Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Russ Baker' is associated with 22 posts.

FTR#‘s 1309 and 1310 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Parts 3 and 4

These broad­casts sup­ple­ment FTR#‘s 509, 1107 and 1108.

Sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions of the lat­ter two broad­casts are recapped in these pro­grams and this descrip­tion.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–Iris Chang’s moth­er, Ying-Ying Chang, could not rule out the “dark con­spir­a­cy” that Iris was fac­ing. Ying-Ying’s point of view was shaped, in part, by Steven Clemons’ obser­va­tions.
2.–In an appen­dix titled “Requiem for Iris Chang,” Steven Clemons not­ed the alleged “sui­cide” of his asso­ciate Juzo Ita­mi, who was bat­tling the same forces as Iris Chang. “I have nev­er bought the sto­ry about Juzo Ita­mi, who was at war in his films with the Japan­ese right-wing crowd and yakuza.”
3.–Iris’ best-known work, “The Rape of Nanking”, inspired a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing Japan­ese com­pen­sa­tion for those who had been com­pelled to labor as slaves and slave pros­ti­tutes or “com­fort women.”
4.–Iris was work­ing on a book and doc­u­men­tary film project about the sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March. Some of those vet­er­ans had been used as slave labor­ers by Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing the war. The Bataan Death March vet­er­ans were among those who sued the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions that had enslaved them.
5.–The pre­sid­ing judge ruled against the vet­er­ans and for the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions. On the day of Iris’ “sui­cide” Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger was meet­ing with Japan­ese busi­ness­men to pro­mote Cal­i­for­nia-Japan­ese trade.
6.–In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber of 2001, Iris spoke at a con­fer­ence assem­bled to protest the cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of the U.S./Japanese treaty of 1951 (nego­ti­at­ed by John Fos­ter Dulles). Iris called “the San Fran­cis­co Peace Treaty a trav­es­ty of jus­tice, a betray­al of our own Amer­i­can vet­er­ans.” Recall the con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion passed in the after­math of, and because of The Rape of Nanking.
7.–After watch­ing a spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion between Iris and the Japan­ese ambas­sador to the U.S., a friend of Iris’ father advised her to hire a body­guard.
8.–As will be not­ed at greater length below, Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion and had writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles crit­i­cal of his poli­cies.
9.–Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and had tak­en stances against many fea­tures of his for­eign pol­i­cy, Bush’s inva­sion of Iraq in par­tic­u­lar. Iris had long opposed all forms of racism in this coun­try.
10.–Sadly, many of those close to Iris dis­missed her fears con­cern­ing the government’s tar­get­ing of her and the over­lap­ping ide­o­log­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty and tar­get­ing of her by the Japan­ese right-wing. The his­tor­i­cal and oper­a­tional over­lap between the two is fun­da­men­tal and is explored in some of the mate­r­i­al below.
11.–When she trav­eled to Louisville, Ken­tucky to inter­view sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March, she felt she was under phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance and harass­ment. We note below that Ken­tucky was a place where Bush con­fi­dant William Stamps Far­ish III had pow­er­ful con­nec­tions.
12.–During her book tour for The Rape of Nanking, Iris was approached by some­one she felt was recruit­ing her. He said “You will be safer to join us.” Was this and attempt at recruit­ment by the CIA?
13.–We repeat the infor­ma­tion in #11, for pur­pos­es of empha­sis.
14.–Iris was con­vinced to her dying day that she was the focal point of hos­til­i­ty from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A remake of the movie The Manchuri­an Can­di­date height­ened her anx­i­ety. Her arti­cles crit­i­cal of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and, as we have and shall see, the over­lap­ping dynam­ics of her work on The Rape of Nanking and Gold War­riors fur­ther deep­ened her per­il. She first pur­chased a firearm for pro­tec­tion and was hop­ing that John Ker­ry would defeat Bush in 2004.
15.–Despite the fact that Iris’ corpse was found in her car in the ear­ly morn­ing, her par­ents weren’t noti­fied of her death until almost mid­night. Why?
16.–Iris’ corpse was dis­cov­ered ear­ly in the morn­ing with her head against the driver’s side win­dow, her hands crossed in her lap and the gun on her left leg. While not phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble, this is alto­geth­er unlike­ly for some­one who had alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide by fir­ing a pow­er­ful hand gun into her mouth. She felt that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” while those around her thought they were “inter­nal,” i.e. “all in her head.”
17.–Same as 16.
18.–Iris’ ordeal was remark­ably sim­i­lar to what Rita Katz endured fol­low­ing her work on Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion.
19.–George W. Bush was pur­su­ing Philip­pine Gold­en Lily loot in order to increase U.S. gold reserves and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, to for­ti­fy his blind trust. That trust was over­seen by William Stamps Far­ish III, who had con­sid­er­able polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic grav­i­tas in the state of Ken­tucky.
20.–Bush’s Harken Ener­gy may well have served as a mon­ey laun­der­ing front, per­haps for some of the gold recov­ered in the Philip­pines. We note that a direc­tor of Harken, Talat Oth­man, inter­ced­ed direct­ly with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 raids. The SAAR net­work was a pri­ma­ry tar­get of those raids: we have seen how Rita Katz and her fel­low inves­ti­ga­tors came under sur­veil­lance and harass­ment for dig­ging into that case.
21.–We revis­it the deep pol­i­tics of the Bush fam­i­ly, the fam­i­ly of Dou­glas MacArthur and William and Alan Quasha.
22.–More about the deep pol­i­tics of the Philip­pines, the Bush fam­i­ly, father and son Quasha, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Alan Quasha’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Harken Ener­gy may be deriv­a­tive of the clan­des­tine acqui­si­tion of Gold­en Lily loot.
23.–The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the oper­a­tions of Gold­en Lily and their involve­ment with things Iris was inves­ti­gat­ing. The Rape of Nanking marked the for­mal begin­ning of Gold­en Lily.
24.–Colonel Tsu­ji Masanobu was heav­i­ly involved with Gold­en Lily and the Bataan Death March, the sur­vivors of which were a focal point of Iris Chang’s research at the time of her death.


