Cullan's Hound

2010-02-07T17:28:00.001-08:00

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Our Current Banking Crisis is a Replay of the S&L Scandal but on STEROIDS!

2009-12-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

Here is the Chapter on the Savings and Loans from Rodney Stich’s book, DEFRAUDING AMERICA:

HUD Mortgage Insurance Scam
Another aspect of the HUD scams dealt with insurance premiums. People buying properties with mortgages provided by HUD paid mortgage insurance premiums up front for the life of the loan, amounting to several thousands dollars on each HUD transaction. Formerly, the buyer of HUD properties paid their insurance premiums on a monthly basis with their mortgage payments. But in 1983, the same Congress that passed legislation making the looting of savings and loans possible, passed legislation known as “HURRA” (Housing and Urban- Rural Recovery Act), pushed by Philip Winn, one of Denver’s high flyers, requiring the mortgage insurance premiums to be paid up front.
CIA asset Gunther Russbacher described to me how this worked, as he saw when he headed Red Hill Savings and Loan. He said that this was another of the many CIA scams that defrauded the American people of many millions of dollars. It is probable that the CIA involvement in this scam is what kept the Justice Department from prosecuting those guilty of the mortgage premium insurance fraud. Russbacher described how the scram worked:
They were using reinsurance companies with policy premiums that were never paid. Money was paid for the reinsurance but it was never paid [to the reinsurers]. The policy money, the premiums, were never paid in to where the policies were active. American International Groups was one of the big ones [involved in the scam]. Transatlantic Holdings was involved, as well as Transpacific Holdings. Maurice Greenberg, a close associate of Denver’s Leonard Millman, headed some of these companies. Dublin International Insurance was part of AI [American International]. We insured Putnam and Company.
Upon close of escrow, the insurance premiums were to be sent to brokerage companies that would then order the mortgage insurance. Among the companies involved in these activities was the American International Group, headquartered in New York. AIG was at the head of hundreds of companies and trusts throughout the world, and reportedly headed by Maurice Greenberg, a close friend of Denver-based Leonard Millman. AIG owned other companies involved in these activities, including Transatlantic Holdings and Putnam Reinsurance, which are in the reinsurance business.
The HUD mortgages for which up- front mortgage insurance premiums were paid were put into “pools” of mortgage loans with Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), which are then sold off on the secondary market to investors. The up-front insurance premiums were reportedly never sent to the companies that were to provide the insurance protection. When there were large and unexpected numbers of foreclosures during the 1980s, the mortgage insurance did not exist to pay for the large losses. CHAPTER EIGHT
Protected Insiders Looting Savings and Loans
Congress and the Reagan Administration deregulated the savings and loan industry through the Garn-St Germain Act of 1982, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on October 15, 1982. As he signed the far-reaching bill, Reagan announced that it was “the most important legislation for financial institutions in 50 years.” He added: “I think we’ve hit the jackpot.” If he meant the jackpot reference for the Mafia, the CIA, and a host of crooks, he was absolutely right. Even the famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, never envisioned such riches.
I had considerable real estate at that time, including motels, hotels, truck stops, golf courses, apartments, and land, and knew the financial frauds that would follow deregulation. It didn’t take any great expertise to predict the consequences, and surely members of Congress and the industry recognized that fact even sooner than I.
Developers, Mafia figures and crooks, started buying small savings and loans in out-of-the-way-places. In that manner they gained access to the Treasury of the United States, permitting them to engage in self- dealings, sham transactions, and massive fraud against the American taxpayer. Deregulation and the concurrent fraud were financially fabulous for many people, fueling massive growth in the real estate industry during the 1980s. The public picked up the price tab in the 1990s, and they would pay for decades, well into the next century. The losses, much of which was outright theft, exceeded the cost of World War II. Never in the history of the United States had such a massive financial debacle occurred, making the American taxpayer the victim of the biggest scam in the nation’s history.
The crooks that held the controlling interests in savings and loan associations paid themselves extravagant salaries, with virtually unlimited expense accounts that bled their companies dry. They made loans to themselves or corporations they owned or controlled and had a fabulous lifestyle that couldn’t possibly be supported by the income of the savings and loans they acquired.
Many sordid details of the savings and loan debacle have never been revealed by the mass media. Crooks, with the help of politicians, Justice Department officials and CIA renegades, stripped the American people of hundreds of billions of dollars. The American economy will eventually feel the effects of this theft, adversely affecting the American people.
Warning Flags Presaging Deregulation
It was no secret to members of Congress what would happen if the savings and loans were deregulated. The consequences of relaxing safeguards were seen elsewhere. For instance, the danger of brokered deposits was evident when serious problems arose in California during the 1960s when these deposits were allowed to reach a high percentage of a financial institution’s deposits, threatening its solvency. Sudden withdrawal of such large sums of money deposited as a block could easily make the institution insolvent. To correct this problem, regulators ordered a cap of five percent of an institution’s total brokered deposits. This restriction remained from 1963 until the limit on brokered deposits was removed in 1982 by the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee, chaired by Treasury Secretary Donald Regan. This change was enormously profitable to financial institutions dealing in such deposits, including Regan’s prior employer before he joined the Reagan administration.
Brokered deposits consisted of blocks of $100,000 deposits from individual depositors, which was the limit for federal insurance guarantees.98 By dealing in brokered deposits the banks were able to increase their capital and engage in huge fraudulent schemes. The danger arose from the high interest rates and fees needed to acquire them, and these costs were greater than what could be earned by lending the money for safe real estate investments. Just prior to voting for deregulating the savings and loans, the nation’s worst bank failure occurred, which was caused by eliminating safeguards and permitting brokered deposits. The Oklahoma City financial institution, Penn Square Bank, failed in 1982 and brought giant Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in Chicago to the brink of failure, as well as other lending institutions that had placed large sums of money into Penn Square Bank.
The American taxpayers had to bail out Continental Illinois to the tune of $4.5 billion (plus the interest that is still being paid on the payout). This amount was in addition to the payments made to the insured depositors at Penn Square. It was the largest federal bailout in the nation’s history, and showed the dangers of deregulation and brokered deposits and what could be expected with the subsequent signing of the deregulation act.
Penn Square offered the deposit brokers higher interest rates and substantial brokerage commissions for funds placed with the financial institution, causing brokers to place millions of dollars into the bank on any given day. But the rates and the fees that Penn Square had to pay for these deposits required making loans on high-risk investments. Further, the continual losses due to high costs of the funds and the inadequacy of returns on these funds required a continuing infusion of money to continue the Ponzi-like scheme.
Common sense and the history of failures made obvious what would happen when Congress voted for deregulation. But many of those who voted for deregulating the savings and loans were recipients of large financial contributions (i.e., bribes).
With brokered deposits there was no money available to make normal home loans; the spread was too much between the rate that homeowners could pay and the rate the savings and loans had to pay for the brokered funds.
The primary problem of deregulation came when the lending institution engaged in self-dealing, land-flips, sham loans, and many other devices used to carry out the massive fraud. All this was obvious to anyone close to the industry, as were members of Congress. But the immediate financial benefits to those voting for deregulation, the law firms and public relations firms, easily took precedence over the harm inflicted upon the United States and the American people, and this attitude prevails throughout these pages.
Every Common-sense Warning Sign Ignored
Some of the practices that could be expected to occur, and which did occur after deregulation, included:
1. Inflating the value of properties through land flips, whereby a parcel of land was “resold” numerous times, sometimes on the same day. Each time the new “buyer” paid a higher price. In that way, a borrower could indicate the land was worth far more than it actually was and obtain a larger loan than the property was worth. Oftentimes no payments would be made on the loan after receiving the loan proceeds, and the property allowed to go into foreclosure. The borrower then walked away with the difference between the purchase price of the property and the loan proceeds. In many cases this constituted millions of dollars
2. Making a loan to a controlled or a dummy corporation far beyond the value of the property, and then let the loan go into default, at which time it would be abandoned.
3. Making a loan that was not intended to be repaid to a controlled corporation. Then when the loan and interest payments are due, make a larger loan on the property to “pay off” the prior loan and accumulated interest, thus showing a sham profit. The loan would be shown as a performing loan on the books rather than a loan in default.
4. Swapping bad loans between cooperating financial institutions and showing the loans as performing loans on the books.
5. Spending lavishly on aircraft, vacation homes, trips, and other expensive life styles and charging it to business expenses. An honestly operated business would not incur such charges when the business was operating in the red.
6. Paying inordinately high salaries to themselves and providing themselves with bonuses when bad non- performing loans are renewed or traded for other bad loans with cooperating institutions.
7. Making sham loans on greatly overvalued real estate owned or controlled by the lending institution, with borrowers never intending to repay the loans.
8. Hiring former federal regulators at exorbitant salaries for their influence- peddling abilities and knowledge, to assist in circumventing regulatory protections.
9. Paying many millions of dollars in bribes to members of Congress to block actions by federal regulators, and block corrective legislation.
Typical Land Flip
A typical example of the fraud associated with land flips was a tract of property northeast of Denver where the new Denver airport was supposed to be located. The original parcel of land, called the Little Buckeroo Ranch, was purchased for $1 million and then flipped over several times in dummy land sales, fraudulently showing its value as $5 million. The Denver group involved in this scam obtained a $5 million non-recourse loan on the property and then defaulted when it was discovered the airport would be built elsewhere. They made a $4 million profit on the deal. People involved in that one example were heavily involved in the HUD and savings and loan fraud in the Denver area and had close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Financing the Looting
To generate the hundreds of millions of dollars to fund these scams, the parties operating savings and loans needed a steady supply of money, far more than could be expected from local depositors. The answer was in brokered deposits. Money brokers pooled $100,000 deposits from different sources and deposited the funds into whatever savings and loan offered the highest interest and paid the highest brokerage fee.
The deposited funds would either be used for high-risk loans or, as was often the case, to fund sham transactions in which there was no intention to repay the loans. The loss of several hundred billion dollars that will be paid by the American taxpayer required more than simply poor judgment. There was no risk to the con artists, as the American taxpayers were insuring the money.
Brokers would often offer deposits to a savings and loan on condition that the institution make one or more loans on a given piece of real estate. The loan amount would often be made in excess of the value of the property used for security, or made without any security. The institution making the loan may or may not realize that the loan would never be repaid. There were many variations of these scams. All could be foreseen, and all had occurred in isolated cases the decade before deregulation.
The Expected Commenced Immediately
The expected started happening immediately. Among the first was Vernon Savings and Loan in Texas, which failed in 1984, involving brokered deposits, land flips, inflated mortgages, and huge personal expenses billed to the financial institutions. Loans that would never have been made with the former safeguards were made to insiders and friends who scratched each other’s backs as they made themselves rich.
Ed Gray was sworn in on May 1, 1983, to head the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB), and promptly discovered the seriousness of the massive fraud. He tried correcting the problem by returning the restriction on brokered deposits to the previous five percent, thereby halting the primary problem. But those who used the brokered deposits descended upon Congress, handing out money insured by the American taxpayer and succeeding in blocking this change. Treasury Secretary Regan, whose former employer profited by the brokered deposits, and many others, sought to discredit Gray as some sort of wacko.
Finally, the discrediting campaign succeeded, and Gray was replaced by Danny Wall, an aide to Senator Jake Garn, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Wall then obstructed corrective action to keep the massive fraud scheme in operation, while simultaneously keeping the money flowing to members of Congress that kept federal investigators at bay. Wall protected Lincoln Savings and Loan from the San Francisco regulatory board that had planned to shut down the corruption- plagued institution, removing Lincoln from the jurisdiction of the regulators who had uncovered the corruption.
In an unprecedented action, Wall transferred regulatory jurisdiction of Lincoln to Washington, and Lincoln continued its corrupt practices of looting assets of U.S. taxpayers and individual investors. One act was to offer bonds of bankrupted American Continental Corporation, Lincoln’s parent corporation, to its depositors, falsely claiming they were governmentprotected. Thousands of elderly people with no other source of income lost their life’s savings through this scheme, made possible by Washington and California politicians. These tactics also increased the immediate cost to the American taxpayer to approximately $2 billion plus the triple or so amount that will be paid in interest before the debt is paid off, if it ever is.
Virtually everyone who played the game, who looked the other way, or who blocked corrective action, profited. Members of Congress, including the Keating-Five, received bribes for blocking corrective action by federal inspectors. The media received advertising dollars from large numbers of real estate developments built under a cloud of fraud. The crooks in the savings and loans and others acting with them profited. Everyone knew the American taxpayer would foot the bills. Another group of losers, given very little attention, were the stockholders. Many of them invested their life’s savings in the savings and loans, and these savings were usually lost.
Simultaneously, Lincoln’s President, Charles Keating,99paid $839,000 of taxpayer’s money to various election committees to reelect Cranston,100 and hundreds of thousands more to the senators known as the “Keating Five:” Senators Alan Cranston, senior member on the House Banking Committee; Dennis DeConcini; John McCain; John Glenn; and Donald Riegle. I had notified each of them of the criminal activities I had uncovered, and demanded they receive testimony and evidence that my CIA and DEA whistleblowers and I were ready to present. They refused to respond.
Members of Congress sought to continue the cover-up to the end. In June 1989 Congress quietly rejected a request for $36.8 million to hire investigators to accelerate the investigation and prosecution of corrupt savings and loan officials.
Significant amounts of the looted funds were given to members of Congress as political contributions or under the table, like paying off the cops to operate a criminal enterprise.
In 1986 the Keating-Five senators applied pressure upon Washington regulators to prevent government investigators from taking actions against Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan (after the group received huge financial donations from Keating). This Congressional obstruction of the regulatory function of the U.S. government increased the costs to taxpayers far in excess of two hundred billion dollars for the entire industry. The taxpayers also must pay for the bribes paid to politicians on the California and federal levels and to the former government officials who became high salaried employees of Lincoln.
California’s Senator Alan Cranston obstructed the actions of the regulators who sought to prevent others from losing money, including elderly and retired people who invested in the uninsured bonds issued by Keating’s enterprises. This obstructive action interrupted the regulatory process, delaying the government takeover of Lincoln Savings and Loan, as it continued selling worthless, uninsured securities to the public.
Even Alan Greenspan, then a private consultant and later chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, sent a letter seeking to block corrective actions, falsely claiming Lincoln was in good financial shape and had good lending practices. This was preposterous. Lincoln’s primary assets were grossly inflated desert land. Lincoln had a practice of lending money to closely related investors or their own real estate enterprises, often without any credit check and without collateral.
Eventually the losses were too great to ignore. A new agency was formed to clean up the mess. But the same parties who blocked prior corrective action wanted Wall installed as its head, fighting to retain the head of the regulatory agency that helped continue the escalating corruption. Senator Cranston and Representative Donald Riegle fought hard to have Danny Wall confirmed as head of the new agency without a confirmation hearing, avoiding senate questioning of the debacle that unfolded while he held responsibility to prevent such fraud.
Congress’ response to the nation’s greatest financial debacle consisted of carefully avoiding charging any of their members, including the Keating- Five, with any crimes. They wrung their hands trying to decide whether any of the senators who received huge amounts of money from the crooks, and who blocked corrective attempts by federal regulators, violated ethics. Using this standard on many people sent to federal prison for far less federal offenses would greatly reduce the prison population.
You Rat on Me and I’ll Rat on You
Cranston had earlier warned the entire United States Senate that, if the Ethics Committee moved to censure him for his role in the savings and loan scandal, he would blow the whistle on the role played by other senators in the savings and loan matter. As the “investigating” committee considered whether to censor Cranston for ethics violations, Senator Jeff Bingaman disqualified himself, requiring appointment of another senator, which in turn required weeks for the replacement to review the evidence. Bingaman had disqualified himself after “suddenly” discovering, after three years, that a conflict of interest existed: his wife worked for a law firm that once represented two of Cranston’s staff members whose legal bill had not been paid.
That move took the heat off the ethics committee until media attention focused elsewhere.
Congress repeatedly refused to provide money to shut down the hemorrhaging savings and loans, which then permitted the looting to go on, as well as continuing the political contributions from the insolvent institutions. Congressman Gonzalez stated101 that the White House and federal officials could simply have placed the looted and failed “institutions under government conservatorship.” But Congressman Gonzalez complained to federal regulators in late 1992 that “Regulators can put failing institutions under government conservatorship now, with or without any new funding. This should save the taxpayers the costs of further depletion of the institutions’ assets.” The refusal to shut down the fraud-racked savings and loans escalated the losses.
Usual Cover-Ups
Investigators, trying to blow the whistle on rampant corruption, testified to the House Banking Committee in October 1989 that Washington officials repeatedly overruled or restricted their investigation of corruption-riddled Lincoln Savings and Loan (as they had done after I started exposing hardcore government corruption in the aviation field starting in the mid-1960s).
Admitting to Paying for Influence
Keating admitted giving over five million dollars in political contributions to influence members of the U.S. House and the Senate and state politicians in California and Arizona. Cranston and the four other senators pressured regulators to back off from shutting down Lincoln Savings and Loan, inflicting even greater losses upon the American taxpayer.
Keating wasn’t hesitant about stating the effects he expected when he paid bribes to members of Congress, stating several times to the press: One question, among many raised in recent weeks, had to do with whether my financial support in any way influenced several political figures to take up my cause. I want to say in the most forceful way I can; I certainly hope so.
Despite the huge losses incurred by these practices, Keating paid himself and his family over $34 million in the three years before its demise, even though losses during this time were destroying the corporation. Representative Henry Gonzalez of Texas initially protected the system by using his post as chairman of the House Banking Committee to obstruct an investigation into questionable banking practices in his home district.
Gonzalez pushed an amendment to protect First National Bank of San Antonio and other financial subsidiaries from the regulatory actions of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But as the savings and loan scandal shot out from under the media blackout Gonzalez, head of the House committee103with oversight responsibilities for the savings and loan industry under the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS),104 focused attention on the savings and loan problems.
“Honesty Doesn’t Pay.”
The Dallas Morning News reported a conversation by an anonymous Texas state legislator, who said he had to take bribes from the HUD and savings and loan crowd because he needed the money to maintain his life style on a legislator’s salary. He reportedly stated: “It’s hard to be pious because in all honesty I could use the money. Honesty doesn’t pay.”
My CIA contacts described a well- publicized area of the savings and loan corruption in Dallas apartment units along Interstate 30, running east to Lake Ray Hubbard. Hundreds of apartments were built for which there was no demand, no rentals, and no sales. Money was made through land flips and shoddy construction. Some apartment buildings were shown as completed even though the plumbing and other necessities had not been installed. Covert CIA proprietary operations were involved in this scheme that defrauded the American public.
California Involvement in Corruption
Corrupt California politics made the Lincoln debacle possible. The California General Services Department (and the California Department of Savings and Loans) obstructed the investigation of Lincoln’s corrupt practices, rendering administrative decisions resulting in the loss of almost a quarter billion dollars in savings of the elderly.
In California, Chapter 11 judicial corruption was especially acute. California was the state producing numerous lawyers and prosecutors that played a key role in some of the scandals described within these pages. The Justice Department‘s scheme to silence me used California lawyers, law firms, and state judges, augmented by California-based U.S. district court judges and justices. In this way they joined the conspiracy of criminality I sought to expose.
Many on the Reagan-Bush team were from California, including Earl Brian (of Inslaw fame), Edwin Meese (the U.S. Attorney involved in many of the scandals described within these pages), J. Lowell Jensen (part of the Inslaw scandal yet to be described), and Senator Alan Cranston.
Numerous California officials and friends of California Governor George Deukmejian, mostly lawyers, were heavily involved in these scandals. A Keating enterprise, TCS, made political contributions totaling $48,000 to Deukmejian’s campaigns. Keating paid over $189,000 to Deukmejian, in addition to the nearly one million given to California Senator Cranston‘s interests. Over 23,000 California investors were seriously harmed, as they purchased $250 million in uninsured bonds (most investors thought they were government insured) after California regulators approved their sales, knowing the corporation was insolvent. Many of these elderly people lost their life savings and their sole means of financial support.
In November 1984 Lawrence Taggart, while a California Savings and Loan Commissioner, rendered official decisions allowing Lincoln to continue its fraudulent schemes, causing thousands of investors to lose their life savings. On December 7, 1984, three days before a crucial deadline that nobody was supposed to know about except highest-level federal regulators, Taggart gave Lincoln approval to move almost a billion dollars to its subsidiaries.
Taggart then left to became a director of TCS. But records showed Taggart was already hired by TCS at that time. On January 1, 1985, Taggart left his California position, responsible for regulating savings and loans, to work full-time as TCS’s highest salaried executive. Additionally, he was to receive half of the after-tax profits earned by the consulting department he headed, and other perks. Three weeks later, Lincoln bought $2.89 million worth of TCS common stock.
Barbara Thomas, a former SEC commissioner, reportedly called the SEC to act as a character witness for Keating during its investigation. Gonzalez said his staff’s investigation revealed that Ms. Thomas had received a $250,000 loan from Mr. Keating with unusual payback provisions, suggesting a quid pro quo arrangement.
Jack Atchison of the auditing firm of Arthur Young & Company was primarily responsible for auditing Lincoln Savings and Loan and submitting the reports to the government. Atchison sent several letters to three senators saying that Lincoln was a sound institution and that federal regulators were harassing Lincoln executives. Atchison then left his employment with the accounting firm and went to work for Lincoln at a salary exceeding $900,000 a year. The salary far exceeded what the position justified. It was surely another of hundreds of quid pro quo agreements in exchange for the sham report showing Lincoln as being solvent and in good financial condition, when actually it was not.
A California Department of Corporations lawyer-regulator issued a strong warning about uninsured bonds sold in Lincoln’s offices. But California officials kept the warning quiet, making possible the sale of worthless bonds to thousands of California investors.
California Assemblyman Patrick Nolan received large financial contributions from Keating after Nolan sponsored legislation removing investment restrictions on state-chartered institutions. More dirty California politics followed. In 1983 I notified Governor Deukmejian, California Attorney General Van De Camp, and numerous state legislators, of the involvement of state judges in seeking to silence my exposure of criminal activities. Instead of investigating the charges and taking corrective action, they protected the judges after I filed civil rights actions in federal court.
California officials denied state examiners and legislative investigators access to records, stating there was high danger of asbestos contamination where the records were stored. Possibly twenty years residence in the building might constitute a danger, but certainly not ten minutes to pick up the files! The building owner denied there was any danger:107 “They [the records] could have been picked up any time in the last 200 days. They knew there was no problem [of asbestos].”
Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin of the California House Banking Committee stated that subpoenas would be necessary in the Lincoln case to obtain the records from the California Department of Corporations and the California Department of Savings and Loans. Officials under Governor Deukmejian refused to turn over the records, knowing that they contained evidence of California politicians’ involvement in the savings and loan scandal. California and Arizona committees conducted interim hearings dealing mostly in trivia, in that way protecting California officials implicated in the savings and loan scandal.
Both U.S. senators from California, Alan Cranston and Pete Wilson, received money from Keating to block the actions by federal regulators. Wilson received over $75,000 from Keating and received large financial contributions within two months of his election to the U.S. Senate, holding the record for the amount of political contributions in 1990, according to the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner.
Part of the money, often the life’s savings and means of economic survival, lost by investors, went to bribe U.S. senators and representatives who were protecting the crooks in the savings and loans. Widows, retired persons, many of them elderly, testified before a House Banking Committee on November 14, 1989, that they lost their entire life’s savings, blaming California Senator Alan Cranston and other members of Congress for their losses. Many, unaware they were uninsured, invested their life’s savings in the over $300 million in junk bonds after Cranston and other members of Congress blocked the actions of government inspectors and regulators. What should have been golden years for thousands of retirees, especially in California, turned into abject poverty, compliments of California regulators and members of Congress, who took bribes to prevent exposure and closure of the corrupt practices of Lincoln Savings and Loan, Keating, and others.
A Few Exceptions
There were a few members of Congress who spoke out on the rampant criminality in the deregulated savings and loan scandal. Representative Jim Leach told a panel of journalists (May 1989), “You have the opportunity to hold your Legislative Branch accountable, and perhaps bring it down.” Referring to the cover-up by the government regulatory agency that permitted the corruption to continue, Leach stated: “This Bank Board did the opposite of making timely warnings. It tried to put people to sleep while a fire was raging.”
Lawyer Joseph Cotchett of Burlingame, California, representing many of the elderly who were swindled in the Lincoln bonds, described the obstructionist tactics by California officials: “And now we have reached the 1,000th coincidence in this case.”
Can the Money be Recovered?
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation‘s Chairman L. William Seidman told of the hopelessness of recovering the huge losses. He warned that the amount of money recovered from anyone found guilty of self-dealing and other insider abuses would be small. “The money is long gone, spent,” Mr. Seidman said. “We cannot expect any substantial recovery from criminal abuse.”
But it could be traced if they wanted to, as I found through CIA and other sources where many of the trusts were located. Whatever the actual immediate figure is, $250 to $500 billion, these figures exceed many times the total amount looted from publicized savings and loans. My CIA and other contacts, who had key roles in the HUD and savings and loan scandals and some yet to be exposed, helped move the money to secret offshore and domestic banks, trusts, limited partnerships and other financial vehicles. They told me where some of the funds could be located. In later pages, some of these locations are identified.
Heavy CIA Involvement
Several well-documented books108 have been written of the savings and loan debacle. One thing that most of them missed, which I would not have known except for becoming a confidant to several CIA operatives, was the major role played by the CIA in the looting of America’s financial institutions. Among the CIA-related savings and loans listed in these books as being part of the looting but not identified as CIA proprietaries were Silverado Bank Savings & Loan (Denver); Aurora Bank (Denver); Indian Springs State Bank (Kansas City, Mo); Red Hill Savings and Loan; and Hill Financial in Red Hill, Pennsylvania. These authors also failed to discover that many of the other savings and loans were often cutouts for the CIA.
Silverado Bank Savings and Loan
Much has been written about Denver’s Silverado Bank Savings & Loan and its most prominent director, Neil Bush, the son of George Bush. But much has remained secret about Silverado. One of the best-kept secrets was that Silverado was a covert CIA operation; that it funded many covert CIA assets; and that many of the huge financial losses were the direct result of CIA activities. It is ironical that Silverado, a CIA proprietary, had as one of its directors the son of former director of the CIA, George Bush. Because of heavy CIA involvement in Silverado, and for other reasons to be covered, Justice Department prosecutors protected the Silverado gang against meaningful prosecution.
Neil Bush played a key role in Silverado’s misconduct, receiving only a token reaction from government agencies that kept a lid on Silverado’s criminal activities. Interest payments on money borrowed by the United States to pay off the original $2 billion looted from Silverado may cause the cost to the taxpayer to exceed $6 billion, assuming these debts are ever paid off. It required over two hundred sham loans of one million dollars each, not repaid, for these losses to occur. Neil Bush, like Oliver North in the Contra affair, displayed a look of innocence when questioned about his role in this huge financial fraud.
Neil Bush, while in a position of trust on the board of directors, borrowed over $2 million from Silverado, part of which went into a dry hole drilling for oil in an unlikely location. Most of the money went for his salary and personal expenses. He was not so stupid as not to realize the money would never be repaid if that hole did not produce oil. He drilled this hole where it was known there was no oil. But the drilling served as justification for paying himself a large salary and lots of perks, which the everbenevolent American taxpayers now must pay well into the next century.
Bush made no payments on the money he borrowed and no charges were filed by the Justice Department beholden to his father, President George Bush. It paid to have Justice Department personnel in your back pocket. Two borrowers from Silverado who were partners with Neil Bush, Ken Good and Bill Walters, got away with $130 million in loans from Silverado that were never repaid. Some of this money went to Michael Norton, who later protected them from prosecution when Norton became U.S. Attorney. The Mafia never had it so good.
When the lending institution failed, the taxpayers were stuck with the tab plus associated costs, including interest on the money borrowed to finance this portion of the national debt. The borrowers in the sham transaction, who had good political connections, often purchased the property at pennies on the dollar from the government after the savings and loans were taken over. Before the taxpayer finishes paying, the cost will probably triple. The infamous Silverado Bank Savings & Loan in Denver was one of the key lending institutions involved in these types of scams.
Media Cover-Up
Investigative reporters for the establishment media in the United States knew for years about the financial debacle, but kept the lid on the scandal. To remove the lid would have financially affected them, as major advertisers would have eliminated their advertisements. In Denver, for example, three newspapers received considerable income from the advertisements of the group heavily involved in the HUD and savings and loan fraud: Rocky Mountain News; Denver Post, and Westword.
Taxpayers’ Bill: Over $200 Billion—and They Never Complained!
The greatest financial debacle ever inflicted in the history of civilization is causing American taxpayers to be saddled with a debt that has been estimated as high as 200 billion dollars, including interest, an amount far exceeding America’s cost of fighting World War II. Probably this large indebtedness will never be paid off. And this is only the savings and loan fraud. Many other corrupt financial scams are pulled on the American public, including HUD, Chapter 11, and others yet to be described. This fraud, and the missing money which no one has sought, requires the American people to pay huge tax increases, and threatens the continuation of basic social programs. Very little attention has been given to the losses suffered by those people who owned stock in the savings and loans, including the retired people who had their entire savings in worthless stocks that no longer provided dividend income.
Where Were the FBI, Justice Department and Other Federal Checks and Balances?
A good question would be: Where were the hundreds of FBI and Justice Department investigators during this massive fraud inflicted upon the American people? The criminal activities were too extensive for them not to know of their existence. With its many connections within the United States, one could also ask where the CIA was during all this? The fact is, they did know. Later pages will help to explain how these criminal enterprises are linked together, and how people in control of our checks and balances were implicated in them.
A California banking investigator, Richard Newsom, testified that he went to the FBI in July 1988, after he found evidence of serious criminal activities in the savings and loan industry. He testified that he had found that the parent company of Lincoln Savings and Loan funneled over $800,000 to Senator Alan Cranston, and that “the stuff was too hot.” The FBI and Department of Justice refused to take any action on the reported corruption. As is shown throughout these pages, the Justice Department‘s lawyers, including their FBI Division, are most noted among insiders as being heavily involved in hard-core obstruction of justice when federal officials are implicated.
Justice Department Protection of Kingpins And Wrist Slapping of Their Underlings
James Metz, listed as a majority owner of Silverado Savings & Loan, pled guilty (October 16, 1992) to taking $100,000 of savings and loan funds for personal use, and received a six- month sentence in a half-way house. This sentence permitted him to work as president of Richmond Homes and be home during the day, requiring only that he sleep at the location at Colfax and Fillmore Streets in Denver. This token judgment ignored the two billion dollars looted with his help from Silverado. My CIA contacts stated Metz was one of many CIA assets in the Denver area.
David Mandarich was indicted for illegal contributions, of which Michael Norton, U.S. Attorney in Denver, was the major recipient. Since Norton was the primary recipient of the money, he had to stand aside and have Marvin Collins, U.S. Attorney from Texas, act as special prosecutor (directed by Norton) to prosecute the case. Mandarich took the fall for the many other big names but was protected by U.S. Attorney Collins, who deliberately presented a weak case to the jury. U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch then assisted in the cover-up by dismissing the charges.
Justice Department prosecutors waited until the statute of limitations had run out for charging Neil Bush and others of the Denver gang before filing nominal charges against Silverado’s James Metz and Michael Wise. Corruption and cover-up in the Denver area was orchestrated by U.S. Attorney Michael Norton and Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Graff in Denver. Investigation of key players would have implicated the CIA and risked exposing White House and other politicians involved in the savings and loan crimes (among others yet to be described).
Coming Down Hard on Scapegoats
Many of those charged and prosecuted by Justice Department lawyers in the savings and loan fraud were outside directors of savings and loans, in honorary positions with no knowledge of or control in the institution’s activities. By seeking to put these people in prison, Justice Department prosecutors were protecting the kingpins that continued to inflict great financial harm upon the American public. By indicting these people, the prosecutors misled the public into thinking that justice was being done.
The Fraud Didn’t Stop
The fraud by the Denver group inflicted billions of dollars in direct losses upon the American people. But it didn’t end there. The same Denver group and others, who brought about the collapse of the savings and loan industry by their corrupt activities, used their Washington influence to buy back properties and other assets from Resolution Trust Corporation at ten and twenty cents on the dollar. They made money bringing down the savings and loans and made money buying the assets back, with the help of the same Washington gang. MDC bought from the RTC $750 million in loans that they had obtained from Silverado for $150 million, making a $600 million profit, and defrauding Silverado out of $600 million. This was not mentioned in the investigation of that savings and loan.
Central Intelligence Agency Involvement
An article in Penthouse109 detailed the CIA involvement in fleecing financial institutions. Entitled: The Banks and the CIA, Cash and Carry, it carried the subtitle, “How Agency rogues fleeced financial institutions to help create one of the greatest scandals in U.S. History.” The article, describing the looting of banks and savings and loans by companies fronting for the Central Intelligence Agency, stated in part:
Agency rogues fleeced financial institutions to help create one of the greatest scandals in U.S. history...free-lance C.I.A. operatives—in the course of carrying out covert operations, fleeced America’s financial institutions....
