FTR #1036 Interview #6 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The sixth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

In FTR #1035, we set forth the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union:

• A num­ber of aspects of his tenure the Sovi­et Union sug­gest that, not only was he there as a spook, but the Sovi­ets knew that he was there to spy. Among the note­wor­thy aspects of his Sovi­et sojourn that are set forth in this pro­gram:
• Oswald was giv­en a hard­ship dis­charge with just a few months remain­ing on his enlist­ment tour. He got this in an inor­di­nate­ly short amount of time. He was sup­posed to take care of his moth­er, and yet his broth­er Robert was there to care for her, mak­ing Lee’s pres­ence there unnec­es­sary.
• Oswald booked his steamship pas­sage from the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart in New Orleans, head­ed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s tri­al.
• Oswald osten­si­bly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, an obscure Swiss insti­tu­tion that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
• He defect­ed to the Sovi­et Union from Helsin­ki, Fin­land. His stay there rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions, includ­ing the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, lux­u­ry hotel.
• After leav­ing the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kur­ki, anoth­er high-end insti­tu­tion. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these insti­tu­tions is a mystery–he did not have enough mon­ey in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
• His selec­tion of Helsin­ki is sig­nif­i­cant, also, because the Sovi­et Embassy there was the only one that could issue a trav­el visa to the Sovi­et Union in a lit­tle more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?
After review­ing the curi­ous aspects of the begin­ning Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union, the pro­gram notes many aspects of his stay in the U.S.S.R. that strong­ly sug­gest he was there as an under­cov­er intel­li­gence oper­a­tive.
After leav­ing from the curi­ous­ly con­ve­nient depar­ture point of Helsin­ki, Fin­land, Oswald met an agent from Intourist, the Sovi­et state trav­el agency. Once again, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s stay in the Sovi­et Union are sug­ges­tive of an intel­li­gence cov­er, a “leg­end.”

