FTR#1253 Pandemics, Inc., Part 3

This pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the “Pan­demics, Inc.” con­sor­tium of Metabio­ta, Eco­Health Alliance, In-Q-Tel and Munich Re.

We note that Andrew C. Weber–a key exec­u­tive of Metabiota–had an inter­est­ing back­ground: ” . . . . He joined Metabio­ta in Feb­ru­ary 2016 as Head of Glob­al Part­ner­ships in the Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Unit. . . . He served until Octo­ber 2014 as Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense for Nuclear, Chem­i­cal & Bio­log­i­cal Defense Pro­grams. . . .”

Weber was in that post at Metabio­ta when, in Octo­ber of 2016, Metabio­ta ini­ti­at­ed its projects in Ukraine.

Next, the pro­gram reviews an excerpt­ing of a Wired Mag­a­zine arti­cle about the Metabiota/Munich Rein­sur­ance project.

Bear in mind that In-Q-Tel, the ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the CIA and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, is greas­ing the wheels of this project with financ­ing.

We high­light two key points of infor­ma­tion:

1.–The busi­ness suc­cess of the pan­dem­ic insur­ance would nec­es­sar­i­ly incor­po­rate analy­sis of the “fear fac­tor” of poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogens: ” . . . . As sophis­ti­cat­ed as Metabiota’s sys­tem was, how­ev­er, it would need to be even more refined to incor­po­rate into an insur­ance pol­i­cy. The mod­el would need to cap­ture some­thing much more dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy than his­tor­i­cal deaths and med­ical stock­piles: fear. The eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of a scourge, the his­tor­i­cal data showed, were as much a result of society’s response as they were to the virus itself. . . . The Sen­ti­ment Index was built to be, as Oppen­heim put it, ‘a cat­a­log of dread.’ For any giv­en pathogen, it could spit out a score from 0 to 100 accord­ing to how fright­en­ing the pub­lic would find it. . . . Mad­hav and her team, along with Wolfe and Oppen­heim, also researched the broad­er eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of dis­ease out­breaks, mea­sured in the ‘cost per death pre­vent­ed’ incurred by soci­etal inter­ven­tions. ‘Mea­sures that decreased per­son-to-per­son con­tact, includ­ing social dis­tanc­ing, quar­an­tine, and school clo­sures, had the great­est cost per death pre­vent­ed, most like­ly because of the amount of eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion caused by those mea­sures,’ they wrote in a 2018 paper. . . .”
2.–More sin­is­ter, still, is the fact that Metabio­ta had ana­lyzed the sce­nario of a nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic two years before it hap­pened. This appears to be the 2018 paper referred to above. Do not fail to note that, at the time that Metabio­ta was run­ning this sce­nario, they were part­nered with Eco­Health Alliance, which was using Pen­ta­gon and USAID mon­ey to research and per­form gain-of-func­tion on these types of coro­n­avirus­es!! ” . . . . As the human and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion mul­ti­plied in tan­dem across the globe, Metabiota’s employ­ees sud­den­ly found them­selves liv­ing inside their own model’s pro­jec­tions. Just two years ear­li­er, the com­pa­ny had run a large set of sce­nar­ios fore­cast­ing the con­se­quences of a nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing around the globe. . . .”

Next, we review aspects of impor­tant arti­cle presents depth on a num­ber of over­lap­ping con­sid­er­a­tions about bio­log­i­cal war­fare, the Covid “op” and the Ukraine war.

Of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance, here, is H5N1’s poten­tial sig­nif­i­cance of the In-Q-Tel, Metabio­ta, Munich Re pan­dem­ic insur­ance con­sor­tium.

In addi­tion to the H5N1’s real or poten­tial impact on busi­ness­es involved with one aspect or anoth­er of com­mer­cial poul­try, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a weaponized/zoonotic muta­tion of the virus could spawn a dev­as­tat­ing human pan­dem­ic could be a major dri­ver of “fear” and the will­ing­ness of busi­ness­es to pur­chase pan­dem­ic insur­ance.

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include:

1.–” . . . . The emer­gence of the virus in 1997 in Hong Kong was eeri­ly pre­dict­ed by Kennedy Short­ridge, the sci­en­tist who would dis­cov­er it. H5N1 didn’t infect humans until Short­ridge and his col­leagues had been study­ing its human infec­tion poten­tial in their labs for sev­er­al years. At the time, the nat­ur­al leap of a flu direct­ly from poul­try to humans was so improb­a­ble that sci­en­tists first sus­pect­ed that it was the result of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
2.–Normally, H5N1 human infec­tions are extreme­ly rare: ” . . . . H5N1 hard­ly ever infects peo­ple. News about high­ly path­o­gen­ic avian influen­za usu­al­ly leads with how dead­ly it is. Rarely is it men­tioned that the dis­ease hard­ly ever infects peo­ple. H5N1 kills more than half of the peo­ple who get it, but H5N1 has cir­cled the globe for decades and there have only ever been 860 human infec­tions world­wide. . . .”
3.–More about how rare human infec­tions are and the rise of avian infec­tions in 2022: ” . . . . There has nev­er been an H5N1 pan­dem­ic and no human infec­tion­with H5N1 bird flu has ever been iden­ti­fied in the U.S. That’s an extra­or­di­nary safe­ty record, giv­en how filthy U.S. fac­to­ry farms and slaugh­ter­hous­es are and how fast the infec­tion spreads among crowd­ed birds. So far in 2022, 29 states have report­ed out­breaks of bird flu in 213 flocks result­ing in the culling of near­ly 31 mil­lion birds, includ­ing almost 5 per­cent of egg-lay­ing hens. In 2015, it was even worse with 50 mil­lion birds culled, but there wasn’t a sin­gle human case. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Antho­ny Fau­ci has made sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in gain-of-func­tion research to give H5N1 pan­dem­ic poten­tial, mak­ing it eas­i­ly trans­mis­si­ble from per­son to person—and Bill Gates chipped in, too! . . .”
5.–” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary 2006, Fau­ci con­vened a one-day in-house ‘NIAID Influen­za Research Sum­mit’ to  iden­ti­fy influen­za research pri­or­i­ties. In Sep­tem­ber, he opened up the top­ic to a 35-mem­ber ‘Blue Rib­bon Pan­el on Influen­za Research’ that includ­ed Fouch­i­er and Kawao­ka. The Blue Rib­bon panel’s report doesn’t men­tion gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments, but Fau­ci gave them grants to do just that. [Ron] Fouch­i­er and [Yoshi­hi­ro] Kawaoka’s now infa­mous gain-of-func­tion research showed that, through lab manip­u­la­tion, H5N1 could be altered to become high­ly trans­mis­si­ble among humans via air­borne infec­tion. . . .”
6.–” . . . . The first human H5N1 out­break occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, the year of what the British call the ‘Hong Kong han­dover,’ when sov­er­eign­ty over Hong Kong was trans­ferred from the U.K. to Chi­na. It was dur­ing this ‘polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive’ year that Kennedy Short­ridge, an Aus­tralian sci­en­tist who was the direc­tor of the World Health Organization’s ref­er­ence lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong, con­firmed human cas­es of high­ly path­o­gen­ic bird flu. . . .”
7.–” . . . .The 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 virus was unique in every respect. Time mag­a­zine report­ed, ‘On the H gene at a point called the cleav­age site, [was] found a tell­tale muta­tion, the same kind of muta­tion found in oth­er high­ly path­o­gen­ic avian virus­es. …The virus … had regions that were iden­ti­cal to por­tions of [an] avian virus that struck Penn­syl­va­nia [chick­ens] in 1983.” The L.A. Times report­ed, ‘The H5 piece came from a virus in a goose. The N1 piece came from a sec­ond virus in a quail. The remain­ing flu genes came from a third virus, also in quail.’ . . . .”
8.–” . . . . Short­ridge had been study­ing how avian influen­za virus­es spread to humans since 1975. Pri­or to dis­cov­er­ing H5N1, Short­ridge eeri­ly pre­dict­ed its emer­gence. As Frank Ching report­ed in ‘Bird Flu, SARS and Beyond’: As ear­ly as 1982, Short­ridge had labeled south­ern Chi­na, where humans and domes­tic ani­mals lived in close prox­im­i­ty, ‘an epi­cen­ter for the ori­gin of pan­demics.’ Ten years lat­er, he called south­ern Chi­na a ‘virus soup’ and warned that pan­dem­ic influen­za was a zoono­sis, that is, it could be trans­mit­ted from ani­mals to humans and, in 1995, he warned that influen­za in south­ern Chi­na could not prop­er­ly be called an ’emerg­ing’ infec­tion because it was con­stant­ly lurk­ing. ‘Elu­sive might be more apt,’ he wrote. . . .”
9.–” . . . . An exam­ple of Shortridge’s pen­chant for such pre­dic­tions is his 1995 Lancet arti­cle “The next pan­dem­ic influen­za virus?” Curi­ous­ly, H5N1 emerged two years lat­er, in 1997, in the same city where Short­ridge worked, Hong Kong. . . .”
10.–” . . . . At the time, the nat­ur­al leap of a flu direct­ly from poul­try to humans was thought to be so unlike­ly that sci­en­tists first sus­pect­ed con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from Shortridge’s lab was the cause of the high­ly improb­a­ble H5N1 diag­no­sis. How would that con­t­a­m­i­na­tion hap­pen unless Short­ridge hadn’t already been work­ing with H5N1 in the lab? . . .”
11.–” . . . . H5N1 didn’t cause dis­ease in humans until this poten­tial had been stud­ied in a lab for sev­er­al years. Fau­ci had been fund­ing Kawao­ka and Fouchier’s efforts to get bird flu to leap to humans since 1990 and their work was con­nect­ed to what Short­ridge was doing in Hong Kong. For sev­en years pri­or to the first human H5N1 out­break in 1997, Fau­ci had been fund­ing Kawaoka’s gain-of-func­tion bird flu research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal and Kawaoka’s men­tor there, Robert G. Web­ster, was work­ing and pub­lish­ing with Short­ridge. Every year, Web­ster spent three months work­ing with Short­ridge at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong, accord­ing to this pro­file of Web­ster which men­tions Kawao­ka as his pro­tege. . . .”