“Cain, Where Is Thy Brother Abel? (Or Thy Sister Iris?)”

In “The Death of A Sales­man” Arthur Miller (speak­ing through Mrs. Loman, Willy’s wid­ow) said “Atten­tion must be paid to such a per­son! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away!” Before mov­ing on from FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, an aspect of the sus­pi­cious death of author Iris Chang bears empha­sis: The peo­ple around her, friends, hus­band and fam­i­ly, attrib­uted her “sui­cide” to psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tur­bances, despite evi­dence that she was the focal point of hos­tile action by intel­li­gence agents and fas­cists, as well as sub­ject­ed to forms of mind con­trol. Ms. Chang said her prob­lems were “external”–those around her felt they were “inter­nal.” Her friend since col­lege, writer Paula Kamen felt that Iris’ fer­til­i­ty treat­ments may have lay at the core of her prob­lems. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we com­pared Iris’ expe­ri­ences with those of Rita Katz, who helped inves­ti­gate the 9/11 mon­ey trail that led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest SAAR net­work raids. When the Agents of Dark­ness gath­er to vis­it ret­ri­bu­tion on some­one seen as a trans­gres­sor, it is, in effect, col­lab­o­ra­tive to increase the tar­get’s iso­la­tion and con­se­quent vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by see­ing them as “sick.” Rita Katz was­n’t expe­ri­enc­ing what she did because of “fer­til­i­ty treat­ments.”


FTR #1107 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 1 and FTR #1108 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 2

“The Sea­graves have uncov­ered one of the Biggest Secrets of the Twen­ti­eth Century”–Iris Chang, quot­ed on the front cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Late last year (2019), the city of San Jose (Cal­i­for­nia) opened a park ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of the late author Iris Chang.