1. Meet­ing with his Intourist guide, Oswald indi­cat­ed that he had secret infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions that he wished to share with Sovi­et intel­li­gence.
2. After being denied res­i­dence in the U.S.S.R. Oswald was involved in an appar­ent­ly “pho­ny” sui­cide attempt, which was almost cer­tain­ly an attempt to remain in the U.S.S.R. longer than his trav­el visa would have per­mit­ted. Were the Sovi­ets on to him? It seems alto­geth­er prob­a­ble.
3. Oswald was housed at the Metro­pole Hotel, which Sovi­et intel­li­gence out­fit­ted with sophis­ti­cat­ed sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, indi­cat­ing sus­pi­cion on their part.
4. Oswald was inter­viewed by U.S. Embassy offi­cer Richard Sny­der, who had strong links to U.S. intel­li­gence, includ­ing a pro­gram at Har­vard to vet stu­dents for intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed trav­el to the U.S.S.R. One of the stu­dents he over­saw was Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki.
5. Sny­der appears to have “han­dled” Oswald in such a way that he would nev­er cease being a U.S. cit­i­zen. Once again, Oswald repeat­ed his intent to give secret intel­li­gence about U.S. air oper­a­tions to Sovi­et intel­li­gence, most like­ly a ref­er­ence to the U‑2 project.
6. Oswald was sent to Min­sk, where he was put to work in a radio fac­to­ry, after being afford­ed more-than-com­fort­able liv­ing cir­cum­stances by Sovi­et author­i­ties.
7. Oswald sub­mit­ted a detailed, 30-page paper on the radio fac­to­ry that appears to have been an intel­li­gence report on the instal­la­tion.
8. Also while in the U.S.S.R., Oswald gave inter­views to jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Priscil­la John­son MacMil­lan, who was a “will­ing CIA asset.” In that inter­view, Oswald gave a per­for­mance which could only be described as a hack­neyed man­i­fes­ta­tion of a stereo­typed Marxist/Communist.
9. The han­dling of Oswald’s files in the cor­ri­dors of U.S. intel­li­gence are more than a lit­tle strange. Despite hav­ing threat­ened to open a trea­so­nous breach in the secu­ri­ty of U.S. air oper­a­tions, no 201 file was opened on Oswald, and his doc­u­men­ta­tion at Lan­g­ley was rout­ed to James Angle­ton’s files on the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was unthink­able. As we will see in future dis­cus­sion, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the FBI’s FLASH clas­si­fi­ca­tion on Oswald–which would have sound­ed an alert upon this osten­si­ble trai­tor­’s re-entry into the U.S.–is also out of the ordi­nary. Recall the unusu­al treat­ment afford­ed State Depart­ment offi­cer Otto Otep­ka in con­nec­tion with inquiries into Oswald and the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was high­light­ed in FTR #1035.
10. While in the U.S.S.R. he met Mari­na Prusako­va (lat­er Mari­na “Oswald”), who may very well have been a Sovi­et intel­li­gence agent.
11. Mari­na lived with her uncle, who was an offi­cer with the MVD, the Sovi­et equiv­a­lent of the FBI.
12. Mari­na inter­act­ed with Robert Web­ster, anoth­er appar­ent “pho­ny” defec­tor from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. Web­ster had worked for the CIA-linked RAND cor­po­ra­tion. It is high­ly unlike­ly that she would have inter­act­ed with both Oswald and Web­ster as a mat­ter of coin­ci­dence.
13. Mari­na also dis­cussed hav­ing enter­tained Afghanistan’s ambas­sador to the Sovi­et Union, again, indica­tive of a prob­a­ble intel­li­gence link on Mari­na’s part.
14. Fur­ther bur­nish­ing Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tions is the fact that she was pro­fi­cient in the Eng­lish lan­guage, both spo­ken and writ­ten. The notion that she would have need­ed an inter­preter, as she is alleged to have required in post-assas­si­na­tion inquiries.
15. Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tion and the prob­a­bil­i­ty that she was assigned to Oswald dove­tails with the sit­u­a­tion of Richard Case Nag­ell. While in Japan, Oswald came in con­tact with Richard Case Nag­ell, a deep-cov­er intel­li­gence offi­cer assigned to play a dou­ble agent. Even­tu­al­ly, Nag­ell was assigned by his [osten­si­ble] Sovi­et han­dlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pre­text for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Unable to talk Oswald out of engag­ing in the asso­ci­a­tions with which he was con­nect­ed, Nagell–who had infil­trat­ed the New Orleans anti-Cas­tro Cuban milieu in which Oswald was entrenched, shot up a Texas bank in order to get him­self put in prison, say­ing he did not want to become a trai­tor. Nag­ell is the focal point of the remark­able book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Rus­sell, who was inter­viewed in FTR #54.
16. The rapid­i­ty and ease with which Oswald and Mari­na were grant­ed per­mis­sion to leave the Sovi­et Union togeth­er also sug­gests that she may have been per­form­ing an intel­li­gence func­tion. Nor­mal­ly, it might have tak­en some years for a Sovi­et woman who had mar­ried an Amer­i­can to obtain per­mis­sion to emi­grate.

After get­ting back to the Unit­ed States, the con­nec­tions and activ­i­ties of the Oswalds con­tin­ue to be “pass­ing strange,” IF one takes the leg­end of the so-called assas­sin at face val­ue.

Hav­ing threat­ened to com­mit trea­son by dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions, (the U‑2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. Orig­i­nal­ly called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an inte­gral part of the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit, a key ele­ment of the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, and an impor­tant part of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. It is unthink­able that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intel­li­gence and the FBI. In fact, Jim men­tions that a for­mer CIA offi­cer Don­ald Dene­selya told the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions that the CIA did, in all like­li­hood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, how­ev­er, sought to dis­tance itself from the JFK assas­si­na­tion fall guy.

When the sup­posed Marx­ist trai­tor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Com­mu­nist White Russ­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the Dallas/Fort Worth are, them­selves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.
Among the peo­ple with which the Oswalds net­worked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his Wife, the for­mer Princess Sherba­tov, a mem­ber of the Romanov Roy­al fam­i­ly!
2. Peter Gre­go­ry.
3. George Bouhe, who will fig­ure promi­nent­ly in our next pro­gram.
4. George de Mohren­schildt, who we will exam­ine at length in our next inter­view. De Mohren­schildt was part of the fam­i­ly that manged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; a long­time CIA asset; a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.

