Victor Bout: The World’s Leading Dealer in Illegal Arms

Viktor Vasilevich Bout ( pronounced “butt” or” bott”) has become the world’s largest dealer in illegal arms , and he achieved this status in a short period of time. Today, the US and the UN officially try to prevent people and countries from dealing with him, yet US contractors in Iraq are still using his services.

Bout is a prominent member of the Russian mafia.. His record of fueling mayhem and murder in Africa and violating US embargoes has led the UN, the United States, and some other nations to join in blacklisting him and forbidding transactions with him Despite its own measures against him , the administration of George W. Bush continues to do business with him and with the Russian mafia.

KGB Major Bout was stati0oned at a Russian base in Angola in 1991.Vic tor was born in Tajikistan in 1967 of Russian parents who had tangential ties to important families, including the Andropovs. He was fluent in six languages. When the soviet empire collapsed in that year, he became an arms dealer, using old Soviet planes Bout started by purchasing three old Antonov planes and soon had 250 to 300 employees, mostly Russians, Ukranians, and Arminians. A Human Rights Watch official said that by 2000 Bout operated the “McDonalds of arms-trafficking.”

He soon became an important figure in the Russian-Ukranian mafia. These underworld people enjoyed the protection of the Russian military and Ministry of Defense. Bout entered business when it was characterized by Yeltsin-era, small, disorganized crime and he would make the transition to Putin- era organized crime ventures. His ties for what passed as the Russian mafia were very important, but he preferred to work as a lone wolf on specific operations .built around his air cargo business.

The Russian mafia had access to a $32 billion weapons stockpile in the Ukraine. It even included helicopters. Even Ukranian president Leonid Kuchma was caught dealing weapons in 1998-2000. Some went to Saddam Hussein. According to the Russian investigators, a worldview drug mega cartel has emerged in which the Russian mafia played a major role. They believe that Yeltsin crime family was an important player in the cartel, and they insist that the Bush family, centered in the current administration, is now a major player. Whether or not that is true, it is known that George H.W. Bush refused to cooperate in an international investigation of Russian mafia money laundering in Switzerland.

These elements participate in a international drug trade that could approach something between $500 million and $1.2 trillion a year. Representatives of its component elements met at the villa of Adnan Khashoggi at Beaulieu, near Nice, France in July 1999. He was once said to the “the richest man in the world.” There were also representatives of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Russian Mafia, and Venezuela. Also present were representativs of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a major drug dealing operation. This cartel deals with Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy, FACA rebels in Columbia, the Kosovo Liberation Army, the CIA, and Russian Military Intelligence(GRU). . Dr. Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat, traces the predecessors of the meta group back to the CIA-sponsored bank BCCI, and before that to cooperative ventures centering in the agency and Myer Lansky. Scott writes that a second drug cartel operates the traffic from Burma into the enterprise zones of southern China, and he has little information on how the two networks might be connected.

With assistance of the Russian mafia, Bout has moved weapons out of the Ukraine and Bulgaria. He soon established a base in Ostend, Belgium and sold weapons to many parties in Africa, to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and then to the Taliban. Bout denied working for the Taliban and The Belgians indicted him for money laundering and conspiracy and put out an international arrest warrant. Bouts planes were used for personal transportation before 9/11 according to Andrew Gilligan of the Evening Standard.

Bout moved to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates , where, he established close business ties to the former ambassador to the US, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Saqr al Nayhan, a member of the Dhabi ruling family. The UAE plays an important role in the Afghan drug trade as opium is shipped there, where it is heavily taxed, and some of that tax money has made itw way back to terrorists. The Village Voice speculated that the failed Dubai plan to purchase US ports would have made it much easier to get drugs into the U.S. He has found the UAE a convenient place to do business with Abdul Qayyum Shaikh, a major central Asian dealer in illegal arms.

Arms merchants like Bout make it possible by moving huge quantities of illegal weapons to illegal destinations. Bout has also established a major base in Gambia, where he has used his influence to mov e huge quantities of illegal blood diamonds. Later, the US ignored his actrivities in the illegal diamonds trade in return for flying arms to the Northen Alliance when it was fighting the Afghan Taliban. He was also involved in business arrangements with dictator Charles Taylor in Liberia. Again, they were moving diamonds. The diamond gangs are known for killing, , rape and murder. Taylor was a business partner of Pat Robertson, a major figure in the illegal diamond trade, and those diamonds were moved on the evangelist’s “Operation Blessing” aircraft. Bout, who owns about 50 Russian planes, has also supplied Philippine extremists Abu Sayyaf Group It estimated that he has supplied arms for every war and insurgency in Africa in the past decade and a half. Perhaps his greatest achievement was arming child soldiers in Sierra Leon. During the slaughter in Rwanda, he armed the Hutu and also flew in French peacekeepers. He operated many companies and many fronts. The first was Transavia Export Company, founded in 1991. He has been accused by a usually reliable correspondent of supplying Osama bin Laden, but he denies it.

Bout claims that all his ventures are legitimate cannot believed, but a majority might be. One of his businesses is flying frozen chickens to Africa. He has enough legitimacy to enable Vladimir Putin to befriend him. Twice Bout flew UN peace keepers to Somalia and East Timor and he was also active selling arms in Kosovo and neighboring areas. Two united Nations Commissions cited him for breaking embargoes, and the US Treasury in 2005 and 2006 froze his US assets. There is a strong nexus between people like Bout and terrorism.

The Child Abduction-Child Sex Trail Goes Cold

So many gaps, contradictions, and disinformation color reports about government sponsored child abduction and abuse, that whatever the real story is, we will probably never know it. We are all conditioned to believe that these sorts of things simply could not happen. Even if there were twice as much partial information available, it would be hard to believe government could be involved, and the story would still be so incomplete that it would be consigned to speculation. According to Nobel laureate, many people–probably a majority– are wired emotionally in such a way that they cannot accept very much bad news about their leaders or society. These folks can rest easy, and the people he calls “realists” will continue to be uneasy because there is more than enough evidence to prompt worry.

A number of sources indicate that Roy Cohn operated a prostitution as early as the fifties and that CIA agent Edwin Wilson was connected with it so that mind control experiments could be carried out by permitting subjects to act out in real life their sexual fantasies. There is a little good information linking the 1950s operation to that of the seventies, which involved both these men. There is some information about a CIA sexual blackmail operation in the 1960s.


Former agent Frank Terpil wrote about agent Ed Wilson’s role in the blackmail operation of the seventies and added that photographs were taken by the agency’s Technical Services Division. The service was used to blackmail members of both parties as well as high government and military officials. Child sex was available, and prominent names were associated with the sex ring, including a future vice president and a very sanctimonious member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some report that Wilson did not operate the ring in the eighties; it passed to a higher official at Langley. There is only a little information on where the children were obtained. One good source say some came from Covenant House, back in the days when it was operated by a priest who was later removed for sexual abuse.

The names of the people allegedly operating government-tied sex rings are always the same and they are also associated with various Iran /Contra operations and various activities ast the Capizon Indian Reservation in Indo, California. This suggest that only a small minority of government agents are tied to the various illegal activities associated with the CIA, NSA, and FBI since the late seventies. This is comforting in a sense, but it also confirms the claim that a small network of right-wing intelligence people inside and outside the government called “The Enterprise” took shape in the late seventies and has been at work ever since. It emerged in opposition to Jimmy Carter but became an instrument of official policy in the Reagan-Bush,Srs. years. Its status now is unknown. When Bill Clinton said there was “ a government within a government” that he could not control, he may have had this in mind.

There are reports of children being moved through airstrips at Sheridan, Oregon, China Lake, California, and Santa Rosa, California. The latter airstrip sees the most traffic and is operated by FEMA. Of course, that airstrip is near Bohemian Grove, where child sex abuse is alleged to have occurred.

The name that crops up with greatest frequency is that of a man in Division Five of the FBI, who also worked for the CIA. He ran weapons in Iran Contra and did black bag jobs for J. Edgar Hoover. He admitted to Stewart Webb that he was involved in molesting children and said he could not leave black operations until George Herbert Walker Bush permitted it. Later in life in married a woman in the Church of Satan. Now he has infiltrated the ranks of people investigation child abuse and survivors organizations.

There are several survivors’ organizations that are obviously infiltrated by agents of the perpetrators and some people who probably never experienced child abuse. All the survivors claim they were snatched by government agents. They also say they were subjected to various experiments and became intelligence operatives and sex slaves. Some tell some unbelievable stories. Maybe they were preprogrammed to provide this disinformation to make all their claims seem ridiculous. On the other hand, their stories have many commonalities regarding techniques, people, places, and the like.

Incident Raises Questions About Child Abuse

Six dirty, ill-clad children were seen in a Tallahassee park on February 4, 1987. They were with two well dressed men who had an old Dodge van. Someone called the police and reported that something seemed amiss. The two men were arrested and charged with child abuse. They belonged to a Washington-based organization called Finders. The van had a mattress in back, and it seemed that all eight of these people slept there. One child showed signs of sexual abuse. All the children were seven or under ,, and only one would speak. Most of the children did not recognize toilets, telephones, staplers, typewriters, or telephones. They believed they were being taken to a school for very bright kids in Mexico and said they were fed as a reward for obedience. One said the men were their teachers.

Washington, DC and the Customs Service police raided a warehouse and apartment. The former agency was involved because it maintained a child pornography unit. belonging to the Finders. A police detective had previously acquired information that the warehouse had been used for orgies and blood rituals. A large quantity of toys was found. The search produced manuals on how to find children and photographs of nude children. One seemed to accent a child’s genitals. There was a large quantity of tapes, and the Finders had a capacity to produce and reproduce tapes. Telexes were found that showed that children had been moved to all parts of the world, and there was an album showing children and adults in white robes, participating in rituals centering in the slaughtering of goats.

The Washington Police Department quickly dropped the matter—“like a hot stone” in the words of the Tallahassee policy. A WPD official said the case “had become a CIA internal matter.”. The FBI advise the WPD not to forward any formation about the matter. The WPD files were sealed on the matter. However, the children were returned to their parents.

