Gadsden Flag

The Gadsden flag was popular as an early flag of the Revolutionary War.

Larry Sinclair Original YouTube Vid

The MSM runs away from any investigation but Larry Sinclair has another medium as well. He says he knows Obama well.

Virtual Islam

A new virtual world, Muxlim Pal, allows Muslims to create a cartoon avatar based loosely on other virtual worlds such as The Sims. Aimed at Muslims in Western nations, Muxlim Pal claims not to be a religious site, said Mohamed El-Fatatry, founder of Muxlim.com--the parent site of Muxlim Pal.

You Saw It Here First

I told 'ya!

He Says He Didn't But I Say He Did

Graphic source: KHQA-TV

A 5 November report by KHQA-TV's Carol Sowers, Quincy, Ill., station, has been removed from their website and it has retracted a story where The Elect planned to discuss his replacement for his vacated Senate seat with Gov. Blagojevich.

The Elect now says "I had no contact with the governor."

Franklin On the Constitution

The following Benjamin Franklin quote is from the “Law of Nations.” A constitution is attacked gradually over time until “states have thus entirely changed their nature, and lost their original constitution:”

§ 30. Of the support of the constitution and obedience to the laws.

The constitution and laws of a state are the basis of the public tranquility, the firmest support of political authority, and a security for the liberty of the citizens. But this constitution is a vain phantom, and the best laws are useless, if they be not religiously observed: the nation ought then to watch very attentively, in order to render them equally respected by those who govern, and by the people destined to obey. To attack the constitution of the state and to violate its laws, is a capital crime against society; and if those guilty of it are invested with authority, they add to this crime a perfidious abuse of the power with which they are intrusted. The nation ought constantly to repress them with its utmost vigour and vigilance, as the importance of the case requires.

It is very uncommon to see the laws and constitution of a state openly and boldly opposed: it is against silent and gradual attacks that a nation ought to be particularly on its guard. Sudden revolutions strike the imaginations of men: they are detailed in history; their secret springs are developed. But we overlook the changes that insensibly happen by a long train of steps that are but slightly marked. It would be rendering nations an important service to show from history how many states have thus entirely changed their nature, and lost their original constitution. This would awaken the attention of mankind: — impressed thenceforward with this excellent maxim (no less essential in politics than in morals) principiis obsta, — they would no longer shut their eyes against innovations, which, though inconsiderable in themselves, may serve as steps to mount to higher and more pernicious enterprises.

Fun With Altering Certificate of Live Birth

Everyone, and I would suggest this would be instructive in classes all over the country, can check whether the image of The Elect's birth certificate from Obama’s web site was altered when checked with even a free hex editor. The hex editor displays information about the image and in this case reveals the image was edited with Adobe Photoshop CS3 on 6/12/2008 at 8:42am. It was altered on a Macintosh.2c Using Adobe Photoshop CS3 at 08:06:12 08:42:36 as indicated in the right side column of the free hex editor anyone can download. Hex editors can be used to check image attributes. The editor also can be used to change the attributes but in this case it seems very obvious the changed attributes match what has been altered to fake Obama’s certification of birth, not a legal document. A State seal and signature were added later to another jpg on his web site. The jpg examined had no State seal or official signature.

Natural Born Citizen

In a free country, you can always ignore the noise created by the mainstream media who are fawning at the mouth to get in line with corporate interests. On the other hand, you can always read for yourself and make up your own mind who has the better argument regarding the natural born citizen issue.

The Founders anticipated the issues, they were prescient. It is uncanny how they knew the crowd would be so dazzled, it is almost as if they could envision the subsequent media developments of television and the Internet. I choose not to get caught up with the fray and I urge any seriously interested to keep researching the subtleties of the law.

Lashkar-e-Taiba America: Coming to a City Near You, If Not There Already

Kashmir-based Islamofascist Lashkar-e-Taiba has deep ties to America. Since 2003, at least five U.S. citizens have been convicted in federal court of conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba. At least nine more men, considered to be in the same larger circle, have been convicted of firearms violations and other felonies. Several other cases are still making their way through the legal process.

