Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: As the pow­ers that be pre­pare to attempt to put Jeb Bush in office, in order to touch up the paint and smooth the plas­ter on The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca, Amer­i­can polit­i­cal cul­ture con­tin­ues to hit new lows, cour­tesy of the GOP and their Amen cho­rus in the media. (Nev­er lose sight of the Bush fam­i­ly’s her­itage, includ­ing the fac­ct that CIA head­quar­ters is named for Jeb and Dubya’s father. Bush fam­i­ly his­to­ry can be found in FTR #‘s 214, 244, 248, 273, 356, 435, 464, 465 as well as FTR #‘s 711 through 716.)

John McCain–himself a for­mer POW–seems intent on lead­ing the GOP’s race to the bot­tom, no mean feat under the cir­cum­stances.

Once again–or is it still–the media are react­ing pas­sive­ly to GOP charges that Oba­ma and the Democ­rats are some­how in bed with ter­ror­ists. This after Ronald Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush were revealed to be deeply involved with both Iran and Monz­er Al-Kas­sar dur­ing the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal. This after it became pub­lic record that the Bush fam­i­ly had busi­ness rela­tion­ships with the Bin Ladens for decades. This after the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002 laid bare the deep com­plic­i­ty of Dubya, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and the GOP with financ­ing Al Qae­da, Hamas and Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad. 

Not even the New York Times could over­look the bla­tant hypocrisy of McCain and com­pa­ny: “Four months ago, Sen­a­tor John McCain said he would sup­port the exchange of five hard-core Tal­iban lead­ers for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. “I would sup­port,” he told CNN. “Obvi­ous­ly I’d have to know the details, but I would sup­port ways of bring­ing him home and if exchange was one of them I think that would be some­thing I think we should seri­ous­ly con­sid­er.”

But the instant the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion actu­al­ly made that trade, Mr. McCain, as he has so often in the past, switched posi­tions for max­i­mum polit­i­cal advan­tage. “I would not have made this deal,” he said a few days ago. Sud­den­ly the pris­on­er exchange is “trou­bling” and “pos­es a great threat” to ser­vice mem­bers. Hear­ings must be held, he said, and sharp ques­tions asked. . . .”

It now comes to light that Dewey Clar­ridge, him­self a play­er in the Iran-Con­tra affair, was the source for much of the “secret intel­li­gence” that has been uti­lized by Fox News, that bea­con of jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty.

Nice.

“The Rush to Demo­nize Sgt. Bergdahl”; The New York Times [Edi­to­r­i­al[; 6/6/2014.

EXCERPT: Four months ago, Sen­a­tor John McCain said he would sup­port the exchange of five hard-core Tal­iban lead­ers for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. “I would sup­port,” he told CNN. “Obvi­ous­ly I’d have to know the details, but I would sup­port ways of bring­ing him home and if exchange was one of them I think that would be some­thing I think we should seri­ous­ly con­sid­er.”

But the instant the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion actu­al­ly made that trade, Mr. McCain, as he has so often in the past, switched posi­tions for max­i­mum polit­i­cal advan­tage. “I would not have made this deal,” he said a few days ago. Sud­den­ly the pris­on­er exchange is “trou­bling” and “pos­es a great threat” to ser­vice mem­bers. Hear­ings must be held, he said, and sharp ques­tions asked.

This hypocrisy now per­vades the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, and has even infect­ed sev­er­al fear­ful Democ­rats. When they could use Sergeant Bergdahl’s cap­tiv­i­ty as a cud­gel against the admin­is­tra­tion, they eager­ly did so, loud­ly and in great num­bers. And the moment they could use his release to make Pres­i­dent Oba­ma look weak on ter­ror­ism or sim­ply incom­pe­tent, they reversed direc­tion with­out a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion to jump aboard the new band­wag­on.

The last few days have made clear­er than ever that there is no action the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion can take — not even the release of a pos­si­bly trou­bled Amer­i­can sol­dier from cap­tiv­i­ty — that can­not be used for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es by his oppo­nents. . . . .

