Spy's lie - people die : Melbourne Indymedia

Rocco Martino: 'I am the Source of the False Niger/Iraq Uranium Story'

The Sunday Times on Sunday and the Financial Times on Monday report that an Italian businessman and fraudster named Rocco Martino has said that he was the source of the false stories and documents related to Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger. He explained that in 1999, French intelligence sought information about business dealings in Niger. He has met with French intelligence officials in Brussels ever since 1999 on a regular basis and knew about the situation in Niamey.

Highly placed European officials admit that Martino provided the French with documents showing that Iraq may have been planning to expand trade with Niger. In fact, the documents did not refer to uranium, and the trade plans were probably the typical sort of relationship Arab oil states had with a whole range of third world countries.

Martino was surprised when he saw that the French immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that the documents indicated an Iraqi interest in uranium. (We now know that Iraq had no nuclear program and so it is hard to see what it would have done with the uranium, anyway). The FT continues:

It was then that Mr Martino first became aware of the value of documents relating to Niger's uranium exports. He was then asked by French officials to provide more information, which led to a flourishing "market" in documents. He subsequently provided France with more documents, which turned out to have been forged when they were handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency by US diplomats.

Martino may well be the "independent" source that British intelligence maintains it had, apart from the forged documents, for the story of Iraq attempts to purchase Niger uranium. If so, it turns out that his "reports" are no more genuine than his documents. Martino alleged that the forgeries were produced by Italian intelligence, SISMI, and were given to their agent in the Niger embassy in Rome to be passed on to Martino from there. They knew Martino, who had once worked for SISMI, would immediately sell the documents to Western intelligence agencies. The question of why SISMI would produce such bad forgeries, which were falsified within a day of their receipt by the IAEA in early March of 2003, remains a mystery unresolved in Martino's account.

The Financial Times concludes:

One western intelligence official said: "This issue shows how vulnerable intelligence services and the media are to tricksters like Martino. He responded to a legitimate . . . demand from the French, who needed the information on Niger. And now he is responding to a new demand in the market, which is being dictated by the political importance this issue has in the US. He is shaping his story to that demand."

Martino's confession bolsters the case made by Josh Marshall in The Hill recently that conservative attacks on the credibility of Ambassador Joseph Wilson have been misplaced. Marshall has been following the Niger story closely for over a year.

Actually, whether Iraq made inquiries into Niger uranium is irrelevant to the current investigation of the Bush White House over the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the press. Plame is Wilson's wife and the leak was done in revenge on him for going public with the news that he had investigated and falsified the Niger story for the CIA in spring of 2002. It is illegal for a government official to blow the cover of a CIA operative.

Plame's specialty? Fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Her close contacts and friends in the 3rd world for the last 20 years? Likely mostly dead, now, thanks to some politico in the Bush White House.

posted by Juan @ 8/2/2004 06:01:30 AM

http://www.juancole.com/

Probably politically dead?... If there's any justice and maybe even Bush, himself will have an appointment in Samarra soon, real soon.

There is a distant mirror to this that involves Italy, spook led disinformation and a vast " giant Wurlitzer' of right wing echo chambers acting in concert to sway policy. Such disinfo seems to find fertile ground in a conspiracist mindset.

From...

The CIA's DI Disgrace
Consortium News - 13 Jul 2004
... Conservative author Claire Sterling was making this case in her book, The Terror Network – and the foreign policy principals of the Reagan-Bush ...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/071304.html

"...It had become an article of faith among the Reagan-Bush newcomers that Moscow was supporting international terror groups as a way to destabilize the West in general and the United States in particular. Conservative author Claire Sterling was making this case in her book, The Terror Network , and the foreign policy principals of the Reagan-Bush administration were fans of Sterling’s hypothesis.

The day after Reagan's inauguration, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, believing that Moscow had tried to assassinate him in Europe where he served as Supreme Allied Commander, linked the Soviet Union to all acts of international terrorism, wrote Melvin Goodman, then-chief of the CIA’s office for Soviet analysis. There was no evidence to support such a charge but Casey had read , Claire Sterling's The Terror Network and, like Haig, was convinced that a Soviet conspiracy was behind global terrorism. [Foreign Policy, Summer 1997]

CIA analysts had a secret reason for doubting Sterling’s theories, however. Specialists at CIA dismissed the book, knowing that much of it was based on CIA ‘black propaganda,’ anticommunist allegations planted in the European press,..."

