FTR #982 Manafort and the Snipers: The Azov Battalion and the “Russia-Gate” Psy-Op

Con­tin­u­ing and deep­en­ing analy­sis of the pro­found Ukrain­ian fas­cist con­nec­tion to the “Rus­sia-Gate” dis­in­for­ma­tion inun­dat­ing the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal and jour­nal­is­tic land­scapes, this pro­gram high­lights cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the sniper shoot­ings  at the Maid­an demon­stra­tions.

Those sniper shoot­ings were the key cir­cum­stance gen­er­at­ing inter­na­tion­al out­rage against the Yanukovich regime and pre­cip­i­tat­ing the rise of the OUN/B Ukrainain fas­cist suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions. Record­ed the day after for­mer Yanukovuch advis­er and Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Paul Man­afort was indict­ed by [VERY] spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Robert Mueller, this pro­gram sup­ple­ments dis­cus­sion from FTR #981.

Dis­till­ing infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the sniper attacks, we review the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Man­afort might have played an advi­so­ry role in the sniper shoot­ings, that the shoot­ings might have been a provo­ca­tion and exam­ine the role of the Nazi Azov bat­tal­ion and its pro­po­nents and com­po­nent fig­ures in con­nec­tion with the Maid­an shoot­ings and the “Rus­sia-Gate” pro­pa­gan­da. 

We won­der if recent attacks in Ukraine might be ele­ments of a “san­i­ti­za­tion” oper­a­tion, aimed at elim­i­nat­ing par­tic­i­pants in the Maid­an shoot­ings (provo­ca­tion?), while blam­ing the vio­lence (of course) on Rus­sia.

Major con­sid­er­a­tions in the Azov Battalion/Maidan sniper/Manafort imbroglio include:

1.-Alleged “Russ­ian agent” Paul Manafort–identified in FTR #919 as a prob­a­ble “advance man” for regimes tar­get­ed for destabilization–may well have been the per­son who rec­om­mend­ed to his “client” Yanukovich to fire on the Maid­an demon­stra­tors. It was that gun­fire that sig­nalled the end of Yanukovich’s gov­ern­ment. This rein­forces Mr. Emory’s take on Man­afort. ” . . . . The lawyer’s demands for expla­na­tion spring from the hack­ing ear­li­er this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daugh­ter, [since con­firmed as gen­uine, at least in part–D.E.] Andrea, with around 300,000 mes­sages pub­lished in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sis­ter Jes­si­ca said: ‘Don’t fool your­self. That mon­ey we have is blood mon­ey.’ It con­tin­ued ‘You know he has killed peo­ple in Ukraine? Know­ing­ly, as a tac­tic to out­rage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remem­ber when there were all those deaths tak­ing place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strat­e­gy that was to cause that, to send those peo­ple get them slaugh­tered.’ . . . .”
2.-Reinforcing the hypoth­e­sis that the Maid­an shoot­ings were a provo­ca­tion is the dis­clo­sure by Ukraine’s chief pros­e­cu­tor that the rifles alleged­ly used to fire on the Maid­an demon­stra­tors were recov­ered by an alleged Yanukovich oper­a­tive and leader of the snipers who was one of the demon­stra­tors on the Maid­an! “ . . . Ukraine’s Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al Yuriy Lut­senko says that the man who helped the so-called “black hun­dred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shoot­ing at pro­test­ers dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty, flee Kyiv and delib­er­ate­ly drowned their weapons to con­ceal evi­dence, was him­self one of the par­tic­i­pants of the Maid­an protests. ‘With the help of mil­i­tary coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence, we have found weapons of the ‘black hun­dred,’ includ­ing a sniper rifle, which the entire coun­try saw on footage show­ing the shoot­ing at the pro­test­ers from out­side the Octo­ber Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV chan­nel. . . . ‘We found it with a large num­ber of auto­mat­ic rifles on the bot­tom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a sin­gle group, whose leader is one of the tar­gets of our inves­ti­ga­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this man who, accord­ing to our ver­sion, upon the orders of [for­mer Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the ‘black hun­dred’ flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, him­self, was with us on the Maid­an,’ Lut­senko said. . . . ”
3.-The jour­nal­is­tic view­point on a Ukrain­ian hack­er alleged­ly used by “Russ­ian hack­ers” against the U.S. comes from  Anton Gerashchenko, part of the same milieu as Pravy Sek­tor, Azov, etc. Gerashchenko is, in fact, an apol­o­gist for Azov, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 803, 804, 808, 818:  ” . . . . Secu­ri­ty experts were ini­tial­ly left scratch­ing their heads when the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty on Dec. 29 released tech­ni­cal evi­dence of Russ­ian hack­ing that seemed to point not to Rus­sia, but rather to Ukraine. . . A mem­ber of Ukraine’s Par­lia­ment with close ties to the secu­ri­ty ser­vices, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the inter­ac­tion was online or by phone and that the Ukrain­ian pro­gram­mer had been paid to write cus­tomized mal­ware with­out know­ing its pur­pose, only lat­er learn­ing it was used in Russ­ian hack­ing. . . . It is not clear whether the spe­cif­ic mal­ware the pro­gram­mer cre­at­ed was used to hack the D.N.C. servers. . . .”
4.-Exemplifying the Ukrain­ian fas­cists at the epi­cen­ter of “Rus­sia-Gate” are a group of Ukrain­ian hack­ers, work­ing in tan­dem with fas­cist politi­cians like the afore­men­tioned Anton Gerashchenko. (This is dis­cussed in FTR #981.) The hacker/Ukrainian fas­cist link spawned the “Pro­pOrNot” list of “Russian/Kremlin/Putin” dupes in the U.S. media: This list was com­piled by the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice, inte­ri­or min­istry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more fright­en­ing poli­cies enact­ed by the cur­rent oli­garch-nation­al­ist regime in Kiev is an online black­list [42] of jour­nal­ists accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with pro-Russ­ian ‘ter­ror­ists.’ [43]  The web­site, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intel­li­gence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultra­na­tion­al­ist ide­olo­gies as Paru­biy and the new­ly-appoint­ed neo-Nazi chief of the Nation­al Police. . . . The web­site is designed to fright­en and muz­zle jour­nal­ists from report­ing any­thing but the pro-nation­al­ist par­ty line, and it has the back­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s suc­ces­sor to the KGB), the pow­er­ful Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Avakov and his noto­ri­ous far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko. Ukraine’s jour­nal­ist black­list website—operated by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed jour­nal­ists, whose email address­es, phone num­bers and oth­er pri­vate infor­ma­tion was post­ed anony­mous­ly to the web­site. . . .”
5.-Anton Geraschenko is also a pri­ma­ry asso­ciate and defend­er of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and the Nazi Social Nation­al Assem­bly that helped spawn it and over­laps its oper­a­tions: ” . . . . The Azov Bat­tal­ion was formed and armed by Ukraine’s inte­rior min­istry. A min­is­te­r­ial advis­er, Anton Gerashchenko [who is net­work­ing with Ukrain­ian hack­ers loom­ing large in the “Rus­sia-Gate” investigation–D.E.], got angry when I asked him if the bat­tal­ion had any neo-Nazi links through the Social Nation­al Assem­bly. ‘The Social Nation­al Assem­bly is not a neo-Nazi organ­i­sa­tion,’ he said. ‘It is a par­ty of Ukrain­ian patri­ots who are giv­ing their lives while the rich Euro­peans are only talk­ing about sup­port­ing Ukraine. When, may I ask, will Eng­lish peo­ple come here and help us fight ter­ror­ists sent by Russia’s Pres­i­dent [Vladimir] Putin, instead of lec­tur­ing us on our moral val­ues or people’s polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions?’ Mr Gerashchenko was adamant, how­ever, that there were no for­eign cit­i­zens fight­ing in the Azov Bat­tal­ion. ‘There are for­eign jour­nal­ists, from Swe­den, Spain and Italy, who have come to report on the hero­ic achieve­ments of the fight­ers in their strug­gle against ter­ror­ism,’ he said. . . .”
6.-Mikael Skillt (whom we dis­cussed in FTR #803), alleges that he spoke to two aparent mem­bers of the unit con­tained at two snipers, some of whom were present dur­ing the Maid­an protests and appeared to have fired at Ukrain­ian police units. This rein­forces the view that the vio­lence that led to the ouster of Yanukovych was the out­growth of a provo­ca­tion. Note that the Azov’s num­ber two man–Ihor Mosiychuk–was sen­tenced to prison for a planned bomb­ing in Jan­u­ary 2014. His sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed on his behalf on the Maid­an, help­ing to cre­ate the tur­moil that led to Yanukovich’s over­throw. Might this have been part of the same gam­bit as the Maid­an sniper attacks? ” . . . . He [Swedish army sniper Mikael Skillt] admits, how­ev­er, to hav­ing spo­ken to at least two snipers, who, dur­ing the Maid­an protests had shot at police from the Trade Union House in Kiev — at the time, the head­quar­ters of the pro­tes­tors. ‘Their mis­sion was to take out Berkut’s snipers,’ explained Skillt.[7] The dead­ly shots from the Maid­an, which in West­ern pro­pa­gan­da had been used to legit­imize the over­throw of Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, have nev­er been inves­ti­gat­ed by the putsch regime, and Berlin has nev­er applied pres­sure for an inves­ti­ga­tion. . . . [On] Jan­u­ary 10, 2014, Mosiy­chuk and two oth­er fas­cists had been found guilty and sen­tenced to sev­er­al years in prison for a planned August 2011 bomb­ing attack. On the evening of Jan­u­ary 10, ultra-right-wingers staged demon­stra­tions protest­ing the sen­tence. The demon­stra­tions degen­er­at­ed into vio­lent con­fronta­tions with the police. These con­fronta­tions, in turn, were then used by Berlin, Brus­sels and Wash­ing­ton to accuse Yanukovych of exces­sive use of force on the ‘move­ment fight­ing for democ­ra­cy.’ . . .”
7.-The assas­si­na­tion of a Chechyan sniper fight­ing in Ukraine sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Maid­an sniper dynam­ic may be in the process of being san­i­tized, after Mr. Man­afort’s indict­ment, yes­ter­day. Are the assas­si­na­tion of Ukrain­ian sniper Ami­na Okuye­va and the bomb­ing attack on Ihor Mosiy­chuk linked? (Mosiy­chuk was Azov’s sec­ond in com­mand, for whom Okuyeve worked as an advi­sor.) Was a pre­vi­ous alleged attempt on the live of Okuye­va and her hus­band by an assas­sin pre­tend­ing to be a “for­eign jour­nal­ist” linked? Might the “for­eign jour­nal­ist” have been con­nect­ed to the Azov Bat­tal­ion? ” . . . . A Ukrain­ian vet­er­an sniper was killed, and her hus­band, who alleged­ly tried to assas­si­nate Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, was wound­ed in a shoot­ing on Mon­day near Kyiv. . . . Ami­na Okuye­va and Adam Osmayev were rid­ing in a car past a rail­road cross­ing in the vil­lage of Hle­vakha when their vehi­cle came under heavy fire from some­one in the bush­es on the side of the road. . . . Osmayev, who was also shot in the leg, has since blamed Rus­sia for the attack and said that it was con­nect­ed to a car-bomb­ing last week that wound­ed Ukrain­ian law­mak­er Ihor Mosiy­chuk . . . Okuye­va had once worked for Mosiy­chuk as an advis­er, accord­ing to Reuters. . . . This was­n’t the first assas­si­na­tion attempt the cou­ple had faced. On June 1, Osmayev and Okuye­va were in a car with a man, Artur Denisul­tanov-Kur­makayev, mas­querad­ing as a French jour­nal­ist named Alex Wern­er. [Was this one of the “for­eign jour­nal­ists” Anton Gerashchenko claimed were com­ing to Ukraine?–D.E.] At one point, Denisul­tanov-Kur­makayev asked them to pull the car over so that he could give them a gift from his edi­tors. ‘When he opened it I spot­ted a Glock pistol,‘Okuyeva told RFERL after the June attack. ‘He imme­di­ate­ly grabbed it and start­ed shoot­ing at Adam.’ . . . ”

Pro­gram and Writ­ten Descrip­tion High­lights Include:

1.-Review of Ukraine’s lus­tra­tion laws–the three-sided statute tar­get­ed cor­rup­tion, enhanced “anti-Com­mu­nism” and–most importantly–criminalized any crit­i­cal com­men­tary on the OUN/B and UPA’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Third Reich.
2.-The efforts by Ukrain­ian fas­cists of the Pravy Sek­tor milieu to oust Petro Poroshenko by report­ing cor­rup­tion to U.S. author­i­ties.
3.-Review of the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with CIA on the Man­afort inves­ti­ga­tion.
4.-The role of OUN/B devo­tee Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko in gov­ern­ing the SBU (the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice.)
5.-Review of the oper­a­tional links between the Ukrain­ian UNO-UNSA (the lat­est iter­a­tion of the UPA) and anti-Russ­ian Chechen Islamists.
6.-Review of Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al secretary–Roman Svarych–as spokesman for the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

FTR #981 The Ukrainian Fascist Foundation of the “Russia-Gate” Psy-Op

In FTR #967, we not­ed the Ukrain­ian fas­cist affil­i­a­tion of Andrei Arte­menko, a Ukrain­ian mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who worked with CIA and FBI-con­nect­ed Trump busi­ness asso­ciate Felix Sater. Alleged by our media and gov­ern­ment to have sig­ni­fied “Russ­ian influ­ence” on the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, this Sater/Artemenko gam­bit was actu­al­ly an ANTI-Russ­ian con­spir­a­cy.