Today, Finders has facilities in Washington and in Culpeper, Va. It claims to be a communal organization that explores rational living and it provides intelligence studies, mostly foreign but some domestic. Its guru, Marion David Pettie, admits that his son and wife had worked for the CIA, but he insisted that he had spent his lifetime trying to keep tract of covert government activities. He insists he was never an employee. He died in 2003. Some speculate that he was a rogue former agent trying to duplicate the agent’s mind control experiments.

Mind Control and Sex/Blackmail Operations: Is There a Tie

An obvious reason for operating a sex ring in Washington is to gain influence over the rich and powerful. Some people insist that the government was involved in these rings and link the involvement in part to child abduction and the government’s psychological experiments.

Knowledge of government mind control experiments and operations is limited. They are together called MK-Ultra. Much is written about Project Monarch, which seems to be a disinformation effort intended to keep people away from studying MKUltra. People have been hurt by Monarch operations, but it is essentially a side show.

During World War II, the US carried out mind control experiments mainly at McGill University in Canada, but also at Cornell under the direction of Dr. D. Ewen Cameron. . After the war, it imported Nazi and Italian Fascist scientists through “Operation Paperclip.” The Nazi scientists believed mind control worked best when the subjects were conditioned as children. Experiments centered on enhancing memory, control of behavior , and developing enhanced interrogation techniques and preparing people to resist vigorous interrogation. Techniques included electronic shock, hypnosis, forms of torture, and drugs including the development of LSD. There was also a hope of creating “sleeper” assassins, who could be triggered by earing a certain word or phrase. The investigators seemed to believe that using occult symbolism and the like proved very useful in programming minds. There is some evidence, including testimony before Congress, about the use of radiation exposure to control behavior.

At one time or another, 44 colleges and universities experimented for the government. In addition a number of hospitals were used. The work was segmented among so many research providers to prevent anyone from getting an overall view of the project. At Tulane, Dr. John Lilly pioneered in the use of electric shock and had great success implanting electrodes in the heads of animals. As far as we know, he used electricity on humans without implanting electrodes in their brains. Another approach to programming subjects was through the use of sexual training and abuse. It was a way of stripping people of all moral structures. It was also desirable to create multiple personalities so that in one personality because this helped the subjects forget actions they had carried out under programming. Other experiments that were follow-ups on Dachau work succeeded in dissolving memory via electronic shock in the sixties. There was also programs designed to create very elite soldiers, which borrowed from Dr. Joseph Mengele’s efforts to create perfect men. Some received a programming that makes possible self-destruction. Some information on the early phases of the program can be found in Orlikow, et al. Vs the U.S. ( 1988)

CIA director William Colby said the agency stopped all the mind control experiments in the early seventies. Lt. Col. Michael Aquino of the Army’s Psychological Warfare division carried on these experiments through the eighties. He became obsessed with Nazi rituals and satanism and founded the Temple of Set , an adaptation of the Church of Satan. He also went to Wewelsburg, a castle used by Himmler, where he presided over black magic ceremonies with former SS people. Did he believe this nonsense? The practice of Nordic satanism is puzzling. Perhaps these rituals are useful at some level of consciousness in innoculating people against remorse and instilling the belief that superior people are are entitled to act as they wish and take what they want.

There were other important experimenters including Heinrich Mueller, alias Dr. Blue or Gog, and his two sons. The experiments were carried on at many military bases and civilian locations, always under cover of innocent-sounding projects. Important work was done at Englewood Arsenal, Maryland, where Friedrich Hoffman carried out psychochemical experiments. Also involved there was Dr. Hubertus Strunghold, who had done experiments on truth serums at Dachau, using mescaline and psychedelics. His work for us was appropriately called Project Chatter. There were Nazi directed experiments on American citizens here and at a mental hospital in New York City. .Other experiments that were follow-ups on Dacuau work succeeded in dissolving memory via electronic shock in the sixties.

An expanded article or series on MKUltra will appear here sometime in the future.

An Early Brownstone Operation–Sex and Blackmail Ring
“Brownstone Operation” is another name for a sex/blackmail ring. A number of sources indicate that Roy Cohn operated one in the 1970s. It was reported that Cohn services including providing boys for men of wealth and power. A escort service was used as a “cut-out” for the sex and blackmail operation. A extension of his work was carried on by CIA agent Edwin Wilson and a former Eisenhower administration official who probably was not a CIA agent. There are reports that Wilson and Cohen cooperated in sex/blackmail scams since the 1950s.

A club run by a South Korean intelligence agent was used by them in the 1970s. . The former Eisenhower official was active in the 1976 and 1980 Reagan campaigns and held a White House under the former California governor but reported to CIA Director Bill Casey. In the late seventies, CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” reported that it was the city’s unofficial shadow government. In the eighties, Wilson was jailed on charges illegal gun running, but he always insisted he was carrying out orders.

Former agent Frank Terpil wrote about agent Ed Wilson’s role in the blackmail operation and added that photographs were taken by the agency’s Technical Services Division. The service was used to blackmail members of both parties as well as high government and military officials. Child sex was available, and prominent names were associated with the sex ring, including a future vice president and a very sanctimonious member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some report that Wilson did not operate the ring in the eighties; it passed to a higher official at Langley. There is only a little information on where the children were obtained.

One good source say some came from religiously operated home for runaway boys. The former Eisenhower official and one of his subordinates had close ties to the boys home. The home was affiliated with a similar home in Guatemala, which was favored by President Anastazio Samoza. The American boys home was lauded by the Reagan administration as an example of what privatization of these services could accomplish. It was also linked to Americacares, an organization that funneled money to the Nicaraguan contras.

An Early Brownstone Sex/Blackmail Operation

An Early Brownstone Operation–Sex and Blackmail Ring

“Brownstone Operation” is another name for a sex/blackmail ring. A number of sources indicate that Roy Cohn operated one in the 1970s. It was reported that Cohn services including providing boys for men of wealth and power. A escort service was used as a “cut-out” for the sex and blackmail operation. A extension of his work was carried on by CIA agent Edwin Wilson and a former Eisenhower administration official who probably was not a CIA agent. There are reports that Wilson and Cohen cooperated in sex/blackmail scams since the 1950s.

A club run by a South Korean intelligence agent was used by them in the 1970s. . The former Eisenhower official was active in the 1976 and 1980 Reagan campaigns and held a White House under the former California governor but reported to CIA Director Bill Casey. In the late seventies, CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” reported that it was the city’s unofficial shadow government. In the eighties, Wilson was jailed on charges illegal gun running, but he always insisted he was carrying out orders.

Former agent Frank Terpil wrote about agent Ed Wilson’s role in the blackmail operation and added that photographs were taken by the agency’s Technical Services Division. The service was used to blackmail members of both parties as well as high government and military officials. Child sex was available, and prominent names were associated with the sex ring, including a future vice president and a very sanctimonious member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some report that Wilson did not operate the ring in the eighties; it passed to a higher official at Langley. There is only a little information on where the children were obtained.

One good source say some came from religiously operated home for runaway boys. The former Eisenhower official and one of his subordinates had close ties to the boys home. The home was affiliated with a similar home in Guatemala, which was favored by President Anastazio Samoza. The American boys home was lauded by the Reagan administration as an example of what privatization of these services could accomplish. It was also linked to Americacares, an organization that funneled money to the Nicaraguan contras.

The Foley Case

The Foley Sex Scandal hit the headlines in September, 2006 when it was learned that Representative Mark Foley, number four man in the House leadership, had been sending sexually inappropriate e-mails to a 16 year old House page. The leadership and Ethics Committee Republicans had been aware of the harassment of this sixteen year old for eleven months and had not acted. Within two days of the breaking of the story, more evidence was produced that showed that the leadership knew about Foley sending sexually inappropriate e-mails to pages as early as 2001.There was even more evidence that there had been discussions about Foley’s problem within the leadership in the last year. Though knowing Foley could prove an embarrassment, Carl Rove asked him to run again in 2004.

Before ten days had passed, it was known that Rep. Jim Kolbe, then head of the Pages’ Board saw Foley’s messages in 2000. Kirt Fordham, Foley’s former chief of staff, said he alerted Hastert’s office of Foley’s troubling misconduct more than three years ago, Fordham went on to become chief of staff for Tom Reynolds, chair of the congressional Campaign Committee. Others in the leadership said they alerted Hastert a year ago. A former page told the Los Angeles Times that Foley stayed in contact with him after he left Washington and that they had sex when the young man was 21. Majority members of the Congressional Pages Board were aware of the problem but this information was withheld from the Democratic member.

The press covered the story in terms of whether the scan dal would lead conservative Christians to stay home on November 7 rather than show up and vote Republican as usual. These good people do not approve of sexual immorality, but they hate still more "liberals," whom they imagine are "elitists" who detest and somehow conspire against ordinary Americans. Perhaps regular conservative Christian voters will stay home because they have learned that the Bushies use them and otherwise make fun of them, but most will turn out to exorcise the demons clergy and clever Republican spinmasters have inserted into their streams of consciousness.

Who can forget the host of Republican Congressmen exposed as degenerates, adulterers, and home-wreckers in the Clinton days. The Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals did not punish them. More recently, fifteen godly House Republicans, mostly from the Appropriations committee, were found exchanging votes for adult sex. There was no conservative Christian outcry. One of the most pious Christian Congressmen in California was recently photographed with a prostitute, but apparently his Christian constitutents have ignored the infraction, perhaps thinking that he, like Gladstone, was trying to convert her.

The Elite's Interest in Sex with Children

,For some reason it appears that members of world elite has a preference for sex with children. In the last few years, the press has carried some stories about this in Latin America, Portugal, Belgium, and Bosnia.

On November 27, 2002, elements of the European press carried a story about diplomats, media people, and politicians having sex with children from a state-run orphanage, Casa Pia. Child pornography was also involved. Unlike the case in Belgium, this quickly disappeared from the headlines.

