R.I.P. Daniel Hopsicker

Over many years, it was Mr. Emory’s priv­i­lege and hon­or to have inter­viewed Daniel Hop­sick­er fre­quent­ly and at length. In the wake of his pass­ing from can­cer on 8/22/2023 at the age of 72, we mourn the loss of this pro­fes­sion­al, and yet can be very glad for his hav­ing shared his work with us. Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Failure in Afghanistan

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

FTR #1028 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Updat­ing pre­vi­ous paths of inquiry, as well as intro­duc­ing new ones, the pro­gram begins with a bit of both–discussion of the mur­der of Sau­di jour­nal­ist and pos­si­ble Sau­di and U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cer Jamal Khashog­gi. A devel­op­ment which res­onates strong­ly with pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the so-called “Arab Spring” (read “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring”), the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics of Ibn Khal­dun and the Broth­er­hood, and Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute (which fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the post‑9/11 Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion into al-Qae­da and ter­ror­ist financ­ing), Khashog­gi’s death has occa­sioned howls of out­rage, much beat­ing of breasts and tear­ing of hair in nor­mal­ly Sau­di-friend­ly con­fines both inside, and out­side of the U.S.

Khashog­gi’s many con­nec­tions and per­son­al and insti­tu­tion­al rela­tion­ships are impor­tant and piv­otal in a num­ber of ways. They include:

1.–Khashoggi’s long-stand­ing advo­ca­cy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Note the main­stream medi­a’s mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as “demo­c­ra­t­ic.” In FTR #‘s 787, 1025 and 1026, we not­ed how fun­da­men­tal­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic the Broth­er­hood is: ” . . . . In his penul­ti­mate col­umn, Mr. Khashog­gi said democ­ra­cy in the Mid­dle East couldn’t hap­pen with­out the inclu­sion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. ‘The erad­i­ca­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is noth­ing less than an abo­li­tion of democ­ra­cy and a guar­an­tee that Arabs will con­tin­ue liv­ing under author­i­tar­i­an and cor­rupt regimes,’ Mr. Khashog­gi wrote Aug. 28. ‘There can be no polit­i­cal reform and democ­ra­cy in any Arab coun­try with­out accept­ing that polit­i­cal­Is­lam is a part of it.’. . . .”  
2.–Allegedly actu­al mem­ber­ship in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: ” . . . .  Sev­er­al of his friends say that ear­ly on Mr. Khashog­gi also joined the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. . . .”
3.–A work­ing pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with Khaled Saf­fu­ri, the co-founder of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute. This insti­tu­tion was, in effect, an Amer­i­can nexus for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its lais­sez-faire/­cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics, as well as being a cen­tral ele­ment in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion. We cov­ered Oper­a­tion Green Quest at length in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing FTR #‘s 356, 357, 462, 464, 513, 1006 : ” . . . . Jamal Khashog­gi, a pro­lif­ic writer and com­men­ta­tor, was work­ing qui­et­ly with intel­lec­tu­als, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democ­ra­cy for the Arab World Now. . . . Khashog­gi had incor­po­rat­ed his democ­ra­cy advo­ca­cy group, DAWN, in Jan­u­ary in Delaware, said Khaled Saf­fu­ri, anoth­er friend. The group was still in the plan­ning stages, and Khashog­gi was work­ing on it qui­et­ly, like­ly con­cerned it could cause trou­ble for asso­ciates, includ­ing activists in the Gulf, Saf­fu­ri said. . . .”
4.–Turkey’s Tayyip Erdo­gan, who might be described as a fas­cist wish­bone, with one foot in the Islam­ic fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the oth­er in the sec­u­lar Pan-Turk­ist fas­cism of the Nation­al Action Par­ty and the Grey Wolves. ” . . . . Mr. Khashog­gi was close to the gov­ern­ment of Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, whose ties with Sau­di Ara­bia had become increas­ing­ly strained in recent years. Turkey backed Qatar in its diplo­mat­ic spat with Sau­di Ara­bia last year, and like Qatar, Turkey also dif­fers with Sau­di Ara­bia over its view of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Mr. Khashog­gi knew Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan per­son­al­ly and was a friend to some of his clos­est advis­ers, say peo­ple who knew him. . . .”
5.–Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, the head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, who, as dis­cussed in numer­ous shows, includ­ing FTR #‘s 347 and 358, basi­cal­ly ran Osama bin Laden. Khashog­gi was also close to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, at one time the sec­ond largest stock­hold­er in News­corp (behind the Mur­dochs) and some­one “20th hijack­er” Zacarias Mous­saoui named as one of the promi­nent Saud­is who financed al-Qae­da. Imme­di­ate­ly after being named by Mous­saoui, al-Waleed announced that he was donat­ing all of his bil­lions to char­i­ty. ” . . . . Through it all, he main­tained close ties to some of Sau­di Arabia’s most pow­er­ful princes. In the ear­ly 2000s, he served as an advis­er to Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, a for­mer head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, dur­ing the prince’s time as ambas­sador to the U.K. and the U.S. He was a friend of the bil­lion­aire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. . . .”
5.–Osama bin Laden and sup­port for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, who mor­phed into al-Qae­da. ” . . . . He trav­eled to Afghanistan as a jour­nal­ist, where he became the first Arab jour­nal­ist to inter­view Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s. ‘A lot of them went to fight. He went to report,’ said Peter Bergen, an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and aca­d­e­m­ic who knew Mr. Khashog­gi. . . .”
7.–Khashoggi was the nephew of Sau­di weapons deal­er Adnan Khashog­gi, who was piv­otal­ly involved with the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal, the sup­port effort for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, Al-Qae­da and the so-called “Truther” move­ment. ” . . . . His uncle was Adnan Khashog­gi, a famous arms deal­er. . . .”
8.– His rela­tion­ship with Sau­di intel­li­gence chief Prince Tur­ki (who “ran” Osama bin Laden for a time), his role in the Afghan war cov­er­ing bin Laden and the Muja­hadeen and his work for the CIA-con­nect­ed Wash­ing­ton Post sug­gest the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that the late Jamal Khashog­gi was a spook-jour­nal­ist, work­ing for both the Saud­is and ele­ments of CIA.