In April, 2000 Virginian Randall Todd Royer went to a LeT camp in Kashmir. Royer trained for a month. In August, Seifullah Chapman made a similar trip, and trained for a month as well. After 9/11 Royer and others recruited Ibrahim al-Hamdi, Yong Ki Kwon, Muhammed Aatique, and Khwaja Mahmood Hasan for training. In December 2001, two of the men, Khan and Kwon, were asked "to return to the United States, gather information, and spread propaganda." A year later, Khan was purchasing drone aircraft parts, and gave them to a LeT operative. Lashkar is a sieve for Al Qaeda. The organization discerns who should leave and who qualifies. In 2007, Mahmud Faruq Brent was convicted of providing material support to LeT, after he admitted to attending one of their training camps. Federal prosecutors in Atlanta are still trying Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee for aiding LeT.

Scapegoat Blagojevich

Graphic source: James A. Finley, AP

Graphic source: AP

Graphic source: AP

Graphic source: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

Barack Obama is flanked by Gov. Blagojevich, left, and Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, right, during an April 2007 rally.

Graphic source: AP

A federal judge in January will sentence political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who helped bankroll campaigns for The Elect and Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Rezko was convicted in June on charges of using clout with Blagojevich's administration to help launch a $7 million kickback scheme. His sentencing had been postponed indefinitely, giving rise to widespread speculation he was talking to federal prosecutors investigating alleged corruption in state government.

Rezko was a prolific fundraiser who raised money for President-elect Obama's campaigns for the state legislature and Congress, but not for Obama's presidential campaign.

Rezko is set to go to trial early next year on unrelated charges that he swindled the General Electric Capital Corp. out of $10 million in the sale of a group of pizza restaurants. He also allegedly owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debts.

Today, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is facing federal corruption charges. FBI agents arrested Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, on charges related in part to the selection of The Elect's successor to the Senate. The charges include a count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and a count of solicitation of bribery. The 76-page affidavit allege that wiretaps recorded Blagojevich conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat in exchange for financial benefits for himself and his wife, Patti.

Obama admitted nothing.

"Obviously, like the rest of the people of Illinois, I am saddened and sobered by the news that came out of the U.S. attorney's office today," he said. "But as this is an ongoing investigation involving the governor, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment on the issue at this time."

Obama said he had no contact with the governor or his office.

His statement that he didn't have contact with Blagojevich about the Senate seat seems to conflict with that of top adviser David Axelrod, who told Fox News Chicago on 23 November: "I know he's talked to the governor, and there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

On Tuesday, Axelrod issued a detraction saying: "I was mistaken. ... They did not then or at any time discuss the subject."

And, I take it the people of Illinois were represented by a Senator who had no interest in finding a suitable replacement. If something does not sound right it usually is not true.

"I was not aware of what was happening," Obama added.

One possible connection between The Elect and the governor had been raised earlier in the year. Federal authorities also allege the governor and Harris schemed with others--including convicted real estate developer Rezko--to obtain financial benefits for himself, his family and others, including his campaign committee, Friends of Blagojevich. Obama was an associate of Rezko in particular in obtaining his mansion in Chicago.

In addition, Obama is close to Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, who has been the governor's staunchest legislative ally. And at least one top aide to Obama, Michael Strautmanis, previously worked for Blagojevich. Obama has appointed Strautmanis to serve as White House chief of staff to the presidential assistant for intergovernmental relations and public liaison. The Chicago native was legislative director and counsel to Blagojevich when the governor was a member of Congress and then helped Blagojevich win the governorship in 2002. There is no indication that Strautmanis is involved in the case.

"We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it," stated U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Blagojevich is most likely guilty, guilty of being the low man on the totem pole. He is the scapegoat.

He still gets to appoint a Senatorial successor, unless one of the other proposals such as him resigning is enacted.

As background, journalist Evelyn Pringle has been doing a lot of in depth research into Obama’s many long time connections to crime and corruption in Chicago and Illinois. Here are some excerpts from her research:

“The names of Obama and Blagojevich became tied to the bid rigging scandal when reports surfaced that Companion had sought their help in carrying out the contract a year after Alsammarae left office, and around the same time he was thrown in jail in Iraq.”

“US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald does not make a habit of destroying pubic officials by listing them in indictments for no reason and the only two political candidates identified as receiving campaign money from Operation Board Games kickback schemes are Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the US Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.”