FTR #954 Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack? Not So Fast

In the wake of the alleged sarin attack by Bashar al-Assad’s gov­ern­ment and the cruise mis­sile strike on a Syr­i­an air base by the U.S., we exam­ine some of the rel­e­vant issues in the cri­sis, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly intel­li­gence eval­u­a­tions sharply diver­gent from the offi­cial ver­sion:

a). We begin with analy­sis of the area (Idlib) where the alleged Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment sarin attack took place. It is dom­i­nat­ed by the Al-Nus­ra Front, the name giv­en to Al-Qae­da in Iraq when it oper­ates in Syr­ia. Note that the top cler­ic in the Al-Qae­da held area is Abdul­lah Muhaysi­ni, a Sau­di cler­ic: ” . . . . who was a stu­dent [25] of Sulay­man Al-Alwan, the Wah­habi cler­ic who over­saw what his Mus­lim crit­ics have called a ‘ter­ror­ist fac­to­ry [26]’ in Sau­di Arabia’s Al-Qas­sim Province. Al-Alwan was also the instruc­tor of the 9/11 hijack­er Abdu­laz­iz Alo­mari. . . .”

b.) Sad­dam and bin Laden worked out an arrange­ment in which Iraq—in order to pro­vide for a pay­back capa­bil­i­ty if the U.S. oust­ed him—gave infor­ma­tion about WMD’s to bin Laden’s peo­ple. Al Qae­da, in turn, was to act as a back-up unit for Saddam’s Iraq, strik­ing at the Unit­ed States if it knocked out Sad­dam. ” . . . . Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kab­ul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein. . . . Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz. . . .”

c). Robert Par­ry notes in Con­sor­tium News that ele­ments in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty do not agree with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. ” . . . . Alarm with­in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty about Trump’s hasty deci­sion to attack Syr­ia rever­ber­at­ed from the Mid­dle East back to Wash­ing­ton, where for­mer CIA offi­cer Philip Giral­di report­ed hear­ing from his intel­li­gence con­tacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poi­son-gas sto­ry was being dis­tort­ed by Trump and the main­stream U.S. news media. Giral­di told Scott Horton’s Web­cast: ‘I’m hear­ing from sources on the ground in the Mid­dle East, peo­ple who are inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the intel­li­gence that is avail­able who are say­ing that the essen­tial nar­ra­tive that we’re all hear­ing about the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment or the Rus­sians using chem­i­cal weapons on inno­cent civil­ians is a sham.’ . . .”

d.) Par­ry also notes that some ana­lysts are report­ing a strike by a drone launched from a joint Sau­di-Israeli base that sup­ports Syr­i­an rebels. ” . . . Despite some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in trac­ing its flight path, ana­lysts even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the flight was launched in Jor­dan from a Sau­di-Israeli spe­cial oper­a­tions base for sup­port­ing Syr­i­an rebels, the source said, adding that the sus­pect­ed rea­son for the poi­son gas was to cre­ate an inci­dent that would reverse the Trump administration’s announce­ment in late March that it was no longer seek­ing the removal of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad. . . .”

e.) Par­ry con­cludes one of his arti­cles with a scathing analy­sis of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s claims by a MIT researcher: ” . . . . In a sep­a­rate analy­sis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Pos­tol, a nation­al secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, con­clud­ed that the White House claims were clear­ly bogus, writ­ing: ‘I have reviewed the doc­u­ment care­ful­ly, and I believe it can be shown, with­out doubt, that the doc­u­ment does not pro­vide any evi­dence what­so­ev­er that the US gov­ern­ment has con­crete knowl­edge that the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ia was the source of the chem­i­cal attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syr­ia at rough­ly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017. In fact, a main piece of evi­dence that is cit­ed in the doc­u­ment points to an attack that was exe­cut­ed by indi­vid­u­als on the ground, not from an air­craft, on the morn­ing of April 4. This con­clu­sion is based on an assump­tion made by the White House when it cit­ed the source of the sarin release and the pho­tographs of that source. My own assess­ment, is that the source was very like­ly tam­pered with or staged, so no seri­ous con­clu­sion could be made from the pho­tographs cit­ed by the White House.’ . . . ”

