Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Afghanistan' is associated with 25 posts.

Failure

In the first two pro­grams after the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Emory pre­sent­ed excerpts from his pro­grams which direct­ly fore­shad­owed the attacks. That event and those that fol­lowed embody the fail­ure of Amer­i­can soci­ety. Serge Schme­mann wrote the lead arti­cle for “The New York Times” the day after the attack. He also craft­ed a “hit-piece” review of Christo­pher Simp­son’s “Blow­back.” That is not sur­pris­ing, giv­en Schme­man­n’s back­ground and some of the “Gray Lady’s” hir­ing prac­tices. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


Reflections on the Collapse in Afghanistan

The Afghan col­lapse was not a sur­prise. Emblem­at­ic of the fail­ure of the mil­i­tary effort was the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s evac­u­a­tion of Al-Qae­da and Tal­iban com­bat­ants so they could escape U.S. mil­i­tary encir­clement. In the last pro­gram Mr. Emory did in 1999, he exam­ined George W. Bush’s polit­i­cal CV and her­itage, in order to gain per­spec­tive on what a Bush pres­i­den­cy might be like. Side 1 of the pro­gram began with dis­cus­sion of the Bin Laden fam­i­ly’s financ­ing of George W. Bush’s first ener­gy com­pa­ny. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


FTR#1182 Terror, the Afghanistan War and The American Deep State, Part 2

The pro­gram begins with mate­r­i­al over­lapped from our pre­vi­ous pro­gram, delin­eat­ing U.S. gov­ern­ment pro­tec­tion of Jihadist ele­ments, in order that they could be used as proxy war­riors in ongo­ing covert oper­a­tions.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The FBI’s lim­it­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tion of the assas­si­na­tion of extrem­ist Rab­bi Meir Kahane; the fact that the lim­it­ing of that inves­ti­ga­tion per­mit­ted Ali Mohamed, Mah­moud Abouli­hama and Mohammed Salameh to par­tic­i­pate in future ter­ror­ist attacks, includ­ing the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing and the 1998 Nairo­bi Embassy bomb­ing; the FBI’s blam­ing of the atten­u­a­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Kahane mur­der on New York DA Robert Mor­gen­thau; Morgenthau’s pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tion of the CIA-linked BCCI; the FBI’s shield­ing of Army Spe­cial Forces oper­a­tive Ali Mohamed in the1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing; the FBI’s shield­ing of Mohamed in the 1995 “Land­marks Case”—the plot to blow up the Unit­ed Nations, the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge and both the Lin­coln and Hol­land Tun­nels; the prob­a­bil­i­ty that Mohamed’s util­i­ty as a train­er of muja­hadeen for covert oper­a­tions in Afghanistan, Bosnia and parts of the for­mer Sovi­et Union was the cause of his invi­o­la­bil­i­ty.

The next sec­tion of the pro­gram presents infor­ma­tion about the gen­e­sis of Ali Mohamed as a U.S. agent and train­er of muja­hadeen.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Zbig­niew Brzezinski’s cre­ation of the muja­hadeen train­ing and recruit­ment orga­ni­za­tion at the out­set of the Afghan war against the Sovi­et Union; the train­ing of Egypt­ian pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat’s elite per­son­al guard (of which Ali Mohamed was a mem­ber) by J.J. Capuc­ci and Asso­ciates, head­ed by “ex” CIA-agent Edwin Wil­son and Theodore Shack­ley; the hand­ing over of the train­ing of Sadat’s guard to the CIA fol­low­ing Brzezinski’s vis­it to Egypt in 1980; Ali Mohamed’s train­ing at Fort Bragg in the U.S. by Spe­cial Forces; Mohamed’s net­work­ing with and alle­giance to both Sheikh Rah­man (involved with the Al-Kifah Cen­ter muja­hadeen effort, the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing and the Land­marks case) and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man and even­tu­al suc­ces­sor.

Next, we dol­ly back and exam­ine the con­tin­ued domes­tic and for­eign oper­a­tions of the Al-Kifah Cen­ter milieu, includ­ing oper­a­tions involv­ing drug traf­fick­ing and oth­er crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, sup­port for the Al-Kifah Cen­ter by Sau­di Ara­bia and the Cen­ter’s involve­ment in covert oper­a­tions in Xin­jiang Province in Chi­na, Chech­nya in Rus­sia, Uzbek­istan and oth­er for­mer parts of the Sovi­et Union and the Balka­ns.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The tran­si­tion of Ali Mohamed’s muja­hadeen-train­ing pro­gram from send­ing fight­ers to Afghanistan to send­ing fight­ers to Bosnia; the Sau­di government’s par­tial financ­ing of Sheikh Rahman’s defense fund (Rah­man was indict­ed in the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing); Al-Kifah trainees’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in covert oper­a­tions in Chech­nya, Tajik­istan and fight­ing along­side the Uighurs in Xin­jiang province; Al-Qaeda’s alliance with the Islam­ic Move­ment of Uzbek­istan; the Al-Qaeda/IMU use of hero­in traf­fick­ing to finance com­bat and ter­ror oper­a­tions; the 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report’s dis­missal of the ver­i­fi­able fact that Al-Qae­da helped finance its oper­a­tions with the Afghan drug trade; the Al-Kifah Cen­ter milieu’s involve­ment in the drug trade, as well as arson-for-hire and coun­ter­feit­ing; Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menep­ta, a Mus­lim sus­pect in both the 9/11 case and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing; Menepta’s alleged involve­ment in orga­nized crime and drug traf­fick­ing; the Al-Kifah Center’s joint oper­a­tions with the Saud­is; Sphinx Trading’s link to the Al-Kifah oper­a­tion; the pro­tec­tion of Sphinx Trad­ing even after 9/11.