In FTR #1015, we not­ed the issu­ing of school text­books glo­ri­fy­ing Nazism while Naren­dra Modi head­ed the Indi­an state of Gujarat.

In FTR #998, among oth­er pro­grams, we not­ed John Cony­ers’ active oppo­si­tion to the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, and his ouster by the #MeToo move­ment, which dis­plays symp­to­matic fea­tures of an “op.” Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the appar­ent role of Far right blog­ger Mike “Misog­y­ny Gets You Laid” Cer­novich. An inter­est­ing per­son to sig­nal the destruc­tion of one of the few active­ly anti-fas­cist law­mak­ers by on osten­si­bly “pro­gres­sive” polit­i­cal move­ment.

It is inter­est­ing and sig­nif­i­cant that Cony­ers also co-spon­sored a House Res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Mod­i’s sup­port for Nazi racism and ide­ol­o­gy.

” . . . . The spon­sor, Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI) said the State Depart­ment ‘has dis­cussed the role of Modi and his gov­ern­ment in pro­mot­ing atti­tudes of racial suprema­cy, racial hatred, and the lega­cy of Nazism through his government’s sup­port of school text­books in which Nazism is glo­ri­fied.’ The res­o­lu­tion said Modi revised school text­books, which men­tioned the ‘charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ty of Hitler the Supre­mo’ and failed to acknowl­edge the hor­rors of the Holo­caust. . . .”

Worth not­ing in this con­text is the fact that Pierre Omid­yar active­ly assist­ed the rise of both the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine and Mod­i’s BJP/RSS fas­cists in India, as dis­cussed in FTR #889.