12.–” . . . . The most eerie con­nec­tion between Short­ridge and Webster’s labs is that the clos­est known rel­a­tive of the 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 was the avian virus that struck Penn­syl­va­nia chick­ens in 1983—that Yoshi­hi­ro Kawao­ka had stud­ied. Accord­ing to Time mag­a­zine: Web­ster assigned a young sci­en­tist, Yoshi­hi­ro Kawao­ka, to try to fig­ure out how the [1983] virus trans­formed itself into such a ‘hot’ pathogen. Kawao­ka, now a pro­fes­sor of virol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son, com­pared the genet­ic struc­ture of virus­es from the first and sec­ond waves and found only a sin­gle, extreme­ly sub­tle change in the H gene. The two virus­es dif­fered by just one nucleotide–one of 1,700 nucleotides that made up the gene. . . .”
13.–”. . . . There’s also a con­nec­tion to Fouch­i­er, through his men­tor at the Eras­mus Med­ical Cen­ter in Rot­ter­dam, the Nether­lands, Jan De Jong, also a col­league and col­lab­o­ra­tor of Short­ridge and Webster’s. . . .”
14.–” . . . . Kawaoka’s col­league and men­tor Robert G. Web­ster and Fouchier’s col­league and men­tor Jan De Jong were the first sci­en­tists out­side of Hong Kong to receive sam­ples of the 1997 H5N1 flu from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
15.–” . . . . De Jong is often cred­it­ed with being the one who iden­ti­fied the 1997 Hong Kong flu as H5N1, but he did so with ‘a pan­el of reagents to every type of flu strain yet known’ that had been brought from Webster’s lab in Mem­phis to the Nation­al Influen­za Cen­tre in Rot­ter­dam. . . .”
16.–” . . . . Kawao­ka and Fouch­i­er are of post-Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion era where the weaponiza­tion of pathogens is euphemisti­cal­ly called ‘gain-of-func­tion’ research, but their old­er col­leagues, De Jong, Short­ridge and Web­ster came of age pri­or to 1972 and their men­tors were of the pre-Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion era when virol­o­gists know­ing­ly and open­ly engi­neered virus­es for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. . . .”
17.–” . . . . Short­ridge and Web­ster were trained by Frank Mac­far­lane Bur­net who served on the Aus­tralian Depart­ment of Defence’s New Weapons and Equip­ment Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee in the 1940s and 50s. The Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Sci­en­tists lists some of the most chill­ing things Bur­net rec­om­mend­ed: Bur­net … said Aus­tralia should devel­op bio­log­i­cal weapons that would work in trop­i­cal Asia with­out spread­ing to Aus­trali­a’s more tem­per­ate pop­u­la­tion cen­tres. . . .”
18.–Burnet’s obser­va­tions: ” . . . . ‘Specif­i­cal­ly to the Aus­tralian sit­u­a­tion, the most effec­tive counter-offen­sive to threat­ened inva­sion by over­pop­u­lat­ed Asi­at­ic coun­tries would be direct­ed towards the destruc­tion by bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal means of trop­i­cal food crops and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infec­tious dis­ease capa­ble of spread­ing in trop­i­cal but not under Aus­tralian con­di­tions.’ . . .”
18.–The broad­cast notes a fright­en­ing rela­tion­ship between Metabio­ta and the selec­tion of Philip Zelikow to head a com­mis­sion to deter­mine the ori­gin of Covid-19: ” . . . . In 2008, Google.org com­mit­ted $30 mil­lion to virus hunt­ing and gain-of-func­tion research on poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogens through a project it called Pre­dict and Pre­vent. At least $5.5 mil­lion of that went to Dr. Nathan Wolfe’s non-prof­it Glob­al Viral Fore­cast­ing Ini­tia­tive, which was soon to become the for-prof­it Metabio­ta. Oth­er GVFI fun­ders at the time includ­ed the Skoll Foun­da­tion, which also gave $5.5 mil­lion, the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, Mer­ck Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries and the US Depart­ment of Defense. . . .”
19.–” . . . . When the GVFI became the for-prof­it Metabio­ta, Google Ven­tures con­tin­ued to invest. In addi­tion, it cre­at­ed a busi­ness part­ner­ship with Metabio­ta, ‘offer­ing its big-data exper­tise to help the com­pa­ny serve its customers–insurers, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and oth­er organizations–by offer­ing them fore­cast­ing and risk-man­age­ment tools.’ In oth­er words, they sell pan­dem­ic insur­ance. . . .”
20.–”. . . . Now that Metabio­ta has got­ten caught up in the COVID ori­gins scan­dal, its orig­i­nal investors, Eric Schmidt of Google, Jef­frey Skoll of EBay, Rajiv Shah of The Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion (for­mer­ly USAID direc­tor, Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion) chipped in to fund the COVID Com­mis­sion Plan­ning Group, a white-wash led by Philip Zelikow who gave us the 9–11 Com­mis­sion cov­er-up. . . .”
21.–In past pro­grams, we have not­ed that David Franz, for­mer head of the U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D at Fort Det­rick was a key advi­sor to Eco­HealthAl­liance. Franz helped pro­duce the encap­su­lat­ed, weapons-grade anthrax used in the 2001 anthrax attacks: ” . . . . One of Metabiota’s PREDICT part­ners is Eco­Health Alliance, whose sci­ence and pol­i­cy advi­sor, David Franz, pro­duced the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks while work­ing for South­ern Research and part­ner­ing with sci­en­tists at Bat­telle. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Munich Re’s deep polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion with the Third Reich, both in its  ini­tial, above-ground phase and in its role as a crit­i­cal ele­ment of the remark­able, lethal Bor­mann cap­i­tal asso­ci­a­tion. 

