By Stephen Kinzer. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2003. 258 pages.
Reviewed by David S. Robarge
At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said "it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us."1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah's Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA's covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah's power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.
British colonialism faced its last stand in 1951 when the Iranian parliament nationalized the sprawling Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) after London refused to modify the firm's exploitative concession. "[B]y a series of insensate actions," the British replied with prideful stubbornness, "the Iranian Government is causing a great enterprise, the proper functioning of which is of immense benefit not only to the United Kingdom and Iran but to the whole free world, to grind to a stop. Unless this is promptly checked, the whole of the free world will be much poorer and weaker, including the deluded Iranian people themselves."2 Of that attitude, Dean Acheson, the secretary of state at the time, later wrote: "Never had so few lost so much so stupidly and so fast."3 But the two sides were talking past each other. The Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, was "a visionary, a utopian, [and] a millenarian" who hated the British, writes Kinzer. "You do not know how crafty they are," Mossadeq told an American envoy sent to broker the impasse. "You do not know how evil they are. You do not know how they sully everything they touch."4
The Truman administration resisted the efforts of some British arch-colonialists to use gunboat diplomacy, but elections in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1951 and 1952 tipped the scales decisively toward intervention. After the loss of India, Britain's new prime minster, Winston Churchill, was committed to stopping his country's empire from unraveling further. Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, were dedicated to rolling back communism and defending democratic governments threatened by Moscow's machinations. In Iran's case, with diplomacy having failed and a military incursion infeasible (the Korean War was underway), they decided to take care of "that madman Mossadeq"5 through a covert action under the supervision of the secretary of state's brother, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen Dulles.6 (Oddly, considering the current scholarly consensus that Eisenhower was in masterful control of his administration, Kinzer depicts him as beguiled by a moralistic John Foster and a cynical Allen.) Directing the operation was the CIA's charming and resourceful man in Tehran, Kermit Roosevelt, an OSS veteran, Arabist, chief of Middle East operations, and inheritor of some of his grandfather Theodore's love of adventure.
The CIA's immediate target was Mossadeq, whom the Shah had picked to run the government just before the parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC. A royal-blooded eccentric given to melodrama and hypochondria, Mossadeq often wept during speeches, had fits and swoons, and conducted affairs of state from bed wearing wool pajamas. During his visit to the United States in October 1951, Newsweek labeled him the "Fainting Fanatic" but also observed that, although most Westerners at first dismissed him as "feeble, senile, and probably a lunatic," many came to regard him as "an immensely shrewd old man with an iron will and a flair for self-dramatization."7 Time recognized his impact on world events by naming him its "Man of the Year" in 1951.
Mossadeq is Kinzer's paladin—in contrast to the schemers he finds in the White House and Whitehall—but the author does subject him to sharp criticism. He points out, for example, that Mossadeq's ideology blinded him to opportunities to benefit both himself and the Iranian people: "The single-mindedness with which he pursued his campaign against [the AIOC] made it impossible for him to compromise when he could and should have."8 In addition, Mossadeq failed at a basic test of statecraft—trying to understand other leaders' perspectives on the world. By ignoring the anticommunist basis of US policy, he wrenched the dispute with the AIOC out of its Cold War context and saw it only from his parochial nationalist viewpoint. Lastly, Mossadeq's naïvete about communist tactics led him to ignore the Tudeh Party's efforts to penetrate and control Iranian institutions. He seemed almost blithely unaware that pro-Soviet communists had taken advantage of democratic systems to seize power in parts of Eastern Europe. By not reining in Iran's communists, he fell on Washington's enemies list. Kinzer throws this fair-minded assessment off kilter, however, with a superfluous epilogue about his pilgrimage to Mossadeq's hometown. Intended to be evocative, the chapter sounds maudlin and contributes little to either an understanding of the coup or Kinzer's speculations about its relevance today.
Kinzer is at his journalistic best when—drawing on published sources, declassified documents, interviews, and a bootleg copy of a secret Agency history of the operation9—he reconstructs the day-to-day running of TPAJAX. The plan comprised propaganda, provocations, demonstrations, and bribery, and employed agents of influence, "false flag" operatives, dissident military leaders, and paid protestors. The measure of success seemed easy enough to gauge—"[a]ll that really mattered was that Tehran be in turmoil," writes Kinzer. The design, which looked good on paper, failed on its first try, however, and succeeded largely through happenstance and Roosevelt's nimble improvisations. No matter how meticulously scripted a covert action may be, the "fog of war" affects it as readily as military forces on a battlefield. Roosevelt may have known that already—he and his confreres chose as the project's unofficial anthem a song from the musical Guys and Dolls: "Luck Be a Lady Tonight."10
TPAJAX had its surreal and offbeat moments. Kinzer describes Roosevelt calmly lunching at a colleague's house in the embassy compound while "[o]utside, Tehran was in upheaval. Cheers and rhythmic chants echoed through the air, punctuated by the sound of gunfire and exploding mortar shells. Squads of soldiers and police surged past the embassy gate every few minutes. Yet Roosevelt's host and his wife were paragons of discretion, asking not a single question about what was happening." To set the right mood just before Washington's chosen coup leader, a senior army general named Fazlollah Zahedi, spoke to the nation on the radio, US officials decided to broadcast some military music. Someone found an appropriate-looking record in the embassy library and put on the first song; to everyone's embarrassment, it was "The Star-Spangled Banner." A less politically discordant tune was quickly played, and then Zahedi took the microphone to declare himself "the lawful prime minister by the Shah's order." Mossadeq was sentenced to prison and then lifetime internal exile.11
The Shah—who reluctantly signed the decrees removing Mossadeq from office and installing Zahedi, thereby giving the coup a constitutional patina—had fled Iran during the crucial latter days of the operation. When he heard of the successful outcome from his refuge in Rome, he leapt to his feet and cried out, "I knew it! They love me!"12 That serious misreading of his subjects' feeling toward him showed that he was out of touch already. Seated again on the Peacock Throne, the insecure and vain Shah forsook the opportunity to introduce constitutional reforms that had been on the Iranian people's minds for decades. Instead, he became a staunch pro-Western satrap with grandiose pretensions. He forced the country into the 20th century economically and socially but ruled like a pre-modern despot, leaving the mosques as the only outlet for dissent. Although the next 25 years of stability that he imposed brought the United States an intelligence payoff the price was dependence on local liaison for information about internal developments. The intelligence gap steadily widened, and Washington was caught by surprise when the Khomeini-inspired Islamist revolution occurred in February 1979.
That takeover, according to Kinzer, links the 51-year-old coup with recent and current terrorism.
With their devotion to radical Islam and their eagerness to embrace even the most horrific kinds of violence, Iran's revolutionary leaders became heroes to fanatics in many countries. Among those who were inspired by their example were Afghans who founded the Taliban, led it to power in Kabul, and gave Osama bin-Laden the base from which he launched devastating terror attacks. It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.13
This conclusion, however, requires too many historical jumps, exculpates several presidents who might have pressured the Shah to institute reforms, and overlooks conflicts between the Shia theocracy in Tehran and Sunni extremists in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Kinzer would have been better off making a less sweeping judgment: that TPAJAX got the CIA into the regime-change business for good—similar efforts would soon follow in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Cuba—but that the Agency has had little success at that enterprise, while bringing itself and the United States more political ill will, and breeding more untoward results, than any other of its activities.14 Most of the CIA's acknowledged efforts of this sort have shown that Washington has been more interested in strongman rule in the Middle East and elsewhere than in encouraging democracy. The result is a credibility problem that accompanied American troops into Iraq and continues to plague them as the United States prepares to hand over sovereignty to local authorities. All the Shah's Men helps clarify why, when many Iraqis heard President George Bush concede that "[s]ixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe,"15 they may have reacted with more than a little skepticism.
Footnotes
1. "Memorandum of Discussion at the 135th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, March 4, 1953," US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Volume X, Iran, 1951-1954 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1989), 699.
2. Kinzer, p. 121, quoting the British delegate to the UN Security Council, Gladwyn Jebb.
3. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 503.
4. Vernon A. Walters, Silent Missions (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 247.
5. John Foster Dulles, quoted in Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), 8.
6. The British had a covert action against Mossadeq in train until he expelled all British diplomats (including undercover intelligence officers) in October 1952. As Kinzer describes, members of MI-6 collaborated with CIA officers in drawing up the TPAJAX operational plan.
7. Kinzer, 120.
8. Ibid., 206-7.
9. Details of the Agency history were publicized in James Risen, "How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and '79)," New York Times, 16 April 2000, 1, 16-17. Lightly redacted versions of the history are posted on two Web sites: the New York Times at www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html; and the National Security Archive's at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/index.html.
10. Kinzer, 175, 211, 13.
11. Ibid., 181, 183-84.
12. Ibid., 184.
13. Ibid., 203-4.
14. Such is the theme of Kinzer's previous venture (with Stephen Schlesinger) into covert action history, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Anchor Books ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1990), wherein the authors ask, "Was Operation SUCCESS [in Guatemala] necessary and did it really advance US interests, in the long range and in the aggregate?" (xiii).
