Spitzer’s mouthpiece has his own secrets to hide

As the sex scandal hurricane engulfed Eliott Spitzer last week, one of his closest advisors at the eye of the storm was Dietrich “Dieter” Snell. An ex U.S. Attorney from the same office conducting the prostitution probe, Snell is now defending Spitzer in the “Troopergate” scandal and reportedly raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for the international law firm he joined last year.A former Southern District prosecutor who later became Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, Snell is also one of the ex Feds who rewrote history in the Commission’s “Final Report” by relying entirely on the tortured “confession” of 9/11’s purported “mastermind” to pinpoint the origin of the “planes as missiles” plot.

He’s the same investigator who dismissed as not “sufficiently credible” the testimony of a decorated Navy Captain who was part of a secret data mining operation that uncovered evidence of 9/11 hijackers in the U.S. more than a year before the attacks.

Read more

Mukasey Refuses Probe of Bush Aides

 WASHINGTON (AP) – Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House’s contempt citations against two of President Bush’s top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime.

As promised, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she has given the Judiciary Committee authority to file a lawsuit against Bolten and Miers in federal court.

“The House shall do so promptly,” she said in a statement.

Mukasey said Bolten and Miers were right in ignoring subpoenas to provide Congress with White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

Read more

The winning ticket: Hillary and Diebold in 2008

By Mike Whitney Online Journal Contributing Writer Jan 16, 2008, 00:14

Email this article  Printer friendly page

“It’s not who votes that counts. It’s who counts the votes.” –Attributed to Joseph Stalin

Something doesn’t ring true about Hillary’s “upset” victory in the New Hampshire primary. It just doesn’t pass the smell test.

All the exit polls showed Clinton trailing Obama by significant margins. In fact, in the Gallup Poll taken just days before the election, “Crocodile tears” Hillary was down by a whopping 13 points. Her “turnaround” was not only unexpected, but downright shocking. The results for the rest of the candidates — excluding Clinton and Obama — were all within the margin of error. Clinton was the only anomaly. Surprise, surprise.

If this election had been conducted in any other country in the world, the Bush administration would have immediately dispatched an independent team of election observers and demanded a recount. But not in the good old USA, where stealing elections is replacing baseball as the national pastime. Would it surprise you to know that, according to Black Box Voting, the marketing and sales director of the company that tallies the votes (LHS) “was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to “sale/CND” and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000.” That would be LHS Sales Director Ken Hajjar.

Here’s an excerpt from Bev Harris’s Black Box Voting web site: “The Diebold ballot printing plant at the time we got records on the overages [that is, more ballots than needed for election] was being run by a convicted felon who had spent four years in prison on a narcotics trafficking charge. No, not New Hampshire’s voting machine programming exec Ken Hajjar, who cut a plea deal in 1990 for his role in cocaine distribution. This was another convicted felon, John Elder, who ran the Diebold ballot printing plant; he’s now an elections consultant.”

Still feel confident about the election results?

Read more

More Sibel Edmunds

It is incredible, Sibel Edmunds the most gagged person in the history of the US, finally comes out with what she has been ordered to keep secret, and not a single American newspaper covers this story.
Sibel Edmunds who volunteered for the FBI after the attacks of 9/11 and whose job existed out of translating and listening to tapes and who speaks and writes fluent Turkish and Farsi, discovered corruption and cover ups in the highest echelons of American society. You would think that Americans have the right to know, but while numerous newspapers around the world print this story the Big corporate media stay silent.
(Thank you project Falcon for pointing the list out to me.)

Here they are:

Over at Sibel’s website, she has published “Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery” – twenty one photos of people.

Sibel doesn’t say anything about the photos – or the people in the photos – but we can reasonably presume that they are the 21 guilty people in her case.

Sibel has broken the photos into three different groups.

The first group contains current and former Pentagon and State Department officials.

Richard Perle

Douglas Feith

Eric Edelman

Marc Grossman

Brent Scowcroft

Larry Franklin

The second group is current and former congressmen

Dennis Hastert – Ex-House Speaker (R-Il)

Roy Blount – ( R, Mo)

Dan Burton – (R – IN)

Tom Lantos – (D- CA)

?

Bob Livingston – ex-Speaker of the House (R-LA)

Stephen Solarz (D-Ny)

The 3rd group includes people who all appear to work at think tanks – primarily WINEP, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Graham E. Fuller – RAND

David Makovsky – WINEP

Alan Makovsky – WINEP

?

?

Yusuf Turani (President-in-exile, Turkistan)

Professor Sabri Sayari (Georgetown, WINEP)

Mehmet Eymur (Former head Turkish counter-terrorism, MIT)

As you can see, there are a couple of ‘Question Marks’ instead of photos. I’m not sure why that is the case.