The C.I.A., it was claimed, sanctioned...pulling money out of federally insured financial institutions to fund covert activities, particularly arms deals.
The article went on to say how Congress had shut off funding needed by the CIA for its covert operations, and how the CIA underground smuggled drugs into the country and looted banks and savings and loans. It further described how the CIA covert operations went underground when President Jimmy Carter ordered disbanding of its covert operations in the late 1970s. The article described how President Reagan’s 1981 inauguration reinvigorated the covert CIA operations. Denied funds by Congress, the covert CIA network carried out unlawful and clandestine activities throughout the United States and overseas. These activities violated the CIA charter and were criminal acts.
The Houston Post started a series of articles in 1991 revealing connections between the CIA, organized crime, and the savings and loan scandal. Investigative reporter Pete Brewton left the Houston Post after pressure was put upon him to withhold key facts. In October 1992 his book was published: The Mafia, the CIA, and George Bush–The Untold Story of America’s Greatest Financial Debacle.
My investigative activities brought me into contact with deep-cover intelligence agency personnel who revealed to me the part played by the CIA in looting the savings and loans and other financial institutions. In the following pages this relationship is explored.
Secret Crimes by the CIA Against America
As described in detail in subsequent pages, commencing in 1990 I became a confidant to many former deep- cover CIA and DEA personnel. One of these was Gunther Russbacher, whose father was a former German intelligence officer during World War II. Russbacher held many sensitive positions within the covert segment of the Central Intelligence Agency and was involved in deep cover operations. More is said about Russbacher in later pages, but reference is made to him and some of the CIA activities that he related to me in detail over an eight- year period.
Russbacher‘s key covert position within the CIA took him far beyond the limited knowledge many CIA personnel have of CIA operations. The Agency tries to limit knowledge of overall operations by compartmentalizing operations and limiting the knowledge that any one participant has of the overall game plan. But Russbacher’s high position within the Agency made him privy to a vast number of secret CIA operations.
Russbacher revealed to me the role played by the CIA in the savings and loan and HUD scandals. He had been with the CIA for over two decades and had been trained by the CIA to operate covert financial operations under various CIA programs, including Operation Cyclops. As he developed knowledge and expertise, the CIA had him organize other CIA proprietary financial institutions.
Russbacher and other deep-cover sources gave me innermost secrets of how the CIA looted America’s financial institutions, how the money was laundered, the criminal elements with whom the CIA acted, and where some of the money ended up. These CIA operatives stated how the operations worked and the names of some of the covert CIA financial institutions, fronts, and cutouts. They gave me blank checks, letterheads, copies of corporate filings, and other writings supporting these statements.
During the past eight years I conducted thousands of hours of questioning with Russbacher and other CIA and insider contacts, receiving details of the most secret CIA operations in which they participated during the last three decades. I received sworn statements, documents, before the publication of this book. I checked their credibility with other CIA sources. Most, if not all of what Russbacher and others stated, and what is included in these pages, I believe to be true.
Some banks and savings and loans became fronts for CIA covert operations and often made phony loans, phony appraisals, and phony sales, generating enormous sums of money for clandestine CIA activities.
Russbacher told me that the CIA had given him many aliases during his years of deep-cover activities. He said that during the first two years of his affiliation he was a contract employee of the CIA. Then, in 1965 he entered the United States Navy and was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence ( ONI). During all but three years of his CIA affiliation, he was in Covert Operations, Consular Operations, and other branches of covert government service. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam and Laos and was an unofficial prisoner during the second tour of duty in Southeast Asia. The U.S. government didn’t list its covert personnel who were prisoners of war.110 In a December 6, 1992 sworn declaration, Russbacher described to me part of the CIA operations in which he was involved:
It is my intent to clarify, once and for all, how the Intelligence Services of the United States of America, have used the savings and loan (Thrift Institutions) to fund their respective covert operations, both within the United States, and abroad. The scheme creating an unlimited money supply was devised after the inside knowledge of how the Federal Reserve operated became known to operatives and case officers. A monetary growth medium had to be found which would enable the Agency (CIA) to have access to an unlimited supply of funds with which covert operations might be funded. The key was...”How to utilize/ capitalize on the Federal Credit Programs.” Careful analysis and study of the Federal Credit Act provided the proper forum.
It was decided that small to medium businesses of the Proprietary Operations Unit would be well on line to provide these expert services. Soon, various businesses, owned and operated by either the Agency or utilizing a front directorship, began to deposit funds (legal tender and bogus bearer bonds) into the selected Thrifts. The loading of these institutions was always accomplished with the help of inside information, gained and acquired by and through information garnered by the FSLIC and their respective service members.
It was decided that various front organizations would deposit millions of dollars into these selected thrifts, and that such deposits would permit the depositors to make collateral loans for eight-five percent (85%) of the deposit value. The disparity of deposit and secured loan was the carrot for the ailing financial institution. The Agency, through its Proprietary Operations Division, was quick to recognize the Fed.
Lending to Deposit Rate for Thrifts, which in turn stated that every dollar taken in on deposit would permit the Thrift to borrow up to seven dollars from the Federal Reserve. It was a lucrative enticement to Agency Operations. The loaned funds were soon gathered from all regional affiliates, and channeled to fund the Charters for our own Thrift institutions. The stage was set. It was merely a question of time until we began re-investing our portfolio.
110 His military numbers included 54 329 963; and his various Social Security numbers included 440-40-1417, 471-50-1578, 441-44-1417, and 447-42-0007.
Over a period of approximately 3 years, more than 35 federally insured “Agency Thrifts” were brought on line. Each of the financial institutions was funded in part by Certificates of Deposit (from our own front companies), and various other instruments of financial obligation. Sometimes, bogus (duplicate) Bearer Bonds were used to insure sufficient start-up capital. Slowly, these institutions began making large loans to other Agency front businesses. Many of them flourished regardless of the initial intent to strip them systematically of their assets. Those which failed to provide an unending “money funnel” were soon brought to Court, pursuant to Chapter 11, of the United States Bankruptcy Laws. Prior to permitting entry into such proceedings all visual assets were stripped and/or removed from the insolvent companies.
The United States Bankruptcy Courts, as well as the assigned United States Trustees, would permit us to re-channel the obvious assets prior to satisfying the demands of the legal creditors. It must be stated that in the initial stages of such operations there were no legal creditors as the entire operation was an “in- house operation,” and subsequently not issues or obligations traded on the open market. Such practices were soon discarded as the volume of the operation was not able to keep out private and corporate investors. Many of the removed assets were sold to other agency operations, which in turn sold said assets to other linked dealers.
Brokerage companies of dubious repute were soon spin-offs of the mega industry. In order to provide continuity as well as expert disclosure, I shall reference the history of the funding of Hill Financial, as well as Red Hill Savings and Loan; the establishment of the National Brokerage Companies; the creation of National Financial Services Corporation; National Leasing Corporation; National Realty Corporation; Crystal Shores Development Corporation; Crystal Shores Financial Corporation, and Clayton Financial Planning Corporation. It is imperative that the continuity and creation are uninterruptDedu. r ing my time of service within the Proprietary Operations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency, I was approached while using the assigned name of Robert Andrew Walker to initiate contact with a nationally prominent brokerage house. (It must be noted that I had been a part of such brokerage facility under another alias/code name.) I followed the order and began a transfer study, which in turn was to initiate and facilitate the founding of a new savings and loan facility in Red Hill, Pennsylvania. All transfer studies were accurate and the new S&L was soon brought on line. It was funded with corporate paper, other private and corporate bonds/certificates, and other financial obligations.
The founding fathers of Hill Financial were Donald Lutz and Robert A. Walker, a/k/a/ Gunther Karl Russbacher. The financial package of the S&L was born from funds derived from SBF Corporation. The new S&L flourished, making numerous loans to the economically depressed local and regional area. These notes were in part nonsecured, and no payoff was anticipated from these local trades. We began to diversify, using the Federal Credit Act to gain and secure additional federal funds, by securing other deposits from Agency Operations. Our deposit portfolio was extended on a ratio of 4.3 to 1 and thereby provided considerable additional loan coverage to other more open and more lucrative markets. We began to explore bringing on line additional feeder organizations which could/would add to our real deposit base.
The decision for such action was taken after I received orders to charter a brokerage company in the state of Missouri. We, the directors of Red Hill S&L held a closed meeting, wherein it was decided that I would become Chairman of the Board, and elevating Donald Lutz to the presidency. Pledging my continued assistance, I was permitted, nay ordered, to set up shop in St. Louis, Missouri, where I dropped the name Robert A. Walker, and became Emery J. Peden.
Within three months I was a registered broker of the Prudential Insurance Company of America. Soon after learning the business, I resigned my position and began a long-term relationship with Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company. I had an office in Clayton, Missouri, and soon made a significant impact on the financial and insurance industry.
END OF SEGMENT ONE (1) of the deposition of Gunther K. Russbacher. I do certify the information contained in this segment of my deposition to be true and correct. Such certification is given under the penalty of perjury. Further, affiant/deponent sayeth not. Gunther Karl Russbacher, deponent in cause. Dated: December 6, 1992.
Russbacher incorporated and operated a number of covert CIA proprietaries in the United States from the late 1970s to 1986. His main headquarters was in Missouri, but his CIA proprietaries had offices throughout the United States, with heavy involvement in Dallas and Denver, where much of the HUD and savings and loan looting took place.
Russbacher identified as CIA proprietaries or assets numerous savings and loans, including Aurora Bank in the Denver area, Silverado Bank Savings & Loan, Red Hill Savings and Loan, Hill Financial, Indian Springs State Bank, and many others. He described the flow of money from, for instance, Silverado Bank Savings & Loan to start up Hill Financial and Red Hill Savings and Loan. Much of the data that he and other deep-cover CIA operatives gave me still has to be analyzed.
Russbacher made reference to CIA contract agents he encountered, including Heinrich Rupp and Richard Brenneke who worked with the CIA at Aurora Bank in Denver and elsewhere, and Anthony Russo at Indian Springs State Bank in Kansas City.
Russbacher described the links between CIA proprietaries and organized crime and how the CIA worked with the group in Denver, looting the HUD program and savings and loans of billions of dollars. He described the corrupt practices of groups in the Denver area, such as MDC Holdings, Richmond Homes, Mizel Development, and their nearly one hundred subsidiaries, partnerships and other legal entities.
Describing his role in two of the savings and loans, Russbacher stated: “I held the position of Chairman of the Board [Red Hill Savings & Loan and Hill Financial]. Let’s back up here, and erase that last thing. Robert Andrew Walker111 held the position of Chairman of the Board.” Russbacher used the CIA-provided-alias of Walker for those positions.
Russbacher described the massive corruption associated with the new Denver International Airport that included bribes, land flips, and sham loans.
Typical CIA Proprietary Operation
An example of how the CIA operated secret companies in the United States is seen from the companies that Russbacher operated for the CIA. Russbacher incorporated and operated many CIA proprietaries, hiding the CIA ownership by showing the stock owned by CIA-related personnel. At the top of the group of companies that Russbacher operated for the CIA was National Brokerage Companies, a general partnership located in Missouri. Under National Brokerage Companies were a number of other general partnerships and corporations. The stock in these corporations was held in several names, including Gunther Russbacher and his CIA-provided aliases, Emery Peden and Robert A. Walker.
Covert CIA personnel, installed as directors, controlled the various companies and corporations. In 1986 the NBC name was changed to National Brokerage Companies International (NBCI).
Russbacher gave me the names of many financial institutions that he said were CIA proprietaries. He described in great detail his role in Red Hill Savings & Loan and Hill Financial in Red Hill, Pennsylvania. He named other CIA proprietary financial institutions, including National Brokerage Companies; National Fiduciary Trust Company; National Financial Services; Crystal Shores Development; and Clayton Financial Planning, which had several divisions, including Agean Lines and Europa Link. Europa Link allegedly owned W.P.R. Petroleum International, which used leased oil tankers for oil delivery to major refineries.
Also, Badner Bank, which funded Germania Savings and Loan; Commerce Bank of Missouri; Carondolet Savings and Loan in St Louis; Mega Bank Group which owned First State System and operated in about eighteen states; Shalimar Perfumes; Shalimar Armaments; Shalimar Chemical Laboratories; R & B Weapons Systems International, Inc.; Pratislaja Brenneke Munitions Amalgam; KRB Weapons Delivery System; National Realty; and others.
Russbacher said that National Brokerage Companies (NBC, Inc.) was incorporated in Missouri in 1980, and that it was the parent company for many others. He said part of its initial funding came from Silverado Bank Savings & Loan via Red Hill Savings and Loan and Hill Financial. Among its subsidiaries were National Leasing; National Realty (under National Leasing), and Crystal Shores Financial Services.
111 One of the aliases provided to Gunther Russbacher by the CIA.
A division under Clayton Financial Planning was Commercial Federal Savings and Loan, which had connections to National Fiduciary Trust Companies.
A division under Clayton Financial Planning was Carondolet Savings and Loan, which also had financial connections to National Fiduciary Trust Companies.
Russbacher stated that under National Fiduciary trust Companies were Badner Bank and International Commerce Bank Holding Company. Under Badner Bank were various airlines, including Zantop Airlines; Tower Airlines; Southern Air Transport; Apollo Air; Virgin Air, and RAW World Service. Under International Commerce Bank Holding Company were Baja Enterprises; property at Cabo San Lucas; Hotel Cabo San Lucas; and Cabo Airport.
Russbacher described the practice of the CIA having their own banks as proprietaries, and named, among others, Commerce Bank of Missouri, and particularly the one in Clayton, naming as a CIA asset the manager, John Bittlecomb. He described the CIA operation known as Valley Bank in Phoenix, which he said played a key role in moving money for the October Surprise operation (and described by former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe in his book, Profits of War).
There were several European holdings, including Shalimar Perfumes, Shalimar Arms, and Shalimar Chemical Laboratories. Under Shalimar Armaments was R & B Weapons Systems International, Incorporated. Under R & B were two companies, Pratislaja Brenneke Munitions Amalgam and R & B Weapons Delivery Systems. It all sounds rather complex, and further explanation follows in subsequent pages.
Moving Huge Sums of Money Overseas
Russbacher described how the CIA moved large quantities of money from U.S. financial proprietaries during the last few years to offshore corporations and banks, including those in the Antilles and the Cayman Islands. “The Agency is deadly afraid of exposure within the United States,” Russbacher said, “and they have begun to siphon off large and tremendous sums of money to foreign accounts. It must be borne in mind that in the last three years there has been a systematic removal of funds and capital assets from these [CIA] corporations.”
Russbacher described how the CIA used the savings and loan institutions to fund their covert operations in the United States and abroad and add to the massive amount of funds secreted in foreign financial institutions. Parallel operations were run by different CIA divisions and directorates, using code names to identify the various operations. Included in the operations affecting financial institutions were Operation Gold Bug, Operation Cyclops, Operation Interlink, Operation Woodsman, Operation Fountain Pen, Operation Thunder, Operation Blue Thunder, and Operation Moth.
Operation Woodsman
Operation Woodsman was a CIA operation that targeted specific companies, forcing the owners out and taking over the assets. Russbacher described several of these operations in which he himself was directly involved. Information used to carry out Operation Woodsman, such as the financial condition of targeted companies, could be obtained by the CIA through a database called the Black Flag file, which is located on a Cray computer in Washington and which is accessed through a government Sentry Terminal (government-secure computer). The Cray computer also contains a list of federal judges, trustees, law firms, and lawyers who covertly work to carry out Justice Department and CIA activities (such as the San Francisco law firm used against me in the sham California action). Referring to Judicial Involvement
Russbacher repeated what he had described to me during the past few years about the role of federal judges in the corruption: “More than fifty percent of the judges are compromised through secret bribes or retainers.” The bribes take many forms. Sometimes through gambling chips at Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos, in the form of gratuities, sometimes through second and third parties, inheritances, anything that will whitewash the funds in the property that is given to the judges or trustees. Russbacher stated that these funds are often hidden in offshore financial accounts, adding:
Let’s say it is property or stock certificates. We’ll have phony documentation set up and put in place and show where the stock certificates or the property or the legacy came from. Even if we have to create our own trust with which to do it. It’s not like we don’t have legally capable counsel available. Now understand this too: these judges received this heavy money regardless of the fact that they have cases pending or not. They get paid whether they do something for us or not.
Russbacher elaborated on the procedure for gaining access to the Cray computer in Washington, telling how the identification number is first entered and then the security code.
Russbacher stated that he learned about Operation Woodsman when he was assigned to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. “Every damn thing, every crooked thing that the DOJ has done,” he said, “involving any and all law firms, is registered under the code name that I have given you.” Russbacher continued:
Our intent was to take over the tangible assets of the operating license and licenses, we go through the predetermination hearing with the judge, trustee and the simple debtors, and then we buy time to reorganize the lines, and transport capabilities. In other words, we use them for ourselves, these little feeder airlines; we try to keep them alive anywhere from six months to a year and a half.
Slowly we set our operations and leverage to where the existing financial records are changed to reflect prior debt encumbrance. We falsify the records. We take an existing carrier, their routes, their equipment, push our schedule and freight manifest through their licenses, and then we ... we have no interest in developing a good business or making a go of it, out of the indentured one that we have taken over.
Russbacher described how the system uses lawyer spotters throughout the United States to identify companies that have large equities but have cash problems CIA proprietaries buy up the company’s receivables and indebted ness, and force the company to sign papers making them susceptible to immediate takeover if their financial situation deteriorates. The CIA proprietary then acts to make this happen, after which the owners lose control. Chapter 11 would be included in Operation Woodsman.
The CIA may loot the company and then put it into Chapter 7 or 11 bankruptcy courts, where several options are available to make off with the assets or to have the indebtedness discharged. Russbacher told how the CIA has about seventy percent of the trustees and many of the federal judges in bankruptcy courts on retainer. He also elaborated upon the practice known as “drop-offs” that force companies into Chapter 11, involving companies with valuable assets that have a cash crunch.
Russbacher described some of the company takeovers in which he was directly involved, naming Midway Airlines, Southern Air Transport, and Frontier Airlines. In some cases, the targeted company would be liquidated and, as in the case of Frontier Airlines, the aircraft would go to a CIA proprietary. In Frontier’s example, most of the aircraft went to the CIA proprietary, Southwest Airlines. In the case of Southern Air Transport, the targeted corporation was kept as a CIA proprietary.
According to Russbacher, referring to the CIA takeover of Chicago based Midway Airlines during the last year of its existence, Midway Airlines was first targeted in 1986 because it had a high debt-to-asset ratio, making the airline vulnerable to the takeover scheme of Operation Woodsman. CIA assets began purchasing Midway’s debt with the intention of taking over the company and then liquidating the assets in Chapter 7.
Russbacher told how Midway tried to get absorbed by another carrier, Northwest Airlines, and that the CIA blocked it, as it wanted Midway’s aircraft. The CIA got Justice Department lawyers and the IRS to take actions against the airline through criminal and tax proceedings through mostly bogus criminal and contempt charges, explaining:
We put together a bunch of phony allegations, mismanagement of funds, possible fraud. Ninety-five percent of it is totally untrue and unfounded, but the five percent that does remain true and factual are at the forefront, and you push those. Some of the directorships on the Board of Directors were subverted and suborned to CIA tactics.
The plan by Northwest Airlines to absorb Midway fell through after both Midway and Northwest were pressured by government agencies acting on behalf of the CIA. This scheme caused Midway to go out of business, so the airline’s Boeing 737 aircraft went to another covert CIA operation: Southwest Airlines.
Russbacher described similar CIA takeovers that developed into larger companies instead of being liquidated for their assets. These included Southern Air Transport (which started out as Savannah Charter Airlines); Central Airlines of Fort Worth; Allegheny Airlines; and others. Russbacher explained that some of the directors had their own businesses and that it was easy for the CIA with its control of other government agencies to put pressure on them, adding: “They were not influenced; they were dictated to.”
I asked: “How could they be dictated to?” Russbacher replied: “The director, who has other business interests and probably a business of his own, suddenly finds himself in a financial quandary due to various tactics used by the CIA. We put him under our thumb. If he decides not to play ball, we threaten him with criminal charges.”
This tactic was reportedly used against Charles W. White of Houston, Texas, who was in partnership with CIA-related Jim Bath. When Bath wanted to withdraw $450,000 from a company composed of private investors and use it in a CIA-related operation, and White refused, the power of the courts and covert agencies were misused against White. After many lawsuits, White was financially destroyed.
Russbacher stated that Justice Department lawyers worked hand in hand with the CIA in Operation Woodsman and other schemes, and that the Agency not only has its own private lawyers but “government lawyers on staff as well as the judges. It’s a fixed deck all the way across.” Russbacher described another CIA takeover: “We did the same thing with hotels,” describing how the CIA took over the Intercontinental Hotels (IH) chain from Pan American Corporation through its CIA front, Global Hotel Management out of Basel, Switzerland.
Among the airlines that were liquidated after acquisition were Central Airlines out of Fort Worth (the agency’s first airline acquisition under Operation Woodsman) and Frontier Airlines of Denver. Russbacher described how the CIA created so much friction between Frontier and United Airlines, who had proposed taking over Frontier that the deal fell through. These problems included union and other problems. The Boeing 737s then went to another CIA proprietary, Southwest Airlines.
Russbacher stated that one reason Southwest Airlines was making money (when all the other airlines were losing money) was that the airline has significant income from CIA- generated business that shows as income on its records, but the source of the income was bogus.
Connections Between the CIA and Those Looting America’s Financial Institutions
Russbacher described the relationship between the CIA proprietaries and the Keating group, adding, “The Keating group is a very small group. There is a much larger group that we [CIA] dealt with, of which Keating was only a part.” In response to my question as to why the Keating group would work with the CIA, Russbacher stated, “To keep the heat off their backs for one. And number two, some of the companies that were involved were actually proprietary operations.”
Russbacher made reference to Anthony Russo, an officer in Indian Springs State Bank, who had financial interest in a CIA proprietary airline, Global International Airways. In 1982 the airline owned by Farhad Azima, an Iranian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, had a fleet of 14 jetliners, making flights to remote airstrips in Central America, carrying military equipment outbound from the United States and often carrying drugs on the return flights. Global flew shipments for CIA operative Edwin Wilson and his company, Egyptian-American Transport and Services Corporation (Eatsco).
Well-known national figures involved with Global included Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley, Richard Secord, Hussein Salem, and others.
Bogus Bearer Bonds
The CIA had other corrupt schemes. Russbacher described another ongoing CIA operation inflicting hundreds of millions of dollars of losses upon U.S. financial institutions. In this operation, CIA proprietaries obtained loans from various financial institutions on the basis of pledged bearer bonds, all of which were bogus. After obtaining the loans, some CIA proprietaries looted the assets and then filed Chapter 7 or 11 in federal courts where they had control over bankruptcy judges and trustees and were represented by covert Justice Department and/or CIA law firms or fronts.
Russbacher was cautious in divulging the secrets of CIA operations, even though he was trying to blow the whistle on some of its worst and most damaging activities against the United States. As time passed and with my constant probing into different areas of CIA activities, and as Russbacher learned that other CIA operatives gave me information which he had withheld from me, he gradually gave me more data. In early 1993, as I learned the operational names of many of the CIA operations from other sources, including Trenton Parker and Michael Riconosciuto, Russbacher opened up and gave me code names and data. He stated that different divisions or groups within the CIA ran parallel operations and had different names for similar activities. Some of them include the following:
Operation Interlink (IL)
Operation Interlink (IL) was the code name for an operation involving financial institutions, whose goal was to raise money for covert CIA activities, and laundering the funds into secret CIA offshore bank accounts
Operation Cyclops (OC)
Operation Cyclops was the name used by the Pegasus unit of the CIA and was an overview over most other Pegasus operations. It included all types of covert financial operations including proprietaries involved in the HUD and the savings and loan programs, and bogus bearer bonds.
Operation Moth (MH)
Operation Moth was one of the Agency’s names for the operation involved in the savings and loan fraud.
Operation Gold Bug (GB)
Operation Gold Bug involved the overall scheme of generating money through various financial activities. Under Operation Gold Bug were a number of other operations. Operation Gold Bug was the development of national and international financial programs to develop sources of income that would be available on a regular basis to support and carry out covert CIA activities domestically and internationally.
Russbacher incorporated and operated over a dozen CIA proprietaries. He outlined the tactics used to loot companies of their assets. When used against savings and loans, Russbacher’s section of the CIA gave it the name, Operation Moth. The highly secret Pegasus group within the CIA gave this program the name of Operation Gold Bug. The intent of both groups and operations was to loot the assets of targeted financial or other institutions and wealthy people. The overall operation that targeted other companies was called Operation Gold Finger.
Operation Thunder (TD)
Operation Thunder was another name for a CIA covert operation that included the HUD and savings and loan fraud, bogus bearer bonds, and other financial schemes.
Russbacher stated that the home base for Operation Thunder was New Orleans and was initially located in a private CIA proprietary. He stated that today the cover for the operation was Telemark Communications, one of the biggest companies in the United States and a CIA proprietary. As with other CIA proprietaries, the top management consisted of Agency people who had liaison with CIA field people who were contract officers or agents, and particularly lawyers and law firms. Russbacher described the heading sheet on correspondence pertaining to Operation Thunder.
On the very top of the sheet were the words:
Operations Memorandum.
Classification: Top Secret: SOG-SI/6
Copy Number: 4 [or whatever number of copies were authorized]
SOG/ALPHA/-DETACHMENT TS-TS-Q/SOG-D/F: 701
FP399689
Staging Area: New Orleans, Louisiana
Operation Blue Thunder (BT)
Operation Blue Thunder related to the destruction of institutions, including taking them over or forcing them into Chapters 7 and 11. After taking them over, the CIA would take over the corporation’s license rights. Basically, it destroyed companies and picked up the assets at fire sale prices.
Operation Fountain Pen (FP)
Operation Fountain Pen started with Bank of Zaire, a CIA proprietary, buying banks, corporations and other financial institutions with bogus bearer bonds, treasury bonds, or duplicate issues.
Bogus Bearer Bonds
Several of the covert CIA operations used bogus bearer bonds that had a twenty or twenty-five year due date and were used as collateral for multimillion- dollar loans.
After obtaining the loans and laundering the money into other secret proprietaries or offshore financial vehicles, the companies would often file Chapter 7 or Chapter 11. The lender would then think the bonds given as collateral covered it, and would not find them to be bogus until many years later. In some cases the CIA proprietary would make interest payments on the loans secured by the phony bonds. The primary criminal act in those cases would be using forged certificates to obtain loans.
Aiding and Abetting by State Officials
Russbacher stated that in 1986 some of the CIA financial institutions he operated were compromised, that connections between the secret proprietaries and members of Congress were in danger of being exposed, and the decision was made to shut them down. He told how Justice Department and CIA personnel conspired with Missouri officials to remove all traces from the state records that the CIA corporations had been incorporated as Missouri Corporations.
Referring to the shutdown of several CIA proprietaries linked to the 1986 downing of a CIA aircraft over Nicaragua, the famous “Hasenfus” flight, Russbacher stated: “All records that were available to the Department of State or to the [state’s] Attorney General’s office have been seized or closed to where the public cannot get hold of them.”
Money-path for Bribing Federal Judges, Trustees, Law Firms
I was prompted to ask Russbacher about payoffs to federal judges after private investigator Stewart Webb heard of a bribe connection between U.S. District Judge Sherman Finesilver in Denver and a corporation in Ireland. After he passed the information along to me I questioned some of my CIA contacts to determine if they knew anything of it.
In response to my questions, Russbacher explained the path of money for bribing federal judges, trustees, law firms, and lawyers. Russbacher stated that the money for these payoffs came from a company located in Dublin and incorporated in Ireland, called Shamrock Overseas Disbursement Corporation. Its telephone is listed as Shamrock Overseas Courier Service. The function of this company was to place money at regular intervals into numbered bank accounts for the recipients to draw upon. Russbacher chuckled as he stated that the Chief Executive Officer at Shamrock Overseas Disbursement was the same person with whom he had worked at other CIA proprietaries: Donald Lutz.
Russbacher and Lutz were on the management staff of various CIA proprietaries, including Red Hill Savings and Loan and Hill Financial located at Red Hill, Pennsylvania, and at Silverado Bank Savings & Loan in Denver. Russbacher stated that the routing of the money funded by Shamrock was “From the Netherlands Antilles. And in turn came from Grand Cayman; that in turn came from the Southern Bank in Florida; that in turn came from Southern Savings and Loan in Illinois; which in turn came from National Brokerage Company.”
“Where does the money originally come from? Is it from stolen Chapter 11 assets?” I asked. Russbacher replied, “That’s part of it. It is a conglomeration of funds. It is what we call an all- purpose account. Arms shipments, the other stuff [drugs, weapons] that we were transporting back and forth. It is what we call the divisible surplus.”
I asked if the federal judges he referred to, as recipients of these funds, were only Bankruptcy Court Judges, to which Russbacher replied, “No, that’s not true. You have to include the DJs [U.S. District Judges] too.” “How is it determined the amount that each judge will get, and what judges are paid off?” I asked. Russbacher replied: “It is predetermined. If you will remember from one of my earlier tapes, I told you that the judges receive their funds regardless of whether they have heard a case in six months or not.”
“How do they determine which judges are recipients, what qualifies them to be on the payroll?” Russbacher replied, “The fact that they work hand-in- hand with the trustees, and they grant us full power to basically do what we [CIA] want in Chapter 11, 13, and 7 proceedings.” “Are there any other similar corporations in the United States like Shamrock?”
“No, Rodney, they are all funded from Shamrock. In other words, if you pull the plug on Shamrock, you have it all.”
Russbacher explained how the recipients pick up the money. “They can get it overseas and pick it up, or they can go to Toronto and pick it up there, at the Royal Bank of Canada.” Russbacher stated, “When they go in to make a withdrawal, they request to see the President or Chief Account officer.” Russbacher explained that this scheme is part of Operation Woodsman, explained in earlier pages.
Russbacher explained that the recipient’s available funds will be found on the bank’s terminal screen and that “all they have to have is the account number. No ID is required. Just give them the account number and the four digit identification number.” Russbacher stated that Royal Bank of Canada, Manufacturers Hanover Bank in New York, and Valley Bank in Arizona, cooperate in this scheme.
Russbacher repeated what he had told me in the past: that funds would also be disbursed to the recipient judges, trustees, or law firms at gambling casinos, including MGM, Harrah’s and Resort in Atlantic City, and Frontier, Stardust, and Horseshoe in Las Vegas. The CIA gave the money to the casino, which in turn gave gambling chips to the recipients when they arrived, after which the chips are cashed in for money. In some cases the casinos report the money as winnings and income tax withheld. “Would your knowledge of this operation be because you were with NBC (National Brokerage Company),” I asked. “Yes, because we made deposits and withdrawals through that route,” he replied.
Black Flag File (BFF)
Russbacher stated that he had seen the list of recipients in this scheme on the computer database while he was at the CIA headquarters at Langley, explaining that the database is called the Black Flag Files (BFF). He stated that the database is on a Cray computer accessed from any government Sentry terminal by typing in an identification entry number. After a flag shows up on the screen, typing in the access code: 3A46915W.
I often asked Russbacher to accompany these statements with a declaration as to their truthfulness, and I did during this questioning. He had also given me declarations attesting to the truthfulness of written information. Russbacher replied: “Sure. All the information that we have discussed on this date, May 17, 1993, from approximately 2020 hours Central Daylight Time, the declaration made to area code 510-944-1930, Rodney Stich, by Gunther Karl Russbacher, 44840417, Captain USN, is true and
correct as to the best of my knowledge and belief.”
Where is the Money
Losses of approximately half a trillion dollars have been the estimated direct cost of just the savings and loan debacle. But where did the money go? It has never been sought or located. The theft of $2 billion by Lincoln or $2 billion by Silverado is a long way from $200 to $500 billion. Neither Congress nor the Justice Department has made any attempt to determine where this money went. Finding it would relieve the American public of a debt load that is affecting the American economy, resulting in a reduction in benefits to individual Americans, thereby causing a staggering tax burden. There is no way that such a huge sum simply evaporated without a trace.
My CIA sources tell me that many of the funds looted by the CIA, organized crime, and such groups as the Denver group have been hidden in offshore financial institutions. Some of the funds that have gone overseas have returned to the United States through foreign shell corporations, buying up vast quantities of U.S. real estate and assets.
112 Russbacher was President of NBC, using the alias of Emery J. Peden, and his former wife, Peggy J. Russbacher, was Executive Vice President. There was a National Brokerage, Incorporated, a National Brokerage Company, and numerous other divisions operated by Russbacher.