15. David E. Sanger, "Bush Asks Lands in Mideast to Try Democratic Ways," New York Times, 7 November 2003: A1.
Dr. David S. Robarge, is a member of CIA's History Staff. This article is unclassified in its entirety.
link to cia website-https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no2/article10.html
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Mass Mind Control Through Network Television
Alex Ansary December 30 2005
Why do countless American people go along with the War on Iraq? Why do so many people call for a police state control grid? A major component to a full understanding of why this kind of governmental and corporate corruption is to discover the modern science of mind control and social engineering. It's baffling to merely glance at the stacks of documentation that this world government isn't being constructed for the greater good of humanity. Although there are a growing number of people waking up the reality of our growing transparent soft cage, there seems to be just enough citizens who are choosing to remain asleep. Worse yet, there are even those who were at least partially awake at one time but found it necessary to return to the slumber of dreamland. This is no accident; this is a carefully crafted design. The drive to dumb down the populations of planet earth is a classic art that existed before the United States did. One component to understanding and deciphering the systems of control is to become a student of the magicians of influence and propaganda. In order to defeat our enemies (or dictators), its imperative that we understand how they think and what they believe in. When people think about mind control, they usually think in terms of the classic "conspiracy theory" that refers to Project MkUltra. This program is a proven example of 'overt mind control.' The project had grown out of an earlier secret program, known as Bluebird that was officially formed to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing. In reality the CIA had other objectives. An earlier aim was to study methods 'through which control of an individual may be attained'. The emphasis of experimentation was 'narco-hypnosis', the blending of mind altering drugs with carefully hypnotic programming. A crack CIA team was formed that could travel, at a moments notice, to anywhere in the world. Their task was to test the new interrogation techniques, and ensure that victims would not remember being interrogated and programmed. All manner of narcotics, from marijuana to LSD, heroin and sodium pentathol (the so called 'truth drug') were regularly used. Despite poor initial results, CIA-sponsored mind control program flourished. On 13 April 1953, the super-secret project MK-ULTRA was born. Its scope was broader than ever before, and only those in the top echelon of the CIA were privy to it. Official CIA documents describe MK-ULTRA as an 'umbrella project' with 149 'sub-projects'. Many of these sub-projects dealt with testing illegal drugs for potential field use. Others dealt with electronics. One explored the possibility of activating 'the human organism by remote control'. Throughout, it remained a major goal to brainwash individuals to become couriers and spies without their knowledge. When it was formed in 1947, the CIA was forbidden to have any domestic police or internal security powers. In short, it was authorized only to operate 'overseas'. From the very start MK-ULTRA staff broke this Congressional stipulation and began testing on unwitting American citizens. Precisely how extensive illegal testing became will never be known. Richard Helms, CIA Director and chief architect of the program, ordered the destruction of all MK-ULTRA records shortly before leaving office in 1973. Despite these precautions some documents were misfiled and came to light in the late 1970's. They laid bare the spy agency's cynicism. Despite the widespread knowledge of MK Ultra and the civil lawsuits that followed, this form of behavior modification is not the most expansive. The real dangers are the types of thought control that are 'covert' and not the subject of several dozen Hollywood movies like "Clockwork Orange" and Mel Gibson's "Conspiracy Theory." Our founding fathers faced enormous challenges in the formation of this country and its bill of rights. One challenge was laying down the groundwork or a free society without knowing what kind of technological advances would be made. Who would have guessed in those times that we needed an article in the bill of rights that specifically prohibits the government and it's associates from engaged in mind control or thought control. The closest item that promises our protection from the government is the 4th Article in The Bill of Rights which states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Like many are now beginning to note, the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights are merely given lip service by our supposedly elected officials. One of the most common examples of mind control in our so-called free and civilized society is the advent and usage of the television set. This isn't to say that all things on TV are geared towards brainwashing you. They're not. But most of the programming on television today is run and programming by the largest media corporations that have interests in defense contracts, such as Westinghouse (CBS), and General Electric (NBC). This makes perfect sense when you see how slanted and warped the news is today. Examining the conflicts of interest is merely glancing at the issue, although to understand the multiple ways that lies become truth, we need to examine the techniques of brain washing that the networks are employing. Radio isn't any different in its ability to brainwash a population into submission. Sixty-seven years ago, six million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare. It was the night before Halloween, 1938. At 8 p.m. CST, the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not waiting to hear Welles' explanation at the end of the program that it had all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien invaders. According to researcher Mack White ( http://www.mackwhite.com/), "Psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing. Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril and Rockefeller money assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Center, the purpose of which was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National Security Council. Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been set up--just in time for the Dawn of Television." Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. It's no longer an overstatement to note that the youth today that are raised and taught through network television are intellectually dead by their early teens. The dumbing down of humanity is represented by another shift which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity in the higher brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while activity in the lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases. The latter, commonly referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with more primitive mental functions, such as the "fight or flight" response. The reptile brain is unable to distinguish between reality and the simulated reality of television. To the reptile brain, if it looks real, it is real. Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response. The reptile brain makes it possible for us to survive as biological beings, but it also leaves us vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers. This is where the manipulators use our own emotions as strings to control us. The distortions and directions we are being moved to are taking place in the subconscious, often undetected. Propaganda techniques were first codified and applied in a scientific manner by journalist Walter Lippman and psychologist Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) early in the 20th century. During World War I, Lippman and Bernays were hired by then United States President, Woodrow Wilson, to participate in the Creel Commission, the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war, on the side of Britain. Edward Bernays said in his 1928 book Propaganda that, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." The Creel Commission provided themes for speeches by "four-minute men" at public functions, and also encouraged censorship of the American press. The Commission was so unpopular that after the war, Congress closed it down without providing funding to organize and archive its papers. The war propaganda campaign of Lippman and Bernays produced within six months such an intense anti-German hysteria as to permanently impress American business (and Adolf Hitler, among others) with the potential of large-scale propaganda to control public opinion. Bernays coined the terms "group mind" and "engineering consent", important concepts in practical propaganda work. The current public relations industry is a direct outgrowth of Lippman's and Bernays' work and is still used extensively by the United States government. For the first half of the 20th century Betrays and Lip man ran a very successful public relations firm. World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, both by Hitler's propagandist Joseph Gobbles and the British Political Warfare Executive, as well as the United States Office of War Information. Turn on your local newscast. You have a few minutes of blue-collar crime, hardly any white collar crime, a few minutes of sports, misc. chit chat, random political jibber-jabber, and a look at the weather that no one is forecasting correctly. Is that what happened in your town? And we're supposed to own the airwaves! The mainstream media openly supports the interests of the prison industrial complex. The stories focus on minority criminal groups, and exploit the real threat to appear much more dangerous than they are. Think about the growing per capita number of prisoners in the country. Then remember that this is happening at the same time that our prison boom began. The police on our streets have created criminals. The focus is to keep us in a state of fear, that way the elitists can attack any group they want to without fear of consequence. This is why the media is continuing to craft the timeless art of dehumanization. The techniques are increasing in their sophistication over time as the mind scientists that serve the empire continue to discover scientific breakthroughs as to how the human brain functions, learns, retains information, and behaves. The most effective brainwashing techniques are used on the most successful propaganda networks. Examine the music bed that lies low during the fright night scope of the second. It's spooky. I wonder if we are supposed to be thinking with our minds or getting ready for stunt. Observe the graphics with the music. They're glitzy and flashing. Like the monkey that is attracted to shiny objects, it's our monkey hand that controls to remote often stops the search for entertainment when the proper amount of glamour catches their attention. Most importantly, notice the repetition behind the lies that the politicians and their corporate media groupies tell us. You see, the unimaginable fallacies are created as 'truth' not because it's logical or provable, but because of the broken record technique. No matter how ridiculous the lie, it's repeated often enough that the brain doesn't know the difference between reality and nursery rhymes. This technique is under estimated in its ability to allow the puppeteers to hypnotize millions of people. Instead of "Fair and balanced" it's "We say it enough times, and you believe it." It's a tragic day when the state can monopolize on the enslaving and imprisonment of a population. Hollywood will continue to frighten us with films on the mafia, gangsters, and the corrupt blue collar criminal whose stupidity and greed get them caught. In the end, our minds are already pre conditioned to accept living in a police state economy and society because we read it in the paper, saw it praised on the news and talk shows, or saw it in a movie. There are several movies planned right now that support the official story of 911 and a few movies that glamorize the War on IRAQ. According to David L Robb, Author of Operation Hollywood, "Hollywood and the Pentagon have a long history of making movies together. It's a tradition that stretches back to the early days of silent films, and extends right up until the present day. It's been a collaboration that works well for both sides. Hollywood producers get what they want - access to billions of dollars worth of military hardware and equipment - tanks, jet fighters, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers - and the military gets what it wants - films that portray the military in a positive light; films that help the services in their recruiting efforts. The Pentagon is not merely a passive supporter of films, however. If the Pentagon doesn't like a script, it will usually suggest script changes that will allow the film to receive the military's support and approval. Sometimes these proposed changes are minor. But sometimes the changes are dramatic. Sometimes they change dialogue. Sometimes they change characters. Sometimes they even change history." They create something coined 'disinfotainment'. They mix disinformation with entertainment and call it disinfotainment. Unadulterated Violence is now accepted on regular TV. Killing in the name of the mother government is praised, that is unless the violence is committed in self defense to protect someone from the system. Sharp shooters, bombers, and assassin are worshipped if they are fighting for the system, are in the military, or are associated with groups that control the masses locally, such as the local police department. I don't condone violence, however it's hypocritical to support one form of homicide when it favors the elite, and condemn another when it's done to protect your land, freedom, or loved ones. This odd reality transfers itself into the shady world of video games that are stepped in plots and tasks to kill as much as the player can. The players are getting younger and younger with 7 out of 10 children playing games with a 'Mature' rating. Recently I was browsing the PC video game selection at a very large electronics store. I was appalled to see nearly 50 different games in which the setting of the game is IRAQ and the goal is to kill as many insurgents as possible and fulfill the mission. Children today are being indoctrinated through their favorite games and law enforcement programs to be the button pushes of the weapons of mass destruction for tomorrow's world. Is it any wonder why there are two