The rest of the pro­gram con­sists of dis­cus­sion of the inter­sec­tion of eugen­ics, white suprema­cy and anti-immi­gra­tion fer­vor, This will be exam­ined at greater length in our next pro­gram.
Key points of analy­sis include:
1.–Similarity between the title of a DHS post­ing and the 14 words slo­gan mint­ed by Nazi David Lane.
2.–The res­ig­na­tion of a DHS Trump appointee due to links to white suprema­cists.
3.–Other Trump appointees with links to the Fed­er­a­tion of Immi­gra­tion Reform.
4.–A pos­si­ble mind con­trol link to the mur­der of Iowa col­lege stu­dent Mol­lie Tib­betts.
5.-Review of the Sirhan Sirhan link to the “girl in the pol­ka dot dress.”

FTR #1027 Send in The Clowns: Reflections on the Kavanaugh Circus

“A friv­o­lous soci­ety can only achieve dra­mat­ic sig­nif­i­cance through what its friv­o­li­ty destroys.”–Edith Whar­ton.

The large­ly inept ques­tion­ing of Brett Kavanaugh about his youth­ful, drunk­en sex­u­al behav­ior eclipsed Kavanaugh­’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in far more seri­ous, and alto­geth­er lethal activ­i­ties dur­ing his piv­otal role with the Bush admin­is­tra­tions, pri­mar­i­ly that of George W. Bush: ” . . . . Kavanaugh, now Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­nee to the Supreme Court, had an ordi­nary-sound­ing title: staff sec­re­tary. But he wield­ed extra­or­di­nary influ­ence as the advis­er respon­si­ble for screen­ing, review­ing and edit­ing doc­u­ments deliv­ered to Bush, inter­views and doc­u­ments show. . . . But no jus­tice in recent mem­o­ry has worked as intent­ly as Kavanaugh at the high­est lev­els of the nation’s polit­i­cal machin­ery, schol­ars said. . . . Doc­u­ments and inter­views show that while Kavanaugh was not a pol­i­cy­mak­er, he was direct­ly involved in help­ing the White House man­age a wide array of sen­si­tive mat­ters, includ­ing the war on ter­ror­ism . . . .  ‘It put Kavanaugh at the cen­ter of every polit­i­cal and pol­i­cy deci­sion at the Bush White House,’ said Peter Irons, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego and author of sev­er­al books about the Supreme Court. ‘He is exact­ly the kind of per­son that the legal con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment wants on the court.’ . . . . Kavanaugh was respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the process that helped shape the president’s think­ing and fueled the Bush admin­is­tra­tion agen­da. ‘He was every­where,’ said Michael Ger­son, a speech­writer in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and now a syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist at The Post. . . . ‘Vir­tu­al­ly every piece of paper had to pass through the staff secretary’s hands,’ Rove said. . . .”

Kavanaugh­’s wife also had deep ties to the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. ” . . . . Ash­ley Estes Kavanaugh worked as media rela­tions coor­di­na­tor for the George W. Bush Pres­i­den­tial Cen­ter from 2009–2010; worked as Direc­tor of Spe­cial Projects for the George W. Bush pres­i­den­tial Foun­da­tion from 2005 to 2009; was Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s per­son­al sec­re­tary from 2001 to 2005; was an assis­tant in the White House from 2001 to 2005; and worked on the Bush-Cheney 2000 cam­paign from 1996 to 2000. Her time with Bush dates to his work in Texas as gov­er­nor there. She was assis­tant to Gov­er­nor George W. Bush from 1996 to 1999. She attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin from 1994 to 1997. . . .”

