Navalny poses as a higher ranking ‘apparatchik’ within Russia’s security services, scrambling to understand what went wrong with the plot to murder (himself) with the nerve agent novichok. He (Navalny) ostensibly has reached one of the foot-soldiers (a Russian intelligence services officer, at his home phone) tasked with carrying out Navalny’s assassination (I would have said you can’t make this shit up except for someone clearly did.) The hoax is audacious.
The 1st problem with Navalny’s ‘hoax call’ reported by Bellingcat is the dates. The 2nd problem is Bellingcat is the reporter. Or, you can switch the order, these are co-equal problems, followed by a 3rd problem that is the call itself.
1) The poisoning happened on 20 August, the ‘hoax call’ is made on 14 December, and released by Bellingcat on 21 December. Now, wait a minute. The context of the call, a desperate demand for answers of what went wrong (Navalny didn’t die) for a report to higher up authority, is something you would expect within the first 48 hours, not nearly three months later. By the time this call was made, that dust should have settled and been vacuumed up by Russia’s intelligence services, everyone would have been debriefed by this time, including the target of the hoax call.
2) Bellingcat is an organization on the point of ‘the Russians did it’ (or the Russians should be held responsible, even if they didn’t do it) world information warfare stage from Syria chemical warfare crimes to MH17 to the Skripal poisoning to (now) Navalny (and whatever else escapes my memory at the moment.)
Every reasonably competent intelligence officer from either side of the ongoing state of warfare between the NATO & NATO associated intelligence agencies, and Russia, perfectly assumes Bellingcat is a front for British intelligence, if they are honest, which is forbidden in this case, if you work for Western intelligence (as well, the CIA might easily request a favor from MI6 and its proxy Bellingcat, time to time.) Of course, if you are Russian, it is not permitted in the liberal democracies to believe anything you have to say (whether truthful or not.)
3) The recorded call itself requires you to believe Russian intelligence officers assigned to assassinations are 85 IQ troglodytes in eternal state of drunk or hungover. That works, if you are a Robert Littell (CIA disinformation) spy novel fan or, alternatively, a 007 freak where Russian intelligence operatives, when it comes to assassinations, are so muscle-bound around the head, there is no space left for brains (having all been squeezed out by steroids, obviously.) But the propaganda ploy works for precisely the subliminal stereotype created in the Western media audience; at many levels we all are conditioned (or attempted to be conditioned) to believe the stereotypes.
At 14 minutes in, there are real questions. He’s too slow & dumb (the FSB guy) he should have been wide awake by now, this all seems scripted. Do we know it is actually the Russian officer on the other end? Rather, is it a MI6 or CIA actor? In the very early stages (long before the 14th minute), the ‘Russian’ intelligence officer should have demanded to make the call himself, calling back from a secure phone to his interrogator (after confirming with his own chain of command), at the least. I can’t believe the Russians are without strict protocol training in this regard. The so-called ‘Konstantin Kudryavtsev’ (a real person but certainly not the person in the call) is too stupid, by far, to demand this obviously important security protocol, and that stupidity is covered by the very fact of discussing ‘a secure line’ while posing him as half-awake & consequently ‘snookered.’ But even a hungover and half-awake 85 IQ (if such ever existed in the FSB, not likely) should grasp violating this protocol while running his mouth could find him hung upside down in chains in the basement of the Lubyanka (FSB Headquarters in Moscow) while his bosses decided what would become of him. This raises a related issue; why would someone who’d so famously screwed up a hit still be on the job? The entire business stinks from the beginning.
Then, at 18 minutes in, the ‘Russian’ troglodyte is volunteering via unsecured line a local investigative chief’s phone number to a ‘superior officer’ (Navalny’s alias) that prior to this call he has never even heard of:
It just goes downhill from there…
The concluding question should be, did Nalvany understand he had been talking to a Western intelligence asset/actor? The answer would be “probably not.” Narcissists are brilliant material for intelligence agency manipulations, in this case of Western intelligence engineering (from the outset) Nalvany being of greater value as an information operations asset in Berlin as opposed to a perpetually failed color revolutionary in Russia.
A former Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence for Special Forces, Ronald Thomas West is a retired investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption. Ronald had lived over thirty years in close association with Blackfeet Indians (those who still speak their language), and is published in international law as a layman: The Right of Self- Determination of Peoples and It’s Application to Indigenous People in The USA or The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole. Ronald has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background (no degree) is social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire.
Spoiler: The short conclusion of this assessment is, Saudi Arabia had to accept & swallow being set up and framed for the murder of longtime intelligence asset Jamal Khashoggi. This reporting had been developed in real time as the so-called ‘facts’ were ‘developed’ in media. None of the msm reporting added up, nevertheless there exists metadata enables sorting through much of the smoke and mirrors:
Jamal Khashoggi’s Turkish Wrap
What will be written one can believe? MSM is so pervasively lied through, in the course of the information wars, we are informed the Russians have committed all attributable acts of evil since Eve took a bite of the apple, example given. That is, until Erdogan’s people accused the Saudis of murdering Jamal Khashoggi. What will the history books say?
As of this writing, one can order “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” (weasel words excusing its sale notwithstanding) at Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ amazon.com but you cannot order ‘How to Get Away With Murder in America’ by Evan Wright, an account of a high ranking CIA official, Enrique Prado, who is demonstrated to have doubled as a serial contract killer throughout his career, as detailed by a crack, award winning reporter citing government records no less.
Why the ‘Saudis did it’ line just doesn’t make sense: However the Saudi regime is undoubtedly brutal by any sensible standards, not only Western standards, their intelligence operatives are not unprofessional and so stupid as to lead the bloodhounds directly to their door by murdering Khashoggi during a known appointment that that he would not return from. This would include rogue agents necessarily needing to conceal the murder from not only the Turks but also the Saudis, impossible within the consulate. It really is as simple as this. In the event the murder were actually a state sanctioned Saudi act, the Istanbul location would have staff who’re Saudi intelligence professionals and would have options to assassinate Khashoggi exterior to the consulate with little opportunity to trace the murder back to the Saudis. That’s the black and white of ‘what’s wrong with this picture.’
In a case where it had actually been Turkish state actors had murdered Jamal Khashoggi, there is no way the Saudis could win the ‘he-said-she-said’ information war and they’d have to cave in and play the game.
No doubt there will be many, falsified future accounts, made available at Amazon Books, of the so-called ‘journalist’ Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, especially those ‘agency approved’ narratives steering the reader away from certain inconvenient facts; 1) Khashoggi’s most recent employer, the Bezos owned Washington Post, is the CIA’s number one (top) information operations laundering organization (front), 2) Khashoggi had intelligence ties to CIA in Afghanistan going back years and profiles as a CIA asset, 3) the murder account is crude enough to pass muster as a false-flag information operation engineered by Turkey’s intelligence chief, the long time al-Qaida aligned (actual member) Hakan Fidan, eliminating a CIA asset and aiming to bring less liberal Saudi players into power who’d be more favorable to the interests of the Erdogan regime’s clandestine relationship with its takfiri allies, 4) any real exam of the facts would notice the main difference between Turkey’s regime and the Saudi regime is Erdogan and his people have to finesse the fact of their actual nature (Salafi) in regards to a strong secular political opposition and NATO membership.
Insofar as the Western leadership howls of outrage at the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, they have little choice but to play along for the fact alternative admissions are too destabilizing, for instance NATO’s Turkey employs an intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, an al-Qaida member since the 1990s, who amounts to a laundered and state employed al-Baghdadi.