FROM... Robert Parry’s upcoming book, Secrets and Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty. As a correspondent for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s, Parry broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra scandal

And this is either sourced from or confirmed by Bob Woodward...

"...It turned out that a small part of Claire Sterlings information had come from an Italian press story on the Red Brigade. The story was part of an old, small scale CIA covert propaganda operation. Sterling apparantly had picked up some of it in her research. Domestic fallout or replay of information in the US called " blowback" is one of the nightmares for both the CIA and journalists, particularly when it receives wide attention or is disputed.
He [Gordon, investigating ] found the sequence particularly telling: from CIA propaganda to Sterlings book galleys, to Haig's reading of the galley's, to Haig's press conference, then Haig's comments picked up in the New York Times article by Sterling, then finally in Sterling's book..."

Page 129, ' Veil, the secret wars of the CIA 1981-1987' Bob Woodward.

AprilCommentary Magazine - Veil, by Bob Woodward.htm

" The record was never corrected..." Then... but we have the Internet now... never again...NEVER AGAIN!

WONT GET FOOLED AGAIN!

We need to consider the possibility that our own government is the source of these and possible other documents.
Recall that there was a fake story in the mainstream press pre-war (March 2003) that said that an unnamed (but obviously US) intelligence source was reporting that Al Qaeda operatives were smuggling VX nerve gas canisters out of Iraq through Turkey.

What was the source of that story? It seemed to me at the time that Rumsfeld-Feith et. al. were peddling some highly deniable propaganda before the war in order to justify it.

At the time, I considered the release of the VX story a most depicable (read treasonous) act, and am still wondering why nobody in the mainstream press followed up on the source of the story.

[The story was lead on ABC World News Tonight, and was commented on by many leading journalists at the time, including Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, and I believe syndicated columnist Georgie Ann Geyer.]

I suspect that proper investigation (calling Mr. Fitzgerald!!) of both the VX and Niger hoax stories might very well reveal their ultimate sources to be folks like Tenet, Cheney, or Rummy-Feith. Perhaps this is why the otherwise shameless Tenet resigned so abruptly that even Bush was caught off guard, and why everyone else, including Bush, is lawyering up.

So it quite plausible then that our own government planted multiple pieces of propaganda designed to justify through lies an otherwise unjustifiable war.

Makes you want to look through the Energy Task Force papers too.

What a bunch of soulless war-profiteering pimps.

And Josh Marshall better watch his "Pelican Brief" back.

Posted by: bebimbob FROM...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004432.php

Powell's appearance on July 16 is the latest sign the probe being conducted by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is highly active and broader than has been publicly known. Sources close to the case say prosecutors were interested in discussions Powell had while with President George W. Bush on a trip to Africa in July 2003, just before Plame's identity was leaked to columnist Robert Novak. A senior State Department official confirmed that, while on the trip, Powell had a department intelligence report on whether Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, a claim Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, discounted after a trip to Niger on behalf of the CIA. The report stated that Wilson's wife had attended a meeting at the CIA where the decision was made to send Wilson to Niger, but it did not mention her last name or undercover status. At the time, White House officials were seeking to discredit Wilson, who had become a public critic of the Bush administration. There's no indication Powell is a subject of the probe; the department official said the secretary never talked to Novak about the Plame matter. Still, sources say the decision to question Powell shows the thoroughness with which Fitzgerald is conducting the probe, and that knowledge about Plame was circulated at the highest levels of the administration.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5570006/site/newsweek/

Abyssinia Michael...In 1935 the Italian Fascists used gas and planes to strafe African villagers in what is now Ethiopia.

Who is Michael Ledeen?

Excerpt, taken from Edward Herman / Gerry O'Sullivan, The "Terrorism"
Industry (Pantheon, 1989), p. 161 ff.

Michael Ledeen has long been associated with CSIS [Center for
Strategic and International Studies] and was one of the founding
organizers of JINSA [The Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs]. During the Reagan years, Ledeen moved into the higher
circles of power, serving as Secretary of State Haig's advisor and
agent in Italy, as a consultant on terrorism, and playing a role in
both the Bulgarian connection case and the Iran-contra affair. With
these connections, Ledeen had exceptional media exposure, appearing on
ABC's "Nightline" and "This Week with David Brinkley," PBS's
"MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour," and CNN's "Crossfire." He has also written
op-ed columns and articles for numerous magazines and newspapers, and
edited the Washington Quarterly (published by CSIS) prior to going to
work for Haig.