In the con­text of Kavanaugh­’s Sen­ate ques­tion­ing, Mr. Emory made a num­ber of points, includ­ing the fol­low­ing:

1.–Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gor­such attend­ed the same high school. Where­as there was a huge com­mo­tion over Brett Kavanaugh­’s drunk­en sex­u­al behav­ior (as there should have been), there was no atten­tion what­so­ev­er paid to Neil Gor­such’s boast­ing of par­tic­i­pa­tion in a social group of reac­tionary stu­dents who called them­selves “The Fas­cism For­ev­er Club.” (That such a social group exist­ed was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by the edi­tors of Gor­such’s high school year­book.)  This was cov­ered in FTR #945. A screen cap­ture of the high school year­book edi­tors’ mus­ings  on Gor­such’s Fas­cism For­ev­er social cir­cle is includ­ed in the writ­ten descrip­tion for the pro­gram.
2.–Absent on the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee that queried and vet­ted Judge Kavanaugh was Al Franken, who was pro­fes­sion­al­ly destroyed in one of the most hys­ter­i­cal­ly fascis­tic, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic events in recent mem­o­ry. (We dis­cussed this in FTR #998, and sup­ple­ment­ed it in FTR #999.) A lynch mob alto­geth­er rem­i­nis­cent of the young women fea­tured in Arthur Miller’s dra­mat­ic para­ble The Cru­cible, forced Franken’s res­ig­na­tion from the Sen­ate large­ly on the ado­les­cent, obvi­ous­ly joc­u­lar and libidi­nous events occur­ring dur­ing a USO tour. An obvi­ous gag pho­to of Franken pre­tend­ing to grope the breasts of an osten­si­bly sleep­ing LeAnn Twee­den (who was not asleep and was wear­ing a flak jack­et) fed the flames of a grotesque polit­i­cal immo­la­tion. On the same USO tour, Twee­den was pho­tographed grab­bing the butt of a male per­former, onstage.
3.–Franken said he wel­comed an inves­ti­ga­tion and vet­ting of the charges against him. There was NONE! The charges of right-wing flak Twee­den (a Birther accord­ing to her friend actor Tom Arnold) were then aug­ment­ed by an alle­ga­tion by a Trump backer that Franken groped her while she was hav­ing a pic­ture tak­en with him at the Min­neso­ta State Fair. Her Trump-back­ing hus­band and her father were present, and the pic­ture was tak­en by her fam­i­ly mem­bers.
The appar­ent assault of Chris­tine Blasey (Ford) by a drunk­en Kavanaugh, although rep­re­hen­si­ble, pales by com­par­i­son with the enor­mous destruc­tion of life that took place dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of George W. Bush, includ­ing:

1.–The Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks.
2.–The ongo­ing war in Afghanistan that stemmed from those attacks.
3.–The war in Iraq, which also stemmed from the 9/11 attacks.
4.–The blood­bath in the war against ISIS, also a result of the inva­sion of Iraq.
5.–The enor­mous destruc­tion of life stem­ming from the finan­cial col­lapse over­seen by Dubya’s admin­is­tra­tion. In FTR #412, record­ed in June of 2003, Mr. Emory fore­cast the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of 2008, not­ing that it was delib­er­ate­ly “engi­neered,” in order to serve as a pre­text for slash­ing fund­ing for domes­tic social wel­fare pro­grams.

The pro­gram fea­tures an excerpt from FTR #715. Not­ing that Kavanaugh­’s resume stretch­es back to the Pres­i­den­cy of George H.W. Bush and gath­ers momen­tum with the Pres­i­den­cy of his son (for whom Kavanaugh­’s wife also worked), it appears pru­dent to give some con­sid­er­a­tion of the trans-gen­er­a­tional nature of the Bush fam­i­ly and crim­i­nal activ­i­ties that are part and par­cel to that fam­i­ly’s involve­ment with fas­cism.

Among the key items of dis­cus­sion is the opaque nature of Dubya’s Harken Ener­gy and the large, mys­te­ri­ous amounts of mon­ey flow­ing into, and out of, the firm. It may well have been a mon­ey laun­der­ing vehi­cle, with the pres­ence of Alan Quasha on the board of direc­tors being sug­ges­tive.

A native of the Philip­pines, Quasha is the son of William Quasha, head of the Philip­pine branch of the Nugan Hand Bank. Part of “Team Mar­cos,” William was inevitably in close prox­im­i­ty to, if not involved with, the recy­cling of the enor­mous gold deposits stashed in the Philip­pines by the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II. In the dis­cus­sion with Russ Bak­er, he sug­gests that Harken may (among oth­er things) have been used to laun­der some of the Gold­en Lily loot from Gen­er­al Yamashita’s trea­sure.