These broad­casts update and sup­ple­ment dis­cus­sion of Iris Chang’s alleged “sui­cide,” high­light­ed in FTR #509. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the Gold­en Lily loot and the deci­sive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors stem­ming from the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in Gold War­riors, the oth­er books by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave, and Ms. Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” have enor­mous and ongo­ing sig­nif­i­cance.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert oper­a­tions but under­wrote much of the post-war glob­al econ­o­my. Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos recov­ered a tremen­dous amount of the Gold­en Lily loot, some of which was shared with  the Japan­ese, some with  the U.S. and much of it kept by Mar­cos. The Mar­cos “Black Gold” fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the death of Ms. Chang.)

In Novem­ber of 2004, author and inves­ti­ga­tor Iris Chang was found dead of an alleged­ly self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound. This pro­gram exam­ines the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death.

In her land­mark book “The Rape of Nanking,” Ms. Chang doc­u­ment­ed the Japan­ese atroc­i­ties which gave that occu­pa­tion its name. The rape of Nanking saw the begin­ning of the Japan­ese Gold­en Lily pro­gram, which yield­ed the spec­tac­u­lar loot­ed wealth and post­war eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal intrigue doc­u­ment­ed in the Sea­graves’ inci­sive text “Gold War­riors.”

The “Rape of Nanking” drew much hos­tile reac­tion from the Japan­ese right and relat­ed forces:  . . . . At the same time, tor­rents of hate mail came in, Brett [her hus­band] said. ‘Iris is sen­si­tive, but she got charged up,’ he recalled. ‘When any­body ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of what she wrote, she would respond with over­whelm­ing evi­dence to back it up. She’s very much a per­fec­tion­ist. It was hard for her not to react every sin­gle time.’ Most of the attacks came from Japan­ese ultra­na­tion­al­ists. ‘We saw car­toons where she was por­trayed as this woman with a great big mouth,‘Brett said. ‘She got used to the fact that there is a Web site called ‘Iris Chang and Her Lies.’ She would just laugh.’ But friends say Iris began to voice con­cerns for her safe­ty. She believed her phone was tapped. She described find­ing threat­en­ing notes on her car. She said she was con­front­ed by a man who said, ‘You will NOT con­tin­ue writ­ing this.’ She used a post office box, nev­er her home address, for mail. ‘There are a fair num­ber of peo­ple who don’t take kind­ly to what she wrote in The Rape of Nanking.’ Brett said, ‘so she’s always been very, very pri­vate about our fam­i­ly life.’ . . . .”

(As we have seen in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 813, 905, 969, 970, the Japan­ese “ultra­na­tion­al­ists” were put right back in pow­er by the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion forces, as the Sea­graves doc­u­ment in Gold War­riors, as well as The Yam­a­to Dynasty.)

At the time of her death, Ms. Chang was research­ing a book chron­i­cling the expe­ri­ences of sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March—the bru­tal per­se­cu­tion of Amer­i­can POW’s cap­tured in the siege of Bataan in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. Many of the sur­vivors were shipped to Japan to work as slave labor­ers for major Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions.

Many of these cor­po­ra­tions have had pro­found con­nec­tions with their Amer­i­can transna­tion­al coun­ter­parts, and were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Amer­i­can invest­ment cap­i­tal in the run-up to World War II. More impor­tant­ly, many of these cor­po­ra­tions are a prin­ci­pal ele­ment of the US/Japanese com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship today.

Law­suits in Cal­i­for­nia tar­get­ed those Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions for com­pen­sa­tion for the slave labor wrung from the Bat­taan POWs. The State Depart­ment sided with the Japan­ese and Judge Vaughn Walk­er ruled against the Bataan sur­vivors.

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, in-depth cov­er­age of the Bataan Death March would uncov­er the Black Eagle Trust and the fun­da­men­tal role in post-World War II Amer­i­can and Japan­ese pol­i­tics of the vast wealth loot­ed by Japan dur­ing World War II. That pur­loined “black gold” is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with U.S. covert oper­a­tions and is at the epi­cen­ter of post­war Japan­ese pow­er pol­i­tics and econ­o­my.