FTR#1213 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 20

This pro­gram under­takes a spec­u­la­tive look at the life and fam­i­ly his­to­ry of Barack Oba­ma, ana­lyzed in the con­text of the Amer­i­can Deep State.

It was under Oba­ma that the “piv­ot to Asia” took place, with his then Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden now pur­su­ing the anti-Chi­na pol­i­cy with a con­sum­ing vig­or.

(We note, also, Avril Haines, who was Oba­ma’s Deputy Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence, then worked as a paid con­sul­tant for Peter Thiel’s Palan­tir firm, was a key par­tic­i­pant in Event 201, served as a key mem­ber of Biden’s tran­si­tion team and, ulti­mate­ly, became Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence, a posi­tion from which she helped ini­ti­ate the momen­tum to legit­imize the “Lab-Leak The­o­ry” of the ori­gin of Covid.)

The cen­tral ele­ment in our analy­sis is the pro­fes­sion­al and polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Oba­ma fam­i­ly’s involve­ment in Indone­sia in the imme­di­ate after­math of the slaugh­ter.

The avail­able infor­ma­tion sug­gests that the benign inter­pre­ta­tion of the Oba­ma fam­i­ly’s cir­cum­stances is not accu­rate. 

Those cir­cum­stances are encap­su­lat­ed: Key Points of Dis­cus­sion nd Analy­sis Include: Lolo Soe­toro’s work as a civil­ian employ­ee of the Indone­sian Army at the East-West Insti­tute in Hawaii (head­ed up at the time by Howard Jones, for years U.S. Ambas­sador to Indone­sia); Soe­toro’s meet­ing of (Stan­ley) Ann Dun­ham at the East-West Insti­tute; Soe­toro’s return to Indone­sia in 1966; Soe­toro’s work for the Indone­sian army fol­low­ing the coup; Soe­toro’s work for Uno­cal and Mobil, two of the key oil com­pa­nies in Indone­sia that faced pos­si­ble nation­al­iza­tion by Sukarno; Ann Dun­ham’s work for USAID and Ford Foun­da­tion in Indone­sia (both com­mon cov­ers for CIA work abroad); Soe­toro’s account of hav­ing seen a man killed in “bloody” fash­ion; the dubi­ous nature of claims by the Oba­ma clan that Ms. Dun­ham learned of the slaugh­ter that had just tak­en place through qui­et asides and innu­en­do (numer­ous press accounts avail­able through U.S. media out­lets had report­ed the mas­sacre); Ann Dun­ham’s sub­se­quent work for the Ford Foun­da­tion in Indone­sia, under Peter Gei­th­n­er (whose son Tim­o­thy Gei­th­n­er became Oba­ma’s Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury); Barack Oba­ma’s work for the Busi­ness Inter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion between col­lege and grad­u­ate school (the com­pa­ny has, in the past, served as a “cor­po­rate cov­er” for CIA employ­ees); Oba­ma’s bio­log­i­cal father’s meet­ing of Ann Dun­ham in a Russ­ian lan­guage class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii in 1960, after enter­ing the U.S. under a joint CIA-State Depart­ment pro­gram ini­ti­at­ed under the aus­pices of Tom Mboya in Kenya (lat­er assas­si­nat­ed because of his perceived/alleged links to CIA).