“Instead of referring to Board Games as the “Rezko” case, before long the media will likely be calling it the “Blagojevich” case. However, because the governor did not become the presidential candidate, when the scandal is recorded in the history books it will be the “Barack Obama” case. “

“Dr Michel Malek gave Obama $10,000 a little over a month before the first meeting on June 30, 2003. He also donated $25,000 to Blagojevich three weeks later on July 25, 2003, and gave Obama another $500 in September 2003. Malek was an investor in Riverside Park. “

“Dr Fortunee Massuda donated $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 25, 2003, and gave a total of $2,000 to Obama on different dates. Massuda’s husband, Charles Hannon, is a co-schemer in the pension fund case and testified against Rezko in the trial.”

“In the media, Obama always made it sound like he rarely saw Rezko, saying they met for breakfast or lunch once or twice a year. However, the FBI mole John Thomas helped investigators “build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru’s Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005,” according to the February 10, 2008 Sun-Times.”

“On May 20, 2005, the Times said, “Two Rezko associates gave Blagojevich $25,000 each just days after the governor named them to a state panel.”

However, the reporters either failed to notice, or failed to mention, that panel member Malek gave $10,000 to Obama on June 30, 2003.“

Read the rest of Evelyn Pringle’s articles here:

Part 1 of Pringle and Part 2.

The transcripts from the Rezko trial are available as well.

Another Case in Washington State Has Standing

A case in Washington State has standing and is moving through the Courts as well.

The Elect Back To Hawaii

Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii indicated that Valerie Jarrett, a close friend of The Elect, and adviser who is co-chair of his transition office, would accompany Obama to the islands. Lingle will meet with Jarrett. The governor also invited Obama to meet with her.

I wonder if they still need to clear up more paperwork.

The Elect visited Hawaii in October to visit his ailing grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who died. Obama snubbed a funeral or service for his grandmother who raised him.

His grandmother was cremated without The Elect or his family attending.

Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz, USSC Docket No. 08A469.

Cort Wrotnowski’s emergency application for a stay and/or injunction as to the Electoral College meeting on 15 December was today referred to the full Court by the Honorable Associate Justice Anotonin Scalia. It has been distributed for Conference of Friday December 12. The official case name is WROTNOWSKI v. BYSIEWICZ, United States Supreme Court Docket No. 08A469.

The central issue is the same as the Donofrio case: whether Barack Obama is not eligible to the office of President due to the fact that he was a British citizen at the time of his birth.

Article 2, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution specifically states: "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

His father's nationality, as a British citizen, appears to make Barack Obama ineligible for the presidency as he is not a natural born Citizen.

"When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom's dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.'s children."

Cf. http://www.fastcheck.org/

Of relevance is the newly discovered ineligibility of 21st President Chester Arthur due to his having been born as a British subject. This is relevant to the case at hand in that Justice Gray--who wrote the seminal opinion in United States v. Wong Kim Arc-- was appointed by Chester Arthur.

The Justice who wrote the opinion was appointed by Chester Arthur.

1st Vietnamese-American Elected to House

The first Vietnamese-American elected to the House says he hopes his win will push more young people to become politically active. Anh "Joseph" Cao says his win shows that "really anything can happen." The Republican defeated nine-term Democratic Rep. William Jefferson in the mostly African-American and heavily Democratic New Orleans-area district. Jefferson had been expected to win a 10th term but he has been battling scandals and a federal indictment for the past three years. Cao came to the U.S. at the age of 8 after his family fled Vietnam as it fell to communists.

"When I [was] 9 years old, I received a letter from my father while he was in the re-education camp," Cao said. "He told me to study hard, to work hard and to give back to your country and to your community. So I hope to do that in Congress."

The Elect's Record Deficit

The Elect as candidate stated:

"Barack Obama will restore fiscal discipline to Washington."

"It's time to put an end to the run-away spending and the record deficits."

The Elect as Elect now proposes public works including a likely:

budget deficit that will come in at 1 Trillion or 1.5 Trillion dollars.

Analogous to the public works of Eisenhower with the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956, which led to the construction of 42,795 miles of roads, the government concluded that the total cost came to $128.9 billion, with the federal government paying $114.3 billion and the states picking up the rest.