Ledeen's academic career came to an end when he was denied tenure at
Washington University in St. Louis in 1972 for, among other reasons,
plagiarism [1]. During the 1970s, he worked as a journalist in Italy
with Il Giornale Nuovo, a right-wing newspaper reputedly controlled by
the CIA [2]. During this Italian stint he collaborated regularly with
Claire Sterling in anticommunist propaganda closely tied to ongoing
U.S. interventionist strategies [3]. In 1980 he entered into a
collaboration with Francesco Pazienza, an agent of the Italian secret
service (SISMI) and a member of Rome's extreme right-wing Masonic
Lodge, P2 (Propaganda Due), headed by the fascist Licio Gelli. In an
Italian criminal court in 1985, Pazienza was judged guilty of
political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of criminals and
terrorists, among other offenses. Indeed, according to the findings of
the court, Pazienza falsified information about the Bologna bombing in
order to divert attention away from the real (right-wing) terrorists
who had staged the attack. Ledeen is identified in the court documents
as an agent of SISMI, possibly placed on their payroll by Pazienza
himself. Ledeen collected money for his services to SISMI, which
included "risk assessment," the training of Italian intelligence
agents, and providing reports on terrorism to the Italian government
[4].

Pazienza and Ledeen worked together in the so-called Billygate affair
during the 1980 presidential campaign, luring Jimmy Carter's brother
into a compromising relationship with Qaddafi (this according to
prosecuting Judge Domenico Sica). During the Reagan transition, to
quote Italian police official Umberto d'Amato, "there was an
interregnum during which relations between Italy and the United States
were carried on in the persons of the duo Pazienza-Ledeen" [5].
Later, the pair were important participants in the creation of the
Bulgarian plot to kill the pope, a story that succeeded in gulling
most of the major media in the West.

Ledeen has moved within the power structure and between Western
governments according to opportunity, for personal advantage and
perhaps also in pursuit of political ends that are not entirely clear.
Although serving as a loyal agent of the U.S. state in Italy in the
1970s, his service in the Billygate affair was to the Republican
Party. He was on the payroll of the Italian secret service agency
SISMI in the early 1980s, but his manipulations in Italy caused the
new head of SISMI to declare before Parliament in 1984 that Ledeen was
an "intriguer" and unwelcome in Italy [6]. His attachment to Israel,
reflected in his JINSA connection, may have influenced his pursuit of
the hostage deal with Iran (Israel favored such a transaction), and
his former boss in the Pentagon, Noel Koch, asserts that while Ledeen
was in Italy the CIA station chief there took him to be "an agent of
influence of a foreign government" [7].

In articles written for Commentary and the New Republic, Ledeen argued
in favor of U.S. support for right-wing terrorists ("resistance
forces") such as UNITA and the Nicaraguan contras, and claimed that
the Soviets had aligned themselves with the Mafia in order to use drug
money to support international terrorism. In the first piece, entitled
"Fighting Back," Ledeen urged the U.S. government to assassinate
selected leaders of the Sandinista, Cuban, East German, Libyan, and
Palestinian armed forces as a "counter-terrorism" measure [8]. In
"K.G.B. Connection," after repeating the oft-told tale of the
Bulgarian plot to kill the pope, Ledeen asserted that the Soviets were
working with drug smugglers because they are "alarmingly short of hard
cash these days." "Yuri Andropov's old organization, the K.G.B., has
apparently become a major backer of drug smugglers, arms runners, and
terrorists..." [9]. And all of this without a shred of evidence to
support his charges.

Ledeen's writings on terrorism, as exemplified by the examples above,
are intellectually negligible and entirely opportunistic [10]. His
superior in the government, Noel Koch, who hired him as an expert
consultant on terrorism at the urging of Reagan officials, described
his work on the subject as "transparent crap." Not only did the head
of SISMI denounce him as an intriguer, but the authors of the Tower
Commission Report concluded that the CIA should permanently terminate
its relationship with Ledeen and his associate, Ghorbanifar. All of
this, however, has not interfered with his status as a terrorism
expert for the U.S. mass media. His connections are still potent, the
right-wing and Israeli lobby are fond of him, he is glib and his
"transparent crap" is therefore acceptable.

References

[1] Charles R. Babcock, "Ledeen Seems to Relish Iran Insider's Role,"
Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1987, p. A 16; Eric Alterman, "Michael
Ledeen," Regardie's, April 1987.

[2] Fred Landis, "Robert Moss, Arnaud de Borchgrave, and Right-Wing
Disinformation," CovertAction Information Bulletin, no. 10 (Aug.-Sept.
1980), p. 43.