As not­ed in FTR #‘s 356 and 1006, among oth­er pro­grams, it was Talat Othman–a for­mer direc­tor of Harken Ener­gy, a polit­i­cal advis­er and per­son­al friend of both Georges Bush and the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute who inter­ced­ed with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­get­ed by the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. O’Neill was fired months lat­er and then FBI Direc­tor Robert Mueller–that most spe­cial of prosecutors–helped derail the Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion.

As high­light­ed in FTR #569, Rita Katz and John Lof­tus, who ini­ti­at­ed the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion and did much of the heavy lift­ing were sur­veilled by FBI and/or CIA. Robert Mueller’s FBI cov­ered up Green Quest.

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of a hor­ror show that emerged in the after­math of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Pol­ly Klass (whose slay­ing led to the pas­sage of California’s “Three Strikes” law.) One can only imag­ine the extent to which con­nec­tions like this bear on the Sau­di spon­sor­ship of ter­ror­ism and the Unit­ed States’ reluc­tance (or inabil­i­ty) to do any­thing about it. What might sur­face if the U.S. were to tru­ly crack down on the Saud­is?

Although what was appar­ent­ly done to Dr. Ford is rep­re­hen­si­ble, it pales by com­par­i­son to oth­er hor­rors vis­it­ed on young women.

Mr. Emory notes that noth­ing has been done about this and noth­ing will be done–by ANY of the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions who weighed in on the Kavanaugh cir­cus.

For to inves­ti­gate these charges would be to cut across the U.S./Saudi pow­er axis. THAT is absolute­ly invi­o­lable, as no one knows bet­ter than Brett Kavanaugh!

” . . . . Jill saw broth­els [in Sau­di Ara­bia] where chil­dren were kept. The broth­els were plain look­ing build­ings in the cen­ter of the town, with yel­low doors. Men con­stant­ly came in and out, most­ly Arabs from the oil fields, but men from oth­er busi­ness­es as well. Jill peeked past the yel­low door into one of the broth­els and saw a room filled with young girls, white-skinned, about twelve-years old. She learned lat­er that many of them were Amer­i­can, abduct­ed and shipped from the Unit­ed States. The lit­tle girls were wear­ing small, skimpy, see-through skirts. A cus­tomer would pick one of them, and take whomev­er he want­ed upstairs.

Lat­er, Jill saw some of the lit­tle girls get­ting air in the back of the broth­el, She could tell they were drugged by the way they walked. Although she nev­er learned who ran the broth­els, she found out that in two or three years the lit­tle girls were turned into the streets where they were left to die. I asked Jill if she ever report­ed what she saw, lit­tle girls who were drugged and forced into sex­u­al slav­ery. She admit­ted that she had – to some­one in the diplo­mat­ic corps. He said he would see what could be done about the abduct­ed Amer­i­can girls – but to her knowl­edge, noth­ing was ever done. . . .”

Game of Thrones: Saudis Funding Taliban as Trump Gives Nod to Increased Military Support for Afghans

As Trump plans increas­ing and pro­long­ing U.S. troop com­mit­ment to Afghanistan, it is worth not­ing that–surprise, surprise–the Saud­is are fund­ing the Tal­iban, much as they have done with Al-Qae­da.

FTR #955 Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack? Not So Fast, Part 2

Sup­ple­ment­ing FTR #954, this broad­cast con­tin­ues analy­sis of the alleged Assad gov­ern­ment chem­i­cal weapons attack. Key points of dis­cus­sion include:

1. Fur­ther analy­sis by MIT expert Theodore Pos­tol, who sees the pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence alleged to sup­port the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s alle­ga­tions as ques­tion­able. ” . . . ‘This adden­dum pro­vides data that unam­bigu­ous­ly shows that the assump­tion in the WHR that there was no tam­per­ing with the alleged site of the sarin release is not cor­rect. This egre­gious error rais­es ques­tions about every oth­er claim in the WHR. … The impli­ca­tion of this obser­va­tion is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any com­pe­tent intel­li­gence expert unless they were moti­vat­ed by fac­tors oth­er than con­cerns about the accu­ra­cy of the report. . . .”

