Corruption – Page 837 – Public Intelligence Blog

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

CIA Deputy Executive Director John Brennan. (Photo: CSIS: Center for Strategic & International Studies / Flickr)

Last month, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a blistering report that documented a secret drug interdiction program in Peru that was responsible for the death of an American missionary and her infant daughter in 2001. The report provided a detailed study of the efforts of senior CIA leaders, including Deputy Director John McLaughlin and Deputy Executive Director John Brennan, to cover up the crime by stonewalling the White House, the Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the flaws of the interdiction program.

Brennan, who was President Obama's original choice to be CIA director until the report complicated the confirmation process, is currently the deputy director of the National Security Council (NSC).McLaughlin was the “villain” in the politicization of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the “slam-dunk” briefing to the president in January 2003. Nevertheless, the Obama administration named McLaughlin to lead the internal investigation of the CIA's intelligence failures in the attempted bombing of a commercial airliner and the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

The detailed report on Peru documents a culture of corruption and deceit at the highest levels of the CIA as well as the interventions of CIA lawyers to stop the DOJ from pursuing prosecutions in the case. The CIA office of general counsel's aggressive campaign to prevent a criminal prosecution of the agency officers culminated with Deputy Director McLaughlin's letter to the assistant attorney general that promised “significant disciplinary action” if CIA officers “lied or made knowingly misleading statements” to the Congress, DOJ, the NSC or office of inspectors general (OIG) investigators. The report carefully documents the lies and the stonewalling, but there was never any genuine punishment.

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Melvin A. Goodman is national security and intelligence columnist for Truthout. He is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career included service at the CIA, State Department, Defense Department and the US Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

See Also:

Journal: Mel Goodman on CIA Myths

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Lack Of)

and especially;

Continue reading “Journal: CIA and the Culture of Corruption”

2010/12/022010/12/02

Journal: Wikileaks Exposes How NYT and Washington Post Shill for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Iranians (Persians) have viewed Russia (Soviet Union) with distrust and as a menace or outright threat for hundreds of years, at least since the Russian Tsars cemented their expansion into Turkestan (or the Turkic countries in what is now called Central Asia). The fact that Iran sits on top of one of the world's largest reservoirs of oil and gas adds to their fears. Russia is also much closer to Iran than the United States. So from a Russian perspective, the emergence of an Iranian nuclear delivery capability would be a far more dangerous ramifications for Russia than for the US, at least in raw geopolitical terms.

With this in mind, the attached report by Gareth Porter begs the question: Why are the Russians less concerned about the so-called Iranian ballistic missile/nuclear threat than the United States? Why would the Washington Post and New York Times bias their reporting in a way that downplays the Russia's more moderate view?

To ask this question is to answer it. (hint: Simply ask what other country is most obsessed by Iran?) Chuck

December 1, 2010

Documents Show NYT and Washington Post Shilling for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”

Wikileaks Exposes Complicity of the Press

By GARETH PORTER

Counterpunch

A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.

In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea.

But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.

The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles – supposedly called the BM-25 – from North Korea. Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the U.S. view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the U.S. side.

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2010/12/012011/10/22

Reference: No Labels “Non-Party” = “Four More Years” for Wall Street

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Media Reports, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy

No Labels Best Links

Wikipedia Overview

No Labels Home Page

See Also:

The founding fathers had no labels (San Diego Examiner)

WARNING NOTICE: http://www.taylormarsh.com has a major virus. Do NOT go to their story on the Houston meeting (apart from its being hype, now it's just plain dangerous).

Phi Beta Iota: We believe the following:

1. Michael Bloomberg wants to be President.

2. Wall Street wants Michael Bloomberg to be President not because Barack Obama has failed them, but because he has so visibly pandered to them. The elite mob includes Burson-Marsteller, the Clintons and Joe Lieberman as well as Peter Peterson and David Walker (former Comptroller General who declared US insolvent in 2007 without being witting of financial crimes legalized by the Clintons and sanctified by Bush II and then Obama).

3. Two groups have been started, one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast, both focused on convergence in the middle, with Michael Bloomberg as the “natural” anti-thesis to the Republican and Democratic alternatives. Both are eligible for and will channel massive funding from corporations exercising their ill-gotten “personality” rights.

Continue reading “Reference: No Labels “Non-Party” = “Four More Years” for Wall Street”

2010/12/012010/12/01

Journal: ONE Party–the Wall Street Party–“Owns” USA

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

The documentary film “Inside Job” makes it perfectly clear that there is only one party in DC: The Wall Street Party. With five Wall Street minders for every elected official in DC, why are we surprised? There are of course a few exceptions, but their legislative record suggest they are essentially ineffective.

The Wall Street Party has constructed a circular tautology that incorporates 1] Wall Street; 2] Government; 3] Academia, and 4] The Press — the American Gang of Four.