Not long after that, on January 28, 2003, the United Kingdom's press reported on Operation Ore. It indicated that a musical star and important overnment figures were having sex with children and relishing child pornography. Very soon, the Tony Blair government exercise its power to impose a news blackout on this story. It damaged national security!

There is a Nebraska Department of Social Service Report ( March 25, 1986) report, verified by four polygraph tests, that 15-20 male and female children children were flown from Omaha to Chicago in the mid-eighties for sexual use at a Republican event. A June 29, 1989 Washington Times story by Paul M. Rodriguez and George Archibald referred to a political six ring–mainly tied to the GOP– which involved “abduction of minors for sexual perversion.” Yorkshire TV followed up on this and prepared “Conspiracy of Silence” for the Discovery Channel. It was to be broadcasted in 1994, someone bought up the rights to the program and it was never shown.

In 2005, stories appeared that military contractors Halliburton and Dyncorp ran child prostitution rings in the Balkans. Only Representative Cynthia Mc Kinney, considered an extremist due to her position on some other matters, asked many questions. However, she gathered some support for an amendment to a military appropriations bill forbidding US military contractors from running prostitution and forced labor operations. However, passage of the amendment was stalled due to pressure from the Pentagon.

It is speculated that John Mark Karr was hustled out of Thailand to prevent him from talking in a Thai court about diplomatic involvement in the child sex trade. One American diplomat keeps two children, one from Laos and the other from Cambodia.

In the United States of America, government has no power to impose news blackouts, but things work the same way as in Great Britain. Indeed, it sometimes eeems that the UK journalists show more vigor than America's corporate scribes. In October, 2006, the press spilled much ink about a Republican Congressman who sent suggestive e-mails to male House pages, but little was done to follow up on reports of more than a few members covering for him. Two members of the House Page Board tried to conceal they served on that committee. One of them as a state official covered her husband's backside from charges he had "inappropriaqte contact with a minor." Another Republican from Illinois was rumored to have had a sexual relationship with a 16 year-old page. Wayne Madsen, a reliable alternative journalist, explored rumors of a Pennsylvania Republican represntative's indiscretions. The corporate press failed to look into the matter. We recommend reading ://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ . His facts are accurate, but too often he thinks the cavalry will arrive in time when it is usually ambushed soon after its departure..

Sexual contact with minors by the elite is not a topic the mainstream press does much to explore.

Washington Sex Ring Stories Virtually Ignored

Alternative news reporter Tom Flocco writes that since 2000 Jack Abramoff has operated a sex ring in the Sheraton and Ritz Carlton hotels in Washington for influential Republicans. The sexual services of children, bisexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, and others were available for White House and Congressional Republicans as well as journalists. Ranking federal officials, military brass, and media hosts also used the service.

For some time, sex with children centered at Hilton because it had very secure areras to hide vehicles and move children--sometimes drugged--through hallways without the possibility of video surveillance. After employees became suspicious, the child sex operation was moved.

Some people who are incapable of mature sexual relationships prefer sex with children. But in other cases, it seems to be a mixture of sexual attraction and what has been called “libido dominandi.” People who are greatly attracted to accumulating power and wealth find sex with children particularly satisfying because it is easier to exercise complete power over children. To a degree it is a matter of “power tends to corrupt.”



Tom Hennigan, another investigator, claims that federal agents are leaking information about this ring that turned up in the Abramoff investigation and was suppressed. They claim there are photographs of prominent people in compromising positions. He adds that an important Senate leader and possible presidential candidate has visited these parties and is a friend of Victor Ashe, George W. Bush's college roomate. According to him, Jeff Gannon, introduced one leading Republican journalist as well as a ranking British politician to these sex parties.

There was little connection to the Mark Foley scandal except that what seemed to be Abramoff money was channelled to one of the ex-page's families. Another investigative reporter claims that Foley and Jeff Gannon recruited important people for the sex ring.

This information suggests that the Abramoff sex parties were separate from those sponsored by two San Diego Republicans at two other hotels. There was no evidence that those two men offered sex with children. That scandal-- a year old, called Hookergate" and now almost forgotten--involved about 15 Republicans from the House Appropriations Committee, who had access to sex in return for their votes. Two high-ranking figures from the CIA also attended these parties and have since resigned.

All this is reminescent of two sex rings in the 1980s that were mostly patronized by Republicans, intelligence people, and foreign dignitaries. Information about these rings is now appearing on numerous places on the internet. As in the case of the alleged Abramoff ring, children were involved as well as photographs.

Count on it. The alleged Abramoff sex ring will not become national news.

Johnny Gosch and More, Part VI: Some Think Jeff Gannon was Johnny

In 2003, a young man appeared in Washington, whom some thought was Johnny Gosch. At least the fellow had the same initials and was the right age. Jeff Gannon was the name used by James D. Guckert, a person who had a few web sites advertising himself as a $200 an hour male prostitute. In the sex industry, he was nicknamed “Bulldog.” Before he had press credentials, he was attending White House briefings. Though he had no training in journalism, he was soon representing two tiny Right-wing news services and was to attend White House briefings for almost two years. He was known for giving the press secretary and the president softball questions. His questions often included false information about Democrats.

He attended 155 of 196 press briefings over almost two years/ He was in the White House two dozen times when there was no briefing. Fourteen times he entered but did not check out, which led some to say he stayed overnight. Twice he entered without signing in March, 2003, before he was a journalist. He also bragged about having seen secret documents that revealed that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative .in 2004, he was invited to the White House Christmas party, a sign of standing in Washington establishment.

Many speculated that Jeff Gannon was really Johnny Gosch and noted that a Jeff Gannon was the Des Moines World Telegram editor who ridiculed the claim that Gannon was abducted. Noreen Gosh has said identifying Gannon has her son is “quite bizarre” but not impossible. It could be argued that if he were her son, she might fear that identifying him would endanger his life. It is known that Guckert graduated from Conneaut Lake High School 1975 and then West Chester University in 1980. Ted Gunderfson, a retired ranking FBI retiree said he had solid information from an unnamed source that Gannon was Gosch. Guckert was probably 48 years old while Gosch would have been 36. Still Ted Gunderson, former FBI agent-in-charge for Los Angeles insists that the CIA can change appearances and ages. Jim Rothstein, a retired New York City detective who has long specialized in child abductions, agrees with Gunderson. .

Soon after people started asking questions about Gannon and tying him to the sex trade, Hunter Thompson committed suicide and Rusty Baker was re-arrested. Baker had served time for having a van-full of pornographic pictures. His subsequent arrest was for not registering as a sex abuser in a county where he no longer lived. De Camp managed to obtain Baker’s release. The arrest was seen as a way of telling Baker to keep quiet. Thompson was working on a story about how explosives leveled the World Trade Center and worried that he would be suicided. In a 2004 interview, he said:”The Bush administration is a heap of Nazi shit. Bullshit. Yeah, you can put it that way. I don't know what your audience is ready for” When he died, Thompson was on the telephone with his wife when he allegedly shot himself, but she said she heard a muffled sound.

Chicago writer Sherman Skolnick has reported that Thompson was doing a book on the politically connected sex trade, but he offered no evidence to support this. There is only mention of Thompson in De Camp’s book, but Thompson never challenged it in court. The only other evidence comes from the Alex Jones radio program. A Thompson acquaintance had this to say:

CALLER “Scott from Texas”: I was just wondering if you guys might be able to clear up something I heard through the journalist Sherman Skolnick. He is reporting that another story or book, I don’t remember exactly which, that Hunter S. Thompson was working on was about this gay prostitution ring in the White House and supposedly that was another touchy topic that he brought out, and the whole…
1. JONES: Had you heard that from Hunter?
PAUL WILLAM ROBERTS: Yeah, I had heard that quite a lot from Hunter. It goes back to Kissinger, I believe.
JONES: Wow.
Now that’s a big confirmation. Now for those who don’t know, We have Washington Times articles from 1989, you know—‘underage call boys in the White House’, and so this is serious . .. Hunter was working on that?
ROBERTS: Yeah, in fact Lyndon LaRouche published some stuff about that. And although, you know, a lot of his material was not that trustworthy, in this particular case there were a lot of sources cited and there was no lawsuit. And where there’s no lawsuit you can be almost guaranteed that it’s true.

Of course, no one can trust the La Rouche people even though they have produced some good material on the Middle East and the involvement of governments in the drug trade. Maybe someday mainstream investigative reporters will get into these taboo waters and sort out what is true.

Johnny Gosch and More, Part V: His Mother Said he Visited Her in 1997

De Camp relied upon psychiatrists to assure him that Bonacci was not lying to him and that over 80% of people with multiple personalities have been sexually abused as children .De Camp believed that Bonacci had been trained by drugging, sexual degradation, and torture in order to create multiple personalities who would carry out various tasks such as spying, torturing, killing, and even committing suicide. . The abuses would have been part of mind control experiments, which some have called the Monarch Project. William Colby assured him that the CIA never talked about a project by that name, but that it had to do some work in that area simply to be sure that there was no danger that someone a President of the United States met could be reading his mind. Paul claimed he was often taken to Offitt Air Force Base, where he was abused. This is the center of the Strategic Air Command, and there are many intelligence people there.

Lt. Colonel Michael Aquino, an allegedly retired Army officer, supervised these psychological operations. The Concerned Parents group in Nebraska said they had two witnesses who said King used to send limousines to the base to pick up boys, allegedly for parties. In the September 7, 1988 issue of the Omaha Metropolitan, There were more CIA people working out of Offitt than out of Langley, Virginia. Many psychological operations were located there, seemingly affirming claims that the children were subjects of experiments. One experimental program, acknowledge by the CIA, is MIK-ULTRA, in which children are confused and manipulated via drugs and sex.