Mike Pence declaring Gina Haspel has been sent to Turkey to ‘get the facts’ is cynical to place of surreal. Recalling Haspel is a veteran of the USA’s own ‘disappearing people’ (the USA’s renditions program with 100 or so declared ‘detainees’ but 11,000 known flights, do the math, meanwhile Haspel had run a ‘black site’), it is anybody’s guess as to why she might really have made the trip. To finger wag at Turkish intelligence?
Other possibilities would include but not be limited to, the NATO states having decided MBS (the Saudi Crown Prince) had become a liability and the operation was carried out as a sop to the liberal democracies. In this case Haspel would be running damage control; wanting the Turks to all get on the same page and improve their story line, from ‘the body has been found in a well’ at the Saudi consul’s residence but that didn’t work because the body would already be demanded for exam, to ‘we have permission to look for the body’ in the well, and ‘we can’t find the body’ that ‘was smuggled out in a carpet’ (if you know that, you should know where the body is), all on top of if the Saudis have honestly admitted the dirty deed, they should be able to locate the body (a week on and they haven’t been able to.) In other words it appears to be the typical liars fest when guilty people don’t know what to say when confronted with demands for information. The Turks’ story lines come across as messed up as the Saudis’ story lines, that’s what happens when both parties are in circumstance of making things up. If the body is found in the well, oh well, now you’d have to examine how it actually got there, or consider if it had been merely asserted it had been found there, this whole thing is hostage to what amounts to a criminal regime’s liars playing off the liars of a criminal regime with its’ back to the wall.
Did the Saudis actually do it? It’s possible. People do incredibly stupid things and that includes the Saudis but I’m not convinced the Saudis did this one. The narrative (information war), as presented in mainstream media, details circumstance absolutely too stupid to be the planned intelligence hit Erdogan and his people would have us believe.
In the paradox that is today’s global reality, faced with soap-opera mentality level of propaganda (what people are prepared to believe) the escape strategy for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia could be to absorb the accusations framing him with an ‘it was rogue players!’ defense and hope to weather the storm, but it’s not likely without major concessions.
This is consequence of the immense amount of ill will Saudi Arabia has accumulated over decades of extreme intolerance and radically brutal punishments insuring people around the world will put nothing past the Saudis when it comes to the information wars. Maybe they DID do it.
26 October 2018 updates: According to Craig Murray, Khashoggi filmed his own murder with Dick Tracy’s 2-way wrist TV:
“I have not seen the video from inside the consulate, but have been shown stills which may be from a video. The most important thing to say is that they are not from a fixed position camera and appear at first sight consistent with the idea they are taken by a device brought in by the victim. I was only shown them briefly. I have not heard the audio recording“
Guess what Craig? That’s absolutely an asinine assertion and if that’s the line being circulated out of Turkey, it means Saudi intelligence was not only stupid enough to kill Khashoggi during an appointment at the consulate pointing the finger direct to themselves, it also means they did not confiscate and shut down Khashoggi’s electronic device but let it broadcast instead. The Turks need to upgrade the level of novels they take their inspirations from; this is just too cheesy. If there is photos extracted from video, as well as audio of the killing in the hands of the Turks (will we ever see them?), it follows the most simple explanation is Khashoggi was in the custody of the Turks when he was murdered. Or someone very close to Turkish intelligence, bringing up this next:
Over at the Spectator, Matthew Brodsky brings up two very salient points ignored in this story by MSM: Khashoggi’s longtime al-Qaida relationship including access to bin Ladin and how it looks very much like CIA issued Khashoggi’s Green Card before he even relocated to the States last year. This would be consistent with Hakan Fidan’s fraternal brothers, al Qaida, having an interest in interrogating and disposing of Khashoggi, with an assist from the Turks (Fidan.)
29 October 2018: Over at zerohedge.com, ‘Tyler Durden’ dissects a Financial Times article (pay wall) where the USA spooks lay out their disinformation line however the author dissecting the Times, seemingly astutely, notes the intelligence agencies are extending what amounts to…
“… a public invitation for MbS to save his own ass by becoming “triply loyal” to the CIA and MI6″
…except the problem with this is, the very nature of the ‘invitation’ (public) is inviting a palace coup. As well, the Financial Times article’s intelligence ‘sources’ states the prince who’d been ousted by MBS, that is Mohammed bin Nayef, had been the “darling” of Western intelligence. That’s a second public kiss of death by the CIA, indicating they certainly don’t want him back. The spook disinformation math (psychology) is simple: when a so-called ‘credible’ source (i.e. Financial Times, where English literate wealthy Saudis read) lays out a case that the CIA has what amounts to geopolitical consensual relationship with a player (Mohammed bin Nayef), that’s a means of making that player’s position impossible within the (in this case Saudi) hierarchy for the very important reasons of perception. If your proposed leader is in bed with CIA, MI6 and/or MOSSAD, the domestic perception is possessed of rather deadly potential. The more likely scenario is, Mohammed bin Nayef was pushed out with an assist from CIA, MI6 and MOSSAD but his replacement, MBS, is hopelessly damaged goods and it’s necessary to get other fish to rise to the bait. Directly relevant to this, Le Figaro is reporting a secret conclave of senior Saudi royals to determine who will replace MBS (who will be discretely retired.)
Meanwhile, across the pond in Britain, the stupidity of the disinformation line grows exponentially; supposedly British intelligence had foreknowledge of the planned Khashoggi kidnap and/or murder, had monitored the Saudi intelligence team’s movement and “begged” the Saudi’s not to do it. But they apparently forgot to tip Khashoggi, the Turks and the CIA… quoting MI6 “we’d done what we could” which indicates this new line in the story is methane generated noise from the MI6 arse.
Recap of the NATO intelligence agencies’ line: Saudi intelligence is so dumb they kill Khashoggi at a known appointment he won’t return from, pointing the finger direct to themselves, an event broadcast with Khashogggi’s own electronic device, ON TOP OF the Saudis having been tipped off the British are monitoring what they’re up to BEFORE the killing. My pet squirrel monkey could do better than this (if I had one.)
As this soap goes on, the Turks demand the Saudis produce a body the Saudis don’t seem to be able to find, and one wonders if the body is being ‘pre-soaked’ by the Turks to point of non-recognition so any remains (perhaps recovered from al-Qaida) can be convincingly be ‘found in a sewer’ (near the consulate, where the Turks are reported to be searching.)
“When you invite cannibals to dinner you can expect to end up as the main course”
The renown cannibal takfiri-salafi terrorist, however originating with Saudi-Wahabi theology, is not allowed in Saudi Arabia. You join, it’s exile for life, ‘don’t come home, ever’ or ‘thwok, thunk’ is the sound of the sword & head roll. It was Hakan Fidan and Recep Erdogan welcomed the takfiri-salafi terrorists into NATO via Turkey with open arms and now there are over a thousand cells there. It follows, where Turkey continues to shield al-Qaida members in Syria’s Northwest Idlib province, counter to the Turks’ agreement with the Russians, we should recall when an al-Qaida commander “was denounced … for his descent into cannibalism oncamera” (note he was not denounced for cannibalism per se) later was ambushed and killed by another group, and Hakan Fidan’s fraternal brothers (the al-Qaida group in Turkish controlled Idlib) went to immediate battle to avenge their cannibal commander’s death.
Who would cut up Khashoggi while still alive? The Saudis? Or the Turk’s allies with a documented (video, no less) reputation for cannibalism?