Flesh­ing out the jihadist milieu, we note bin Laden rel­a­tives and their involve­ment in Al-Qae­da fronts and the cov­er-up of their activ­i­ties by the Deep State milieu.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth and its links to muja­hadeen and ter­ror­ism; Abdul­lah bin Laden’s lead­er­ship of the WAMY; Abdul­lah bin Laden’s evac­u­a­tion by jet along with oth­er Saud­is and mem­bers of the bin Laden fam­i­ly after 9/11; the Gold­en Chain let­ter dis­cov­ered in the IIRO office in Bosnia, con­tain­ing the names of key Al-Qae­da financiers; the pres­ence in the “Gold­en Chain’ of Khalid bin Mah­fouz, the top banker in Sau­di Ara­bia; the IIRO’s found­ing by Jamal Kali­fa, Osama bin Laden’s nephew.

The last part of our pro­gram reviews two ele­ments pre­sent­ed in FTR#1181.

In the tri­al of Ramzi Yousef, a lay-out of the ter­ror sce­nario that became the 9/11 attacks was on Youse­f’s lap­top, yet was nev­er brought to light.

Like­wise, the name of Khalid Shaikh Mohamed–dubbed the mas­ter­mind of the 9/11 and cur­rent­ly the focal point of ongo­ing legal proceedings–was all but omit­ted from Youse­f’s tri­al, despite his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the abort­ed “Oper­a­tion Bojin­ka” plot to blow up a num­ber of air­lin­ers over the Pacif­ic.

In our series, we note the exclu­sion of key par­tic­i­pants in the mur­der of extrem­ist Rab­bi Meir Kahane, which per­mit­ted co-con­spir­a­tors to par­tic­i­pate in the first World Trade Cen­ter attack in 1993 and Nairo­bi U.S. Embassy bomb­ings in 1998.

Among the prob­a­ble motives for these key, dead­ly omis­sions is the use of these Al-Qae­da, Mus­lim-Broth­er­hood derived ter­ror­ist ele­ments as proxy war­riors in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chech­nya and Uzbek­istan.

We con­clude by review­ing how cyn­i­cal the Deep State can be, act­ing with a com­plete dis­re­gard for Amer­i­can com­bat mil­i­tary per­son­nel.


FTR #1181 Terror, The Afghanistan War and the American Deep State, Part 1

With Pres­i­dent Biden hav­ing announced the with­draw­al of U.S. com­bat forces from Afghanistan, we con­tem­plate the events that led to that involve­ment, espe­cial­ly ter­ror­ist inci­dents cul­mi­nat­ing in the 9/11 attack.

We rely on research done by the bril­liant, ven­er­a­ble Peter Dale Scott.

We begin by not­ing how cyn­i­cal the Deep State can be, act­ing with a com­plete dis­re­gard for Amer­i­can com­bat mil­i­tary per­son­nel: ” . . . . Just how sub­or­di­nat­ed offi­cial pol­i­cy could become to deep state needs was demon­strat­ed in Novem­ber 2001, when Cheney, at the request of [Pakistan’s head of state] Mushar­raf and the ISI [Pakistan’s pri­ma­ry intel­li­gence ser­vice], approved secret air­lifts to fer­ry sur­round­ed Pak­istani and high-lev­el al-Qae­da fight­ers out of Afghanistan, to safe­ty in Pak­istan. . . .”

In the tri­al of Ramzi Yousef, a lay-out of the ter­ror sce­nario that became the 9/11 attacks was on Youse­f’s lap­top, yet was nev­er brought to light.

Like­wise, the name of Khalid Shaikh Mohamed–dubbed the mas­ter­mind of the 9/11 and cur­rent­ly the focal point of ongo­ing legal proceedings–was all but omit­ted from Youse­f’s tri­al, despite his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the abort­ed “Oper­a­tion Bojin­ka” plot to blow up a num­ber of air­lin­ers over the Pacif­ic.

In our series, we note the exclu­sion of key par­tic­i­pants in the mur­der of extrem­ist Rab­bi Meir Kahane, which per­mit­ted co-con­spir­a­tors to par­tic­i­pate in the first World Trade Cen­ter attack in 1993 and Nairo­bi U.S. Embassy bomb­ings in 1998.

Among the prob­a­ble motives for these key, dead­ly omis­sions is the use of these Al-Qae­da, Mus­lim-Broth­er­hood derived ter­ror­ist ele­ments as proxy war­riors in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chech­nya and Uzbek­istan.

“. . . . In Triple Cross, Peter Lance, who does not men­tion KSM’s escape from Qatar, focus­es instead on the way that, lat­er in the same year, U.S. fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors kept his name out of the tri­al of Ramzi Yousef in con­nec­tion with the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing: “Assis­tant U.S. Attor­neys Mike Gar­cia and Diet­rich Snell pre­sent­ed a riv­et­ing, evi­dence-dri­ven case . . . and char­ac­ter­ized the mate­r­i­al retrieved from Ramzi’s Toshi­ba lap­top as ‘the most dev­as­tat­ing evi­dence of all. . . .’ . . . While Yousef’s lap­top . . . con­tained the full details of the plot lat­er exe­cut­ed on 9/11, not a word of that sce­nario was men­tioned dur­ing tri­al . . . . Most sur­pris­ing, dur­ing the entire sum­mer-long tri­al, the name of the fourth Bojin­ka con­spir­a­tor, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed . . . . was men­tioned by name only once, in ref­er­ence to a let­ter found in [Yousef’s apart­ment] . . . .”