One of the Many Ways in Which Crime Money is Reportedly Hidden
Investigator Stewart Webb heard from one of his sources that hundreds of trusts are filed with the state of Colorado that contain huge amounts of money looted from the HUD and savings and loan frauds, and also from drug money laundering. He and Russbacher said many of the trusts were filed in the County Recorders office in Denver and various Colorado counties, including Baca County. In seeking further information, I asked another CIA source, Gunther Russbacher, “Do you know anything about the Baca trusts?” He replied, “How in the hell did you find out about those?” Russbacher was especially well informed. He told me that many of the trusts were set up by Denver lawyer Norman Brownstein, a key member of the Denver group involved in the HUD and savings and loan scandals. These trusts were reportedly set up for the benefit of such insiders as Larry Mizel, Leonard Millman, MDC Holdings, Richmond Homes, and hundreds of other related legal holdings.
Most of the actual funds associated with these trusts are reportedly located outside the United States. He said that he himself had filed trusts in Baca County for his children. Russbacher said that the location of the money covered by these trusts, which he stated amounted to billions of dollars, were located in offshore financial institutions.
This money includes the billions of dollars stolen from the HUD and savings and loan programs, the billions looted every year from Chapter 11 assets, drug profits, and the other dirty schemes involving the characters listed within these pages. If this information is correct, and if the sources of hidden money divulged to me by my CIA sources were traced, possibly large amounts of the huge losses inflicted upon the American people could be recovered.
Billions of Hidden Taxpayers’ Money
Russbacher had several times stated in response to my questions that many billions of dollars of money obtained by CIA proprietaries from the American public were hidden in offshore financial institutions. In Colorado there are located well over a thousand trusts hiding many billions of dollars looted from the American public.
Continued Looting of America
Many of the same crooks that caused billions of dollars in losses were reaping profits through their inner knowledge and political connections, enabling them to manipulate the agency responsible for selling off assets of the seized savings and loans, the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC). While waiting for senate confirmation as Clinton’s nominee to head the RTC, Stanley G. Tate, announced that upon being confirmed he would be exposing “ubiquitous mismanagement, waste, and fraud at the RTC.” Tate told reporters113 that he planned to release a 36-page statement during the nomination hearings supporting his charges. Tate had discovered the corruption while holding a temporary position on the board overseeing the RTC. Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., one of the many senators who ignored my reports of the corruption in federal government, refused to conduct confirmation hearings for the RTC nominee. While Riegle blocked Tate’s confirmation, others were making death threats against the nominee. As if these acts were not enough, anonymous attacks were made upon Tate by RTC employees. Media sources wrote articles intended to block his confirmation. The coordinated campaign succeeded; Tate withdrew his acceptance of the nomination on November 30, 1993. Again, public ignorance permitted the same scum to continue looting America.
Relief For Felons
The conduct of such savings and loan operators as Don R. Dixon and Edwin T. McBirney caused billions of dollars of losses that the American taxpayers will be paying on for many years. They used taxpayer funds for sexual parties, to hire prostitutes, enjoy lavish life styles, none of which came out of profits. There weren’t any. In 1993, McBirney was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and Dixon was sentenced to two consecutive fiveyear terms.
In July 1994, Justice Department lawyers and a federal judge, Robert Maloney, cut ten years from Dixon’s sentence, causing his release that same year, after serving a fraction of his prison sentence. McBirney was scheduled for release shortly thereafter. The excuse used was good behavior. But there isn’t much else that can occur in federal prison. It is a standard practice where the CIA or some other government agency is implicated and a defendant protects this relationship, that a reduction in prison sentence is promised and then carried out at a later date when media attention no longer exists. An inordinate amount of the huge savings and loan losses occurred in Texas, where the RTC recovered only about five cents on every dollar of the losses incurred.114 Despite the many people committing the fraud, the RTC issued only about two dozen subpoenas as part of their investigations, which are necessary to follow the money trail to learn where the money went, such as bribes to politicians, kickbacks, money laundering to off-shore bank accounts. The RTC did not issue any subpoenas in its “investigation” of 86 of 137 failed Texas savings and loans. Comparing this with the investigation into Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan as part of the Whitewater investigation, over 160 grand jury subpoenas were issued solely by special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr.
“Protective Investigations”
If the RTC had issued the subpoenas required by the nature of the savings and loan crimes of the 1980s, it is probable that the involvement of the CIA and many political figures would have been identified. Also, the way the RTC handled the sales of the seized savings and loan assets made possible even more looting of the American taxpayers as many of the same crooks purchased the seized real estate for pennies on the dollar. A New York Times article (July 23, 1994) headed, “The R.T.C. let crooked thrift owners get away,” stated:
The failures of the RTC to properly pursue the crooked parties, or to obtain maximum money for the seized thrifts, were too purposeful to be simply gross incompetence or negligence. Because of the involvement of people from both the Republican and Democratic parties, none pursued the needed investigations to determine where the enormous amount of money went in the gory looting of U.S. taxpayers.
Roger Altman, involved in the Whitewater matter, was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from April 1993 until March 1994, and within a month of taking that position he reversed the RTC’s attempt to get Congress to extend the federal statute of limitations for prosecuting savings and loan wrongdoing. Altman said that the RTC no longer needed the extension, when actually this was obviously not correct, since there was virtually no investigation of the big-time wrongdoers.
Altman commissioned a task force that issued a report to Congress defending the RTC investigations and belittled the loss to the American public by the Texas savings and loans. The New York Times article of July 23, 1994, stated, “A former chief R.T.C. investigator in Texas told Congress last month that this was a ‘whitewash of a national scandal.’“ Former Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen and then Treasury secretary, and Altman, campaigned against extending the federal statute of limitations, insuring that many of the savings and loans thieves would be protected against criminal prosecutions, and that the recipients of the looted money not be discovered.
Fraud Was No Secret
It is important to recognize that the looting of the savings and loans were a secret only to the people that would have to pay, and that is the American public. Thousands of government personnel, including investigators in the various divisions of the U.S. Department of Justice, including the FBI, the many CIA personnel throughout the United States, and others, could not have been unaware that this massive fraud was going on. Possibly the CIA involvement in the looting of the savings and loans, the HUD program, and other areas still to be described, was the reason that the criminal activities were covered up.
There is no more powerful government agency, for cover-up and obstruction of justice, then the people in control of the United States Department of Justice, the same people who covered up every major scandal and subversive activity described within these pages. I first discovered this practice while an FAA inspector, and in the subsequent years this obstruction of justice became even more obvious.
Adding to Savings and Loan Looting
Shortly before this book went to print, I started learning about another scam for which Americans will someday have to pay. This involved HUD mortgage insurance that was paid by the buyers in escrow for the full life of the loans. The money was then siphoned off and the insurance never purchased. Formerly, the buyer of HUD properties paid their insurance premiums on a monthly basis with their mortgage payments. But in 1983, the same Congress that made possible the looting of the savings and loans passed legislation known as “HURRA” (Housing and Urban-Rural Recovery Act) that required up-front payment for years of mortgage insurance premiums. The intended looting of these funds is the most probable explanation for this change. Massive theft of these funds then occurred, with government cover-up of the scheme.
Among the companies involved in these activities was the American International Group (AIG), which was the head of hundreds of companies and trusts throughout the world. Among the reinsurance companies controlled by AIG were Transatlantic Holdings and Putnam Reinsurance.
The HUD mortgages for which up- front mortgage insurance premiums were paid were put into “pools” of mortgage loans with Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), which were then sold off on the secondary market to investors. When large numbers of foreclosures occurred during the 1980s, huge losses were incurred when the mortgage insurance did not exist to pay for the financial losses. CIA asset Gunther Russbacher described to me how he discovered this scam while he headed the CIA’s Red Hill Savings and Loan:
They were using reinsurance companies with policy premiums that were never paid. Money was paid for the reinsurance but it was never paid [to the reinsurers]. The policy money, the premiums, were never paid in to where the policies were active. American International Groups was one of the big ones [involved in the scam]. Transatlantic Holdings was involved, as well as Transpacific Holdings. Maurice Greenberg, a close associate of Denver’s Leonard Millman, headed some of these companies. Dublin International Insurance was part of AI [American International]. We insured Putnam and Company.
Imposing Secrecy on the Excuse of “National Security”
It is probable that the CIA involvement in this scam is what kept the Justice Department from prosecuting those guilty of the mortgage premium insurance fraud, using the “national security” excuse for withholding this knowledge from the public.
As in other scandals, it pays to have “friends” in the right places to act as damage control. In 1997, according to Standard and Poor, former senator from Texas, Lloyd Bentson, and Carla Hills, were officials in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), keeping the lid on this scandal.
---end of quotes--- You can download an ebook from this site: http://defraudingamerica.com/

(Anti-Anti-Semite essay)

2009-11-16T19:16:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I first Met Ray McGovern in 1945. He is a Mensch!

The modern “Protocols of Zion”

How the mass media now promotes the same lies that caused the death of more than 5 million Jews in WWII
Historical and Investigative Research 25 Aug 2005, by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot1.htm
Genocides don’t just happen. The killers must think they kill in self defense. Which is to say that the victims of an extermination must first be perceived as a mortal danger. For this, a propaganda campaign will be necessary. The propaganda that got between 5 and 6 million Jews exterminated in WWII went by the name Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion. This series documents that this propaganda is once again being energetically spread by the Western mass media, just as it was in the prelude to WWII.
The next Catastrophe looms...
Short Preface
How likely is a great anti-Jewish slaughter in the twenty-first century?
To answer this question is to make a forecast. Any kind of forecast requires the person making the prediction to evaluate patterns in the past in order to guess about the future. Thus, in order to get a feel for the likelihood of an anti-Jewish slaughter in the twenty-first century we examine the past to see whether such an event would be surprising, or else normal. As it turns out, it would be perfectly normal. For 2000 years in the Western world it has been more common than not for a century to contain at least one great anti-Jewish bloodletting. Unless otherwise specified, the items in the following list—which is not complete, but which will suffice to make my point—are culled from James Carroll’s history of Western anti-Semitism, entitled Constantine’s Sword:
1st century - Genocide of the Jews by the Romans (‘First Jewish War’)
2nd century - Genocide of the Jews by the Romans (‘Diaspora Revolt’ and ‘Second Jewish War’)
4th century - Following Emperor Constantine’s Council of Nicaea (325), all sorts of imperial measures against the Jews, special taxes, prohibition on new synagogues, and prohibition of Christian-Jewish marriages.[00]
Church father Ambrose encourages burning of synagogues so as to abolish Judaism.
5th century - Attacks against Jewish communities during Holy Week, including the burning of synagogues.[00] A great massacre of Jews in Alexandria.
[There is a relative pause in anti-Jewish attacks, and relative tolerance toward Jews, due to the collapse of the political structure of the Roman Empire. Once the German aristocracies that conquered Europe converted to Catholicism, and the empire was reconstituted as the Germanic Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, the attacks are renewed.]
11th century - Crusaders massacre Jewish communities in the Rhineland.
12th century - Crusaders massacre Jews in Europe; persecution in Spain.
13th century - Forced conversions of Jews all over Europe.
14th century - Black Plague is blamed on Jews. Perhaps three hundred Jewish communities are wiped out. Jews in the Rhineland are exterminated. Jews in Seville are massacred, followed by widespread pogroms in Iberia.
15th century - Spanish inquisition. Many Jews are killed. More than 150,000 are expelled from Spain.
16th century - Inquisition becomes pan-European phenomenon.
17th century - Inquisition continues.
19th century - In 1827 the Russian Tsar began a process of slow-genocide against the Eastern Jews, by forced conscription into the Russian army for Jewish boys, starting at the age of eight. Somewhat later the rate of conscription for some populations of Jews was raised to 5 times higher than what was applied to any other population, and matching the rate of groups selected for special punishment. The terms of service in the Russian army were 25 years.[0]
19th century - Widespread pogroms against the Eastern Jews in the Russian Empire.[1]
20th century - Widespread pogroms against the Eastern Jews in the Russian Empire, and then a genocide by the German Nazis all over Europe.
The twentieth century massacres, still fresh, were especially bloody. One often hears the slogan “Never Again,” meaning never again a Holocaust such as was carried out by the German Nazis. The slogan is invoked almost as a magical incantation, as if its recitation had the power to prevent the next antisemitic mass atrocity. It does not. If practically every century there have been great massacres of Jews in the Western world, then the least risky prediction that a historian can make for the twenty-first century is that there will be another—without even looking at the evidence for current trends. The burden of proof is therefore on those who believe this cannot happen again: they will have to document why the world is now different.
This is a burden they cannot meet.
The hostile propaganda that got hundreds of thousands of Jews persecuted and/or killed in Tsarist Russia, and then between 5 and 6 million Jews exterminated in WWII, is once again being energetically spread by the Western mass media. The result will be the same: a great massacre of Jews. This piece will document what the mass media does and how it prepares the ground for the next genocide, which is right around the corner. Unless this is quickly understood by the millions of people who will either kill, abet, or silently watch, the great Jewish Catastrophe of our times will soon overtake us.
1. Introduction: The “Protocols of Zion” in the broadest historical perspective.
George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What he meant was that problems have causes; if they are not examined, these causes cannot be recognized when they return, and we must suffer their consequences all over again. In the case of a disastrous, genocidal war, such as WWII, we are talking about problems that really ought to be avoided. Best to pay close attention to the causes, then.
So let us ask the question: What causes one people to exterminate another?
I think the answer is simpler than the multitude of hand-wringing disquisitions on the WWII massacres have led us to believe. Yes, of course, many people follow orders without asking why, and so forth. But still, extermination is the most extreme of all possible human behaviors; people will not do it unless they think they are defending themselves.
So let us call that my hypothesis.
What my hypothesis predicts is that exterminations will be preceded by massive propaganda efforts meant to convince large segments of population A that population B represents a catastrophic and imminent danger to population A, and hence must be destroyed—in self defense. Do we have evidence of such a massive propaganda effort prior to WWII?
We do.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Russian Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, produced a hoax that accused ‘the Jews’ of controlling all of the governments of Europe, and the United States, in addition to leading all the revolutionary movements, plus the capitalist enterprises. The document was called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and it pretended to be the minutes of a secret meeting conducted by a circle of super-powerful Jews who in secret controlled everything. These supposed Jewish elders absurdly represented themselves as evil in the document, and explained to each other how they were going to destroy ‘gentile [read: Christian] civilization.’ They were just up to no good. In producing this hoax, the Tsar’s people were trying to prevent the revolution that was brewing by distracting the oppressed Russian masses with the danger that this especially oppressed and destitute minority, ‘the Jews,’ supposedly posed for everybody. The revolution was not averted, but the hoax of The Protocols had for consequence a series of pogroms, which is to say episodes of vandalizing and sacking of Jewish communities in the Russian Empire, including widespread massacres that cost tens of thousands of Jewish lives.[1a]
The Protocols subsequently became a bestseller all over Europe and the United States, quite despite the fact that in 1921 Phillip Graves from the Times of London published a front-page demonstration that it was a cut-and-paste job from three works of fiction, but especially from Maurice Joly’s Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a political analysis of Napoleon III’s repressive regime that had absolutely nothing to do with Jews, one way or another. In order to show this, Graves put excerpts from Joly’s Dialogues in Hell and from The Protocols side by side so that readers of the Times could see that they were practically identical.[2] To no avail. The Protocols continued to sell madly all over the Western world thanks to the sponsorship of wealthy antisemites such as Henry Ford and many others.[2a] The anti-Jewish hysteria continued to grow, and when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany he made The Protocols required reading in German schools.[3] In this way, a large multitude of ordinary Westerners was made to believe that they were in mortal danger from ‘the Jews’: the so-called ‘Jewish Peril.’
This fearful hysteria prepared the ground for extermination.
Now, the various claims in The Protocols were completely contradictory and each of them alone quite implausible: Why would ‘the Jews’ simultaneously act as one to promote capitalism and to destroy it?; How could ‘the Jews’ control all the governments of Europe and the US when they were the most oppressed population in the West, mostly dirt poor, and many of them still semi-slaves?; Why would ‘the Jews’ allow themselves to live in such extreme disadvantage if they were supposedly so powerful? And once the killings started, another question was pertinent: Why weren’t ‘the Jews’ using their supposedly enormous power to counter the savagery of the Russian pogroms and of the Nazi Final Solution? But the targets of this propaganda campaign—ordinary gentiles—for the most part did not stop to ask these questions because they were heirs to a tradition going back two-thousand years in which ‘the Jews’ had been demonized by Christian religious authorities as powerfully ‘evil,’ and moreover out to get ‘the Christians.’
Such accusations had produced many anti-Jewish massacres in the past. Analyzing the full list given at the top would keep us here too long, but the example of the fourteenth century is dramatic and instructive, because it bears a very close structural similarity to the Tsarist accusation: when 23 million europeans died in the Black Death of the fourteenth century, an imaginary Jewish conspiracy was blamed for it all, producing anti-Jewish slaughters in Europe and, in some places, exterminations.
These days we know that the Black Death was a plague epidemic originating probably in Central Asia which then spread to China, India, Egypt, all of Asia Minor, and reached Europe by 1346 or so. But the mediaeval Europeans didn’t know that. All they knew was that everybody was dying around them, and that they hated the Jews. So a rumor was circulated that all this dying originated in a Jewish scheme to poison the European drinking wells. As James Carroll explains in his history of Western antisemitism:
“. . .survivors in the cities [devastated by the plague] thought they knew the cause: a well-poisoning conspiracy of Jews. . . A masterly rumor identified a native of Toledo, one Jacob Pascal, whose name suggested Passover, as the initiator of the plot. A cabal (a word we have from ‘Kabbalah’) of Iberian Jews was the supplier of poison to Jewish agents elsewhere in Europe—a first international conspiracy. Jews in Geneva, under torture, confessed that the rumor was true, which was all it took. As had been the case during the Crusades, the first major conflagration of anti-Jewish violence took place in the Rhineland, where Jews were slaughtered in large numbers. One chronicler reported that twelve thousand were put to death in Mainz—an echo of [the Crusade of] 1096. . . .‘By the time the plague had passed,’ [historian] Barbara Tuchman observed, ‘few Jews were left in Germany or the Low Countries.’”[4]
The Jews also suffered as direct victims of the Black Death, of course, but the enraged Christians who thought they were defending themselves by exterminating the Jews did not stop to ask themselves why the Jews would poison themselves. Later, neither would Europeans in the twentieth century stop to examine the absurdities in The Protocols of Zion. The general similarities between the two cases are so striking that it is impossible not to see a causal chain at work: one accusation lays the ground for the next.
Even by the standards of the time, the Black Death accusations against the Jewish people were spectacularly absurd. Consider only that “About half of Norway’s population died when the Black Death (a plague epidemic) struck in 1349-50,”[5] so Norway suffered about as badly as England did.[6] And yet it should have been obvious to everybody that ‘the Jews’ had no opportunity to poison wells in Norway.
“Norwegians converted from paganism to Christianity in the course of nearly 100 years, largely as a result of coercive measures. In the year 1000, all non-Christians were banned from Norway in an effort to institutionalize Christianity as the national religion. Although the ban was presumably targeted at pagan adherents, it also put Norway out of bounds for Jews for over 800 years.”[7]
There were no Jews in Norway in 1349.
So this raises the question: Even if European Christians hated the Jews, still, how could they defy all logic to believe anything so ridiculous as the accusation that the Jewish people were responsible for the Black Death? Simple: ‘the Jews’ were supposed to be powerfully, and even supernaturally, ‘evil.’ After all, weren’t Christians hearing from their religious authorities every Sunday that ‘the Jews’ had killed God? If they were capable of that, then what wouldn’t—and what couldn’t—‘the Jews’ do?
That first and most dramatic accusation (‘deicide,’ the killing of God), which appears in the canonical gospels, is false. Whether or not you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was God incarnate, the historical fact is that Jesus was executed by the Romans, something that even the gospels make clear. Of course, the gospels represent the Roman governor in Judea, Pontius Pilate, as reluctantly executing Jesus because he was threatened by ‘the Jews,’ who angrily demanded Jesus’ crucifixion. But there are several reasons why that particular claim is absurd.
First of all, the Jewish people were one of the largest populations in the Roman Empire, and they were spread out all over the Mediterranean and beyond.[8] More than 99.99% of the Jewish population, therefore, simply could not be present at Jesus’ execution. The only people who could have been there were a small fraction of the Jerusalem Jews. So it is impossible that ‘the Jews’—as a people—killed God even if we assume that Jesus was God incarnate and that the account in the gospels is reasonably historical.
But we cannot assume that the passion account in the gospels is reasonably historical. All the ancient documents we have making reference to Pontius Pilate, outside of the gospels, are consistent: Pontius Pilate was a monster who executed Jews for fun, and who delighted in provoking them.[9] He hardly needed to be threatened by an angry mob in order to execute a Jew who made trouble for Rome.
And Jesus made trouble for Rome.
“All the High Priests [of the Jerusalem Temple] whom we see in the gospel narratives,” as historian Fergus Millar explains, “were Roman appointees,” which means the Temple was at this time a center of Roman collaboration.[10] The Romans naturally needed to prop up the prestige of the Temple against the intellectual and physical attacks of Jewish revolutionaries, the better to wield the Temple’s authority for Rome’s benefit. Therefore, if Jesus was arrested for causing a commotion in the Temple, as the gospels assert, then Jesus was making trouble for Rome; Pilate, who enjoyed killing Jews anyway, cannot have been reluctant to execute Jesus.
Finally, consider that crucifixion was a sacrilege to the Jews, and a symbol of the oppression of the Romans against them, which was extreme. Why would a Jewish mob demand the crucifixion of a fellow Jew? Here, for context, is another passage from James Carroll’s history of Western antisemitism:
“In the year 4 BCE, which also happened to be the year of Jesus’ birth, Herod the Great died. His death left a temporary power vacuum, which caused violent outbreaks among forces loyal to various pretenders to succeed Herod as Rome’s client king and among the followers of messianic movements who sought to seize an opening against Rome. The Romans smashed every rebellion and, with those legions pouncing from Syria, restored direct imperial rule. As summed up by the scholars Richard Horsely and Neil Asher Silberman: ‘The Roman armies swept through many of the towns and villages of the country, raping, killing and destroying nearly everything in sight. In Galilee, all centers of rebellion were brutally suppressed; the rebel-held town of Sepphoris was burned to the ground, and all its surviving inhabitants were sold into slavery.’ Thousands of Jews were killed. Villages in Galilee were laid waste. In Jerusalem where rebels had briefly taken charge, the Romans showed the lengths to which they were prepared to go to maintain control by swiftly executing anyone even suspected of collusion with the rebellion—Josephus puts the number at two thousand. The Roman means of execution, of course, was crucifixion, and Josephus makes the point that indeed the victims were crucified. This means that just outside the wall of the Jewish capital, crosses were erected—not three lonely crosses on a hill, as in the tidy Christian imagination, but perhaps two thousand in close proximity. On each was hung a Jew, and each Jew was left to die over several days of suffocation, as muscles gave out so that the victim could no longer hold himself erect enough to catch a breath. And once squeezed free of life, the corpses were left on their crosses to be eaten by buzzards.”[11]
Believing that an angry Jewish mob in first-century Judea demanded of Pontius Pilate that Jesus be crucified is exactly like believing that an angry Jewish mob in twentieth-century Germany demanded of Adolf Hitler that a controversial rabbi be sent to Auschwitz. This is not even remotely plausible, no matter what controversy had been sparked by the rabbi.
The accusation that ‘the Jews’ had killed God, once much of the eastern Mediterranean had begun to convert to Christianity, helped the Romans carry out an anti-Jewish extermination in the first and second centuries that can only be compared to the Nazi Final Solution, and which may have outdone it in relative terms. James Carroll writes:
“. . .in the climactic war of 66-73 CE [the first ‘Jewish War’], . . .Jerusalem was laid waste and hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed (Josephus and Tacitus put the number of Jewish dead in this first war at around 600,000; in the second ‘Jewish War’ sixty years later, the tally for Jewish victims is put at 850,000). . . [T]he vast number of victims were killed without the mechanized methods that make modern warfare so lethal, which is why analogies between Rome and the worst of twentieth century dictators [i.e. Adolf Hitler] may not be misplaced here. …if the [Roman] legions had had machine guns, bombs, railroads, and gas at their disposal, who is to say that any Jew would have survived the second century?”[12]
That looks bad enough, but in fact Carroll neglects to mention the ‘Diaspora Revolt,’ a genocidal installment that took place between the two ‘Jewish Wars’: “Historians estimate that many hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the Romans and Greeks during the ‘Diaspora Revolt’ of 115-17 CE.”[13] The sum total is that the pattern of absurd accusations followed by anti-Jewish exterminations began early, some two thousand years ago. Each accusation has made the next one seem plausible.
A cultural inertia.
Now, since there have been anti-Jewish massacres in Europe for a long time, and since, in modern times, they have been preceded by absurd accusations of super-powerful Jewish conspiracies, one would expect modern, educated people to be ready to identify the next such absurd accusation. Worryingly, they are not.
Today the world is awash with the twin rumors that Israel supposedly controls the lone superpower’s hated foreign policy, and that ‘the Jews’ supposedly control the mainstream Western media. Few people seem to think that there is anything too alarming in such beliefs, despite their having the same basic structure as the Black Death accusation which led to anti-Jewish exterminations in the fourteenth century, and despite being practically identical to the Protocols of Zion accusations, which led to anti-Jewish exterminations in the twentieth century. The Jewish people certainly do not appear to think that they are on the eve of another catastrophe, just as they also didn’t want to believe the worst prior to the Nazi genocides in which 5 to 6 million European Jews were annihilated. But from the historical perspective the current climate should be alarming in the extreme.
In 2003, Mahathir Mohammed, the former prime minister of Malaysia, said the following:
“We [Muslims] are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people [the total Muslim population] cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.
. . .They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.”[14]
The ‘evil’ Jews, says Mahathir, invented human rights and democracy because they thought they had a right to equality with others, and so that persecuting Jews would appear wrong. Are you following this argument? Mahathir blames the Jews for inventing human rights and democracy.
Mahathir is a fascist.
Mahathir obviously agrees that in the past the Jewish people have been persecuted and did not enjoy equal rights (which he defends). This means that, in his view, ‘the Jews’ were not controlling the world when “Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million.” But according to Mahathir matters are different today, for ‘the Jews,’ he says, “have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.” And ‘the Jews’ are going to use this secret world power to do…what? Why, to wipe out the Muslims, says Mahathir! But Muslims shouldn’t just stand still and wait for this to happen: “We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. . .”
The above are just two excerpts from a speech in which Mahathir hammered away at the same point in a million different ways: ‘The super-powerful Jews are out to get us, and we need to defend ourselves before it is too late.’ The speech opened the 10th Organization of the Islamic Conference Summit, attended by every Muslim head of state in the world.
Mahathir got a standing ovation.
This is clearly designed to whip up hysterical fear of the Jews, just as Adolf Hitler’s identical accusations also were, with disastrous results. And Mahathir’s effort is not an isolated one. The old Tsarist hoax, The Protocols of Zion, is a bestseller in the Muslim world (and elsewhere) today. Consider only that state-owned Egyptian TV recently created a 40-part series entitled Horseman Without a Horse that has been viewed all over the world, and which is a dramatization of The Protocols of Zion.[15] And yet educated people are by and large not rushing to point out that an imminent anti-Jewish massacre is being prepared by such high-profile—and widely agreed upon—accusations, which are not radically different from the constant refrain heard in the West: that Israel and ‘the Jewish lobby’ supposedly control US foreign policy, and that ‘the Jews’ supposedly control the Western mass media (and all the banks!).
About the climate in the West, consider only what US presidential candidate Ralph Nader said in 2004, during the presidential campaign:
“The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes to the United States and meets with the puppet in the White House and then proceeds to Capitol Hill, where he meets with hundreds of other puppets, should be replaced.”[16]
Nader is supposedly a leftist, but what he says is indistinguishable from what the ultra-right-wing neo-Nazi websites write.[17]
It seems, therefore, that we are well on our way to proving George Santayana correct, once again. If these baseless and hysterical beliefs are once again allowed to run amok without contest, we are headed for another catastrophe.
So I will contest them.
I have already traced elsewhere the history of US foreign policy towards the Jewish people from the 1930s to the present, in order to demonstrate that this policy has been consistently and radically anti-Jewish, and continues to be, becoming more anti-Jewish all the time, contrary to the common belief and to Mahathir’s and Nader’s mouth-foaming rantings.[18] I have also documented that the so-called ‘Jewish lobby’ does not produce pro-Israeli policies—in fact, what AIPAC (the most visible organ in the ‘Jewish lobby’) does is promote pro-PLO US policies.[19] In this piece I will document that neither do ‘the Jews’ control the Western mass media, and that in fact the media goes out of its way to attack the Jewish people.
The argument
Before I do anything else, let me lay out two hypotheses concerning the type of interest that may be behind what gets said in the Western mass media, and specify what kind of evidence will support one hypothesis against another.
Hypothesis 1: A pro-Jewish interest controls the Western mass media.
Hypothesis 2: An anti-Jewish interest controls the Western mass media.
If the media lies in order to defend the Jews, and in order to paint the enemies of the Jews unfairly in a bad light, then the hypothesis of a pro-Jewish interest controlling the media will be supported. By the same token, to find the media lying in order to attack the Jews, and in order to paint their enemies unfairly in a good light, will support the second hypothesis, namely, that an anti-Jewish interest controls the mass media.
I will not be the first to argue and document that the Western mass media has an anti-Jewish bias. But the example I will rely on to make my case will show that the mass media is not merely biased but consciously duplicitous, thereby providing the strongest possible demonstration that it is anti-Jewish.
I will look closely at the activities of two people: Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro, both of them ‘former CIA officials.’ I will establish, in this order,
1) that McGovern and Cannistraro are darlings of the Western mass media, which media puts them prominently on display;
2) that any fool with twenty minutes of time can easily demonstrate that McGovern and Cannistraro are liars who, by the way, used to train terrorists for a living;
3) that the Western mass media (naturally) knows this about McGovern and Cannistraro, but it does not share it with the public;
4) that McGovern and Cannistraro, employing spectacular lies, go out of their way to attack Israel and defend Israel’s terrorist enemies in the mass media; and
5) that McGovern’s and Cannistraro’s widely reproduced criticisms of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq are carefully designed to make ‘the Jews’ appear as supposedly in control of the US government for nefarious ends, producing a modern version of that old slander, The Protocols of Zion.
Footnotes and Further Reading
[00] Cornwell, J. 2000. El papa de Hitler: La verdadera historia de Pio XII. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta. (p.40)
In English: Cornwell, J. 1999. Hitler’s pope: The secret history of Pius XII. New York: Viking.
[0] To read about this, consult:
Nathans, Benjamin. 2002. Beyond the Pale: The Jewish encounter with late imperial Russia, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. (pp.26-38)
[1] This footnote contains discussion of two pogroms. The first took place inside the Russian Empire, where the word ‘pogrom’ originates, in the town of Kishinev [Kih-shee-nuh-yev], in 1903, and the events are related by historian Amos Elon. The second took place in British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and the events are related by Kenneth Levin (who quotes at length the writings of eye-witness Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson).
KISHINEV:
“On April 19 an outrage occurred in the small Bessarabian town of Kishinev, which, in less than 48 hours, left 45 local Jews lying dead, and nearly 600 wounded; 1,500 shops and homes were pillaged or destroyed. The church bells were ringing on Easter Sunday, when a wild mob, undoubtedly acting on a given signal, rushed through the narrow streets killing Jews and setting fire to their homes and stores. In the past few decades Kishiniev’s Christian population of some 60,000 had lived peacefully alongside 50,000 Jewish artisans and small shopkeepers. The only newspaper in the town was a sensational anti-Semitic journal, the Bessarabitz, subsidized by the czarist Ministry of the Interior from a special slush fund. In recent months the Bessarabitz had waged a vicious campaign against the Jews of Kishinev, accusing them of ritual murder of Christian babies and of sponsoring, at the same time, both socialist revolution and the capitalist exploitation of Christians.
The police made no attempt to interfere in the widespread killing, looting, and arson. For almost twenty-four hours, while the army was ordered by the provincial governor to remain in its barracks, the mob ran amok. Nails were driven into victim’s skulls, eyes gouged out, and babies thrown from higher stories of buildings to the pavement. Men were castrated, women were raped. The local bishop drove in his carriage through the crowd, blessing it as he passed. Only on the evening of the second day did the police appear on the scene to disperse the mob. By then the devastation had been accomplished. It was generally believed that Konstantin Pobedenostsev, the Czar’s close adviser and head of the Holy Synod, had inspired the outrage in order to divert popular sentiments from the social revolutionists.
Pobedenostsev’s own solution of the Jewish problem was known to be three-pronged: a third would convert, a third would emigrate, and a third would die. It was widely reported that Wenzel von Plehve, the czarist Minister of the Interior, had instructed the provincial governor of Kishinev not to be overzealous in his protection of the Jews. At Kishinev the government was testing a new technique to drown the revolutionary fervor in Jewish blood. News of the pogrom was suppressed in the Russian newspapers, which merely stated that there had been a sudden outbreak provoked by the Jews.”