Jamal Khashoggi was a triple agent reflecting his long time relationships with al-Qaida, Saudi intelligence and the CIA. When it comes to Syria, Saudi intelligence and CIA’s consensual relations have been rather smooth for quite some time. The Turks and al-Qaida, on the other hand, despite a common animus held towards Assad with the Saudis and Americans, would jump at opportunity to interrogate and butcher a CIA asset, especially if there were opportunity to frame a 3rd party. Al Qaida likes the Saudis even less than the Erdogan regime who sees the the House of Saud’s Arabian desert kingdom as a renegade Ottoman province. As well, for the Turks, they won’t forget the CIA has already tried to take Erdogan out. Saudi intelligence might be a bit more reticent in carrying out the killing of a CIA asset, given the close nature of their relationship with the CIA. Then, it should be looked at whether Khashoggi’s fiance, a Turkish “36 year old doctoral student” had been a Turkish intelligence or al-Qaida aligned ‘honey pot.’
When Gina Haspel flew to Turkey to ‘review evidence’, no doubt she compared notes with Hakan Fidan on who has the better ‘insurance file’ where national players represented in the intelligence agencies heads do business based not only on common interests but also liberally blackmail each other. In this latter case, the Turks could easily point out ‘if we take the hit for this and go down as result, the Western (read NATO) nations will discover who had been deep in the oil for weapons business with ISIS, you know it wasn’t only us.’ This would be a big concern for British and French, especially, not only the Americans.
FINALLY, it comes down to there is no body any of the parties are able or willing to produce. The (plausibly blackmailed) NATO nations would have us believe the Saudis butchered Khashoggi alive but that seems much more like a Turk allied al-Qaida narrative or what happens when you encounter people who prefer to think of their dinner as ‘long pig.’
What happened to Jamal Khashoggi? We’ll probably never know. But it could as easily (or more easily) be the Edogan regime’s al-Qaida actors murdered him with Fidan’s blessing and the Saudis had to take the hit.
Despite the much deserved worldwide reputation for brutality in matters of state punishments, the Saudi regime was never so bloody as the people Erdogan’s regime rub shoulders with everyday.
*
A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background (no degree) is social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire.
There are recent concurrent events pointing to a plausible false flag murder by western intelligence. The first, a ‘coincidental’ event is, a leaked British diplomatic-intelligence cable western press won’t touch with the proverbial ‘ten foot pole.’
Dated January 12, 2018, the British Diplomatic Telegram (TD) – signed by Benjamin Norman (who tracks Middle East issues at the British Embassy in Washington) – has circulated a lot behind the scenes of the Wehrkunde, the last Munich Security Conference (16-18 February). Why ? Because this document – quite exceptional – reveals the content of a meeting (of the “Small Group on Syria”, bringing together high-ranking diplomats from the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan ), which should have been kept strictly confidential.
Why ? Because it reveals, by the menu, the “Western strategy” concerning the war in Syria: to feed and multiply the hostilities by any means to prevent a Pax Russiana; to continue an intense communication campaign on the Russian and Syrian bombings that kill civilians; frame the UN Special Representative for Syria – Staffan de Mistura – with a binding roadmap; sabotage the Sochi peace conference to return to Geneva in a tripartite format: Syrian opposition, Syrian government and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDS – mainly made up of Kurdish deputies on the orders of the Pentagon).
In the background, the British TD described the two main political objectives: to sabotage the Sochi conference and to prepare the same massive propaganda campaign that accompanied the liberation of Aleppo in December 2016, intended to punctuate the reconquest, admittedly devastating, by the Syrian government army of Eastern Ghouta (suburb of Damascus) in the hands of different terrorist groups. Reading the document, we understand that this Western strategy opts for “an endless war” in Syria, while denouncing to the international public opinion a new “humanitarian catastrophe”. In conclusion, TD welcomes the US leadership for effective implementation and media coverage – as broad as possible – of this strategy.
A short aside, the leak of the preceding may be why the recently staged ‘chemical incident’ in Syria was finally ignored by the generals at the White House.
Back towards the subject of sloppy assassins; with a full on covert proxy war in the middle east aimed at Russia, with supporting information warfare in high gear per the preceding memo, it should come as no surprise there will be other fronts where the demonizing of Vladimir Putin and Russia will go to overdrive. We’ve recently seen this in ‘the Russians did it’ with the endlessly clumsy efforts to cover up the DNC mails ‘hack by the Russians’ actually was an insider’s leak (by the assassinated DNC computer technician Seth Rich.)
Going to another ‘domestic assassination’ pointing to the low moral reach of western intelligence agencies, no one in mainstream media has ever tried to deny a dying man, John Hopkins, was an authentic British MI5 veteran when he’d confessed to being a member of the team that assassinated Princess Diana; dryly noting in the western culture dying men don’t normally make false confessions to have their souls seen off to Hell, rather the opposite is true:
Living MI5 veteran Annie Machon meanwhile had bolstered the dying John Hopkins account, when some years previous to Hopkins’ confession, Machon gives the political reasons she states Princess Diana had been assassinated for. Or, one could say, Hopkins had verified Machon’s matter of fact statements:
Returning to the USA, Seth Rich’s assassination was, according to the intelligence agencies faithful lap dogs also known as western media (referencing operation mockingbird) a ‘botched robbery’, a gratuitous lie little different to Lady Di’s assassination had been a ‘tragic accident.’ In either of the preceding case, the information operations are focused on directing attention away from the actual perpetrators to a simple case of ‘sh*t happens.’ In either of the preceding case there is no reasonable avenue to pin blame on a geopolitical boogyman, when Diana died Russia was in the Yeltsen era of western democracies exploiting and looting that nation, there was no need to look for an enemy to implicate, and in any case Russia would be a reach too far to blame for a murder of a woman moving in political direction more sympathetic Russia’s traditional alliances in the middle east. In the case of Seth Rich, the intelligence agencies would want to draw attention away from the actual leaker of the DNC’s mails, after having silenced him with two silenced 40 caliber (possibly Glock) rounds in the back, and in any case it would make little sense to blame the Russians for the murder of a man that could exonerate Putin’s people of any complicity in the DNC mails release. With the Rich case falling apart around ‘the Russians did it’ false flag accusation, it is also quite possible the FBI changing the timeline of a 40 caliber Glock stolen from an FBI agent’s car is a deliberate false lead.
Altogether different to the preceding ‘sh*t happens’ cover stories in circumstance of intelligence agencies disposing of inconvenient lives, there is an altogether sinister/cynical circumstance or category of what are likely false flag murders with a glaring consistency giving their purpose away: crude sloppiness.
To begin, if Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un actually wanted someone dead, they certainly would have better options than means generating what amounts to tabloid headlines in western press.
Alexander Litvinenko was a Yeltsen era grandstanding FSB anti-corruption cop fired by Putin for his loud mouth, and probably little more. Coming out of the Yeltsen era, Russia was notoriously, complexly corrupt and Litvinenko had been employed by (and was very close to) one of the corrupt oligarchs Putin’s people had subsequently attempted to prosecute, Boris Berezovsky. According to a London court finding, Litvinenko’s employer Berezovsky was:
“an “inherently unreliable” witness, who “regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes” and that “At times the evidence which he gave was deliberately dishonest; sometimes he was clearly making his evidence up as he went along in response to the perceived difficulty in answering the questions””
Hardly a name and recommendation you’d want on your resume but it is number one on Litvinenko’s. One shouldn’t be impressed, subsequently, with his judgment. Nor does Litvinenko profile as someone the Russian State would put a priority on assassinating; he was already in a self-destructive loop in and of his own making. The idea Russian state actors would poison someone in such a deliberately agonizing way (polonium 210) as to enable what amounted to weeks of scripted reality TV blaming Putin, makes no sense at all; except that Putin was actually the intended propaganda victim of a false flag assassination. If it were the Russian state responsible, I expect the work would have been effectively untraceable, near instant death and solely attributable to ‘natural’ cause.