house bills and a senate bill (with more on the way), which are giant steps in dismantling free speech of the general public. These bills together would kill (PEG) cable access centers where the public still owns the airwaves. It's the programming created locally, without censorship or commercial gain. Their income is derived from franchises within the local cities and a small percentage cable subscriber frees. This is a corporate takeover because this is centralizing communication by removing the locally based programming and moving the audience to the more official, nationalistic, and sensational programs that promotes violence, uniformity, and slavery over peach, diversity and freedom. Cable access features free speech and information with perspectives neglected by mainstream television. It also features a free flow programming system with fresh programs being aired by new producers on a rotating basis. This keeps the content and information creative and locally based while network TV is rigid with regular time slots and repetitive programming. The blocks of programming that are universally accepted parallel the shift to craft our entire lives towards the factory's bell and the illusion of time. This is the creation of the hive mind. The hive mind is result of massive brainwashing to the general public. Everyone shares the same thoughts, goals, knowledge and understanding. A hive mind society gears itself towards conformity and ignores diversity while masqueraded as the road to utopia in mainstream television. Network programming, weather it's the news or drama, is geared towards artificially creating your world and reality. With the proper amount of entertainment and sensationalism, we may even be living our lives through the television set. Many anchors and actors are beautiful and research shows that attractive people are usually perceived as trust worthy. While the real news rolls quickly by on the bottom of your screen, the anchor is selling you on the idea of having your very own police state hell hole right here in your local jurisdiction, or how 2 sports opposing teams chased around on a court for 2 hours in attempt to score points means something to you. No education, no information, SPIN. Today the media represents a tool of brainwashing and indoctrination that is utilized on behalf of the owners interests. Since the 1996 Telco act, television and radio stations all across the nation were bought out by major international media outlets. Clear Channel and Infinity are the two largest corporations in radio today. This has centralized the distribution of information and has threatened our free society ever since. The media drums to the heartbeat of its owners, whose interests are not of the general public. Instead they are interested in their other financial endeavors like defense contracting, oil business, political parties, prison industry. The conflicts of interest are monumental with the deregulation of the corporations. The lines are now blurred between one network's coverage of the war and the other. Once we come to the conclusion that the media is intentionally deceiving us, we can apply the principles of problem-reaction-solution. This formula takes a problem by either creating it or allowing it to happen and presenting that to the population. It could be terrorism, molestation, extra terrestrials. These topics create fear and no one in their right mind would support terrorism or crime. It's therefore OK to blast the television, the papers, and radio with 'the problem.' The natural reaction from the people is a request for more control to ensure more safety. Most let their fear and emotional side control their decisions and usually translated into something like, "The government needs more power over our lives to make us safer and freer from tyranny. I believe what the media tells me so I will support whatever decisions they make." Today's mainstream corporate news program discourages dissent of the war and paints activists with a negative brush that hints of treason. At the same time, the so-called journalists are cogs in a much larger machine who know that if they report a story that paints the government in a dark light, is likely to remain on 'the wire' and off the front page. The most disturbing thing about spending a single hour examining network cable news and modern Hollywood films are the reoccurring themes in the backdrop. The central ideas of countless "investigative reports" or "Friday night special" features are about a threat of some type over the horizon. The end of the world as we know it is being sold. If the news isn't feeding it to you, then the History Channel or Discover Channel are either talking about the crusades, asteroids, UFOs, earthquakes, terrorism, or exposes about serial killers. They are crafted a message that our world is unstable, and the threat is always an invisible and dangerous one that only our military can fix. When you record and log all the messages, you end up with a script, a screen write produced through the movie studios of Hollywood hell. I am not alone in noting this observation. Local and network news are designing their editorials about despair and fear because the owners, producers, and editors now understand that fear sells. The end result are the desired ratings, delivered like expected. The masters of modern spin understand that we like to be terrified. Just look at the success in the action/suspense/terror genres that have plopped onto the conveyor belt and packaged for our glee consumption. When the editors in charge found out that simply plastering a terror alert chart didn't scare the people the same way it used to, they began to kick up the campaign of terror a few notches with new and creative ways to sell the police state. When you get to the other side of the terror alerts of all shapes and sizes, you find another nightmare masquerading as the savior. The 'Ministry of Truth' will protect you. The mother government is here to rescue you and squash this brown terrorist bug, this gray alien, this avian bird flu, and every other nightmare that the nightly news brought you. The finest public relations specialists take the science of worshipping our kings down to a frame by frame level. George W. Bush is pictured in numerous poises with a hallo around his head. In other pictures, he stands tall with dozens of American flags blowing in the wind behind him. A more blasphemous display features him speaking in front of the cross of Jesus Christ. The message send couldn't be more clearly presented. Our current leaders are of the messiah status and only through them, will we reach the gates of safety. The lie that has been accepted by so many as truth is that this is a religious war. Numerous prime time programs are telling the story of the crusades (without the horrors) to synch our vibrations up to something out of the 13th Century, instead of the 21st Century. If the America people accept the fact that the crusades are here, that George Bush reports directly to god, and that revelations are here, then they have won the war for our minds. The loudspeaker whispers, "All our problems are by accident, never design." Across the room the system's minion snorts, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." It's that plot that says Middle Eastern terrorists from an Afghan cave are the reason beyond our little, "War on terror." Related messages in the script demonize young minority males and suggest harsh punishments for crimes they commit. They don't come out overtly and state their racist agenda. They come at you from the side by airing the same crime news repetitively, usually when it's committed by the minority group. The networks love the fact that the TV sets the norms in society and today, and hence politically opinion. Who would imagine that in the United States of America, both candidates of both parties in the 2004 election would be members of the Skull and Bones society at Yale University? Out of 290 million Americans, this is the best we could come up with? It is the decision of the owners to influence producers, editors, and others involved to paint to brush to fit the objective, which is the bottom line. If Sports is what the people want, then they get it, usually in large doses. Multi-media sports (or spectator sports) is just an escape from our own existence. It's like gambling, or drug addiction. It provides that buffer zone of rooting for something with other people that we've been told is good. People's fantasies also lead them to fixating on sports. Its simulated masculinity, in an age where there's a push to change us from men to robots. It's human nature to resist and fight that which is suppressing us. The sociologists and psychologists in areas of influence know this. Spectator sports prove the outlet internationally for what has been stripped away from us. We've lost the right to rebel and change our government through warfare if necessary. Today the bulk of our nation's population today doesn't know what's really going on with the fall of the American dollar and the plans for the transfer of American wealth to other countries. However, most can tell you who the top basketball or football players are. A lot of fans wish they were the stars, out there on the stage, the court, and the drag strip. Either you're "numero uno" in center stage or you're nothing. End of story. What I never understood when I was in high school was why my peers and friends would act naïve or ignorant in a "Wayne's World" or "Beavis and Butthead" kind of way. What I've learned since then is that the numerous programs that are pimping themselves of as 'entertainment' are actually demo graphed to the lowest common denominator. This is especially true with disc jockeys in Radio today. The reason our airwaves are saturated with jokes and content centered on fart jokes, private parts, borderline racism, and general trash talk is because it is selling. In the meantime, large numbers of our children, young adults, and older audiences are mimicking what they see and hear because the current 'norm' is selling this behavior as cool or 'chic.' When the conditioned is so intense that these forms of content are considered the norm, anything else seems either bizarre or uninteresting to the average American's attention span that is decreasing by the day. Hypothetically, if a producer on a network did get away from a feature story exposing government corruption at the highest levels, chances are the large impact necessary wouldn't be realized because the average viewer's brain has already been conditioned to seek out certain types of disinfotainment. The media has created the picture perfect society that could exist if we only did things their way, (their interests/government interest). It tells us what happiness is and what it is not and same for love, hate or anything else they can implant into our sub consciousness. We can become the perfect slave to the system through indoctrination given through network TV. Over time the messages are becoming increasingly racist, violent, and dishonest. But the programming began decades ago and few have the eyes to see it for what it has become. We live in a world where the populations give their minds away to the official version of the event, where utopia is right around the corner when big brother is riding shotgun. It's a world where Hollywood can make you believe anything, even that you are free. It's a world in which the prosecutor and the judge sit on the same side of the bench. The most obvious reason that our minds are being controlled on a massive scale psychologically, is become our culture has been conditioned incriminatingly to a TV, a radio, or a paper. We are given the world reality through a screen, some ink, or radio waves. The truth is hiding in plain site. The indoctrination through these mediums warns us that views other than those presented by them are unimportant and too be condemned. This Administration and media monopoly has a carefully crafted dehumanization program to anyone that dissents the official version of events. Some people are wrong about 5% of the time. Some are wrong most of the time. I wish I was wrong all the time. A lot of people deal with these intense realities, by asking me rhetorically, "What is the solution, smart guy?" Remember, it's the viewers, the consumers and all the other little votes called dollars that helped this oligarchy system lay its concrete foundation in our backyards. We must recognize the truth about why the system is flawed and enslaving us if we wish to beat it. The most important solution to fighting this type of brainwashing and mind control is to start with ourselves and our own awakening in the smaller things. In this case, it's brainwashing but after awhile we break Outside the Box and begin venturing outside the system and into unknown terrain. Fighting with people and forcing them to understand 'our truth' is not a solution. If our collective free will created this nightmare, than only our collective free will change it. The battle begins in the heart and mind of the beholder, and then extends outward from there, only to those open to the information. If you choose to travel the road to the truth, then you must be prepared for the obstacles that await you. You may be condemned or criticized by your family, your friends, your lovers, or your co-workers. This is their programming that began at birth that is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. You're going to have to be stronger than that. You must realize that there is a reality that exists outside of this controlled artificial system. Like Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, he took that 'leap of faith' over the bridgeless canyon in an attempt to get to the other side. Like Neo in the Matrix, he took the red pill from Morpheus in his attempt to cross over to his real self. Once you wake up, it's as if a hypnotist came along and snapped his fingers. You wake up and say to yourself, "Oh my god. I can see it now. Why did it take me so long to wake up?!" For some of you it can be a major shock. Like anything else, take this information and knowledge in stages. If it took a lifetime for them to mold your reality for you, then you know that it may take longer than a day to fully awaken. Remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Why do countless American people go along with the War on Iraq? Why do so many people call for a police state control grid? A major component to a full understanding of why this kind of governmental and corporate corruption is to discover the modern science of mind control and social engineering. It's baffling to merely glance at the stacks of documentation that this world government isn't being constructed for the greater