I do not suppose anyone noticed that we are not currently undergoing the economic growth that we enjoyed under an Eisenhower administration. The deficit will simply be passed on to a less prosperous next generation.

Graphing Energy Use

A glance at a graph can illustrate clearly how the U.S. uses mostly non-renewable sources of energy.

The Elect and His Mysterious Health Concerns

The Elect has promised not to light up in the smoke-free White House. Does this mean he will release his medical records? I would not assume a middle-aged smoker would be in good health. "There are times where I've fallen off the wagon," he stated on Meet the Press, but the substantive issue, which people have the right to know, is what his actual health involves. But, to date, no records are scheduled to be released. We are expected to accept, on faith, that all is well. The Elect added during the campaign: "But I figure, seeing as I'm running for president, I need to cut myself a little slack," he said.

"I've done a terrific job, under the circumstances, of making myself much healthier," which implies that something relating to his health may be less than well.

The Elect told the magazine Men's Health in an interview for its November issue that he wished he had more time for staying fit and that he still occasionally smoked a cigarette. This is another indication that health is a concern.

Note on Weiner, Legacy of Ashes

Although no one should be shocked with the atrocious failures of the CIA, the length, depth, and outrageous incompetence of CIA is startlingly in this work nonetheless. There were few successes and consistent failings of a revolving door of directors and an inability of both Republicans and Democratic presidents to grasp the essential importance of protecting Americans from attack. Most notably with 9/11, but in case after case, CIA could not provide verifiable intelligence about American's enemies and they failed in their mission to protect America.

The author is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times which in itself commends itself to be read. The Weiner volume updates the gap left by the now dated works of John Ranelagh (The Agency, 1986) and Christopher Andrew (For the President’s Eyes Only, 1995) regarding CIA history.

As Weiner relates it, the title phrase “legacy of ashes” comes from a critical remark President Dwight D. Eisenhower uttered near the end of his administration when, Weiner tells us, Ike finally blew up at Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen Dulles and the failings of CIA generally, and more particularly at Dulles’s resistance to recommendations for intelligence reform from the president’s board of consultants.

“A great deal has been accomplished,” Dulles insisted to the president at the final gatherings of Eisenhower’s National Security Council. Everything is well in hand, he said. I have fixed the clandestine service. American intelligence has never been more agile and adept. Coordination and cooperation are better than they have ever been. The proposals of the president’s intelligence board were preposterous, he said, they were madness, they were illegal. I am responsible under the law for intelligence coordination, he reminded the president. I cannot delegate that responsibility. Without my leadership, he said, American intelligence would be a “body floating in thin air.”

At the last, Dwight Eisenhower exploded in anger and frustration. “The structure of our intelligence organization is faulty,” he told Dulles. It makes no sense, it has to be reorganized, and we should have done it long ago. Nothing had changed since Pearl Harbor. “I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this,” said the president of the United States. He said he would “leave a legacy of ashes” to his successor (p. 166).

Weiner takes license with factual data since the interaction, as presumed here, did not take place as reported.

An examination of the source documents shows that:

* Dulles made his remarks (“body floating in thin air”) at a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) on 12 January 1961, and he was speaking against a Defense Department proposal to separate the position of DCI from the management of CIA.

* Eisenhower’s supposed retort (“eight-year defeat…legacy of ashes”) occurred a week earlier, at the 5 January NSC meeting, and had nothing to do with CIA. Eisenhower was expressing frustration at what he considered his major failing regarding intelligence—his inability to reform and streamline military intelligence.

* Far from criticizing Dulles and CIA, Eisenhower at both meetings affirmed the Agency’s central role in the collection and correlation of strategic intelligence while criticizing the redundancy and expense of having four separate military intelligence agencies.

* The words “preposterous” and “madness” are nowhere to be found in the record of Dulles’s remarks on proposals to reform intelligence (Memoranda of Discussions at the 473rd Meeting (5 January 1961) and the 474th Meeting (12 January 1961) of the National Security Council; documents 80 and 84, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963: Volume XXV (2001). See also document 79, a record of 3 January meeting of Eisenhower, National Security Advisor Gordon Gray, and General Andrew Goodpaster).