The ‘Russians did it’ Litvinenko assassination case has always smelled to high heaven. Former FSB officer Litvinenko had all the wrong friends/trusted all the wrong people. As sloppy as the hit on him was, people the British have an ax to grind with (Russians) are purportedly to blame, but Litvinenko’s MI6 employer should be every bit as suspect as anyone.
Litvinenko’s fatal mistake likely had been to cooperate with Spanish intelligence on Russian mafia, bringing him too close to his expertise on the Afghan heroin pipeline. That MI6 may have been the actual perpetrator of Litvenenko’s murder is almost a certainty, with MI6 having been identified as piling ‘off the record’ cash to the government of Karzai and its known close connections to heroin trafficking via Uzbekistan. It is likely MI6 had debriefed Litvinenko with an eye to eventually murdering him in the initial plan; when they’d hired the former FSB anti-corruption expert with entirely too much knowledge of the Russian end of the so-called ‘St Petersburg pipeline.’
Now, we have a reprise of the Litvinenko assassination in the case of Sergei Skripal‘s poisoning, consistent with the leaked memo at the beginning of this essay, has information warfare in the guise of the Associated Press written all over it, invoking Litvinenko:
The circumstances surrounding Sunday’s incident were still murky and police urged the public not to speculate. But few could avoid invoking the name of Litvinenko — the former Russian agent who died after drinking polonium-210-laced tea in a swanky London hotel in 2006.
His illness was initially treated as unexplained. Evidence eventually emerged indicating he had been deliberately poisoned with the radioactive material.
A British judge wrote in a 2016 report that Litvinenko’s death was an assassination carried out by Russia’s security services — with the likely approval of Putin. The Russian government has denied any responsibility.
Not mentioned by the AP reporting: the 2016 report had taken ten years, conveniently appeared when the west had upped its demonizing of Putin, has been disputed by Litvinenko’s own brother and father as well by dissident intelligence professionals and the ‘Sir Robert Owens’ report appears on its face to be what amounts to the work of a ‘British Robert Mueller’ taking intelligence agency script.
Especially damning in this most recent case of ‘sloppy assassination’ is, whoever poisoned Skripal (with nerve agent) also poisoned his daughter. What better means to paint Putin the devil incarnate? Again, this makes no sense at all to have actually originated from the Russian side purely from a public relations standpoint. Putin certainly wouldn’t want this sort of press and already British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has implicated ‘future steps’ to punish Russia.
Demonizing the ‘thug’ and ‘killer’ Putin has been the high sport of the USA’s CIA bed-partner, the American mainstream press.
Incidental to these preceding, Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov posed precisely ZERO political threat to Putin. Realizing this, one can only wonder whether the murderous spooks at Langley & Vauxhall had decided Nemtsov was more valuable dead, gunned down in sight of the Kremlin, with his death pinned by western press on Putin, than Nemtsov would ever be effective alive. Nemtsov’s Chechen killers were caught but not whoever it was ordered the killing, recalling western intelligence has a long history of cultivating radicals and fomenting trouble in Chechnya.
Which brings up this next:
Kim Jong-nam was no threat at all to his half-brother Kim Jong-un, and possessed sub-zero value while alive, to the CIA; he wasn’t political, kept a low profile and for the most part, entirely minded his own business. But a deliberately sloppy assassination, by default pinned on the (according to the often falsified western press accounts) crude by nature North Korean state, would see a priceless propaganda return, for pennies on the investment in Kim Jong-nam’s murder. This post is not the only source taking this line; as we’ve discovered concurrently published investigation following the assassin’s tracks to South Korea (they should look for further tracks to the CIA’s chief of stations in Tokyo & Seoul.)
Any naïf who’d believe the American government doesn’t employ professional killers (CIA assassination most definitely isn’t only about drones) should have a read about Enrique Prado:
“Enrique “Ricky” Prado’s resume reads like the ultimate CIA officer: veteran of the Central American wars, running the CIA’s operations in Korea [bold mine, RTW], a top spy in America’s espionage programs against China, and deputy to counter-terrorist chief Cofer Black — and then a stint at Blackwater. But he’s also alleged to have started out a career as a hitman for a notorious Miami mobster, and kept working for the mob even after joining the CIA”
Recalling the leaked British cable’s language on information warfare…
In conclusion, TD welcomes the US leadership for effective implementation and media coverage – as broad as possible – of this strategy
…and the established record of the American and British intelligence agency murders inclusive of Enrique Prado/CIA killer and John Hopkins/MI5 killer, in the context of information warfare, it is not a stretch at all to propose ‘sloppiness’ is a trademark of made for media false flag murders; to engineer public opinion for purpose of demonizing the perceived enemies of those who would rule us.
A slightly differing version of this article has been picked up and run at the online magazine ‘Russia Insider.’ This edition reflects subsequent updates
Anyone who believes VICE isn’t mainstream news should be aware Rupert Murdoch pushed $70 million of his money into buying a piece of the VICE action (buying his kid a seat on the VICE board of directors.) In a piece worthy of Murdoch’s British tabloid ‘The Sun on Sunday’ the public is treated to a rank psy-ops piece:
The 328-page report said there was a “strong probability” the Russian intelligence agency (FSB) directed two men to poison Litvinenko in London, and that this operation was “probably” sanctioned by then FSB head Nikolai Patrushev and Russian President Vladimir Putin
Yep, trust VICE to roll over for the MI6 murder novel at the snap of a neocon finger, with no critical exam of the wider facts surrounding Alexander Litvinenko’s death. The most remarkable words in the British report blaming the Kremlin and Putin are “probability” and “probably.” Probability and probably are NOT evidence but rather spinning an inescapable admission there is no hard evidence backing the accusations. So it is, the west ups the ante in its demonizing Vladimir Putin with sham report per rank propaganda purposes (recalling the Dutch investigation of MH 17.)
This case has always smelled to high heaven. Former FSB officer Litvinenko had all the wrong friends/trusted all the wrong people. As sloppy as the hit on him was, people the British have an ax to grind with (Russians) are purportedly to blame, but Litvinenko’s MI6 employer should be every bit as suspect as anyone.
“Professional standards require intelligence professionals to lie, hide information, or use covert tactics to protect their “cover,” access, sources, and responsibilities. The Central Intelligence Agency [as well, MI6] expects, teaches, encourages, and controls these tactics so that the lies are consistent and supported (“backstopped”). The CIA [as well, MI6] expects intelligence officers to teach others to lie, deceive, steal, launder money, and perform a variety of other activities [such as ‘psy-ops’ or information operations] that would certainly be illegal if practiced in the United States [or Britain]. They call these tactics “tradecraft,” and intelligence officers practice them in all the world’s intelligence services”
A case can be made the preponderance of circumstantial evidence points to the opposite direction of the (heavily influenced by MI6) British report’s conclusion.
More likely Litvinenko’s *truly fatal* mistake was to begin working with Spanish authorities on breaking down the illicit heroin trade at a time when a British ambassador who had been recently fired subsequently penned an essay ‘Britain protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time’ coinciding with revelations both CIA & MI6 had been paying millions in off-record cash to the Karzai government in Kabul (noting Hamid Karzai’s brother, Wali, was both; renting a large compound to the CIA and concurrently playing kingpin in Afghanistan’s heroin trade) .. even as Russia’s anti-heroin efforts are undermined by NATO:
Meanwhile, the British ambassador would appear to have been sent packing for investigating the problem from neighboring Uzbekistan. It is interesting to note his linking the murdered former Russian anti-corruption investigator Alexander Letvinenko to uncovering the Afghan heroin pipeline to St Petersburg… a murder blamed in popular media on Russia with no critical exam whatsoever of Litvinenko’s subsequent MI6 connections in this regard.