good of humanity. Although there are a growing number of people waking up the reality of our growing transparent soft cage, there seems to be just enough citizens who are choosing to remain asleep. Worse yet, there are even those who were at least partially awake at one time but found it necessary to return to the slumber of dreamland. This is no accident; this is a carefully crafted design. The drive to dumb down the populations of planet earth is a classic art that existed before the United States did. One component to understanding and deciphering the systems of control is to become a student of the magicians of influence and propaganda. In order to defeat our enemies (or dictators), its imperative that we understand how they think and what they believe in. When people think about mind control, they usually think in terms of the classic "conspiracy theory" that refers to Project MkUltra. This program is a proven example of 'overt mind control.' The project had grown out of an earlier secret program, known as Bluebird that was officially formed to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing. In reality the CIA had other objectives. An earlier aim was to study methods 'through which control of an individual may be attained'. The emphasis of experimentation was 'narco-hypnosis', the blending of mind altering drugs with carefully hypnotic programming. A crack CIA team was formed that could travel, at a moments notice, to anywhere in the world. Their task was to test the new interrogation techniques, and ensure that victims would not remember being interrogated and programmed. All manner of narcotics, from marijuana to LSD, heroin and sodium pentathol (the so called 'truth drug') were regularly used. Despite poor initial results, CIA-sponsored mind control program flourished. On 13 April 1953, the super-secret project MK-ULTRA was born. Its scope was broader than ever before, and only those in the top echelon of the CIA were privy to it. Official CIA documents describe MK-ULTRA as an 'umbrella project' with 149 'sub-projects'. Many of these sub-projects dealt with testing illegal drugs for potential field use. Others dealt with electronics. One explored the possibility of activating 'the human organism by remote control'. Throughout, it remained a major goal to brainwash individuals to become couriers and spies without their knowledge. When it was formed in 1947, the CIA was forbidden to have any domestic police or internal security powers. In short, it was authorized only to operate 'overseas'. From the very start MK-ULTRA staff broke this Congressional stipulation and began testing on unwitting American citizens. Precisely how extensive illegal testing became will never be known. Richard Helms, CIA Director and chief architect of the program, ordered the destruction of all MK-ULTRA records shortly before leaving office in 1973. Despite these precautions some documents were misfiled and came to light in the late 1970's. They laid bare the spy agency's cynicism. Despite the widespread knowledge of MK Ultra and the civil lawsuits that followed, this form of behavior modification is not the most expansive. The real dangers are the types of thought control that are 'covert' and not the subject of several dozen Hollywood movies like "Clockwork Orange" and Mel Gibson's "Conspiracy Theory." Our founding fathers faced enormous challenges in the formation of this country and its bill of rights. One challenge was laying down the groundwork or a free society without knowing what kind of technological advances would be made. Who would have guessed in those times that we needed an article in the bill of rights that specifically prohibits the government and it's associates from engaged in mind control or thought control. The closest item that promises our protection from the government is the 4th Article in The Bill of Rights which states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Like many are now beginning to note, the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights are merely given lip service by our supposedly elected officials. One of the most common examples of mind control in our so-called free and civilized society is the advent and usage of the television set. This isn't to say that all things on TV are geared towards brainwashing you. They're not. But most of the programming on television today is run and programming by the largest media corporations that have interests in defense contracts, such as Westinghouse (CBS), and General Electric (NBC). This makes perfect sense when you see how slanted and warped the news is today. Examining the conflicts of interest is merely glancing at the issue, although to understand the multiple ways that lies become truth, we need to examine the techniques of brain washing that the networks are employing. Radio isn't any different in its ability to brainwash a population into submission. Sixty-seven years ago, six million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare. It was the night before Halloween, 1938. At 8 p.m. CST, the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not waiting to hear Welles' explanation at the end of the program that it had all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien invaders. According to researcher Mack White ( http://www.mackwhite.com/), "Psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing. Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril and Rockefeller money assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Center, the purpose of which was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National Security Council. Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been set up--just in time for the Dawn of Television." Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. It's no longer an overstatement to note that the youth today that are raised and taught through network television are intellectually dead by their early teens. The dumbing down of humanity is represented by another shift which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity in the higher brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while activity in the lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases. The latter, commonly referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with more primitive mental functions, such as the "fight or flight" response. The reptile brain is unable to distinguish between reality and the simulated reality of television. To the reptile brain, if it looks real, it is real. Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response. The reptile brain makes it possible for us to survive as biological beings, but it also leaves us vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers. This is where the manipulators use our own emotions as strings to control us. The distortions and directions we are being moved to are taking place in the subconscious, often undetected. Propaganda techniques were first codified and applied in a scientific manner by journalist Walter Lippman and psychologist Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) early in the 20th century. During World War I, Lippman and Bernays were hired by then United States President, Woodrow Wilson, to participate in the Creel Commission, the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war, on the side of Britain. Edward Bernays said in his 1928 book Propaganda that, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." The Creel Commission provided themes for speeches by "four-minute men" at public functions, and also encouraged censorship of the American press. The Commission was so unpopular that after the war, Congress closed it down without providing funding to organize and archive its papers. The war propaganda campaign of Lippman and Bernays produced within six months such an intense anti-German hysteria as to permanently impress American business (and Adolf Hitler, among others) with the potential of large-scale propaganda to control public opinion. Bernays coined the terms "group mind" and "engineering consent", important concepts in practical propaganda work. The current public relations industry is a direct outgrowth of Lippman's and Bernays' work and is still used extensively by the United States government. For the first half of the 20th century Betrays and Lip man ran a very successful public relations firm. World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, both by Hitler's propagandist Joseph Gobbles and the British Political Warfare Executive, as well as the United States Office of War Information. Turn on your local newscast. You have a few minutes of blue-collar crime, hardly any white collar crime, a few minutes of sports, misc. chit chat, random political jibber-jabber, and a look at the weather that no one is forecasting correctly. Is that what happened in your town? And we're supposed to own the airwaves! The mainstream media openly supports the interests of the prison industrial complex. The stories focus on minority criminal groups, and exploit the real threat to appear much more dangerous than they are. Think about the growing per capita number of prisoners in the country. Then remember that this is happening at the same time that our prison boom began. The police on our streets have created criminals. The focus is to keep us in a state of fear, that way the elitists can attack any group they want to without fear of consequence. This is why the media is continuing to craft the timeless art of dehumanization. The techniques are increasing in their sophistication over time as the mind scientists that serve the empire continue to discover scientific breakthroughs as to how the human brain functions, learns, retains information, and behaves. The most effective brainwashing techniques are used on the most successful propaganda networks. Examine the music bed that lies low during the fright night scope of the second. It's spooky. I wonder if we are supposed to be thinking with our minds or getting ready for stunt. Observe the graphics with the music. They're glitzy and flashing. Like the monkey that is attracted to shiny objects, it's our monkey hand that controls to remote often stops the search for entertainment when the proper amount of glamour catches their attention. Most importantly, notice the repetition behind the lies that the politicians and their corporate media groupies tell us. You see, the unimaginable fallacies are created as 'truth' not because it's logical or provable, but because of the broken record technique. No matter how ridiculous the lie, it's repeated often enough that the brain doesn't know the difference between reality and nursery rhymes. This technique is under estimated in its ability to allow the puppeteers to hypnotize millions of people. Instead of "Fair and balanced" it's "We say it enough times, and you believe it." It's a tragic day when the state can monopolize on the enslaving and imprisonment of a population. Hollywood will continue to frighten us with films on the mafia, gangsters, and the corrupt blue collar criminal whose stupidity and greed get them caught. In the end, our minds are already pre conditioned to accept living in a police state economy and society because we read it in the paper, saw it praised on the news and talk shows, or saw it in a movie. There are several movies planned right now that support the official story of 911 and a few movies that glamorize the War on IRAQ. According to David L Robb, Author of Operation Hollywood, "Hollywood and the Pentagon have a long history of making movies together. It's a tradition that stretches back to the early days of silent films, and extends right up until the present day. It's been a collaboration that works well for both sides. Hollywood producers get what they want - access to billions of dollars worth of military hardware and equipment - tanks, jet fighters, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers - and the military gets what it wants - films that portray the military in a positive light; films that help the services in their recruiting efforts. The Pentagon is not merely a passive supporter of films, however. If the Pentagon doesn't like a script, it will usually suggest script changes that will allow the film to receive the military's support and approval. Sometimes these proposed changes are minor. But sometimes the changes are dramatic. Sometimes they change dialogue. Sometimes they change characters. Sometimes they even change history." They create something coined 'disinfotainment'. They mix disinformation with entertainment and call it disinfotainment. Unadulterated Violence is now accepted on regular TV. Killing in the name of the mother government is praised, that is unless the violence is committed in self defense to protect someone from the system. Sharp shooters, bombers, and assassin are worshipped if they are fighting for the system, are in the military, or are associated with groups that control the masses locally, such as the local police department. I don't condone violence, however it's hypocritical to support one form of homicide when it favors the elite, and condemn another when it's done to protect your land, freedom, or loved ones. This odd reality transfers itself into the shady world of video games that are stepped in plots and tasks to kill as much as the player can. The players are getting younger and younger with 7 out of 10 children playing games with a 'Mature' rating. Recently I was browsing the PC video game selection at a very large electronics store. I was appalled to see nearly 50 different games in which the setting of the game is IRAQ and the goal is to kill as many insurgents as possible and fulfill the mission. Children today are being indoctrinated through their favorite games and law enforcement programs to be the button pushes of the weapons of mass destruction for tomorrow's world. Is it any wonder why there are two house bills and a senate bill (with more on the way), which are giant steps in dismantling free speech of the general public. These bills together would kill (PEG) cable access centers where the public still owns the airwaves. It's the programming created locally, without censorship or commercial gain. Their income is derived from franchises within the local cities and a small percentage cable subscriber frees. This is a corporate takeover because this is centralizing communication by removing the locally based programming and moving the audience to the more official, nationalistic, and sensational programs that promotes violence, uniformity, and slavery over peach, diversity and freedom. Cable access features free speech and information with perspectives neglected by mainstream television. It also features a free flow programming system with fresh programs