The central concern of Weiner is of course to compare CIA performance against other intelligence agencies. The intelligence services that are often judged to be superior to CIA—the Israeli Mossad, the Cuban DGI, the East German Stasi, and even the British SIS—are far more limited in focus and scope. However, the real problem are the abundant mistakes and difficulties that a democracy has when engaged in covert operations. The most notable point of comparison in terms of performance from superior agencies, with the exception of the SIS of course, is that CIA originates from a democratic nation. They are at a disadvantage in the dark world of covert operations. The problem is acute in that CIA from the beginning was charged with worldwide coverage in all intelligence areas, something no other service, except perhaps the Soviet KGB, was required to do. As has been pointed out many times, `it is a rough neighborhood.' But perhaps more to the point, when you read alleged success stories and self-serving memoirs, such as George Tenet's about his tenure as head of CIA, he pointedly acclaims successes of other agencies, as a way of complimenting his our actions of course. This is a roundabout way of suggesting that other intelligence agencies are more effective than CIA.

In regards to CIA origins, Weiner is forced by his own premise of CIA incompetence to assert the incredible: that Harry Truman didn’t know what was going on in his own administration regarding Cold War covert activities.

Yet publicly available documents, which Weiner seems to be unaware of or ignores, make an overwhelming case that President Truman was informed frequently of NSC and other policy discussions on covert operations and CIA’s role in them. In Michael Warner, ed., CIA Cold War Records: The CIA Under Harry Truman (CIA History Staff, 1994) is a memo from the DCI dated 23 April 1952 to the NSC about CIA activities. It includes (pages 459–60) a discussion of “cold war covert activities, including guerrilla warfare.” The document is marked “Included in the President’s Book.”

Weiner might also have read Hayden Peake, “Harry S. Truman on CIA Covert Activities,” in Studies in Intelligence 25, No. 1 (1981). Peake demonstrates that, Truman’s stated opposition to Eisenhower- and Kennedy-era covert operations notwithstanding, CIA officials of the late 1940s and early 1950s considered Truman to have been intimately involved in the development of CIA’s covert mission.

Weiner might also have examined more closely the holdings of the Truman Library, where he would have been able to see a progress report sent by DCI Souers to the president in June 1946 on “planning for psychological warfare” on the part of the Central Intelligence Group; he might also have taken note of the NSC memorandums for the president summarizing NSC discussions of 20 May and 3 June 1948 concerning psychological and political warfare, also in the Truman Library, President’s Secretary’s files.

He misses other important evidence of Truman’s knowledge of such activity, such as the Acting DCI’s 16 January 1951 report to the NSC on “Responsibilities of CIA (OPC) with Respect to Guerrilla Warfare.” Weiner does cite the 23 October 1951 NSC report on “Scope and Pace of Covert Operations,” but he misses the significance of this document’s presence in the files of Truman’s secretary—unless Weiner is implying that she was in on the aforementioned conspiracy to keep him in the dark.

During the Eisenhower administration, CIA began their mission to provide actionable intelligence about American enemies to a succession of presidents. Eisenhower handled CIA by looking the other way. CIA should act but not to let Eisenhower know what manner of nefarious activities CIA did.

Allen Dulles freely admitted to Eisenhower that CIA had no sources in the Kremlin, that its Soviet estimates relied more on speculation and “the logic of the situation” than on hard evidence, and that the Agency could not reliably warn of a sudden Soviet attack (pp. 73–75). This goes to the heart of Weiner's import; CIA failed to penetrate and discover the intentions of American's enemies.

Weiner chronicles the chaos of the early days of CIA espionage and covert action, particularly when the Office of Strategic Operations and Office of Policy Coordination were separate entities with separate stations in the field and competing programs (p. 33).

Weiner notes with some alarm that ethnic agent teams were sent into action and few--about 25%--were ever heard from again. These ethnic agents were nationalists, willing to risk their lives against the Soviets in their homeland without US help, and we were willing to take the chance that sending them might yield good intelligence or otherwise harm our adversaries. By contrast, in the more recent case of the Chinese Muslim Uighers for example, they will simply be dispatched without mission or recruitment, insofar as we know, out of Guatanomo. The same low risk-possible moderate to high return because of their actions is not apparently considered today.