A CIA/MI6 joint venture? After, (video, above) the Russians’ high visibility whistle-blowing, there is grudging (and minimal) actions by NATO, busting just a few labs out of hundreds and ONLY those labs it would seem are not under the CIA’s protection. The southwest of Afghanistan is the poppy region where the USA and British military had taken a ‘hands off’ attitude and done little to nothing to address the problem. Any drug interdiction program efforts had been initiated against only THOSE OPUIM FARMERS WHO DO BUSINESS WITH THE TALIBAN, or 15% of the labs and traffickers. As the USA wound down the American military involvement, it is clear the problem had never been honestly addressed.
Again, Litvinenko’s fatal mistake likely had been to concurrently cooperate with Spanish intelligence on Russian mafia, bringing him too close to his expertise on the Afghan heroin pipeline. That MI6 may have been the actual perpetrator of Litvenenko’s murder is almost a certainty, with MI6 having been identified as piling ‘off the record’ cash to the government of Karzai and its known close connections to heroin trafficking. The product can’t be moved to Russia (ultimately via Russian mafia on the St Petersburg end) by the Americans and British without cooperation bought from the Afghans at the source, again recalling Hamid Karzai’s brother, Wali, was both; renting a large compound to the CIA and concurrently playing kingpin in Afghanistan’s heroin trade. So Litvinenko easily could have been killed by his MI6 employer with Putin blamed as a matter of frosting on the intelligence agency hit. May as well get some gain when embarrassing circumstance requires the killing of your own agent. In the close alternative scenario, MI6 had debriefed Litvinenko with an eye to murdering him in the initial plan; when they’d hired the former FSB anti-corruption expert with entirely too much knowledge of the Russian end of the so-called ‘St Petersburg pipeline.’ At the end of the day, it come down to western intelligence complicity in the Afghan heroin trade is old news
“I don’t believe for a second that the Russian authorities were involved. The sentence [report’s findings] is a set-up to provide more bad publicity against the Russian government. The Russians had no reason to want Alexander dead. My brother was not a spy, he was more like a policeman. He was in the FSB but he worked against organised crime, murders, arms trafficking, stuff like that.
“He did not know any state secrets or go on any special missions. It is the Western media that have called him a spy. He [Alexander Litvinenko] had already started to get in touch with old friends and would have gone back [to Russia] in due course. My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government.
“Why else would the court be called to hold this inquiry only after 10 years?” –Maxim Litvinenko
Ok, so this is a gross story. But I’m in the habit of putting nearly everything out there (except for what is between my ears and had never put through or even spoken about in presence of any electronic device), if only so the NSA cannot claim they have anything ‘secret’ on me. It sort of balances things when the public can know what the spies think only they should know. Want my entire sex history? Check my (free online) book ‘Queer Chicken Dinner.’ The NSA has read it. It’s worth a read just to discover the evil joke on Jack Kerouac couched in the title. Too bad the iconic pedophile worshipped by millions drank himself to death rather than lived to read my rebuttal to his ‘On the Road.’
Over this past year I’ve been on hiatus from Berlin, a city of spies and assassins where any moment can be a hairs breath from encounter with a poison pellet for someone like myself. Gee, I must have seriously pissed some evil and powerful people off, prurient examples one, two, three, four & five. Or, if you want the facts rather than the comedy, check my “America’s Deep State” series of articles. This story is tame when compared to the gross closet habits of the ‘deep state’ elite in America’s leadership. Sort of a switch here, the public free to know what the NSA could only wish the public would never discover and perhaps Snowden’s revelations will be the nitro added to my glycerin.
So, I returned to Berlin on one of my madcap journeys intended to strike deeper fear into the informed but cowardly politicians who sit on my story like using a trash can filled with nitro-glycerin for a stool they fear to get off of. I accomplished what I’d set out to do as they remained paralyzed on the lid of the explosive perch. It would never occur to a politician that if you’d like to defuse an explosive circumstance created by criminals, there is this thing called courage and meeting the problem head on. By now my strategy is to shame them into courageous action, all else having failed. And then, having returned my little village, oh fuck. Here where intelligence agencies dare not tread, actually cannot tread without 200 noses pressed against glass at the sight of any stranger, nature nailed me.
I woke up feeling as though I’d been shot in the left of my abdomen, had to crap and after that began vomiting .. all the while the pain of what seemed a gunshot to my kidney. The projectile that hit me was more than subsonic, as a small calcium pellet had departed the kidney chamber and found its trajectory via the ureter, the barrel of the gun that’d shot me.
So, passing a kidney stone should be straightforward enough, but of course my online medical certification in the subject was only beginning and I made some mistakes, one of them pretty bad. Dehydrated from puking and feeling as though I’d been both, put through the wringer AND run over by a truck, I did not eat and only sipped water for two days, when I should have been both eating and pouring water down like an open ended drain. And then I sorely fucked up by deciding applesauce would be gentle on my belly when reintroducing food. I ate LOTS of applesauce. Pectin. In other words, an organic, epoxy plug. Having survived the stone, now I’d shut down my intestinal tract with a REALLY BINDING constipation.
I turned down an offer of synthetic morphine from an acquaintance because morphine is constipating, I did not need google search to know this and by now I thought the worst of my pain was behind me. Of course it is the meta-data in all of this the National Security Agency finds most valuable, using google-search is like having the NSA read your mind. Natural laxatives, none have worked to now, mint tea, oatmeal, peanut butter (the 100% ground peanuts, no sugar, salt or hydrogenation), nectarines, none of these is working to dissolve the pectin epoxy plug. The NSA having known this much of my experience to now, will have to be disappointed, my having not googled ‘synthetic morphine’ together with ‘constipation’ .. discovering after the fact when reading here, I cannot be busted for an illegal Rush Limbaugh style Oxy-Contin habit.
On day five of my steadily backing up natural sewer, I marvel at the wonder of human creation, by now I’ve reviewed my disbelief in god and find it is quite ok on account of the human inventions, no, rather make that human stupidities associated with the very idea and nothing has changed. Of course science is only equal. What’s missing here? It appears I’ll work that out in some other lifetime.
One cup of olive oil chased by a liter of orange juice and nothing happens. Same again, some hours later and manage an encouraging sign, there is a feeling the pectin plug has budged ¼ inch and I managed to expel a pellet about the diameter of a euro cent. But DON’T DARE push hard on account of the unrepaired hernia that threatens me with holding a fistful of my gut expelled just beneath my right ribcage about six inches from my sternum. In the event that happened, I suppose I could get some tattoo art adding a scrotum, pubic hair and the moniker ‘NSA DICK’ to enhance my hernias appearance and sell myself to a homo-erotic freak show in Paris.
Hospital is not an option, into that sort of data-base with my American Express Platinum emergency medical insurance and the NSA shares it with all of the security services and the CIA’s Dr Mengele would be paying me a visit in short order. Or a concerned Rabbi from MOSSAD. Or perhaps a MI6 ‘doughnut dolly’ wanting to draw a curtain around my bed for an intimate inspection of my anus and insertion of a cyanide suppository.
Oh, a suppository. Well, duh, let’s google that for the NSA’s sake. Homemade? Well, according to google, you are supposed to have thought this out first and had a bar of pure glycerin soap on hand. But, let’s suppose Yankee ingenuity can come up with something. THINK! Do you suppose if one were quick enough, a cold, hard chunk of butter up the anus (before it can melt) might do the trick?