being aired by new producers on a rotating basis. This keeps the content and information creative and locally based while network TV is rigid with regular time slots and repetitive programming. The blocks of programming that are universally accepted parallel the shift to craft our entire lives towards the factory's bell and the illusion of time. This is the creation of the hive mind. The hive mind is result of massive brainwashing to the general public. Everyone shares the same thoughts, goals, knowledge and understanding. A hive mind society gears itself towards conformity and ignores diversity while masqueraded as the road to utopia in mainstream television. Network programming, weather it's the news or drama, is geared towards artificially creating your world and reality. With the proper amount of entertainment and sensationalism, we may even be living our lives through the television set. Many anchors and actors are beautiful and research shows that attractive people are usually perceived as trust worthy. While the real news rolls quickly by on the bottom of your screen, the anchor is selling you on the idea of having your very own police state hell hole right here in your local jurisdiction, or how 2 sports opposing teams chased around on a court for 2 hours in attempt to score points means something to you. No education, no information, SPIN. Today the media represents a tool of brainwashing and indoctrination that is utilized on behalf of the owners interests. Since the 1996 Telco act, television and radio stations all across the nation were bought out by major international media outlets. Clear Channel and Infinity are the two largest corporations in radio today. This has centralized the distribution of information and has threatened our free society ever since. The media drums to the heartbeat of its owners, whose interests are not of the general public. Instead they are interested in their other financial endeavors like defense contracting, oil business, political parties, prison industry. The conflicts of interest are monumental with the deregulation of the corporations. The lines are now blurred between one network's coverage of the war and the other. Once we come to the conclusion that the media is intentionally deceiving us, we can apply the principles of problem-reaction-solution. This formula takes a problem by either creating it or allowing it to happen and presenting that to the population. It could be terrorism, molestation, extra terrestrials. These topics create fear and no one in their right mind would support terrorism or crime. It's therefore OK to blast the television, the papers, and radio with 'the problem.' The natural reaction from the people is a request for more control to ensure more safety. Most let their fear and emotional side control their decisions and usually translated into something like, "The government needs more power over our lives to make us safer and freer from tyranny. I believe what the media tells me so I will support whatever decisions they make." Today's mainstream corporate news program discourages dissent of the war and paints activists with a negative brush that hints of treason. At the same time, the so-called journalists are cogs in a much larger machine who know that if they report a story that paints the government in a dark light, is likely to remain on 'the wire' and off the front page. The most disturbing thing about spending a single hour examining network cable news and modern Hollywood films are the reoccurring themes in the backdrop. The central ideas of countless "investigative reports" or "Friday night special" features are about a threat of some type over the horizon. The end of the world as we know it is being sold. If the news isn't feeding it to you, then the History Channel or Discover Channel are either talking about the crusades, asteroids, UFOs, earthquakes, terrorism, or exposes about serial killers. They are crafted a message that our world is unstable, and the threat is always an invisible and dangerous one that only our military can fix. When you record and log all the messages, you end up with a script, a screen write produced through the movie studios of Hollywood hell. I am not alone in noting this observation. Local and network news are designing their editorials about despair and fear because the owners, producers, and editors now understand that fear sells. The end result are the desired ratings, delivered like expected. The masters of modern spin understand that we like to be terrified. Just look at the success in the action/suspense/terror genres that have plopped onto the conveyor belt and packaged for our glee consumption. When the editors in charge found out that simply plastering a terror alert chart didn't scare the people the same way it used to, they began to kick up the campaign of terror a few notches with new and creative ways to sell the police state. When you get to the other side of the terror alerts of all shapes and sizes, you find another nightmare masquerading as the savior. The 'Ministry of Truth' will protect you. The mother government is here to rescue you and squash this brown terrorist bug, this gray alien, this avian bird flu, and every other nightmare that the nightly news brought you. The finest public relations specialists take the science of worshipping our kings down to a frame by frame level. George W. Bush is pictured in numerous poises with a hallo around his head. In other pictures, he stands tall with dozens of American flags blowing in the wind behind him. A more blasphemous display features him speaking in front of the cross of Jesus Christ. The message send couldn't be more clearly presented. Our current leaders are of the messiah status and only through them, will we reach the gates of safety. The lie that has been accepted by so many as truth is that this is a religious war. Numerous prime time programs are telling the story of the crusades (without the horrors) to synch our vibrations up to something out of the 13th Century, instead of the 21st Century. If the America people accept the fact that the crusades are here, that George Bush reports directly to god, and that revelations are here, then they have won the war for our minds. The loudspeaker whispers, "All our problems are by accident, never design." Across the room the system's minion snorts, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." It's that plot that says Middle Eastern terrorists from an Afghan cave are the reason beyond our little, "War on terror." Related messages in the script demonize young minority males and suggest harsh punishments for crimes they commit. They don't come out overtly and state their racist agenda. They come at you from the side by airing the same crime news repetitively, usually when it's committed by the minority group. The networks love the fact that the TV sets the norms in society and today, and hence politically opinion. Who would imagine that in the United States of America, both candidates of both parties in the 2004 election would be members of the Skull and Bones society at Yale University? Out of 290 million Americans, this is the best we could come up with? It is the decision of the owners to influence producers, editors, and others involved to paint to brush to fit the objective, which is the bottom line. If Sports is what the people want, then they get it, usually in large doses. Multi-media sports (or spectator sports) is just an escape from our own existence. It's like gambling, or drug addiction. It provides that buffer zone of rooting for something with other people that we've been told is good. People's fantasies also lead them to fixating on sports. Its simulated masculinity, in an age where there's a push to change us from men to robots. It's human nature to resist and fight that which is suppressing us. The sociologists and psychologists in areas of influence know this. Spectator sports prove the outlet internationally for what has been stripped away from us. We've lost the right to rebel and change our government through warfare if necessary. Today the bulk of our nation's population today doesn't know what's really going on with the fall of the American dollar and the plans for the transfer of American wealth to other countries. However, most can tell you who the top basketball or football players are. A lot of fans wish they were the stars, out there on the stage, the court, and the drag strip. Either you're "numero uno" in center stage or you're nothing. End of story. What I never understood when I was in high school was why my peers and friends would act naïve or ignorant in a "Wayne's World" or "Beavis and Butthead" kind of way. What I've learned since then is that the numerous programs that are pimping themselves of as 'entertainment' are actually demo graphed to the lowest common denominator. This is especially true with disc jockeys in Radio today. The reason our airwaves are saturated with jokes and content centered on fart jokes, private parts, borderline racism, and general trash talk is because it is selling. In the meantime, large numbers of our children, young adults, and older audiences are mimicking what they see and hear because the current 'norm' is selling this behavior as cool or 'chic.' When the conditioned is so intense that these forms of content are considered the norm, anything else seems either bizarre or uninteresting to the average American's attention span that is decreasing by the day. Hypothetically, if a producer on a network did get away from a feature story exposing government corruption at the highest levels, chances are the large impact necessary wouldn't be realized because the average viewer's brain has already been conditioned to seek out certain types of disinfotainment. The media has created the picture perfect society that could exist if we only did things their way, (their interests/government interest). It tells us what happiness is and what it is not and same for love, hate or anything else they can implant into our sub consciousness. We can become the perfect slave to the system through indoctrination given through network TV. Over time the messages are becoming increasingly racist, violent, and dishonest. But the programming began decades ago and few have the eyes to see it for what it has become. We live in a world where the populations give their minds away to the official version of the event, where utopia is right around the corner when big brother is riding shotgun. It's a world where Hollywood can make you believe anything, even that you are free. It's a world in which the prosecutor and the judge sit on the same side of the bench. The most obvious reason that our minds are being controlled on a massive scale psychologically, is become our culture has been conditioned incriminatingly to a TV, a radio, or a paper. We are given the world reality through a screen, some ink, or radio waves. The truth is hiding in plain site. The indoctrination through these mediums warns us that views other than those presented by them are unimportant and too be condemned. This Administration and media monopoly has a carefully crafted dehumanization program to anyone that dissents the official version of events. Some people are wrong about 5% of the time. Some are wrong most of the time. I wish I was wrong all the time. A lot of people deal with these intense realities, by asking me rhetorically, "What is the solution, smart guy?" Remember, it's the viewers, the consumers and all the other little votes called dollars that helped this oligarchy system lay its concrete foundation in our backyards. We must recognize the truth about why the system is flawed and enslaving us if we wish to beat it. The most important solution to fighting this type of brainwashing and mind control is to start with ourselves and our own awakening in the smaller things. In this case, it's brainwashing but after awhile we break Outside the Box and begin venturing outside the system and into unknown terrain. Fighting with people and forcing them to understand 'our truth' is not a solution. If our collective free will created this nightmare, than only our collective free will change it. The battle begins in the heart and mind of the beholder, and then extends outward from there, only to those open to the information. If you choose to travel the road to the truth, then you must be prepared for the obstacles that await you. You may be condemned or criticized by your family, your friends, your lovers, or your co-workers. This is their programming that began at birth that is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. You're going to have to be stronger than that. You must realize that there is a reality that exists outside of this controlled artificial system. Like Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, he took that 'leap of faith' over the bridgeless canyon in an attempt to get to the other side. Like Neo in the Matrix, he took the red pill from Morpheus in his attempt to cross over to his real self. Once you wake up, it's as if a hypnotist came along and snapped his fingers. You wake up and say to yourself, "Oh my god. I can see it now. Why did it take me so long to wake up?!" For some of you it can be a major shock. Like anything else, take this information and knowledge in stages. If it took a lifetime for them to mold your reality for you, then you know that it may take longer than a day to fully awaken. Remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
MI5: Iran and Al Qaeda Planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki”
Intelligence report says UK may be target of a huge attack this Summer
Steve Watson 
An MI5 intelligence report leaked to the media earlier this month has revealed that the British security services fear that a major attack on Western targets may be carried out by Al Qaeda leaders with supporters in Iran.
Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West, The London Times reports.
The report also states that although there is no proof that the Iranian government has any times with Al Qaeda whatsoever, leaders there may be "turning a blind eye" to terrorist networks.
Just as there was no connection or affiliation between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, despite the continued preposterous claim that there was by Dick Cheney, there is no connection between the regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad and Al Qaeda. In fact it is even more unlikely there ever would be an affiliation as the reigning leaders in Iran are Shi'ite where as Al Qaeda is a Sunni group.
Indeed, Al Qaeda affiliated right wing terror groups in Iran are very much against the Ahmadinejad government and are routinely carrying out attacks aimed at Iranian soldiers and state figures.