Illus­trat­ing the machi­na­tions of what Pro­fes­sor Scott terms “The Amer­i­can Deep State” are the inter­ac­tions between Big Oil, Sul­li­van & Cromwell, the Dulles broth­ers and the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion to desta­bi­lize the Mossad­eq regime in Iran.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: A let­ter writ­ten by Sul­li­van & Cromwell attor­ney John Fos­ter Dulles in the 1930s to a British col­league, cel­e­brat­ing car­tels and the tri­umph of inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­men in over­com­ing bar­ri­ers to geopo­lit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing erect­ed by “nation­al­ist” politi­cians; col­lab­o­ra­tion by the “Sev­en Sis­ters” of Big Oil (Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey [now Exxon], Stan­dard Oil of New York [now Mobil], Stan­dard Oil of Cal­i­for­nia [now Chevron], Gulf Oil, Tex­a­co, Roy­al Dutch Shell and Anglo-Iran­ian [now BP] in con­trol­ling the inter­na­tion­al oil busi­ness; a coop­er­a­tive effort by the Sev­en Sis­ters to suc­cess­ful­ly reduce Iran­ian oil pro­duc­tion from 241 mil­lion bar­rels a year in 1950 to 10.6 mil­lion bar­rels a year in 1952 in order to desta­bi­lize pre­mier Mossad­eq; Pro­fes­sor Scott’s point that the CIA’s over­throw of Mossad­eq in 1953 rep­re­sent­ed a “Deep State” real­iza­tion of the goal of the oil car­tel; the role of ARAMCO in the stran­gling of Iran­ian oil pro­duc­tion, off­set­ting the drop in Iran­ian pro­duc­tion by increas­ing its own; change of a Jus­tice Depart­ment suit against Big Oil from a crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ing to a civ­il suit pros­e­cut­ed by the Depart­ment of State; the pre­dictable res­o­lu­tion of that suit in favor of big oil; the fact that the oil car­tel was rep­re­sent­ed in that suit by Sul­li­van & Cromwell and John Fos­ter Dulles was in charge of the State Depart­ment; the fact that John Fos­ter Dulles’ broth­er and Sul­li­van & Cromwell asso­ciate Allen was in charge of the CIA at the same time and over­saw the removal of Mossad­eq; Allen Dulles’ suc­cess­ful gam­bit to side­step Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er by secur­ing British Prime Min­is­ter Harold MacMil­lan as an exec­u­tive author­i­ty to dis­patch U‑2 flights..

The pro­gram con­cludes with delin­eation of U.S. gov­ern­ment pro­tec­tion of Jihadist ele­ments so that they could be used as proxy war­riors in ongo­ing covert oper­a­tions.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: U.S. gov­ern­ment pro­tec­tion for Ali Mohamed, an al-Qae­da oper­a­tive who dou­bled as a Spe­cial Forces oper­a­tive train­ing muja­hadeen for com­bat oper­a­tions in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chech­nya among oth­er places; FBI agent John Zent’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the RCMP in Van­cou­ver, lead­ing to Mohamed’s release from cus­tody; Mohamed’s train­ing of muja­hadeen at the Al-Kifah Refugee Cen­ter in Brook­lyn; the assas­si­na­tion of extrem­ist Rab­bi Meir Kahane by trainees of Mohamed’s includ­ing El Sayyid Nosair; the FBI and New York Police Department’s cov­er-up of the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Kahane killing of Nosair/Mohamed asso­ciates; the even­tu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion of some of those asso­ciates in the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing; the FBI’s sab­o­tage of New York Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Robert Morgenthau’s attempts to widen the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Al-Kifah milieu; the cen­tral role of Ali Mohamed’s Al-Kifah trainees in the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing.


Afghan Overture

In a series of pro­grams we are record­ing, we high­light the vital research of the bril­liant, ven­er­a­ble Berke­ley researcher Peter Dale Scott, who has chron­i­cled the shock­ing behav­ior of ele­ments of our gov­ern­ment, cov­er­ing up the involve­ment in ter­ror­ist inci­dents of indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that, if prop­er­ly pur­sued, could have pre­vent­ed the 9/11 attacks–the event that pre­cip­i­tat­ed our entry into that con­flict. “. . . . In Triple Cross, Peter Lance, who does not men­tion [9/11 mas­ter­mind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s] escape from Qatar, focus­es instead on the way that, lat­er in the same year, U.S. fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors kept his name out of the tri­al of Ramzi Yousef in con­nec­tion with the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing: ‘Assis­tant U.S. Attor­neys Mike Gar­cia and Diet­rich Snell pre­sent­ed a riv­et­ing, evi­dence-dri­ven case . . . and char­ac­ter­ized the mate­r­i­al retrieved from Ramzi’s Toshi­ba lap­top as ‘the most dev­as­tat­ing evi­dence of all. . . .’ . . . While Yousef’s lap­top . . . con­tained the full details of the plot lat­er exe­cut­ed on 9/11, not a word of that sce­nario was men­tioned dur­ing tri­al . . . . Most sur­pris­ing, dur­ing the entire sum­mer-long tri­al, the name of the fourth Bojin­ka con­spir­a­tor, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed . . . . was men­tioned by name only once, in ref­er­ence to a let­ter found in [Yousef’s apart­ment] . . . .”


Representative, Crystallized Moment in the Afghan War

We have cov­ered the deba­cle of U.S. pol­i­cy in Afghanistan in FTR#‘s 678, 680, 683 and 685. High-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers expressed their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with Afghan pol­i­cy in a “Wash­ing­ton Post” sto­ry. As Biden piv­ots from “For­ev­er War,” as epit­o­mized by the war in Afghanistan, to what may very well be World War III, in sup­port of the OUN/B‑dominated nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus of con­tem­po­rary Ukraine, it is worth con­tem­plat­ing the stun­ning lack of regard the “Deep State” in this coun­try has for its men and women in uni­form. ” . . . . . . . . Just how sub­or­di­nat­ed offi­cial pol­i­cy could become to deep state needs was demon­strat­ed in Novem­ber 2001, when Cheney, at the request of [Pakistan’s head of state] Mushar­raf and the ISI [Pakistan’s pri­ma­ry intel­li­gence ser­vice], approved secret air­lifts to fer­ry sur­round­ed Pak­istani and high-lev­el al-Qae­da fight­ers out of Afghanistan, to safe­ty in Pak­istan. . . .”