f.) Detailed analy­sis of an August, 2013 sarin attack, orig­i­nal­ly thought to have been per­pe­trat­ed by Bashar Al-Assad, was pre­sent­ed by Sey­mour Hersh in the Lon­don Review of Books. The sarin turns out not to have come from Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment stock­piles. “. . . . Obama’s change of mind had its ori­gins at Por­ton Down, the defence lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wilt­shire. British intel­li­gence had obtained a sam­ple of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analy­sis demon­strat­ed that the gas used didn’t match the batch­es known to exist in the Syr­i­an army’s chem­i­cal weapons arse­nal. The mes­sage that the case against Syr­ia wouldn’t hold up was quick­ly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. . . .”

g.) Al-Nus­ra (Al-Qae­da), on the oth­er hand, was pro­duc­ing Sarin and look­ing to ramp up pro­duc­tion through a sup­ply pipeline run­ning through Turkey. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syr­ia were devel­op­ing chem­i­cal weapons. On 20 June ana­lysts for the US Defense Intel­li­gence Agency issued a high­ly clas­si­fied five-page ‘talk­ing points’ brief­ing for the DIA’s deputy direc­tor, David Shedd, which stat­ed that al-Nus­ra main­tained a sarin pro­duc­tion cell: its pro­gramme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre‑9/11 effort’. . . .”

h.) The 2013 con­clu­sions of gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey are worth exam­in­ing in the con­text of the cur­rent cri­sis: ” . . . . From the begin­ning of the cri­sis, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, the joint chiefs had been skep­ti­cal of the administration’s argu­ment that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and oth­er agen­cies for more sub­stan­tial evi­dence. ‘There was no way they thought Syr­ia would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was win­ning the war,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1. Review of the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood devel­op­men­tal the­o­ry. “. . . . 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 . . . The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. . . .”

2. Review of Gra­ham E. Fuller’s sup­port for the eco­nom­ic val­ues of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and his strange sup­port for Bernie Sanders, whose val­ues are the oppo­site of those espoused by Fuller.

3. The fact that war in the Mid­dle East rais­es oil prices–this to be seen against the back­ground of Rex Tiller­son being Sec­re­tary of State (pre­vi­ous­ly CEO of Exxon/Mobil). ” . . . . For investors like Mr. Abdul­lah, con­flict in the Mid­dle East means one thing: high­er oil prices. ‘It’s always good for us,’ he says. . . .”

4. Robert Par­ry’s view that the omis­sion of CIA direc­tor Mike Pom­peo and oth­er top U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials from a pho­to of Trump’s top advi­sors is indica­tive of dis­sent with­in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty from the offi­cial ver­sion of the attack.

FTR #886 What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by “The Earth Island Boogie?,” Part 3: Geopolitical Quicksand