In this pro­gram, we high­light the pro­found extent to which the “evi­dence” in the Rus­sia-Gate “inves­ti­ga­tion” tracks back to the very same OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions we have cov­ered in so many of our pre­vi­ous pro­grams:

1.-A sto­ry not­ing the prob­a­ble Dnipropetro­vsk ori­gin of the mis­sile tech­nol­o­gy appar­ent­ly facil­i­tat­ing North Kore­a’s guid­ed mis­sile tech­nol­o­gy doc­u­ment­ed the polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion of Igor Kolo­moisky [Kolo­moiskoy], gov­er­nor of the “Dnipro” dis­trict: ” . . . . So, among the Kolo­moisky-backed mili­tias was the Azov bat­tal­ion whose mem­bers marched with Swastikas and oth­er Nazi insignias. . . . . . . . In response to the reports of pos­si­ble Ukrain­ian col­lu­sion in North Korea’s mis­sile pro­gram, Olek­san­dr Turchynov, sec­re­tary of the Ukrain­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty and defense coun­cil, issued a bizarre denial sug­gest­ing that The New York Times and U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies were pawns of Rus­sia. . . . Press reports about Turchynov’s state­ment left out two salient facts: that as the inter­im Pres­i­dent fol­low­ing the Feb­ru­ary 2014 coup, Turchynov ordered Right Sek­tor mil­i­tants to begin the bloody siege of rebel-held Slo­vian­sk, a key esca­la­tion in the con­flict, and that Turchynov was the one who appoint­ed Kolo­moisky to be the ruler of Dnipropetro­vsk.”
2.-The jour­nal­is­tic view­point on a Ukrain­ian hack­er alleged­ly used by “Russ­ian hack­ers” against the U.S. comes from  Anton Gerashchenko, part of the same milieu as Pravy Sek­tor, Azov, etc. Gerashchenko is, in fact, an apol­o­gist for Azov, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 803, 804, 808, 818:  ” . . . . Secu­ri­ty experts were ini­tial­ly left scratch­ing their heads when the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty on Dec. 29 released tech­ni­cal evi­dence of Russ­ian hack­ing that seemed to point not to Rus­sia, but rather to Ukraine. . . A mem­ber of Ukraine’s Par­lia­ment with close ties to the secu­ri­ty ser­vices, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the inter­ac­tion was online or by phone and that the Ukrain­ian pro­gram­mer had been paid to write cus­tomized mal­ware with­out know­ing its pur­pose, only lat­er learn­ing it was used in Russ­ian hack­ing. . . . It is not clear whether the spe­cif­ic mal­ware the pro­gram­mer cre­at­ed was used to hack the D.N.C. servers. . . .”
3.-Reading between the lines, an oth­er­wise char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly pro­pa­gan­dized New York Times arti­cle encap­su­lat­ed crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant infor­ma­tion: “. . . . While still polit­i­cal­ly influ­enced, Ukrain­ian law enforce­ment is no longer a swamp of incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion. It has been able to mon­i­tor Mr. Man­afort’s for­mer busi­ness asso­ciates and turn up evi­dence of Russ­ian hack­ing in the 2016 Unit­ed States elec­tion, in part owing to Amer­i­can sup­port. . . .”
4.-Exemplifying the Ukrain­ian fas­cists at the epi­cen­ter of “Rus­sia-Gate” are a group of Ukrain­ian hack­ers, work­ing in tan­dem with fas­cist politi­cians like the afore­men­tioned Anton Gerashchenko. The hacker/Ukrainian fas­cist link spawned the “Pro­pOrNot” list of “Russian/Kremlin/Putin” dupes in the U.S. media: This list was com­piled by the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice, inte­ri­or min­istry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more fright­en­ing poli­cies enact­ed by the cur­rent oli­garch-nation­al­ist regime in Kiev is an online black­list [42] of jour­nal­ists accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with pro-Russ­ian ‘ter­ror­ists.’ [43]  The web­site, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intel­li­gence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultra­na­tion­al­ist ide­olo­gies as Paru­biy and the new­ly-appoint­ed neo-Nazi chief of the Nation­al Police. . . . The web­site is designed to fright­en and muz­zle jour­nal­ists from report­ing any­thing but the pro-nation­al­ist par­ty line, and it has the back­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s suc­ces­sor to the KGB), the pow­er­ful Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Avakov and his noto­ri­ous far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko. Ukraine’s jour­nal­ist black­list website—operated by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed jour­nal­ists, whose email address­es, phone num­bers and oth­er pri­vate infor­ma­tion was post­ed anony­mous­ly to the web­site.
5.-A Ukrain­ian activist named Alexan­dra Chalu­pa has been instru­men­tal in dis­trib­ut­ing the “Rus­sia did it” dis­in­for­ma­tion to Hillary Clin­ton and influ­enc­ing the progress of the dis­in­for­ma­tion in the media. ” . . . . One of the key media sources [46] who blamed the DNC hacks on Rus­sia, ramp­ing up fears of cryp­to-Putin­ist infil­tra­tion, is a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can lob­by­ist work­ing for the DNC. She is Alexan­dra Chalupa—described as the head of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Committee’s oppo­si­tion research on Rus­sia and on Trump, and founder and pres­i­dent of the Ukrain­ian lob­by group ‘US Unit­ed With Ukraine Coali­tion’ [47], which lob­bied hard to pass a 2014 bill increas­ing loans and mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine, impos­ing sanc­tions on Rus­sians, and tight­ly align­ing US and Ukraine geostrate­gic inter­ests. . . . In one leaked DNC email [50] ear­li­er this year, Chalu­pa boasts to DNC Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Luis Miran­da that she brought Isikoff to a US-gov­ern­ment spon­sored Wash­ing­ton event fea­tur­ing 68 Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists, where Chalu­pa was invit­ed ‘to speak specif­i­cal­ly about Paul Man­afort.’ In turn, Isikoff named her as the key inside source [46] ‘prov­ing’ that the Rus­sians were behind the hacks, and that Trump’s cam­paign was under the spell of Krem­lin spies and sor­cer­ers. . . .”
6.-Alleged “Russ­ian agent” Paul Manafort–identified in FTR #919 as a prob­a­ble “advance man” for regimes tar­get­ed for destabilization–may well have been the per­son who rec­om­mend­ed to his “client” Yanukovich to fire on the Maid­an demon­stra­tors. It was that gun­fire that sig­nalled the end of Yanukovich’s gov­ern­ment. This rein­forces Mr. Emory’s take on Man­afort. ” . . . . The lawyer’s demands for expla­na­tion spring from the hack­ing ear­li­er this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daugh­ter, [since con­firmed as genuine–D.E.] Andrea, with around 300,000 mes­sages pub­lished in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sis­ter Jes­si­ca said: ‘Don’t fool your­self. That mon­ey we have is blood mon­ey.’ It con­tin­ued ‘You know he has killed peo­ple in Ukraine? Know­ing­ly, as a tac­tic to out­rage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remem­ber when there were all those deaths tak­ing place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strat­e­gy that was to cause that, to send those peo­ple get them slaugh­tered.’ . . . .”
7.-Reinforcing the hypoth­e­sis that the Maid­an shoot­ings were a provo­ca­tion is the dis­clo­sure by Ukraine’s chief pros­e­cu­tor that the rifles alleged­ly used to fire on the Maid­an demon­stra­tors were recov­ered by an alleged Yanukovich oper­a­tive and leader of the snipers who was one of the demon­stra­tors on the Maid­an! “ . . . Ukraine’s Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al Yuriy Lut­senko says that the man who helped the so-called “black hun­dred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shoot­ing at pro­test­ers dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty, flee Kyiv and delib­er­ate­ly drowned their weapons to con­ceal evi­dence, was him­self one of the par­tic­i­pants of the Maid­an protests. ‘With the help of mil­i­tary coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence, we have found weapons of the ‘black hun­dred,’ includ­ing a sniper rifle, which the entire coun­try saw on footage show­ing the shoot­ing at the pro­test­ers from out­side the Octo­ber Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV chan­nel. . . . ‘We found it with a large num­ber of auto­mat­ic rifles on the bot­tom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a sin­gle group, whose leader is one of the tar­gets of our inves­ti­ga­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this man who, accord­ing to our ver­sion, upon the orders of [for­mer Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the ‘black hun­dred’ flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, him­self, was with us on the Maid­an,’ Lut­senko said. . . . ”
8.-The sniper activ­i­ty in the Maid­an must be weighed against the fact that Nazi-linked ele­ments from the Azov milieu were serv­ing as snipers in Kiev at the time. Were they con­nect­ed to the shoot­ings of demon­stra­tors?
9.-The sup­posed “evi­dence” of Russ­ian hack­ing in the U.S. elec­tion comes from Crowd­Strike, whose co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy officer–Dmitry Alperovitch–is deeply tied to the NATO/OUN/B milieu installed in pow­er in Ukraine: ” . . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. The con­nec­tion between Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Information sup­ple­ment­ing the dis­cus­sion from FTR #967 con­cern­ing attempts by the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions to oust Poroshenko.
2.-Efforts by Yulia Tymoshenko to pass infor­ma­tion about Poroshenko to U.S. author­i­ties.
3.-The role of for­mer Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence chief, Pravy Sek­tor inti­mate Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko in Tymoshenko’s efforts.
4.-The role of Naly­vaichenko in pro­vid­ing dirt on Poroshenko to Arte­menko
5.-The role of Atlantic Coun­cil financier Vik­tor Pinchuk in advanc­ing “peace plans” being attrib­uted to “Russia/Putin/the Kremlin/dupes of same.”