Pakistani Intelligence and Iranian officials have even gone as far as asserting that such groups are operating under the auspices of US intelligence . What would Iran have to gain from working with such groups or turning a blind eye to them as they continue to target the leadership there?
The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI's Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.
“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki' and will ‘shake the Roman throne'. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.”
The report says there is “no indication” this attack would specifically target Britain, “although we are aware that AQI . . . networks are active in the UK”.
Given the fact that Iran is years away from developing nuclear weapons capability and Al Qaeda, literally an invented term to group together loosely affiliated western intelligence assets in the middle east, can only dream of having such weapons, MI5 reassuringly states that the reference to Hiroshima and Naga-saki, where more than 200,000 people died in nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of the second world war, is unlikely to be a literal boast.
PHEW. Much more likely a scenario is a false flag nuclear or biological event which could be blamed on "Al Qaeda" and then in turn on Iran for "harbouring" extremists within its borders.
Just two months ago former National Security Advisor and founding member of the Trilateral Commission Zbigniew Brzezinski tacitly warned a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that an attack on Iran could be launched following such a staged provocation.
"If one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain circumstances be appealing. I'm afraid that if this situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential beneficiary, that temptation could arise," said Brzezinski.
Warnings of a false flag event to be pinned on Iran have also come from Presidential Candidate Ron Paul , former National Security Council Director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Affairs Hillary Mann , Former United Nations weapons inspector and Marine Scott Ritter , Former CIA analyst and Bush 41 staffer Ray McGovern and British Member of Parliament George Galloway ,
Should an attack occur within the U.S. as Brzezinski forecasted could happen, Dick Cheney's USSTRATCOM contingency plan calls for attacking Iran in the immediate aftermath of a 'second 9/11' - no matter who is behind it - which of course is going to be the cabal Dick Cheney fronts for itself and the same pack of murderers that are actively seeking to initiate global ethic cleansing and genocide to bring about world war three.
The questions raised and clear falsities exposed surrounding the recent incidents between Iran and Britain over the detention of fifteen sailors and the previous declaration that Iran is aiding insurgents in Iraq have not allowed the US or Britain enough opportunity or pretext to carry out the long touted objective of attacking and negating Iran's nuclear power sites.
Despite this, massed US and British forces in the Persian gulf show no sign of stepping down a gear and continue to engage in war gaming. Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov , among others, is still adamant that preparations to strike Iran's strategic facilities continue.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) - based at MI5's London headquarters believes that an attack may be scheduled to go ahead before Tony Blair leaves office. Given that Blair is expected to stand down within the next three weeks this makes it imminent.
Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West, The London Times reports.
The report also states that although there is no proof that the Iranian government has any times with Al Qaeda whatsoever, leaders there may be "turning a blind eye" to terrorist networks.
Just as there was no connection or affiliation between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, despite the continued preposterous claim that there was by Dick Cheney, there is no connection between the regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad and Al Qaeda. In fact it is even more unlikely there ever would be an affiliation as the reigning leaders in Iran are Shi'ite where as Al Qaeda is a Sunni group.
Indeed, Al Qaeda affiliated right wing terror groups in Iran are very much against the Ahmadinejad government and are routinely carrying out attacks aimed at Iranian soldiers and state figures.
Pakistani Intelligence and Iranian officials have even gone as far as asserting that such groups are operating under the auspices of US intelligence . What would Iran have to gain from working with such groups or turning a blind eye to them as they continue to target the leadership there?
The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI's Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.
“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki' and will ‘shake the Roman throne'. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.”
The report says there is “no indication” this attack would specifically target Britain, “although we are aware that AQI . . . networks are active in the UK”.
Given the fact that Iran is years away from developing nuclear weapons capability and Al Qaeda, literally an invented term to group together loosely affiliated western intelligence assets in the middle east, can only dream of having such weapons, MI5 reassuringly states that the reference to Hiroshima and Naga-saki, where more than 200,000 people died in nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of the second world war, is unlikely to be a literal boast.
PHEW. Much more likely a scenario is a false flag nuclear or biological event which could be blamed on "Al Qaeda" and then in turn on Iran for "harbouring" extremists within its borders.
Just two months ago former National Security Advisor and founding member of the Trilateral Commission Zbigniew Brzezinski tacitly warned a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that an attack on Iran could be launched following such a staged provocation.
"If one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain circumstances be appealing. I'm afraid that if this situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential beneficiary, that temptation could arise," said Brzezinski.
Warnings of a false flag event to be pinned on Iran have also come from Presidential Candidate Ron Paul , former National Security Council Director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Affairs Hillary Mann , Former United Nations weapons inspector and Marine Scott Ritter , Former CIA analyst and Bush 41 staffer Ray McGovern and British Member of Parliament George Galloway ,
Should an attack occur within the U.S. as Brzezinski forecasted could happen, Dick Cheney's USSTRATCOM contingency plan calls for attacking Iran in the immediate aftermath of a 'second 9/11' - no matter who is behind it - which of course is going to be the cabal Dick Cheney fronts for itself and the same pack of murderers that are actively seeking to initiate global ethic cleansing and genocide to bring about world war three.
The questions raised and clear falsities exposed surrounding the recent incidents between Iran and Britain over the detention of fifteen sailors and the previous declaration that Iran is aiding insurgents in Iraq have not allowed the US or Britain enough opportunity or pretext to carry out the long touted objective of attacking and negating Iran's nuclear power sites.
Despite this, massed US and British forces in the Persian gulf show no sign of stepping down a gear and continue to engage in war gaming. Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov , among others, is still adamant that preparations to strike Iran's strategic facilities continue.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) - based at MI5's London headquarters believes that an attack may be scheduled to go ahead before Tony Blair leaves office. Given that Blair is expected to stand down within the next three weeks this makes it imminent.
Seung-Hui Cho Was a Mind Controlled Assassin
Deadly accuracy, disturbing revelations suggest outside involvement in VA Massacre, cocktail of brainwashing from prozac, violent video games contributed to carnage
Paul Joseph Watson
Seung-Hui Cho was a mind-controlled assassin, whether you believe he was under the influence of outside parties or not, the fact is that th
e cultural brainwashing of violent video games and psychotropic drugs directly contributed, as it does in all these cases, to the carnage at Virginia Tech on Monday morning.
Gun grabbers are already exploiting the tragedy to disarm future students from the opportunity of being able to defend themselves against deranged killers, but the media circus is completely silent when it comes to the laying blame at the feet of a deadly cocktail of mind-warping drugs and bloodthirsty shoot-em-ups.
Outside of the obvious culpability of the factors we see in every mass shooting - video games and "antidepressant" drugs, numerous red flags concerning Monday events are beginning to suggest that Cho was more than a heartbroken nutcase with an axe to grind.
Charles Mesloh, Professor of Criminology at Florida Gulf Coast University, told NBC 2 News that he was shocked Cho could have killed 32 people with two handguns absent expert training. Mesloh immediately assumed that Cho must have used a shotgun or an assault rifle.
e cultural brainwashing of violent video games and psychotropic drugs directly contributed, as it does in all these cases, to the carnage at Virginia Tech on Monday morning.Gun grabbers are already exploiting the tragedy to disarm future students from the opportunity of being able to defend themselves against deranged killers, but the media circus is completely silent when it comes to the laying blame at the feet of a deadly cocktail of mind-warping drugs and bloodthirsty shoot-em-ups.
Outside of the obvious culpability of the factors we see in every mass shooting - video games and "antidepressant" drugs, numerous red flags concerning Monday events are beginning to suggest that Cho was more than a heartbroken nutcase with an axe to grind.
Charles Mesloh, Professor of Criminology at Florida Gulf Coast University, told NBC 2 News that he was shocked Cho could have killed 32 people with two handguns absent expert training. Mesloh immediately assumed that Cho must have used a shotgun or an assault rifle.
"I'm dumbfounded by the number of people he managed to kill with these weapons," said Mesloh, "The only thing I can figure is that he got close to them and he simply executed them."
Mesloh said the killer performed like a trained professional, "He had a 60% fatality rate with handguns - that's unheard of given 9 millimeters don't kill people instantly," said Mesloh, stating that the handguns Cho used were designed for "plinking at cans," not executing human beings.
Cho was certainly no slouch, in the two hour gap between the first reported shootings and the wider rampage that would occur later in the morning, during which time the University completely failed to warn the students despite having loudspeakers stationed throughout the campus, Cho had time to film a confession video, transfer it to his computer, burn it onto a DVD, package it up, travel to the post office, post the package, and travel back to his dorm room to retrieve his guns and then travel back to the opposite end of the campus to resume the killing spree. The almost inconceivable speed of Cho's actions become more suspicious when we recall initial reports that there were two shooters.
Even if we rule out the fact that Cho had received expert firearms training, the cultural mind control of violent video games and mind-altering psychotropic drugs were themselves a cocktail of brainwashing that directly contributed to the carnage, as they do in nearly all these cases.
From the very first reports of the shootings we predicted the killer would be on prozac, would have recently been in psychiatric care and would have regularly played violent video games and that has precisely turned out to be accurate in all three instances.
Cho was certainly no slouch, in the two hour gap between the first reported shootings and the wider rampage that would occur later in the morning, during which time the University completely failed to warn the students despite having loudspeakers stationed throughout the campus, Cho had time to film a confession video, transfer it to his computer, burn it onto a DVD, package it up, travel to the post office, post the package, and travel back to his dorm room to retrieve his guns and then travel back to the opposite end of the campus to resume the killing spree. The almost inconceivable speed of Cho's actions become more suspicious when we recall initial reports that there were two shooters.
Even if we rule out the fact that Cho had received expert firearms training, the cultural mind control of violent video games and mind-altering psychotropic drugs were themselves a cocktail of brainwashing that directly contributed to the carnage, as they do in nearly all these cases.
From the very first reports of the shootings we predicted the killer would be on prozac, would have recently been in psychiatric care and would have regularly played violent video games and that has precisely turned out to be accurate in all three instances.
"Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly a game called "Counterstrike," a hugely popular online game in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns," reports Newsmax citing the Washington Post.