US official in Blackwater probe quits

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) – U.S. State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, under scrutiny for his brother’s link to the Blackwater security firm, has decided to resign, U.S. officials said on Friday.Krongard, the State Department’s top investigator, has been accused by current and former subordinates of thwarting probes into waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq, including alleged arms smuggling by Blackwater.

Read more

Congress Has a Way of Making Witnesses Speak: Its Own Jail

Published: December 4, 2007

Congress and the White House appear to be headed for a constitutional showdown. The House of Representatives is poised to hold Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, and Harriet Miers, a former White House counsel, in contempt for failing to comply with subpoenas in the United States attorneys scandal. If the Justice Department refuses to enforce the subpoenas, as seems likely, Congress will have to decide whether to do so. Washington lawyers are dusting off an old but apparently sturdy doctrine called “inherent contempt” that gives Congress the power to bring the recalcitrant witnesses in — by force, if necessary.

What we know that Congress has learned in its investigation of the purge of nine top federal prosecutors is disturbing. Cases appear to have been brought against Democrats and blocked against Republicans to help Republicans win elections. The stakes have grown steadily: it now seems that innocent people, like Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant, may have been jailed for political reasons. Congress has a duty to find out what happened.

Read more

Official probing Rove now under investigation himself

The federal official helming a probe into potentially illegal partisan political activities conducted by Karl Rove and other White House officials is himself the focus of a federal investigation.

Scott Bloch, the Bush-appointed head of the US Office of Special Counsel, is under investigation for the alleged improper deletion of emails on office computers, The Wall Street Journal‘s John R. Wilke reports.

“Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year,” writes Wilke. “They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.” The inspector general of the Office of Personnel Management is examining the case at the urging of the White House.

Read more

“Buzzy” Krongard works for Blackwater USA

Buzzy Krongard, of CIA fame, member of the Council for foreign relations, Good friend to Erik Princes mother and father, he who gave Prince his first Contract and who’s bank was implicated in the foreknowledge of 9/11 bets now sits on the board of Blackwater USA. Just to show how incestuous this cabal is have a look at the following PDF.

Updates following also all information you might have about these people feel free to send it to me as a comment. I need to be able to verify independently, so only the most reliable info goes into the PDF. 

Cheney’s Gestapo

Cheney Pursuing Nuclear Ambitions of His Own

By Jason Leopold
    t r u t h o u t | Report    Monday 05 November 2007

    While Dick Cheney has been talking tough over the years about Iran’s alleged nuclear activities, the vice president has been quietly pursuing nuclear ambitions of his own.

    For more than two years, Cheney and a relatively unknown administration official, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell, have been regularly visiting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure agency officials rewrite regulatory policies and bypass public hearings in order to streamline the licensing process for energy companies that have filed applications to build new nuclear power reactors, as well as applications for new nuclear facilities that are expected to be filed by other companies in the months ahead, longtime NRC officials said.

    Before being sworn in as deputy energy secretary in March 2005, Sell, a lawyer whose roots extend to Bush’s home state of Texas, was a White House lobbyist working on energy issues. He had also participated in secret meetings with Cheney’s Energy Task Force.

    In April, Sell and Cheney had both met with NRC officials to sign off on the final regulatory policies related to new nuclear reactors. Following the meeting, Sell had alerted a group of energy companies they could begin to take advantage of the faster application process, NRC officials said.

    NRC officials said that Cheney has expressed a desire to see applications for nuclear reactor projects approved by the NRC when he and Bush leave the White House in January 2009.

Read more

Defense contract award protested

The winning firm had an unfair advantage due to Bush administration links, say companies in complaints to GAO.

By Walter F. Roche Jr., Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 26, 2007

WASHINGTON — A Defense Department medical services contract worth up to $790 million was awarded last month to a Wisconsin-based company three months after it hired a former Bush administration appointee who had supervised military health programs at the Pentagon for the last six years.

William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs from 2001 until April, joined Logistics Health Inc. as a director and consultant in June. The firm beat out two other bidders with proposals that ranged from $80 million to $100 million less, records show. Under the new contract, Logistics Health will provide immunizations and physical and dental exams for reservists and National Guard members.

Logistics Health of LaCrosse, Wis., is headed by another ex-official of the Bush administration — former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson.

“They stacked the deck,” said Fran Lessans, president of Passport Health, one of the losing bidders. Her Baltimore-based firm lost despite a bid projected over five years to cost nearly $100 million less than Logistics Health’s winning proposal.

“It was wired. There is no doubt in my mind,” Lessans said of the Defense procurement process.

Read more

Defense contract award protested

The winning firm had an unfair advantage due to Bush administration links, say companies in complaints to GAO.