Failure in Afghanistan

A rel­a­tive­ly rare piece of qual­i­ty, inci­sive analy­sis from the Main­stream Media, Craig Whit­lock­’s “At War With The Truth” presents an hon­est, albeit atten­u­at­ed, analy­sis of the fail­ure of the war in Afghanistan. In addi­tion, this paper presents the back­ground to, and foun­da­tion of, the lat­est iter­a­tion of the Rus­sia-gate psy-op: “Boun­ty­gate.” A thought­ful piece by Scott Rit­ter in “Con­sor­tium News” pars­es the deep pol­i­tics of “Boun­ty­gate” and the real­i­ty of Russ­ian pol­i­cy vis a vis the Tal­iban and Cen­tral Asia.


FTR #1026 The So-Called “Arab Spring” Revisited, Part 2

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis from our pre­vi­ous pro­gram, this broad­cast delves fur­ther into the net­work­ing between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Al-Qae­da. Against the back­ground of the occu­pa­tion of Idlib Province in Syr­ia by Al-Qae­da, we high­light the appar­ent role of Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the events sur­round­ing the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beng­hazi, Libya.

The over­throw of Khadafy in Libya was an out­growth of the so-called Arab Spring, as was the pre­cip­i­ta­tion of the civ­il war in Syr­ia. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the GOP-led inves­ti­ga­tions of the Beng­hazi attack led direct­ly to both the inves­ti­ga­tion of Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mails and the deci­sive­ly sig­nif­i­cant FBI tam­per­ing with the 2016 elec­tion, as well as the alleged “hack” of Hillary’s e‑mails!

An Egypt­ian news­pa­per pub­lished what were said to be inter­cept­ed record­ings of Mor­si com­mu­ni­cat­ing con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with Muham­mad al-Zawahiri, the the broth­er of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da. Much of this checks out with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record.

Note the net­work­ing of GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham with Khairat El-Shater of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood while he was in prison, as well as the alleged links between the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood and the cells involved in attack­ing the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

What we may well be look­ing at is a gam­bit along the lines of what has become known as the Octo­ber Surprise–collusion between the Iran­ian Islamists and George H.W. Bush/CIA/GOP to (among oth­er things) desta­bi­lize the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and 1980 re-elec­tion cam­paign.

In addi­tion, we won­der about a deal hav­ing been struck to have Al-Qae­da fight against Bashar Assad in Syr­ia, while avoid­ing attacks inside the U.S.?

Of pri­ma­ry focus in the mate­r­i­al below is Khairat El-Shater (translit­er­at­ed spellings of his name dif­fer.) El-Shater:

1.–Was the num­ber two man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, though not for­mer­ly a mem­ber of Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment.
2.–Networked with U.S. Ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son and GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat El-Shater (alter­na­tive­ly translit­er­at­ed with two “t’s” and/or an “al”), short­ly after Mor­si was deposed. ” . . . . It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat El-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”
3.–Was deeply involved in mobi­liz­ing Al-Qae­da on behalf of Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood. . . . ”
4.–Was the appar­ent source of a $50 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion by the Broth­er­hood to Al Qae­da: ” . . . . That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt. . . .”
5.–Had the pass­port of the alleged leader of the Beng­hazi attack in his home when he was arrest­ed: ” . . . . Most recent­ly, on July 29, 2013, Ahmed Musa, a promi­nent Egypt­ian polit­i­cal insid­er and ana­lyst made sev­er­al asser­tions on Tahrir TV that fur­ther con­nect­ed the dots. . . . Musa insist­ed that he had absolute knowl­edge that the mur­der­er of Chris Stevens was Mohsin al-‘Azzazi, whose pass­port was found in Broth­er­hood leader Khairat El-Shater’s home, when the lat­ter was arrest­ed. . . .”
6.–Epitomized the GOP-beloved, cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic ide­ol­o­gy and lifestyle: ” . . . . Arguably the most pow­er­ful man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is Khairat El-Shater, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire tycoon whose finan­cial inter­ests extend into elec­tron­ics, man­u­fac­tur­ing and retail. A strong advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion, Al-Shater is one of a cadre of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood busi­ness­men who helped finance the Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Party’s impres­sive elec­toral vic­to­ry this win­ter and is now craft­ing the FJP’s eco­nom­ic agen­da. . . . . . . . the Brotherhood’s ide­ol­o­gy actu­al­ly has more in com­mon with America’s Repub­li­can Par­ty than with al-Qai­da. Few Amer­i­cans know it but the Broth­er­hood is a free-mar­ket par­ty led by wealthy busi­ness­men whose eco­nom­ic agen­da embraces pri­va­ti­za­tion and for­eign invest­ment while spurn­ing labor unions and the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Like the Repub­li­cans in the U.S., the finan­cial inter­ests of the party’s lead­er­ship of busi­ness­men and pro­fes­sion­als diverge sharply from those of its poor, social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers. . . .”

This broad­cast begins with con­clu­sion of read­ing of a key arti­cle that was fea­tured in our last pro­gram.

Key points of analy­sis in dis­cus­sion of the Morsi/Zawahiri/Brotherhood con­nec­tion include:

1.–Muhamed Zawahir­i’s promise to bol­ster Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment with mil­i­tary sup­port, in exchange for Mor­si steer­ing Egypt in the direc­tion of Sharia law. ” . . . . The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt.  After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly. . . .”
2.–Morsi’s agree­ment with Zawahir­i’s pro­pos­al. ” . . . . Zawahiri fur­ther request­ed that Mor­si allow them to devel­op train­ing camps in Sinai in order to sup­port the Broth­er­hood through trained mil­i­tants. Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard’ to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der. . . .”
3.–The net­work­ing between U.S. Ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son and GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat El-Shater (alter­na­tive­ly translit­er­at­ed with two “t’s”), short­ly after Mor­si was deposed. ” . . . . It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”
4.–Note that Mor­si sanc­tioned and Broth­er­hood-aid­ed Al-Qae­da mil­i­tants were appar­ent­ly involved in the Behg­hazi attacks that led to the Beng­hazi inves­ti­ga­tion, the Hillary e‑mails non-scan­dal and all that fol­lowed: ” . . . . Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port.  Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices. . . . ”
5.–Khairat El-Shater was deeply involved in mobi­liz­ing Al-Qae­da on behalf of Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood. . . . ”
6.–Khairat El-Shater was the appar­ent source of a $50 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion by the Broth­er­hood to Al Qae­da: ” . . . . That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt. . . .”
7.–Next, we high­light anoth­er impor­tant arti­cle from Ray­mond Ibrahim about the Mor­si/Al-Qae­da con­nec­tion to the Beng­hazi attack. Sup­ple­ment­ing the infor­ma­tion about net­work­ing between U.S. Ambas­sador to Egypt Anne Pat­ter­son, John McCain, Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat al-Shater, we note that:

1.–The Beng­hazi attack­ers were appar­ent­ly linked to Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . days after the Beng­hazi attack back in Sep­tem­ber 2012, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood con­nec­tions appeared.  A video made dur­ing the con­sulate attack records peo­ple approach­ing the belea­guered U.S. com­pound; one of them yells to the besiegers in an Egypt­ian dialect, ‘Don’t shoot—Dr. Mor­si sent us!’ appar­ent­ly a ref­er­ence to the for­mer Islamist pres­i­dent. . . .”
2.–The pass­port of the alleged leader of the Beng­hazi attack was found in the home of McCain/Graham con­tact Kharat al-Shater’s home when he was arrest­ed: ” . . . . Most recent­ly, on July 29, 2013, Ahmed Musa, a promi­nent Egypt­ian polit­i­cal insid­er and ana­lyst made sev­er­al asser­tions on Tahrir TV that fur­ther con­nect­ed the dots. . . . Musa insist­ed that he had absolute knowl­edge that the mur­der­er of Chris Stevens was Mohsin al-‘Azzazi, whose pass­port was found in Broth­er­hood leader Khairat El-Shater’s home, when the lat­ter was arrest­ed. . . .”
3.–The attack on the U.S. Embassy may well have been intend­ed to take Chris Stevens hostage, in order to use him as poten­tial barter for the Blind Sheikh: ” . . . . The day before the embassy attacks, based on lit­tle known but legit­i­mate Ara­bic reports, I wrote an arti­cle titled ‘Jihadis Threat­en to Burn U.S. Embassy in Cairo,’ explain­ing how Islamists—including al-Qaeda—were threat­en­ing to attack the U.S. embassy in Cairo unless the noto­ri­ous Blind Sheikh—an Islamist hero held in prison in the U.S. in con­nec­tion to the first World Trade Cen­ter bombing—was released.  The date Sep­tem­ber 11 was also delib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to attack the embassy to com­mem­o­rate the ‘hero­ic’ Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 al-Qae­da strikes on Amer­i­ca. . . .”
4.–The Unit­ed States: ” . . . . first with Anne Pat­ter­son, and now with Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham, keep pres­sur­ing Egypt to release Broth­er­hood lead­ers; McCain per­son­al­ly even vis­it­ed the civil­ian El-Shater, whose raid­ed home revealed the pass­port of Azzazi, whom Musa claims is the mur­der­er of Stevens. . . .”

Fol­low­ing the Beng­hazi dis­cus­sion, we recap an arti­cle about the Broth­er­hood and appar­ent Al-Qaeda/Beng­hazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Khairat El-Shater, not­ing the pow­er­ful res­o­nance between his and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s val­ues and those of the GOP and the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty:

1.–” . . . . the Brotherhood’s ide­ol­o­gy actu­al­ly has more in com­mon with America’s Repub­li­can Par­ty than with al-Qai­da. Few Amer­i­cans know it but the Broth­er­hood is a free-mar­ket par­ty led by wealthy busi­ness­men whose eco­nom­ic agen­da embraces pri­va­ti­za­tion and for­eign invest­ment while spurn­ing labor unions and the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Like the Repub­li­cans in the U.S., the finan­cial inter­ests of the party’s lead­er­ship of busi­ness­men and pro­fes­sion­als diverge sharply from those of its poor, social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Arguably the most pow­er­ful man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is Khairat El-Shater, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire tycoon whose finan­cial inter­ests extend into elec­tron­ics, man­u­fac­tur­ing and retail. A strong advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion, Al-Shater is one of a cadre of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood busi­ness­men who helped finance the Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Party’s impres­sive elec­toral vic­to­ry this win­ter and is now craft­ing the FJP’s eco­nom­ic agen­da. . . .”

We con­clude with infor­ma­tion about the train­ing of activists in high-tech and social media in order to launch the Arab Spring.

In a remark­able and very impor­tant new book, Yasha Levine has high­light­ed the role of U.S. tech per­son­nel in train­ing and prep­ping the Arab Spring online activists.

Note while read­ing the fol­low­ing excerpts of this remark­able and impor­tant book, that:

1.–The Tor net­work was devel­oped by, and used and com­pro­mised by, ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence.
2.–One of the pri­ma­ry advo­cates and spon­sors of the Tor net­work is the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors. As we saw in FTR #‘s 891, 895, is an exten­sion of the CIA.
3.–Jacob Appel­baum has been financed by the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, advo­cates use of the Tor net­work, has helped Wik­iLeaks with its exten­sive use of the Tor net­work, and is a the­o­ret­i­cal accolyte of Ayn Rand.


FTR #1025 The So-Called “Arab Spring” Revisited, Part 1

In this pro­gram, we review and present infor­ma­tion about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the phe­nom­e­non that became known as “The Arab Spring.”

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, allied with the Axis in World War II. After the war, the orga­ni­za­tion grav­i­tat­ed to ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, where it proved to be a bul­wark against Com­mu­nism in the Mus­lim world.