SOURCE: Elon, A. 1975. Herzl. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston. (pp.373-374)
JERUSALEM: The following account of the 1920 anti-Jewish racist riots in Jerusalem is from Kenneth Levin:
“The British, in the [WWI] postwar years, were attempting to maintain their Middle East territories with very limited forces and were indeed concerned with minimizing local unrest. But, of course, this does not account for [British] Mandate [in ‘Palestine’] officers working as agents provocateurs and stirring up anti-Jewish violence or for British authorities failing to quell Arab riots when they were fully able to do so. Nor does it explain the [British] Military Administration’s preventing local Jewish units—elements of the Jewish Battalions—from coming to the defense of the Jews of Jerusalem. [The Jewish leader Vladimir Zeev] Jabotinsky, who tried to organize defense, was arrested by the British and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He was soon released by only in the context of an amnesty extended also to the rioters. The British chose to construe the Jewish units’ attempts to defend the Jews of Jerusalem as an intolerable breach of military discipline and disbanded the units.
Liuetenant Colonel John Patterson, a non-Jewish British officer who had commanded the Zion Mule Corps in Gallipolli [a Jewish force that fought with distinction on the British side during WWI], was subsequently appointed commander of the 38th Jewish Battalion and led the battalion in the [WWI] Palestine campaign [during which the British wrested control of ‘Palestine’ from the Ottoman Turks]. Patterson wrote extensively of the anti-Jewish depredations to which his [Jewish] troops, and the Jewish population of Palestine, were subjected by the British military’s forces in Palestine under Allenby (the Egyptian Expeditionary Force) and later by the Military Administration. These depredations emanated both from the command structure and, in the wake of evident command tolerance, from the rank and file. With regard to Arab attacks on the Jews in April, 1920, in Jerusalem, Patterson, referring to the assault as ‘the Jerusalem pogrom,’ noted the Military Administration’s encouragement of the violence, its failure to intervene to stop it, its blocking of intervention by Jewish troops, its attempts to use the Arab assault as an excuse to curb Zionist programs, and its scapegoating of Jabotinsky.
Patterson wrote, for example, of the events of April, 1920, ‘A veritable ‘pogrom,’ such as we have hitherto only associated with Tsarist [Czarist] Russia, took place in the Holy City of Jerusalem in April, 1920, and as this was the climax to the maladministration of the Military Authorities, I consider that the facts of the case should be made public...
‘The Balfour Declaration [which gave Britain the responsibility of establishing a Jewish homeland in British Mandate ‘Palestine’]...was never allowed [by the Military Administration] to be officially published within the borders of Palestine; the Hebrew language was proscribed; there was open discrimination against the Jews; the Jewish Regiment was at all times kept in the background and treated as a pariah. This official attitude was interpreted by the hooligan element and interested schemers in the only possible way, viz., that the military authorities in Palestine were against the Jews and Zionism, and the conviction began to grow [within Arab circles] that any act calculated to deal a death blow to Zionist aspirations would not be unwelcome by those in authority...
‘Moreover, this malign influence was sometimes strengthened by very plain speaking. The Military Governor of an important town was actually heard to declare...in the presence of British and French Officers and of Arab waiters, that in case of anti-Jewish riots in his city, he would remove the garrison and take up his position at a window, where he could watch, and laugh at, what went on!
‘This amazing declaration was reported to the Acting Chief Administrator, and the Acting Chief Political Officer, but no action was taken against the Governor. Only one interpretation can be placed on such leniency.’
Patterson, as quoted in Chapter 5, wrote elsewhere of the Arab attacks, ‘There can be no doubt that it was assumed in some quarters that when trouble, which had been deliberately encouraged, arose, the Home Government, embarrassed by a thousand difficulties at its doors, would agree with the wire-pullers in Palestine, and say to the Jewish people that the carrying out of the Balfour Declaration, owing to the hostility displayed by the Arabs, was outside the range of practical politics.’”
SOURCE: Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (pp.203-204)
To learn more about the dramatic British support for anti-Jewish terrorist violence in British Mandate ‘Palestine’, visit:
“HOW DID THE ‘PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT’ EMERGE?: The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US”; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
[1a] “The Protocols of Zion”; Emperor’s Clothes; 26 November 2002; by Jared Israel.
http://emperors-clothes.com/antisem/protocols-1.htm
[2] “The Protocols of Zion - An Exposure: Transcript of Philip Graves’ articles published in the London Times, August 16 to 18, 1921”; Emperor’s Clothes; Posted 21 November 2002.
http://emperors-clothes.com/antisem/graves-tran.htm
The above is an easy to read transcript of the London Times article. If you would like to look at the pdfs of the original, then visit:
http://emperors-clothes.com/antisem/times-pdf.htm
[2a] “Henry Ford, who was so impressed by the efficient way meat packers slaughtered and dismantled animals in Chicago, made his own unique contribution to the slaughter of people in Europe. Not only did he develop the assembly-line method that Germans used to kill Jews, but he launched a vicious anti-Semitic campaign that helped make the Holocaust happen.
In the early 1920s Ford’s weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, published a series of articles based on the text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic tract that had been circulating in Europe. Ford published a book-length compilation of the articles entitled The International Jew, which was translated into most of the European languages and was widely disseminated by anti-Semites, chief among them the German publisher Theodor Fritsch, an early supporter of Hitler. Thanks to a well-financed publicity campaign and the prestige of the Ford name, The International Jew was hugely successful both domestically and internationally.
The International Jew found its most receptive audience in Germany where it was known as The Eternal Jew. Ford was enormously popular in Germany. When his autobiography went on sale there, it immediately became the country’s number one bestseller. In the early 1920s The Eternal Jew quickly became the bible of the German anti-Semitism, with Fritsch’s publishing house printing six editions between 1920 and 1922.
After Ford’s book came to the attention of Hitler in Munich, he used a shortened version of it in the Nazi propaganda war against the Jews of Germany. In 1923 a Chicago Tribune correspondent in Germany reported that Hitler’s organization in Munich was ‘sending out Mr. Ford’s books by the carload.’ Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth movement and the son of an aristocratic German father and American mother, said at the postwar Nuremberg war crimes trial that he became a convinced anti-Semite at age seventeen after reading The Eternal Jew. ‘You have no idea what a great influence this book had on the thinking of German youth. The younger generation looked with envy to symbols of success and prosperity like Henry Ford, and if he said the Jews were to blame, why naturally we believed him.’
Hitler regarded Ford as a comrade-in-arms and kept a life-sized portrait of him on the wall next to his desk in his office in Munich. In 1923 when Hitler heard that Ford might run for President of the United States, he told an American reporter, ‘I wish that I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections. We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascist movement in America. We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. The book is being circulated in millions throughout Germany.’ Hitler praised Ford in Mein Kampf, the only American to be singled out. In 1931, when a Detriot News reporter asked Hitler what Ford’s portrait on the wall meant to him, Hitler said, ‘I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.’”
SOURCE: “Animals, Slavery, and the Holocaust”; Logos; Spring 2005; vol. 4, iss. 2.; by Charles Patterson
http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/patterson.htm
[3] Cohn, N. 1981. Warrant for genocide: The myth of the Jewish world-conspiracy and the Protocols of the elders of Zion. Chico, CA: Scholar’s Press.
[4] Carroll, J. 2001. Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (p.339)
[5] Diamond, J. M. 2005. Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking. (p.267)
[6] “The population in England in 1400 was perhaps half what it had been 100 years earlier; in that country alone, the Black Death certainly caused the depopulation or total disappearance of about 1,000 villages.”
SOURCE: “Black Death.” Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8420/eb/article-9015473
[Accessed August 7, 2005].
[7] “Jews in Norway”; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_in_Norway
[8] Historian Robert Wolfe puts the Jews at 10% of the Mediterranean population. William Horbury says 8-9%, and that’s the lowest estimate I have seen. Some say higher than 10%.
Wolfe, R. 2003. The origins of the messianic ideal. New York: J-Rep. (p.59)
Horbury, W. 1991. “The Jewish dimension,” in Early Christianity: Origins and evolution to AD 600. In honor of WHC Frend. Edited by I. Hazlett. London: SPCK. (p.40)
The Acts of the Apostles (2:5-11) mentions that Jerusalem was full of “Jews from every nation” who went there on pilgrimage. Here is the full list found in that text:
. . .Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphyla, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes [converts], Cretans and Arabs. . .
The first century Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo wrote in his Legatio ad Gaium (281-283) that
“. . .the Holy City [Jerusalem]. . .is the capital not of the single country of Judea but of most other countries also, because of the colonies which it has sent out from time to time to the neighboring lands of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Syria. . ., to the distant countries of Pamphylia, Cilicia, most of Asia as far as Bithynia and the remote corners of Pontus, and in the same way to Europe, to Thessaly, Boetia, Macedonia, Aetolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, and most of the best parts of the Peloponnese. It is not only the continents that are full of Jewish colonies. So are the best known of the islands, Euboea, Cyprus, and Crete. I say nothing about the regions beyond the Euphrates. With the exception of a small district, all of them, Babylon and those of the other satrapies which have fertile land around them, have Jewish settlers. . .in Europe, Asia, and Libya, in continents and islands, in coastal and inland regions. . .”
[9] Here’s just one example from a long list of deliberate provocations by Pilate meant to give him an excuse to harass and kill Jews. He built an aqueduct in Jerusalem and appropriated money from the Temple to finance it, despite the fact that the Temple funds - even from the point of view of Roman law - were sacrosanct. When an angry crowd gathered to protest this, Pilate was ready for them, and had “ordered soldiers to dress in plainclothes, conceal their weapons, and mingle with the people.” When the crowd didn’t disperse he gave the order, and the mingled soldiers attacked. “Several people were killed, and others were trampled to death in the stampede that followed.”
SOURCE: Pagels, E. 1995. The Origin of Satan. New York: Random House. (pp.30-31)
[10] Millar, F. 1993. The Roman Near East: 31 BC -AD 337. London: Harvard University Press. (p.45)
[11] Carroll, J. 2001. Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (p.83)
[12] Carroll, J. 2001. Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (p.90)
[13] Wolfe, R. 2003. The origins of the messianic ideal. New York: J-Rep. (pp.58-59)
[14] “Dr Mahathir opens 10th OIC Summit: Update from The Star News Desk”; The Star Online; Thursday October 16, 2003.
http://www.mathaba.net/gci/news/mahathir.htm
Recommended:
“What do the EU, George Bush and Malaysian PM Mahathir have in Common? (Could it be they’re all pushing the politics of antisemitism?)”; Empeor’s Clothes; 26 November 2003; By Jared Israel.
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/eureport.htm
[15] “The Protocols of Zion”; Emperor’s Clothes; 26 November 2002; by Jared Israel.
http://emperors-clothes.com/antisem/protocols-1.htm
[16] Mr. Nader’s Baiting, The Washington Post, August 15, 2004 Sunday, Final Edition, Editorial; B06, 448 words
[17] For example, the Washington Post article above compared the quote from Nader to this, from the neo-Nazi National Alliance:
“Bush also repeated the catch-phrase . . . ‘committed to the security of Israel as a Jewish state,’ which is repeated almost word-for-word again and again by Israel’s sycophants and Capitol Hill puppets.”
[18] “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm
[19] “WHAT IS AIPAC FOR?: Does the so-called ‘Jewish Lobby’ produce pro-Israeli US foreign policy, or the opposite?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 5 May 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/aipac.htm
2. The mainstream Western media loves Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA agents and anti-Israeli propagandists.
Very few people get as much media exposure as Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro, and that is what I will establish here.
The first record I can find of Raymond McGovern expressing himself in the media as a pundit, after retiring from the CIA, is an 822-word editorial published in 1999 by the Boston Globe.[1] In 2000, the Christian Science Monitor published a Raymond McGovern Op-Ed, and another one in 2001.[2] Then it really took off. In 2002 USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today again, the Boston Globe, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Washington Post all carried editorials by Raymond McGovern.[3] His pieces expressed opinions concerning intelligence and foreign policy matters and his past CIA experience was invariably listed as a credential either in the headline or in the signature.
Then, in January of 2003, Raymond McGovern and other ex-spies founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), an organization that specializes in criticizing the US government for perceived intelligence and foreign policy failures.[4] Immediately following that, the mainstream Western press began using Raymond McGovern as an ‘expert source’ for quotes and wise reflections, and as a news item, in their news stories, whenever he or VIPS said anything in public about US intelligence. This happened at the Guardian, the New York Times, the Ottawa Citizen, several times at the Independent (London), the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), the St. Petersburg Times (Florida), the Denver Post, the Buffalo News, and the New Zealand Herald.[5] Towards the end of the year the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gave Raymond McGovern an interview.[6]
TV and Radio also got very interested in McGovern in 2003 and used him both as an interview subject and a source of sound bites. This was done by News World International, KGO-AM (more than once), KPFA (more than once), CNN (lots of times), FOX News (a few times), NBC News, MSNBC (more than once), CNBC, WFLA-TV, KUSA-TV, Channel NewsAsia (more than once), and National Public Radio (NPR).[7]
From that point onwards Raymond McGovern has continued to be all over the place, and the press has vouched for him left and right as an ‘expert’ on intelligence matters whose only necessary credential is that he used to work for the CIA.
Let me now give you a sense for how dramatically Raymond McGovern is vouched for.
In August 2004, the New York Times published a review of Robert Greenwald’s film “Uncovered: The War on Iraq” that gushes with praise: “Mr. Greenwald’s film is sober and meticulous.” (Greenwald’s film is in fact a parade of ‘former CIA’ people giving their opinions, but never mind that.) In addition, says the NYT:
“Mr. Greenwald focuses on a simple, demonstrable point: that the war in Iraq was sold to Congress and the American public through a coordinated series of public misstatements that at best look like wishful thinking and at worst like outright deception.”[8]
And the NYT also writes,
“. . .the star of the show is Ray McGovern, an articulate and dryly funny former C.I.A. analyst who now heads the anti-invasion group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.”
So the most prestigious newspaper in the world defends the trustworthiness of a film that is a collection of quotes from ‘former CIA’ people, and that has for star one Raymond McGovern. Thus, by implication, the New York Times defends the trustworthiness of Raymond McGovern—adding, for good measure, that he is likeable: “articulate and dryly funny.”
The mainstream Western media also loves Vincent Cannistraro. They quote and interview him incessantly as an authoritative ‘expert’ on intelligence and foreign policy issues, and his only credential is, again, that he used to work for the CIA.
A July 2005 search for Vincent Cannistraro in Lexis-Nexis (which archives a great deal of what the Western media publishes) turned up more than 700 news articles in major papers in which he was quoted or interviewed as an expert ever since the Washington Post celebrated his “debut” in this capacity in 1990. That gives an average of more than 4 quotes or interviews per month—and that’s just in the major papers, not all of them archived by Lexis-Nexis.
In addition, Cannistraro has penned his own pieces in the major papers. He has done this at the Washington Post (three times), the St. Petersburg Times (Florida), and the Boston Globe (twice).[9]
For its part, the radio and TV world does not merely interview Vincent Cannistraro constantly on all matters having to do with security, intelligence, and foreign policy, presenting him always as an expert for having been “chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s counterterrorism center”; they have also put him on the staff. Thus, he is now “Vince Cannistraro, an ABC News analyst and former CIA counterterrorism chief.”[10]
McGovern and Cannistraro are ‘former CIA officials’ who get an enormous amount of air time in the Western mass media, teaching ordinary people what they are supposed to think concerning intelligence and foreign policy issues. In particular, as I will show later, McGovern and Cannistraro specialize in attacking Israel and defending the Jewish state’s terrorist enemies. I will examine such arguments in detail. But first let us ask the general question: Should you believe ‘former CIA officials’?
Why should you?
Footnotes and Further Reading
[1] How lies replaced intelligence at the CIA; RAY McGOVERN; Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990. During the ‘60s his responsibilities included analysis of Soviet policy toward Vietnam. , The Boston Globe, October 7, 1999, Thursday, ,City Edition, OP-ED; Pg. A27, 822 words, By Ray McGovern
[2] Unequal in the eyes of justice?, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), September 18, 2000, Monday, OPINION; Pg. 11, 598 words, Ray McGovern, WASHINGTON
A defining moment in history, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), September 17, 2001, Monday, OPINION; Pg. 20, 2484 words. “Shades of Vietnam,” by Ray McGovern.
[3] Congress can’t fix fractured intelligence, USA TODAY, May 22, 2002, Wednesday,, FINAL EDITION, NEWS;, Pg. 10A, 488 words
Protecting the homeland: Don’t jeopardize intelligence links, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), July 25, 2002, Thursday, OPINION; Pg. 09, 697 words, Ray McGovern, WASHINGTON
Appeasement wrong policy toward Iraq, USA TODAY, September 12, 2002, Thursday,, FINAL EDITION, NEWS;, Pg. 12A, 615 words
RAY MCGOVERN Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1964-90, is now co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington.; HOW ‘INTELLIGENCE’ NOW SERVES THE DEFENSE DEPT., The Boston Globe, September 29, 2002, Sunday, ,THIRD EDITION, Pg. D11, 812 words, BY RAY MCGOVERN
The best intelligence? CIA, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin), November 22, 2002 Friday, FINAL EDITION, Pg. 19A, 811 words, RAY MCGOVERN
President Bush’s Selection of Henry Kissinger, The Washington Post, December 2, 2002 Monday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. A20, 343 words
[4] The Skeptical Spy; News: Ray McGovern is tearing away at the nation’s mismanaged and malfunctioning intelligence apparatus, all in an effort to save it; Ray McGovern Interviewed By Michael W. Robbins; Mother Jones; March 10, 2004.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/03/03_400.html
[5] Threat of war: Region: Secret report throws doubt on democracy hopes: Domino theory discounted, The Guardian (London), March 15, 2003, Guardian Home Pages, Pg. 5, 637 words, Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Save Our Spooks , The New York Times, May 30, 2003 Friday, Late Edition - Final , Section A; Column 6; Editorial Desk; Pg. 27, 727 words, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Public was misled on Iraq: Ex-CIA officials: Bush administration ‘cooked’ weapons intelligence, group charges, Ottawa Citizen, May 31, 2003 Saturday Final Edition, News; Pg. A13, 474 words, Tim Reid, WASHINGTON
IRAQ AFTERMATH: RUMSFELD CHANGES TACK BY INSISTING THAT WMD WILL BE FOUND, The Independent (London), May 31, 2003, Saturday, NEWS; Pg. 8, 510 words, PAUL WAUGH DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR Donald Rumsfeld: Set up his own intelligence unit
THE IRAQ WEAPONS MIRAGE; THIS COULD INDEED BE ‘A POLICY AND INTELLIGENCE FIASCO OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), June 2, 2003 Monday, SOONER EDITION, Pg.A-15, 732 words, NEW YORK
IRAQ AFTERMATH: CHENEY IS ACCUSED OF PRESSURING THE CIA BEFORE WAR TO BEEF UP WEAPONS EVIDENCE, The Independent (London), June 6, 2003, Friday, NEWS; Pg. 10, 566 words, RUPERT CORNWELL IN WASHINGTON
Missing: Iraq WMD, American credibility, St. Petersburg Times (Florida), June 8, 2003 Sunday, PERSPECTIVE; Pg. 1D, 1578 words, DAVID BALLINGRUD
Cheney’s intelligence role scrutinized Critics say VP’s influence in making case for war may have led to faulty statements, The Denver Post, July 23, 2003 Wednesday, FINAL EDITION, Pg. A-01, 2518 words, John Aloysius Farrell , Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
THE EPIC SLAUGHTER IN IRAQ ALSO DESERVES AN INQUIRY; THE OVERVIEW, Independent on Sunday (London), August 24, 2003, Sunday, COMMENT; Pg. 22, 1157 words, JOHN PILGER
OUTING PLAME WAS UNWISE, UNFORTUNATE FOR JOURNALISM, Buffalo News (New York), October 6, 2003 Monday, FINAL EDITION Correction Appended, EDITORIAL PAGE, Pg.B4, 801 words, WASHINGTON
INTELLIGENCE: CASE FOR WAR CONFECTED, SAY TOP US OFFICIALS; HIGH-RANKING FORMER PENTAGON AND CIA FIGURES VENT ANGER AT, Independent on Sunday (London), November 9, 2003, Sunday, FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 19, 1036 words, ANDREW GUMBEL IN LOS ANGELES Dick Cheney: accused of leaning on the CIA; Colin Powell, right, with CIA director George Tenet at the UN headquarters KATHY WILLENS/AP
NO PRESIDENT HAS LIED SO BALDLY AND SO OFTEN AND SO DEMONSTRABLY’ Ray McGovern: voicing the concerns of the CIA, Independent on Sunday (London), November 9, 2003, Sunday, FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 19, 469 words
Case for war made up, say top names, The New Zealand Herald, November 10, 2003 Monday, NEWS; World, 899 words, By ANDREW GUMBEL in Los Angeles
[6] Q & A / RAY McGOVERN, former CIA analyst: ‘We’re trying to spread a little truth’, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 7, 2003 Sunday, Home Edition, Pg. 2F, 948 words, DAN CHAPMAN
[7] START: 00:21:06; Insight; Washington is standing by its conviction. Visual - Kuwait. Soldiers have been looking around to find biological weapons. Sound Bites - Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, saying that the weapons will be found. Sound Bites - President Bush saying that he is tired of Iraq. Interview - Ray McGovern, fmr CIA, saying that the UN should take over the search. Sound Bites - Gen. Tommy Franks, US Central Command, saying that they are looking at several sites. :LR END: 00:24:16 ; International News First, Video Monitoring Services of America, April 14, 2003, Monday, 18:00-18:30 ET, News World International, Television, National Cable, 87 words, 14, nwi18000414.
START: 14.42 Teased Segment - Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Interview - spokesperson Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, by phone; discusses issue that information given to President Bush was warped, says the CIA did not find the “correct” answers for what Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted to do, says they created their own intelligence agency that came up with the “correct” answers to support their goals, played on the trauma of 9-11, says Congress was lied to, explains their purpose of preserving the ethics of intelligence, states his loyalty to Bush, Sr, says Richard Perle and others were kept at arm’s length during the first Bush term, he says the Senate Intelligence Committee chair Pat Roberts is a joke, a captive of the intelligence community, says Gen Scowcroft needs to conduct an independent investigation. END: 21.05 ; Morning Drive Time, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 2, 2003, Monday, 06:00-07:00 PT, KGO-AM, Television, Local Radio, 144 words, 7, rkgo06000602
START: 08.30 […] Interview - Ray McGovern, briefed President Reagan during the ‘80s, explains the intelligence can be manufactured to support an administration’s war; President Johnson actions during the Vietnam War reviewed. McGovern mentions a report from McNeil Lehrer as per McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor, Johnson Administration, as per the lack of evidence to attack the Tonkin Gulf. He compares that report to the situation Colin Powell was in during the Iraq war. McGovern explains he and Powell grew up together in the Bronx. Ray McGovern is a former CIA agent and he is on the Steering Committee for Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity; Verna Avery Brown conducted the interview. END: 16.04 ; KPFA Evening News, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 3, 2003, Tuesday, 18:00-19:00 PT, KPFA-FM, Television, Local Radio, 303 words, 7, rkpfa1800.0603.7
INSIGHT, CNN INTERNATIONAL, INSIGHT 05:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, June 3, 2003 Tuesday, Transcript # 060301cb.k01, SHOW, NEWS; INTERNATIONAL, 3834 words, Malcolm Savidge, Ray McGovern, Daryl Kimball, Jonathan Mann, Walter Rodgers
Sharon, Abbas Shake Hands; Martha Stewart Indicted, CNN, CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN 22:00, June 4, 2003 Wednesday, Transcript # 060400CN.V84, News; International, 11764 words, James Rubin, Charles Gasparino, Scott Simon, Dennis Kucinich, Aaron Brown, John King, Christiane Amanpour, Kelly Wallace, Jeff Greenfield, Allan Chernoff, Gary Tuchman, David Ensor, Robin Oakley, Jonathan Karl, Charles Feldman
START: 00:32:32 Intelligence Questions; Recap From Above & Continuing Coverage. Visual - Helicopter/ Military Forces. Visual - Weapons. Sound Bites - John Bolton, Undersecretary Of State. Visual - Strikes In Iraq. Studio Interview - Ray McGovern, Former CIA Officer. Sound Bites - Douglas Feith, Undersecretary Of Defense. Visual - CIA HQ. David Ensor Reporting. :LR END: 00:37:04 ; American Morning, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 5, 2003, Thursday, 07:00-08:00 ET, CNN, Television, National Cable, 67 words, 23, cnn07000605
START: 00:13:18 Weapons Hunt.; White House officials are now dismissing claims that America has yet to find weapons of mass destruction. Graphic - Fox News Polll. Interview - Ray McGovern, Former CIA Analyst, says that the problem has not really been put before the American people yet. Interview - Dr. Gazi George, Former Iraqi Scientist, says that the weapons are there in a clandestine weapons of mass destruction program. Graphic - Mobile Facilities. gram ti END: 00:18:16 ; Fox News Live, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 8, 2003, Sunday, 14:00-15:00 ET, Fox News Channel, Television, National Cable, 82 words, 6, fnc14000608.
Condoleezza Rice discusses Middle East peace and Iraq, NBC News Transcripts, Meet the Press (10:00 AM ET) - NBC, June 8, 2003 Sunday, 4483 words
Allegations White House and Pentagon distorted facts to justify Iraq war, NBC News Transcripts, NBC Nightly News (6:30 PM ET) - NBC, June 9, 2003 Monday, 470 words, TOM BROKAW, ANDREA MITCHELL
LESTER HOLT LIVE For June 9, 2003, MSNBC, SHOW: LESTER HOLT LIVE 21:00, June 9, 2003 Monday, NEWS; DOMESTIC, 3793 words, Lester Holt; Andrea Mitchell; Jonas Tichenor
Allegations White House and Pentagon distorted facts to justify Iraq war, CNBC News Transcripts, The News with Brian Williams (7:00 PM ET) - CNBC, June 9, 2003 Monday, 797 words, BRIAN WILLIAMS, ANDREA MITCHELL
START: 00:11:58 Iraq.; Interview - Ray McGovern, retired CIA analyst, discusses Iraq. :LR END: 00:13:00 ; NBC 17 News At, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 10, 2003, Tuesday, 06:00-07:00 ET, WNCN-TV, Television, Local TV, 19 words, 20, wncn06000610
START: 00:04:31 Iraq.; Interview - Ray McGovern, retired CIA analyst, discusses Iraq. :LR6 seg END: 00:05:39 ; News Channel 8 Today, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 10, 2003, Tuesday, 06:00-07:00 ET, WFLA-TV, Television, Local TV, 20 words, 7, wfla06000610
START: 00:37:20 WMD Search; Continuing Coverage Of The Hunt For WMD in Iraq. Sound Bites - President Bush. Visual - Weapons Inspectors. Interview - Ray McGovern, Retired CIA Analyst. :LR END: 00:38:28 ; 9 News Six AM, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 10, 2003, Tuesday, 06:00-07:00 MT, KUSA-TV, Television, Local TV, 36 words, 33, kusa06000610
START: 00:35:00 Intel Issue.; Studio discussion on intelligence information regarding the war. Studio Interview - Wayne Simmons, former CIA operative, comments. Studio Interview - Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, comments. :LRgram ti END: 00:40:52 ; Fox News Live, Video Monitoring Services of America, June 15, 2003, Sunday, 18:00-19:00 ET, Fox News Channel, Television, National Cable, 44 words, 15, fnc18000615
US lawmakers start probe into WMD case for Iraq war, Channel NewsAsia, June 21, 2003 Saturday, WORLD, 519 words.
START: 27.02 9/11 The latest news pertaining to the Middle East and the 9/11 Panel. Phone Interview - Ray McGovern, CIA Analyst, discusses the issues pertaining to Governor Keene and the 9/11 Commission. Phone Interview - Mike Rupert, Former LAPD Officer, discusses the issues pertaining to discrepancies about 9/11. Phone Interview - Dave Patorti, Lost Brother in 9/11, discusses the issues. He mentions www.unansweredquestions.org. END: 32.32 ; KPFA Evening News, Video Monitoring Services of America, July 9, 2003, Wednesday, 18:00-19:00 PT, KPFA-FM, Television, Local Radio, 77 words, 13, rkpfa1800.0709.13
Ray McGovern discusses an open letter to President Bush demanding the resignation of Dick Cheney, National Public Radio (NPR), All Things Considered (9:00 PM ET) - NPR, July 15, 2003 Tuesday, 813 words, ROBERT SIEGEL
START: 00:21:55 […] Weapons warning from CIA Analyst Ray McGovern in the San Francsico Chronicle. Now he says the stuff doesn’t exist unless it was planted. […]END: 00:26:47 ; Fox News Live, Video Monitoring Services of America, July 17, 2003, Thursday, 12:00-13:00 ET, Fox News Channel, Television, National Cable, 228 words, 12, fnc12000717
Q&A 14:30, CNN INTERNATIONAL, Q&A WITH JIM CLANCY 02:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, July 23, 2003 Wednesday, Transcript # 072302cb.k18, SHOW, NEWS; INTERNATIONAL, 2411 words, James Carafano, Ray McGovern, Michael Holmes
Bush wants to know who blew cover of CIA agent, Channel NewsAsia, October 1, 2003 Wednesday, WORLD, 491 words
BUCHANAN & PRESS For November 10, 2003, MSNBC, SHOW: BUCHANAN & PRESS 18:00, November 10, 2003 Monday, NEWS; INTERNATIONAL, 7836 words, Pat Buchanan; Bill Press
[8] Revisiting The Road To Iraq War, Step by Step, The New York Times, August 20, 2004 Friday, Late Edition - Final, Section E; PT1; Column 6; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; FILM REVIEW; Pg. 6, 684 words, By DAVE KEHR
[9] The CIA Dinosaur, The Washington Post, September 5, 1991, Thursday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; PAGE A21, 1056 words, Vincent Cannistraro
It’s time to dismantle the CIA, St. Petersburg Times (Florida), September 6, 1991, Friday, City Edition, EDITORIAL; COLUMNS; Pg. 14A, 629 words, Vincent Cannistraro, WASHINGTON
A strike against terrorism - and ourselves? WORLD; Vincent Cannistraro is the former chief of CIA counterterrorism operations and is a consultant to ABC-TV news., The Boston Globe, August 23, 1998, Sunday, City Edition, FOCUS; Pg. E1, 1151 words, By Vincent Cannistraro.

Undetected At Home, The Washington Post, September 13, 2001 Thursday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. A31, 901 words, Vincent Cannistraro.
Assassination Is Wrong—and Dumb, The Washington Post, August 30, 2001 Thursday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. A29, 820 words, Vincent Cannistraro
THE BIG IDEA / THE NEW NEW TERRORISM Vincent Cannistraro is a former head of CIA counterterrorism operations and former director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council.; A CHANGING INTELLIGENCE PARADIGM, The Boston Globe, September 23, 2001, Sunday, ,THIRD EDITION, Pg. D8, 935 words, BY VINCENT CANNISTRARO
[10] BIN LADEN IS AT LARGE: CIA; FLED AFGHANISTAN IN DECEMBER, REPORT CLAIMS, The Toronto Sun, January 16, 2002 Wednesday,, Final Edition, News;, Pg. 12, 273 words, SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO SUN, WASHINGTON
3. Should you believe ‘former CIA officials’ such as Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro?
Many people publicly criticize the CIA and the US government. This is not surprising. But these days, quite a few of these critics are people who, we are told, used to work for the CIA. This is remarkable. McGovern and Cannistraro—media darlings—are both examples of this phenomenon.
Now, consider the following two mutually exclusive hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: ‘Former CIA’ people are telling the truth.
Hypothesis 2: ‘Former CIA’ people are telling lies.
I find the second hypothesis more immediately plausible, but a scientific preference for this hypothesis will nevertheless require a demonstration, or a series of them. I will offer one.
Who is Raymond McGovern?
Raymond McGovern is described by the press as “a retired CIA agent”[4] who “for 27 years [was] serving seven U.S. presidents and routinely presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House.”[5] More specifically, “Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 [and] during the ’60s his responsibilities included analysis of Soviet policy toward Vietnam.”[6] At this time, “Mr McGovern worked near the very top of his profession, giving direct advice to Henry Kissinger during the Nixon era.”[7] Later “Ray McGovern [became] one of President Ronald Reagan’s intelligence briefers from 1981-85”[8] when he was in charge of “preparing the President’s daily security brief.”[9] He also “briefed President Bush’s father [i.e. Bush Sr.] in the White House in the 1980’s.”[10] Close contact with Bush Sr. during those years probably explains why “Ray McGovern counts himself a personal friend of George [H.W.] Bush, the president’s father,”[11] but remarkably this does not inconvenience his new identity as “outspoken Bush [Jr.] critic Ray McGovern.”[12] Finally, although Raymond McGovern is supposedly “distinguished as a Soviet specialist and cold warrior,”[13] this is not his only specialty, for he is also called “Ray McGovern, former CIA chief for the Middle East.”[14]
As mentioned earlier, Raymond (Ray) McGovern “is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,” or VIPS.[1] This is a group of supposedly disaffected ‘former CIA officials,’ now supposedly concerned citizens, who say they want to save US Intelligence. Raymond McGovern publishes prolifically, attacking the US government left and right, and VIPS produces a constant stream of ‘memoranda,’ published in various places, addressed to the president of the United States and other officials, telling them what they ought to be doing.