Ana­lyz­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Amer­i­can use of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Islamists as proxy war­riors and armed her­alds of cor­po­ratist free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic val­ues might back­fire on the Unit­ed States, we look at the devel­op­ment of ISIS, the curi­ous Turk­ish about-face on the Fetul­lah Gulen orga­ni­za­tion and fall­out from the so-called “Arab Spring.” Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of a “dooms­day” con­tin­gency plan con­coct­ed by al-Qae­da and Sad­dam Hus­sein to back each oth­er up mil­i­tar­i­ly in the event either or both were over­thrown by the U.S., we exam­ine the promi­nent role of for­mer mem­bers of Sad­dam’s offi­cer corps in admin­is­ter­ing ISIS. ISIS and al-Qae­da are hold­ing forth in Libya, which is serv­ing as a base for spread­ing their oper­a­tions into Africa. Like the bloody Syr­i­an civ­il war, the over­throw of Khadafy (which set the stage for the Islamist pres­ence in Libya) is an out­growth of the so-called “Arab Spring”–one of the “con­ga-line ops” we high­light­ed in FTR #885. Much of the pro­gram high­lights the oper­a­tions of the Fetul­lah Gulen orga­ni­za­tion in Turkey. Alleged to be a CIA front orga­ni­za­tion and Islam­ic extrem­ist in nature, the Gulen orga­ni­za­tion was for­mer­ly an ally of Tayyip Erdo­gan. Now, it is among his most bit­ter oppo­nents. Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Hitler’s view that Islamists were a cru­cial Third Reich ally; review of a crit­i­cal meet­ing in Switzer­land at which promi­nent Euro-fas­cists and al-Taqwa direc­tor Ahmed Huber met; spec­u­la­tion that the Swiss “Euro-fas­cist” sum­mit may have helped gen­er­ate the intel­li­gence dis­in­for­ma­tion that helped lure the Bush admin­is­tra­tion into the ill-advised Iraq war; “ex” CIA offi­cer Gra­ham Fuller’s ridicule of the alle­ga­tion that the Gulen orga­ni­za­tion is a CIA front orga­ni­za­tion; the close con­nec­tions between Erdo­gan’s AKP Par­ty, Ger­many and the EU.

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 #811 Walkin’ the Snake in Ukraine, Part 4

With anoth­er anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks hav­ing passed, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the ongo­ing dam­age from the unlearned lessons con­cern­ing those attacks. Before dis­cussing ongo­ing sup­port for Cau­casian and Chechen jihadist ele­ments by ele­ments of U.S., West­ern and Sau­di intel­li­gence, the pro­gram high­lights the bogus intel­li­gence about a sup­posed “Russ­ian inva­sion” of Ukraine that does not appear to have occurred at all. Much of the sup­posed intel­li­gence on this “inva­sion” comes from satel­lite pho­tos, show­ing what are sup­posed to be Russ­ian armored and artillery ele­ments in Ukraine. These pho­tos are NOT from U.S. recon­nais­sance satel­lites, but come from a pri­vate company–DigitalGlobe. Found­ed by vet­er­ans of Ronald Rea­gan’s “Star Wars” pro­gram (The Strate­gic Defense Ini­tia­tive), the com­pa­ny’s exec­u­tives have CV’s involv­ing work for Bain (Mitt Rom­ney’s firm) and IHS, the Thyssen/Bornemisza group firm that is the epi­cen­ter of the Peak Oil doc­trine. Access­ing archival infor­ma­tion about sup­port for Chechen Islamists by ele­ments of U.S., West­ern and Sau­di intel­li­gence, the pro­gram notes the involve­ment of Ukrain­ian fas­cists from the UNA/UNSO orga­ni­za­tion in Chech­nya and the Cau­ca­sus. The report­ed com­bat exper­tise of ISIS is said by some ana­lysts to have evolved from the par­tic­i­pa­tion in that group of Chechen vet­er­ans, mak­ing our slip­pery slope involve­ment against the group blowback–to an extent–from the West­’s proxy war­riors in the Cau­ca­sus. As was the case in Afghanistan–where the U.S. fought a bloody, inde­ci­sive war against jihadists craft­ed to fight against the U.S.S.R. and sub­se­quent­ly Russia–we once again find Amer­i­can mil­i­tary forces engaged against jihadists being used as proxy war­riors by ele­ments of the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate elite and allied nation­al secu­ri­ty ele­ments. The pro­gram con­cludes with a clos­er look at the his­tor­i­cal back­ground to some recent pro­pa­gan­da in the New York Times’ op-ed page, ascrib­ing Russ­ian respon­si­bil­i­ty to the 1999 assas­si­na­tions of Armen­ian polit­i­cal lead­ers by the Dash­nags, an Armen­ian nation­al­ist group with long­stand­ing his­tor­i­cal links to Ukrain­ian fas­cists and oth­er ele­ments of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism and the Under­ground Reich.