It is our view that the Broth­er­hood was seen as use­ful because of its mil­i­tary off­shoots (Al-Qae­da in par­tic­u­lar) were use­ful proxy war­riors in places like the Cau­ca­sus and the Balka­ns and because the Broth­er­hood’s cor­po­ratist, neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine was in keep­ing with the desires and goals of the trans-nation­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

(The Afghan Muja­hedin were a direct off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the suc­cess­ful war con­duct­ed by that group was a suc­cess­ful man­i­fes­ta­tion of “Broth­er­hood” as proxy war­riors. Of course, Al-Qae­da grew direct­ly from the Afghan jihadists.)

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

In FTR #787, we solid­i­fied our analy­sis with defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion of our work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed years ear­li­er.

About the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine: ” . . . . . . . In Mus­lim litur­gy, the deals cut in the souk become a metaphor for the con­tract between God and the faith­ful. And the busi­ness mod­el Muham­mad pre­scribed, accord­ing to Mus­lim schol­ars and econ­o­mists, is very much in the lais­sez-faire tra­di­tion lat­er embraced by the West. Prices were to be set by God alone—anticipating by more than a mil­len­nium Adam Smith’s ref­er­ence to the ‘invis­i­ble hand’ of mar­ket-based pric­ing. . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tury philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nomic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in pow­er ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over com­merce. . . .”

Ronald Rea­gan res­onat­ed with the Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine when pro­mot­ing his sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics: “Pres­i­dent Rea­gan, in his news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, cit­ed a 14th cen­tu­ry Islam­ic schol­ar as an ear­ly expo­nent of the ”sup­ply-side” eco­nom­ic the­o­ry on which his Admin­is­tra­tion bases many of its poli­cies. An author­i­ty on the schol­ar lat­er said that the ref­er­ence seemed accu­rate. . . . Respond­ing to a ques­tion about the effects of tax and spend­ing cuts that began tak­ing effect yes­ter­day, Mr. Rea­gan said the sup­ply-side prin­ci­ple dat­ed at least as far back as Ibn Khal­dun, who is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the great­est Arab his­to­ri­an to emerge from the high­ly devel­oped Ara­bic cul­ture of the Mid­dle Ages. . . .”

The U.S. view on the Broth­er­hood and Islamism in gen­er­al was epit­o­mized by CIA offi­cer Gra­ham Fuller, who ran the Afghan Muja­hadin: ” . . . . . . . Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ently believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­ica and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller. . . .‘There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,’ he wrote. ‘Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­ory envis­ages the role of the state as lim­ited to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­fully object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.’ . . . .”

Next, we present the read­ing of an arti­cle by CFR mem­ber Bruce Hoff­man. Not­ing Al Qaeda’s resur­gence and Al Qaeda’s empha­sis on the Syr­i­an con­flict, Hoff­man cites the so-called “Arab Spring” as the key event in Al Qaeda’s resur­gence. ” . . . . The thou­sands of hard­ened al-Qae­da fight­ers freed from Egypt­ian pris­ons in 2012–2013 by Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si gal­va­nized the move­ment at a crit­i­cal moment, when insta­bil­i­ty reigned and a hand­ful of men well-versed in ter­ror­ism and sub­ver­sion could plunge a coun­try or a region into chaos. Whether in Libya, Turkey, Syr­ia, or Yemen, their arrival was prov­i­den­tial in terms of advanc­ing al-Qaeda’s inter­ests or increas­ing its influ­ence. . . . It was Syr­ia where al-Qaeda’s inter­ven­tion proved most con­se­quen­tial. One of Zawahiri’s first offi­cial acts after suc­ceed­ing bin Laden as emir was to order a Syr­i­an vet­er­an of the Iraqi insur­gency named Abu Moham­mad al-Julani to return home and estab­lish the al-Qae­da fran­chise that would even­tu­al­ly become Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. . . .”

Hoff­man notes that Al-Qae­da and the Islam­ic State were, at one  time, part of a uni­fied orga­ni­za­tion: ” . . . . Al-Qaeda’s cho­sen instru­ment was Jab­hat al-Nus­ra, the prod­uct of a joint ini­tia­tive with al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, which had rebrand­ed itself as the Islam­ic State of Iraq (ISI). But as Nus­ra grew in both strength and impact, a dis­pute erupt­ed between ISI and al-Qae­da over con­trol of the group. In a bold pow­er grab, ISI’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Bagh­da­di, announced the forcible amal­ga­ma­tion of al-Nus­ra with ISI in a new orga­ni­za­tion to be called the Islam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS). Julani refused to accede to the uni­lat­er­al merg­er and appealed to Zawahiri. The quar­rel inten­si­fied, and after Zawahiri’s attempts to medi­ate it col­lapsed, he expelled ISIS from the al-Qae­da net­work. . . .”

An Egypt­ian news­pa­per pub­lished what were said to be inter­cept­ed record­ings of Mor­si com­mu­ni­cat­ing con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with Muham­mad al-Zawahiri, the the broth­er of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da. Much of this checks out with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record.

The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment sen­tenced more than 500 mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, to the resound­ing con­dem­na­tion of West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing the U.S. What we were not told was why. THIS appears to be why. Note the pro­found con­nec­tion between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment of Mor­si and Al Qae­da, infor­ma­tion that sup­ple­ments what the Bruce Hoff­man paper dis­cuss­es: ” . . . . Mor­si informed Zawahiri that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­ports the mujahidin (jihadis) and that the mujahidin should sup­port the Broth­er­hood in order for them both, and the Islamist agen­da, to pre­vail in Egypt. This makes sense in the con­text that, soon after Mor­si came to pow­er, the gen­er­al pub­lic did become increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of him and his poli­cies, includ­ing the fact that he was plac­ing only Broth­er­hood mem­bers in Egypt’s most impor­tant posts, try­ing quick­ly to push through a pro-Islamist con­sti­tu­tion, and, as Egyp­tians called it, try­ing in gen­er­al to ‘Broth­er­hood­ize’ Egypt. This sec­ond phone call being longer than the first, Zawahiri took it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late Mor­si on his recent pres­i­den­tial victory—which, inci­den­tal­ly, from the start, was por­trayed by some as fraudulent—and expressed his joy that Morsi’s pres­i­den­cy could only mean that ‘all sec­u­lar infi­dels would be removed from Egypt.’ Then Zawahiri told Mor­si: ‘Rule accord­ing to the Sharia of Allah [or ‘Islam­ic law’], and we will stand next to you.  Know that, from the start, there is no so-called democ­ra­cy, so get rid of your oppo­si­tion.’ . . .”