[3] See chapter 5, p. 83.

[4] Herman and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 94-95; Jonathan
Kwitny, "Tale of Intrigue: Why an Italian Spy Got Closely Involved in
the Billygate Affair," Wall Street Journal, Aug. 8, 1985.

[5] Quoted in Sandro Acciari and Pietro Calderoni, "C'ero io, c'era
Pazienza," L'Espresso, Nov. 11, 1984.

[6] Marizio De Luca, "Fuori l'intrigante," L'Espresso, Aug. 5, 1984.

[7] Quoted in Christopher Hitchens, "Minority Report," Nation, Nov.
14, 1988, p. 482. Koch makes this statement following remarks on the
Pollard case and Ledeen's constant efforts to obtain secret documents
that seemed to have little bearing on his supposed responsibilities in
Koch's office.

[8] Michael Ledeen, "Fighting Back," Commentary, Aug. 1985, p. 28.

[9] Michael Ledeen, "K.G.B. Connections," New Republic, Feb. 28,
1983, pp. 9-10.

[10] For a fuller analysis and numerous further examples, see Herman
and Brodhead, Bulgarian Connection, pp. 161-73.

Posted by Pedram at May 7, 2003 11:50 PM

http://www.eyeranian.net/2003/05/07,54.shtml

Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right.

By John Laughland

On the antiwar Right, it has been customary to attack the warmongering neoconservative clique for its Trotskyite origins. Certainly, the founding father of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, wrote in 1983 that he was 'proud' to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940. Other future leading lights of the neocon movement were also initially Trotskyites, like James Burnham and Max Kampelman, the latter a conscientious objector during the war against Hitler, a status that Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of Jeane, used his influence to obtain for him. But there is at least one neoconservative commentator whose personal political odyssey began with a fascination not with Trotskyism, but instead with another famous political movement that grew up in the early decades of the 20th century: fascism. I refer to Michael Ledeen, leading neocon theoretician, expert on Machiavelli, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, regular columnist for National Review, and the principal cheerleader today for an extension of the war on terror to include regime change in Iran.

Ledeen has gained notoriety in recent months for the following paragraph in his latest book, The War Against the Terror Masters. In what reads like a prophetic approval of the policy of chaos now being visited on Iraq, Ledeen wrote,

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence, our existence, not our politics, threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

This is not the first time Ledeen has written eloquently on his love for 'the democratic revolution' and 'creative destruction.' In 1996, he gave an extended account of his theory of revolution in his book, Freedom Betrayed , the title, one assumes, is a deliberate reference to Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed. Ledeen explains that 'America is a revolutionary force' because the American Revolution is the only revolution in history that has succeeded, the French and Russian revolutions having quickly collapsed into terror. Consequently, '[O]ur revolutionary values are part of our genetic make-up. ' We drive the revolution because of what we represent: the most successful experiment in human freedom. ' We are an ideological nation, and our most successful leaders are ideologues.' Denouncing Bill Clinton as a 'counter-revolutionary' (!), Ledeen is especially eager to make one point: 'Of all the myths that cloud our understanding, and therefore paralyze our will and action, the most pernicious is that only the Left has a legitimate claim to the revolutionary tradition.'

Ledeen’s conviction that the Right is as revolutionary as the Left derives from his youthful interest in Italian fascism. In 1975, Ledeen published an interview, in book form, with the Italian historian Renzo de Felice, a man he greatly admires. It caused a great controversy in Italy. Ledeen later made clear that he relished the ire of the left-wing establishment precisely because 'De Felice was challenging the conventional wisdom of Italian Marxist historiography, which had always insisted that fascism was a reactionary movement.' What de Felice showed, by contrast, was that Italian fascism was both right-wing and revolutionary. Ledeen had himself argued this very point in his book, Universal Fascism, published in 1972. That work starts with the assertion that it is a mistake to explain the support of fascism by millions of Europeans ,solely because they had been hypnotized by the rhetoric of gifted orators and manipulated by skilful propagandists. 'It seems more plausible,' Ledeen argued, 'to attempt to explain their enthusiasm by treating them as believers in the rightness of the fascist cause, which had a coherent ideological appeal to a great many people.' For Ledeen, as for the lifelong fascist theoretician and practitioner, Giuseppe Bottai, that appeal lay in the fact that fascism was 'the Revolution of the 20th century.'