We are of the opin­ion that Oba­ma is part of a Deep State, trans-gen­er­a­tional intel­li­gence net­work and his stew­ard­ship of the “piv­ot to Asia,” Avril Haines key posi­tion in the events sur­round­ing the full-court press against Chi­na, and “Delaware Joe” [Biden]‘s pur­suit of a vig­or­ous anti-Chi­na pol­i­cy are part of the straight rail­way line of Asian pol­i­cy described by Stan­ley Horn­beck: “.  . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . . [Horn­beck] had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the for­ma­tion of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League in Tai­wan under Chi­ang Kai-shek.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang and their sup­port for the Indone­sian coup, includ­ing stag­ing attacks on the Chi­nese embassy in Jakar­ta; Tai­wan as the site for the merg­ing of the Asian Peo­ple’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations to form the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League; the role of Adri­an Zenz in the fab­ri­ca­tion of the Uighur geno­cide meme; Zen­z’s asso­ci­a­tion with the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion, a deriv­a­tive of the Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee, a sub­sidiary of the OUN/B and deeply involved with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations; the role of ele­ments of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and Pravy Sek­tor in the “pro-democ­ra­cy” move­ment in Hong Kong; the adop­tion by the “pro-Democ­ra­cy move­ment” of a per­mu­ta­tion of the “Glo­ry to Ukraine, Glo­ry to The Heroes” salute of the OUN/B; review of the net­work­ing between Ruzy Nazar and the Pan-Turk­ist and Nazi deep polit­i­cal forces at work in Xin­jiang province; review of Nazar’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the ABN at WACL’s con­fer­ence in Dal­las, Texas.

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of the for­ma­tion of WACL, the pro­gram high­lights the impor­tance of the Indone­sian oil com­pa­nies to the U.S. and their Indone­sian satraps. 

FTR #965 Are We Going to Have a Third World War?

Recent devel­op­ments are sug­ges­tive of the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of an immi­nent Third World War. We present some new infor­ma­tion and recap and fur­ther ana­lyze sto­ries cov­ered in pre­vi­ous pro­grams in order to under­score and high­light the poten­tial dev­as­ta­tion of these events.

As the furor (“fuehrer”?) sur­round­ing the poten­tial­ly lethal polit­i­cal hoax known as “Rus­sia-gate” gains momen­tum, it should be not­ed that the point man for the Trump busi­ness inter­ests in their deal­ings with Rus­sia is Felix Sater. A Russ­ian-born immi­grant, Sater is a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal and a con­vict­ed felon with his­tor­i­cal links to the Mafia. Beyond that, and more impor­tant­ly, Sater is an FBI infor­mant and a CIA con­tract agent: “. . . . There is every indi­ca­tion that the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lenient treat­ment result­ed from Sater play­ing a get-out-of-jail free card. Short­ly before his secret guilty plea, Sater became a free­lance oper­a­tive of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. One of his fel­low stock swindlers, Sal­va­tore Lau­ria, wrote a book about it. The Scor­pi­on and the Frog is described on its cov­er as ‘the true sto­ry of one man’s fraud­u­lent rise and fall in the Wall Street of the nineties.’ Accord­ing to Lauria–and the court files that have been unsealed–Sater helped the CIA buy small mis­siles before they got to ter­ror­ists. He also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”

Sater was active on behalf of the Trumps in the fall of 2015: “. . . . Sater worked on a plan for a Trump Tow­er in Moscow as recent­ly as the fall of 2015, but he said that had come to a halt because of Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. . . .”

Sater was ini­ti­at­ing con­tact between the Rus­sians and “Team Trump” in Jan­u­ary of this year: “ . . . . Nev­er­the­less, in late Jan­u­ary, Sater and a Ukrain­ian law­mak­er report­ed­ly met with Trump’s per­son­al lawyer, Michael Cohen, at a New York hotel. Accord­ing to the [New York] Times, they dis­cussed a plan that involved the U.S. lift­ing sanc­tions against Rus­sia, and Cohen said he hand-deliv­ered the plan in a sealed enve­lope to then-nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor Michael Fly­nn. Cohen lat­er denied deliv­er­ing the enve­lope to any­one in the White House, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post. . . .”

A stun­ning devel­op­ment con­cerns extreme ret­i­cence on the part of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty:

The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence had an “inter­est­ing” response to a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act law­suit demand­ing the release of the clas­si­fied report giv­en to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma back in Jan­u­ary pur­port­ing to show the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was behind the hacks. Accord­ing to the ODNI, the request­ed doc­u­ment would present a risk to human intel­li­gence sources by reveal­ing the com­par­a­tive weight giv­en to human vs tech­ni­cal evi­dence, risk­ing US sources and meth­ods. But the ODNI went fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that even releas­ing a ful­ly redact­ed doc­u­ment would present sim­i­lar risks!

It is NOT easy to see the ODNI’s reluc­tance to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed copy of the report as any­thing but disin­gen­u­ous. In the con­text of poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing dete­ri­o­ra­tion of Russian/U.S. rela­tions over Syr­ia, Ukraine, and the Russ­ian “elec­tion-hack­ing” uproar, the ODNI’s behav­ior can­not be any­thing but dis­qui­et­ing:

” . . . . The intel­li­gence offi­cial argued that a redact­ed ver­sion of the orig­i­nal report would allow a trained eye to assess ‘com­par­a­tive weight’ of human intel­li­gence and sig­nals intel­li­gence report­ing includ­ed in the com­pendi­um. Release of some of the infor­ma­tion the pri­va­cy-focused orga­ni­za­tion wants made pub­lic ‘could prove fatal to U.S. human intel­li­gence sources,’ [Deputy Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence for Intel­li­gence Inte­gra­tion Edward] Gis­taro warned.