‘Go get the butter’ is probably the worst line in ‘The Last Tango in Paris’ and fucked in the ass is not happening to me now, NOT EVER. Anal sex is just not my thing. But it might titillate the French DGSE:
^ The NSA (him) & the world (her)
As I close this essay together with polishing off a liter of ‘bio-primo pflaumenkur’ (a German prune juice based, internal cleansing concoction), we’ll all find out if it works, that is whether I live to create another essay and post it here… so if you don’t see another, well, it’s been an amazing adventure…
Heroin, Bags of Cash & the CIA
CIA Narcotics Trafficking, Vietnam to Afghanistan
It had been reported in the New York Times the CIA has been handing off many millions of dollars to individuals in the Afghan government to buy influence. Using open source analysis, I will propose a case for these many millions being heroin trafficking ‘hush money.’ But first, a bit of history:
In 1970, serving in Vietnam, I had transferred from the 199th Light Infantry Brigade based at Long Binh, for extended tour of duty with the 330th Transportation Company located at Vung Tau. The US Army Airfield at Vung Tau was an advanced aircraft maintenance location, primarily, with a runway that could handle freight aircraft up to a C-130. By far, however, it was mainly a service center for helicopters needing advanced repairs, engine overhauls, rotor replacements, et cetera. Among other tasks, I worked airfield perimeter and flight line security. We had fully armed Cobra gun ships for airfield protection that needed secured from possible sapper attack, particularly, as well as the more typical security needs. The period was from October of 1970 to November of 1971.
As an E-5, I had responsibility for men on the perimeter at times, at other times on the flight line. Perimeter duty in my sector was parallel to the landing and take off (main) runway. This was Vietnam approaching late stage conflict. Heroin addiction was estimated by myself and other non-commissioned officers to be about 30% of the US Forces enlisted men on this airfield. Our own company and it’s platoons were about this average level of addicts as was our understanding this being the similar case of the other Army units located there.
Again and again, over this 13 month period, heroin ran out. It could not be missed when nearly a third our soldiers at Vung Tau, a few hundreds of men, went into physical and mental symptom of withdrawal. It was not pretty. This was not the weak, comparatively speaking, heroin someone would needle. It was STRONG. It was smoked or ‘snorted’ up the nose. Intravenous use of this drug would have been almost instantly fatal. Tremendous quantity of the drug was consumed by these horrifically addicted men.
Vung Tau could not be easily supplied with heroin on demand, without some serious interruptions, in the large quantities required to maintain the habits of hundreds of badly addicted soldiers by Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents. The location was separated from the mainland by bracken marsh, accessed by a single causeway secured in multiple sectors with tightly controlled traffic having to pass American and Australian security checks. By sea would have been more likely, but here it is also problematic for the un-interrupted enemy supply of our soldiers with drugs. Vung Tau was highly secured by sea with armed patrol boats because of the high military value of its mission. It is a small area of land with essentially little coastline to secure. Security was tight. Interdiction would have been a near certainty, at least once in a while. It didn’t happen.
The Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents of course did not have air access to us. The CIA did.
It was nowhere near rocket science to note the CIA airline Air America flight that parked 1/4 mile away from every other aircraft, never came in to parking area. Typically, 3 people, armed, stayed with the aircraft, command staff car picked up 2 others. Luggage (nearly modern steamer trunks filled with not only heroin but also high grade marijuana) for at least 10 (TEN) people was picked up by a 3/4 ton truck, with 2 persons riding with the baggage, 1 left guarding the aircraft. All airfield personnel were strictly instructed NEVER to approach the Air America flights. They never stayed more than several hours. Bingo, heroin flush by that evening. Again and again. Every time the soldier’s suppliers had run out of heroin, there was an Air America flight landed. Problem solved, the addicted soldiers were functional again.
After Vietnam I served with 19th Special Forces Group as (11F40) Sergeant for Operations and Intelligence, working together with some of the best in the field, a position that eventually pointed to my later career as an investigator. In conversation with special forces veterans of CIA liaised Indochina operations, it became clear CIA narcotics trafficking in Vietnam was not a ‘one off’ by some isolated or small rogue element. I continued to follow the CIA in the available sources and have made some assessments, drawn some conclusions.
The covert, operational or ‘black ops’ sector itself of the CIA has been the source of major narco-trafficking or, there has been a large and well organized rogue element within this sector where oversight is problematic. These people are in major international drug trafficking and their worldwide tracks are beginning to emerge over time, with overwhelming circumstantial evidence.
It had been established by the 1970s and reported on in media that the CIA had bought the loyalties of tribes in the so called ‘Golden Triangle’ opium producing region with cash for their crop, the most likely or closest proximity, raw base or source of the heroin in Vietnam. War zones with covert logistics for intelligence services are perfect opportunities to commercially process on large scale with no effective police oversight. Again and again, reliable CIA narcotics trafficking accounts have surfaced only to be quashed, noting in the linked affidavit, the Iran-Contra’s Robert Gates associated Richard Secord, and George W Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (at time of invasion of Afghanistan.)
After Vietnam, and the loss of direct military backing in force for our covert agency and no longer in control of the necessary areas in the region, heroin waned and cocaine became big. One only has to look at the tracks of the graduates of the School of the Americas, and connect the dots. This is the CIA associated initial source of the leadership training that has today’s Mexican Federal Police sometimes overwhelmed in pitched battles with drug lord militiamen that are now days professional commandos. Move south from there and you had Noriega in Panama, same source of training and a CIA asset, became a major international narco-trafficker.
South farther again and you have Uribe associated with cartels, right wing militias and associated death squads, CIA, School of the Americas training, all in the mix of Colombia, and drug trade and coca production is up there, eradication a farce. In 2005 you find Gulf Stream jets used in the CIA renditions are passing through the hands of known CIA assets, to Uribe family linked cartel, one had crashed in Mexico carrying 4 tons of Cocaine as noted in the narco-sphere news:
“the Gulfstream II was purchased less than two weeks before it crashed in Mexico by a duo that included a U.S. government operative who allegedly had done past contract work for a variety of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, according to a known CIA asset (Baruch Vega) who is identified as such in public court records. The four tons of cocaine onboard of the Gulfstream II at the time of its crash landing, according Vega, was purchased in Colombia via a syndicate that included a Colombian narco-trafficker named Nelson Urrego, who, according to Panamanian press reports and Vega, is a U.S. government (CIA) asset”
And now Mexico is severing its relationship with the CIA having anything to do with the so-called ‘war on drugs’ and it is a smart move (when considering the Pentagon has enlisted Blackwater as a contractor in the business.) Meanwhile the ‘war on drugs’ discovers the Rick Perry administration in the George W Bush home state of Texas moves very quickly to shut down investigators who’d discovered high powered American judges, politicians and law enforcement at parties thrown by drug cartels. Couple this to a joint Blackwater/CIA covert assassination program that had been run by known cartel killer Enrique Prado, coupled to Erik Prince’s known religious extremism with ties to and funding of the American religious right, one may more than speculate international narcotics trafficking is funding Rick Perry’s Islamophobic Tea Party.
And Bush appointed Robert Mueller’s FBI? NOT INTERESTED, Small wonder with Mueller having been at the center of damage control and cover-up of the Iran-Contra linked BCCI terror and narcotics money laundering scandal. This is reinforced when Attorney General Eric Holder had concealed religious-right big shot Carl Lindner‘s contributions to the Uribe linked AUC death squads in Colombia.
The CIA trafficking in Latin America is the most well documented, on account of the Iran-Contra affair having spilled into the open. And it is here we come up with the Bush family criminal syndicate who’s who of international narcotics traffickers .. oh and that ties into George H.W. Bush’s close buddy Bill Clinton, the business is a bi-partisan bag of maggots.