Ledeen supports de Felice’s distinction between 'fascism-movement' and 'fascism-regime.' Mussolini’s regime, he says, was 'authoritarian and reactionary'; by contrast, within 'fascism-movement,' there were many who were animated by 'a desire to renew.' These people wanted 'something more revolutionary: the old ruling class had to be swept away so that newer, more dynamic elements, capable of effecting fundamental changes, could come to power.' Like his claim that the common ground between Nazism and Italian fascism was 'exceedingly minimal', Ledeen writes, 'The fact of the Axis Pact should not be permitted to become the overriding consideration in this analysis', Ledeen’s careful distinction between fascist 'regime' and 'movement' makes him a clear apologist for the latter. While ‘fascism-movement’ was overcome and eventually suppressed by ‘fascism-regime,’ he explains, 'fascism nevertheless constituted a political revolution in Italy. For the first time, there was an attempt to mobilize the masses and to involve them in the political life of the country.' Indeed, Ledeen criticizes Mussolini precisely for not being revolutionary enough. 'He never had enough confidence in the Italian people to permit them a genuine participation in fascism.' Ledeen therefore concurs with the fascist intellectual, Camillo Pellizi, who argues, in a book Ledeen calls 'a moving and fundamental work', that Mussolini’s was 'a failed revolution.' Pellizzi had hoped that 'the new era was to be the era of youthful genius and creativity': for him, Ledeen says, the fascist state was 'a generator of energy and creativity.' The purest ideologues of fascism, in other words, wanted something very similar to that which Ledeen himself wants now, namely a 'worldwide mass movement' enabling the peoples of the world, 'liberated' by American militarism, to participate in the 'greatest experiment in human freedom. Ledeen wrote in 1996, The people yearn for the real thing 'revolution.'

Ledeen was especially interested in the role played by youth in Italian fascism. It was here that he detected the movement’s most exciting revolutionary potential. The young Ledeen wrote that those who exalted the position of youth in the fascist revolution, like those who argued in favor of his beloved 'universal fascism' were committed to exporting Italian fascism to the whole world, an idea in which Mussolini was initially uninterested. When he was later converted to it, Mussolini said that fascism drew on the universalist heritage of Rome, both ancient and Catholic. No doubt Ledeen thinks that the new Rome in Washington has the same universalist mission. He writes that people around Berto Ricci, the editor of the fascist newspaper L’Universale, and a man he calls 'brilliant' and 'an example of enthusiasm and independence', called for the formation of a new empire, an empire based not on military conquest but rather on Italy’s unique genius for civilization. They intended to develop the traditions of their country and their civilization in such a manner as to make them the basic tenets of a new world order. Ledeen adds, in a passage that anticipates his later love of creative destruction, Clearly the act of destruction which would produce the flowering of the new fascist hegemony would sweep away the present generation of Italians, along with the rest. And Giuseppe Bottai, to whom Ledeen attributes 'considerable energy and autonomy,' was notable for his belief that 'the infusion of the creative energies of a new generation was essential' for the fascist revolution. Bottai 'implored the young ' to found a new order arising from the spontaneous activity of their creation.

One of the greatest exponents of such youthful vitalism was the high priest of fascism, the poet and adventurer Gabriele D’Annunzio, to whom Ledeen devoted an enthusiastic biography in 1977. Years ago, I visited D’Annunzio’s house on the shores of Lake Garda: there is a battleship in the garden and a Brenn gun in the sitting room. D’Annunzio was an eccentric and militaristic Italian Nietzschean who eulogized rape and acts of savagery committed by the people he called his spiritual ancestors. The poet was also an early prophet of military intervention and regime change: he invaded the Croatian city of Fiume (now Rijeka) in 1919 and held the city for a year, during which he put into practice his theories of 'New Order.' In 1918, moreover, D’Annunzio had dropped propaganda leaflets over Vienna promising to liberate the Austrians from their own government, something Ledeen hails as 'a glorious gesture.' D’Annunzio’s watchword was 'the liberation of human personality.' His heroism during the war made it possible, Ledeen writes, to bridge the chasm between intellectuals and the masses. The revolt D’Annunzio led was directed against the old order of Western Europe, and was carried out in the name of youthful creativity and virility.

As Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire 'to tear down the old order' (his words from 2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in 2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In 1932, Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into 'old' and 'new' when he wrote, in Towards the Fascist International, Either old Europe or young Europe. Fascism is the gravedigger of old Europe. Now the forces of the Fascist International are rising. It all sounds rather prophetic. ____________________________________________

John Laughland is a London-based writer and lecturer and a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group.

http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html

From Seymour Hersh’s 'The StovePipe' article in the 10-27-2003 New Yoker (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact):

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, 'Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.' He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney, the former officer said. They said, ‘O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.’ My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. Everyone was bragging about it, ‘Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.’ These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the sismi intelligence.