Note the net­work­ing of GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham with Khairat El-Shater of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood while he was in prison. ” . . . . The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt.  After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly. It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”

Might there be some rela­tion­ship between the Gra­ham, McCain/Shater con­tacts and the evo­lu­tion of the Benghazi/Clinton emails/Trump elec­tion nexus?

Note, also, that Mor­si and Zawahir­i/Al-Qae­da jihadis were alleged­ly involved in the Behg­hazi attack that, ulti­mate­ly, led to the Beng­hazi hear­ings, the  Hillary Clin­ton e‑mail non-scan­dal and Don­ald Trump’s ascent: ” . . . . Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard’ to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der. That Libya is men­tioned is inter­est­ing.  Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port.  Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices. . . .”


FTR #945 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

This pro­gram updates and/or intro­duces var­i­ous points of inquiry:

For­mer Oba­ma U.N. Ambas­sador Susan Rice was one of just a hand­ful of main­stream politi­cians who (VERY belat­ed­ly) got things right. Speak­ing of Steve Ban­non’s ele­va­tion to a posi­tion of pri­ma­cy on the NSC, she observed: ” . . . . ‘Trump loves and trusts the mil­i­tary so much he just kicked them out of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and put a Nazi in their place,’ she said. . . .”

Ban­non’s ascen­sion is note­wor­thy: “ . . . . But the defin­ing moment for Mr. Ban­non came Sat­ur­day night in the form of an exec­u­tive order giv­ing the rum­pled right-wing agi­ta­tor a full seat on the ‘prin­ci­pals com­mit­tee’ of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil — while down­grad­ing the roles of the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence, who will now attend only when the coun­cil is con­sid­er­ing issues in their direct areas of respon­si­bil­i­ties. It is a star­tling ele­va­tion of a polit­i­cal advis­er, to a sta­tus along­side the sec­re­taries of state and defense, and over the president’s top mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence advis­ers. . . .”

Ban­non’s ascen­sion to the NSC should be ana­lyzed against the back­ground of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans drawn up by Oliv­er North and still on the books. This is dis­cussed at length in AFA #32.

One of the key fea­tures of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans involved the fed­er­al dep­u­ti­za­tion of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers to main­tain order. The mil­i­tary, even with the assis­tance of the Nation­al Guard, does not have the man­pow­er to main­tain civil­ian order. It is our sus­pi­cion that Ban­non may be involved with the imple­men­ta­tion of such activ­i­ties.

Noto­ri­ous troll, blog­ger and Naz­i/white-suprema­cist fel­low trav­el­er Charles “Chuck” John­son has sub­stan­tive input in Trump’s cab­i­net selec­tions. Worth not­ing is the fact that John­son may be oper­at­ing in tan­dem with Peter Thiel, whose data­base named the “Plum List” bears a strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty to a web­site “ThePlumlist.com,” appar­ent­ly being used by John­son to help staff Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion.

“ . . . . Despite his dis­re­gard for facts and reck­less approach to pub­lish­ing, John­son, who was recent­ly pho­tographed at a din­ner attend­ed by white suprema­cists in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., built a sig­nif­i­cant fol­low­ing among many who self-iden­ti­fied as being a part of the ‘alt-right.’ Trump drew sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from those same fol­low­ers dur­ing the elec­tion. . . . .

” . . . . John­son also helped cre­ate a data­base where poten­tial polit­i­cal appointees could send in their resumes to be con­sid­ered for gov­ern­ment posi­tions. He has access to the web­site ThePlumlist.com, and though the recent­ly cre­at­ed web­site remains dor­mant, can­di­dates have been told to send their infor­ma­tion to an email account asso­ci­at­ed with that domain. In Novem­ber, The Dai­ly Mail report­ed that Thiel main­tains a data­base called the “Plum List” to track poten­tial hires and qual­i­fied appli­cants. Sources famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion described the list as an intake sys­tem for the team, and said it was sep­a­rate from the ver­sion that Thiel and his clos­est asso­ciates use to track final selec­tions that are for­ward­ed to Trump. . . .”

John­son had a very telling obser­va­tion near the end of the fol­low­ing arti­cle: ” . . . John­son attrib­uted much of the work that he and oth­ers have done in sup­port of Trump to being able to tap into vot­ers’ emo­tions through memes, such as the Pepe the Frog car­toon that became an infor­mal mas­cot for Trump sup­port­ers. . . .”

A sign of the times man­i­fest­ed in Ken­tucky, where a group of tan, mil­i­tary style vehi­cles fly­ing a Trump ban­ner was spot­ted. “ . . . . Davis said it would also vio­late reg­u­la­tions to run a mil­i­tary con­voy with no unit mark­ings on the vehi­cles, and said he did not think the vehi­cles belonged to any ser­vice branch. Per the report, he sug­gest­ed that they were mil­i­tary sur­plus. . . . ”

The vehi­cles belonged to an elite SEAL unit. “. . . . ‘The con­voy were ser­vice mem­bers assigned to an East Coast-based Naval Spe­cial War­fare unit dri­ving vehi­cles while tran­sit­ing between two train­ing loca­tions,’ Lieu­tenant Jacqui Maxwell, a spokesper­son for Naval Spe­cial War­fare Group 2, told ABC News. Naval Spe­cial War­fare Units is the offi­cial Navy term for its elite SEAL spe­cial oper­a­tions teams.. . . . ”

The founder of “the artists for­mer­ly known as Black­wa­ter” Erik Prince has been serv­ing as a back chan­nel advis­er on intel­li­gence and secu­ri­ty mat­ters to Trump. “. . . . he may be mak­ing a come­back, this time as a backchan­nel advi­sor on intel­li­gence and secu­ri­ty mat­ters to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, The Inter­cept report­ed on Tues­day. It’s unclear when Prince made his way into Trump’s inner cir­cle, but he has made siz­able con­tri­bu­tions to the pro-Trump Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tee (PAC). The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC) fil­ings for the PAC shows he made a con­tri­bu­tion of $100,000 in Sep­tem­ber 2016 to their efforts. His moth­er Elisa Prince also gave $50,000 to the com­mit­tee. Prince’s sis­ter Bet­sy DeVos is Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion choice. . . .”