A Robert Gates linked Iran-Contra player, Duane Clarridge, had a ‘private’ CIA operating in Afghanistan, run by an Air Force contractor named Michael Furlong The New York Times had reported. Some 40 days after this story broke, we see this:
By waiting 40 days since this had spilled, Robert Gates had given damage control in this affair ample time to meet, plan, erase tracks, create false leads, and destroy evidence. Throughout his series, the New York Times reporter neglects to mention Robert Gates is also an Iran-Contra figure with a history of cover-up, investigated by prosecutor Lawrence Walsh who stated:
“By October, when Gates claimed he first remembered hearing of the diversion, Casey ordered an inquiry and later made a report to Poindexter; but, by then, the Hasenfus aircraft had been shot down and Casey and Gates were beginning to cover.”
The now known operation coordinated by Furlong employed International Media Ventures, run by veterans of General McChrystal’s Special Operations forces, American International Security, run by a former Green Beret, and most interestingly, as we have seen, a company belonging to Duane ‘Dewey’ Clarridge, a former top CIA official with close ties to Robert Gates and Iran-Contra, as well utilized by the FBI in Afghanistan. Gates waited well over a month to “open an inquiry” to see whether “rules were violated” (notice contract murder is suddenly a mere ‘rules violation.’) With reports across the globe shouting bloody murder at the trouble he was in, Furlong appears never to have been prosecuted. Where had the Furlong/Clarridge operation been based and run out of? Almost certainly from the government protected Afghan drug lord (and presidential brother) Walid Karzai’s CIA rented compound outside Kandahar. The Clarridge operation is most certainly a cover for heroin trafficking.
Now the clincher. More than 90% of this years Heroin supplied to the world (90% TO THE WORLD) will come from poppies grown in Afghanistan. This is not just the Taliban folks, it is the CIA. Cleaning up the problem or cornering the market? It would very much seem any ‘drug eradication program is window dressing the problem while in actuality cornering the market. This thought is buttressed by the Russian experience with attempting cooperation in cleaning up the hundreds of heroin labs in Afghanistan, with the American military commanders at the top blocking any efforts:
After, (video, above) the Russians’ high visibility whistle-blowing, there is grudging (and minimal) actions by the USA, busting just a few labs out of hundreds and ONLY those labs it would seem are not under the CIA’s protection. The southwest of Afghanistan is the poppy region where the USA military had taken a ‘hands off’ attitude and done little to nothing to address the problem. Any drug interdiction program efforts had been initiated against only THOSE OPUIM FARMERS WHO DO BUSINESS WITH THE TALIBAN, or 15% of the labs and traffickers. The Taliban’s 15% control of 93% of the world market for opium & heroin is still nearly 14% the world supply, this is no small business in the matter of funding their insurgency, not to mention their product is likely laundered through the CIA for export. As the USA winds down the American military involvement, it is clear the problem had never been honestly addressed.
Meanwhile, a British ambassador had been sent packing for investigating the problem from neighboring Uzbekistan and subsequently pens an article “Britain is Protecting the Biggest Heroin Crop of All Time.” It is interesting to note his linking a murdered former Russian anti-corruption investigator, Alexander Letvnenko working for MI6, had uncovered the Afghan heroin pipeline to St Petersburg… a crime blamed in popular media on Russia with little mention whatsoever of his connections in this regard. Litvenenko’s fatal mistake likely had been to concurrently cooperate with Spanish authorities on Russian mafia, bringing him too close to his expertise on the Afghan heroin pipelines. That MI6 may have been the actual perpetrator of Litvenenko’s murder is almost a certainty, with MI6 now also having been identified as piling ‘off the record’ cash to the government of Karzai and its known close connections to heroin trafficking. In the end, it come down to western complicity in the Afghan heroin trade is old news.
And in a 2009 interview with Phillip Giraldi, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has the following to say:
EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.
There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.
GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?
EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.
GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?
EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.
As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.
The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.
Criminals do not voluntarily surrender their business models. Cleaning up the problem is not going to happen until the CIA covert operations is brought under control. The CIA, or a rogue element within the organization has been, personally enriching themselves for decades as international narco-traffickers, my assessment. All the while using our nation’s ‘Security’ together with all of the power of the apparatus the term implies, to cover a rogue and criminal club within our ranks. And so, another example of how it is the pursuit of violence through wars corrupts and/or attracts corrupt people. C’est la vie.
Additional Notes
An interesting aside, General Patraeus figures into the Latin America/Iran-Contra era, when he supervised his friend and professional associate from the CIA ‘Dirty Wars’ days, death squad veteran James Steele, when running covert torture centers in Iraq.
These following stories from the AP WIRE [4 years ago] point to, among other things, CIA having wiretapped DEA to prevent DEA stumbling on CIA international narco-trafficking and continued efforts by our Justice Department to cover-up crime with the state secrets doctrine:
Sep 11th, 2009 | WASHINGTON — A federal judge says the CIA is hiding behind dubious national security arguments to shield itself from a potentially embarrassing lawsuit U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who earlier ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent accused in the suit, has rejected an emergency request to put the case on hold while the government appeals.
The CIA has argued that allowing the case to proceed would divulge classified information, but, in an opinion made public on Friday, Lamberth said there was no good reason to delay.
In the suit, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent claims the CIA illegally wiretapped his home when stationed in Rangoon, Burma in 1993. The agent, Richard Horn, said he became suspicious when he returned from a trip to find his government-issued rectangular coffee table had been replaced with a round one.
The case has been a test of the Obama administration’s use of the so-called state secrets privilege, when the government seeks to block legal action by saying the details that would be revealed would harm national security.
Administration officials have pledged to review all state secrets claims made by the previous Bush administration, but in many cases the government is still asserting the need to prevent disclosures that it says would harm national security.
In the DEA case, Lamberth has previously rejected the state secrets claim. Government lawyers are attempting to reassert the privilege but on different grounds, but the judge isn’t buying it.
“Having lost on their assertion of the state secrets privilege, the government’s new refrain is heads you lose, tails we win,” the judge wrote.
The court case is rooted in an old squabble between the DEA and CIA operating overseas.
Horn claims Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him relocated because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country’s drug trade.
The CIA has not said in court filings whether or not it monitored Horn, but Horn claims he was monitored without lawful authority and in violation of his constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The CIA buys off the DEA
10 Nov 09-
WASHINGTON — The government has agreed to pay $3 million to a former agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration who sued CIA officers for illegal eavesdropping
The proposed settlement followed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in July that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against the eavesdropping allegations.
The lawsuit was brought by former DEA agent Richard Horn, who says his home in Rangoon, Burma, was illegally wiretapped by the CIA in 1993. He says Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him transferred because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country’s drug trade.
Horn sued Brown and Huddle in 1994, seeking monetary damages for violating his civil rights. The CIA itself was a defendant in the lawsuit until early this year…..
Then-CIA Director George Tenet filed an affidavit asking that the case against Brown be dismissed because he was a covert agent whose identity was a state secret that must not be revealed in open court. Lamberth granted the CIA’s request and threw out the case against Brown in 2004.
Lamberth found out last year that Brown’s cover had been lifted in 2002, even though the CIA continued to file legal documents saying his status was covert. The judge found that the CIA intentionally misled the court and he reinstated the case against Brown.