FTR #967 Update on Ukrainian Fascism, the “Russia-Gate” Psy-Op and the Possibility of a Third World War

This pro­gram affords a vista on sev­er­al crit­i­cal polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty land­scapes, includ­ing the use of nuclear pow­er plants as an eco­nom­ic weapon and sab­o­taged via phys­i­cal inter­dic­tion or cyber-inter­fer­ence.

After exam­in­ing a sup­posed “Russ­ian-med­dling” inci­dent which was actu­al­ly an ANTI-Russ­ian inci­dent to use Ukrain­ian nuclear pow­er plants to super­sede the old Sovi­et pow­er grid in for­mer republics of the U.S.S.R., we note the con­tin­ued dom­i­nance of the Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal land­scape by vir­u­lent fas­cists evolved from the World War II era OUN/B.

We con­clude with a ter­ri­fy­ing look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the sabotaging/hacking of nuclear pow­er plants could lead to a Third World War.

With the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ments turn­ing hand­springs over “Rus­sia-gate,” we exam­ine in detail one of the inci­dents promi­nent in the pre­sen­ta­tion of the sup­po­si­tion that “our democ­ra­cy” was manip­u­lat­ed by the Rus­sians.

In late Jan­u­ary, Trump point man for “mat­ters Russian”–CIA/FBI oper­a­tive Felix Sater, a long-time asso­ciate of his and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and a Ukrain­ian par­lia­men­tar­i­an named Andrii Arte­menko were propos­ing a cease-fire/­peace plan for Ukraine. This has been spun by our media as con­sti­tut­ing yet anoth­er of the “Rus­sia con­trols Trump” man­i­fes­ta­tions.

The facts, how­ev­er, reveal that this was not a “pro-Russ­ian” gam­bit but an ANTI-Russ­ian gam­bit! In addi­tion to the CIA/FBI affil­i­a­tion of Sater, it should be not­ed that Arte­menko was part of the Pravy Sek­tor milieu in Ukraine, one of the most vir­u­lent of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in that benight­ed nation.

Sater, Arte­menko and oth­ers were work­ing on a plan to reha­bil­i­tate Ukrain­ian nuclear pow­er plants in order to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty for Ukraine and the Baltic states, free­ing those for­mer Sovi­et republics from their old Sovi­et elec­tri­cal pow­er grids. The aging Sovi­et grids are a remain­ing ele­ment for poten­tial Russ­ian influ­ence in these areas.

Andrii Arte­menko:

1.-” . . . is a pop­ulist politi­cian with ties to the far-right Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary-polit­i­cal group “Right Sec­tor” and a mem­ber of the pro-West­ern oppo­si­tion par­lia­men­tary coali­tion led by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Yulia Tymoshenko’s par­ty. . . .. . . . Arte­menko, who is a staunch ally of Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko, a for­mer head of Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty ser­vice with lofty polit­i­cal ambi­tions, has aligned him­self with oth­er West-lean­ing pop­ulists like Tymoshenko. . . .”
2.-” . . . . has a wife who is a mod­el, he served 2.5 years in prison with­out a tri­al, he has busi­ness in U.S and he is involved in the mil­i­tary trade to the war zones in the Mid­dle East. At home, he has close ties with the ultra-nation­al­is­tic Right Sec­tor. . . .”
3.-” . . . accord­ing to his pre­vi­ous e‑declaration in 2015, Arte­menko has a wife, mod­el Oksana Kuch­ma and four chil­dren, includ­ing two with U.S. cit­i­zen­ship — Edward Daniel, Amber Kather­ine. . . .”
4.-” . . . . found­ed sev­er­al com­pa­nies that pro­vid­ed mil­i­tary logis­tics ser­vices into the con­flict zones and trav­eled to Sau­di Ara­bia, Syr­ia, and Qatar for busi­ness trips. . . .”
5.-” . . . . is the deputy head of the Euro­pean Inte­gra­tion Com­mit­tee and respon­si­ble for diplo­mat­ic con­nec­tions with Sau­di Ara­bia, Qatar, Unit­ed States, Kuwait, Lithua­nia and Belarus. . . .”
6.-” . . . . joined the Right Sec­tor polit­i­cal par­ty and was rumored to be one of the spon­sors of its leader, Dmytro Yarosh, dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign in 2014. There is even a pho­to of Arte­menko, seat­ing among the Right Sec­tor Par­ty founders at the first par­ty meet­ing in March 2014. Right Sec­tor spokesper­son Artem Sko­ropad­sky told the Kyiv Post on Feb. 20 that he couldn’t con­firm or deny whether Arte­menko financed the Right Sec­tor Par­ty. . . .”