Bonacco reported sometimes traveling with a gangster-like character called “Emilo” on various missions. On one occasion, they kidnaped a Des Moines a 12 year ld newspaper boy named Johnny Gosch. The boy’s mother, Noreen, had heard of two little girls abducted and placed in a sex ring and demanded that the police explore this possibility, but the local chief insisted Johnny was a runaway. In her book Why Johnny Can’t Come Home (2000), Noreen Gosch said that about six months after the boy disappeared, George Paul Bishop showed up, claiming to be a federal agent concerned with child abductions. He stayed in touch with her for some time and disappeared in 1985. Perhaps he was trying to help, and perhaps he was monitoring what she was learning. Bishop was arrested in 2001 on chargs he had a pornographic video showing a sixteen year old boy.

AT 2:30 AM one morning in 1997, Johnny showed up at Noreen’s apartment. He was accompanied by another male who seemed to be deciding what Johnny could say to her. She recognized him in part by a birthmark. He told her not to pursue the matter and not to talk about the visit. She remained silent for two years.

The Johnny Gosch Case, And More: Part IV: Other Political Sex Rings

King was associated with lobbyist Craig Spence in helping the contras. The Omaha World</span> reported on May 21, 1989 that King's Franklin Trust was used to launder money and that some of went to the Nicaraguan contras.

Bonacci told De Camp that the lobbyist once took a group of people, including two teenage prostitutes, on a midnight tour of the White House on July 4, 1988. King and Spence appear to have been partners in the sex trade and had two operations named "Dream Boys" and " Man to Man." Those operations were owned by an umbrella outfit called "Bodies by God.". These CIA supported sex operations were expansion of the agency’s Vietnam era operation, designed to entrap members of Congress. It was run by two CIA agents and a CIA contractor who was a big time lobbyist. They brought boys into the Distict of Columbia through Roy Cohen sex operations in New York City. In the eighties some boys were obtained from Covenant House and its branch in Nicaragua.

Two hundred prominent people were alleged to have used Spence and King’s services, but few of them were damaged by the disclosure. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole’s chief of staff was forced to resign due to the disclosure. The CIA claimed two of the boys worked for the KGB, but it looked more like a CIA blackmail operation. Later the Washington Times reported that Donald Gregg, an aid to Bush arranged tours for Spence’s people .Spence seemed to have great influence, entertained lavishly, and was said to spend $20,000 a month employing various kinds of prostitutes. It was claimed that the CIA helped him photograph prominent people and members of agencies in compromising situations. After the Washington Times exposed the sex righ, Spence lost influence and seemed to have no funds. He told friends he feared "Casey’s boys" were after him. He was soon found dead in a Boston hotel room. Barbara Bush expressed pleasure that the Washington Post did not touch the story." Spence was particularly close to a prominent federal attorney, whose career was in no way damaged by the intimate association.

There were also more conventional sex-for-votes operations available to Republican Congressmen and Senators. In the mid-1980s, Ed Rollins, a Reagan White House operative, succeeded in covering up a small operation that provided two dozen Republican Congressmen wiith sexual favors. Only Tom Evans of Delaware got caught and lost his seat. He foolishly confessed to his wife. This was a straight-forward operation run by a lobbyist, and there were no CIA ties.

In 2006, another sex for Republican votes sex operation was exposed. This time, most the congressmen seemed to come from the Defense Appropriations subcommittee of the Military Affairs Committee. Again, only conventional adult sex was involved. It is unclear whether the CIA was involved. Porter Goss , director of the CIA, and his number three man, Dusty Foggio, attended the parties to gamble but were not involved with the prostitutes. One of the defense and intelligence contractors paying the bills was almost certainly working for the CIA in the 1980s. One of those financing the sex parties had previously admitted that he was involved in sex parties for Congressmen in Hondouras in the mid-eighties, during the operations called Iran-Contra.

The John Gosch Case, and More, Part III: Possible Connections with People of Importance

On September 11, 1996, James Harold James , head of the Pennsylvania legislature’s black caucus, held a news conference in Philadelphia. He demanded an investigation of the drug trade, noted that the Iran-Contra investigation showed that the CIA was helping the Contras bring drugs into the country, and said he wanted to know of George H.W. Bush involved. The senior Bush’s name would be raised repeatedly from the beginning by child victims, and investigators have questioned whether the child sex ring was tied to drug running, but no clear linkage has emerged. . John De Camp thought Representative James was onto something because of the many ties between Bush and King and the witnesses who placed George H.W. Bush at King’s sex parties. James Flanery of the Omaha World Herald had reported that King was heavily involved in running guns to Nicaragua; he was subsequently taken off the story and assigned out of Nebraska for a year. King’s public relations firm was used by the Contras and he was a heavy contributor to one of their groups.

King boasted about his relationship with his hero, Bill Casey of the CIA. Pronto, Spain’s largest weekly, reported there was reason to believe that the child ex ring was tied to the CIA. Steve Bowman, an Omaha businessman researching the Franklin theft and sex scandal, claims he has believable witnesses who associate George H.W. Bush with the child sex ring. An Australian newsletter Inside News produced documents relating to the 1985 Nebraska Department of Social Services investigation of stories told by Eunice (Lisa) Washington and her sister Tracey. They repeatedly ran away from their foster parents and told about the King sex ring .

They also said George H.W. Bush attended two of King’s sex parties. King took them to parties via his private jet. Lisa first met Bush at a Republican convention, and she also told of going to a party in Washington where the guests had guards. She added that King sometimes got boys from Boys Town. In October, 1984, she saw Bush at a Chicago party, and he left with a 19 year-old boy named Brent. A check of the papers showed he was there campaigning. In 1986, charges against the Webbs were dismissed. The Webb foster children said they had been abused by GOP delegates at the Southfork Ranch in 1884 and also somewhere in Louisiana. Children testified that they saw a government limousine and secret srviice men at an October, 1988 sex party. It was estimated that there were between 20 and 20 child mollesting Congressmen in the 1980s.

The Johnny Gosch Case, And More, Part II: De Camp Uncovers Child Sex Ring

Abductee John Bonacci was afflicted with multiple personalities but the psychiatrists told Senator De Camp the boy was not lying. De Camp finally decided to represent the boy, and his best friend, former CIA Director William Colby, told him he should write a book about it for his own safety. The investigation of Bonacci’s claims led the police to find and seal hundreds of sex videotapes that were found in Larry Kings office. There were some convictions. Among them was an editor of the Omaha World Herald.

De Camp was a former State Senator and got his colleagues to investigate. Gary Cardon the chief investigator called Senator Loren Schmidt from Chicago saying, "I’ve got them, I’ve got them." The investigator’s private plane crashed shortly after leaving Chicago. Federal investigators swarmed the crash site, and none of his papers or his briefcase were officially retrieved Cardoni and his young son were both killed.

De Camp eventually found one Larry "Rusty" Nelson, King’s photographer, in prison. De Camp sprung him. Nelson became a key witness in a major case that netted one victim a million dollars. He also represented an Alicia Owen, a little girl who stuck by her guns even as other children who were witnessed disappeared. Her first attorney was creditably accused of giving privileged information to the FBI. That agency would work overtime to discredit the victims. She got 15 years for perjury in naming prominent politicians. She is still in prison and holds the record in Nebraska for time sent in solitary confinement. In her trial, the prosecutor acted as though there was noone named Rusty Nelson. De Camp got a second trial for her after Troy Boner, who had given information to Gary Cardoni, swore out an affadivit confirming her statements. However, in the second trial, he took the Fifth Amendment, privately telling De Camp it was that or be killed in prison. Boner had claimed that his brother, whose suicide he doubted, was a victim.

In 1993, Yorkshire Television sent a crew to the United States to film "Conspiracy of Silence" about De camp’s claims. They were thorough and even paid for extensive polygraph tests for one witness. The program was extensively advertised to be shown on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. At the last minute someone bought the production rights and it was not shown in the United States. ( to be continued )

The Johnny Gosch Case , and More: Part One

Only days ago, the mother of a missing boy found two photographs of him on her door step in Des Moines, Iowa. Johnny Gosch, a news boy, disappeared 24 years ago. The photographs showed her son bound and gagged along with two other children, and the police verified that the pictures were authentic and that 12 year old Johnny was in the photograph.

There is evidence provided by another abuctee, John Bonacci, that Johnny was taken by a sex ring connected with an intelligence agency and the Reagan-Bush administration. Sex with children was apparently used to to entrap important people and reward its own operatives. In the Eighties, Larry King of North Omaha was considered one of the Republican Party’s fastest rising stars. An African American, he sang at two Republican conventions. He ran a credit union that was raided by the Feds in 1988. As much as $40 million of the missing money was connected to the Iran-Contra scandal, probably laundered drug money from Latin America.

Several investigators found that a sex ring was tied to his bank, It has been claimed that children were being used for sex and as drug couriers for King and others. Youngsters were also telling how they had sex with this or that famous businessman or politician The list included the publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, a police chief, and a mayor who later later became a Representative to Congress. Former Republican state Senator John De Camp, who was in office 16 years, knew King and was sure the stories were lies and was ready to refute them. Then he was contacted by a prisoner, John Bonacci, who convinced who convinced him they were true De Camp got him out of jail, and ten years later won a million dollar settlement for him from King in a court of law. Before this, however, a grand jury investigated the matter, was aware of the complaints of 80 children, and refused to hand down indictments. The Nebraska legislative committee and the staffers who worked on this found the accusers very credible, but this reader of the evidence wonder s if some of the horrible acts attributed to the perpetrators exceeded what human being could do. Bonacci had kept an exact diary, and forensic experts tested the ink entries to be sure they were made over a long period of time. He eventually testified in court that he helped kidnap a twelve year old boy, Johnny Gosch. Bonacci wrote about Bohemian Grove, outside Sacramento, a 2700 acre encampment that belongs to the Bohemian Club, that seems attached to reenacting ancient Druidic rituals. Alex Jones infiltrated the grounds in 2000 and filmed some Luciferian rituals going back to ancient Babylon. Jones claims Governor George W. Bush was there along with some security personnel.