The agreement in the case was revealed in court papers filed Tuesday night, and Lamberth will now consider whether to dismiss the suit. Under the proposed settlement, the government makes no admission as to whether the allegations in the lawsuit are true
And:
WASHINGTON — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the president of Afghanistan, gets regular payments from the CIA and has for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The newspaper said that according to current and former American officials, the CIA pays Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around Kandahar.
The CIA’s ties to Karzai, who is a suspected player in the country’s illegal opium trade, have created deep divisions within the Obama administration, the Times said
Allegations that Karzai is involved in the drug trade have circulated in Kabul for months. He denies them.
Critics say the ties with Karzai complicate the United States’ increasingly tense relationship with his older brother, President Hamid Karzai. The CIA’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
Some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, a central figure in the south of the country where the Taliban is dominant, undermines the U.S. push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.
“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan, was quoted by the Times in an article published on its Web site.
Ahmed Wali Karzai told the Times that he cooperates with American civilian and military officials but does not engage in the drug trade and does not receive payments from the CIA.
Karzai helps the CIA operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists, according to several American officials. Karzai also is paid for allowing the CIA and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city, which also is the base of the Kandahar Strike Force, the Times said.
Karzai also helps the CIA communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban, the newspaper reported.
CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the report.
Followed by this AP story:
“Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan where a large chunk of the new U.S. forces will be deployed, cited corruption — which Karzai has pledged to fight — as the worst problem facing his nation. “The biggest problem is corruption in the Afghan government, police and military but also in some of the companies coming from the United States, Canada and England and Germany,” Hamidi said. “There is corruption and drug dealing by the people who are in power, within the police and the military.”Hamidi said just last month he was told that Taliban were sleeping in the police barracks.”The police are taking money from both sides — the government and the Taliban,” he said. “When we have this kind of police and military, the Afghan problem won’t be solved in 20 years.””
What Hamidi had pointed directly to, is military subcontractors in the employ of CIA, the military and the police, all in bed with both narcotics trafficking and the Taliban.
Wali Karzai and Ghulam Haider Hamidi were both assassinated not long after, Wali Karzai because he was too ‘hot’ (his own CIA liaison killed him) and Ghulam Haider Hamidi because he was too clean ..
27 March 2014 update: Crimea sanctions is the excuse the Obama administration uses to cancel joint efforts with Russia to combat international narcotics trafficking. Read the facts at the Moscow Times
1 May 2014 update: “We are not scared from the government, because most of the officials have their share in the harvesting”Read the article at usnews.com
10 June 2014 update: New information comes to light on the CIA rendition jets subsequently moved over to narcotics traffickers, read the article at narconews.com
9 July 2015 update: Corresponding perfectly with the Department of Defense & CIA gaining control over the opium production in Afghanistan: “CDC health officials said that the US is in the grip of a heroin epidemic, with abuse of the drug doubling among 18-25 year olds, doubling for women, and rising among white people by 114 percent over a decade from 2002 to 2013.” Read the story at RT and see the facts posted at the Center for Disease Control.
29 August 2021 Update: Pepe Escobar to The GreyZone’s Ben Norton & Max Blumenthal on the Taliban pledge to wipe out opium production in, and opium export from, Afghanistan:
“This is all Northern Alliance warlords. Once again, there is no Pashtuns involved in this. This is a huge, serious issue, and I’m sure they’re going to fulfill it because this is another eternal clash between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. This is a very, very important point for them in terms of public opinion everywhere, not only in Eurasia but in the rest of the world in terms of anti-drugs and a very good p.r. for them.”
Well, Pepe Escobar is full of shit or full of himself (which is about the same thing.) Opium and heroin production in Afghanistan was never a sole business of the Northern Alliance. Walid Karzai was a Pashtun and key player in the narcotics trade operating out of the Pashtun majority Kandahar Province, the single most productive region of opium in Afghanistan. No Pashtun opium farmers in Kandahar? I don’t think so. No Pashtuns involved in the production and export of opium and heroin causing problems in Russia and Iran? I don’t think so. And the hundreds of on location Afghanistan heroin processing labs are not so much as mentioned by Escobar. Let’s also not forget Kandahar Province is historically renown as a Taliban sympathetic territory where narcotics trafficking and related corruption was to a point the Taliban were sleeping in the USA supported Afghanistan government’s police barracks:
“Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar … cited corruption … as the worst problem facing his nation. “The biggest problem is corruption in the Afghan government, police and military but also in some of the companies coming from the United States, Canada and England and Germany,” Hamidi said. “There is corruption and drug dealing by the people who are in power, within the police and the military.” Hamidi said just last month he was told that Taliban were sleeping in the police barracks. “The police are taking money from both sides — the government and the Taliban,” he said. “When we have this kind of police and military, the Afghan problem won’t be solved in 20 years””
The statement by Escobar relevant to the preceding is, in effect, such an egregious lie, it discredits the entire interview with Norton & Blumenthal.
Seal worked directly for Sonia Atala, the CIA protected drug baron (Michael … that the Sandinistas were directly involved in drug trafficking into the United States.
Hitz also investigated the claim that the CIA participated in drug trafficking in Central America in the 1980s. A declassified version of his report was released in …
CIA and the Nugan Hand Bank. … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on DrugTrafficking he recruited WerBell as a consultant because he “had extensive …
According to Daniel Sheehan, Hull was a CIA contract operative in Costa Rica where he managed 8,000 … Drug Trafficking by the US National Security Council …
A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror … Paul DeRienzo: What was the CIA’s role in heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia?
(2) David Corn, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine … the contra program who (were) alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking.
In 1971, Edwin P. Wilson left the CIA to run shipping companies for a secret Navy … In 1983 the Australian Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking released a report …
The two men told Sheehan about a group of former CIA agents and assets were … in a racketeering network involved in drug trafficking and arms smuggling.
He remained in prison for three years and according to one source the CIA paid … He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and …
In 1973 Frank Nugan, an Australian lawyer, and Michael Hand, a former CIA … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking he recruited WerBell as a …
In 1974 the Nugan Hand Bank got involved in helping the CIA to take part in … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking he recruited WerBell as a …
… in Defrauding America, when George Bush Sr. and CIA Director William Casey … on allegations of illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with …
In 1974 the Nugan Hand Bank got involved in helping the CIA to take part in … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking he recruited WerBell as a …
In 1961 Felix Rodriguez joined the CIA-backed Brigade 2506 and … blame oppressed people for drugs – but international drug trafficking requires fleets of cargo …
According to Alfred W. McCoy (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global … He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and …
Second, I was contacted two years ago by a former CIA agent (who worked in the … He had then been a leader of the Corsican drug trafficking network in South …
The bank’s legal counsel was William Colby, a former director of the CIA. The Board … (Before releasing it to the public, the Joint Task Force on DrugTrafficking, …
Summers believes that some members of the CIA took part in this conspiracy. ….. He had then been a leader of the Corsican drug trafficking network in South …
(1) Fabian Escalante, The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, …… go to prison for 18 months for a drug trafficking charge,” answers the general.
Michael Townley was another CIA agent who was involved in organizing …. the CIA. He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and …
According to David Corn (Blonde Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA Crusade) in 1985 …. jobs, and became obsessed with the covert world and drug–trafficking.
He had then been a leader of the Corsican drug trafficking network in South ….. the CIA, the military, Johnson’s crooked Texas cronies, and Texas Governor John …
… on subjects such as cross-border narcotics trafficking and monitoring violent …. is laid at the CIA’s feet, where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall.
spartacus-educational.com/JFKcaulfieldJ.htm
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Related:
Profits of War (my book review) Renegade MOSSAD officer Ari Ben Menache writes about (among other things) MOSSAD cooperation with CIA in Iran-Contra linked cocaine trafficking. Buy the book at amazon