2. Par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­pi­cious (laugh­able?) is a pic­ture show­ing per­son­nel exam­in­ing the pur­port­ed sarin attack site with woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate pro­tec­tive cloth­ing. ” . . . . ‘If there were any sarin present at this loca­tion when this pho­to­graph was tak­en every­body in the pho­to­graph would have received a lethal or debil­i­tat­ing dose of sarin. The fact that these peo­ple were dressed so inad­e­quate­ly either sug­gests a com­plete igno­rance of the basic mea­sures need­ed to pro­tect an indi­vid­ual from sarin poi­son­ing, or that they knew that the site was not seri­ous­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. This is the crater that is the cen­ter­piece evi­dence pro­vid­ed in the WHR for a sarin attack deliv­ered by a Syr­i­an air­craft.’ . . . . ”

3. Ques­tion­able analy­sis in the alleged chlo­rine gas attacks also attrib­uted to the al-Assad regime. ” . . . In one of the chlo­rine cas­es, how­ev­er, Syr­i­an eye­wit­ness­es came for­ward to tes­ti­fy that the rebels had staged the alleged attack so it could be blamed on the gov­ern­ment. In that inci­dent, the U.N. team reached no con­clu­sion as to what had real­ly hap­pened, but nei­ther did the inves­ti­ga­tors – now alert­ed to the rebels’ tac­tic of stag­ing chem­i­cal attacks – apply any addi­tion­al skep­ti­cism to the oth­er cas­es. In one case, the rebels and their sup­port­ers also claimed to know that an alleged ‘bar­rel bomb’ con­tained a can­is­ter of chlo­rine because of the sound that it made while descend­ing. There was no expla­na­tion for how that sort of detec­tion was even pos­si­ble. . . .”

4. A British doc­tor who was a focal point of PR cov­er­age of the alleged sarin attack has a jihadist back­ground. ” . . . . A British doc­tor who doc­u­ment­ed a sus­pect­ed chem­i­cal weapons attack in Syr­ia was con­sid­ered a ‘com­mit­ted jihadist’ by MI6 and was struck off the Gen­er­al Med­ical Coun­cil in 2016. Sha­jul Islam, 31, post­ed sev­er­al videos on Twit­ter in the after­math of the Tues­day’s (4 April) attack where he appeared to be treat­ing patients in Khan Sheikhoun. He appeared on sev­er­al tele­vi­sion net­works such as NBC to dis­cuss what he saw, but it has now emerged Islam was pre­vi­ous­ly charged on ter­ror offences in the UK. . . .”

4. The under­ly­ing strate­gic rea­son for some of the Trump/Russian inter­face, one that dove­tails with the Syr­i­an provocation/escalation: ” . . . . The Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates arranged a secret meet­ing in Jan­u­ary between Black­wa­ter founder Erik Prince and a Russ­ian close to Pres­i­dent Vladi­mir Putin as part of an appar­ent effort to estab­lish a back-chan­nel line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Moscow and Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, accord­ing to U.S., Euro­pean and Arab offi­cials. The meet­ing took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion — in the Sey­chelles islands in the Indi­an Ocean, offi­cials said. Though the full agen­da remains unclear, the UAE agreed to bro­ker the meet­ing in part to explore whether Rus­sia could be per­suad­ed to cur­tail its rela­tion­ship with Iran, includ­ing in Syr­ia, a Trump admin­is­tra­tion objec­tive . . . .”