According to a New York Times piece dated 30 May 2003 and entitled “Save our Spooks,” members of VIPS are very upset that the Bush administration allegedly used phony intelligence to justify the war on Iraq.
“The outrage among the intelligence professionals is so widespread that they have formed a group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, that wrote to President Bush this month to protest what it called ‘a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions.’”[2]
McGovern and VIPS have also repeatedly accused the US government of lying, and they strike a rather sanctimonious pose. Here’s McGovern:
“. . .no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably [as George Bush Jr.]. . .The presumption now has to be that he’s lying any time that he’s saying anything.”[3]
The impression one gets is not only that Raymond McGovern hates Bush Jr., but that he is really very offended by lying.
I am naturally not suggesting that the US government is honest, but the question for us is this: When ‘former CIA officials’ such as McGovern and other members of VIPS make various sorts of claims on their authority as ‘former CIA officials,’ should we believe them? To get a sense for that, let us get a better sense for Raymond McGovern.
“Ray McGovern [is] a former CIA operations officer,”[15] which is to say that “Ray McGovern [is] a 27-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service.”[16] What is the CIA’s clandestine service? As the Washington Post explains,
“[The Central Intelligence Agency’s] Directorate of Operations, the agency’s clandestine service. . ., manages the agency’s counterterrorism center, espionage and paramilitary operations.”[17]
The New York Times explains why the US ruling elite likes the CIA’s clandestine service so much:
“The appeal of covert operations is that they are relatively cheap [and] do not require American troops.”[18]
In theory, American troops cannot be launched against another country without congressional authorization and, moreover, American troops tend to be relatively visible. So “the appeal of covert operations” run out of the CIA is that they allow the US ruling elite to subvert democratic politics and do all sorts of things in secret that the United States citizenry may not agree with in the least. For example, it allows the CIA to engage in “paramilitary operations” that will employ terrorists in order to destroy foreign countries. Here follow three examples from a long list:
1) the CIA’s 1953 right-wing coup against the democratic government of Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran, which was followed by the US-sponsored and repressive right-wing dictatorship of the Shah;
2) the CIA’s 1954 right-wing coup against the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, which was followed by a US-sponsored and repressive right-wing dictatorship; and
3) the CIA training and financing of the Nicaraguan Contras, a terrorist force composed of Anastasio Somoza’s right wing thugs. Somoza was a US-sponsored repressive right-wing dictator who had been ousted by the Sandinista movement. The US-trained Contras slaughtered innocent Nicaraguan peasants wholesale for no greater crime than opposing the repressive Somoza regime under which they had suffered for many years.
Those who work for the CIA clandestine service are professional liars. This means that, rather than rush to accept the argument put forward by “Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service,” we should examine it carefully.
I do this next.
McGovern’s argument
Bush Jr.’s administration used the following argument to justify the attack on Iraq: that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons. The intelligence on that, we’ve been told, was based on a forgery. Raymond McGovern and VIPS have told everybody that they are very upset about this forgery, and McGovern recently wrote the following:
“Who authored the forgery remains a mystery—but one that our Republican-controlled Congress has avoided trying to solve. . .
So those searching for answers are reduced to asking the obvious: Cui bono? Who stood to benefit from such a forgery? A no-brainer—those lusting for war on Iraq. And who might they be? Look up the ‘neo-conservative’ writings on the website of the Project for the New American Century. There you will find information on people like Michael Ledeen, ‘Freedom Analyst’ at the American Enterprise Institute and a key strategist among ‘neoconservative’ hawks in and out of the Bush administration. Applauding the invasion of Iraq, Ledeen asserted—with equal enthusiasm—that the war could not be contained, and that ‘it may turn out to be a war to remake the world.’”[19]
McGovern is very clear. Those with a motive to produce the Iraq-Niger deception, he says, are the so-called ‘neoconservatives’ (‘neo-cons’ for short). The author of this deception, he accuses, was none other than neo-con Michael Ledeen:
“Beyond his geopolitical punditry, Ledeen’s curriculum vitae shows he is no stranger to rogue operations. A longtime Washington operative, he was fired as a ‘consultant’ for the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan for running fool’s errands for Oliver North during the Iran-Contra subterfuge. One of Ledeen’s Iran-Contra partners in crime, so to speak, was Elliot Abrams, who was convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra. Abrams was pardoned before jail time, however, by George H. W. Bush, and he is now George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser. Ledeen is said to enjoy easy entrée to the office of the vice president as well as to his friend Abrams.”
What is McGovern’s message here? That Ledeen was involved with the Iran-Contra scandal, and is still friends with the leaders of that conspiracy, who are known to be enormous liars. McGovern continues:
“During a radio interview with Ian Masters on April 3, 2005, former CIA operative Vincent Cannistraro charged that the Iraq-Niger documents were forged in the United States. Drawing on earlier speculation regarding who forged the documents, Masters asked, ‘If I were to say the name Michael Ledeen to you, what would you say?’ Cannistraro replied, ‘You’re very close.’
Ledeen has denied having anything to do with the forgery. Yet the company he keeps with other prominent Iran-Contra convictees/pardonees/intelligence contractors suggests otherwise.”
Ledeen wanted the war against Iraq, says Raymond McGovern, so he had a motive, hence he must be the forger. Anybody familiar with criminal law understands that showing motive does not convict a person of a crime, for there is usually more than one person with a plausible motive (McGovern himself says we have a whole multitude of them here: the ‘neoconservatives’). So the job for an investigator is to find, among those who had a motive, the person or persons to whom the evidence actually points. In lieu of referring us to any evidence that Michael Ledeen forged anything, however, McGovern merely repeats a third-party accusation against Ledeen, which is supposedly authoritative because made by “former CIA operative Vincent Cannistraro.”
Now this is a bit awkward, because Vincent Cannistraro, like McGovern, was “a member of the CIA’s clandestine service.”[20] So a professional liar from the CIA clandestine service is asking you to believe an accusation against Michael Ledeen because it comes from another professional liar from the CIA clandestine service, Vincent Cannistraro. This does not build a strong case against Ledeen...
It gets worse.
As pointed out above, McGovern tells us that Michael Ledeen’s friend “Elliot Abrams… was convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra,” by way of laying down the principle that people associated with the Contra program are liars. With this principle in hand, McGovern argues that, given “the company [Ledeen] keeps with other prominent Iran-Contra convictees/pardonees/intelligence contractors” his denials about being the Iraq-Niger forger may be dismissed. But if Iran-Contra people are liars, what falls apart is Vincent Cannistraro’s accusation against Ledeen, because Cannistraro in fact ran the Contra program!
You read correctly. I shall review the relevant facts.
Vincent Cannistraro created and ran the Contras from start to finish
Before 1984,Vincent Cannistraro was a “CIA agent in Central America”[21] and “a member of the CIA’s clandestine service”[22] -- right when the CIA’s clandestine service was training the Contra terrorists in Central America. This suggests that Vincent Cannistraro had something to do with training the Contras. He did. The man at the very top of the Contra structure was Lt. Col. Oliver North, and
“Following the 1984 flap over a CIA-sponsored manual for the contras that advocated assassination, North helped arrange a job on the NSC staff for Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA officer who had run the agency’s task force on the contras.”[26]
So we see above that, indeed, Cannistraro was the guy responsible for creating the Contra force on the ground. What sort of a job did Cannistraro get with Oliver North at the NSC in 1984? Vincent Cannistraro became “Director of NSC [National Security Council] Intelligence from 1984 to 1987.”[23] In other words, in the year 1984, Oliver North brought Vincent Cannistraro from the CIA’s clandestine service and made him the highest intelligence official in Ronald Reagan’s NSC. Did this have anything to do with North’s Contras, whom Cannistraro had just been creating and training in the field? You would think so, because Ronald Reagan “transferred the Contra program from the CIA to the NSC after congressional authorization for the CIA’s Contra program expired in mid 1984,”[24] And indeed:
“Cannistraro... was assigned... to work with North on Contra affairs, and in his role of coordinating intelligence programs throughout the administration, he headed several inter-agency meetings on aid for the rebels.”[25]
Please take note of the word ‘headed’—as in ‘directed,’ ‘led,’ ‘presided over,’ ‘managed,’ and ‘ran.’ Cannistraro was running the Contras from start to finish.
McGovern tells us that Michael Ledeen is a “longtime Washington operative [who] was fired as a ‘consultant’ for the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan for running fool’s errands for Oliver North during the Iran-Contra subterfuge.” So Ledeen was running errands for Vincent Cannistraro, for it was Cannistraro who was running the Contra program from the National Security Council. But Cannistraro is the one accusing Ledeen?
What a piece of theater!
McGovern tells you that people associated with the Contra program are liars so that you will dismiss Ledeen’s denials and accept Cannistraro’s accusation. But Ledeen is a relatively minor figure in the Iran-Contra conspiracy, whereas Cannistraro happens to be Mr. Contra.
So, what is the matter with Raymond McGovern?
There are two possibilities, here:
Hypothesis 1: Raymond McGovern never knew and still doesn’t know that Cannistraro was running the Contras, in which case Raymond McGovern is not very smart.
Hypothesis 2: Raymond McGovern knows that Cannistraro was running the Contras but he doesn’t tell us because he wants Cannistraro’s accusation to appear credible against Ledeen’s denials. In this case, Raymond McGovern is dishonest.
Whichever hypothesis we choose, it has already been established that adopting the outspoken Raymond McGovern’s opinions about anything will be risky, to say the least.
But which hypothesis is more plausible? That can be decided.
“Ray McGovern was a member of the CIA for 27 years and he served as the ‘All Intelligence Agent’ during the Reagan administration. He was responsible for briefing the President, the Vice President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Cabinet and National Security Advisor.”[27]
So let’s see. We have to ask ourselves the following: Is it really possible that Raymond McGovern, a man who “worked near the very top of his profession,”[7] this being the intelligence gathering profession, and who “served as the ‘All Intelligence Agent’ during the Reagan administration,” never knew and still doesn’t know that Vincent Cannistraro, in the same Reagan administration, was running the Contra program?
Hold that thought.
We also learn above, since the secretaries of Treasury and Defense are included in “the Cabinet,” that McGovern was briefing every senior member of Reagan’s National Security Council (NSC) on intelligence matters.[28] So is it possible that Raymond McGovern never knew and still doesn’t know that Reagan (or North) brought Cannistraro to the NSC to continue running the Contra program in the year 1984, even though in the same year of 1984 McGovern, the ‘All Intelligence Agent’ during the Reagan administration,” was doing intelligence briefings for everybody at the NSC?
. . .even though Cannistraro first ran the Contra program as a CIA clandestine service operation and Raymond McGovern is a “27-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service”?[16]
. . . . . .even though the Contra program was a cold war effort and Raymond McGovern is a “distinguished... cold warrior”?[13]
. . . . . . . .even though Cannistraro’s Contra role was scandalously reported in the papers while Raymond McGovern was still a Reagan administration official?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .even though Raymond McGovern (and any 10-year-old), using the publicly available online media search-engine Lexis-Nexis, can find out in five minutes (as I did) that the mainstream press reported in the 80s that Cannistraro had been running the Contra program?
I think that Raymond McGovern knows perfectly well that Vincent Cannistraro was running the Contra program.
People should now definitely ask themselves what the point of Raymond McGovern’s dishonest public activities might be. But from here onwards what people should certainly not do is automatically believe anything that Raymond McGovern says. Neither should people soften their skepticism for the Western mass media, which, as we have seen, incessantly pushes Raymond McGovern as a trusty ‘expert.’
Why does the media do this? Is it because the mainstream Western media cannot do the analysis I have just presented, where I demonstrate that McGovern is dishonest? But that was trivial to do, and the mainstream media has resources that easily eclipse my own.
The most innocent hypothesis here would be that the media is spectacularly lazy and/or incompetent. And yet we must reject that hypothesis, because the mainstream media is also quite fond of Vincent Cannistraro, and it is impossible that the media does not know that Vincent Cannistraro created and ran the Contra terrorists because. . .they—the media—reported on this.
Next I examine the astonishing manner in which the media covers up Cannistraro’s Contra history. After that we shall take a look at what both McGovern and Cannistraro say about the Arab-Israeli conflict all over the same media.
Footnotes and Further Reading
[1] “Cheney Wasn’t Involved Either... Right”; By Ray McGovern; t r u t h o u t | Perspective; Wednesday 20 July 2005.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072005C.shtml
[2] Save Our Spooks , The New York Times, May 30, 2003 Friday, Late Edition - Final , Section A; Column 6; Editorial Desk; Pg. 27, 727 words, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF; E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
[3] NO PRESIDENT HAS LIED SO BALDLY AND SO OFTEN AND SO DEMONSTRABLY’ Ray McGovern: voicing the concerns of the CIA, Independent on Sunday (London), November 9, 2003, Sunday, FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 19, 469 words
[4] Standing for principle sparks a crisis, Chicago Sun-Times, December 21, 1997, SUNDAY, Late Sports Final Edition, SHOW; PAPERBACKS; Pg. 24; NC, 837 words, BY DOLORES FLAHERTY AND ROGER FLAHERTY
[5] Q & A / RAY McGOVERN, former CIA analyst: ‘We’re trying to spread a little truth’, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 7, 2003 Sunday, Home Edition, Pg. 2F, 948 words, DAN CHAPMAN
[6] How lies replaced intelligence at the CIA; RAY McGOVERN; Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990. During the ‘60s his responsibilities included analysis of Soviet policy toward Vietnam. , The Boston Globe, October 7, 1999, Thursday, ,City Edition, OP-ED; Pg. A27, 822 words, By Ray McGovern
[7] NO PRESIDENT HAS LIED SO BALDLY AND SO OFTEN AND SO DEMONSTRABLY’ Ray McGovern: voicing the concerns of the CIA, Independent on Sunday (London), November 9, 2003, Sunday, FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 19, 469 words
[8] Missing: Iraq WMD, American credibility, St. Petersburg Times (Florida), June 8, 2003 Sunday, PERSPECTIVE; Pg. 1D, 1578 words, DAVID BALLINGRUD
[9] NO PRESIDENT HAS LIED SO BALDLY AND SO OFTEN AND SO DEMONSTRABLY’ Ray McGovern: voicing the concerns of the CIA, Independent on Sunday (London), November 9, 2003, Sunday, FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 19, 469 words
[10] Save Our Spooks , The New York Times, May 30, 2003 Friday, Late Edition - Final , Section A; Column 6; Editorial Desk; Pg. 27, 727 words, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF; E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
[11] THE EPIC SLAUGHTER IN IRAQ ALSO DESERVES AN INQUIRY; THE OVERVIEW, Independent on Sunday (London), August 24, 2003, Sunday, COMMENT; Pg. 22, 1157 words, JOHN PILGER
[12] A CONSUMMATE BUREAUCRAT ADEPT AT CURRYING FAVOUR, The Independent (London), June 4, 2004, Friday, First Edition; NEWS; Pg. 4, 658 words, ANDREW GUMBEL IN LOS ANGELES
[13] THE EPIC SLAUGHTER IN IRAQ ALSO DESERVES AN INQUIRY; THE OVERVIEW, Independent on Sunday (London), August 24, 2003, Sunday, COMMENT; Pg. 22, 1157 words, JOHN PILGER
[14] Comment&Analysis: There was no failure of intelligence: US spies were ignored, or worse, if they failed to make the case for war, The Guardian (London) - Final Edition, February 5, 2004, Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 26, 1185 words, Sidney Blumenthal
[15] TERROR SUSPECTS’ TORTURE CLAIMS HAVE MASS. LINK, The Boston Globe, November 29, 2004, Monday, THIRD EDITION, Pg. A1, 1448 words, By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
[16] US INTELLIGENCE SHAKE-UP MEETS GROWING CRITICISM, The Boston Globe, January 2, 2005, Sunday, THIRD EDITION, Pg. A1, 1016 words, By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
[17] The Washington Post, August 09, 2002, Friday, Final Edition, A SECTION; Pg. A01, 2035 words, The Slowly Changing Face of the CIA Spy; Recruits Eager to Fight Terror Are Flooding In, but Few Look the Part, Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer.
[18] Hallucinations About Iraq, The New York Times, July 28, 1998, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 14; Column 1; Editorial Desk , 370 words
[19] “Cheney Wasn’t Involved Either... Right”; By Ray McGovern; t r u t h o u t | Perspective; Wednesday 20 July 2005.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072005C.shtml
[20] “Vince Cannistraro, a former member of the CIA’s clandestine service and one-time director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council.”—Associated Press, March 2, 1997, Sunday, AM cycle, Washington Dateline, 788 words, CIA cuts off more than 1,000 informants, many for criminality, By JOHN DIAMOND, Associated Press Writer, WASHINGTON
[21] United Press International, June 15, 1987, Monday, AM cycle, Washington News, 519 words, Walsh draws testimony from NSC officials, By LORI SANTOS, WASHINGTON
[22] “Vince Cannistraro, a former member of the CIA’s clandestine service and one-time director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council.”—Associated Press, March 2, 1997, Sunday, AM cycle, Washington Dateline, 788 words, CIA cuts off more than 1,000 informants, many for criminality, By JOHN DIAMOND, Associated Press Writer, WASHINGTON
[23] “Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to 1987, [Vincent] Cannistraro went on to serve as chief of operations for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and to lead the CIA’s investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103...”—From a PBS interview that may be read here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/
[24] Kornbluh, P., and M. Byrne. 1993. The Iran-Contra Scandal: The declassified history. New York: The New Press. (p.xviii): President Reagan “transferred the Contra program from the CIA to the NSC after congressional authorization for the CIA’s Contra program expired in mid 1984.”
[25] United Press International, June 15, 1987, Monday, AM cycle, Washington News, 519 words, Walsh draws testimony from NSC officials, By LORI SANTOS, WASHINGTON
[26] Tale of Two White House Aides: Confidence and Motivation; North Viewed as a Can-Do Marine Who Went Too Far in Zealousness, The Washington Post, November 30, 1986, Sunday, Final Edition Correction Appended, FIRST SECTION; PAGE A1, 2694 words, David Ignatius, Washington Post Staff Writer, FOREIGN NEWS, NATIONAL NEWS, BIOGRAPHY
[27] http://www.webactive.com/page/148
[28] “The National Security Council is chaired by the President. Its regular attendees (both statutory and non-statutory) are the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs [i.e. the National Security Advisor]” http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/
4. How the mass media covers for Vincent Cannistraro, terrorist, and creator of the Nicaraguan Contras.
Concerning the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the Washington Post reported in November of 1990 as follows:
“Vincent Cannistraro, who was chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s counterterrorism center, said investigators have made ‘substantial progress in identifying the modus operandi by which that bomb got on board.’”[1]
What is the point of describing Vincent Cannistraro as someone “who was chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s counterterrorism center”? Naturally, to make the reader feel that Cannistraro can be trusted as a source on the topic the Washington Post is writing about: the investigation of a terrorist attack against Pan-Am flight 103. To leave no doubt, the Washington Post writes:
“Cannistraro’s remarks, made to reporters at a luncheon seminar, were the first indication that the international inquiry, already the largest criminal probe in history, may have turned up enough solid evidence to stand up in a court of law.”
In other words, if Cannistraro says that “investigators have made ‘substantial progress,’” this to the Washington Post becomes “the first indication that [there is] enough solid evidence to stand up in a court of law.” You can trust Cannistraro, says the Post.
And the Post does not waste any opportunities to try and burnish Cannistraro’s supposed luster: “Cannistraro made his remarks at a luncheon signaling his debut as a senior fellow at the National Strategy Information Center,” a supposedly “nongovernmental organization,” according to their website.[2] This identifies Cannistraro as a quotable, mainstream, formerly with the government, but no longer with the government, and now at a policy think tank, ‘expert.’
But this is remarkable, because the year in question is 1990, which is to say only one year after 1989, when Cannistraro was still appearing in the news for his role in the Contra affair! Why then doesn’t the Washington Post introduce him as “Vincent Cannistraro, who used to run the illegal terrorist Contra program”? Because the Post’s readers would immediately wonder why this person is being quoted as a trusted authority on anything, especially when he is supposed to be speaking as a ‘counter-terrorist.’
So is the Washington Post dishonest?
The Washington Post can only be defended as honest if we hold that the people running the Washington Post are terribly incompetent. In fact, they have to be so incompetent that in 1990 they no longer had any recollection of Cannistraro’s Contra role, which was still in the news only a year earlier. Further, they are so incompetent that they cannot do the most basic research—in their own archives! -- to refresh their memories about Vincent Cannistraro. With this proviso we may defend that the Washington Post is honest, but the monumental incompetence that must be imputed to this paper would still leave us without a good reason to trust the Washington Post—they are just too incompetent.
Let me now defend a different hypothesis, however, which does not require us to believe anything so absurd as that.
First, I give you a vivid picture of what the Contras were like:
“The Contras have ambushed religious-aid workers, beheading a nun and riddling her body with bullets. They have also eviscerated a pregnant woman, shot campesinos (peasants) and slaughtered their animals, cut down Red Cross workers and bombed towns with their schools and hospitals.”[3]
Please read that again, slower this time.
One of the people responsible for blowing the whistle on the Contras was former Contra Edgar Chamorro:
“At the World Court in the Hague, where he recently testified on behalf of the Sandinista government, Chamorro said the CIA ‘did not discourage’ atrocities, such as Contras terrorizing villagers, slitting throats and mutilating bodies.
He described U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s so-called ‘freedom fighters’ as a gang of professional criminals who don’t know why they are fighting.
‘The CIA had to send a man to train Contras to teach them what they were fighting for. It was ridiculous,’ he said.
‘I wondered how can democracy come to Nicaragua with all these fascists?’
Chamorro returned to Nicaragua last October under a government amnesty. He was expelled from the Contras in 1984 after revealing corruption within the rebel movement and a CIA manual on jungle warfare, which advocated assassination as a political means.”[4]
Now, as you may recall, in Part 3 I quoted an article in which the following was reported:
“Following the 1984 flap over a CIA-sponsored manual for the contras that advocated assassination, [Oliver] North helped arrange a job on the NSC staff for Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA officer who had run the agency’s task force on the contras.”
It is important properly to digest this with the utmost precision: Cannistraro ran “the [CIA’s] task force on the contras,” which became mired in controversy when Edgar Chamorro made public that the CIA manual for the Contras—for which Cannistraro was responsible—“advocated assassination.” Cannistraro was the man teaching the Contras to commit atrocities. North transferred Cannistraro to the NSC staff in part to protect him from this controversy, and also because he wanted Cannistraro to continue running the Contra program from the NSC.
Now, guess who it is that reported above how North brought Cannistraro to the NSC when Cannistraro’s terrorist strategy created a controversy?
That was David Ignatius from. . .the Washington Post.[5] This was in 1986, only four years before the same Washington Post would re-suit Vincent Cannistraro and present him to its readers as a counter-terrorism expert who could be trusted in his new role as pundit.
Is this shocking? That’s nothing. In 2001 the same Washington Post published an editorial with the title “Assassination is wrong.”[6] Guess who wrote it? You’ll never guess: Vincent Cannistraro, the man who, as the Washington Post reported in 1986, taught the Contra terrorists . . .what? Why, how to assassinate! So the Washington Post clearly cannot be accused of incompetence, for even the greatest paroxysm of incompetence will not make anything like this possible.
The Washington Post, however, can certainly be accused of dishonesty. . .and cynicism.
As we have already seen in Part 2, the Washington Post is not alone: the entire Western mass media treats Cannistraro as a trusted expert, so much so that he now parades himself, I remind you, as “Vince Cannistraro, an ABC News analyst and former CIA counterterrorism chief.”[7]
So now we have to ask ourselves: Is it a coincidence that both McGovern and Cannistraro attack Israel in the mass media employing the most spectacular lies? I turn to this next.

Footnotes and Further Reading
[1] Pan Am Bombing Probe Progressing; U.S. ‘Very Close’ to Securing Indictments, Ex-CIA Official Says, The Washington Post, November 21, 1990, Wednesday, Final Edition, FIRST SECTION; PAGE A6, 1037 words, George Lardner Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer, NATIONAL NEWS, FOREIGN NEWS
[2] http://www.strategycenter.org/about.htm
[3] Contras cling to their war, The Toronto Star, April 29, 1990, Sunday, SUNDAY SECOND EDITION, NEWS; Pg. H1, 1030 words, By Linda Diebel Toronto Star, MANAGUA
[4] U.S. operating 70 covert schemes ex-CIA man says, The Toronto Star, March 26, 1988, Saturday, SATURDAY SECOND EDITION, NEWS; Pg. A15, 449 words, By Robert Brehl Toronto Star
[5] Tale of Two White House Aides: Confidence and Motivation; North Viewed as a Can-Do Marine Who Went Too Far in Zealousness, The Washington Post, November 30, 1986, Sunday, Final Edition Correction Appended, FIRST SECTION; PAGE A1, 2694 words, David Ignatius, Washington Post Staff Writer, FOREIGN NEWS, NATIONAL NEWS, BIOGRAPHY
[6] Assassination Is Wrong—and Dumb, The Washington Post, August 30, 2001 Thursday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. A29, 820 words, Vincent Cannistraro
[7] BIN LADEN IS AT LARGE: CIA; FLED AFGHANISTAN IN DECEMBER, REPORT CLAIMS, The Toronto Sun, January 16, 2002 Wednesday,, Final Edition, News;, Pg. 12, 273 words, SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO SUN, WASHINGTON
5. McGovern and Cannistraro both attack Israel - with lies.
I shall consider the anti-Israel arguments of Vincent Cannistraro and Raymond McGovern, in that order, followed by a brief historical reflection on the broad patterns at work.
Vincent Cannistraro and the defense of antisemitic terrorism
In 1996, the Observer reported on Vincent Cannistraro’s views as follows:
“Cannistraro believes [that]. . .‘You cannot deal with this kind of terrorism as a criminal act. While there are obviously violations of the criminal statutes involved, in terrorism the act is not committed for gain or cash. It is motivated by religious and political reasons. You don’t deal with that just by putting the perpetrators in jail. It becomes an issue for the policy makers.’
. . .‘You have to be consistent,’ [says Cannistraro,] ‘not just in individual cases but on the issue of terrorism as a whole. You cannot appear to give one group the wink—giving Gerry Adams [from the political wing of the terrorist IRA, in Northern Ireland] an invitation to the White House—and then condemn other groups that feel they have an equally legitimate cause.’”[1]
Terrorism should always work, says Cannistraro; policy makers should be nice to all terrorists, without exceptions. This is Cannistraro’s philosophy.
But certain terrorists Vincent Cannistraro is especially fond of. . .
As you might expect by now, Vincent Cannistraro’s 2001 Washington Post editorial entitled “Assassination is Wrong” does not contain one word of remorse for the slaughter of innocent Nicaraguan villagers carried out by the terrorist Contras whom Cannistraro trained in assassination techniques (see Part 3 and Part 4). On the contrary, the principle Cannistraro defends in his Washington Post editorial is that it is unethical to assassinate terrorist leaders. And notice which:
“The Israeli assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [a terrorist component of the PLO], is another instance of a misbegotten Israeli counterterrorist program. The Israeli government has drawn up a list of Palestinian subjects who can be assassinated and is methodically carrying out targeted killings as its intelligence resources provide the opportunity.
But it is apparent that the assassination campaign is neither effective nor moral. . . The U.S. government should not endorse or tacitly encourage a process that is illegal under U.S. law and that, if such actions were abetted by a U.S. official, would be subject to legal sanction by judicial authority and law enforcement.”[2]
In this sanctimonious homily, what does Vincent Cannistraro mean by “a US official”? Does he mean “a US official” such as, for example, Vincent Cannistraro, who trained the terrorist Contra force to assassinate? Surely not, because Vincent Cannistraro did zero jail time for his own actions, which means that he is not “a US official [who] would be subject to legal sanction by judicial authority and law enforcement.” In fact, Vincent Cannistraro is not even subject to the most superficial journalistic scrutiny (as we saw in Part 4).
What Cannistraro makes above is an extreme anti-Israeli argument. It is also an incorrect one. Killing the leaders of terrorist organizations is not immoral; what is immoral is killing innocent civilians. If the Israeli government targets those who kill innocent Israeli civilians, then it is doing its duty.
Cannistraro also argues that killing terrorist leaders is ineffective and in fact counterproductive because it produces revenge killings: “The other side believes a ‘blood debt’ has been incurred that obligates a revenge response. The cycle of violence is perpetuated.” This argument is also incorrect. The reason Israeli responses are ineffective is that they are timid and also contradictory (for example, many more terrorists have been released from Israeli jails as a result of the Oslo process madness than have been assassinated by the Israeli security services). There is no such thing as a “revenge response” for the antisemitic Arab terrorists—they mean to kill Israeli Jews anyway.[3] They sometimes say they kill in revenge for acts of Israeli self-defense so that CIA terrorists such as Vincent Cannistraro can defend the killing of innocent Jews as a “revenge response” in the pages of the Washington Post, thus educating the public to blame the Arab-Israeli conflict on the fact that, every once in a while, the Israelis choose to defend themselves.
Now, the absurd extremity of Vincent Cannistraro’s argument suggests that, though fond of all terrorists, perhaps he is especially fond of the Arab terrorists who attack Israel. Recently, during a PBS Frontline interview in which he functioned, as always, as an ‘expert,’ Cannistraro made a statement that is consistent with that hypothesis:
“VINCENT CANNISTRARO: The [1982] Lebanese occupation by Israel caused the Palestinians to have to leave Lebanon eventually. . . They had been the protectors for the American diplomatic community in Beirut. . . There was liaison with the PLO, and the Americans were depending on them for their security.”[4]
Take note that the year 1982 is eleven whole years before the signing of the Oslo agreement. Nobody was pretending in 1982 that the PLO wanted peace, or that it was anything other than a terrorist organization, and Israel invaded Lebanon because the PLO was killing Israeli civilians from its bases there. And yet, at the same time that the PLO was murdering innocent Israeli civilians, the US was employing PLO terrorists for security at its Beirut embassy. Vincent Cannistraro, who in 1982 was training terrorists for Ronald Reagan’s CIA clandestine service, sings in harmony: he calls the PLO terrorists “protectors,” and what he loudly laments is not the loss of innocent Israeli civilian life but the fact that in 1982 the IDF pushed the PLO out of Lebanon, forcing them to exile themselves in faraway Tunis. This subsequently made it difficult for the PLO to kill Israeli civilians—difficult, that is, until the US twisted Israel’s arm and forced it to accept the PLO as the government in the West Bank and Gaza.[5]
In the same interview Cannistraro alleges that the US took Israel’s side in 1982, but this is false: the US put great pressure on Israel in order to make sure that the PLO terrorists could leave Lebanon safely, and then the US provided military cover for the evacuation of the same PLO terrorists.[6]
Cannistraro has been terribly consistent in his theme of apology for the Arab terrorists. For example, he was quoted by USA Today defending the argument that the money raised by ‘charities’ associated with Arab terrorist groups supposedly does not go to make weapons.[7]
I now turn to Raymond McGovern.
Raymond McGovern, and the antisemitic re-writing of Israeli history
On September 11, 2001, thousands of innocent Americans died in attacks in New York and Washington for which the Al-Qaeda Islamist terrorists took responsibility. Just a few days later, on September 17, Ray McGovern declared in a Christian Science Monitor editorial that the fault lay with ‘the Jews.’ And why? Because, according to McGovern, it was Arab opposition to the alleged US support for Israel that had caused the attack. McGovern’s argument is that US support for Israel is immoral and not unlike US support for the oppressive and extreme right-wing South Vietnamese regime in the 60s. In other words, McGovern presents the Arab terrorists who kill innocent Israeli civilians as the people with justice on their side.
“I was an Army officer in the early ’60s when ‘counterterrorism’ came into vogue. Woefully uneducated in Southeast Asian history, our leaders had concluded that North Vietnam was attacking ‘democratic’ South Vietnam through terrorism. Most of us had no idea that the Vietnamese ‘terrorists’ had thrown off invaders from China, France, and Japan, and that millions of Vietnamese were again ready to drive off others.
We are no better educated on the history of the Middle East...
We are simply going to make war on terrorists. And we will be no more successful this time... Israeli leader Ariel Sharon sent tanks into Palestinian-controlled territory. On Friday, he ordered his foreign minister to boycott a meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat...