By Walter F. Roche Jr., Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 26, 2007

WASHINGTON — A Defense Department medical services contract worth up to $790 million was awarded last month to a Wisconsin-based company three months after it hired a former Bush administration appointee who had supervised military health programs at the Pentagon for the last six years.

William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs from 2001 until April, joined Logistics Health Inc. as a director and consultant in June. The firm beat out two other bidders with proposals that ranged from $80 million to $100 million less, records show. Under the new contract, Logistics Health will provide immunizations and physical and dental exams for reservists and National Guard members.

Logistics Health of LaCrosse, Wis., is headed by another ex-official of the Bush administration — former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson.

“They stacked the deck,” said Fran Lessans, president of Passport Health, one of the losing bidders. Her Baltimore-based firm lost despite a bid projected over five years to cost nearly $100 million less than Logistics Health’s winning proposal.

“It was wired. There is no doubt in my mind,” Lessans said of the Defense procurement process.

Read more

Is the CIA helping itself to the Afghan heroin harvest?

Nick Possum
Whispers from the Mean Streets
October 22, 2007

No names, no pack drill, like we used to say in the army, but I had a client who wanted me to look into some aspects of the world heroin trade.

I googled a bit, and made a few phone calls and began to have disturbing suspicions.

Since the fall of the Taliban regime, which had seriously honoured an agreement to close down the trade, heroin production in Afghanistan has surged. In 2006 there was a 50 per cent increase in the poppy harvest and it created a new record for world production, my contact in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime told me. Afghanistan now accounts for 92 per cent of the world’s illicit production. She expected it would take another leap upwards this year.

So where is the stuff ending up? So far, not in Australia, but that’s only a matter of time. Once again, the streets of Western Europe and Russia are awash with the stuff and that fact got me thinking about the CIA.

The espionage game provides a powerful motive, superbly trained teams and the perfect cover for large-scale drug smuggling. It’s hardly a secret that, in the past, the CIA has partaken of the feast and, collectively, it couldn’t give a damn if the stuff gets dumped on the despised nations of ‘Old Europe’.

The US clandestine agencies are a sprawling brotherhood of silence and trust. And it isn’t just the huge bureaucracy of the CIA itself. Now, there’s also a freelance parallel universe of ‘special forces’ and ‘security contractors’ – created by the neocons for their War on Terror – doing everything from assassinations to ‘interrogation’. No mainstream politician wants to know what these people are doing in their name.

Read more

Michael Mukasey: Another Loyal Bushie

The Michael Mukasey Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing has demonstrated that Mukasey cannot be relied upon to function independently as U.S. Attorney General. Nevertheless, Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee seem so thrilled that Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales that they’re willing to vote for him even though he’s another loyal Bushie. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, backed down on his promise to hold up the confirmation hearing until the administration turned over material his committee had requested regarding several investigations. Leahy said of Mukasey after the hearing, “He’s at least answered the questions, which is better than his predecessor. He’s going to be different than Gonzales on all the issues, I think. He will certainly be better than Gonzales on morale.” 

But saying that Mukasey compares favorably to Alberto Gonzales is faint praise for the nominee. The former Attorney General resigned during a firestorm of criticism about his U.S. Attorney purges, and his repeated claims of memory loss when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Mukasey doesn’t seem to have a memory problem; he relied on a different excuse for dodging the Senators’ hard questions: he hasn’t been “read in on” the details of Bush policies, such as interrogation techniques, or the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Mukasey claims he doesn’t know what water boarding is, so he can’t say if it constitutes torture. Say what? Mukasey’s claimed ignorance of water boarding is about as credible as his predecessor’s convenient claims of amnesia. Rear Adm. John Hutson (USN Ret.) testified at the confirmation hearing, “Other than, perhaps the rack and thumbscrews, water boarding is the most iconic example of torture in history. It was devised, I believe, in the Spanish inquisition. It has been repudiated for centuries.”

Read more

Clinton bucks the trend and rakes in cash from the US weapons industry

The US arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party. Mrs Clinton has also emerged as Wall Street’s favourite. Investment bankers have opened their wallets in unprecedented numbers for the New York senator over the past three months and, in the process, dumped their earlier favourite, Barack Obama.

Mrs Clinton’s wooing of the defence industry is all the more remarkable given the frosty relations between Bill Clinton and the military during his presidency. An analysis of campaign contributions shows senior defence industry employees are pouring money into her war chest in the belief that their generosity will be repaid many times over with future defence contracts.

Employees of the top five US arms manufacturers – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon – gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to the Republicans. “The contributions clearly suggest the arms industry has reached the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed,” said Thomas Edsall, an academic at Columbia University in New York.