In FTR #‘s 941 and 942, we exam­ined Tul­si Gab­bard (D–HI), usu­al­ly described as a “ris­ing star” in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Of sub­stan­tive­ly greater inter­est for our pur­pos­es is the fact that she was one of the dri­ving forces behind the Bernie Sanders phe­nom­e­non.

This pro­gram updates that analy­sis, set­ting forth more about Gab­bard’s behav­ior, asso­ciates and fascist/Underground Reich asso­ci­a­tions:

a)Gabbard received kid glove treat­ment from Pierre Omid­yar’s Hon­olu­lu Civ­il Beat.

b)She recent­ly took an unan­nounced, and pos­si­bly ille­gal, trip to Syr­ia, dur­ing which she met with Bashar Assad. This fur­ther dis­rupts an already bad­ly weak­ened Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

c) Her trip was shep­herd­ed by: “. . . . Gabbard’s office claims her trip was fund­ed by the Arab Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Social Ser­vices (Aac­cess) – Ohio; how­ev­er, the group has not report­ed any finan­cial rev­enue to the US gov­ern­ment since 2006. Bas­sam Khawam, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Aac­cess who trav­eled with Gab­bard, report­ed­ly belongs to a pro-Assad Lebanese polit­i­cal par­ty, the Syr­i­an Social Nation­al­ist par­ty (SSNP). The par­ty has dis­patched its mem­bers to fight on behalf of the Assad regime dur­ing the near­ly six-year war. . . .”

d) Bas­sam Khawam’s polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion with the Syr­i­an Social Nation­al­ist Par­ty is “inter­est­ing”: ” . . . . They greet their lead­ers with a Hit­ler­ian salute; sing their Ara­bic anthem, “Greet­ings to You, Syr­ia,” to the strains of “Deutsch­land, Deutsch­land über alles”; and throng to the sym­bol of the red hur­ri­cane, a swasti­ka in cir­cu­lar motion. These are the hall­marks of the Syr­i­an Social Nation­al­ist Par­ty (SSNP), the old­est ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion in exis­tence today and one of the most secret and dead­ly. . . .”

e)More about Khawam’s polit­i­cal ally, the SSNP: “. . . . [founder Antun] Saadeh emi­grat­ed again to Brazil in 1938 and after­wards to Argenti­na, only to return to Lebanon in 1947 fol­low­ing the coun­try’s inde­pen­dence from the French in 1943. On his way to Argenti­na, he vis­it­ed Italy and Berlin, which increased the sus­pi­cions of the French that the SSNP might have been enter­tain­ing rela­tions with the Axis. . . . Ree­va Simon writes: “the par­ty’s ‘leader for life’, was an admir­er of Adolf Hitler influ­enced by Nazi and fas­cist ideology”.[55][59] The par­ty adopt­ed a reversed swasti­ka as the par­ty’s sym­bol, sang the par­ty’s anthem to Deutsch­land über alles, and includ­ed devel­op­ing the cult of a leader, advo­cat­ing total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment, and glo­ri­fy­ing an ancient pre-Chris­t­ian past and the organ­ic whole of the Syr­i­an Volk or nation.[52][55] . . . .”
Gab­bard co-spon­sored a bill that would clas­si­fy any­one oppos­ing Ukraine’s entry into the EU as a “ter­ror­ist.”

The pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of anoth­er alleged Russ­ian “hack,” which smells sus­pi­cious­ly like a “cyber-false flag” oper­a­tion: ” . . . . Two new users showed up as reg­is­tered admin­is­tra­tors of the web­site: larisa@steamreal.ru and ewartumba@mail.ru. The ‘.ru’ suf­fix indi­cates a Russ­ian ori­gin, Ben­son said. The pro­file pages of the users had char­ac­ters in the Russ­ian alpha­bet in ‘Address’ and ‘About Me’ fields, she said. . . .She said she can’t say whether Rus­sians were real­ly involved or whether the address­es could have been faked by some­one mim­ic­k­ing a con­nec­tion based on what had been in the news. But it was impor­tant that police and the FBI become involved, to ‘make this infor­ma­tion part of the body of infor­ma­tion police and the FBI are com­pil­ing from the nation­al inves­ti­ga­tion,’ she said. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The inclu­sion of Gab­bard’s asso­ciates in the Hin­du nationalist/fascist RSS in a pres­ti­gious Indi­an lit­er­ary fes­ti­val, symp­to­matic of a phe­nom­e­non sim­i­lar to the rise of Trump: “. . . . ‘We are acknowl­edg­ing that the intel­lec­tu­al nerve cen­ter has shift­ed, and the seat of cul­tur­al pow­er has shift­ed, because no one was inter­est­ed in invit­ing these guys before 2014,’ said Supriya Nair, a writer and edi­tor who has attend­ed the fes­ti­val for the last six years. In any case, she said, the shift right­ward had already tak­en place in the larg­er soci­ety. ‘This is a last bas­tion,’ she said. . . .”; Naren­dra Mod­i’s rise in India, what Supriya Nair described as a shift of “the intel­lec­tu­al nerve cen­ter” has been fueled by “dark mon­ey;” Trump PR man Felix Sater’s role in shep­herd­ing Trump’s trips to Rus­sia; review of Sater’s work for the CIA;
review of Pierre Omid­yar’s role in financ­ing the rise of Naren­dra Modi and the OUN/B fas­cist in Ukraine.