Any­thing but a “pro-Russ­ian” agent. Again, he was work­ing with Trump point man for mat­ters Russ­ian Felix Sater on this deal to pro­vide nuclear-gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty to some for­mer Sovi­et republics. Again, an anti-Russ­ian plot, NOT a pro-Russ­ian plot!

Next, we note that June 30th has been estab­lished as a com­mem­o­ra­tive cel­e­bra­tion in Lvov [Lviv]. It was on June 30, 1941, when the OUN‑B announced an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state in the city of Lviv. That same day marked the start of the Lviv Pograms that led to the death of thou­sands of Jews.

The hol­i­day cel­e­brates Roman Shukhevych, com­man­der of the Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion that car­ried out the mass killings. The city of Lviv is start­ing “Shukhevy­ch­fest” to be held in Lviv on June 30th, com­mem­o­rat­ing the pogrom. Shukhevy­ch’s birth­day. Shukhevych was named a “Hero of the Ukraine” by Vik­tor Yuschenko.

In past posts and pro­grams, we have dis­cussed Volodomir Vya­tro­vich, head of the Orwellian Insti­tute of Nation­al Remem­brance. He defend­ed Shukhevych and the pub­lic dis­play­ing of the sym­bol of the Gali­cian Divi­sion (14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion.)

Return­ing to Sater col­lab­o­ra­tor Andrii Arte­menko, we note that he is part of push by Pravy Sek­tor and oth­er OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine to oust Poroshenko.

A major, ter­ri­fy­ing part of the pro­gram focus­es on nuclear pow­er plants, the phys­i­cal and/or cyber sab­o­tag­ing of those plants and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this could lead to a Third World War. Against the back­ground of the drum­beat of anti-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da to which we are being sub­ject­ed, the charge that “Russ­ian hack­ers” attempt­ed to gain access to U.S. nuclear pow­er plants using a spearfish­ing attack is to be viewed with alarm.

“. . . . The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed Sat­ur­day that U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials have already pinned the recent nuclear cyber intru­sions on Rus­sia. . . . Ana­lysts remain quick to tamp down asser­tions that Russia’s fin­ger­print on the lat­est attack is a sure thing. . . . Still, it’s a pret­ty alarm­ing sit­u­a­tion regard­less of who was behind it, in part because it’s an exam­ple of how poten­tial­ly vul­ner­a­ble things like nuclear plants are to any hack­er, state-backed or not: . . . . Still, the source said a well-resourced attack­er could try sneak­ing in thumb dri­ves, plant­i­ng an insid­er or even land­ing a drone equipped with wire­less attack tech­nol­o­gy into a nuclear gen­er­a­tion site. Reports indi­cate that the infa­mous Stuxnet worm, which dam­aged Iran­ian nuclear cen­trifuges in the late 2000s, prob­a­bly snuck in on remov­able media. Once inside the “air gapped” tar­get net­work, Stuxnet relied on its own hard-cod­ed instruc­tions, rather than any remote com­mands sent in through the inter­net, to cause cost­ly and sen­si­tive nuclear equip­ment to spin out of con­trol. . . .”

The above-excerpt­ed sto­ry should be viewed against the back­ground of a fright­en­ing devel­op­ment in Flori­da. Devon Arthurs – a neo-Nazi-turned-Muslim–murdered two of his neo-Nazi room­mates back in May. Nation­al Guard sol­dier Bran­don Rus­sell – Arthurs’s sur­viv­ing third room­mate, was found with bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als, radioac­tive sub­stances and a framed pic­ture of Tim­o­thy McVeigh after police searched their res­i­dence.

Rus­sell:

1.-Planned to sab­o­tage a nuclear pow­er plant. ” . . . . He said Rus­sell stud­ied how to build nuclear weapons in school and is ‘some­body that lit­er­al­ly has knowl­edge of how to build a nuclear bomb.’ . . . He also said they had a plan to fire mor­tars loaded with nuclear mate­r­i­al into the cool­ing units of a nuclear pow­er plant near Mia­mi. He said the dam­age would cause ‘a mas­sive reac­tor fail­ure’ and spread ‘irra­di­at­ed water’ through­out the ocean. . . .”
2.-Belonged to a Nazi group called “Atom­waf­fen.” ” . . . The FBI said Rus­sell “admit­ted to his neo-Nazi beliefs” and said he was a mem­ber of a group called Atom­waf­fen, which is Ger­man for ‘atom­ic weapon.’ . . .”
3.-Was in the Nation­al Guard. Recall that, in the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, the Under­ground Reich gains con­trol of the opin­ion-form­ing media, infil­trates the U.S. mil­i­tary and takes over the coun­try after it is dev­as­tat­ed by a series of ter­ror­ist inci­dents involv­ing Russ­ian WMDs. The stage is set for a Nazi flase flag oper­a­tion that could be blamed on Rus­sia.

Rus­sell, and the rest of Atom­waf­fen, received a wring­ing endorse­ment from bril­liant Nazi hack­er Andrew Aueren­heimer. Auern­heimer is a skilled hack­er who may very well have the abil­i­ty to trig­ger a nuclear melt down some­day. Writ­ing of the mur­der of Rus­sel­l’s room­mates Auern­heimer, the two killed room­mates were “friends of friends” and the “Atom­waf­fen are a bunch of good dudes. They’ve post­ed tons of fliers with absolute­ly killer graph­ics at tons of uni­ver­si­ties over the years. They gen­er­al­ly have a lot of fun and par­ty.”

The point, here, is that Aueren­heimer is part of the Nazi milieu that was look­ing to sab­o­tage a nuclear pow­er plant. With our media hyp­ing “Russ­ian hack­ing,” includ­ing the sup­posed attempt to hack U.S. nuclear pow­er plants, the pro­pa­gan­da stage is set for some­one with Aueren­heimer’s for­mi­da­ble com­put­er skills to sab­o­tage a nuke plant, there­by [very pos­si­bly] start­ing World War III.

This post con­cludes with a detailed arti­cle referred to briefly at the end of the broad­cast. It delves into the tech­ni­cal­ly com­pli­cat­ed dis­cus­sion about the high-pro­file hacks.

Against the back­ground of the reports of Russ­ian hack­ing of U.S. nuclear pow­er plants, the “Atom­waf­fen” link to Ukraine-based Andrew Aueren­heimer, writer Jef­frey Car­r’s reflec­tions are to be weighed very seri­ous­ly:

” . . . . Here’s my night­mare. Every time a claim of attri­bu­tion is made—right or wrong—it becomes part of a per­ma­nent record; an un-ver­i­fi­able prove­nance that is built upon by the next secu­ri­ty researcher or start­up who wants to grab a head­line, and by the one after him, and the one after her. The most sen­sa­tion­al of those claims are almost assured of inter­na­tion­al media atten­tion, and if they align with U.S. pol­i­cy inter­ests, they rapid­ly move from unver­i­fied the­o­ry to fact.