'They thought that, with this crowd, it was the only way to go, to nail these guys who were not practicing good tradecraft and vetting intelligence,' my source said. 'They thought it’d be bought at lower levels 'a big bluff.' The thinking, he said, was that the documents would be endorsed by Iraq hawks at the top of the Bush Administration, who would be unable to resist flaunting them at a press conference or an interagency government meeting. They would then look foolish when intelligence officials pointed out that they were obvious fakes. But the tactic backfired, he said, when the papers won widespread acceptance within the Administration. 'It got out of control.'

An out of control joke by retired CIA operatives!!!!

Posted by: Markht on August 1, 2004 at 10:57 PM | PERMALINK

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004432.php

Pissed at Cheney pestering them the same way a certain Commonwealth car driver got pissed off at Bill the dill Heffernan - Big time.

This stuff does make you wonder just how much of the worlds problems are caused by bored "intelligence" agents. The CIA should grow up and stop playing silly games... But then that is what they're payed to do. Maybe they can go back to experimenting with drugs...

"In 1942, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), investicated the potentioal of marijuana as a truth drug to be used in the interrogation of enemy agents and captives. The first extract was termed honey oil. Tasteless and make from hashish, it was to be added to the food of interrogation subjects. When is was tested on OSS guinea pigs, they broke out in peals of laughter, talked incessantly, became paranoidd or clammed up. The research was abandoned in favour of developing LSD for the same purpose. However, the researchers published a report on marijuana which stated that the commonest effect of honey oil was fits of laughter. Anslinger, who had been attacking marijuana for over a decade as brain-destroying narcotic, was a signatory to the report."

From "Cannabis in History" by Martin Booth.

"An out of control joke by retired CIA operatives!!!!"

Maybe it's time they cut down a little on the Honey Oil...

it's an awfulkly inconvenient name you have, exclamation mark!

But your content is excellent.
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/74269_comment.php#75693

thanks!

One thing which is sort of but sort of not relevant to this thread is a certain tactic which the state uses a lot against activists. This is to harass them mercilessly, but mostly in fairly trivial ways (for example harassment charges, cop cars driving up and down the street, messing with centrelink payments, opening mail, anonymous phome calls and messages etc...).

The purpose of this kind of harassment is basically to drive people mad (or make them appear mad by losing their temper etc) in order to discredit them - but without drawing too much attention to the states own actions. For example if you have been recieving wierd phone calls at night and cop cars survailing your house for a while, this can make you so stressed that all it takes is a minor provocation to push you over the edge. When you try to explain the situation to people you sound mad and paranoid ("So there was a car parked outside of your house? Big deal...").

I know of this tactic from personal experience. It nearly drove me mad wondering why all these little things (like the ones I metioned above and other many other bizzare head-fucks) were happening, what they meant, what exactly was going on - and worst of all - was I really paranoid and mad. Finally after a nervous breakdown (which I am still recovering from) a family member pointed out to me that this was EXACTLY WHY THEY WERE DOING IT.

Why I raise this (at the risk of being branded insane again) is that I noticed people attempting to carry out the same tactic against me on a previous thread... and after a little searching realised that it is done regularly here on MIM. People are baited into arguments by right right wing loonies and then when they get angry they are branded "mad", "screaming", etc by supposed leftys - while the right wing loonys escape criticism. This is then used as an excuse to ingnore and undermine their opinions. So much for free speech.

After months of lies, harassment, abuse, insomnia and stress. Just a few subtle digs... And I was off my feet and screaming "BULLSHIT! YOU LYING MOTHERFUCKER!" at the judge. And that judge gave me the most smug, self-satisfied grin I ever saw, which said - clearer than words ever could - "I got you now you little shit...". It wasn't even my trial. It made the papers of course and I got charged. It also fucked up my appeal for previous charges (which had been with the same judge). I wasn't the only one they got that way either.

Just bear that in mind when posting here on "our" "Independent" Media.

What was the Bulgarian connection?

...down on a couch and relax knowing truly vital news such as " UC created prions to infect us", " Touch yr sack-not Iraq" and " Arthurs dead" stay up on the main line. Trust MIM?

Sure can.

There's your buggerian connection. Has Indymedia jumped the shark?