Successes pale in comparison with the failures of CIA. In 1948 CIA accurately assessed the chance for war with the Soviets as nil which was a positive accomplishment but the accurate Agency predictions of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 hardly compares as something which impacts the security of Americans.

One of most notable failures and the most memorable is an episode in Guatemala in 1994, when the CIA chief of station confronted the American ambassador, Marilyn McAfee, with intelligence, as she recalled, that "I was having a lesbian affair with my secretary, whose name was Carol Murphy." The CIA's friends in the Guatemalan military had bugged McAfee's bedroom, Weiner reports, and "recorded her cooing endearments to Murphy. They spread the word that the ambassador was a lesbian." The CIA's "Murphy memo" was widely distributed in Washington. There was only one problem: the ambassador was married, not gay, and not sleeping with her secretary. " 'Murphy' was the name of her two-year-old black standard poodle. The bug in her bedroom had recorded her petting her dog."

Weiner portrays the development of the U-2 spy plane, mostly as a result of the fact that CIA could not develop human assets inside the USSR. However, if we had only developed “a bigger picture of life inside the Soviet Union” that revealed the Russians “were unable to produce the necessities of life” (p. 114), we would not have had to create the unprecedented capability to take pictures of Soviet military power from 70,000 feet. A better insight into Soviet life would have revealed that a formidable and genuinely threatening military machine was a chimera. Satellite imagery helped keep the Cold War cold. This is significant.

Other successes include the successful covert support of democracy in Italy in 1948. The Berlin Tunnel operation gets a note, and the story of CIA’s first major Soviet spy, Pyotr Popov, is buried in a footnote. The Agency understood the 1967 Mideast war and was attributable to the rigorous analytic work that was behind the judgment.

A key point that could be an overwhelming success is whether CIA identified the collapse of the Soviet Union. Weiner also repeats the canard that CIA missed the decline of the USSR, something that was obvious to everyone in the world but the Agency. He does not discuss several important sources that have refuted this claim: the work of Bruce Berkowitz, Douglas MacEachin, Robert Gates, and the Case Program of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. CIA analysts warned of the USSR’s socio-economic troubles from the late 1970s on.

Another mistake is the common misconception is to dismiss Ronald Reagan as someone who came to the presidency knowing “little more about the CIA than what he had learned at the movies” (p. 375). This is a wrong-headed view of a president who in 1975 had served on the Rockefeller Commission investigating intelligence activities and who had drafted for his own delivery, from 1975 to 1978, radio addresses on national security matters that included cogent discussions about CIA and intelligence issues. In addition, a large number of Reagan’s letters and essays has emerged that dispel Weiner’s notion.

A recent, really critical situation to consider is the infamous “sixteen words” President Bush used in the 2003 State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein’s alleged efforts to purchase uranium in Africa. Weiner, claiming that Bush was making “CIA’s case,” omits mention of the attribution of the information to British intelligence. Moreover, George Tenet’s recent memoir makes it clear that the Agency had removed the assertion from previous speeches and simply had failed to do so for the State of the Union. CIA, in fact, did not support that statement.

There are errors of fact in Legacy of Ashes. Following is a short list:

* OSS was not “barred from seeing the most important intercepted communications” during World War II (p. 5); few in any organization could view ULTRA intercepts, but within OSS the X-2 counterintelligence branch had access.
* The distinction between the espionage and covert action missions did not emerge in the postwar period (p. 11) but years earlier was already part of the organizing principle of OSS; the Secret Intelligence branch handled what would later be called HUMINT, and various other branches were responsible for paramilitary and other covert activity.
* The 1949 CIA Act did not provide the Agency with the legal authority to conduct covert action (p. 40)—that legislation concerned DCI authorities regarding personnel, secrecy, and unvouchered funds (which certainly helped operations remain covert); the Agency construed its covert action authority from admittedly vague language in the 1947 National Security Act and from Executive Orders.
* Weiner obviously read (and quotes from) my Studies in Intelligence article on the ill-fated flight of Jack Downey and Dick Fecteau in 1952, yet he misrepresented a flight to pick up documents as a mission to “rescue” agents who had radioed for help (p. 60).
* The reference to a “CIA colonel” (p. 88) is odd; the KGB had colonels, but CIA never had military ranks—though it has employed military officers.
* Weiner also errs when he says that the current director, Michael Hayden (p. 510), is the first active-duty military officer to lead the Agency since the early 1950s—that was Admiral Stansfield Turner (1977).
* Weiner says that the 1950s-era program to encourage Soviet walk-ins outside the USSR, REDCAP, was not effective and had no significant successes by 1956 (p. 124). He forgets the two Peters, Pyotr Deriabin and Pyotr Popov, both of whom were immensely important assets.
* The idea that the “Islamic warriors” CIA supported in Afghanistan would later turn on the United States (p. xv) fails to make the basic distinction between the Afghan mujahedin, whom the Agency supported, and Arabs who went to Afghanistan in the 1980s—whom CIA did not support.
* John McCone was never a deputy secretary of defense (p. 180) and did not, as DCI, begin mass firings (p. 188).