In addi­tion to the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March sur­vivors, Ms. Chang’s research cut across some deep polit­i­cal dynam­ics con­nect­ed to then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion and his busi­ness deal­ings.

George W. Bush:

1.–Was using U.S. Naval forces to secure Japan­ese war gold from the Philip­pines for his per­son­al blind trust, as well as shoring up Amer­i­can reserves.
2.–Was deeply involved with Harken Ener­gy, which may well have been a cor­po­rate front for the acqui­si­tion and recy­cling of Gold­en Lily loot and Bor­mann mon­ey.
3.–Was heir to a deep polit­i­cal her­itage involv­ing, among oth­ers, the fam­i­ly of William Stamps Far­ish, the head of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey dur­ing the time it man­i­fest­ed its car­tel agree­ments with I.G. Far­ben. Dubya ben­e­fit­ed from his father’s lega­cy of involve­ment with the milieu of Dou­glas MacArthur. George H.W. Bush’s deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions in the Philip­pines include the involve­ment of both Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Paul Man­afort and Trump and GOP trick­ster Roger Stone with Fer­di­nand Mar­cos while the dic­ta­tor was involved with the recov­ery of Gold­en Lily loot.
4. Served as a direc­tor of Harken when the head of the firm was Alan Quasha, son of William Quasha, an attor­ney for the CIA-linked Nugan Hand Bank, a focal point of AFA #25. William had been Alien Prop­er­ty cus­to­di­an in the Philip­pines under Dou­glas MacArthur, which placed him in a posi­tion to great­ly influ­ence the “Alien Prop­er­ty” placed there by the Japan­ese under Gold­en Lily.

There is evi­dence to sug­gest that Ms. Chang’s death may have result­ed from mind con­trol, admin­is­tered to neu­tral­ize her as a threat to those clan­des­tine eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty rela­tion­ships that have gov­erned US/Japanese affairs in the post­war peri­od. Ms. Chang had received threats ever since the pub­li­ca­tion of her land­mark text The Rape of Nanking.

(For more about the gov­ern­men­t’s mind con­trol pro­grams, see, among oth­er broad­casts, AFA #‘s 5–7.)

She appears to have been under sur­veil­lance, and her “sui­cide” note alleged that a sus­pi­cious intern­ment in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal may have been ini­ti­at­ed at the insti­ga­tion of the ele­ments opposed to a ruf­fling of the Japanese/US feath­ers. In addi­tion to threat­en­ing to expose a dom­i­nant fac­tor in U.S. covert oper­a­tions, a key ele­ment in the post­war Amer­i­can and glob­al econ­o­my, Ms. Chang’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Japan­ese war crimes was an irri­tant to the Japan­ese estab­lish­ment that had thrived on the gold and oth­er wealth loot­ed from occu­pied coun­tries since World War II.

Ms. Chang’s “sui­cide” note read, in part: “. . . .There are aspects of my expe­ri­ence in Louisville that I will nev­er under­stand. . . . . I can nev­er shake my belief that I was being recruit­ed, and lat­er per­se­cut­ed, by forces more pow­er­ful than I could have imag­ined. Whether it was the CIA or some oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I will nev­er know. As long as I am alive, these forces will nev­er stop hound­ing me. Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep fore­bod­ing about my safe­ty. I sensed sud­den­ly threats to my own life: an eerie feel­ing that I was being fol­lowed in the streets, the white van parked out­side my house, dam­aged mail arriv­ing at my P.O. Box. I believe my deten­tion at Nor­ton Hos­pi­tal was the gov­ern­men­t’s attempt to dis­cred­it me. . . .”

At the con­clu­sion of the pro­gram, we review Rita Katz’s expe­ri­ences after she helped break the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR net­work that became known  as Oper­a­tion Green Quest. That inves­ti­ga­tion over­lapped George W. Bush’s firm Harken Ener­gy. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty between Iris Chang’s expe­ri­ences and those  of Rita  Katz. ” . . . . White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a ter­ri­ble sen­sa­tion to know that you have no pri­va­cy. . . . and no secu­ri­ty. That strange click­ing of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crude­ly opened mail at home in the office. . . and the same man I spied in my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket, who was also on the train I took to Wash­ing­ton a week ago. . . Life can be mis­er­able when you know that someone’s always breath­ing down your neck. . . .”