5. George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials are con­fi­dent anoth­er ter­ror­ist attack is com­ing appear to be con­cerned that the Trump could use ter­ror to grab and abuse exec­u­tive pow­ers. We present some of their thoughts against the back­ground of our dis­cus­sion in FTR #953 about Bernie Sanders’ paving the way for Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked ele­ments: ” . . . . ‘We can assume there will be anoth­er ter­ror­ist attack in the U.S. If the exec­u­tive order is in place, he will point to the attack as sup­port for the exec­u­tive order and the need to expand it to oth­er coun­tries with bad dudes (Mus­lims). If the exec­u­tive order has been struck down, Trump will blame judges and Democ­rats for the attack. . . .‘We both whol­ly believe that Trump needs a bogey­man. But, more impor­tant­ly, he needs dis­trac­tion and a blame source. In ter­ror­ists, he has his bogey­man. In his con­trol of the pre­vail­ing press nar­ra­tive via tweet, he has dis­trac­tion. And, in the judi­cia­ry, he has a source of blame for why his way was right from the begin­ning.’ . . . . ‘I am ful­ly con­fi­dent that an attack is exact­ly what he wants and needs.’ . . . .”

Where­as the Syr­i­an alleged sarin inci­dent appears to have been effect­ed by some of the West­’s al-Qae­da sur­ro­gates in the con­flict, past provo­ca­tions have involved more direct involve­ment by ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. In May of 1963, with then South Viet­namese pres­i­dent Diem push­ing for a reduc­tion in U.S. forces in Viet­nam (against Amer­i­can wish­es), a bomb­ing occurred at a Hue radio sta­tion that was the focal point of Bud­dhist protests of the gov­ern­men­t’s pol­i­cy toward Bud­dhists. The author­ship of that attack and a 1952 Saigon bomb­ing, was not the Viet­cong.

Key points of analy­sis:

1. The May, 1963 attack in Hue: “ . . . . As Dang Sy and his secu­ri­ty offi­cers were approach­ing the area in armored cars about fifty meters away, two pow­er­ful explo­sions blast­ed the peo­ple on the veran­da of the sta­tion, killing sev­en on the spot and fatal­ly wound­ing a child. At least fif­teen oth­ers were injured. . . .”

2. Foren­sic analy­sis of the wounds of the vic­tims: “ . . . Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hos­pi­tal direc­tor at Hue, said after exam­in­ing the vic­tims’ bod­ies that he had nev­er seen such injuries. The bod­ies had been decap­i­tat­ed. He found no met­al in the corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his offi­cial find­ing, Dr. Quyen ruled that ‘the death of the peo­ple was caused by an explo­sion which took place in mid-air, blow­ing off their heads and muti­lat­ing their bod­ies.’ . . . ”

3. Dr. Quyen’s con­clu­sions about the source of the vic­tims’ wounds in the 1963 attack: “ . . . . The absence of any met­al in the bod­ies or on the radio sta­tion’s veran­da point­ed to pow­er­ful plas­tic bombs as the source of the explo­sions. . . .”

4. Analy­sis of the 1952 bomb­ing in Saigon: “ . . . . Who did pos­sess such pow­er­ful plas­tic bombs? An answer is pro­vid­ed by Gra­ham Greene’s prophet­ic nov­el The Qui­et Amer­i­can, based on his­tor­i­cal events that occurred in Saigon eleven years before the bomb­ing in Hue. Greene was in Saigon on Jan­u­ary 9, 1952, when two bombs explod­ed in the city’s cen­ter, killing ten and injur­ing many more. A pic­ture of the scene, show­ing a man with his legs blown off, appeared in Life mag­a­zine as the ‘Pic­ture of the Week.’ The Life cap­tion said the Saigon bombs had been ‘plant­ed by Viet Minh Com­mu­nists’ and ‘sig­naled gen­er­al inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the Viet Minh vio­lence.’ In like man­ner, the New York Times head­lined: ‘Reds’ Time Bombs Rip Saigon Cen­ter.’ . . .”