"In December 2005 -- more than a year before Monday's mass shootings -- a district court in Montgomery County, Va., ruled that Cho presented "an imminent danger to self or others." That was the necessary criterion for a detention order, so that Cho, who had been accused of stalking by two female schoolmates, could be evaluated by a state doctor and ordered to undergo outpatient care," reports ABC News , " but despite the court identifying the future killer as a risk, they let him go.
Investigators believe that Cho Seung Hui, the Virginia Tech murderer, had been taking anti-depressant medication at some point before the shootings, according to The Chicago Tribune .
Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, as well as 15-year-old Kip Kinkel, the Oregon killer who gunned down his parents and classmates, were all on psychotropic drugs. Scientific studies proving that prozac encourages suicidal tendencies in young people are voluminous and span back nearly a decade.
Jeff Weise, the Red Lake High School killer was on prozac , "Unabomber" Ted Kaczinski, Michael McDermott, John Hinckley, Jr., Byran Uyesugi, Mark David Chapman and Charles Carl Roberts IV, the Amish school killer, were all on SSRI psychotropic drugs.
Since these deadly drugs are prevalent in almost all mass shooting incidents, where is the call to ban prozac? Why is the knee-jerk reaction always to attack the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans to self-defense, a right that was exercised in January 2002 when students subdued a shooter at another Virginia university before he could kill more than three people because they were allowed guns on campus?
Why are the deeper reasons behind what motivates young men to kill pushed aside while control freaks demand that law-abiding citizens be disarmed of the only thing that can protect them from such madmen?
Questions about the sequence of events on Monday, VA Tech, as well as the profile of the killer are arousing increased suspicion.
We have been receiving numerous calls and e mails alerting us to the fact that VA Tech is pulling links from its website concerning their relationship with the CIA. Reports from November 2005 confirm that the CIA was active in operating recruitment programs based out of VA Tech. Several professors from VA Tech are involved in government programs linked with NASA and other agencies.
Wikipedia also pulled a bizarre recently taken photograph of Cho wearing a U.S. Marines uniform.
Such details only fan the flames of accusations that Cho could have been a Manchurian Candidate, a mind-controlled assassin.
The CIA's program to create mind-controlled assassins that could be triggered by code words, MK ULTRA, is not a conspiracy theory, it's a historical fact documented by declassified government files and Senate hearings . President Bill Clinton himself had to apologize for the program before he left office.
On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said, "The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an 'extensive testing and experimentation' program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens 'at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign."
One such victim of these experiments was Cathy O'Brien, who immediately after the shootings re-iterated the revelations in her latest book, that Blacksburg Virginia is a central location for mind control programs that are still ongoing today.
CIA mind control programs can be tracked back to the 1950's and Project BLUEBIRD, later renamed ARTICHOKE. From blogger Kurt Nimmo;
“BLUEBIRD was approved by the CIA director on April 20, 1950. In August 1951, the Project was renamed ARTICHOKE. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE included a great deal of work on the creation of amnesia, hypnotic couriers, and the Manchurian Candidate,” writes Colin A. Ross, MD. “ARTICHOKE documents prove that hypnotic couriers functioned effectively in real-life simulations conducted by the CIA in the early 1950's. The degree to which such individuals were used in actual operations is still classified…. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were administered in a compartmented fashion. The details of the programs were kept secret even form other personnel within the CIA…. The BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE materials establish conclusively that full Manchurian Candidates were created and tested successfully by physicians with TOP SECRET clearance from the CIA…. As well as being potential couriers and infiltration agents, the subjects could function in effect as hypnotically controlled cameras. They could enter a room or building, memorize materials quickly, leave the building, and then be amnesic for the entire episode. The memorized material could then be retrieved by a handler using a previously implanted code or signal, without the amnesia being disturbed. Hypnosis was not the mind control doctors' only method for creation of controlled amnesia, however. Drugs, magnetic fields, sound waves, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and many other methods were studied under BLUEBIRD and ARTHICHOKE.”
Researchers into supposed "lone nut" assassinations time and time again run across evidence pointing to CIA mind control experimentation. The best example is Sirhan Sirhan, Bobby Kennedy's assassin. Sirhan was found to be in a completely trance-like state after pulling the trigger and couldn't even remember shooting Kennedy when asked about the incident days later. Sirhan's lawyer, Lawrence Teeter, has presented convincing evidence that Sirhan was under mind control.
Either way you cut it, Seung-Hui Cho was a victim of brainwashing and mind control. The right questions are not being asked and the finger of blame is being pointed in the wrong direction, ensuring that another tragedy like the VA Tech Massacre is almost guaranteed.
"In December 2005 -- more than a year before Monday's mass shootings -- a district court in Montgomery County, Va., ruled that Cho presented "an imminent danger to self or others." That was the necessary criterion for a detention order, so that Cho, who had been accused of stalking by two female schoolmates, could be evaluated by a state doctor and ordered to undergo outpatient care," reports ABC News , " but despite the court identifying the future killer as a risk, they let him go.
Investigators believe that Cho Seung Hui, the Virginia Tech murderer, had been taking anti-depressant medication at some point before the shootings, according to The Chicago Tribune .
Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, as well as 15-year-old Kip Kinkel, the Oregon killer who gunned down his parents and classmates, were all on psychotropic drugs. Scientific studies proving that prozac encourages suicidal tendencies in young people are voluminous and span back nearly a decade.
Jeff Weise, the Red Lake High School killer was on prozac , "Unabomber" Ted Kaczinski, Michael McDermott, John Hinckley, Jr., Byran Uyesugi, Mark David Chapman and Charles Carl Roberts IV, the Amish school killer, were all on SSRI psychotropic drugs.
Since these deadly drugs are prevalent in almost all mass shooting incidents, where is the call to ban prozac? Why is the knee-jerk reaction always to attack the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans to self-defense, a right that was exercised in January 2002 when students subdued a shooter at another Virginia university before he could kill more than three people because they were allowed guns on campus?
Why are the deeper reasons behind what motivates young men to kill pushed aside while control freaks demand that law-abiding citizens be disarmed of the only thing that can protect them from such madmen?
Questions about the sequence of events on Monday, VA Tech, as well as the profile of the killer are arousing increased suspicion.
We have been receiving numerous calls and e mails alerting us to the fact that VA Tech is pulling links from its website concerning their relationship with the CIA. Reports from November 2005 confirm that the CIA was active in operating recruitment programs based out of VA Tech. Several professors from VA Tech are involved in government programs linked with NASA and other agencies.
Wikipedia also pulled a bizarre recently taken photograph of Cho wearing a U.S. Marines uniform.
Such details only fan the flames of accusations that Cho could have been a Manchurian Candidate, a mind-controlled assassin.
The CIA's program to create mind-controlled assassins that could be triggered by code words, MK ULTRA, is not a conspiracy theory, it's a historical fact documented by declassified government files and Senate hearings . President Bill Clinton himself had to apologize for the program before he left office.
On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said, "The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an 'extensive testing and experimentation' program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens 'at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign."
One such victim of these experiments was Cathy O'Brien, who immediately after the shootings re-iterated the revelations in her latest book, that Blacksburg Virginia is a central location for mind control programs that are still ongoing today.
CIA mind control programs can be tracked back to the 1950's and Project BLUEBIRD, later renamed ARTICHOKE. From blogger Kurt Nimmo;
“BLUEBIRD was approved by the CIA director on April 20, 1950. In August 1951, the Project was renamed ARTICHOKE. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE included a great deal of work on the creation of amnesia, hypnotic couriers, and the Manchurian Candidate,” writes Colin A. Ross, MD. “ARTICHOKE documents prove that hypnotic couriers functioned effectively in real-life simulations conducted by the CIA in the early 1950's. The degree to which such individuals were used in actual operations is still classified…. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were administered in a compartmented fashion. The details of the programs were kept secret even form other personnel within the CIA…. The BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE materials establish conclusively that full Manchurian Candidates were created and tested successfully by physicians with TOP SECRET clearance from the CIA…. As well as being potential couriers and infiltration agents, the subjects could function in effect as hypnotically controlled cameras. They could enter a room or building, memorize materials quickly, leave the building, and then be amnesic for the entire episode. The memorized material could then be retrieved by a handler using a previously implanted code or signal, without the amnesia being disturbed. Hypnosis was not the mind control doctors' only method for creation of controlled amnesia, however. Drugs, magnetic fields, sound waves, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and many other methods were studied under BLUEBIRD and ARTHICHOKE.”
Researchers into supposed "lone nut" assassinations time and time again run across evidence pointing to CIA mind control experimentation. The best example is Sirhan Sirhan, Bobby Kennedy's assassin. Sirhan was found to be in a completely trance-like state after pulling the trigger and couldn't even remember shooting Kennedy when asked about the incident days later. Sirhan's lawyer, Lawrence Teeter, has presented convincing evidence that Sirhan was under mind control.
Either way you cut it, Seung-Hui Cho was a victim of brainwashing and mind control. The right questions are not being asked and the finger of blame is being pointed in the wrong direction, ensuring that another tragedy like the VA Tech Massacre is almost guaranteed.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Total Gun Control = Total Tyranny!