In con­ver­sa­tions with friends, Ms. Chang not­ed that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” not in her head. She also felt she was being “recruit­ed” to become a “Manchuri­an Can­di­date” for the CIA–i.e. being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol. ” . . . . in her last year she became para­noid about every­thing from virus­es attack­ing her com­put­er to attempts by the gov­ern­ment to “recruit” her, a la The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The alleged role of Japan­ese war crim­i­nal Tsu­ji Masanobu in aid­ing the Mar­cos gold recov­er­ies in the Philip­pines; the role of Tsu­ji Masanobu in imple­ment­ing the Bataan Death March; William Stamps Far­ish III’s stew­ard­ship of Dubya’s blind trust, for which Philip­pines war gold was appar­ent­ly being sought; William Stamps Far­ish (II) and his stew­ard­ship of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey, when it col­lab­o­rat­ed with I.G. Far­ben; George H.W. Bush’s asso­ci­a­tion with the descen­dants of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate fig­ures who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich.


FTR #1027 Send in The Clowns: Reflections on the Kavanaugh Circus

“A friv­o­lous soci­ety can only achieve dra­mat­ic sig­nif­i­cance through what its friv­o­li­ty destroys.”–Edith Whar­ton.

The large­ly inept ques­tion­ing of Brett Kavanaugh about his youth­ful, drunk­en sex­u­al behav­ior eclipsed Kavanaugh­’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in far more seri­ous, and alto­geth­er lethal activ­i­ties dur­ing his piv­otal role with the Bush admin­is­tra­tions, pri­mar­i­ly that of George W. Bush: ” . . . . Kavanaugh, now Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­nee to the Supreme Court, had an ordi­nary-sound­ing title: staff sec­re­tary. But he wield­ed extra­or­di­nary influ­ence as the advis­er respon­si­ble for screen­ing, review­ing and edit­ing doc­u­ments deliv­ered to Bush, inter­views and doc­u­ments show. . . . But no jus­tice in recent mem­o­ry has worked as intent­ly as Kavanaugh at the high­est lev­els of the nation’s polit­i­cal machin­ery, schol­ars said. . . . Doc­u­ments and inter­views show that while Kavanaugh was not a pol­i­cy­mak­er, he was direct­ly involved in help­ing the White House man­age a wide array of sen­si­tive mat­ters, includ­ing the war on ter­ror­ism . . . .  ‘It put Kavanaugh at the cen­ter of every polit­i­cal and pol­i­cy deci­sion at the Bush White House,’ said Peter Irons, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego and author of sev­er­al books about the Supreme Court. ‘He is exact­ly the kind of per­son that the legal con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment wants on the court.’ . . . . Kavanaugh was respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the process that helped shape the president’s think­ing and fueled the Bush admin­is­tra­tion agen­da. ‘He was every­where,’ said Michael Ger­son, a speech­writer in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and now a syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist at The Post. . . . ‘Vir­tu­al­ly every piece of paper had to pass through the staff secretary’s hands,’ Rove said. . . .”

Kavanaugh­’s wife also had deep ties to the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. ” . . . . Ash­ley Estes Kavanaugh worked as media rela­tions coor­di­na­tor for the George W. Bush Pres­i­den­tial Cen­ter from 2009–2010; worked as Direc­tor of Spe­cial Projects for the George W. Bush pres­i­den­tial Foun­da­tion from 2005 to 2009; was Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s per­son­al sec­re­tary from 2001 to 2005; was an assis­tant in the White House from 2001 to 2005; and worked on the Bush-Cheney 2000 cam­paign from 1996 to 2000. Her time with Bush dates to his work in Texas as gov­er­nor there. She was assis­tant to Gov­er­nor George W. Bush from 1996 to 1999. She attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin from 1994 to 1997. . . .”