FTR #800 Meet the New Boss(es), Same as the Old Boss(es): Update on Ukraine

Con­tin­u­ing our ongo­ing cov­er­age of the Ukrain­ian cri­sis, the pro­gram begins with an exam­i­na­tion of the con­ti­nu­ity of the OUN/B Third Reich col­lab­o­ra­tionist milieu through the decades. The “new” Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko is advised by a team of polit­i­cal vetarns, includ­ing Roman Zvarych (“Svarych”), the per­son­al sec­re­tary to OUN/B head Jaroslav Stet­sko and a right-hand man to his wid­ow and suc­ces­sor Sla­va Stet­sko. Svarych served as Min­is­ter of Jus­tice in both Tym­noshenko gov­ern­ments, as well as under Vik­tor Yuschenko. The Con­gress of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, co-found­ed by Sla­va Stet­sko and Zvarych, has served as a cen­tral ele­ment in Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal coali­tions, embody­ing the con­ti­nu­ity of the OUN/B through­out the short his­to­ry of post-Sovi­et Ukraine. In addi­tion to retain­ing Swo­bo­da’s Andriy Paru­biy as Ukraine’s top defense offi­cial, Poroshenko is imple­ment­ing the EU aus­ter­i­ty doc­trine, con­tin­u­ing the bru­tal civ­il war and open­ing up Ukraine to Ger­man invest­ment. The U.S. and EU are endors­ing frack­ing and fos­sil fuel pro­duc­tion to sab­o­tage the Russ­ian econ­o­my and Pres­i­dent Putin’s gov­ern­ment.

Ukrainian Money-Go-Round

We have not­ed in posts and pro­grams that Ukraine has 25% of the world’s proven nat­ur­al gas reserves. The East­ern part of the coun­try is rich­er in nat­ur­al gas than the West. Exem­pli­fy­ing the very crony cap­i­tal­ism that the U.S. decries when it occurs else­where (includ­ing Rus­sia), Burisma–a Cyprus-based com­pa­ny with sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas fields –has hired Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s son R. Hunter Biden. The com­pa­ny’s board of direc­tors fea­tures Devon Archer, the for­mer col­lege room­mate of Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry’s Step­son Christo­pher Heinz (of the wealthy food-empire fam­i­ly.) In addi­tion, Ukraine has issued $1 bil­lion bonds, backed by the U.S. tax­pay­er.

FTR #784 “First, Tame the Intellectuals . . . .”

Sev­er­al Swo­bo­da par­lia­men­tary deputies roughed up the direc­tor of the largest state TV sta­tion in Ukraine and forced his resignation–this because he broad­cast excerpts of Putin’s speech about the annex­a­tion of Crimea. The assault was led by Ihor Mirosh­ny­chenko, the Deputy Chair of the par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee on Free­dom of Speech and Infor­ma­tion! Like the U.S. media, the Ger­man media have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ing Swo­bo­da as some­thing oth­er than the fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion it clear­ly is. Much of the pro­gram deals with the nature of the so-called demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion in Rus­sia, about which we’ve heard so much cat­er­waul­ing of late. In par­tic­u­lar, the pro­gram high­lights the true polit­i­cal cache of Alex­ei Naval­ny, recent­ly fea­tured as an op-ed writer in The New York Times.

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

In the after­math of the Ukraine coup, want­ed posters for for­mer pres­i­dent Yanukovich sprang up all over that coun­try and were lib­er­al­ly dis­trib­uted in the media. QUICK: If you were going to craft and dis­trib­ute want­ed posters in the Unit­ed States, would you have the text in Ukrain­ian?

The Ukraine Is Alleged to Have 25% of the World’s Proven Natural Gas Reserves

A fac­tor that is cen­tral to the Ukrain­ian sit­u­a­tion is that coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas reserves. The Ukraine has a quar­ter of the world’s proven nat­ur­al gas reserves. Those reserves may well be seen as the answer to the EU’s ener­gy sit­u­a­tion. We won­der if the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch process might be used to derive motor fuel from that nat­ur­al gas, as is being done in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-affil­i­at­ed nation of Qatar.