Read more

Charlie Savage: Cheney Plotted Bush’s Imperial Presidency ‘Thirty Years Ago’

The Bush administration has long held that President Bush’s expanded executive power is justified due to 9/11. “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority and I think that the world we live in demands it,” claimed Vice President Cheney in 2005.

But in his new book, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage reveals that Cheney has been on a thirty-year quest to implement his views of unfettered executive power.

Read more

Rohrabacher stands behind Blackwater chief

Erik Prince will become an all American Hero just like Ollie North.

What was it again that Ollie North did that make him a Hero in Dan Rohrabacher’s eyes?

Oh, I remember, he was the chief coordinator of the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to that really friendly terrorist gang named the “Contras” in Nicaragua. And all this without anybody knowing, illegally while lying to the congress. Yep, a real all American Hero. And Erik Prince really likes that idea. In fact Erik Prince supported Ollie North financially on occasion.(travellerev)

 

By DENA BUNIS

WASHINGTON – Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has more than a passing interest in the recent controversy surrounding Blackwater USA. The owner is a friend of his.

Erik Prince, the president of Blackwater, was an intern in Rohrabacher’s Capitol Hill office in 1990 and they have since become friends. Rohrabacher is furious at the congressional inquiries into incidents in Iraq where Blackwater security guards have been accused of killing Iraqi civilians.

“I think the Democrats should be ashamed of themselves,” Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, said in a telephone interview Monday.

Prince, Rohrabacher said, has “had thousands of people involved in a warlike situation and has an insignificant number of bad eggs in that group.”

In the wake of the Blackwater controversy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week ordered video cameras be installed in the company’s vehicles and federal agents will ride with the security contractors who escort diplomatic convoys. The FBI is investigating the Iraqi incidents.

George Bush smooths path for Hillary

Sarah Baxter

BUSH administration officials are paving the way for a smooth transition to a possible Democratic presidency as Hillary Clinton consolidates her position as the overwhelming favourite to win her party’s nomination for the 2008 election.

Clinton has powered her way to the top of the Democratic pack, establishing a 33-point lead in one poll last week over Barack Obama, her nearest rival.

She raised $7m more than Obama in the last quarter and attracted more individual contri-butors than the Illinois senator, proving her popularity with grassroots Democrats.

With Clinton looking the near-inevitable nominee, Bush officials intend to hold her to her promise to be tough on defence and national security. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is hoping to establish a bipartisan consensus on defence that will last beyond next year’s election.

Read more

function pictureGalleryPopup(pubUrl,articleId) { var newWin = window.open(pubUrl+’template/2.0-0/element/pictureGalleryPopup.jsp?id=’+articleId+’&&offset=0&&sectionName=NewsUSElections’,’mywindow’,’menubar=0,resizable=0,width=615,height=655′); }

US Senate calls for Iraq’s partition

This would make it easier for the different  factions to settle their differences?
No, it would make it easier to steal the oil. You just have to deal with the Kurds who already have made a deal with miljonair oil magnate Ray L. Hunt, who is a good friend and benefactor of, you guessed it, the Bush family.
Ching ,ching, game over.

Washington (dpa) – US lawmakers voted Wednesday to split Iraq into a loose federation of sectarian-based regions and urged President George W Bush to press Iraqi leaders to agree.

More than 20 Republicans joined Democrats to pass the non-binding measure in the Senate, 75-23, showing frustration in both parties about Bush’s war policy and lagging national reconciliation in Iraq.

Supporters of Iraqi partition believe it would let Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions settle their differences and make it easier for US troops eventually to return home.

Read more

Why Cheney Likes Mukasey for A.G.

In praising George W. Bush’s new choice for Attorney General, Vice President Dick Cheney identified one freedom in particular that retired Judge Michael Mukasey would protect: “the freedom from fear of terrorist attacks.”

The comment spoke volumes about the Bush administration’s priorities, fitting with the President’s oft-repeated claim that the government has no more important duty than to protect the American people.

That this claim goes unchallenged – despite the fact that the oath administered to federal officials demands that they defend the Constitution and says nothing about public safety – has been a leading indicator of how Bush and Cheney have exploited the self-centeredness of many Americans to amass unprecedented executive power.

Read more

Duty, Honor, Country 2007

An Open Letter to the New Generation of Military Officers Serving and Protecting Our Nation

By Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., National Commander, The Patriots

9/14/07

“The Nuremberg Principles says that we in the military have not only the right, but also the DUTY to refuse an illegal order. It was on this basis that we executed Nazi officers who were ‘only carrying out their orders’… The Constitution which we are sworn to uphold says that treaties entered into by the United States are the ‘highest law of the land,’ equivalent to the Constitution itself. Accordingly, we in the military are sworn to uphold treaty law, including the United Nations charter and the Geneva Convention… Based on the above, I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal.”

Read more