“Fox’s Bergdahl Jiha­di Sto­ry: ‘Secret Docs Based on a Pur­port­ed Eye­wit­ness’­Sup­plied by a Shady Right Wing Group” by Charles John­son; Lit­tle Green Foot­balls; 6/6/2014.

EXCERPT: OK, I might as well post the link to this BREAKING BOMBSHELL SCOOP from the always reli­able Fox News, but every­thing you real­ly need to know about it is right there in the first para­graph:

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point dur­ing his cap­tiv­i­ty con­vert­ed to Islam, frat­er­nized open­ly with his cap­tors and declared him­self a “mujahid,” or war­rior for Islam, accord­ing to secret doc­u­ments pre­pared on the basis of a pur­port­ed eye­wit­ness account and obtained by Fox News.

New fron­tiers in anony­mous sourc­ing! But actu­al­ly, Fox jour­nal­ist James Rosen (yes, the one Glenn Green­wald is always cham­pi­oning) does tell us some­thing about where he got these dou­ble secret pur­port­ed eye­wit­ness accounts:

These real-time dis­patch­es were gen­er­at­ed by the Eclipse Group, a shad­owy pri­vate firm of for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cers and oper­a­tives that has sub­con­tract­ed with the Defense Depart­ment and promi­nent cor­po­ra­tions to deliv­er gran­u­lar intel­li­gence on ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties and oth­er secu­ri­ty-relat­ed top­ics, often from chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments in far-flung cor­ners of the globe.

The group is run by Duane R. (“Dewey”) Clar­ridge, a for­mer senior oper­a­tions offi­cer for the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency in the 1980s best known for hav­ing been indict­ed for lying to Con­gress about his role in the tan­gled set of events that became known as the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal.

Ooohhhkay. When did it become 1980 again? First Ollie North pops up, now this.

For a bit more con­text on Clar­ridge, here’s a New York Times arti­cle on what he does, men­tion­ing that he was behind a com­plete­ly bogus report pub­lished at Bre­it­bart “News” in 2010 that Mul­lah Omar had been placed under house arrest in Pak­istan: Ex-Spy, Duane R. Clar­ridge, Runs His Own Pri­vate C.I.A.

When the mil­i­tary would not lis­ten to him, Mr. Clar­ridge found oth­er ways to ped­dle his infor­ma­tion. For instance, his pri­vate spies in April and May were report­ing that Mul­lah Muham­mad Omar, the reclu­sive cler­ic who leads the Afghan Tal­iban, had been cap­tured by Pak­istani offi­cials and placed under house arrest. Asso­ciates said Mr. Clar­ridge believed that Pakistan’s spy ser­vice was play­ing a game: keep­ing Mul­lah Omar con­fined but con­tin­u­ing to sup­port the Afghan Tal­iban.

Both mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials said the infor­ma­tion could not be cor­rob­o­rat­ed, but Mr. Clar­ridge used back chan­nels to pass it on to senior Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, includ­ing Den­nis C. Blair, then the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence.

And asso­ciates said that Mr. Clar­ridge, deter­mined to make the infor­ma­tion pub­lic, arranged for it to get to Mr. Thor, a square-jawed writer of thrillers, a blog­ger and a reg­u­lar guest on Mr. Beck’s pro­gram on Fox News.

Most of Mr. Thor’s books are yarns about the hero­ic exploits of Spe­cial Oper­a­tions troops. In inter­views, he said he was once embed­ded with a “black spe­cial ops team” and helped expose “a Tal­iban pornography/murder ring.”

On May 10, biggovernment.com — a Web site run by the con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Andrew Bre­it­bart — pub­lished an “exclu­sive” by Mr. Thor, who declined to com­ment for this arti­cle.

He declined to com­ment because the sto­ry was false, of course, and wingnuts nev­er admit things like that. . . . .