Because each head­line is informed by a report, and because indi­ca­tors of com­pro­mise and oth­er tech­ni­cal details are shared between ven­dors world­wide, any State or non-State actor in the world will soon have the abil­i­ty to imi­tate an APT group with State attri­bu­tion, launch an attack against anoth­er State, and gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient harm­ful effects to trig­ger an inter­na­tion­al inci­dent. All because some com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies are com­pelled to chase head­lines with sen­sa­tion­al claims of attri­bu­tion that can­not be ver­i­fied. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The CIA/State Depart­ment back­ground of Kurt Volk­er (nice Anglo-Sax­on name, that), Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and an advo­cate of sell­ing weapon­ry to that benight­ed state; Andrii Arte­menko and Felix Sater’s would-be asso­ciate in the Ukrain­ian nuclear pow­er plant scheme, Robert Armao; Armao’s links to Nel­son Rock­e­feller, Marc Rich and Francesco Pazien­za (a fig­ure in the inves­ti­ga­tions into P‑2, the shoot­ing of Pope John Paul I and the col­lapse of the Ban­co Ambrosiano); Review of James Comey’s role in inves­ti­gat­ing Bill Clin­ton’s par­don of Marc Rich; review of the revival of the FBI’s Twit­ter account and its dis­sem­i­na­tion of Marc Rich mate­r­i­al on the eve of the elec­tion; review of Felix Sater’s CIA/FBI back­ground; Aueren­heimer’s obses­sion with Tim­o­thy McVeigh; Bran­don Rus­sel­l’s fas­ci­na­tion with Tim­o­thy McVeigh..

FTR #966 Dramatis Personae of the Russia-Gate Psy-Op

Devel­op­ing infor­ma­tion about the cast of char­ac­ters in the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op, we high­light the polit­i­cal alle­giance of “Team Trump”–the oper­a­tives involved with Trump’s cam­paign and busi­ness deal­ings with Rus­sia, as well as Robert Mueller, for­mer FBI chief and a very spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor indeed.

Although Trump cer­tain­ly had links to Russ­ian mob fig­ures, they are by no means the prime movers in this dra­ma.

Most impor­tant­ly, we detail the polit­i­cal resumes and deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the cast of char­ac­ters in this dra­ma, track­ing the oper­a­tional links back to Joe McCarthy and the red-bait­ing spe­cial­ists from the first Cold War.

Joe McCarthy legal point man Roy Cohn is, to a con­sid­er­able extent, the spi­der at the cen­ter of this web. Cohn:

1.-Was Trump’s attor­ney for much of “The Don­ald’s” pro­fes­sion­al life.
2.-Introduced Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and dirty tricks spe­cial­ist Roger Stone to the seat­ed Pres­i­dent.
3.-Was instru­men­tal in arrang­ing for a bribe which made “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York. Cohn and Stone’s asso­ciate in this oper­a­tion was Antho­ny “Fat Tony” Salerno–one of Cohn’s mob clients and among Don­ald Trump’s orga­nized crime asso­ciates as well.
4.-Was the point man for intro­duc­ing Rupert Mur­doch to Ronald Rea­gan and forg­ing the right-wing media attack machine that dom­i­nates today, the most promi­nent ele­ment of which is Fox News.

Roger Stone is anoth­er fig­ure who weaves through­out this con­cate­na­tion. Stone:

1.-Was Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er dirty tricks oper­a­tive, who net­worked with Wik­iLeaks go-between for the Trump/Alt-right crew.
2.-Was tout­ing Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty can­di­date Gary John­son. John­son and Jill Stein were advo­cat­ed for by Stone as par­tic­i­pants in the debates between Hillary Clin­ton and Trump. (John­son and Stein’s com­bined vote total helped Trump win in sev­er­al key states.)
3.-Worked with Roy Cohn to put “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York, as not­ed above.

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. As the media firestorm around “Rus­sia-gate” builds, it is impor­tant not to lose sight of Sater. ” . . . . He [Sater] 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. . . .” We won­der if help­ing the “Rus­sia-Gate” op may have been one of those.

Beyond Sater, oth­er key play­ers in this con­cate­na­tion do not track back to “Kremlin/Putin/FSB/KGB.” Rob Goldstone–the pub­li­cist whose over­ture to Don­ald Trump, Jr. ini­ti­at­ed the lat­est “Rus­sia-gate jour­nal­is­tic feed­ing fren­zy in the media, began his career a jour­nal­is­tic foot sol­dier for Rupert Mur­doch, the very same Rupert Mur­doch whose chris­ten­ing as a GOP/right-wing pro­pa­gan­dist was ini­ti­at­ed by Roy Cohn.

Gold­stone con­tact­ed Don­ald Trump Jr., dan­gling the bait that there might be dirt on Hillary avail­able if he met with some asso­ciates. Fore­most among those is a Russ­ian attor­ney, Natal­ie Vesel­nit­skaya. Her appar­ent pur­pose in this meet­ing was not to offer up dirt on Hillary Clin­ton but to work toward eas­ing a media lock­down on a doc­u­men­tary about the Mag­nit­sky affair.

Spun in the West, the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar, as a clas­sic exam­ple of ham-fist­ed Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and vio­lence, the Mag­nit­sky affair was revealed in the film doc­u­men­tary to be an exam­ple of U.S. cor­rup­tion, not Russ­ian.

Craft­ed by Putin polit­i­cal oppo­nent Andrei Nekrasov, the film revealed an unex­pect­ed dynam­ic: ” . . . . Nekrasov dis­cov­ered that a woman work­ing in Browder’s com­pa­ny was the actu­al whistle­blow­er and that Mag­nit­sky – rather than a cru­sad­ing lawyer – was an accoun­tant who was impli­cat­ed in the scheme. . . .”

Attempt­ing to lift the media black­out on Nekrasov’s film was Vesel­nit­skaya’s goal, not dis­sem­i­nat­ing dirt on Hillary Clin­ton.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: the financ­ing of Joe McCarthy’s career by Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er Wal­ter Har­nischfeger, part of the Ger­man-Amer­i­can Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try which was at the fore­front of the dis­cus­sion in FTR #‘s 918, 919; McCarthy’s use of a post­war Nazi net­work head­ed by Gen­er­al Karl Wolff, SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler’s per­son­al adju­tant; Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor Robert Mueller’s role in cov­er­ing up the BCCI scan­dal and the over­lap­ping Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion pur­suant to 9/11.