Gis­taro also appears to argue that even if offi­cials blacked out the whole report, high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion would be at risk.

‘I agree with the [Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil] that a heav­i­ly or even ful­ly redact­ed ver­sion of the clas­si­fied report can not be pub­licly released with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion prop­er­ly clas­si­fied as SECRET or TOP SECRET,’ he wrote. . . . ‘The ODNI should release the com­plete report to EPIC so that the pub­lic and the Con­gress can under­stand the full extent of the Russ­ian inter­fer­ence with the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion,’ EPIC’s Marc Roten­berg told POLITICO Tues­day. ‘It is already clear that gov­ern­ment secre­cy is frus­trat­ing mean­ing­ful over­sight. The FBI, for exam­ple, will not even iden­ti­fy the states that were tar­get­ed by Rus­sia.’ . . . ”

With the high-pro­file hacks being attributed–almost cer­tain­ly falsely–to Rus­sia, there are omi­nous devel­op­ments tak­ing place that may well lead to a Third World War. Dur­ing the clos­ing days of his Pres­i­den­cy, Oba­ma autho­rized the plant­i­ng of cyber weapons on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works. Oba­ma did this after talk­ing with Putin on the Hot Line, estab­lished to pre­vent a Third World War. Putin denied inter­fer­ing in the U.S. elec­tion.

The con­clu­sion that Rus­sia hacked the U.S. elec­tion on Putin’s orders appears to have been based on a CIA source in the Krem­lin. Even when that intel­li­gence was deliv­ered, oth­er agen­cies weren’t ready to accept the CIA’s con­clu­sion and it took intel­li­gence from anoth­er nation (not named) to pro­vide the final intel­li­gence tip­ping point that led to a broad-based con­clu­sion the not only was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment behind the cyber­at­tacks but that Vladimir Putin him­self ordered it.

That ally’s intel­li­gence is described as “the most crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal intel­li­gence on Rus­sia,” how­ev­er the NSA still wasn’t con­vinced based on what sounds like a lack of con­fi­dence in that source. Thus, it looks like a CIA Krem­lin source and an unnamed for­eign intel­li­gence agency with ques­tion­able cre­den­tials are the basis of what appears to be a like­ly future full-scale US/Russian cyber­war.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that IF, on Putin’s orders (and we are to believe such) Rus­sia con­tin­ued to hack U.S. com­put­er sys­tems to influ­ence the elec­tion, Putin would have to have gone utter­ly mad. Those hacks would have pre­clud­ed any rap­proche­ment between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States under a Pres­i­dent Trump. There is no indi­ca­tion that Putin went off the deep end.

Also augur­ing a pos­si­ble Third World War are two devel­op­ments in Syr­ia. Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle in “Die Welt” reveal­ing that, not only was the April 4 alleged Sarin attack NOT a chem­i­cal weapons attack but there was wide­spread knowl­edge of this in Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence cir­cles.

What did the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty know about the attack? The Russ­ian and Syr­i­an air force had informed the US in advance of that airstrike that they had intel­li­gence that top lev­el lead­ers of Ahrar al-Sham and Jab­hat al-Nus­ra were meet­ing in that build­ing and they informed of the US of the attack plan in advance of the attack and that it was on a “high-val­ue” tar­get. And the attack involved the unusu­al use of a guid­ed bomb and Syria’s top pilots. ” . . . . Russ­ian and Syr­i­an intel­li­gence offi­cials, who coor­di­nate oper­a­tions close­ly with the Amer­i­can com­mand posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was spe­cial because of the high-val­ue tar­get. ‘It was a red-hot change. The mis­sion was out of the ordi­nary – scrub the sked,’ the senior advis­er told me. ‘Every oper­a­tions offi­cer in the region’ – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – ‘had to know there was some­thing going on. The Rus­sians gave the Syr­i­an Air Force a guid­ed bomb and that was a rar­i­ty. They’re skimpy with their guid­ed bombs and rarely share them with the Syr­i­an Air Force. And the Syr­i­ans assigned their best pilot to the mis­sion, with the best wing­man.’ The advance intel­li­gence on the tar­get, as sup­plied by the Rus­sians, was giv­en the high­est pos­si­ble score inside the Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. . . .”

Fol­low­ing the attack, US intel­li­gence con­clud­ed that there was no sarin gas attack, Assad wouldn’t have been that polit­i­cal­ly sui­ci­dal. The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . ‘This was not a chem­i­cal weapons strike,’ the advis­er said. ‘That’s a fairy tale. . . .”