[But] Peace won’t come by military means. Mr. Sharon should know that. The biblical concept of shalom means nothing other than the experience of justice. No justice, no peace.”[9]
McGovern’s analysis is precisely upside down. But before I examine that, let me point out again what a fraud McGovern is.
He claims total ignorance about Vietnam, and as a result he says that “our leaders” were able to dupe him and also the rest of the US citizenry. “Most of us,” he writes, “had no idea that the Vietnamese ‘terrorists’ had thrown off invaders from China, France, and Japan, and that millions of Vietnamese were again ready to drive off others.” But why does Raymond MGovern include himself in the ignorant and duped masses? “Ray McGovern” I remind you, “was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, [and] during the ’60s his responsibilities included analysis of Soviet policy toward Vietnam.”[10] I remind you also that “Mr. McGovern worked near the very top of his profession, giving direct advice to Henry Kissinger during the Nixon era.”[11] That would be the same Henry Kissinger and the same Richard Nixon who carried out the war against Vietnam.
So nobody duped Raymond McGovern about Vietnam. He was one of the intelligence experts on Vietnam who were busy duping the US citizenry!
Now, according to McGovern, the reason there is an Arab-Israeli conflict is that the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza are victims of Israeli injustice, just as the North Vietnamese were victims of US injustice. This is false. The West Bank and Gaza Arabs are oppressed by the PLO, which is why they themselves have nicknamed the PLO police the “death squad.”[12] Before the PLO was brought to the West Bank and Gaza, the Arabs living there were the luckiest Arabs in the world.
This is easily demonstrated.
Israel’s administration of the West Bank and Gaza followed a war provoked by the Arab states in 1967 with the purpose of exterminating the Israeli Jewish population. As the tension increased, before that war, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser promised: “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand. We shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.”[13] In this war, the West Bank and Gaza Arabs (the so-called ‘Palestinians’) were an enemy population, which they remain; and yet despite that, Israel’s administration of these territories, which Israel acquired after defending itself successfully in 1967, was quite benign. This is Newsweek, writing ten years later in 1977:
“Arab living standards [in the West Bank] have jumped more than 50 per cent in the past ten years, and employment has nearly doubled, largely because of the $250 million annual trade that has grown up between the West Bank and Israel. The Israelis have also kept the Jordan River bridges open, allowing 1 million Arabs a year to cross and to keep their markets in Jordan for such products as olive oil, soap and farm produce. The Israelis also allow the Arabs to elect their own officials, even though the winners are often radical activists [meaning antisemites]. Still, the Arabs say they have never been more unhappy. . .”[14]
So consider again Raymond McGovern’s argument. Using his false premise that the West Bank and Gaza Arabs have supposedly been victimized by the Israelis, McGovern defends the PLO’s violence, comparing it to the North Vietnamese struggle to defend themselves from the widespread terrorist attacks of the United States, which were meant to prop up the right wing South Vietnamese regime, which was extremely repressive. If McGovern convinces you that Israel is like the US in Vietnam, you will learn to think of the Israelis as the supposed real terrorists. He does not want you to see the killing of innocent Israeli civilians as objectionable; to McGovern, what is objectionable is the quite lukewarm Israeli counter-response. This stance has everything in common with Vincent Cannistraro’s views on the Arab-Israeli conflict, for Cannistraro defends the Palestinian Arab terrorists and blames the Israelis, as we saw.
Two months later, Raymond McGovern fired away again on the pages of USA Today:
“Where are the sober voices to explain why so many Palestinians are eager to sacrifice their lives in causing havoc in Israel? Religious fanaticism? Too facile an answer. Our problem is that we flunk history.
Did we never learn that land that was home to the Palestinians for 1,000 years was taken from them when the state of Israel was created; that still more was seized in the 1967 war; that the Israelis continue to build and populate settlements in what are now casually referred to as the ‘occupied territories’?
Did we not know that in such territories the Palestinians are subjected to oppression reminiscent of past pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe?
The biblical concept of shalom is nothing more than the experience of justice. No justice, no peace. . .”[15]
Raymond McGovern certainly flunks psychology, because he pretends that if people send their own children to die as human bombs, destroying other people’s children, this cannot possibly have anything to do with religious fanaticism. That would be “too facile an answer,” he says. Why “too facile”? Palestinian Authority TV has mullhas drill into the heads of West Bank and Gaza Arabs, every Friday, the message: “Blessings to whoever waged Jihad for the sake of Allah!; blessings to whoever raided for the sake of Allah!; blessings to whoever put a belt of explosives on his body or on his sons’ and plunged into the midst of the Jews crying: ‘Allah Akbar, praise to Allah!’”[16] McGovern, however, thinks that blowing up your child is a natural response to the fact that others unjustly seize your territory. But people who think they have legitimate territorial grievances, and who are not Muslims, don’t do this.
But do the so-called ‘Palestinian Arabs’ have legitimate grievances? After laying down the judgment that “we flunk history,” Raymond McGovern asks rhetorically,
“Did we not know that in such territories [West Bank and Gaza] the Palestinians are subjected to oppression reminiscent of past pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe?”
It seems to have escaped Raymond McGovern’s attention that the government over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs since 1994, thanks to the Oslo agreement, is not Israel but the PLO. This is who oppresses these Arabs, which is why, as mentioned above, these Arabs call the PLO’s Palestinian Authority police the “death squad.”[17]
The one who flunks history is McGovern. And how. Is he really serious when he writes about the “land that was home to the Palestinians for 1,000 years [and] was taken from them when the state of Israel was created”? Is this the sort of thing you have to say in order to become, “Ray McGovern. . .CIA chief for the Middle East”?[18]
Who are these 1000-year-old ancestral ‘Palestinians’?
The name ‘Palestine’ was invented by the ancient Romans after an anti-Jewish genocide in order to wipe out any connection between the Jews and their land.[19] ‘Palestine’ means ‘land of the Philistines.’[20] The Romans were cleansing the Jews from their own land.[20a]
One cannot invoke this Roman name change as applying to Arabs, the way McGovern and many others would like, because Arabs are not Philistines (the Philistines were not even Semites, having been most closely related to the Greeks). And the Philistines no longer exist. Moreover, the name ‘Palestine’ fell into ambiguous use/disuse for a long time.[20b]
“The name Palestine was revived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and applied to the territory in this region that was placed under the British Mandate for Palestine.”[21]
Shortly after that, however, in 1922, the British decided to redefine ‘Palestine’ and lopped off what eventually became the Kindom of Jordan (then baptized ‘Transjordan’ by the British). Thus, almost immediately, quite a lot of people who, by British colonialist fiat, had just become ‘Palestinian,’ became non-Palestinian again, and once again by British colonialist fiat. Remarkable, isn’t it? Making and unmaking ‘Palestinians’ is the easiest thing in the world. The point of the name change, for the British, was to sabotage the Zonist project.[22]
This shows that the name ‘Palestine,’ re-introduced by the British after the Ottoman Turks lost the Levant, was still, in 1922, associated with the concept of a Jewish homeland. This is why, when the Zionist movement was struggling to create the state of Israel, one of its leaders, Hillel Kook (alias Peter Bergson) would express himself like this: “I am a Hebrew. My allegiance is to the Hebrew nation. My country is Palestine.”[23a] The same point explains the following:
“...the Arab historian Philip Hitti testified in 1946 before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that ‘There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.’ Earlier, in 1937, a local Arab leader appearing before the Peel Commission similarly declared, ‘There is no such thing [as Palestine]. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented.’ ...During the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank and the Egyptian occupation of Gaza, the [so-called] Palestinian Arabs had not claimed a distinct peoplehood or sued for self-determination.”[23b]
So, who would Raymond McGovern’s 1000-year-old ancestral ‘Palestinians’ be, then? Even according to Arab historians testifying in the mid-20th c., there was never any such thing as an Arab Palestinian people.
This is not—mind you—to deny that many Muslims lived there. But they were simply Arabs, or else non-Arab Muslims—they were not ‘Palestinians.’ And, in fact, many of the so-called ‘Palestinians’ immigrated into this area around the same time that Zionist Jews also began immigrating, because the Turkish Sultan was resettling Muslims in this area in a deliberate attempt to defeat Zionism.[23bb]
By 1948, when the state of Israel was declared, an additional great multitude of Muslim immigrants had come there from other parts of the Arab due to the economic boom that the Jews, many of them also immigrants, had created.[23d] People such as Raymond McGovern now pretend that these Muslim immigrants are native ‘Palestinians’; but in that case so are the Jewish immigrants.
And the Jews were not all immigrating, mind you. Although the Romans reduced the Jews dramatically in the horrific first and second century slaughters, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Jerusalem and surrounding areas since before the Romans. In 1841, before Zionist immigration began,
“the four cities holy to Judaism in Palestine, Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias, had substantial native Jewish populations. Small Jewish communities also subsisted in most of the larger towns and even in the villeges of the Galilee.”[23e]
By the mid-19th century, in fact, Jerusalem was already a majority-Jewish city.[24]
Raymond McGovern’s claim that the Israeli Jews unjustly took anything away from anybody when the State of Israel was created is also false. The Zionist immigrants had been buying land at market prices from the Arab title holders, who freely sold their land and enriched themselves fabulously by selling swamp and desert that had not been looked after for years, and which was in an atrocious state of decay, disuse, and/or frank abandonment.[25] Only the Jews wanted this land, and they made it flourish.
Following the Holocaust, the United Nations voted to create the State of Israel so that the Jewish people could have a state of their own, where they could be safe from extermination. In other words, the State of Israel was created by a perfectly legal United Nations vote in 1947, which vote gave a fraction of what had been British Mandate ‘Palestine’ for the creation of a Jewish state, and the rest for the creation of an Arab state. The land specified by the UN for a Jewish state had borders drawn only around those areas that had a majority Jewish population, plus the Negev desert. Many Jews were therefore left outside of Israel, in what was supposed to become an Arab state.
The Jews accepted the 1947 UN vote despite the fact that Israeli territory was cut up into three absurdly non-contiguous territories.[26] By contrast, the Arabs in the former British Mandate territory, together with the surrounding Arab states, illegally declared war. Their publicly stated objective was to finish Adolf Hitler’s job (interrupted only three years before) and exterminate the Israeli Jews, as announced by Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League:
“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”[27]
Raymond McGovern would like you to think that the Arab states which attacked nascent Israel in 1948 were fighting for land for the supposedly ancestral ‘Palestinian Arabs,’ but that’s impossible. The enemies of Israel announced the genocidal point of their attack—they were not fighting to get land that had in fact not been stolen from the nonexistent ‘Palestinian Arabs,’ but to exterminate a people who had bought this land and wanted only to live peacefully on it.
In the 1948 war the Israelis pulled off a miracle against all odds by winning against their multiple Arab enemies, and at the end Israel in fact controlled just a bit more land than what had been allotted to her in the UN partition.[29] But this was territory gained fighting a defensive war against a genocidal enemy, so McGovern cannot argue that there has been an injustice here; this territory was theirs to keep. If the Arab states and the Arabs who had lived in British Mandate ‘Palestine’ did not like that, they had themselves to blame for having launched an illegal war of aggression with the purpose of exterminating another people.
Raymond McGovern also claims that the Israelis committed an injustice when they acquired more land in 1967, supposedly at the expense of the ‘Palestinians.’ This is a reference to the Israeli acquisition of the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza. But contrary to what McGovern writes, these territories also belong rightfully to Israel now, because they were also gained fighting a defensive war against Arab attackers who once again meant to exterminate the Israeli Jews.[13] Plus: the states that previously controlled these territories had been illegally squatting on them. Plus: a 1967 Pentagon study determined that Israel cannot survive unless it holds on to these territories.[30] Plus: Israel offered to give these territories back in exchange for a mere Arab promise of peace, and... the Arabs refused![31]
In any case, McGovern cannot be right, under any interpretation, that the West Bank and Gaza are ‘Palestinian’ lands, because the leaders of the supposed ‘Palestinians’ originally made it perfectly clear that the West Bank and Gaza were not ‘Palestinian’ territories. In fact the PLO went quite out of its way, in 1964, to take this position.[32] The PLO first laid a claim to the West Bank and Gaza after 1967, when Israel acquired these territories and Jews returned to live in the West Bank and Gaza. Just as there is no such thing as an Palestinian Arab, there is no such thing as a fixed Palestinian land. There is just land that Jews live on. This is what the PLO lays claim to because the PLO’s purpose is to exterminate the Israeli Jews, as specified most explicitly in the 1968 PLO Charter, which calls for “liquidating the Zionist. . .presence” and explains that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.”[35] Wherever Jews live in the Middle East, then, the PLO will claim that this is ‘Palestinian’ land that may be ‘liberated’ only in the process of wiping out the Jews. (Any appearance that the PLO is conducting peaceful negotiations is merely a front.[36])
Given that Cannistraro and McGovern are CIA people, what does this say about the US government?
If you believe that the US government is pro-Jewish and pro-Israel, here is an obvious question: Why doesn’t the US government expose McGovern and Cannistraro, who are contributing to the above anti-Jewish slanders, which prepare the next antisemitic genocide, and who moreover incessantly attack the US government?
I turn to this next.
Footnotes and Further Reading
[1] BATTLING THE BOMBERS: FACE TO FACE WITH TERROR, The Observer, August 4, 1996, Sunday, THE OBSERVER NEWS PAGE; Pg. 19, 2707 words, Peter Beaumont
[2] Assassination Is Wrong—and Dumb, The Washington Post, August 30, 2001 Thursday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. A29, 820 words, Vincent Cannistraro
[3] To understand the ideology of the terrorists who kill Israeli civilians, read:
“HOW DID THE ‘PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT’ EMERGE? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US.”; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
Some of this material was originally published here:
“Anti-Semitism, Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership”; Israel National News; May 26, ‘03 / 24 Iyar 5763; by Francisco J. Gil-White
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=2405
[4] To read the Frontline Interview go to:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/
target/interviews/cannistraro.html
[5] To read about the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon, see:
“In 1982, The US military rushed into Lebanon to protect the PLO from the Israelis.” From: “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1982
To read about how the US twisted Israel’s arm and forced it to accept the PLO terrorists into Israeli territory, see:
“Bush Sr.’s administration forced Israel to participate in the Oslo process, which brought the PLO into the West Bank and Gaza”; From, “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1991
[6] To read about how the US protected the PLO terrorists in Lebanon, see:
“In 1982, The US military rushed into Lebanon to protect the PLO from the Israelis.” From: “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1982
[7] “‘This is more political and symbolic than it is real and relevant. . . . No one fund raises for guns and bullets,’ says former CIA counterterrorism director Vince Cannistraro.
At best, funding for Hamas and other groups in the USA is in ‘the low millions’ and mostly designated for Islamic charities in such areas as the semi-autonomous Gaza Strip, Cannistraro says.”
SOURCE: Clinton strikes at terrorism / Freezes assets of Mideast groups, USA TODAY, January 25, 1995, Wednesday, FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. 8A, 503 words, Juan J. Walte; Lee Michael Katz
[9] A defining moment in history, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), September 17, 2001, Monday, OPINION; Pg. 20, 2484 words
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2001/0917/p20s1-coop.html
(you have to scroll down for McGovern’s opinion piece, entitled “Shades of Vietnam”)
[10] How lies replaced intelligence at the CIA; RAY McGOVERN; Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990. During the ‘60s his responsibilities included analysis of Soviet policy toward Vietnam. , The Boston Globe, October 7, 1999, Thursday, ,City Edition, OP-ED; Pg. A27, 822 words, By Ray McGovern
[11] NO PRESIDENT HAS LIED SO BALDLY AND SO OFTEN AND SO DEMONSTRABLY’ Ray McGovern: voicing the concerns of the CIA, Independent on Sunday (London), November 9, 2003, Sunday, FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 19, 469 words
[12] To read about how the PLO oppresses the Palestinian Arabs it governs, read:
“The CIA trained the PLO, knowing it would use this training to oppress Arabs and kill Jews”; From, “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~fjgil/ally2.htm#1994
[13] “. . .Syria used the Golan Heights, which tower 3,000 feet above the Galilee, to shell Israeli farms and villages. Syria’s attacks grew more frequent in 1965 and 1966, while Nasser’s rhetoric became increasingly bellicose: ‘We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand,’ he said on March 8, 1965. ‘We shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.’”
SOURCE: Howard Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 616.
To read more about the goals of the Arab enemies of Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, read:
“Although Israel suffered terrorist attacks from its Arab neighbors during the years 1964-67, when they staged a full-scale military provocation, the US refused to help”; From, “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1967
[14] Newsweek, June 13, 1977, UNITED STATES EDITION, INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 55, 849 words, The West Bank Today, Milan J. Kubic
[15] Land-for-peace policy doesn’t work, USA TODAY, December 4, 2001, Tuesday,, FINAL EDITION, NEWS;, Pg. 12A, 392 words
[16] At the following address:
http://www.memri.org/video/index.html
you will find a collection of televised Friday sermons, with translation, put together by the Middle East Media Research. Look for the heading: “Palestinian Authority Sermons 2000-2003.” The quotation in the text, conveniently, is the first in the collection.
[17] To read about how the PLO oppresses the Palestinian Arabs it governs, read:
“The CIA trained the PLO, knowing it would use this training to oppress Arabs and kill Jews”; From, “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1994
[18] Comment&Analysis: There was no failure of intelligence: US spies were ignored, or worse, if they failed to make the case for war, The Guardian (London) - Final Edition, February 5, 2004, Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 26, 1185 words, Sidney Blumenthal
[19] “. . .the climactic war of 66-73 CE [‘First Jewish War’], when Jerusalem was laid waste and hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed, (Josephus and Tacitus put the number of Jewish dead in this first war at around 600,000; in the second ‘Jewish war’ sixty years later, the tally of Jewish victims is put at 850,000), traumatized all Jews. . . Whatever the actual totals. . .the vast number of victims were killed without the mechanized methods that make modern wars so lethal, which is why analogies between Rome and the worst of twentieth-century dictators may not be misplaced here. . . .if the [Roman] legions had had machine guns, bombs, railroads and gas at their disposal, who is to say any Jew would have survived the second century?”
SOURCE: Carroll, J. 2001. Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (p.90)
Historian Robert Wolfe (2003:58-59) explains:
“The Romans and their Greek allies killed something like 2 or 3 million Jews during this period out of a total Jewish population of approximately 7 million within the boundaries of the so-called ‘Roman empire.’ The total number of Jewish casualties reported by Josephus for the ‘First Jewish War’ add up to approximately 1,300,000. The Roman historian Dio Cassius states that 580,000 Jews were killed during the ‘Second Jewish War.’ Historians estimate that many hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the Romans and Greeks during the ‘Diaspora Revolt’ of 115-17 CE. There were close to 1 million Jews in Egypt alone at the start of this period, yet hardly any remaining by the end of the 2nd century CE. The large Jewish communities in Syria and Turkey were likewise decimated. . . By the end of the 2nd century CE, only 750,000 Jews remained in Judah, home of something like 4 million Jews prior to the Roman onslaught.”
SOURCE: Wolfe, R. 2003. The origins of the messianic ideal. New York: J-Rep.
[20] “. . .the Philistines came from Caphtor (possibly Crete). They are mentioned in Egyptian records as one of the Sea Peoples that invaded Egypt in about 1190 BC after ravaging Anatolia, Cyprus, and Syria. After being repulsed by the Egyptians, they occupied the coastal plain of Palestine from Joppa (modern Tel Aviv–Yafo) southward to the Gaza Strip. The area contained the five cities (the Pentapolis) of the Philistine confederacy (Gaza, Ashkelon [Ascalon], Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron) and was known as Philistia, or the Land of the Philistines. It was from this designation that the whole of the country was later called Palestine by the Greeks.”
“Philistine.” Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8420/eb/article-9059701
[Accessed August 23, 2005].
[20a] The final genocidal onslaught of the Romans against the Jews was simply breathtaking.
“Fifty forts where the rebels had put up resistance were destroyed and 985 towns, villages, and agricultural settlements [also were]. [The Roman author] Dio [Cassius] says 580,000 Jews died in the fighting ‘and countless numbers of starvation, fire and the sword. Nearly the entire land of Judea was laid waste.’ In the late fourth century, St. Jerome reported from Bethlehem a tradition that, after the defeat, there were so many Jewish slaves for sale that the price dropped to less than a horse.
[The emperor] Hadrian relentlessly carried through to completion his plan to transform ruined Jerusalem into a Greek polis. He buried the hollows of the old city in rubble to level the site. Outside the limits he removed the debris to get at and excavate the rock below to provide the huge ashlars for the public buildings he set up on the levelled site. . . .The city he built was called Aelia Capitolina. Greek-speakers were moved in to populate it and the Jews were forbidden to enter on pain of death.”
SOURCE: Johnson, P. 1987. A History of the Jews. New York: Harper & Row. (pp.142-143)
[20b] Historian Nathan Weinstock, writing as an anti-Zionist in his book Zionism, False Messiah, where he claims that there supposedly was such a thing as a “specific Palestinian identity,” nevertheless concedes the following:
“When the first Zionist immigrants arrived in the Holy Land, Palestine did not exist as a distinct political entity. The territory which corresponded to this name was composed, roughly speaking, of the western provinces of the region which was traditionally known as ‘Syria.’ There were no borders to delimit it precisely. In fact, the definitive borders of the country, which covers about 17,000 square miles, were established by a series of agreements and treaties concluded between 1906 and 1922. The vagueness of the word ‘Palestine’ in the 19th century is illustrated by the vocabulary of the first Zionists, who used the expressions ‘Syria’ and ‘Palestine’ interchangeably.”
SOURCE: Weinstock, N. 1979. Zionism: False Messiah. London: Ink Links Ltd. (p.51)
[21] “Where did the name Palestine come from?”; Early History, Palestine Origin; Palestine Facts.
http://palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_name_origin.php
[22] The British, in the Balfour Declaration, had officially committed themselves to helping create a Jewish homeland in ‘Palestine,’ which as mentioned above was at first a larger territory, including all of what was later named ‘Transjordan’ (present-day Jordan). This commitment then received the highest international legal sanction when the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate, which ordered the British to “secure the establishment of the Jewish national home” there.
“In June 1922 the League of Nations [the highest international authority, precursor to the United Nations] passed the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was an explicit document regarding Britain’s responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine including ‘secur[ing] the establishment of the Jewish national home,’ and ‘safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine.’”
SOURCE: British Mandate of Palestine | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine
But the British quickly changed their mind.
They made Hajj Amin al Husseini the Mufti of Jerusalem after he showed in 1920 that he could organize Arab terrorist riots against Jews living in British Mandate territory. In 1921 he organized another terrorist wave and the British rewarded him by expanding his budget and bureaucratic authority. This also became the excuse to blame the victim and bar Jewish immigrants from entering the territory east of the river Jordan, which they now named ‘Transjordan.’ Jews henceforth could only immigrate to the redefined ‘Palestine,’ now restricted to the territory west of the river Jordan, hugging the Mediterranean coast.
The British shrunk the definition of ‘Palestine’ in order to appear to stay within the letter of the Balfour Declaration and yet effectively making the Jewish homeland much smaller. What does this show? The same thing that the British policy towards Hajj Amin already did: that the British had an anti-Jewish policy.
“The [1922 British] White Paper stated that the Balfour Declaration could not be amended and that the Jews were in Palestine by right, [but] it partitioned the area of the Mandate by excluding the area east of the Jordan River [now ‘Transjordan’] from Jewish settlement.”
SOURCE: “How did the Arab territory of Transjordan come into being?”; British Mandate Transjordan; Palestine Facts.
http://palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_transjordan.php
To read about Hajj Amin al Husseini, and his lasting influence on the Palestinian Arab movement, read:
“HOW DID THE ‘PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT’ EMERGE? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US.”; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
[23a] Rapoport, L. 1999. Shake heaven and earth: Peter Bergson and the struggle to rescue the Jews of Europe. Jerusalem and New York: Gefen. (p.192)
[23b] Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (p.288)
[23bb] “...1880...is the last year before the great Jewish immigration began. ...The Turks had begun the systematic colonization of non-Palestinian Moslems, notably Circassians and Algerians, in 1878. After 1880, the forces of nascent Jewish nationalism, foreign Moslem colonization sponsored by the Turks, and spontaneouss Arab immigration prompted by the new prosperity of Palestine changed the demographic face of the land.”
SOURCE: Blumberg, A. 1985. Zion before Zionism 1838-1880. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. (p.x)
“Millions of Muhagir (émigrés), Muslims fleeing the new Christian states in the Balkans after defeats in the 19th century, abandoned the former Ottoman provinces of Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Bosnia-Herzegovinia, Thessalia, Epirus, and Macedonia. The sultan resorted to the traditional policy of Islamic colonization and, determined to counter the Zionist movement, settled the refugees in Judea, Galilee, Samaria and Transjordan. These were the same Muslims who had combated the rights, emancipation, and independence of Christian dhimmis (semi-slaves of the Muslims) in Europe. The sultan had sent some of them to Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine where they were given collective land grants under favorable conditions according to the principles of Islamic colonization imposed on natives ever since the beginning of the Arab conquest. Circassian tribes fleeing the Russian advance in the Caucasus were sent into the Levant at the same time; most of them were settled around Armenian villages in Mesopotamia where they soon began to massacre the local people. Other Circassian colonists settled in historic Palestine—today’s Israel, Cisjordan and Jordan—establishing villages in Judea, and near Jerusalem such as Abou Gosh, or in Kuneitra on the Golan. Today their descendents intermarry. In Jordan they make up the king’s guard. Up until the First World War 95% of the land in Palestine was in the Ottoman sultan’s domain.”
SOURCE: Bat Ye’or (2002) Jews and Christians under Islam: Dhimmitude and Marcionism. Published in French as Juifs et chrétiens sous l’islam, Dhimmitude et marcionisme [Commentaire, N°97, Printemps 2002]
http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/
by_dhimmitude_marcionism_en.pdf
French original:
http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/commmentaire_spring2002.htm
[23d] The excerpt below was written by Nathan Weinstock when he was an anti-Zionist, so his description of how the Arabs in the British Mandate area benefited from the economic boom created by the Jewish immigrants is especially noteworthy:
“. . .the repercussions on the Arab economy of the inflow of capital into Palestine and the country’s economic expansion were felt in the long run. Agriculture advanced considerably during this period, when there were the beginnings of an evolution towards intensive farming. Arab orchards, which covered an area of 332,000 dunams in 1921, spread over 832,000 dunams in 1942. Cattle-breeding and poultry-rearing made rapid headway; there was an increase of the order of 60 per cent in 13 years. The orange-groves developed at great speed: 22,000 dunams of citrus fruit in 1922, 144,000 dunams in 1937. Vegetable production increased almost tenfold between 1920 and 1938. On the whole, however—and it was here that the immobilisme and the backwardness of the social structures really told—Arab agriculture continued to suffer from a shortage of capital.
On the other hand, in a period of economic boom and massive immigration, the scarcity of man-power and the intense tempo of construction favoured the taking on of Arab workers. Moreover, a growing number of Palestinian Arabs found jobs in the public services: 18,000 in 1930, more than 30,000 in 1945. One should add to this those employed by concessionary companies, concerns in which the majority of capital was Jewish but which were bound under their statutory provisions to take on a certain proportion of Arab workers.”
SOURCE: Weinstock, N. 1979. Zionism: False Messiah. London: Ink Links Ltd. (p.160)
In his history of Israel, Howard Sachar notes that the British Peel Commission, which was established to study a partition plan for ‘Palestine’ in 1937 (following the ‘Arab Revolt’ of 1936), produced a proposal that…
“...filled 404 pages, contained elaborate maps and statistical indices, and ranked as one of the major documents of British foreign policy. First summarizing the views expressed by Arabs and Jews, the report then detailed the accomplishments of the Jewish National Home, not the least of which was an economy vigorous enough to have stimulated a 50 percent growth of the Arab population since 1921. There was no question that Arabs, fellahin and landlords alike, were enjoying unprecedented affluence in Palestine. The Arab charge that Jews had obtained too large a proportion of the best soil could not be substantiated, for much of the citrus land originally had been sand or swamp...”
SOURCE: Sachar, Howard Morley - A history of Israel : from the rise of Zionism to our time / Howard M. Sachar. 1982, c1979. (p.204) [emphasis mine]
[23e] Blumberg, A. 1985. Zion before Zionism 1838-1880. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
[24] This article contains much footnoted documentation concerning the Jewish population of Jerusalem in the nineteenth century. It was originally published in Midstream (New York) September-October, 2000:
“THE LAND OF ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM IN 1900,” by Elliott A. Green
http://www.think-israel.org/green.jerusalem1900.html
[25] Jewish immigrants were buying land from Arabs in Palestine, and the Arabs were eagerly selling this land. There were some abuses in this, I agree, but not by the Jews. The large Arab landowners in Palestine directed all sorts of political attacks against the small landowners, accusing them of collaboration with Zionism if they dared sell their land, while at the same time the big owners sold their properties at exorbitant prices to the same immigrant Jews, making a killing in the land speculation market. That was not fair to the small Arab landowners who wanted to make money too, and who got harassed, sometimes with violence, by the hypocritical, large landowning families—also know as the ‘effendis.’
Even historian Nathan Weinstock, writing as an anti-Zionist in Zionism: False Messiah, recognized this. Let’s take a look:
“While the effendi stratum engaged in these profitable transactions (land deals brought it the handsome sum of £854,796 in 1933, £1,647,836 in 1934 and £1,699,488 in 1935), secret collaboration with the British and the Zionists enabled its members, nevertheless, to preserve their dominant position. Thus it was that the Husseinis displayed “moderation” during the first years of the Mandate (after the events of 1920 which had cost one of their main leaders, Pasha Musa Kazem al-Husseini, his office as Mayor of Jerusalem). For their part the Nashashibis courted the British and cultivated friendships on the Zionist Executive. The Abdul Hadis – the biggest landowners in Palestine – concluded a secret agreement with the Zionist leaders in 1928 on the eve of the 7th Arab Conference, promising that the customary denunciation of the Balfour Declaration would be dropped.
But, whilst in public these leaders stepped up their incendiary attacks on Zionism, denouncing any transfer of ancestral soil to the Jews as a betrayal, they secretly enriched themselves by means of the very operations which they so furiously attacked. The fanatical braggadocio was designed for the gallery. It made it possible to win the support of the masses. It also, no doubt, served other less avowable goals. Under nationalist pressure, the small Arab landowners no longer dared to sell their land openly to the Jews. During the 1936-1939 Revolt [Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Al] Husseini’s guerillas actually executed “traitors”, but “at the same time a close relative of the Mufti was doing a brisk trade in precisely such allegedly criminal deals, but with a notable difference, for this person used to force sales from Arab small-holders at niggardly prices and then resell to the Jews at the usual exorbitant rates ...” In other words, hyper-nationalist propaganda became a lucrative industry, indeed even an American-style racket, for the Arab gentry.”
SOURCE: Weinstock, N. 1979. Zionism: False Messiah. London: Ink Links Ltd. (pp.163-164)
Take note that the Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, who (one often hears) supposedly led an anti-colonial struggle, and in so doing founded the Palestinian movement, does not really behave like an anti-colonialist or someone looking after the interests of Palestinian Arabs.
With respect to the first point, he was not bothered that land was being sold to immigrant Jews so long as it was his family that made a handsome profit. With respect to the second point, he had no problem with his family coercing land sales from small Arab landowners at bargain prices so that they could then resell to immigrant Jews at exorbitant prices. Not only that: he executed some of these small Arab landowners for a sin no greater than also trying to make a profit, which activity lowered the price of land on the market for Hajj Amin’s relatives. Hajj Amin and his relatives were gangsters, and the first effect of a gangster is always to bring misery to his own population, which Hajj Amin did, repeatedly.
It is true that the Arab share-cropping laborers—the fellahin—who had been working in lands that were sold to immigrant Jews, were often out of a job (at least temporarily) after the transactions were concluded, and many suffered dire poverty. But the immigrant Jews did not cause this situation: it was already true that these laborers were very poor, completely exploited by, and chronically indebted to, the effendi class because of the feudal structure of Palestinian Arab society.
What the Jews did was buy land from people who wanted to sell it. The Jews needed to buy land on which to farm, and they could only buy it from those people who had title to the land. A long history of feudal exploitation of the Arab lower classes by the Arab upper classes in Palestine cannot suddenly become the fault of “the Jews” just because they buy some land.
Anti-Zionists such as Nathan Weinstock do try to make that argument, however. For example:
“When the question of the acquisition of land by the Zionist organisations in Palestine is broached, it is usually not stated that these land transactions are to be explained by the big Arab landowners’ eagerness to sell their property. Furthermore, these purchases led to an extremely lucrative wave of property speculation; the price of a dunam near Rishon-le-Zion, originally 8 shillings, had gone up to £P.10-£P.25 by 1931. The Zionists certainly paid dearly for their Holy Land. The high-prices sales, which brought a fortune to the usurious, parasitic effendi class, proved disastrous for the fellahin who were expelled from the estates they had worked on. Massive dispossession of the fellahin was the essence of the Palestinian problem, both as a national and a social issue.