It is no surprise that the Wall Street Party has a principle goal of privatizing wealth via tax cuts for themselves, while socializing the pain and suffering by slashing public spending for security in employment, health and education.

Tautologies, such as the ones that prop up the Wall Street Party, are constructed for the sole purpose of being unarguably true and are by design incapable of disproof. A prime example of the Wall Street Party's abuse of reality is their hijacking and distortion of the works of Adam Smith.

Of course tautologies are false reality distortion bubbles. They can only paper over the diversion from reality just so long. Then they fail in a big way. A prime example of this would be the former USSR.

The best way to deal with this is most likely an open source refutation [refudiation?] of the claims of the Wall Street Party.

Phi Beta Iota: Reprinted from Facebook with permission of the author.

2010/11/30

Reference: “Human Resources” by Scott Noble

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, History, IO Sense-Making, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform

From Skilluminati Research [quoting another person]:

Last night I watched Human Resources and I was impressed enough to pass it along. It's a documentary about Social Control, examining the history, the philosophy and ultimately the pathology of elite power. The movie is a full two hours and you can download a copy of the video file right here
(http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FC6BGEOM).

Overall, Human Resources is rough around the edges but still overloaded with gems. Set aside some time to digest this — and take notes.

Scott Noble does an admirable job of fitting ten hours of material into two. I also appreciated the space he gives to all the people he interviews…there's a metric ton of ideas here and he lets almost all of them unfold and breathe at their own pace. The footage itself is very low-fi and some of the interviews feel like they drag on for too long, or wander in circles. Impressively, those moments are few and far between. Noble can't cover everything, but the scope of this movie alone makes it the most ambitious entry in this strange genre so far, more complete than The Century of the Self and less hysterical than the Zeitgeist franchise.

The film really clicks in the final act, when the focus turns toward the CIA's MK experimentation. I was surprised and grateful to find an extended interview with Dr. Colin Ross, who takes pains to note that “CIA MK” is actually a misleading generalization, obscuring a larger network of projects involving the Army, Naval Intelligence and several other, more opaque agencies. There's a lot of rewindable moments here, tread slowly.

When the perfect documentary about Social Control finally arrives, I'm guessing it will be built on this precise blueprint. This film might be
full of cosmetic flaws, but his argument is (mostly) methodical and devastating. A toast to Scott Noble.

2010/11/292010/11/30

Journal: WikiLeaks Next Round BANKS

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, IO Multinational, IO Secrets, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

WikiLeaks plans to release thousands of internal documents from a major
U.S. bank in early 2011, Forbes magazine reported on Monday.

“You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” Assange told Forbes
during an interview in London, but refused to provide details about the
bank.

MORE @
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article923432.ece?homepage=true

Phi Beta Iota: Our hope for the round after banks would be massive leakage from the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. This “open everything” meme is way cool. Think of it as tough love.

Facebook Question and Answer

Jonathan Kan So, do WikiLeaks make your Open Source Intelligence dream comes true?

The short answer is no–WikiLeaks is the lowest form of open source raw sewage–BUT WikiLeaks is serving an enormous purpose in demonstrating without equivocation that “rule by secrecy” is unethical, inept, and not in the public interest. It is a catalyst for change, not change itself. For change the game, see Tom Atlee on politics (search Tom Atlee Change the Game) and for substance see my M4IS2 Briefing to South America, at www.tinyurl.com/SteeleCHILE. Pass it on. The revolution has started without a single politician being involved.

2010/11/282010/11/28

Journal: US Secret Intelligence Tasking US Diplomats

02 Diplomacy, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Secrets, Methods & Process, Officers Call

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Insofar as I know, the DoD military Services remain under broad and explicit proscription from accessing the Wikileaks site or the Wikileaks releases in any form. Some of the Service directives are very intimidating, threatening court martials for military members, loss of security clearances, etc., etc. From the broadcast media, it appears that major lockdowns of information will shortly follow. And SPC Bradley Manning, currently confined at Quantico, will probably walk as, I suspect, will Hasan at Fort Hood. MA

Phi Beta Iota: This demonstrates that the National Clandestine Service (NCS) is completely ignorant of what can be known through open sources, and that the Secretary of State is not doing her job of assuring that diplomacy is not micro-tasked into what are clearly clandestine and covert operations support functions absolutely not appropriate to diplomatic status. These people should not have message release authority. The US Government needs a total make-over. First, however, CIA needs a director that is fully capable on day one.

U.S. Expands Role of Diplomats in Spying

By MARK MAZZETTI

November 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries.

Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.

The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive” in specific countries. (“Humint” is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,” as well as “internet and intranet ‘handles’, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.”

Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, on Sunday disputed that American diplomats had assumed a new role overseas.

Read the rest of this sad story….