-colonialism are not likely to find a place on the front pages of the great dailies and weeklies of the old-line press – nor even on websites controlled by it.

There is another answer, too, that I will provide at the end of this article. It is simple and blunt. Thus you may skip the article if you want. Or you may read on ...

Democracy is said to be on the rise in the Middle East, yet all democracy is evidently not created equal. Democratic movements in Egypt and Tunisia are said to have won out. Yet similar movements in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia – inconvenient by Western standards – are neither encouraged nor widely reported.

This makes sense only when one realizes the truth about what is going on. The world's great, intergenerational banking families have embarked on a new spate of colonialism to disenfranchise their enemies and empower their allies. Those regimes in developing countries that endorse power-elite goals will be allowed to function. Otherwise they will be destabilized.

Hardly a whisper regarding what is evidently and obviously a deliberate policy of "neo-colonialism" has been heard from the West's mainstream media. Thus it was with interest that I read an article in yesterday's online version of The Hindu, India's "national newspaper" entitled The Manufacture of Consensus and Legitimacy. Author M.S. Prabhakara deals with many of the issues raised in these electronic pages in the past few weeks.

Prabhakara has pretty much figured it out – as we have over the past few months. He believes the recent conflicts in the Middle East and Africa raise important questions about the limits of national sovereignty, as United Nations resolutions were used to justify invasions into both Libya and the Ivory Coast. Here's some more from the article:

Foreign armed intervention to save the people from their own governments and leaders became inevitable. The question who decides that there is indeed a mass uprising that is being repressed with such violence by the very state that is supposed to protect its people becomes irrelevant in an environment where the media and 'civil society' exert enormous influence in moulding national and international opinion, and something else called R2P. And thereby hangs a tale.

This new and evolving doctrine that has legitimised foreign intervention to remove leaders like Qadhafi on the ground that they have become 'enemies of the people' was crafted through an 'international consensus' during the 2005 UN World Summit and has come to be known as the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P, in the jargon of the new language order). This consensus was manufactured by NGOs networking with the United Nations and other national and international human rights organisations.

The Preamble [to the R2P doctrine] drips with moral commitment to protect the 'people' against their own governments, even if these were to be elected governments. It also raises many questions. For instance, the mechanisms built in democratic polities to remove elected governments that have become oppressive are not even taken into consideration because the state and its elected representatives have become corrupt beyond redemption, unlike the 'civil society' that is axiomatically seen as immaculate, unstained.

The key point raised in the article is that "above all, this very 'international community' now entrusted with the 'responsibility to assist the states in fulfilling this responsibility,' to protect their population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, has itself waged war against their own people, committed genocides."

And, yes, this is the critical issue. Prabhakara catches the heart of it: "Put simply, instrumentalities such as the R2P [we've reported on this previously, along with the under-the-radar abrogation of the Peace of Westphalia] devised by the 'international community,' like the ongoing demeaning of the democratic political process in India by positing against it 'non-political politics,' are yet another weapon being crafted to assist the relentless process of recolonisation under way in many formerly colonised countries."

Cheney heads to Vancouver amid NDP call he be barred from Canada

Globe and Mail
Kevin Drews

A member of Parliament from British Columbia is challenging the federal immigration minister to a debate on torture, war crimes and whether former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney should be barred from entering Canada.

Don Davies, the NDP immigration critic, said Mr. Cheney should not be allowed into Canada to promote his book “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir” during an exclusive $500-a-ticket dinner in Vancouver Monday night.

Mr. Davies said Mr. Cheney has admitted publicly to authorizing and endorsing the use of water boarding and sleep deprivation while serving as vice-president in the Bush administration. Mr. Davies contends those interrogation techniques break Canadian and international law.

“Sections 35 and 36 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act have a number of provisions that directly state that anybody who has engaged in those practices is inadmissible to Canada,” said Mr. Davies. “So I'm just calling on the immigration minister to enforce the law.”

Mr. Davies said the federal government has been silent on the issue and he's ready to debate Immigration Minister Jason Kenney “on any point” raised.

Mr. Kenney hasn't commented on the issue, but a spokesperson said that highly trained public servants who follow Canada's immigration laws make decisions on admissibility on a case-by-case basis.

Mr. Cheney's spokesmen could not be reached to comment on the controversy his visit has generated. However the former vice-president has vigorously and vocally defended interrogation techniques used on detainees during the Bush years, saying they saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Monday night's exclusive event at the Vancouver Club has already sold out, said Leah Costello, founder of the Bon Mot Book Club.