Certain authors try and skirt round this direct consequence of the Zionist enterprise, which was testified to, for example, by the groups of dispossessed fellahin reduced to beggary in the shantytowns situated at the gates of Haifa. Yet it was not long before popular discontent reached such a pitch that the British authorities had to offer to put Crown lands at the disposal of the evicted share-croppers.” (pp.161-162)
Weinstock is attacking those who defend the morality of immigrant Jewish land acquisitions. This is who he criticizes for attempts to “skirt round this direct consequence of the Zionist enterprise.” But why speak like that? Why not call it a direct consequence of the feudal nature of Palestinian Arab society?
After all, the effect of Jewish immigration was to increase the demand for agricultural land in Palestine, which then created land speculation by the effendi landowners. Other things can do that, too (and did); for example, immigration from other parts of the Arab world into Palestine, and the arrival of technologies that made land more productive, plus a native Arab agrarian capitalist class that meant to develop this land. In such a case the results for the poor Arab laborers are the same, and yet I would bet my house that in such cases nobody rushes here to identify the people buying land as those creating the problem. The problem was obviously already there.
Matters are different if the land-buyers are Jews. But the difference is not in the structure of the situation, it has to do with antisemitism.
In this regard, note that, commenting on the impoverishment resulting from the sale of land, Weinstock writes, “Yet it was not long before popular discontent reached such a pitch that the British authorities had to offer to put Crown lands at the disposal of the evicted share-croppers.”
In other words, the British Mandate authority had taken possession of part of the land. And the British withheld this land from use—a boon to the big landowners, of course, since scarcity increases price, but bad for the Jewish immigrants and the land-starved Arab poor. Why doesn’t Weinstock attribute the misery of the fellahin to this British policy of grabbing and withholding land, some of which they released to the poor only when faced with social disturbances? For Weinstock, the British are not the problem; the big landowners are not the problem; the Arab social system is not the problem. Only the Jews are the problem. In other words, for Weinstock and other anti-Zionists, “the Jews” are The Problem.
I should note that even Nathan Weinstock recognizes that the influx of Jewish immigrants brought about an economic boom in Palestine, to the benefit of the same Arab workers who had once slaved on the Arab feudal estates.
“. . .the repercussions on the Arab economy of the inflow of capital into Palestine and the country’s economic expansion were felt in the long run. Agriculture advanced considerably during this period, when there were the beginnings of an evolution towards intensive farming. Arab orchards, which covered an area of 332,000 dunams in 1921, spread over 832,000 dunams in 1942. Cattle-breeding and poultry-rearing made rapid headway; there was an increase of the order of 60 per cent in 13 years. The orange-groves developed at great speed: 22,000 dunams of citrus fruit in 1922, 144,000 dunams in 1937. Vegetable production increased almost tenfold between 1920 and 1938. On the whole, however- and it was here that the immobilisme and the backwardness of the social structures really told – Arab agriculture continued to suffer from a shortage of capital.
On the other hand, in a period of economic boom and massive immigration, the scarcity of man-power and the intense tempo of construction favoured the taking on of Arab workers. Moreover, a growing number of Palestinian Arabs found jobs in the public services: 18,000 in 1930, more than 30,000 in 1945. One should add to this those employed by concessionary companies, concerns in which the majority of capital was Jewish but which were bound under their statutory provisions to take on a certain proportion of Arab workers.” (p.160)
Rapid growth of the Arab economy in Palestine resulted in significant part from the fact that the influx of Jewish immigrants created demand for the products of Arab industry. Weinstock states that “Jewish agriculture covered only 15 per cent of the calorie consumption of the urban Jewish population. Thus, for example, Jewish cereal production would not possibly have been sufficient to feed the Yishuv” (p.159). Weinstock raises this point in connection with his observation that the “compartmentalisation of the Palestinian economy, which became considerably accentuated after the 1929 [terrorist] disturbances [against Jewish civilians], was nevertheless in no way absolute” (p.159). That is to say, the immigrant Jews were making up the deficit by buying from the Palestinian Arabs, which stimulated the economy, and accelerated the process of urbanization.
So the arrival of the Jews indirectly had the effect of getting some people laid off, but also had the effect of creating other sorts of jobs - and many of the latter were no longer part of a feudal economy. On this basis one could argue that the immigrant Jews brought about a net benefit to the Palestinian economy.
This argument has been made.
For example, in his History of Israel, Howard Sachar notes that the Peel Commission, which was established to study a partition plan for Palestine in 1937 (following the ‘Arab Revolt’ of 1936), produced a proposal that…
“…filled 404 pages, contained elaborate maps and statistical indices, and ranked as one of the major documents of British foreign policy. First summarizing the views expressed by Arabs and Jews, the report then detailed the accomplishments of the Jewish National Home, not the least of which was an economy vigorous enough to have stimulated a 50 percent growth of the Arab population since 1921. There was no question that Arabs, fellahin and landlords alike, were enjoying unprecedented affluence in Palestine. The Arab charge that Jews had obtained too large a proportion of the best soil could not be substantiated, for much of the citrus land originally had been sand or swamp…”
SOURCE: Sachar, Howard Morley - A history of Israel : from the rise of Zionism to our time / Howard M. Sachar. 1982, c1979. (p.204)
If Arabs, “fellahin and landlords alike, were enjoying unprecedented affluence in Palestine” in 1937, then the net economic impact of Jewish immigration had been, in the long run, positive.
[26] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/partmap.html
[27] Source: Howard M Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 333
[28] To read about all this, consult:
“Forced by external circumstances, the US government gave lukewarm support to the creation of the State of Israel. But then it reversed itself and implemented anti-Israel policies”; From, “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1947
[29] http://www.mideastweb.org/1949armistice.htm
[30] “After the 1967 Six-Day War, the US put pressure on Israel to relinquish the territory gained, even though it knew it was indispensable to Israeli defense”; From, “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1967b
[31] “It was not clear how military victory could be turned into peace. Shortly after the war’s end Israel began that quest, but it would take more than a decade and involve yet another war before yielding any results. Eshkol’s secret offer to trade much of the newly won territory for peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria was rejected by Nasser, who, supported by an emergency resupply of Soviet arms, led the Arabs at the Khartoum Arab Summit in The Sudan in August 1967 in a refusal to negotiate directly with Israel.”
SOURCE: “Labour Rule After Ben-Gurion: Troubled victory” “Israel.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2003. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2 Nov, 2003

[32] The 1964 PLO Covenant or Charter explicitly states that the West Bank, Gaza, and Himmah—which Jordan, Egypt, and Syria respectively had occupied during the War of 1948 and were still sitting on—were not part of ‘Palestine.’ These lands had all been part of British Mandate Palestine. And yet it was quite all right, the PLO stated, for Jordan, Egypt, and Syria to have those three territories, even though the PLO was defining ‘Palestine’ as British Mandate Palestine. But this made perfect sense: the PLO was an Arab League creation, and the states of the Arab League would not have the PLO contesting their control of the parts of ‘Palestine’ that they had occupied. Which ‘Palestine’ did the PLO mean to ‘liberate,’ then? Answer: whatever land the Jews were living on: Israel. This was conclusively demonstrated in the rewritten 1968 PLO Charter. In this document the PLO removed the clause concerning the West Bank and Gaza and from this point onwards did lay claim now to a ‘Palestine’ that includes the West Bank and Gaza
Evidence:
Article 24 of the 1964 Charter states: “This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area.”
http://www.un.int/palestine/PLO/PNA2.html
In the 1968 Charter, the above renunciation of sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza was removed:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/plocov.htm
[34] http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#_ftn48e
[35] Translation: The Associated Press, December 15, 1998, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 1070 words, Clinton meets with Netanyahu, Arafat, appeals for progress, By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent, EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip. [Emphasis added]
Article 9. . .says that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.”
Article 15 says it is “a national duty to repulse the Zionist imperialist invasion from the great Arab homeland and to purge the Zionist presence from Palestine.”
Article 22 declares that “the liberation of Palestine will liquidate the Zionist and imperialist presence and bring about the stabilization of peace in the Middle East.”
[36] To understand how the PLO uses fraudulent talk of ‘peace’ to be in a better position to kill Israelis, read:
“Mahmoud Abbas, who in 2005 is being given total control over Gaza, is the one who invented the strategy of talking ‘peace’ the better to slaughter Israelis. The US ruling elite loves Mahmoud Abbas.” http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#2005
[37] Two quotations from: Sachar, Howard Morley - A history of Israel : from the rise of Zionism to our time / Howard M. Sachar. 1982, c1979.
“…in February 1967 the PLO leader [Ahmed Shukeiry] was wounded in an assassination attempt. For the while, as a result, the organization was at least partially immobilized by factional intrigues.
Not so a rival, and even more radical Palestinian group in Syria, the Fatah (Arab Liberation Movement), organized several years earlier by veterans of the Mufti’s former Arab Higher Committee [and led by Yasser Arafat].” (p.619)
“The Fatah leader’s actual name was Abd al-Rahman abd al-Rauf Arafat al-Qud al-Husseini. He shortened it to obscure his kinship with the discredited ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini.” (p.682)
To read more about Hajj Amin al Husseini, and his lasting influence on the Palestinian Arab movement, visit:
“HOW DID THE ‘PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT’ EMERGE? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US.”; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
[38] To see just how hard the US has protected the PLO and pushed for a PLO state, and how it twisted Israel’s arm so that she would accept one, see the following sections of: “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
“In 1982, The US military rushed into Lebanon to protect the PLO from the Israelis.”
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1982
“The ‘First Intifada’ was a US-PLO strategy used to represent the Arabs in West Bank and Gaza as supposedly oppressed ‘underdogs.’” http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1987
“In 1989, with Dick Cheney, the US began supporting a PLO state in the open as the ‘only solution’ to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1989
“In 1991, Bush Sr.’s administration forced Israel to participate in the Oslo process, which brought the PLO into the West Bank and Gaza.” http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1991
“Perhaps as early as 1994, The CIA trained the PLO, knowing it would use this training to oppress Arabs and kill Jews.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1994
“Mahmoud Abbas, who in 2005 is being given total control over Gaza, is the one who invented the strategy of talking ‘peace’ the better to slaughter Israelis. The US ruling elite loves Mahmoud Abbas.”
6. Why doesn’t the US government expose McGovern and Cannistraro?
The hypothesis that the Western mass media is pro-Israel predicts that it will expose McGovern and Cannistraro as liars, not that it will publish their views left and right. The same hypothesis predicts that the media will expose Cannistraro as a trainer of terrorists, not present him as a counter-terrorism ‘expert’ and allow him to publish editorials in which he defends the terrorist enemies of Israel. From the evidence examined here, therefore, it is difficult not to conclude that the Western mass media is anti-Israel.
What about the US government?
The hypothesis that the US government is pro-Israel predicts that the US government will expose McGovern and Cannistraro as liars, even if the anti-Israeli mass media doesn’t. But in fact that US government has not done this, despite the fact that this is terribly easy to do. Why? Could it be because the US government likes the fact that McGovern and Cannistraro are plastered all over the Western mass media making arguments that are harmful to Israel?
If so, that would agree with the hypothesis that the US government is anti-Israel.
And yet a puzzle remains. Because, you see, McGovern and Cannistraro specialize in attacking the US government in the most extreme way. Under what hypothesis would the US government neglect to expose as liars those who attack the same US government left and right all over the Western mass media?
To sharpen this question, allow me to refresh your memory.
McGovern’s main activity is to attack the US government
As you may recall, Raymond McGovern created VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) in order to bring together a coalition of ‘former CIA’ people who now devote themselves to attacking the US government publicly for misusing the intelligence services, and for outright lying. This is, in fact, Raymond McGovern’s main activity.
If you do a search in the Lexis-Nexis archive, limiting yourself just to the major papers, McGovern has appeared a total of 80 times since 1999. This gives a yearly average of about 13 appearances, which is already impressive and yet deceptive because McGovern’s exposure has been growing over time: in the last year alone (August 2004-August 2005) he has appeared 30 times, which is more than twice a month. Remember, this is just in the major papers that are archived by Lexis-Nexis; his total exposure is more impressive still, for he appears also in papers not archived by Lexis-Nexis, and in radio and television. (And none of this counts appearances of McGovern’s VIPS that do not mention McGovern specifically.) But now, to get a sense for how much of McGovern’s public identity is wrapped up in the ‘anti-Bush’ stance, one may ask the question: What percentage of McGovern’s appearances have to do with his stated opposition to the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq? If you limit the above Lexis search for ‘Ray McGovern’ by adding the term ‘Iraq,’ we get 61 out of 80 total. In other words, over 75% of all McGovern appearances in the major papers concern his anti-invasion stance.
What this means is that Raymond McGovern is most identifiable as “outspoken Bush [Jr.] critic Ray McGovern.”[1] He is in fact the ‘poster boy’ for the anti-invasion movement, which is why the New York Times tells us that Robert Greenwald’s supposedly “sober and meticulous” anti-invasion film has Ray McGovern for protagonist:
“. . .the star of the show is Ray McGovern, an articulate and dryly funny former C.I.A. analyst who now heads the anti-invasion group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.”[2]
Another Lexis search reveals that fully 20% of all McGovern’s anti-invasion appearances concern the accusation that the US government used forged intelligence to make us believe that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons, there to provide themselves with an excuse to attack Iraq.
About this, you may recall that McGovern accuses the ‘neoconservatives’ of being behind the hoax, and one Michael Ledeen, ‘neo-con,’ of being the supposed author of the forgery. But instead of presenting, or even referring us to, any evidence against Ledeen, McGovern simply tells us that Vincent Cannistraro points his supposedly authoritative finger at this man. Ledeen denies having forged anything, but McGovern argues, as we saw, that Ledeen’s denials are not credible because he is associated with the Contra program, and people having anything to do with the Contra program, according to McGovern, should be assumed to be lying. Which is funny because Vincent Cannistraro, whose accusation against Ledeen is all that McGovern has, is who created, trained, and ran the Contra program.
Now, the US government—under massive attack from McGovern and his VIPS—could point this out. And it could also point out who Cannistraro is, given that Cannistraro is also a high-profile critic of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. Consider:
“Critics of the White House include officials who have served in previous Republican administrations such as Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA head of counter-terrorism and member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan.”[3]
The above quote is from a Sunday Telegraph article with the following headline:
“THE CIA ‘OLD GUARD’ GOES TO WAR WITH BUSH: The intelligence community has been made the scapegoat for the failings over Iraq.”
So, given
1) that many people are upset with the Bush administration’s handling of the invasion of Iraq; and
2) that the criticisms of ‘former CIA officials’ such as McGovern and Cannistraro have contributed greatly to feed a relatively large opposition movement,
Why then doesn’t the White House defend itself by pointing out what I have documented concerning McGovern and Cannistraro?
After all, it was terribly easy to do, and it would put “critics of the White House” on the defensive. Attention would be diverted to the hypocrite who threw a stone in his own glass house, and the attack against the Bush administration would look a lot weaker. So why doesn’t the Bush administration expose McGovern and Cannistraro? Could it be that the Bush administration actually smiles on McGovern’s and Cannistraro’s activities?
This possibility must be entertained, because the Bush administration is not defending itself when it easily could.
Just for the sake of argument, suppose for a minute that McGovern’s and Cannistraro’s anti-invasion attacks are carefully designed to harm the Jewish people—say, by contributing to the widespread belief that ‘the Jews’ supposedly control the US government. How might this be brought about? Easy: just say that the attack on Iraq is all the fault of ‘the Jews.’ Below I will demonstrate that McGovern’s and Cannistraro’s attacks against the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq have precisely this structure. Assuming you find my demonstration below satisfying, the fact that the US government does not defend itself from McGovern’s and Cannistraro’s attacks by exposing them as liars, when it easily could, is consistent with the hypothesis that the US government has an anti-Jewish policy.
Perhaps this is all theater, in other words.
What I mean is this. Given that the best way to attack the Jewish people, in modern times, has been to convince everybody that ‘the Jews’ supposedly run everything in secret and mean to harm non-Jews, the best way to produce this hysteria again today would be to accuse ‘the Jews’ of controlling the US government, because the US is the lone superpower. If the ruling elite in charge of the US government had a desire to attack the Jewish people, it might take steps to generate the accusation, against itself, that it is supposedly controlled by ‘the Jews.’ This would not only mobilize antisemitism but would also place the blame for hated US foreign policy elsewhere. In this scenario, trusty alleged ‘former’ members of US Intelligence would be deployed to attack the US government in the media for supposedly being run by ‘the Jews.’
McGovern’s and Cannistraro’s anti-invasion arguments are meant to point the finger at… ‘the Jews.’
In June 2005, the Washington Post reported that many House Democrats had taken part in a “mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war” that was led by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich). It was a chance for “The lawmakers and the witnesses” present “to rally against the war,” said the Post. Of the four witnesses attending, the one who made the most noise, as you might expect, was one Raymond McGovern.
“The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel, and military bases craved by administration ‘neocons’ so ‘the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.’”[4]
And McGovern was not saying that the United States was even an equal partner with Israel, but that Israel had led the United States in this whole affair:
“[McGovern] said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”
According to McGovern, then, Bush has been corrupted and therefore does what the Israeli prime minister wants. Since McGovern says that “Israel should not be considered an ally,” what he implies is that president Bush is a traitor controlled by an enemy state: the Jewish state.
In the prelude to World War II, German Nazi propaganda—and pro-German fascists within the United States—accused Franklin Delano Roosevelt of being a tool of ‘the Jews.’[5] This was part of the general ‘Jewish Peril’ hysteria that the Nazis helped popularize. It is not easy to distinguish that propaganda from McGovern’s statements.
The Democratic representative from Virginia, James P. Moran Jr., is who prompted McGovern’s answer by wondering out loud “whether the true war motive was Iraq’s threat to Israel.” When he heard McGovern’s reply, he “thanked McGovern for his ‘candid answer.’”
This was evidently part of a more complex effort to attack the Jewish people, because, as was reported in the same article,
“At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations—that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an ‘insider trading scam’ on 9/11 -- that previously have been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.”
So these Democrats not only blamed the Iraq war on ‘the Jews,’ with McGovern’s help, but they took this opportunity to also blame 9-11 on ‘the Jews.’ This is straight out of The Protocols of Zion: anything bad that happens anywhere must be the fault of ‘the Jews.’
When ‘the Jews’ were accused of causing the Black Death in the fourteenth century by supposedly poisoning wells all over Europe, the enraged Europeans who then massacred innocent Jews, and in some places exterminated them, did not stop to think about the contradiction: Jews were also dying from the Black Death. Why would they poison themselves? The same kind of illogic is at work in the above accusations.
The US response to 9-11 has produced an increase in antisemitic Islamist terrorism. If you suppose that ‘the Jews’ were behind 9-11, and also that they control Bush (hence also Bush’s response to 9-11), then you must suppose they did all that in order to…what? In order to increase the hatred non-Jews feel towards them? How could ‘the Jews’ be smart enough to control the lone superpower in secret and then stupidly use this power to increase the probability of once again being exterminated?
The war on Iraq, which has turned Iraq into an Islamist factory of terrorism and antisemitism, much worse than what Iraq was before the war, has hardly benefited Israel. This is especially true when you consider that the US withdrawal will effectively give Iraq to Iran, and that Iran is again boldly and publicly calling for the destruction of Israel.[5a] So again we are supposed to believe that Israel shrewdly used its allegedly vast and secret power over the US to harm itself.
Then there is the ongoing process to create a PLO state. Perhaps you will have noticed that the US is not under Israeli pressure to cede Texas to Al-Qaeda. What is happening is that, under US pressure, Israel is ceding strategic territory so that terrorists pledged to the extermination of the Israeli Jews can have total control over it, never minding that these terrorists never stop shooting at Israeli civilians even as the land is handed over to them. I reiterate, this is happening because of US pressure.[6] So what is the argument, here? McGovern says that “Bush. . .[does] the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.” He does? In other words, Ariel Sharon controls George Bush so that he can force Bush to force him (Sharon) to turn over strategic territory in the Jewish state to the antisemitic and genocidal PLO terrorists?
If your model of how the world works requires you to produce absurdities of this magnitude, you should worry that you have the wrong model. McGovern hardly worries: he knows that he is talking garbage. But the point for him is not to make sense. And those who listen to McGovern believe what he says not because it makes any logical or factual sense, but because it makes cultural sense. The aristocracies in both the Christian and Muslim civilizations have always mobilized propaganda to accuse ‘the Jews’ of being ‘evil’ and secretly powerful. As a result, this is how Westerners ‘perceive’ the world, and this flawed perception takes precedence over all rational processes and scientific documentation—with catastrophic consequences for everybody, not just for the Jews (it wasn’t only Jews dying by the millions in World War II).
Now let’s come back to what McGovern said:
“…witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel, and military bases craved by administration ‘neocons’ so ‘the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.’”
Notice the accusation against the ‘neocons.’ It occurs simultaneously with the accusation against Israel—i.e. against ‘the Jews.’ But not merely simultaneously. According to McGovern, the ‘neo-cons’ act so that “the United States and Israel [can] dominate.” But since, according to McGovern, Bush is Sharon’s puppet, McGovern’s implied argument is obviously that the ‘neo-cons’ are another tool wielded by ‘the Jews’ to control the US government. In other words, in this lingo, saying that the ‘neo-cons’ control the US government is just another way of saying that ‘the Jews’ control the US government. If you doubt this, just try doing a Google search on the ‘neo-cons’ and see if you can finish counting the times people complain that the Jewish ‘neo-cons’ are the ones truly running things.
Vincent Cannistraro, whose radically anti-Israel and pro-PLO position we have already examined, is, not coincidentally, also quite active pushing the line that the ‘neo-cons’ control US foreign policy:
“They’re gathering all the reins of foreign policy together,’ said former CIA official Vincent Cannistraro, who strongly disagrees with the way Bush has handled Iraq. ‘Clearly, it has a very strong message about the conduct of foreign policy in the next four years. Dissenting views of an aggressive foreign policy have been eliminated and it is a victory for the hardliners, the neoconservatives.’”[7]
“They’re gathering all the reins of foreign policy together. . .the hardliners, the neoconservatives. . .”—the supernaturally superpowerful...Jews.
Which brings us full circle to Raymond McGovern’s accusation against one ‘neo-con’ in particular: Michael Ledeen.
Why do Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro accuse Michael Ledeen of being the Iraq-Niger forger?
As you may recall, McGovern uses the supposedly authoritative accusation by Vincent Cannistraro, and nothing else, to point the finger at Ledeen as the person responsible for forging documents employed in claiming that Iraq was seeking to get uranium from Niger.
Is it a coincidence that Michael Ledeen claims to be Jewish?
This is funny: McGovern and Cannistraro want you to think that the neoconservatives are the tools by means of which Israel controls US foreign policy. But US foreign policy toward the Jewish state involves applying pressure on Israel so that it will cede strategic territory to those terrorists who have promised the extermination of the Israeli Jews. If Michael Ledeen and the other ‘neo-cons’ are responsible for this, can they be considered pro-Israeli?
And sticking with the example of Ledeen, if he is a tool of Ariel Sharon, how come he publicly attacks Ariel Sharon by comparing him to the terrorist Yasser Arafat? Here is an example: “Both Sharon and Arafat are warriors, not statesmen, said Michael Ledeen.”[8]
Or consider this question: Can Michael Ledeen be pro-Jewish if he goes quite out of his way to protest a movie that documents the anti-Jewish horrors of WWII?
The Holocaust Museum produced a 14-minute film that the New York Times calls a “sober but wrenching account of the history and consequences of anti-Semitism, [which] describes the role of Christian churches in fomenting sentiment against Jews in Europe.”[9] That’s it—just 14 minutes. According to the New York Times, “…the film does not attribute the Holocaust solely to religious anti-Semitism, [but] it documents the role of Christian churches in fomenting anti-Semitic sentiment.” Although there were certainly individual Christians who bravely opposed the anti-Jewish policies of the German Nazis and their allies throughout Europe, it is quite well documented that the institutional leadership of the Christian Churches tended to promote antisemitism and also to side with Adolf Hitler.[10] In addition, as stated in the same NYT article by the Rev. John T. Pawlikowski (professor of social ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and chairman of the Holocaust Museum’s Church Relations Council): “There was intense anti-Semitism within the Catholic and Protestant communities at a religio-cultural level which helped bring about the Holocaust. To pretend otherwise is to distort history.” He is right.
But Michael Ledeen pretends otherwise.
As reported also by the New York Times, Michael Ledeen co-authored a protest letter with other Jewish neo-conservatives that has “called the documentary, ‘Anti-Semitism,’ inaccurate and anti-Christian.” This can certainly qualify Michael Ledeen and his neo-conservative buddies for the labels pro-Christian and anti-Jewish, but it is hard to see how any such behavior fits with a pro-Jewish orientation.
At this point you may be thinking: Whoa! There are contradictions at every turn. Yes, many contradictions, indeed. But throughout, one unwavering consistency: the Jewish people are always under attack:
1) in the mass media’s reporting of Michael Ledeen’s attacks against the Israeli prime minister;
2) in the mass media’s loud reporting of Michael Ledeen’s absurd Holocaust denying behaviors;
3) in the public figure of Michael Ledeen, as a Jew vilified—by dishonest darlings of the mass media—with the accusation that he is a treasonous forger, which the mass media duly plasters everywhere, the better to revive the old and vivid caricature of the ‘scheming Jew’ (compare to the Dreyfus affair in early twentieth century France[11]); and
4) in the representation—by dishonest darlings of the mass media—of Michael Ledeen and other Jewish neo-conservatives as ‘evil elders of Zion,’ secretly in control, supposedly, and for Israel’s benefit, of the lone superpower’s nefarious foreign policy.
Can this all be coincidence?
Well at the very least it is enough to make me wonder who really is in control of the Western mass media! I turn to this next.
Footnotes and Further Reading
[1] A CONSUMMATE BUREAUCRAT ADEPT AT CURRYING FAVOUR, The Independent (London), June 4, 2004, Friday, First Edition; NEWS; Pg. 4, 658 words, ANDREW GUMBEL IN LOS ANGELES
[2] Revisiting The Road To Iraq War, Step by Step, The New York Times, August 20, 2004 Friday, Late Edition - Final, Section E; PT1; Column 6; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; FILM REVIEW; Pg. 6, 684 words, By DAVE KEHR
[3] The CIA ‘old guard’ goes to war with Bush ‘The intelligence community has been made the scapegoat for the failings over Iraq. It deserves some of the blame, but not all of it’, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), October 10, 2004, Sunday, Pg. 33, 789 words, BY PHILIP SHERWELL in WashingtonBY ANNA GIZOWSKA in Sydney
[4] Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War, The Washington Post, June 17, 2005 Friday, Final Edition, A Section; A06 , WASHINGTON SKETCH Dana Milbank, 855 words, Dana Milbank
[5] “Roosevelt Betrays America”: a Nazi pamphlet by Dr. Robert Ley; German Propaganda Archive; Calvin: Minds in the Making; Calvin College. http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ley1.htm
[5a] “Bush Jr.’s War on Iraq: A general introduction”; Historical and Investigative Research; 1 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/iraq-general-intro.htm
[6] To see just how hard the US has protected the PLO and pushed for a PLO state, and how it twisted Israel’s arm so that she would accept one, see the following sections of HIR’s investigation, “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”:
“In 1982, The US military rushed into Lebanon to protect the PLO from the Israelis.”
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1982
“The ‘First Intifada’ was a US-PLO strategy used to represent the Arabs in West Bank and Gaza as supposedly oppressed ‘underdogs.’” http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1987
“In 1989, with Dick Cheney, the US began supporting a PLO state in the open as the ‘only solution’ to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1989
“In 1991, Bush Sr.’s administration forced Israel to participate in the Oslo process, which brought the PLO into the West Bank and Gaza.” http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1991
“Perhaps as early as 1994, The CIA trained the PLO, knowing it would use this training to oppress Arabs and kill Jews.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1994
“Mahmoud Abbas, who in 2005 is being given total control over Gaza, is the one who invented the strategy of talking ‘peace’ the better to slaughter Israelis. The US ruling elite loves Mahmoud Abbas.” http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#2005
[7] PRESIDENT MOVES TO REIN IN 2 AGENCIES CHANGES, The Boston Globe, November 17, 2004, Wednesday, THIRD EDITION, Pg. A1, 1151 words, By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff
[8] An ancient dispute renewed daily Bones of contention Palestinians: The last 50 years Big fight over small piece of land, Omaha World Herald (Nebraska), April 18, 2002, Thursday, SUNRISE EDITION, Pg. 10a;, 1669 words, By Jake Thompson, WASHINGTON
[9] Jewish Conservatives Attack Holocaust Film, The New York Times, January 20, 1998, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 14; Column 4; National Desk , 628 words, By JUDITH MILLER
[10] “The Pictures Tell the Tale: The Vatican and Nazism in Germany and Croatia”; Emperor’s Clothes; 22 April 2005; by Jared Israel http://emperors-clothes.com/vatican/cpix.htm
“Hitler’s Pope” by John Cornwell; Vanity Fair, October 1999. http://emperors-clothes.com/vatican/hitlers.htm
[11] Alfred Dreyfus. Born October 19, 1859, Mulhouse, France; died July 12, 1935, Paris.
French army officer whose trial for treason began a 12-year controversy, known as the Dreyfus Affair, that deeply marked the political and social history of the French Third Republic.
Dreyfus was the son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer. In 1882 he entered the École Polytechnique and decided on a military career. By 1889 he had risen to the rank of captain. Dreyfus was assigned to the War Ministry when, in 1894, he was accused of selling military secrets to the German military attaché. He was arrested on October 15, and on December 22 he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on the infamous penal colony of Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guiana.
The legal proceedings, which were based on specious evidence, were highly irregular. Although he denied his guilt and although his family consistently supported his plea of innocence, public opinion and the French press as a whole, led by its virulently anti-Semitic faction, welcomed the verdict and the sentence. In particular, the newspaper La Libre Parole, edited by Édouard Drumont, used Dreyfus to symbolize the supposed disloyalty of French Jews.
But doubts began to grow. Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart found evidence that Major C.F. (Walsin-)Esterhazy was engaged in espionage and that it was Esterhazy’s handwriting found on the letter that had incriminated Dreyfus. When Picquart was removed from his post, it was believed that his discovery was too inconvenient for his superiors. The pro-Dreyfus side slowly gained adherents (among them, journalists Joseph Reinach and Georges Clemenceau—the future World War I premier—and a senator, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner).
The affair was made absurdly complicated by the activities of Esterhazy in inventing evidence and spreading rumours, and of Major Hubert Joseph Henry, discoverer of the original letter attributed to Dreyfus, in forging new documents and suppressing others. When Esterhazy was brought before a court martial, he was acquitted, and Picquart was arrested. This precipitated an event that was to crystallize the whole movement for revision of Dreyfus’s trial. On January 13, 1898, the novelist Émile Zola wrote an open letter published on the front page of Aurore, Clemenceau’s paper, under the headline “J’Accuse.” By the evening of that day, 200,000 copies had been sold. Zola accused the army of covering up its mistaken conviction of Dreyfus and of acquitting Esterhazy on the orders of the Ministry of War.
By the time of the Zola letter, the Dreyfus case had attracted widespread public attention and had split France into two opposing camps. The issues were regarded as far exceeding the personal matter of the guilt or innocence of Dreyfus. The anti-Dreyfusards (those against reopening the case), nationalist and authoritarian, viewed the controversy as an attempt by the nation’s enemies to discredit the army and saw it as a case of national security against international socialism and Jewry, of France against Germany. The Dreyfusards (those seeking the exoneration of Captain Dreyfus) saw the issue as the principle of the freedom of the individual subordinated to that of national security and as republican civilian authority pitted against a military authority that acted independently of the state.
Amid uproar in the parliament, the government was pressed by the nationalists to bring Zola to justice, while anti-Semitic riots broke out in the provinces. A petition demanding revision of the Dreyfus trial was signed by some 3,000 persons, including Anatole France, Marcel Proust, and a host of other intellectuals. The trial of Zola began on February 7; he was found guilty of libel and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs.
From 1898 to 1899 the Dreyfusard cause gained in strength. Major Henry committed suicide at the end of August 1898, after confessing his forgeries. Esterhazy, in panic, fled to Belgium and London. The confession of Henry opened a new phase in the affair, for it ensured that the appeal of the Dreyfus family for a retrial would now be irresistible.
A new ministry, led by René Waldeck-Rousseau, took office in June 1899 and resolved to bring the affair to an end at last. Dreyfus, brought back from Devil’s Island for retrial, appeared before a new court martial in Rennes (August 7 -- September 9, 1899). It found him guilty, but the president of the republic, in order to resolve the issue, pardoned him. Dreyfus accepted the act of clemency but reserved the right to do all in his power to establish his innocence.