5. In the 1952 bomb­ing, the oper­a­tional coor­di­na­tion between U.S. media out­lets and the per­pe­tra­tors of the attack is note­wor­thy for our pur­pos­es: “ . . . . Gen­er­al The’s bomb­ing mate­r­i­al, a U.S. plas­tic, had been sup­plied to him by his spon­sor, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. Greene observed in his mem­oir, Ways of Escape, it was no coin­ci­dence that ‘the Life pho­tog­ra­ph­er at the moment of the explo­sion was so well placed that he was able to take an aston­ish­ing and hor­ri­fy­ing pho­to­graph which showed the body of a trishaw dri­ver still upright after his legs had been blown off.’ The CIA had set the scene, alert­ing the Life pho­tog­ra­ph­er and Times reporter so they could con­vey the ter­ror­ist bomb­ing as the work of ‘Viet Minh Com­mu­nists’ to a mass audi­ence. . . .”

6. South Viet­namese inves­ti­ga­tion of the May, 1963 attack, arrived at a con­clu­sion sim­i­lar to Gra­ham Greene’s dis­cov­ery in the 1952 attack: “ . . . . Accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried by the Catholic news­pa­per Hoa Binh. . . . a Cap­tain Scott . . . . had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admit­ted he was the Amer­i­can agent respon­si­ble for the bomb­ing at the radio sta­tion the next day. He said he used ‘an explo­sive that was still secret and known only to cer­tain peo­ple in the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, a charge no larg­er than a match­box with a tim­ing device.’. . . .”

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 #903 Daniel Hopsicker on Donald Trump and How He Is Going to Make America Great Again

Don­ald Trump’s entire busi­ness career–his “art of the deal”–derives from high­ly ques­tion­able deal­ings with a pan­theon of orga­nized crime fig­ures, cor­rupt financiers and intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed oper­a­tives. From his ear­ly entre­pre­neur­ial career in Atlantic City to his under­tak­ings in Flori­da to his oper­a­tions in West­ern cities like Las Vegas, one finds Trump asso­ci­at­ed with Jim­my-Hof­fa linked Mafia fig­ures, peo­ple from the milieu of Howard Hugh­es and Iran-Con­tra play­ers such as Adnan Khashog­gi. Trump has pro­ject­ed financier Carl Icahn as his Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, ignor­ing Icah­n’s link to what Daniel has called “Cocaine One” and the mys­te­ri­ous, nefar­i­ous Sky­way air­lines. Trump’s Atlantic City deals involved mob-linked fig­ures like Dan Sul­li­van, Ken­neth Shapiro, “Fat Tony Saler­no” and Nicky Scar­fo. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the State of New Jer­sey, Atlantic City offi­cials, and the Hol­i­day Inn inter­ests have aid­ed Trump in high­ly ques­tion­able ways. In Las Vegas, Trump has been the heir to fig­ures from the Mey­er Lan­sky and Howard Hugh­es inter­ests, such as Louis Less­er. Trump’s larg­er cir­cle of friends links to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the Mar­cos fam­i­ly in the Philip­pines, whose largesse derived from the Gold­en Lily loot secret­ed by the Japan­ese in World War II. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Craig Less­er (Louis Lesser’s son) and his role in access­ing some of the Gold­en Lily loot in the Philip­pines; Iran-Con­tra fig­ure Adnan Khashog­gi’s sale of his per­son­al yacht to Don­ald Trump; Khashog­gi’s links to Imel­da Mar­cos; Trump’s flip­ping of a lux­u­ry Palm Beach (Flori­da) prop­er­ty to Russ­ian mob­ster Dim­it­ry Rybolovlev; Trump’s use of “off­shoring” tac­tics to ren­der his deal­ings opaque.

Why Were the Immigration Files on Tamerlan Tsarnaev So Heavily Redacted?

In FTR #773, among oth­er pro­grams and posts, we not­ed that the Boston Marathon bomb­ing appears to have been blow­back from ongo­ing covert “ops” using Islamist proxy war­riors in the Earth Island. The heavy cen­sor­ship of Tamer­lan Tsar­naev’s immi­gra­tion files rein­forces the sus­pi­cion that there is infor­ma­tion about the bombers that is too sen­si­tive to be released. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

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.