There is more than amply evidence of repeated enactment of these rituals, but it is hard to believe that anyone could take them seriously. They must be a strange form of amusement and a way of registering contempt for conventional norms. Very eminent people give lectures around a campfire to many men deep in their cups. There is a pronounced homosexual subculture, particularly among employees, but it is not part of scheduled events.

It was here that several boys were used in some sort of ritual, and one caged boy was very badly abused, finally dying after being beaten and raped by an adult. Later, the two remaining boys were taken to a house where a film of what happened was shown and they were passed around like playthings. Bonacci said Hunter Thompson directed the film .There is no way of knowing what Thompson was doing there .Perhaps he was observing the ways of the rich and powerful? Other abuctees said Hunter Thompson did "snuff" films, and Rusty Nelson, Kings photographer, testified to this in court. The diary recounted being paid for sex with men King knew at various places.

If Kay Griggs can be believed, intelligence operatives joined the power brokers in cavorting at Bohemian Grove. She claimed that Marine Colonel George Raymond Griggs, her former husband, told her about how he and other assassins went to Bohemian Gove to engage anal and oral sex and run naked in the woods. She also employed his diary as evidence and went public in 1996, before Skull and Bones and Bohemian Grove were public knowledge. She received death threats and had to seek sanctuary in the home of journalist Sarah McClendon. . He referred to the hit men as The Brotherhood or The Firm and thought they were linked together in a sort of secret ‘cap and gown" and skull and bones society. They took their inspiration from Skull and Bones at Yale and a similar secret society at Princeton. According to her, the colonel talked about military hit squads, sexual slavery,weapons and drug sales, psychological conditioning, and involvement with prominent people such as Paul Wolfowitz, who was present in the 1970s when Grigg trained assassins in Indonesia. The colonel told her that he had been sexually molested by teachers and that many of the operatives shared this background.

Senator De Kamp reported that King had also found a way to get some boys out of Boys Town. The former head of Boys Town, Monsignor Robert Hupp, retained De Camp in order to get some help in cleaning up a mess there. King gave money to the institution and provided internships for boys. He also almost controlled the Boys and Girls Clubs of Omaha. A court threw out the case against the archdiocese and Boys Town. . ( to be continued)

ABRAMOFF AND THE GOP CASH MACHINE--Revised

The investigation of powerful Republican Jack Abramoff could reveal much about how the GOP juggernaut works. It looks like he will get ten years, which will include any sentence from a fraud case now pending in Florida. There is also a fascinating subplot involving the funneling of Pentagon money into Republican political action committees, but this part of the story is not likely to surface..
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff was George W. Bush’s top fund-raiser in 2004. He is at the heart of the Republican strategy to use corporate money to retain control of both houses indefinitely. the Tioga tribe from opening a casino, for which the Tiogas had paid Abramoff to seek.
As closer friend and former college roommate of Grover Norquist, he was at the heart of the Republican policy-making mechanism, which is Norquist’s famous Wednesday meetings. To have your interests considered at these meetings, it is useful to donate to the Republican party and hire Republican lobbyists. Another bonus, is that your lobbyists can set with House staffers in drafting legislation. They even get desks and the use of government computers.

. Abramoff is Tom DeLay’s "Closest and dearest friend" and a frequent golfing buddy and travel host. He provided the Texan with the fund connections necessary to do favors for colleagues and amass enormous political power. With De Lay and Senator Rick Santorum, Abamoff fashioned and helped enforce the "K Street Strategy," which forced firms to purge Democrat lobbyists and hire Republicans. It resulted in greatly increased corporate contributions to the GOP. The plan was to gain control of K Street lobbying operations and use it to nail down permanent contyrol of Congress. Through them, money and favors would be channeled to De Lay and his allies in return for the assurance that official action would follow.
Implementation of this strategy began in 1995 with the Republican take-over of the House. In 1996, GOP national Chairman Haley Barbour and Republican leaders held a meeting for CEOs to inform them about what it took to do business in Washington. After a few firms were punished for hiring Democrat lobbyists, most fell into line and screen their choices with Rick Santorum or Roy Blont, now acting Republican majority leader. By 2006, some CEOs note that the lobbyists are essentially Republican operatives, more loyal to the party than to their clients.
If a lobbyist wants to talk to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, she musty be screened by gate-keeper Susan Ralston, who once worked with Abramoff. She usually checks out the lobbyist with Norquist, who keeps charts the loyalty and contributions of the lobbyists. In recent days, the official word in Washington is that she was placed in Rove’s office by sometime lobbyist Ralph Reed, former leader of the Christian Coalition now running for lieutenant governor in Georgia. We are expected to believe Abramoff had nothing to do with her job change.
Many other lobbying firms have become part of the enlarged K Street Strategy, but none is more important than Alexander Strategies. It was started b y De Lay’s friend and former aid Edwin A. Buckman, and has been assisted by Abramoff and Mrs. DeLay, who received $115,000 in consulting fees from it. It was reported that DeLay frequently routed potential clients to Buckman’s shop. Buckman also operated DeLay’s Family Network, and , for a time, he managed the leadership’s Americans for a Republican Majority. Alexander Strategies jointly managed with Abramoff some Malaysian and Indian accounts.
With the announcement of Abramoff’s guilty plea, politicians–including some Democrats– are shedding his donations. At the top f his list is Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is giving up a little less than $70,000. He may fear that a few careful readers recall information from the Edmunds matter that he accepted funds from Turkish-American lobbyists under very questionable circumstances. Of course, two gag orders and a retroactive top secret classification now covers all that information. Erie Congressman Phil English refused to return his $5,000. Senator Rick Santorum has yet to act, but will probably surrender it given the tight reelection he faces.

Jack Abramoff is known to have recently collected at least $66,000,000 from Indian tribes in connection with gambling rights, and he helped powerful Christian politician Ralph Reed help one gambling tribe prevent another from competing with it. Abramoff helped the Choctaws funnel a $1,500,000 payment to the Alabama Christian Coalition at Reed’s behest. The payment was for preventing His career total from the Native Americans could top $300,000,000.
He and partner Adam Kidan, another powerful Republican, have been indicted for wire fraud involved in the purchase of Sun Cruz, a casino cruise line. Abramoff and Kidan were Young Republicans and attended Georgetown Law Gus Boulis, a minor shareholder, was murdered in 2001 after he complained about free spending and the employment of mobsters tied to "Big Tony", Mosatiello, who is allegedly tied to the Gambino crime family. No one is accusing Abramoff of involvement in murder. Three alleged hit men have been charged. Kidan is accused of paying the daughter of one of them $30,000 and of giving a defendant’s company $115,000.( Miami Herald November 6, 2005)
The state prosecutor looking into the De Lay case in Austin has subpoenaed records from the recent prosecution of Congressman Rusty Cunningham, who was convicted of taking more bribes than any other representative in history. Cunningham received most of his gifts and money from firms controlled in one way or another by Brent Wilkes, was an unindicted co-conspirator. The main form is MZM, founded in 1993. Maybe it does defense intelligence, or maybe it just shred documents for the Pentagon. Its all very murky, and the San Diego papers have been unable to establish the ownership of his chain of firms. Several observers, including The Hill, have wondered if all this is part of a scheme to route Pentagon dollars to the Republican party. Through his Group W Transportation, Wilkes has retained Alexander Strategy for lobbying purposes.
It is known that Wilkes has also channeled $630,000 to Abramoff, was a substantial fund raiser for George W. Bush and the Terminator, Rep. Duncan hunter, Rep. Katherine Harris. Some, including The Hill ( December 11, 2005), speculate that he provides a conduit for Pentagon funds to go to Republican campaigns. Wilkes could have been a CIA contractor in the 1980s when he weass tied to a bank that handled contra transactions. He remains a close friend of Kyle Foggo, promoted by Porter Goss to the number three spot in the agency. Don’t look for too much on this part of the story to come out.
The former White House coordinator of federal procurement, David Safavian, has been arrested in connection with the Abramoff probe. He had been an Abramoff partner. Jennifer Safavian, his wife, is lead counsel for the House Government Operations Committee, which will look into how Katrina was handled.

The FBI is looking into whether a federal prosecutor was reassigned in 2002 in order to derail the Abramoff investigation. The Abramoff case is being explored by grand juries in Florida and Guam Senator John McCain’s committee is also looking into the matter. The five counts against Safavian will go before a DC federal court. A thorough investigation of these matters could reveal much about how the GOP power structure in Washington works and whether there is a "pay for play" operation going on. It is as likely that the whole matter will sink into a swamp of complex and endless litigation, and that a masterful spin operation will portray all of this as the result of an evil leftist plot to sully the reputations of God-fearing Republicans.
The investigation of Abramoff is being handled by interim appointment Alice Fisher, whom some claim has ties to De Lay’s legal team. Even with Abramoff and possible DeLay out of the way, the K Street Strategy could remain in place. There is talk of the majority party introducing reform legislation to clean up its image, but the devil will be in the detail.

ABLE DANGER--revised and updated

There have been many conflicting stories about what was involved in Able Danger. It is hard to believe that Al Qaeda and many foreign intelligence agencies do not have almost complete information on the project. Why are American citizens kept in the dark?

We already knew that US intelligence people had been tracking the future highjackers in Hamburg, Germany for years, and that Al Qaeda Cells in Brooklyn and in the west had also long been in the sights of the FBI. With the revelation of the Able Danger project, it becomes almost impossible to escape the conclusion that the federal government had more than enough information to prevent 9-11. The 9-ll 1 either was not told about Able Danger or it chose to ignore the information because it would have derailed its major conclusions. Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton said the conclusions would have been different had they known about Able Danger, but he is the man who presided over what seemed to be a clumsy cover up of an October 19, 1980 deal with Iran to hold 52 hostages until after the U.S. election.
In 1999, the Pentagon Special Operations Command established Able-Danger, a secret program, to gather information on Al Qaeda. In that year, it had identified Mohammed Atta, the architect of 9-11, and three others as members of the cell that attacked the World Trade complex in 1993. .Atta would mastermind the 9-11, and the other three were also among the hijackers.
Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who worked at the DIA, became aware of Atta and his three colleagues in mid-2000. Shaffer informed the FBI of what was known about these four Al Quada operatives. He urged the arrest of Atta, but Pentagon lawyers became involved to prevent the arrest. The lawyers claimed they had problems recommending action against someone holding a green card. But Atta did not have a green card or a valid entry visa. He came to the US three times on a visitor’s visa. The Pentagon is now denying that it knew anything about these people before 9-11. There is mounting evidence that Able Danger was much more than an anti-terrorist operation, and the Pentagon should not be faulted with keeping quiet about those aspects that involved highly sophisticated electronic surveillance of foreign targets outside the US.