In 1904 a retrial was granted and in July 1906 a civilian court of appeals (the Cour d’Appel) cleared Dreyfus and reversed all previous convictions. The parliament passed a bill reinstating Dreyfus. On July 22 he was formally reinstated and decorated with the Legion of Honour. After further short service in the army, in which he attained the rank of major, he retired to the reserves. He was recalled to active service during World War I and, as a lieutenant colonel, commanded an ammunition column. After the war he retired into obscurity. The army did not publicly declare his innocence until 1995.
SOURCE: “Dreyfus, Alfred.” Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8473/eb/article-9031197 [Accessed January 1, 2006].
7. Why do people say that ‘the Jews’ control the media? They don’t.
Table of Contents ( hyperlinked < )
< Introduction
< General Electric—not controlled by Jews
< Time-Warner—not controlled by Jews
< Rupert Murdoch’s empire—not controlled by Jews
< Who controls the media?
< Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s failed attempt to control Universal, and the lessons therein
< Final remarks
Introduction
Before WWII, the Nazis and their sympathizers made popular all over the world the allegation that ‘the Jews’ controlled everything in secret, including the mass media, and that they would use this clandestine power to hurt us all. The accusations were widely believed because they were built on a long tradition of Western accusations against the Jews going back to the first century, when they were accused of killing God: a cultural inertia (see Part 1). The Nazi accusations of the supposed clandestine total power of ‘the Jews,’ plus supposed evil intent of the same, produced a pan-Western anti-Jewish hysteria that fueled the genocide of more than 5 million Jews, which repeated the consequences of similar accusations in previous centuries in the West (see Part 1). We are back where we started. It is almost impossible to be both alive and in the West and not have heard the allegation that “the Jews control the media.” As before, the accusation is a lie. This piece will demonstrate that most of the big media is not controlled by ‘the Jews,’ and that when people claiming a Jewish identity do own a big media company, this company will be especially careful to take an anti-Jewish slant.
Where to start?
Let’s take a look at General Electric, one of the greatest media powerhouses.
General Electric—not controlled by Jews
This is a publicly traded company, so it is owned by the stockholders, not by ‘the Jews.’ In any case, companies are run by their CEO’s. The CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of this company for many years was Jack Welch who, as The New Yorker informs me, is “the grandson of Irish immigrants… [H]is mother, Grace, [was] a strict Roman Catholic…”[1] And this religious orientation apparently lingered, because the Toronto Star says that “Welch [is] a devout Catholic.”[2] Whatever else that means, it certainly means that Welch is not Jewish.
The current CEO at General Electric is one Jeffrey Immelt, whose last name is German. USA Today reports that he is a “Presbyterian.”[3] Whatever else that means, it means that Jeffrey Immelt is not Jewish.
This is already a lot of media that is—and has been—controlled by non-Jews.
General Electric owns NBC/Universal Television Studio, and NBC/Universal Television and Universal Pictures, and 30% of Paxson Communications.
It also owns the following NBC stations: WNBC (New York), KNBC (Los Angeles), WMAQ (Chicago), WCAU (Philadelphia), KNTV (San Jose/San Francisco), KXAS (Dallas/Fort Worth), WRC (Washington), WTVJ (Miami), KNSD (San Diego), WVIT (Hartford), WNCN (Raleigh), WCMH (Columbus), WVTM (Birmingham), WJAR (Providence).
In addition, GE owns the following: Telemundo Stations: KVEA/KWHY (Los Angeles), WNJU (New York), WSCV (Miami), KTMD (Houston), WSNS (Chicago), KXTX (Dallas/Fort Worth), KVDA (San Antonio), KSTS (San Jose/San Francisco), KDRX (Phoenix), KNSO (Fresno), KMAS (Denver), WNEU (Boston/Merrimack), KHRR (Tucson), and WKAQ (Puerto Rico).
And, finally, GE owns the following channels: CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Mun2TV, Sci-Fi, Trio, and USA.[4]
That’s a lot of media. And yet, compared to Time-Warner, General Electric is not such a big media empire.
Time-Warner—not controlled by Jews
This company used to be called AOL-Time-Warner back when AOL was still an admired company. In January 2003 the Washington Post reported as follows:
“The announcement Sunday that Steve Case will yield the company chairmanship in May leaves [Richard D.] Parsons alone at the top of the world’s largest media company [Time-Warner].”[10]
The notice for Parsons’ mother’s death, in the New York Times, states that “A funeral service will be held on Friday, January 16. at 10am at New Hope Lutheran Church.”[11] Whatever else that means, it means that Richard D. Parsons is not Jewish. So “the world’s largest media company” is run by a non-Jew.
Steve Case, the man who ran AOL-Time-Warner before Parsons got the job, celebrated mass at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral after his brother Dan died.[12] Whatever else that means, it means that Steve Case is not Jewish.
It is true that the CEO at Time-Warner in the period 1992 to 2002 was Gerald Levin, who is Jewish. But that’s over now. And it is worth pointing out that during Levin’s tenure Time-Warner did not have a pro-Jewish line. On the contrary. Consider only that CNN was acquired by Time-Warner in 1996, during Levin’s tenure, and CNN is Time-Warner’s major TV news operation. Vincent Cannistraro, incessant enemy of Israel, was appearing regularly on CNN when Levin acquired it (more than once a month in 1994).[13] But after CNN became part of Time-Warner, CNN did not expose Cannistraro as a terrorist—on the contrary, he continued to appear on CNN as a trusty counter-terrorism ‘expert.’ And in 2001, with Gerald Levin still presiding as CEO, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer referred to Vincent Cannistraro’s Washington Post editorial (which defends the human rights of those who murder innocent Israeli children) in order to make his own anti-Israel attack.[14]
Rupert Murdoch’s empire—not controlled by Jews
Moving on, I have heard it said that Rupert Murdoch is supposedly Jewish, but this is because “Murdoch’s mother is frequently mis-reported to be Jewish—although this is not the case.”[15] Now, if Murdoch’s mother is not Jewish, I wonder why she is “frequently mis-reported to be Jewish…”? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Rupert Murdoch presides over “one of the world’s largest and most influential media corporations”? In any case, as the same source informs me, “Rupert’s father was the son of a Presbyterian minister from Scotland.” Whatever else that means, it means that Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish.
As in the case of Murdoch’s mother, Murdoch’s media is also frequently mis-reported to be pro-Jewish. To see that this is false, consider only that FOX TV is part of Murdoch’s media empire. This TV company has had Vincent Cannistraro as an interview guest, dressing him up as a ‘counter-terrorism’ expert,[16] and it has used him as a supposedly authoritative source on multiple occasions.[17] It has also interviewed Raymond McGovern as a representative of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).[18]
Does FOX TV have a pro-Israel bent, as has been alleged? I have a pro-Israel bent, which is why I have taken the trouble to document whether or not Vincent Cannistraro and Ray McGovern, who are prominently on display attacking Israel, can be believed. Why doesn’t FOX TV do this? It is incredibly easy to do. If FOX TV is really competing with the other media outlets, and if they are pro-Israel, why aren’t they demonstrating to their viewers that one cannot trust Vincent Cannistraro and Raymond McGovern, prominent enemies of Israel? This would simultaneously advance FOX’s supposedly pro-Israel bent and would demonstrate the inferiority of their media competition, which has been pushing Cannistraro and McGovern as ‘experts’ you can trust (see here, and here). Instead, FOX TV helps burnish Cannistraro’s and McGovern’s images as supposed ‘experts,’ like everybody else.
Who controls the media?
Many Jews are employed in the mass media, and they are overrepresented. Jews are overrepresented in all the professions, because they have always been the literate culture par excellence, and whenever given the opportunities they do their best to get a quality education. But, as the above documentation makes clear, ‘the Jews’ obviously don’t control the mass media.
Let us now examine the opposite hypothesis to the one underlying the claim that the media is controlled by ‘the Jews.’ This would be the hypothesis that the antisemites are the ones everywhere in power. Is this a reasonable view? Well, what predictions does it make? I can think of two predictions that are relatively straightforward.
Prediction 1. A media company that defends the Jews will not be allowed to prosper.
Evidence: Israel National Radio has indeed been persecuted for no better reason than that it defends Israel, opposing the Oslo so-called ‘peace’ process that revived the PLO when it had already been defeated, and which has contributed to so many innocent deaths in Israel. You may read about that here:
“On the importance of Israel National Radio (Arutz Sheva)”; Historical and Investigative Research; 30 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/israel/inr_interview.htm
Corollary. A media company owned or controlled by Jews that does prosper will have to be an ‘exception that proves the rule.’ It will be an exception in that the company really will be owned or controlled by ethnic Jews (most big media companies aren’t), but it will prove the rule by attacking the Jews as loudly—or perhaps more loudly—than the rest of the big media. Why? Because otherwise the antisemites in power will not allow such a media company to prosper, as per the first prediction, above.
Evidence: Let us take a look at the performance of the The New York Times and The Washington Post during the Holocaust, because both are big media companies that have been Jewish-owned, and because the Holocaust simply had to be opposed—it was not a morally ambiguous issue. The following is from Kenneth Levin’s The Oslo Syndrome:
“The failure of most media outlets to give prominent coverage to news related to the Nazis’ campaign of extermination compromised efforts to increase public awareness and rally support for rescue, and prominent Jewish-owned news outlets shared in this failure. The New York Times, in the years before the war, had already established a pattern of limiting discussion of the Nazis’ depredations of the Jews. When, shortly after Hitler’s ascension to power, the paper was challenged to open its letter columns to the plight of Germany’s Jews, publisher Adolph Ochs refused. He explained that to do so would generate too much mail and would require, under Times rules, that he give equal space to the other side. (Almost two decades earlier, in 1915, Ochs had warned an editor against giving too prominent coverage to an American Jewish Committee campaign for aid to Jewish civilian populations that were enduring particular hardship in eastern European war zones. The publisher suggested that the campaign was too parochial.) When news of the mass killing began to emerge, the Times consistently buried the story. The revelation by Rabbi Wise in November, 1942, of two million Jews murdered was reported on page 10, next to an article about a truck hijacking in New Jersey.
People who have worked for and written about the Times have spoken of management’s not wanting the Times to appear to be concerned with Jewish issues or to be thought of as a Jewish paper. But this explanation for the paper’s subdued coverage of the plight of Europe’s Jews is not simply a retrospective one; the nature of the Times’ coverage, and the explanation for it, were perceived similarly by many people then. For example, Deborah Lipstadt writes that a resolution by 500 Christian ministers and laymen donouncing the ‘systematic Nazi destruction of the Jewish people’ was given only a few lines by the Times and buried in page 7, and a similar event was reported on page 17. Villard blamed the paper’s ‘unfortunate trait’ of not wanting to appear ‘a vigorous defender’ of the Jews.
...The Washington Post, also a Jewish-owned paper in a position to influence the level of public awareness and attention, likewise gave little prominence to coverage of the genocide. Moreover, publisher Eugene Meyer strongly objected to calls for rescue. The paper ran a four-part front page series—much higher profile than it gave any Holocaust story—attacking the Bergson group [which was pushing for a rescue effort]; a series that it subsequently had to retract because of inaccuracies. In addition, Meyer wrote a letter to the U.S. solicitor general accusing those promoting rescue of harassing the president, and concluded that he felt it is not ‘necessary for any pressure group, however well meaning, to devote its time and money to the business of ‘molding American opinion’ on this subject.”[9]
The above suggests that ‘the Jews’ do not even control the media that is owned by individual Jews. This is consistent with the Jews being an oppressed people, which is of course the opposite of a conspiracy holding the reins of world power (and it fits the pattern, doesn’t it, of the last 2000 years, in which there has been one anti-Jewish massacre after another, with relentless regularity, and often mobilized by the accusation that the Jews are supposed to be a secret conspiracy in power!; see Part 1).
Prediction 2. The real powerbrokers should discriminate against Jews in the buying and selling of big media.
Evidence: Edgar Bronfman’s difficulties in becoming a media mogul, which I examine below.
Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s failed attempt to control Universal, and the lessons therein
As mentioned above, these days GE owns Universal. But Edgar Bronfman Jr. wanted to buy it himself and tried to. We shall examine this because Bronfman is Jewish and the details of his failed bid for Universal are quite instructive.
The Los Angeles Times explains that “Edgar Bronfman Jr. wanted to be a media mogul,” and so badly that he “orchestrated the sale of his family’s company [Seagram]...to finance his dream of a global media empire built around Universal Studios….”[5] To see what Bronfman was willing to risk to become a media mogul, consider only that “the expensive Hollywood gamble cost the Bronfmans Universal, their liquor business, and a good portion of their multibillion-dollar fortune.”
But despite Bronfman’s unrivaled passion to become a media mogul, it was simply not to be. After buying Universal from gentiles (Matsushita, a Japanese company), he had to sell it to Vivendi, also run by gentiles, less than a year later, holding it for about as long as a rugby player holds a ball. When he tried to get Universal back, no matter what he offered, Bronfman couldn’t, as we shall see.
It was Jean-Marie Messier who presided as CEO of Vivendi when this company acquired Universal from Edgar Bronfman. This Messier had been buying up a lot of stuff, and lots of articles have been written to explain the troubles at Vivendi as resulting from Messier’s “acquisition spree,” which overextended the company. But in a Slate article dated 6 August 2003 Messier himself alleged that Vivendi-Universal didn’t work out for a different reason: “According to Messier, the clannish Jews in Hollywood had it in for the gentile [i.e. non-Jewish] Frenchman.”[6] Whatever else that means, it means that Jean-Marie Messier is not Jewish.
And Messier was replaced in 2002 by Jean-Rene Fourtou, whose name appears to indicate that he isn’t Jewish either.
Now, the current CEO of Vivendi is Jean-Bernard Lévy, whose name does appear Jewish. However, it turns out that the man who really calls the shots, anyway, as the New York Times explained in 2003, is Claude Bébéar, who is considered by many “a sinister ‘godfather’ of old-style crony capitalism” and who is described as “a practicing Roman Catholic.”[7] Whatever else that means, it means that Claude Bébéar is not Jewish.
Bébéar has so much power that he decides who gets to be CEO at Vivendi, as the New York Times explained in the same article:
“In 1991, [Bébéar] stormed the United States with a $1 billion investment in the Equitable Life Assurance group, a business he later turned into an AXA unit. That gave him credibility in international finance and helped him install Mr. Fourtou last year as Vivendi’s chairman, to replace Jean-Marie Messier, who was ousted after Vivendi was crushed by debt from an acquisition spree that involved big American deals.”
Now, for the Bronfman drama.
Three years after selling his beloved media empire to Vivendi, Edgar Bronfman Jr. put together “a desperate bid to regain Universal” when Vivendi, chafing under Messier’s “acquisition spree,” announced that it would sell Universal. Other competitors backed out when Bronfman outbid them all. But despite all this, the man whom “practicing Catholic” Claude Bébéar installed at Vivendi to correct Messier’s “acquisition spree,” Jean-Rene Fourtou, still sold Universal to somebody else: to non-Jews: to General Electric.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times:
“[Bronfman] cast himself in the self-described role of ‘lion tamer’ to a group of unruly private investors, pulling them together long enough to tender a $13-billion bid to buy back his Universal empire. . . .by September, when Vivendi chairman Jean-Rene Fourtou promised to name a winner, it looked as though Bronfman might have triumphed. Up to that point, every Hollywood high-roller...had dropped out of the bidding for Universal. . . Their reasons were simple: Vivendi wanted too much money.
But Bronfman. . .had a score to settle, as well as a fundamental belief in Universal’s intrinsic value. The studio might not currently be worth the $14 billion Vivendi was demanding, but Bronfman thought the asking price was close enough that he meant to stay in the game to the end.
Then, on the morning after Labor Day, when Bronfman prepared to bask in the limelight as the once and future mayor of Universal City, Vivendi’s Fourtou announced the $14-billion NBC deal [that is, with NBC’s parent company, General Electric].”[8]
This is very clear.
If “Bronfman. . .had a score to settle. . .[and]. . .meant to stay in the game to the end,” it was obviously easier to wring an extra billion or two from Bronfman than from anybody else. He was passionate about getting the company back and would have gone higher if asked to. But he was not asked to! Vivendi sold Universal to GE even though GE offered not one penny more than Vivendi’s asking price.
So this may be considered evidence for how rich gentiles discriminate against rich Jews in the buying and selling of big media; it is certainly not evidence that ‘the Jews’ control the media.
And once again: If Bronfman had been allowed to create the Universal media empire he so lusted after, his media would have almost certainly attacked the Jews. Consider only that Edgar Bronfman Sr., the man’s father, from his perch atop the World Jewish Congress, has behaved in some ways as a high-profile anti-Israel operative. In the early years of the Reagan administration, Edgar Bronfman Sr. lent his name to various diplomatic attacks against Israel, and in 1985 he was the leader of an attempt to maneuver behind Israel’s back and saddle it with a terrorist PLO state next door. Bronfman is a citizen of the US, not Israel, and Israeli patriots repudiated him.[9a]
But that was mild. This is how far Bronfman Sr. has gone to attack the Jews:
“Edgar Bronfman, President of the World Jewish Congress, ...suggested the [Jewish] settlements [in the West Bank and Gaza] were the key obstacle to peace and echoed [Hebrew University] professor [Ze’ev] Sternhell in advising the Palestinians that they would be wise to focus their terror attacks on settlers.”[9b]
What Bronfman Sr.’s performance suggests is that what is true for Jewish-owned media in an antisemitic universe will be true for powerful Jews in general, whether or not they are media moguls: the reason they have been allowed to become powerful is that they do not defend the Jews, and on the contrary appear to take pleasure in attacking them. This is not speculation, and interested readers may consult the following HIR investigation on the behavior of a wide cross-section of Diaspora Jewish leaders.
“How mainstream Diaspora Jewish leaders are failing the Jewish people today”; Historical and Investigative Research; 22 March 2006; by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders2.htm
Final remarks
Now, this is strictly for fun, but let me point something out.
When we do find Jews among the powerful media controllers, they don’t defend the Jewish people at all. But we don’t find that many. What we find is a rather large number of powerful news media controllers who are Christian: Jack Welch, Catholic; the mighty godfather who really calls the shots at Vivendi (and at many other places), Claude Bébéar, another Catholic; and Steve Case, who’s also Catholic. Then we have Jeffrey Immelt, Presbyterian; and Rupert Murdoch, another Presbyterian. Richard D. Parsons is a Lutheran. All Christians!
It is a historical fact that the Christian gospels slander ‘the Jews’ with the false accusation that they killed God (see Part 1 of this series). It is a historical fact that Christians have long persecuted Jews in the West (see Part 1 of this series). And it is a fact documented in this series that the media is anti-Jewish (see Parts 2 through 5). Finally, we have seen that the US government acquiesces in the media attacks against Israel when it could easily counter them (see Part 6 of this series). And yet, somehow, the rumor is not about a Christian conspiracy to attack the Jewish people—despite the fact that, as you now clearly see, ‘the Christians’ control the mass media.
Curious, isn’t it?
The whole thing reminds me of a saying from The Wizard of Oz: “Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain. . .!”
Footnotes and Further Reading
[1] The New Yorker, October 1, 2001, THE CRITICS; Books; Pg. 112, 2389 words, GUT PUNCH; How great was Jack Welch?, JOHN CASSIDY
[2] Finding cracks in the brand that Jack built, Toronto Star, March 15, 2002 Friday, Ontario Edition, BUSINESS;, Pg. C01, 1916 words, ANDREW STAWICKI/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
[3] GE enters new era as a legend leaves, USA TODAY, September 7, 2001, Friday,, FINAL EDITION, MONEY;, Pg. 1B, 1860 words, Del Jones, NEW YORK
[4] “WHO OWNS WHAT?; General Electric”; Columbia Journalism Review.
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/ge.asp
[5] Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2003 Sunday, Home Edition, Page 14, 4833 words, Cover Story; Fumbling the Franchise; Edgar Bronfman Jr. Wanted to Be a Media Mogul. That Dream Cost Him Billions, as Well as the Canadian Liquor Empire His Grandfather Built. Guess What? He Still Wants to Be a Media Mogul., Dennis McDougal, Dennis McDougal is the author of “The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman,, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood” (DaCapo, 2001).
[6] “J’Accuse! Jean-Marie Messier and Edgar Bronfman Jr. battle over anti-Semitism, anti-non-Semitism, and who’s the worse businessman”; By Daniel Gross; Posted Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2003, at 2:36 PM PT
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086678/#ContinueArticle
[7] If Claude Bebear Speaks, French Companies Listen , The New York Times, November 18, 2003 Tuesday, Late Edition - Final , Section W; Column 3; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1, 1797 words, By JOHN TAGLIABUE , PARIS, Nov. 14
[8] Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2003 Sunday, Home Edition, Page 14, 4833 words, Cover Story; Fumbling the Franchise; Edgar Bronfman Jr. Wanted to Be a Media Mogul. That Dream Cost Him Billions, as Well as the Canadian Liquor Empire His Grandfather Built. Guess What? He Still Wants to Be a Media Mogul., Dennis McDougal, Dennis McDougal is the author of “The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman,, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood” (DaCapo, 2001).
[9] Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (pp.139-140)
[9a] Some of Bronfman Sr.’s anti-Israeli activities are documented in sections corresponding to the years 1981, 1982-83, and 1985 of the following piece: “Is the US an Ally of Israel?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1981 http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1982 http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1985
[9b]
[10] Parsons, Alone at the Top; AOL Time Warner Chief Unlikely to Be Overlooked Now, The Washington Post, January 14, 2003 Tuesday, Final Edition, FINANCIAL; Pg. E01, 1140 words, Frank Ahrens, Washington Post Staff Writer
[11] PARSONS—Isabelle J. Died January 11, 2004. Beloved wife of the late Lorenzo L. Parsons, Sr., devoted mother of five children, Loretta Parsons Poole, Richard Parsons, Janet Parsons, Diane Parsons and the late Lorenzo, Jr.; proud grandmother of Gregory Parsons, Leslie Parsons and Rebecca Parsons; loving sister-in-law of Eloise, Bonnaveta, Elaine and Joan; cherished aunt of a great host of nieces and nephews; and friend to many.
She was an important part of all of their lives and will be missed dearly. A wake will be held on Thursday, January 15th from 2-5pm and 7-9pm at the Bernard F. Dowd Funeral Home located at 165-20 Hillside Ave, Jamaica, NY. A funeral service will be held on Friday, January 16. at 10am at New Hope Lutheran Church located at 167-25 118th Ave, Jamaica, NY. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Lorenzo and Isabelle Parsons Scholarship Fund, Community Funds, Inc., Two Park Ave, NY, NY, 10016, in memory of the deceased.
PARSONS—Isabelle J. Time Warner Inc. mourns the passing of the beloved mother of our Chairman and CEO, Richard D. Parsons. We extend our condolences to his entire family. Your friends and colleagues at Time Warner.
SOURCE: Paid Notice: Deaths; PARSONS, ISABELLE J., The New York Times, January 13, 2004 Tuesday, Late Edition - Final , Section B; Column 1; Classified; Pg. 7, 200 words
[12] Farewell to a genuinely good man, The San Francisco Chronicle, JULY 5, 2002, FRIDAY,, FINAL EDITION, NEWS;, Pg. A2;, 737 words, Rob Morse
[13] Plane Crash on the White House Lawn, CNN, Larry King Live 9:00 pm ET, September 12, 1994, Transcript # 1224, News; Domestic, 8591 words, LARRY KING;
Plane Crash on the White House Lawn, CNN, Larry King Live 9:00 pm ET, September 12, 1994, Transcript # 1224-1, News, 1839 words, LARRY KING;
Branch Davidian Verdict Ends in Acquittals, CNN, The Week in Review 1:00 pm ET, February 27, 1994, Transcript # 99, News; Domestic, 5934 words, SUSAN ROOK; BOB CAIN;
CIA Mole Uncovered, CNN, The Week in Review 1:00 pm ET, February 27, 1994, Transcript # 99-3, News, 800 words, SUSAN ROOK; BOB CAIN;
CNN, The Big Story 8:30 am ET, February 26, 1994, Transcript # 83, News; Domestic, 3673 words
CIA Employee and Wife Arrested for Spying for Russia, CNN, NEWS 2:02 am ET, February 23, 1994, Transcript # 448-1, News; Domestic, 414 words, DEBORAH POTTER
Espionage Case Has Far-Reaching Implications, CNN, NEWS 4:58 pm ET, February 23, 1994, Transcript # 653-5, News; Domestic, 560 words, SKIP LOESCHER
U.S. Intelligence Assess Espionage Damage, CNN, NEWS 6:33 pm ET, February 23, 1994, Transcript # 685-6, News; Domestic, 652 words, CHARLES BIERBAUER
CNN, Crossfire 7:30 pm ET, February 23, 1994, Transcript # 1035, News; Domestic, 4383 words
Relations With Moscow Frayed Amid Espionage Charges, CNN, Inside Politics 4:34 pm ET, February 22, 1994, Transcript # 525-1, News; Domestic, 1314 words, WOLF BLITZER
Relations With Moscow Frayed Amid Espionage Charges, CNN, Inside Politics 4:30 pm ET, February 22, 1994, Transcript # 525, Election; News, 3550 words, CATHERINE CRIER; BERNARD SHAW;
Relations With Moscow Frayed Amid Espionage Charges, CNN, Inside Politics 4:30 pm ET, February 22, 1994, Transcript # 525-1, News, 1315 words, CATHERINE CRIER; BERNARD SHAW;
Alleged CIA Mole Arrested for Passing Secrets to Russia, CNN, NEWS 6:03 pm ET, February 22, 1994, Transcript # 684-1, News; Domestic, 447 words, DEBORAH POTTER
[14] “BLITZER: …there is a lot of criticism leveled against this Israeli policy. Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of counter-terrorism over at the CIA wrote in today’s ‘Washington Post’ this. And let me read it to you, and we’ll put it up on the screen. He said: ‘As a counter- terrorist technique, assassination is not only immoral but ineffective in accomplishing its stated goal, the deterrence of terrorism.’”
SOURCE: Targeted for Death: Israel’s Policy of Assassination, CNN, CNN WOLF BLITZER REPORTS 20:00, August 30, 2001 Thursday, Transcript # 083000CN.V67, News; Domestic, 3434 words, Henry Kissinger, William Cohen, Wolf Blitzer, David Ensor, Greta Van Susteren
[15] Rupert Murdoch; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch
[16] Special Edition America United, Fox News Network, FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME (18:00), September 15, 2001 Saturday, Transcript # 091501cb.254, News; International, 5565 words, Vince Cannistraro, Brit Hume, Wendell Goler, Greg Palkot, Carl Cameron, Rita Cosby, David Shuster.
[17] Political Headlines, Fox News Network, FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME (18:00), October 3, 2001 Wednesday, Transcript # 100301cb.254, News; International, 2683 words, Brit Hume, Bret Baier, Jim Angle, Carl Cameron, Brian Wilson
Members Of Congress Criticize Pre-War Intelligence On Iraq; More American Soldiers Are Killed In Iraq As Children Attend A Renovated School; International Donors Conference Falls Short On Iraqi Aid Funding, Fox News Network, FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME (18:00), October 24, 2003 Friday, Transcript # 102401cb.254, News; International, 2002 words, Tony Snow, Major Garrett, Steve Harrigan, Molly Henneberg, James Rosen
Interview With Saxby Chambliss, Hank Perritt, Fox News Network, FOX HANNITY & COLMES (21:00), September 30, 2002 Monday, Transcript # 093001cb.253, News; Domestic, 2732 words, Saxby Chambliss, Hank Perritt, Sean Hannity; Alan Colmes
Interview With Laura Ingraham, David Corn, Fox News Network, FOX HANNITY & COLMES (21:30), September 27, 2002 Friday, Transcript # 092703cb.253, News; Domestic, 2779 words, Laura Ingraham, David Corn, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes
Interview With David Hackworth, Fox News Network, FOX HANNITY & COLMES (21:00), August 20, 2002 Tuesday, Transcript # 082001cb.253, News; Domestic, 1730 words, David Hackworth, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes
[18] Interview with Veteran Intel Pros for Sanity’s Ray McGovern; Prime Minister Blair Denies Misleading Country on WMD, Fox News Network, THE BIG STORY WITH JOHN GIBSON (17:20), June 4, 2003 Wednesday, Transcript # 060403cb.263, News; International, 1716 words, Ray McGovern, David Asman, Adam Boulton

Francisco Gil-White is an anthropologist who was Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and lecturer at the Solomon Asch Centre for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict. He was born in Chicago and raised in Mexico City. His father is Francisco Gil Díaz, Secretary of Finance and Public Credit in the cabinet of Vicente Fox. He holds a Masters Degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Biological and Cultural Anthropology from UCLA.
Gil-White’s contract at the University of Pennsylvania, which began in September 2001, has not been renewed. Gil-White claims that this was a politically motivated dismissal due to his controversial political views, such as a refutation of the conventional version of the 1990s civil wars in Yugoslavia [1] and the view that the Palestine Liberation Organisation traces its roots to Adolf Hitler’s World War II Final Solution.[2] Gil-White has made public documents relevant to his dispute with the University of Pennsylvania,[3] and has stated publicly that he is planning to sue the university.[4] On 17 February 2005, Gil-White appeared on Hannity and Colmes (Fox News Channel) in a segment on “how far academic freedom should go” regarding his controversial positions that NATO framed Slobodan Milošević, the U.S. government is in fact an enemy of Israel, and his agreement with independent investigation that skeptically examines the official version of events on the September 11, 2001 attacks. To the interviewer’s questions, Gil-White pointed out that the university never objected to his opinions on 9-11, which it appears to have been unaware of, and that the insistence of the interviewers on this issue was strange given that the interview was supposedly about the reason Gil-White was fired from UPENN, namely, his research on US foreign policy and on the origins of the PLO.[5]
Gil-White was assistant editor at the online magazine Emperor’s Clothes[6] from 2002 to 2005, and now runs his Foundation for the Analysis of Conflict, Ethnic and Social (FACES), which supports his website, Historical and Investigative Research, which publishes his political writings. He stopped writing for Emperor’s Clothes after disagreements with editor Jared Israel, who charged on the website Israpundit that Gil-White misrepresented historian Nathan Weinstock as an enemy of the Jews, and falsified documentation to support his accusation that the main US Zionist leader, Rabbi Steven Wise, “got his wish” when the holocaust took place.[7] Gil-White answered these charges on the same Israpundit page, presenting evidence to support his view that Nathan Weinstock is indeed an enemy of the Jews, and that so was Rabbi Steven Wise. [8] Concerning Nathan Weinstock, Gil-White submitted evidence to support 1) that Nathan Weinstock, based on Benny Morris’s work, accuses the Israeli government of committing crimes against civilians in the 1948 War, 2) that Ephraim Karsh has meticulously shown how Benny Morris misquotes, distorts, and fabricates documents to make his accusations; and 3) that Jared Israel himself is on record calling Benny Morris a fraud, relying on Karsh’s demonstrations. Gil-White’s argument is that if Jared Israel agrees that Benny Morris is a fraud, then he should agree that Weinstock is a fraud as well, since Weinstock relies on Morris in order to repeat Morris’s accusations.
On Rabbi Stephen Wise, Gil-White wrote an article[9] summarizing the evidence put forth in recent historical works accusing that Stephen Wise opposed efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust, and tracing Wise’s energetic efforts to sabotage the efforts of those who did support rescue. At the top of Gil-White’s article he quoted Rabbi Wise’s words: “I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany...” which Gil-White interpreted to mean that Stephen Wise wanted the Jews to die. Jared Israel objects to the partial quotation and to the interpretation, charging that Gil-White distorted Wise’s meaning by truncating his statement and taking it out of context. However, in the body of the article, Gil-White did quote the entire sentence, which reads as follows: “I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany than live in lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany.” And Gil-White also explained the context (both at the top and in the body of the article): this was Rabbi Wise’s reply to Neville Chamberlain’s suggestion, on the eve of WWII,that Jewish refugees from Hitler might be resettled in the former German colony of Tanganyika. Since the Jewish refugees were not resettled in Tanganyika, since most of them died at the hands of the Germans, and since Stephen Wise was the most important American Jewish leader, which is why he got to express his views to Chamberlain, Gil-White concluded, in the context of his review of documentation on Wise’s opposition to the rescue of Jews, that, with the Holocaust, “Stephen Wise got his wish.” Jared Israel disagrees with this interpretation and charges that by supporting it (though only at the top of the article) with a partial rather than full sentence, Gil-White “falsified documents.”
Recently Francisco Gil-White teamed up with Israeli citizen Chaim Wolfowicz to create StrongIsrael.org in order to protest what they consider a repetition of the WWII appeasement of the German Nazis in the Oslo Process. The website gathers signatures from Israel and from all over the world in opposition to any more territorial concessions by the Israeli government to PLO/Fatah. Francisco Gil-White was interviewed by Israel National Radio on Sunday, October 27, 2007, about the StrongIsrael effort.[10]