In Weiner's view the CIA never performed up to snuff. He paints a critical portrait of an agency run by Ivy League incompetents, "old Grotonians" who lied to presidents -- an agency that, more often than not, failed to foresee major world events, violated human rights, spied on Americans, plotted assassinations of foreign leaders, and put so much of its energy and resources into bungled covert operations that it failed in its core mission of collecting and analyzing information.

The success of CIA have to be taken with a grain of salt. CIA had overthrown the legally elected government of Guatemala, a covert operation long touted as one of the intelligence agency's grand "successes." It was even called Operation Success. Guatemala was made safe for United Fruit -- talk about banana republics -- but not for democracy. A series of military dictators followed the CIA coup, with death squads and repression in which perhaps 200,000 Guatemalans perished.

The question of how CIA relates to democracy is acute. Weiner states that CIA director Richard Helms opposed Richard Nixon in regards to the Watergate cover-up. Not so. In an odd footnote, Weiner says Helms "complied with the president's order to go along with the cover-up for sixteen days at most." But the author, who quotes extensively from dozens of CIA documents, curiously makes no mention of the damning memo that Helms wrote to his deputy, Vernon Walters, on June 28, 1972, about the FBI investigation of the break-in: "We still adhere to the request that they confine themselves to the personalities already arrested or directly under suspicion and that they desist from expanding this investigation into other areas which may well, eventually, run afoul of our operations." It was a bald-faced lie, exactly what the White House was demanding that Helms tell the FBI.

Of course, the most critical point is the CIA quandry. How do we proceed without clear direction of the president and what do we do to serve a democracy in undemocratic ways. John Hamre, former deputy secretary of defense and president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington states: "It is an organization that thrives through deception. How do you manage an organization like that?" Weiner notes: "How do you run a secret intelligence service in an open democracy? How do you serve the truth by lying? How do you spread democracy by deceit?" (p. 501). We are left with the paradox that is CIA.

Ideas: Phil Mullen, China, Michael Savage

Institute of Ideas
London, U.K.
Nov 1st, 2008



Economist and business manager Phil Mullan says don't blame China. Mullan says China has been keeping the US afloat, but text book economics says rich countries are supposed to support poor countries not the other way around.

Mullan says "America is the most indebted country in the world," but "presumes to be the world's economic leader," and has an economy based on "fictitious capital values."

Phil Mullan, economist and business manager, says the credit crisis isn't simply an economic recession but a reflection of a weakened economic policy.

Mullan says what makes it worse is economic authorities have been consistently behind the curve. Mullan claims "We've lived with an economic paradigm of there is no alternative to the market.

Economist and business manager Phil Mullan says economic markets in the west have been hollowed out.

Economic growth has appeared to look good, but what is the quality of this growth? Mullan asserts economic activity in the west revolves around retail, property, and public spending, while taking advantage of manufacturers in the East.

Investment banker Michael Savage says that the crisis isn't a result of banks lending more money that they have but of other economies such as China and East Asian oil producers pumping money into Western economies.

Savage says, "I'd point the finger at the Chinese working class." "The Chinese should consume more, thats the way out of the crisis."

Hanson on Contemporary History

Military historian, Victor Davis Hanson, discusses The Almost Elect, Palin, McCain, Biden, and the Culture Wars.