When the Kean Commission came into being, Shaffer personally informed its executive director, Dr. Philip Zelikow, about Able-Danger and what was known about Atta and the three other hijackers. Zelikow did not give this information to the commission and did not include it in the document. Zelikow said it was "not historically relevant."1 Zeliknow had been on loan from the White House National Security Office and is now special counsellor to his friend, Secretary of State Rice.

Eventually the Army destroyed the Able Danger files on Atta claiming this was necessary because he was a "US person" under the meaning of legislation that said the military could only retain intelligence information on US persons for 90 days. It has been reported that some of the destroyed information involved ties between prominent Americans and the Chinese military The data also showed that several Al Quaeda operatives rented rooms in a New Jersey hotel and that a cell met there.

. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were briefed on what the Able Danger information-mining task force had learned. In February and March of 2001, Able Danger was shut down by the Defense Department, only to be reactivated later. Shaffer, a Bronze medal winner, lost his security clearance as well as his DIA job.Shaffer claimed that when the Bush administration replaced his top superior General Schoomaker, that all hope of using the knowledge gained was gone.Navy Captain Scott Philpott, hade of the team, said they identified Atta as a member of the Brooklyn cell, but the US had certain knowledge Atta was in Hamburg at the time Philpott gave. However, J.D. Smith, a civilian contractor, has said he was "absolutely positive" Atta was in Brooklyn at that time. . Shaffer was forbidden to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, this decision was later reversed.

The DIA is moving to take Shaffer off its payroll, and an unidentified DIA representative told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Shaffer was having an affair with one of Congressman Curt Weldon’s staffers. The Congressman answered that the colonel did not know anyone on his staff. Some other members of the Able Danger team are represented by Shaffer’s lawyer and are now saying Other members of the data-mining task force do not support his claim that they knew Atta was physically in the United States. The colonel must be under enormous pressure to modify his story.

While in Afghanistan, Shaffer told what he knew to Dr. Philip Zelikow, then US ambassador there. Zelikow expressed great interest in the information but avoided seeing Shaffer when the colonel attempted to contact him in Washington.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh has used this to sell his book, claiming the Clintons kept him from hunting Al Qaeda. Of course, he is a very partisan Republican and has never explained why three good leads within his agency were quashed or why he did not stand by John O’Neill, the best terrorist hunter we have had to date.

Two conclusions are inescapable. (1) There was great reluctance on the part of the Pentagon, under both Clinton and Bush, to act on the knowledge it had about Atta and his three friends.( 2) Now it is clear to all, that it is busy denying it had this knowledge, and it was mightily assisted in this cover-up by the executive director of the 9-11 commission.
Republicans note it was the Clinton Pentagon that failed to act on information about these terrorists. However, it was under Freeh, a very partisan Republican, that the FBI repeatedly failed to act on information that could have been used to stop terrorists. Moreover, it is clear that the FBI had knowledge of the movements of Atta and two others in Venice, Florida before 9-11.

James Woolsey, former CIA director and neocon who detested Clinton, is now working closely with Pa. Republican Congressman Curt Weldon to give the story a strong anti-Clinton spin. It is expected that Weldon will hold hearings to counterbalance those chaired by Specter in the Senate.

What is known is that Atta attended a flight school in Venice. The DEA confiscated and auctioned a private jet owned by one of the owners of the school. The agency found 43 pounds of heroin. No action was ever taken against the Venezuelan pilot or the owner Wally Hilliard. The same jet had made 39 weekly milk runs to Venezuela before the DEA acted. The school’s co-owner was Rudi Dekkers, a native of Holland who owed his government $3,000,000. There was a second flight school at that airport owned by another native of Holland, Arne Kruithof. The two Hollanders bought flight schools within months of one another. Dekkers claimed he did not know her, but they both used ascal Schreier, a German, to recruit Arab students.
Dekkers said Atta was a terrible person, an incompetent pilot who left school December 20, 2000 and did not return.. Others claim Atta was there in 2001 and that he and the operator were friendly. In August, two of the other hijackers were with Atta, and Atta’s attorney father visited from Egypt. The three younger men were said to hire a Yellow Cab in the evenings which was driven by a retired Navy Seal, who left soon after they left Venice.Another driver reported that the two were oin very friendly terms and that they shared a cab to a Sarasota night spot in August, 2001. Atta was apparently a hard drinker. ``Following the lead of the FBI, the 9-11 commission did not discuss the schools.

The Knight Rider papers, the Washington Post, and Newsweek reported a week after 9-11 that five of the hijackers had been trained at US military facilities at one time or another. This did not involve Atta’s brief employment much earlier in Hamburg, before he experienced a religious conversion in Egypt. It was said that Atta was at the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Abdulaziz Alomari was at the Areospace Medical School in Texas.
The Sarasota Herald-Times discovered that Atta lived for more than two months at the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice in March and April of 2001 with a part-time stripper and longerie model. She reported that the FBI urged her to keep quiet.
Soon after 9-11, FBI agents were in Venice asking questions that made it clear they knew about Atta’s movements there. They questioned another cabbie about their nocturnal rides with the other driver. They seized a pharmacy’s security tape for the day Atta and his father were there and excised that part of the tape. It develops in an odd coincidence that the woman who helped one of the hijackers find an apartment was the wife of Michael Irish, the senior National Enquirer editor who received an anthrax letter. Irish also used that aifield.
There were rumors that the flight schools had a CIA connection, and that their records were removed on September 12, 2001. . The limited action taken after the biggest drug seizure in central Florida history led to speculation about some kind of a protected drug trade. For years there have been rumors about CIA and DIA drug trading; and those who have written about this have had their careers ruined. There will probably never be enough evidence to prove why the Pentagon did not want to move against Atta and now claims it knew nothing about him. One employee said Atta and others moved on to a school in Pompano Beach to learn to fly big jets via simulator. He added that he did not think this approach could be successful.

Fired FBI translator Sibel Edmunds was asked if she came across evidence that there was any evidence of a connection between drug trading and 9-11. She is now under a very tough gag orders, and she only offered a sort of "nondenial-denial." Don’t look for solid answers anytime soon.

There is compelling evidence that the FBI was keeping track of Atta’s movements in Venice, Florida in 9-11. It has also been suggested that he had been involved in a protected heroin smuggling operation and that this accounts for the Pentagon’s reluctance to pursue him earlier.
Below is info of CIA surveillance abroad from the cooperative research operation called Complete 911 Timeline

What to Expect from Condi

Secretary of State Condi Rice has returned from Europe, where she was reasonably successful at dealing with reports of torture and a network of black holes with a mass of double-speak, obfuscation, and misleading language. Much depended upon how "torture" is defined, and she used the new definition given it by George W. Bush in a 2002 "finding."

This is the same Condi Rice who offered dead wrong explanations about what was known about terrorists in the US before 9/11 and who went beyond even Dick Cheney in hyping the case for war--talking about mushroom clouds over American cities as a result of Iraqi action. Yet her popularity grows by the day, and right-wing strategist Dick Morris is probably right in suggesting she would be verey hard to beat in 2008. If the Roman orator, lawyeer, and historian Cicero could be recovered via a time machine, he would say that when the masses are filled with fear and terror, they seek individuals to save them and eschew truth and reason.
Condi seems to be the ultimate beneficiary of the fear and paranoia strategy. Her reversal of Powell's Sudan policy offers a strong hint of what to expect from her as Secretary of State and potential president.



Colin Powell charged the Sudanese government with genocide in Dafur. The Sudanese army and paramilitarys known as the Arab Janjaweed accomplished this by gang rapes, burning of villages, and mass killings. Condi Rice, his successor, has reversed Powell's policy and written to Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, the Sudanese head of state, saying that she hoped for "close cooperation" in battling terrorism.


In late April, a CIA jet brought Major General Salah Abdalah Gosh, head of the Sudanese intelligence agency Mukhabarat, to Washington for secret talks. Gosh has been accused of playing a major role in the mass murders. His agency has provided useful information on Al Qaeda, and the US relies on his operatives in Muslim countries where it lacks human assets.In May, the White House moved to kill the Dafur Accountability Act. The death toll in Dafur is somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 human beings. The UN refuses to deal with the Dafur situation, and the International Criminal Court will probably not be able to address the matter for at least a year.
posted by Sherman De Brosse

What Are US Options as a De Facto Shiite Republic of Iraq Emerges?

The US invasion of Iraq has produced an Islamic republic with very close ties to Iran. The new constitution may not use the name “ Islamic Republic of Iraq,” but those words describe what is emerging. Such a state, with religious law and roving religious police, already is taking shape in the regions controlled by the two dominant Shiite parties, SCIRI and DAWA. Any US exit strategy must take account of these facts.

The fact is a Shiite Islamic Republic has emerged. Even before the legislative elections of late 2005, the Shiite government has moved against Sunni power centers. The new constitution is seen by some experts as less the blueprint for a long-term unified stat than a formula for eventual dissolution into three states. Few doubt that it is only a matter of time before the Kurds opt for a separate state.