In the con­text of Kavanaugh­’s Sen­ate ques­tion­ing, Mr. Emory made a num­ber of points, includ­ing the fol­low­ing:

1.–Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gor­such attend­ed the same high school. Where­as there was a huge com­mo­tion over Brett Kavanaugh­’s drunk­en sex­u­al behav­ior (as there should have been), there was no atten­tion what­so­ev­er paid to Neil Gor­such’s boast­ing of par­tic­i­pa­tion in a social group of reac­tionary stu­dents who called them­selves “The Fas­cism For­ev­er Club.” (That such a social group exist­ed was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by the edi­tors of Gor­such’s high school year­book.)  This was cov­ered in FTR #945. A screen cap­ture of the high school year­book edi­tors’ mus­ings  on Gor­such’s Fas­cism For­ev­er social cir­cle is includ­ed in the writ­ten descrip­tion for the pro­gram.
2.–Absent on the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee that queried and vet­ted Judge Kavanaugh was Al Franken, who was pro­fes­sion­al­ly destroyed in one of the most hys­ter­i­cal­ly fascis­tic, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic events in recent mem­o­ry. (We dis­cussed this in FTR #998, and sup­ple­ment­ed it in FTR #999.) A lynch mob alto­geth­er rem­i­nis­cent of the young women fea­tured in Arthur Miller’s dra­mat­ic para­ble The Cru­cible, forced Franken’s res­ig­na­tion from the Sen­ate large­ly on the ado­les­cent, obvi­ous­ly joc­u­lar and libidi­nous events occur­ring dur­ing a USO tour. An obvi­ous gag pho­to of Franken pre­tend­ing to grope the breasts of an osten­si­bly sleep­ing LeAnn Twee­den (who was not asleep and was wear­ing a flak jack­et) fed the flames of a grotesque polit­i­cal immo­la­tion. On the same USO tour, Twee­den was pho­tographed grab­bing the butt of a male per­former, onstage.
3.–Franken said he wel­comed an inves­ti­ga­tion and vet­ting of the charges against him. There was NONE! The charges of right-wing flak Twee­den (a Birther accord­ing to her friend actor Tom Arnold) were then aug­ment­ed by an alle­ga­tion by a Trump backer that Franken groped her while she was hav­ing a pic­ture tak­en with him at the Min­neso­ta State Fair. Her Trump-back­ing hus­band and her father were present, and the pic­ture was tak­en by her fam­i­ly mem­bers.
The appar­ent assault of Chris­tine Blasey (Ford) by a drunk­en Kavanaugh, although rep­re­hen­si­ble, pales by com­par­i­son with the enor­mous destruc­tion of life that took place dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of George W. Bush, includ­ing:

1.–The Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks.
2.–The ongo­ing war in Afghanistan that stemmed from those attacks.
3.–The war in Iraq, which also stemmed from the 9/11 attacks.
4.–The blood­bath in the war against ISIS, also a result of the inva­sion of Iraq.
5.–The enor­mous destruc­tion of life stem­ming from the finan­cial col­lapse over­seen by Dubya’s admin­is­tra­tion. In FTR #412, record­ed in June of 2003, Mr. Emory fore­cast the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of 2008, not­ing that it was delib­er­ate­ly “engi­neered,” in order to serve as a pre­text for slash­ing fund­ing for domes­tic social wel­fare pro­grams.

The pro­gram fea­tures an excerpt from FTR #715. Not­ing that Kavanaugh­’s resume stretch­es back to the Pres­i­den­cy of George H.W. Bush and gath­ers momen­tum with the Pres­i­den­cy of his son (for whom Kavanaugh­’s wife also worked), it appears pru­dent to give some con­sid­er­a­tion of the trans-gen­er­a­tional nature of the Bush fam­i­ly and crim­i­nal activ­i­ties that are part and par­cel to that fam­i­ly’s involve­ment with fas­cism.