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 #963 Watergate and the Assassination of President Kennedy, Part 3

As com­par­isons between the Water­gate scan­dal and “Rus­sia-gate” sat­u­rate the media (in the sum­mer of 2017), the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion about con­nec­tions between the Water­gate scan­dal and the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Nixon told aides that he did­n’t want to release the White House tape record­ings because he was afraid “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” might come out. Nixon aide H.R. Halde­man said in his book “The Ends of Pow­er” that “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” was a code word in the Nixon White House for the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. (It should be remem­bered that Nixon was in Dal­las on 11/22/63, yet he told the FBI in Feb­ru­ary of 1964 that he had left Dal­las two days pri­or to Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion.)

When inter­viewed by the War­ren Com­mis­sion, Jack Ruby indi­cat­ed that he had been part of a con­spir­a­cy to kill Kennedy and that he feared for his life. The War­ren Com­mis­sion turned a deaf ear to his desire to go to Wash­ing­ton and “spill the beans.” Ger­ald Ford (who suc­ceed­ed Nixon as Pres­i­dent and par­doned him of all crimes com­mit­ted), Leon Jawors­ki (a War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel who was a direc­tor of a CIA domes­tic fund­ing con­duit and who was select­ed by Nixon to be Water­gate Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor) and Arlen Specter (anoth­er War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel who was Nixon’s first choice as his per­son­al defense attor­ney in the Water­gate affair) were present at Ruby’s de fac­to con­fes­sion.

War­ren Com­mis­sion Coun­sel J. Lee Rankin is also present at this inter­view. Nixon first select­ed J. Lee Rankin to serve as Water­gate Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor. Rankin was sub­se­quent­ly tabbed to review the Water­gate tapes and deter­mine which would be released. Rankin was the War­ren Com­mis­sion’s liai­son between the com­mis­sion and both the CIA and the FBI. Rankin was a key pro­po­nent of the so-called “Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.”

It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Nazis and Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tain­ly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Com­mu­nist League) were involved.

” . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . . I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Naz­i’s [sic], and that is who is in pow­er in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­i­ca is also full of these Naz­i’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­ri­or motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .”

The late inves­tiga­tive reporter and “What’s My Line” pan­elist Dorothy Kil­gallen pub­lished Ruby’s War­ren Com­mis­sion Tes­ti­mo­ny and had told asso­ciates she would “break this case wide open.” Short­ly after­ward, she was found dead of alco­hol and bar­bi­tu­rate poisoning–suicide and acci­den­tal death have both been put for­ward as rea­sons for her demise. Her wid­ow­er refused pub­lic com­men­tary on her death and even­tu­al­ly “com­mit­ted sui­cide” him­self.

We excerpt The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 2, high­light­ing Kil­gal­len’s death. Inter­est­ing­ly and sig­nif­i­cant­ly, “What’s My Line” host and mod­er­a­tor John Charles Daly was Earl War­ren’s son-in-law, as dis­cussed in FTR #190. Did Daly pur­pose­ful­ly or inad­ver­tent­ly con­vey infor­ma­tion to War­ren about Kil­gal­len’s inves­ti­ga­tion? Was that in any way con­nect­ed with her death?

On the Daly/Warren in-law relationship–note that Daly worked as a White House cor­re­spon­dent and globe-trav­el­ing reporter for CBS radio news, a vice-pres­i­den­cy at ABC in charge of news and also head­ed the Voice of Amer­i­ca, which had strong links to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. Those jour­nal­is­tic posi­tions, as well as his role as direc­tor of VOA may well have brought him into the fold of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

The late inves­tiga­tive reporter and “What’s My Line” pan­elist Dorothy Kil­gallen pub­lished Ruby’s War­ren Com­mis­sion Tes­ti­mo­ny and had told asso­ciates she would “break this case wide open.” Short­ly after­ward, she was found dead of alco­hol and bar­bi­tu­rate poisoning–suicide and acci­den­tal death have both been put for­ward as rea­sons for her demise. Her wid­ow­er refused pub­lic com­men­tary on her death and even­tu­al­ly “com­mit­ted sui­cide” him­self.

Next, the pro­gram excerpts FTR #253, fea­tur­ing an intrigu­ing com­men­tary by the late, vet­er­an CIA offi­cer Gor­don Nov­el. High­lights of that pro­gram include:

1. The broad­cast high­lights the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Richard Nixon’s White House tapes. These tape record­ings were, ulti­mate­ly, the vehi­cle for forc­ing his exit from the White House. That event was the cul­mi­na­tion of the Water­gate affair. There was dis­cus­sion in the fall of 2000 among elec­tron­ics experts con­cern­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of uti­liz­ing advanced, high-tech equip­ment to recov­er mate­r­i­al from a famous 18 ½ minute era­sure on one of the tapes.
(The San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er; 9/22/2000; p. A2.)
2. The sub­ject of whether or not the era­sure had been delib­er­ate was a sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment of con­tro­ver­sy dur­ing the Water­gate affair. (Nixon’s sec­re­tary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed that she “acci­den­tal­ly” erased the tape. Most experts reject­ed her ver­sion of events. Inter­est­ing­ly, the tape that was erased was a record­ing of a con­ver­sa­tion between White House aide H.R. Halde­man and Nixon. In an auto­bi­og­ra­phy about the Water­gate affair, Halde­man wrote that “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” was a code word with­in the Nixon White House for the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Nixon refused to release the Water­gate tapes for fear that release would lead to expo­sure of “the whole Bay of Pigs thing.”
3. Much of the pro­gram con­sists of excerpts from oth­er broad­casts. In an excerpt from G‑3, the broad­cast high­lights a vet­er­an covert intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor named Gor­don Nov­el. Among Novel’s many tal­ents is elec­tron­ic coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence. His name crops up in the con­text of both the JFK case and the Water­gate scan­dal. Nov­el was the source for an impor­tant piece of infor­ma­tion that fig­ured in the Jim Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. That report con­cerned a raid on a muni­tions cache to obtain arms for anti-Cas­tro activ­i­ties, the CIA’s Bay of Pigs inva­sion, in par­tic­u­lar.
(“Coin­ci­dence or Con­spir­a­cy?”; Bernard Fen­ster­wald and the Com­mit­tee to Inves­ti­gate Assas­si­na­tions; copy­right 1976 by Zebra Books, a divi­sion of Kens­ing­ton Pub­lish­ers.)
4. This oper­a­tion alleged­ly involved David Fer­rie and Guy Ban­nis­ter, two of the key fig­ures in Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. Nov­el was lat­er con­sult­ed by White House aide Charles Col­son con­cern­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of elec­tron­i­cal­ly eras­ing the tapes. (Coin­ci­dence or Con­spir­a­cy?)
5. Novel’s tan­gen­tial involve­ment in the Water­gate inves­ti­ga­tion sur­faced in a mag­a­zine called Tech­nol­o­gy Illus­trat­ed. In 1983, the mag­a­zine ran an arti­cle about Novel’s pres­ence at a gath­er­ing of vet­er­an covert intel­li­gence oper­a­tives, includ­ing con­vict­ed Water­gate bur­glar G. Gor­don Lid­dy.
(“Tech­nol­o­gy Illus­trat­ed”; 4/83.)
6. In a let­ter to the edi­tor, Mr. Nov­el took issue to some of the com­ments about him in the April issue.
(Tech­nol­o­gy Illus­trat­ed; 7/83.)
7. In that let­ter, Nov­el made ref­er­ence to his ultra high tech­nol­o­gy role “to erase the Water­gate tapes.” (Idem.)
In 1984, Mr. Emory was a guest on a late-night com­mer­cial talk show and Mr. Nov­el phoned in, tak­ing issue with Mr. Emory’s descrip­tion of his posi­tion in Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tion.
(The Express Way show with Lar­ry John­son on KOME-FM in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia; 10/29/1984.)
8. Most of the sec­ond side of this pro­gram con­sists of an excerpt­ing of the con­ver­sa­tion with the late, for­mi­da­ble Nov­el. In his con­ver­sa­tion with Mr. Emory, Nov­el denied any involve­ment in Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and crit­i­cized Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. (Idem.)
9. When the sub­ject of Water­gate came up, Mr. Emory asked Mr. Nov­el if he denied actu­al­ly hav­ing erased the Water­gate tapes. Nov­el replied “only because they didn’t pay me.” (Idem.)
When pressed fur­ther, Nov­el clar­i­fied his state­ment, say­ing he didn’t erase any por­tions of the Water­gate tapes. He did state that he was one of a pan­el of experts who ana­lyzed the 18 ½‑minute gap and stat­ed that it could have been made acci­den­tal­ly. (Idem.)
10. Intrigu­ing­ly, Nov­el added that he was also on the pan­el of elec­tron­ics experts that tes­ti­fied that the Dic­ta­phone record­ing from a Dal­las police motor­cy­cle was accu­rate in its reveal­ing of a fourth shot–which neu­tral­ized the sin­gle bul­let the­o­ry.
11. In FTR #190, Nov­el con­firmed his role in the bur­glary of the Schlum­berg­er facil­i­ty and main­tained that he was involved with a plan to give anti-Cas­tro Cubans [Cas­tro] army uni­forms to wear while attack­ing the U.S. Marines at Guan­tanamo, there­by trig­ger­ing a U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.
12. After Mr. Nov­el­’s death, it emerged that he was serv­ing as a mole in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion, fun­nel­ing infor­ma­tion to Allen Dulles.