Shiite death squads are already taking hundreds of lives, a number of mass graves have been discovered. Many of the murders are the handiwork of the Iraqi government's Special Police Commandos. These strike units are advised by the same American officer who guided Central American death squads in the mid-1980s. There are more and more signs that US airpower is being used against Sunnis in urban centers to teach them that there is a heavy price to pay for supporting insurgents. American officers have complained about being required to provide security while Shiite military forces abuse Sunnis. Former Minister Alawi referred to the abuse of Sunnis by comparing what is happening now to the activities of the Saddam regime. Recently, it was learned that the Shiites were torturing many Sunni prisoners and that over 120 Sunni captives were found in such a condition that some of their skin was about to fall off. Murder and terrorism proved an effective tactic in C entral America two decades ago, and it appears our government is betting on this approach again.

The US continues to refer to Iran as a terrorist state, but quiet, low-level talks are being carried out with Iran. Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan native and new US ambassador to Iran, onstitutes the best hope for protecting US interests there and facilitating the removal of most ground forceds in the next few years. Though one of the neo-cons who led the US into this adventure, he has shown a remarkable pragmatic streak, and he is a superb strategist and negotiator. Statements coming from US sources in the GReen Zone refer less and less to a unified Iraqi state in the future. He has been empowered to talk to the Iranians and has been given power to help shape US policy in the region.

His best option is an alliance with the Shiites, and Us policy on the ground indicates it is taking shape. Rumsfeld announced trhe eginning of troop withdrawls, indicating some assurance that a deal facilitating long term extrication is likely to emerge.

There is a potential fly in the ointment. The European press is reporting that the US is courting support for air attacks on Iranian military and nuclear sites, including the plant at Bushehr and the uraniam site at Saghad. Should this attack materialize, it wouild be difficult to count on Shiite and Iranian help in puilling large numbers ot troops out of Iraq.

Developments in Iraq give the lie to claims of an emerging democracy there, and Shiite policy seems likely to provoke civil war and/or dissolution. The US does not have many options that tgry to pick the winner, who unfortunately is linked at the hip to Iran.

In Baghdad, Shiites on city council in league with the military have deposed the city's mayor. So much for the democratic process.Iraq has apologized for the Iran-Iraq , and leader of SCIRI has said that Iraq should pay Iran billions in reparations. Iraq and Iran have also entered into a mutual defense arrangement. The Iraqi intelligence service has been thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian agents, and the two countries have already agreed that Iranians would train the new Iraqi army. Shiites remember that Iranians supported their 1991 revolt against Saddam, while the US did nothing to help as 300,000 of their coreligionists were slaughtered. Many Iraqis this massive loss of life was part of some sort of American plan.There can be little doubt that Karen Hughes and Karl Rove can spin away for most Americans the unpleasant facts that the war strengthened the hand of Iran—a member of the “axis of evil”-- and that over 1800 Americans have died to create an Islamic republic. A supine mainstream press will not dwell on these facts. The important thing is that our policy makers do not believe their own PR releases. They must swallow some hard facts and improve relations with Iran so that some sort of deal can be made to allow a face-saving exit. It can only be hoped that the price of extracting most of our forces is not turning a blind eye to Iran's nuclear ambitions.Another fact is that the only effective Iraqi military units are Kurdish, including some that are sponsored by the Kurdish Communist party. If these units are to remain outside Kurdistan to keep the Sunni insurgency in check, the US must take the needs of the secular Kurds into account while negotiating an exit deal. None of this will be easy.

HOW WRONG WAS NEWSWEEK IN REPORTING ABUSE OF THE KORAN?

In May, 2005, Newsweek magazine published an apology for printing an article which said that an unidentified Pentagon official said that a certain document showed that military interrogators at Guanatanamo had flushed a copy of the holy Koran down a toilet. For an undisclosed reason, the anonymous source later said he was not sure which document said this had occurred. He did not deny that he was privy to this information; he simply claimed he did not know in which document or documents he had read it. There is no question that Newsweek reporters had not properly verified the story.There had been other complaints about abuses of the Koran in military prisons, and days after the apology The Los Angeles Times reported that seven other detainees had lodged similar complaints.

On May 25, 2005 the FBI's summaries of interviews were obtained by the ACLU, and they revealed that almost a dozen detainees reported mistreatment of copies of the Koran. In reports in 2002 and early 2003, the International Committee of the Red Cross provided documentation of "corroborated allegations" of "multiple instances" in which US troops were mishandling or disrespectful Korans at Guantanamo. The Financial Times ( December 30, 2004) reported that some prisoners had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran. The Independent of London reported on March 17, 2004 that 70 inmates went on a hunger strike after a guard kicked a copy of the Koran. On May 1, 2004, The New York Times reported that one of the three hunger strikes at the facility was touched off by guards tossing copies of the Koran into a pile and apparently stomped upon.The mishandling of the Koran was only the tip of the iceberg; there appears to have been a pattern of interrogation methods designed to be offensive to Muslims. Dogs were used to threaten Islamic detainees, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez’s September, 2003 memo authorizing the practice indicates that this would "exploit Arab fear of dogs."

Similarly, the frequent photographing of nude Muslim men and "removal of facial hair" were approved by Donald Rumsfeld in November, 2002, and were designed to place detainees in positions in which they were in violation of deeply held religious beliefs.Detainees were often forced to be naked in front of one another or in front of the opposite sex, and threats were made to show these humiliating photographs to their families.There were also reports of Muslims having alcohol and pork being forced down their throats.Reports began to surface in 2004 t hat some prisoners who were released from Guantanamo were claiming that they had been tortured by "prostitutes." These men were questioned by women in late night sessions that included fake menstrual blood. The fake menstrual blood would render the detainees unclean and unable to pray. After smearing it on a prisoner, a female interrogator said, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

Sexual intimidation included interrogators sporting tight T-shirts, sexual touching, parading in miniskirts, and leaving bras and thong underwear hanging in the room. One woman in a tight shirt rubbed her breasts against the back of a praying internee and then mocked him because he had an erection.Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III later investigated these incidents and said only two women were involved and that they had devised these techniques entirely on their own.Even before the first abuses were reported. British observers voiced concerns that that many American troops had an unhealthy attitude toward the Iraqis which would threaten the success of the occupation. A senior British commander said, "They don’t see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. If such an attitude did sometimes prevail, it would be worthwhile to learn why. Similarly, it is imperative that we learn why the evidence points to a pattern of interrogation techniques that exploited Muslim religious and cultural sensibilities.One can only wonder to what extent these abuses can be traced to the Bush administration's decision to redefine the meaning of "torture" as used in Title 18 of the US Code, Sections 2340-2340. The Bush Justice Department decided that abuse was not turture if its main intention was extraction of information.

Later, in July 2005, Senator John McCain attempted to amend a defense appropriations bill to ban torture, and he had enough support among Republican senators that Vice President Cheney was sent to bring them into line. The Bush administration threatened to veto the bill if it included the McCain amendment. Only nine senators voted against it.On the other hand, some abuses of human rights are simply inherent in warfare and particularly in wars that claims that all enemies are somehow complicit in terrorism. British troops, like American, seemed to believe this and the first abuses reported by Tariq Ali in Bush in Babylon were of British soldiers sexually abusing civilians and filming themselvbes doing so.Conservatives used Newsweek’s blunder to underscore its claim that the mainstream press could not be trusted and to insist that the claims of abuse of Muslim detainees have been greatly exaggerated. The mainstream press framed the story of the magazine’s sloppy reporting in a manner that usually ignored the fact that there had been many other reports of the abuse of the Koran in military prisons. Just as the uproar over Dan Rather’s poor handling of documents relating to George W. Bush’s military service made inquiries into the president’s Texas-Arkansas Air Guard services almost impossible to cover, the flap over Newsweek’s error could produce similar results. However, the main conservative response to the torture scandal is to minimize it. Rush Limbaugh consistently refers to "Club Gitmo," claiming the conditions there are similar to those at a resort. On another occasion, he pronouncedm "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it....." He added that we should recognize that our troops needed "to blow some steam off." The "its no big deal" defense has worked pretty well.Some aspects of the scandal, such as torture at the hands of civilian contractors, have received very little attention. Brigadier General Karl R. Horst recently complained that mercenaries who are on the streets lften "do stupid stuff" like shoot people. Yet the whole matter of using mercenaries are nearly invisible, even after they turned up in New Orleans, boasting about their pay and what they had done in Iraq.There are now reports that some of the meals an American contractor provides Iraqi truck drivers provides Filipino and and Turkish employees of the occupation forces contain pork. Moreover, they regularly send outdated and spoiled food to Filipino and Muslim employees. Some of the Filipinos are Muslim. Some of the Filipino employees are Muslim , as are the Turks. Often the food is left over from soldiers' cafeterias and is shipped in garbage bags. To be fair here, it should be noted that American soldiers also receive spoiled and outdated food. What is involv ed here is not discriminatioon, rather it is good, old-fashioned greed and run of the mill overilling. . Let's watch the mainstream press to see how much coverage this gets



THE US POSITION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Many of us do not fully understand how the Right managed to take control of the country. The fact is that the US has long tilted to the right.1. It has accepted only 13 of 44 UN human rights treaties.2. It has ratified 14 0f the ILO's 162 active treaties.3. Only the US and Somalia have refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the ChildThe current administration is particularly opposed to such agreements and is very committed to a go-it-alone posture. Though having a much better record on human rights than the GOP, Democrats have not rushed to embrace such agreements. A recent position paper issued by the Republican Policy Committee denounces the International Red Cross because it has raised questions about the treatment of detainees by the military and says it is losing credibility by claiming the torture has occurred in these facilities.Recall the scorn and vitriol heaped on Jimmy Carter when he tried to address human rights. Even in those last days of Democratic power, there were real limits to what an administration could do on behalf of human rights.LOOSE BUSHIE TALK ABOUT DEPLOYMENT OF NUCLEAR ARMS THREATENS NON-PROLIFERATIONDouglas Roche, former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament, has raised warning flags about the Bush administration's speculation about when it could deploy nuclear weapons in a China-Taiwan conflict, a North Korean attack on South Korea, and various scenarios in which Arabs attack Israel. In some cases, this talk represents the first time the US has contemplated using nuclear devices against non-nuclear powers. Of course, it is a violation of the letter and spirit of the Non-Prolifertion Treaty of 1970.In 2000, the signatories agreed upon Thirteen Practical Steps that would lead to eliminating nuclear weapons. Since 2001, the United States has moved in violation of these principles and carried out a nucler posture review that makes it all too clear that nuclear weapons will remain the cornerstone of our national security policy for another half century. Commenting on all this, a Brazilian spokesman said, "one cannot worship at the altar of nuclear weapons and raise heresy charges against those who do not join the sect."The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty comes up for review again in May. No doubt the signatories will find a way to paper over the problem, adjusting to the policy shifts of the main nuclear power, but the movement has probably lost its steam. In 2015, there will probably be many more than 8 nuclear powers.