Among the key items of dis­cus­sion is the opaque nature of Dubya’s Harken Ener­gy and the large, mys­te­ri­ous amounts of mon­ey flow­ing into, and out of, the firm. It may well have been a mon­ey laun­der­ing vehi­cle, with the pres­ence of Alan Quasha on the board of direc­tors being sug­ges­tive.

A native of the Philip­pines, Quasha is the son of William Quasha, head of the Philip­pine branch of the Nugan Hand Bank. Part of “Team Mar­cos,” William was inevitably in close prox­im­i­ty to, if not involved with, the recy­cling of the enor­mous gold deposits stashed in the Philip­pines by the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II. In the dis­cus­sion with Russ Bak­er, he sug­gests that Harken may (among oth­er things) have been used to laun­der some of the Gold­en Lily loot from Gen­er­al Yamashita’s trea­sure.

As not­ed in FTR #‘s 356 and 1006, among oth­er pro­grams, it was Talat Othman–a for­mer direc­tor of Harken Ener­gy, a polit­i­cal advis­er and per­son­al friend of both Georges Bush and the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute who inter­ced­ed with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­get­ed by the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. O’Neill was fired months lat­er and then FBI Direc­tor Robert Mueller–that most spe­cial of prosecutors–helped derail the Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion.

As high­light­ed in FTR #569, Rita Katz and John Lof­tus, who ini­ti­at­ed the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion and did much of the heavy lift­ing were sur­veilled by FBI and/or CIA. Robert Mueller’s FBI cov­ered up Green Quest.

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of a hor­ror show that emerged in the after­math of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Pol­ly Klass (whose slay­ing led to the pas­sage of California’s “Three Strikes” law.) One can only imag­ine the extent to which con­nec­tions like this bear on the Sau­di spon­sor­ship of ter­ror­ism and the Unit­ed States’ reluc­tance (or inabil­i­ty) to do any­thing about it. What might sur­face if the U.S. were to tru­ly crack down on the Saud­is?

Although what was appar­ent­ly done to Dr. Ford is rep­re­hen­si­ble, it pales by com­par­i­son to oth­er hor­rors vis­it­ed on young women.

Mr. Emory notes that noth­ing has been done about this and noth­ing will be done–by ANY of the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions who weighed in on the Kavanaugh cir­cus.

For to inves­ti­gate these charges would be to cut across the U.S./Saudi pow­er axis. THAT is absolute­ly invi­o­lable, as no one knows bet­ter than Brett Kavanaugh!

” . . . . Jill saw broth­els [in Sau­di Ara­bia] where chil­dren were kept. The broth­els were plain look­ing build­ings in the cen­ter of the town, with yel­low doors. Men con­stant­ly came in and out, most­ly Arabs from the oil fields, but men from oth­er busi­ness­es as well. Jill peeked past the yel­low door into one of the broth­els and saw a room filled with young girls, white-skinned, about twelve-years old. She learned lat­er that many of them were Amer­i­can, abduct­ed and shipped from the Unit­ed States. The lit­tle girls were wear­ing small, skimpy, see-through skirts. A cus­tomer would pick one of them, and take whomev­er he want­ed upstairs.

Lat­er, Jill saw some of the lit­tle girls get­ting air in the back of the broth­el, She could tell they were drugged by the way they walked. Although she nev­er learned who ran the broth­els, she found out that in two or three years the lit­tle girls were turned into the streets where they were left to die. I asked Jill if she ever report­ed what she saw, lit­tle girls who were drugged and forced into sex­u­al slav­ery. She admit­ted that she had – to some­one in the diplo­mat­ic corps. He said he would see what could be done about the abduct­ed Amer­i­can girls – but to her knowl­edge, noth­ing was ever done. . . .”