She said club organizers wanted to stimulate debate and decided to invite Mr. Cheney because of the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the release of the former vice-president's memoirs.
“How I feel, you know, it definitely comes down to the freedom of speech issue, and what I love about Canada is that we are all free to speak and to debate and to pursue ideas and positions that we believe in.”

Ms. Costello said the club has a security plan in place and has contacted police.
A number of Vancouver peace activists and organizations are calling for protests.
The website stopwar.ca is calling Mr. Cheney an “unrepentant torture and war advocate” and is asking supporters to give him the “welcome he deserves.”

Cheney 'War Criminal' protest crowd at his book talk

The Examiner
Deborah  Dupre

Dick Cheney, promoting his new book, was met by approximately 75 human rights defenders wanting him indicted for war crimes, wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods, chanting in megaphones outside Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in the conservative Yorba Linda, Orange County, CA. Wednesday night before the former Vice President's presentation there.

“There is nothing more important than the right of people to express their opinions,” Cheney told the crowd who paid $75.00 to hear him. “Their freedom to speak is guaranteed by the Constitution,” he said, after police escorted two women out of the library for voicing their opposition to him according to The Orange County Register News.

 

Promoting his book, "In My Time," a 352-page memoir, "Cheney spoke about his four decades in government, the Sept. 11 attacks, and his involvement with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," reported CNN.

 

Asked if the "current fatality count of more than 4,000 troops in Iraq, coupled with the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war, made it a worthy endeavor," the man who led the secret oil talks where plans were drawn to invade Iraq six months before 911, as documented in Josh Tickell's movie, "Fuel", Cheney answered 'yes.'

 

He congratulated President Barack Obama for killing Osama bin Laden in May, adding the Bush administration also deserves credit for that "success" that UN Human Rights officials had demanded evidence of the said assassination, an ultimate rights violation although more commonly viewed by rights advocates as a psychological operation for Obama's political gain on the heels of a top UN official suggesting the US government may have orchestrated the September 11, 2001 mass murder in New York City. ("UN Human Rights official to US: Hand over Bin Laden details," Dupré, D., Examiner, May 3, 2011)

 

"A lot of the work we did in the intelligence community and special operations forces in that period of time laid that groundwork for the ultimate capturing and killing of Osama bin Laden," Cheney said.

 

Rights defenders from across Southern California gathered to protest Cheney’s book tour event. 

 

"Outside, Carol Levers, who calls herself 'the only Democrat in Yorba Linda,' stood along Yorba Linda Boulevard in front of the library holding a sign that called Cheney a war criminal, a reference, she said, to Cheney’s involvement in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war she said was started on false pretenses," reported OCR.

 

IndictBushNow organizers with anti-war activists and military families were on the library grounds chanting and holding signs.

 

Iraq war veterans held a banner that read: “1 million dead, thousands tortured: Bush and Cheney guilty of war crimes – IndictBushNow.org.”

 

"The rights group outside chanted through their megaphones and hands, 'Cheney, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide,” following the voice of Mike Prysner, a former U.S. army soldier," reported the Daily Titan's Susana Cobo.

 

Prysner, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). is noted for his historical speech explaining what he did "after finding the enemy,"  (See: "What an Iraq veteran did after finding the enemy," Dupré, D., Examiner, January 4, 2010)

 

Countering the crowd of protesters at the library before Cheney spoke, six people demonstrated approval of him and torture he spear-headed according to Cobo.

 

“I’m one of his biggest fans,” said Cheney supporter, Richard Henderson, wearing a red shirt with a giant "mugshot of Cheney" according to OCR. Before the event, Henderson credited Cheney, former President George W. Bush, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, with “holding the government together."

 

"I have total respect for (Cheney). He took all the slings and arrows anybody could possibly throw at him.”

 

Cheney addressed criticism of “enhanced interrogation techniques” saying that "they were used on a small number of people and yielded “valuable intelligence,” including helping to foil a plot to fly a plane into a Los Angeles skyscraper," according to OCR.

“It was approved by the president of the United States … and sanctioned by the Justice Department,” he said. “My personal view is it was exactly the sort of thing we needed to do” and prevent large terrorist attacks. “We were bound and determined it wasn’t going to happen again.”

"Former Vice President Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture. He deserves to be indicted and jailed for his crimes," stated Indict Bush Organization in a written statement released after the event on Thursday.