The Rather-Mapes Inquisition Revisited

On September 9, 2004, CBS aired a program segment that would cost producer Mary Mapes her job and would seriously damage the reputation of Dan Rather. The network produced photocopies of documents that showed that George W. Bush tried so evade his Air Guard duties in 1972. The documents were attributed to his commanding officer, Colonel Jerry Killian. One documents expert told Mapes the documents were trustworthy, and another supported his view. The problem was that several other experts advised CBS not to use them

The rest the mainstream press made the story CBS’s failure to establish beyond doubt that the copies were legitimate and resolutely refused to consider the context in which Mapes and Rather made their decisions. As a result, questions about George W. Bush’s Guard service was rendered out of bounds.CBS did not reveal its source, and some conservatives insisted they came from the Democratic National Committee. Later, USA Today turned up another document in which Killian tried to find out if Bush ever took the physical examination. Marian Carr Knox , Killian’s former secretary, said she did not type them but was certain their contents reflected the facts of the situation then and Killian’s frustration that Bush was defying him.

In the ensuing debate, neither her comments or the USA Today document were given any weight.Killian was not alive to verify the documents, but CBS had contacted his commanding officer General Bobby Hodges who said the memos reflected what Killian had told him about Bush. He did not vouch for their authenticity. After a storm of criticism arose, he told CBS they were forgeries and refused to verify that the contents reflected accurately what Killian reported about Bush.2 Right-wing bloggers said the documents were forgeries because they contained "superscripts", and they said typewriters in 1972-1973 were not equipped for that. CBS soon proved that government typewriters then did have "superscript," but no one seemed to listen and even now journalists praise the accuracy of those right-wing bloggers.

CBS had to reveal that the copies came from Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett, who had become an anti-Bush zealot because, earlier he had claimed, Bush operatives had purged Air Guard records of damaging information. He said that aids of the governor visited the archives of the Texas Guard at Camp Mabry in 1997 and scrubbed them of much of the information about Governor Bush’s service according to Burkett. He reported hearing Joe Albaugh, Bush’s chief of staff, discussing with Adjutant General Daniel James the need to get rid of documents that could embarrass the governor. Several days later, Burkett saw several such documents in a trash can and read them When he made that claim, he was counting on a colleague to support him; but that man backed out at the last minute.Burkett had said he made repeated attempts to tell the Kerry campaign that he saw documents like them at in the trash at his base. He never got beyond a number of youthful workers, so he sent an e-mail to Senator Max Cleland. He said he was never contacted by anyone from the campaign.

Burkett, a very religious man, probably did not forge the papers. He later admitted the were given to him by a Hispanic woman whose story he very much wanted to believe. This person seems to have vanished from the radar. Who sent her remains a mystery, but this writer would not be astonished if Karl Rove had enlisted her in a brilliant sting that discredited CBS and Dan Rather and made explorations into George W. Bush’s background out of bounds.

The known information about Bush’s Guard service certainly suggested that what the documents said was true, and this is probably why Mapes and Rather went with the story and made the mistake of assuming the documents were legitimate. For some reason, none of the critics of CBS showed an ioata of intererst in what was known from other sources about Bush's Air Guard Service. The team appointed to investigate Rather and Mapes was unable to demonstrate that they were forgeries. It was not instructed to look into Bush's service in the Air Guard. The inquisitors had many questions about Ms. Mapes' politics, as though liberals had a compulsion to fabricate evidence.

George W. Bush made a six year commitment to the Texas Air National Guard in 1968.The sons of other prominent Texas families occupied had found this a convenient way to have stateside duty. Bush scored the minimal points on a qualifying test and with the help of Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes was given one of two remain flying slots in a Guard Unit known as the "champaign unit." He was assigned to flying F102 interceptors. At the time there was a waiting list of over 100,000 people trying to get into the Air National Guard. 4 People who saw the papers of the papers of the late Colonel Jerry Killian indicate that Bush discussed with him ways to avoid regularly scheduled drills from May to November and to get around taking a physical examination in 1972 and that the colonel was pressured by superiors– one of whom was a legendary retired officer- too see that Bush received good ratings. Bush was ordered to take the annual physical examination but never did so .

Dan Rather later apologized for using the documents since it had become impossible to authenticate them.On September 29, 1972, the Air National Guard confirmed orders suspending Lt. Bush from flying status because he had not accomplished a medical exam. Years later, an aid to Governor Bush explained that he had decided to quit flying. This was at a time wheen the military started testing for drug use and insisting that the examinations be administered by military physicians. Bush had managed to arrange to meet his Guard obligations in Alabama, where he was involved in a Senate campaign.

Linda Allison, widow of the campaign chairman, and others reported that they had kn knowledge that Bush wanted to participate in the campaign until several days before his arrival. She said, "Well, you have to know Georgie....He really was a totally irresponsible person. Big George called Jimmy [ her husband] and said, he’s killing us in Houston, take him down there and let him work on that campaign...." She said she thought he was using pot and "perhaps cocaine."It was said that Bush thrashed the house he rented in Montgomery and did not pay the damages. There is no record he ever appeared for drills there in 1972-1973. General William Turnipseed, who then commanded the Alabama Guard, said Bush did not appear for duty. He received two special orders instructing him to return to Texas for duty, and he did log 36 days of duty, beginning in July, 1973.In the Fall of 1973, Bush was demoted to assignment in the Obligated Reserve Section in Denver because he was unable to meet his obligations as a jet fighter pilot. Bush was released early from the Guard in return for his signing a promise that he would enter the Reserves, but he never kept the promise. However, pay records that were later released showed that he made some effort to make up some service obligations while there working on a senatorial campaign.

In September, 2004, it was reported that critical written reports on Bush’s service, though required to be preserved had either not been written or had somehow disappeared. Bush had missed his medical examination in `1972, but somehow the report on this incident was missing. He had clearly missed five months of drills and regulations required that he receive counseling after this infarction. Yet no information on these events were found in his files.Questions about Bush’s military service were explored in some detail by the AP wire service, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, and other print media during the campaign of 2000. The television news programs did not deal with it then and it was not a major issue. 7The issue briefly reappeared in early 2003. In February, 2004, the Bush White House tried to end the discussion of his Guard Service by making public hundreds of documents.They were mostly payroll records, but many key pieces of correspondence had somehow disappeared.

The documents proved difficult to understand, and only independent Paul Lukasiak of Philadelphia bothered to study them. The president claimed he had "made up" all their monthly training exercises he had missed, but Lukasiak proved that five months had not been made up. Bush’s records showed he often took substitute training before scheduled monthly training but there was no proof Alabama Guard authorities authorized these substitutions. Moreover, his substitute training did not conform to Air Force regulations requiring it occur no more than 15 days before a scheduled Unit Training Assembly or 30 days after it. One John Calhoun claimed he was Bush at 8 or 10 of the assemblies, but Bush himself never claimed to be at more than one of the assemblies Calhoun mentioned. Nevertheless, Calhoun was featured on many right-wing talk and cable shows in 2004. At the same time, one Bob Mintz, until recently a Republican, came forward to testify that he had been looking for Bush at the base because he wanted to find another bachelor to chum around with but never found him. Retired Colonel and flight instructor Leonard Walls, who is non-political, also testified that he never met Bush at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery. Lukasiak raised many other troubling matters, one of which was why Bush was stripped of flight status in 1973, but the mainstream press showed no interesting in his investigative work.

The IRS and Religion

Two decades ago conservative strategists decided to play the religion card, and some of them talked about turning conservative churches into a vast network of Republican "club houses." The reference was to the political club houses of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Now, they have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, and the political churches or religious Republican club houses are vastly more powerful than the old club houses where people played cards, smoked cigars, and haggled over minor patronage.Last years, hundreds of Protestant and Catholic churches were treated to sermons on the theme that a good Christian could not vote for John Kerry. The priests and ministers usually stopped just short of saying the congregants should vote for George W. Bush.

However, these political churchmen came so close to doing so that conservative Congressman talked about introducing legislation permitting men of the cloth to cross the line a few times before endangering the tax-exempt status of their churches.In October, 2004, Rector Emeritus George Regas told the folks at All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena that Christ would not support a preemptive or preventive war. He also talked about poverty, but did not endorse the tough love approach to compassion, stripping the poor of benefits to compel them become creative and industrious. Regas did not urge people to vote for Kerry or against George W. Bush.Nevertheless, the IRS is now considering whether to strip that church of its tax exempt status. It is unlikely occur. Perhaps the threat to All Saints was intended as a means of arguing in favor of legislation permitting churchmen to discuss politics in the pulpit.

More than a few progressive clergymen will hear the warning shot and learn to trim their sails, even if it means backing off from some of the Christian message.How many religious Republican club houses has the IRS investigated? Narry a one.This is partly about intimidation and smart politics. Much more is involved. The people behind these policies support religious indoctrionation in public schools and at the Air Force Academy. They tried to produce a specially annotate version of the Bible for the Armed Forces.

At bottom many on the Religious Right are true believers who cannot brook dissent and find it blasphemous to even suggest that Jesus Christ would question American exceptionmalism or refuse to enlist in a crusade led by George W. Bush. The Catholics among them, worked ov ertime to explain John Paul II's opposition to both!