FTR #821 Continuity of Government, the JFK Assassination and Covert Operations

Ana­lyz­ing the role of net­works orig­i­nal­ly set up to per­pet­u­ate and sus­tain gov­ern­ment in the event of nuclear war, this pro­gram high­lights the role of Con­ti­nu­ity of Gov­ern­ment (COG) ele­ments in a num­ber of domes­tic and/or ille­gal covert oper­a­tions. With its own com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, the COG has proved an effec­tive vehi­cle for side­step­ping nor­mal oper­a­tional chan­nels in order to real­ize nefar­i­ous aims. The COG-relat­ed net­works and indi­vid­u­als have fig­ured promi­nent­ly in aspects of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Water­gate, the Octo­ber Sur­prise, the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal and events pur­suant to the 9/11 attacks. Dick Cheney and Don­ald Rums­feld are two of the promi­nent fig­ures in the COG net­works and have been present in the Nixon/Ford, Reagan/Bush, Clin­ton and George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions.


FTR #751 Interview with Russ Baker

In this vis­it with Russ Bak­er, we intro­duced some new top­ics and updat­ed some oth­er inquiries. Not­ed as a ped­dler of the unten­able “Lee Har­vey Oswald as lone nut assas­sin” hypoth­e­sis, Ger­ald Pos­ner has emerged as a PR func­tionary for the broth­er of Afghan pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai. We not­ed that Bill O’Reil­ly did some good work on the JFK assas­si­na­tion before con­form­ing to the right-wing ide­o­log­i­cal dic­tates of Fox News. Much of the pro­gram cen­tered on dis­cus­sion of the re-open­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tion into Robert Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. Grant Coop­er’s behav­ior as Sirhan Sirhan’s first defense attor­ney was stun­ning.


He’s BAAAAACK! Gerald Posner’s Latest Gig

Like Count Drac­u­la, Ger­ald Pos­ner keeps com­ing back. Hav­ing led the media charges to dis­cred­it War­ren Com­mis­sion crit­ics, crit­ics of the offi­cial ver­sion of Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion and Ladis­las Farago’s research on Mar­tin Bor­man­n’s pres­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca, Pos­ner is now defend­ing Afghan pres­i­dent Karza­i’s broth­er against cred­i­ble charges that he has been on the CIA’s pay­roll, while par­tic­i­pa­tring sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the Afghan hero­in trade.


‘Roid Rage: The Bosches, the Bushes and Sports Doping

The Bush fam­i­ly has been very, very close to the anti-Cas­tro Cuban exile com­mu­ni­ty for decades, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly the late Orlan­do Bosch, head of the CORU orga­ni­za­tion. Now, it emerges that a rel­a­tive of Orlan­do Bosch heads the Bio­gen­e­sis firm, under inves­ti­ga­tion for alleged­ly pro­vid­ing per­for­mance-enhanc­ing drugs to pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes.


Updating JFK, RFK Assassination Investigations

Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions con­tin­ue to loom large over our polit­i­cal land­scape. A recent New York Times obit­u­ary touched on Daniel Bur­ros, the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty mem­ber whose name, address and phone num­ber were in sup­posed “left­ist” Lee Har­vey Oswald’s address book. “Fam­i­ly of Secrets” author Russ Bak­er informs us that Sirhan Sirhan’s first attor­ney Grant Coop­er was under indict­ment with pos­si­ble JFK co-con­spir­a­tor John Rosel­li when he rep­re­sent­ed RFK’s accused assas­sin.


RFK Jr: JFK Assassination Was a Conspiracy

We’ve pro­duced much pro­gram­ming and post­ing over the years on the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, RFK and Mar­tin Luther King. All of these killings are con­nect­ed and, togeth­er, com­prise the sys­tem­at­ic elim­i­na­tion of viable pro­gres­sive lead­er­ship in this coun­try. Stat­ing the obvi­ous, Robert F. Kennedy’s kids RFK jr. and Rory have stat­ed that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was not assas­si­nat­ed by a lone nut. We’ve not seen any state­ments by Kennedy fam­i­ly mem­bers about the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy. That case is head­ing back into court. The inves­ti­ga­tion of Robert Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion yields evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing in the direc­tion of his broth­er’s killing, Dr. King’s assas­si­na­tion and the shoot­ing of George Wal­lace.