The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . . A Bomb Dam­age Assess­ment (BDA) by the U.S. mil­i­tary lat­er deter­mined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syr­i­an bomb trig­gered a series of sec­ondary explo­sions that could have gen­er­at­ed a huge tox­ic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fer­til­iz­ers, dis­in­fec­tants and oth­er goods stored in the base­ment, its effect mag­ni­fied by the dense morn­ing air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. . . .”

The behav­ior of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was not only in direct con­flict with intel­li­gence on the attack, but rein­forced pro­pa­gan­da by some of the Al-Qae­da-linked jihadists the West has been using as proxy war­riors in Syr­ia and else­where: ” . . . . ‘The Salafists and jihadists got every­thing they want­ed out of their hyped-up Syr­i­an nerve gas ploy,’ the senior advis­er to the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty told me, refer­ring to the flare up of ten­sions between Syr­ia, Rus­sia and Amer­i­ca. ‘The issue is, what if there’s anoth­er false flag sarin attack cred­it­ed to hat­ed Syr­ia? Trump has upped the ante and paint­ed him­self into a cor­ner with his deci­sion to bomb. And do not think these guys are not plan­ning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and hard­er. He’s inca­pable of say­ing he made a mis­take.’ . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of a Trump admin­is­tra­tion warn­ing of anoth­er sup­posed, impend­ing “Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons strike”–a warn­ing that has since been retract­ed; dis­cus­sion of bril­liant Nazi hack­er Andrew Aueren­heimer’s orches­tra­tion of an “Alt-right” online intim­i­da­tion cam­paign against CNN employ­ees; Aueren­heimer’s cur­rent res­i­dence in Ukraine; the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of the activation/manipulation of the NSA cyber-weapons installed on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works by a third par­ty (per­haps some­one with the capa­bil­i­ties of the bril­liant Aueren­heimer); review of the obser­va­tions by a Ger­man professor–opposed to Nazism/Hitler–who described the essence of what it was like, sub­jec­tive­ly, to live through the rise of Hitler–his obser­va­tion pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the ODNI’s deci­sion not to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed ver­sion of the intel­li­gence report on “Russ­ian med­dling” in the U.S. elec­tion: ” . . . . . . . . What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­at­ed in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand because of nation­al­i­ty secu­ri­ty, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”

FTR #895 The CIA and the “Privacy” Advocates: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis and dis­cus­sion from FTR #891, we fur­ther explore the CIA-gen­er­at­ed back­ground and fund­ing of the “pri­va­cy” advo­cates who com­prise much of “Team Snow­den.” Recall that Snow­den him­self was with CIA when he chose to dou­ble on NSA. We begin by review­ing our scruti­ny of Edward Snow­den from the per­spec­tive of Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty, the Air Force “Focal Point Offi­cer” who devel­oped a CIA-con­trolled net­work inside of the branch­es of the mil­i­tary and oth­er agen­cies of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. This “focal point” net­work con­sti­tut­ed a “secret gov­ern­ment with­in a gov­ern­ment” that appears to exist to this day. Next, we set forth the evo­lu­tion of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and Radio Free Asia, the par­ent orga­ni­za­tions of the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. The OTF has cap­i­tal­ized much of the encrypt­ed “anti-sur­veil­lance” tech­nol­o­gy that has been devel­oped. “Team Snow­den,” in turn, has evolved from this milieu. In our past dis­cus­sions of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, we have not­ed that the very same covert action net­works used to over­throw and elim­i­nate gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als deemed hos­tile to U.S. inter­ests were ulti­mate­ly deployed against Amer­i­cans and even the Unit­ed States itself. “Regime change” and desta­bi­liza­tion came home. In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that a CIA-derived tech­nol­o­gy milieu devel­oped to assist and effect “ops” abroad was used to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion through the Snow­den “op.” ” . . . Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­ganda out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Internet’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists. . . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .” Pro­gram High­lights Include: The con­tro­ver­sy over What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy; the devel­op­ment of What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy by the CIA-derived Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund; FBI Direc­tor James Comey’s sup­port for Mitt Rom­ney in 2012; the appar­ent role of Comey in desta­bi­liz­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and the Hillary Clin­ton cam­paign.

FTR #828 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

As the title indi­cates this pro­gram brings up to date a num­ber of sto­ries cov­ered in the past and intro­duces some new top­ics of dis­cus­sion. The top­ics cov­ered include: JFK’s 1963 attempts at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba; new infor­ma­tion cast­ing doubt on the “lone nut” the­o­ry of the 2001 anthrax attacks (which fin­gered Bruce Ivins as a “lone nut” per­pe­tra­tor); Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Rajoy’s sup­pres­sion of polit­i­cal dis­sent, echo­ing the poli­cies of Fran­cis­co Fran­co; a Catholic mass held to hon­or the mem­o­ry of the mur­der­ous World War II Ustachi leader Ante Pavel­ic; the glob­al eco­nom­ic elites’ pur­suit of the same eco­nom­ic poli­cies that drove peo­ple into the arms of fas­cism in the 1930’s; Ayn Rand’s role in inves­ti­gat­ing the 1940’s movie “It’s a Won­der­ful Life” as pos­si­ble cryp­to-Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da; the GOP’s imple­men­ta­tion of fraud­u­lent “dynam­ic scor­ing” eco­nom­ic eval­u­a­tion; the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing’s warn­ing that the devel­op­ment of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence could threat­en the exis­tence of human­i­ty; Mr. Emory’s 1995 warn­ing that the devel­op­ment of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence could threat­en the exis­tence of human­i­ty.