FTR #961 Watergate and the Assassination of President Kennedy, Part 1

With Water­gate being bruit­ed about by our media in con­junc­tion with the “inves­ti­ga­tions” into Trump and “Rus­sia-gate,” we are tak­ing time to dig into the archives and recap infor­ma­tion about one of the fac­tors that under­lay the Water­gate scandal–the Assas­si­na­tion of JFK.

The first of the pro­grams excerpts The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 3 (record­ed on 11/15/1983) at length. From the descrip­tion for the pro­gram:

“Richard Nixon’s polit­i­cal demise came through the Water­gate scan­dal. Nixon ini­ti­at­ed the Water­gate cov­er-up because he feared that “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” would come out. In his polit­i­cal mem­oir “The Ends of Pow­er,” Nixon aide H.R. Halde­man wrote that the phrase “Bay of Pigs” was a code-word with­in the Nixon White House for the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion.

The pro­gram doc­u­ments many of the areas of over­lap between the Water­gate and Kennedy inves­ti­ga­tions.

Nixon him­self was in Dal­las on Novem­ber 22, 1963, as a lawyer for Pep­si­co (the par­ent com­pa­ny of Pep­si Cola.) Fly­ing out of Dal­las rough­ly two hours before Kennedy was slain, Nixon told the FBI in Feb­ru­ary of 1964 that the only time he had been in Dal­las in 1963 had been “two days pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion.” This bla­tant lie is negat­ed by a wire ser­vice inter­view Nixon gave in Dal­las on Novem­ber 21. Text of the inter­view ran in the New York Times and oth­er major news­pa­pers.

Water­gate Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor Leon Jawors­ki was select­ed by Nixon to replace the ille­gal­ly fired Archibald Cox. Jawors­ki had pre­vi­ous­ly served as a War­ren Com­mis­sion Coun­sel, while at the same time serv­ing as direc­tor of a CIA domes­tic fund­ing con­duit.

Nixon named for­mer War­ren Com­mis­sion mem­ber Ger­ald Ford to replace Vice Pres­i­dent Agnew. Ford then replaced Nixon as Pres­i­dent and par­doned him of all crimes he may have com­mit­ted. . . .

. . . . The pro­gram dis­cuss­es evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing numer­ous oth­er fig­ures to the both inves­ti­ga­tions, includ­ing Water­gate Judge John Sir­i­ca and Water­gate bur­glar Frank Stur­gis (aka Frank Fior­i­ni).

To attempt selec­tive era­sure of the all-impor­tant Water­gate tapes, Nixon sought the assis­tance of Gor­don Nov­el, a vet­er­an intel­li­gencer, elec­tron­ics expert, anti-Cas­tro vet­er­an and a fig­ure in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion in New Orleans. At least one key tape was par­tial­ly erased (the famous 18 1/2 minute gap), though no cul­prit was ever iden­ti­fied.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Leon Jaworski’s role as Kore­a­gate Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor, which per­mit­ted the eclips­ing of the Moon orga­ni­za­tion’s links to the CIA; the role of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church–the Moon organization–in gen­er­at­ing sup­port for Nixon dur­ing Water­gate; Jude Sarah Hugh­es’s involve­ment with a CIA domes­tic fund­ing con­duit; Hugh­es’s admin­is­tra­tion of the oath of office to LBJ on the plane fly­ing back to Wash­ing­ton DC; Judge Sir­i­ca’s elec­toral sup­port for Richard Nixon (“Max­i­mum John” Sir­i­ca was the Judge in the Water­gate case); the fact that the suit by JFK researcher Harold Weis­berg and attor­ney James Lesar sought infor­ma­tion from the War­ren Com­mis­sion, part of the exec­u­tive branch of gov­ern­ment; that body was a Pres­i­den­tial fact-find­ing com­mis­sion with no legal sta­tus what­so­ev­er; Sir­i­ca’s rul­ing against the plain­tiffs was a con­tra­ven­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion; Jaworski’s role as one of two heads of the Texas Court of Inquiry, the body formed by the state of Texas in order to inves­ti­gate the assassination;“ex” CIA offi­cer James McCord’s deci­sive role in both betray­ing the Water­gate bur­glars and in see­ing to it that the inves­ti­ga­tion would go for­ward; Frank Stur­gis and his role (as Frank Fior­i­ni) in run­ning the Mob’s casi­nos in Cuba pre-Cas­tro; Stur­gis’s role in gen­er­at­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion point­ing toward Cas­tro as the archi­tect of the assas­si­na­tion; an arti­cle from a 1983 tech­nol­o­gy pub­li­ca­tion in which Gor­don Nov­el dis­cuss­es his ultra high-tech­nol­o­gy role “to erase the Water­gate tapes” (this will be dis­cussed at greater length in future pro­grams.)