FTR #822 The Snowdenistas, the GOP and Violent Secession

This pro­gram begins by revis­it­ing “The Adven­tures of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den. The “Snow­denistas,” the GOP and the vio­lent, para­mil­i­tary, seces­sion­ist right con­sti­tute a polit­i­cal con­tin­u­um, the lib­er­al views of most of Snow­den’s sup­port­ers, notwith­stand­ing. Snow­den’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice–Citizen Greenwald–continues his pat­tern of frat­er­niz­ing and pro­fes­sion­al­ly defend­ing Nazis and White Suprema­cists. Ebay, owned by Snow­den’s finan­cial angel–Pierre Omidyar–is a sup­port­er of ALEC, one of the most impor­tant of the far-right polit­i­cal engines. Under­scor­ing the extrem­ist nature of the con­tem­po­rary Repub­li­can Par­ty, we note that Texas politi­cians, includ­ing Gov­er­nor-elect Greg Abbott have been explic­it­ly sup­port­ive of para­mil­i­tary vig­i­lantes oper­at­ing along the Mex­i­can bor­der, some of which were stock­pil­ing ammo­ni­um nitrate. Dou­glas MacK­in­non (a for­mer Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush speech­writer) is advo­cat­ing the seces­sion of a num­ber of states to form a new coun­try called “Rea­gan.” Hav­ing grand­stand­ed as an “anti-ter­ror” bul­wark, for­mer Bush (II) Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft is prac­tic­ing law. One of his clients is weapons deal­er Vik­tor Bout, who sup­plied weapons to Al Qae­da.

Benghazi Follies

With the polit­i­cal firestorm gen­er­at­ed by the GOP over the Beng­hazi attack in 2012, it is cer­tain­ly inter­est­ing and pos­si­bly very rel­e­vant to note that the C.I.A. base chief ordered five com­man­dos guard­ing the base to stand down, there­by enabling the lethal vio­lence that claimed the life of the Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Libya. One won­ders if the delay was in fact to pre­cip­i­tate the lethal deba­cle being uti­lized by the Repub­li­cans in their anti-Clin­ton, anti-Oba­ma pro­pa­gan­da?

FTR #797 Cyber-Libertarian Fascism: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

In the long FTR series on L’Af­faire Snow­den, we not­ed that all of the play­ers were out­right fas­cists and/or expo­nents of cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic the­o­ry. That includes Pierre Omid­yar, Nazi fel­low-trav­el­er Glenn Green­wald’s finan­cial angel and backer of First Look media. Tout­ing the lais­sez-faire eco­nom­ics of the GOP and oth­er cor­po­ratist ele­ments around the world, Omid­yar has also helped to finance the rise of fas­cist ele­ments abroad, includ­ing assist­ing in the ascent of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor forces in the Ukraine, as well as Naren­dra Modi, heir to the RSS Hin­du fas­cists that spawned his BJP. Julian Assange, his polit­i­cal idol Rand Paul, Rand Paul’s sup­port­er Ralph Nad­er and Snow­den him­self all fig­ure strong­ly into this unsa­vory polit­i­cal land­scape.

BND Files on Postwar Gestapo and SS Agents Purged During Ernst Uhrlau’s Directorship

Chief of the Ham­burg police dur­ing a peri­od in which Ger­man intel­li­gence had mem­bers of the Ham­burg cell of 9/11 hijack­ers under sur­veil­lance, Ernst Uhrlau was appoint­ed spe­cial advis­er to the Chan­cel­lor on intel­li­gence mat­ters in 1998. He became head of the BND in 2005. Dur­ing Uhrlau’s tenure as BND direc­tor, files on BND offi­cers with SS and Gestapo back­grounds were shred­ded.

FTR #762 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 8: U‑2 Brut? (The Destabilization of the Obama Administration)

Among the evi­dent pri­ma­ry goals of the intel­li­gence oper­a­tion under­tak­en by Edward Snow­den is the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Inten­tion­al­ly dam­ag­ing Oba­ma’s attempts at improv­ing rela­tions with Rus­sia, Chi­na and Germany/EU, the “op” bears strong sim­i­lar­i­ty to the U‑2 inci­dent in May of 1960. That oper­a­tion appears to have been orches­trat­ed by domes­tic intel­li­gence ele­ments, where­as this appears to have been a for­eign “op,” prob­a­bly BND/Underground Reich.