By Rob RonningAny blueprint for the establishment of totalitarian government is destined to fail if total gun control measures cannot be established. Without the disarmament of the masses, tyrannical government would be virtually impossible. The global elite is fully aware of this fact and is working feverishly on the implementation of controls that effectively disarm entire populations, with the exception of a few selected minions. While this complete disarmament is being engineered, citizensare being psychologically manipulated to believe that “civilian” gun possession always leads to increased crime rates, and that stringent gun control laws are necessary for personal safety and the reduction of crime. This campaign for gun control influences Western opinions using a veritable barrage of incidents involving often-fatal gun violence. In the United States, barely a day passes in any major city without several stories revealing escalating gun crimes, and endless commentary concerning ways to address this issue. Furthering the subversive agenda of total gun bans, as if by an invisible cue, a national story of horrific proportions such as the Columbine High School shootings or the Washington DC area sniper occurs. Whether you believe these national tragedies related to gun deaths have been planned by sinister forces or have accidentally happened, it is clear that the intent of the powers in control is to use these incidents as a pretext for the radical strengthening of gun laws worldwide.Other Western nations have sustained gun incidents that served to overhaul and strengthen their gun laws with less than exemplary success. For instance, handguns were banned in the United Kingdom after the Dunblane Massacre of 1996, but it is widely reported that gun crimes continue to rise dramatically against an increasingly unarmed populace. Australia also has stringent gun control laws, due in part to 35 deaths (32 killed by guns) and 19 injuries in April of 1996 at Port Arthur, Tasmania. As in the United Kingdom, the laws enacted in Australia have been ineffective in decreasing total crime where guns are involved. Canada’s gun control laws are also much more restrictive than the United States, and an actual photograph identification license has been required for possession of handguns since January 2001. The hysteria of gun control now even extends to the banning of toy guns! Where does the average person draw the line and demand the right to adequately protect him or herself from increasing crime without undue governmental interference?For U.S. citizens, the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights should serve as a protection for the right to bear arms, but it is being rendered useless by our own Supreme Court! The interpretation of the Second Amendment by many legal scholars argues that the militia clause in the amendment completely renders it anachronistic, since the “well regulated militia” now refers to the National Guard instead of the independent State militias of the past. Some commentators have even drawn the conclusion that a literal interpretation of the Second Amendment by current militia organizations may have played a prominent role in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. (Alex Jones clarifies beyond any shadow of doubt in the film, 911: The Road To Tyranny, that private militia organizations had nothing to do with this government operation!) Does the Second Amendment allow for the right of the people to keep and bear arms, without infringement, for the security of a free state? Did the drafters of the Constitution and Bill of Rights feel that this right was an important aspect in the maintenance of freedom? Thomas Jefferson wrote in his papers: “The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” While condoning random and unnecessary violence is incomprehensible, one is forced to ask how lawmakers, scholars and commentators would view the patriots of the Revolutionary War today? Apparently, being a patriotic citizen willing to defend personal freedom against a corrupt government is becoming a criminal act in a country founded on those stated principles.Despots and dictators throughout history have suppressed their citizens by the restriction or registration of armaments and weapons. Nazi Germany used strict registration laws already in existence within their county and other conquered European countries to quickly disarm the people. The U.S. government is proposing in the Our Lady of Peace Act (passed by the House and currently before the Senate for approval) to fully automate the criminal background check system already in place with super-databases the States are forced to help furnish and maintain. Coupled with provisions in the Homeland Security Act and Patriot Act previously passed into law, the proverbial handwriting is on the wall: Total Gun Control = Total Tyranny! We are currently headed directly toward both.
Monday, April 16, 2007
The Pagan Origin Of Easter
by David J. Meyer
Easter is a day that is honoured by nearly all of contemporary Christianity and is used to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The holiday often involves a church service at sunrise, a feast which includes an "Easter Ham", decorated eggs and stories about rabbits.
Those who love truth learn to ask questions, and many questions must be asked regarding the holiday of Easter.
Is it truly the day when Jesus arose from the dead? Where did all of the strange customs come from, which have nothing to do with the resurrection of our Saviour?
The purpose of this tract is to help answer those questions, and to help those who seek truth to draw their own conclusions.
The first thing we must understand is that professing Christians were not the only ones who celebrated a festival called "Easter."
"Ishtar", which is pronounced "Easter" was a day that commemorated the resurrection of one of their gods that they called "Tammuz", who was believed to be the only begotten son of the moon-goddess and the sun-god.
In those ancient times, there was a man named Nimrod, who was the grandson of one of Noah's son named Ham.
Ham had a son named Cush who married a woman named Semiramis.Cush and Semiramis then had a son named him "Nimrod."
After the death of his father, Nimrod married his own mother and became a powerful King.
The Bible tells of of this man, Nimrod, in Genesis 10:8-10 as follows: "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad,and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
Nimrod became a god-man to the people and Semiramis, his wife and mother, became the powerful Queen of ancient Babylon.
Nimrod was eventually killed by an enemy, and his body was cut in pieces and sent to various parts of his kingdom.
Semiramis had all of the parts gathered, except for one part that could not be found.
That missing part was his reproductive organ. Semiramis claimed that Nimrod could not come back to life without it and told the people of Babylon that Nimrod had ascended to the sun and was now to be called "Baal", the sun god.
Queen Semiramis also proclaimed that Baal would be present on earth in the form of a flame, whether candle or lamp, when used in worship.
Semiramis was creating a mystery religion, and with the help of Satan, she set herself up as a goddess.
Semiramis claimed that she was immaculately conceived.
She taught that the moon was a goddess that went through a 28 day cycle and ovulated when full.
She further claimed that she came down from the moon in a giant moon egg that fell into the Euphrates River.
This was to have happened at the time of the first full moon after the spring equinox.
Semiramis became known as "Ishtar" which is pronounced "Easter", and her moon egg became known as "Ishtar's" egg."
Ishtar soon became pregnant and claimed that it was the rays of the sun-god Baal that caused her to conceive.
The son that she brought forth was named Tammuz.
Tammuz was noted to be especially fond of rabbits, and they became sacred in the ancient religion, because Tammuz was believed to be the son of the sun-god, Baal. Tammuz, like his supposed father, became a hunter.
The day came when Tammuz was killed by a wild pig.
Queen Ishtar told the people that Tammuz was now ascended to his father, Baal, and that the two of them would be with the worshippers in the sacred candle or lamp flame as Father, Son and Spirit.
Ishtar, who was now worshipped as the "Mother of God and Queen of Heaven", continued to build her mystery religion.
The queen told the worshippers that when Tammuz was killed by the wild pig, some of his blood fell on the stump of an evergreen tree, and the stump grew into a full new tree overnight. This made the evergreen tree sacred by the blood of Tammuz.
She also proclaimed a forty day period of time of sorrow each year prior to the anniversary of the death of Tammuz.
During this time, no meat was to be eaten.
Worshippers were to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of Baal and Tammuz, and to make the sign of the "T" in front of their hearts as they worshipped.
They also ate sacred cakes with the marking of a "T" or cross on the top.
Every year, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, a celebration was made.
It was Ishtar's Sunday and was celebrated with rabbits and eggs.
Ishtar also proclaimed that because Tammuz was killed by a pig, that a pig must be eaten on that Sunday.
By now, the readers of this tract should have made the connection that paganism has infiltrated the contemporary "Christian" churches, and further study indicates that this paganism came in by way of the Roman Catholic System.
The truth is that Easter has nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We also know that Easter can be as much as three weeks away from the Passover, because the pagan holiday is always set as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
Some have wondered why the word "Easter" is in the the King James Bible.
It is because Acts, chapter 12, tells us that it was the evil King Herod, who was planning to celebrate Easter, and not the Christians.
The true Passover and pagan Easter sometimes coincide, but in some years, they are a great distance apart.
So much more could be said, and we have much more information for you, if you are a seeker of the truth.
We know that the Bible tells us in John 4:24, "God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
The truth is that the forty days of Lent, eggs, rabbits,hot cross buns and the Easter ham have everything to do with the ancient pagan religion of Mystery Babylon.These are all antichrist activities!
Satan is a master deceiver, and has filled the lives of well-meaning, professing Christians with idolatry.
These things bring the wrath of God upon children of disobedience, who try to make pagan customs of Baal worship Christian.
You must answer for your activities and for what you teach your children.
These customs of Easter honor Baal, who is also Satan, and is still worshipped as the "Rising Sun" and his house is the "House of the Rising Sun."
How many churches have "sunrise services" on Ishtar's day and face the rising sun in the East?
How many will use colored eggs and rabbit stories, as they did in ancient Babylon.
These things are no joke, any more than Judgement day is a joke.
I pray to God that this tract will cause you to search for more truth.
We will be glad to help you by providing more information and by praying for you.
These are the last days, and it is time to repent, come out and be separate
Easter is a day that is honoured by nearly all of contemporary Christianity and is used to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The holiday often involves a church service at sunrise, a feast which includes an "Easter Ham", decorated eggs and stories about rabbits.
Those who love truth learn to ask questions, and many questions must be asked regarding the holiday of Easter.
Is it truly the day when Jesus arose from the dead? Where did all of the strange customs come from, which have nothing to do with the resurrection of our Saviour?
The purpose of this tract is to help answer those questions, and to help those who seek truth to draw their own conclusions.
The first thing we must understand is that professing Christians were not the only ones who celebrated a festival called "Easter."
"Ishtar", which is pronounced "Easter" was a day that commemorated the resurrection of one of their gods that they called "Tammuz", who was believed to be the only begotten son of the moon-goddess and the sun-god.
In those ancient times, there was a man named Nimrod, who was the grandson of one of Noah's son named Ham.
Ham had a son named Cush who married a woman named Semiramis.Cush and Semiramis then had a son named him "Nimrod."
After the death of his father, Nimrod married his own mother and became a powerful King.
The Bible tells of of this man, Nimrod, in Genesis 10:8-10 as follows: "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad,and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
Nimrod became a god-man to the people and Semiramis, his wife and mother, became the powerful Queen of ancient Babylon.
Nimrod was eventually killed by an enemy, and his body was cut in pieces and sent to various parts of his kingdom.
Semiramis had all of the parts gathered, except for one part that could not be found.
That missing part was his reproductive organ. Semiramis claimed that Nimrod could not come back to life without it and told the people of Babylon that Nimrod had ascended to the sun and was now to be called "Baal", the sun god.
Queen Semiramis also proclaimed that Baal would be present on earth in the form of a flame, whether candle or lamp, when used in worship.
Semiramis was creating a mystery religion, and with the help of Satan, she set herself up as a goddess.
Semiramis claimed that she was immaculately conceived.
She taught that the moon was a goddess that went through a 28 day cycle and ovulated when full.
She further claimed that she came down from the moon in a giant moon egg that fell into the Euphrates River.
This was to have happened at the time of the first full moon after the spring equinox.
Semiramis became known as "Ishtar" which is pronounced "Easter", and her moon egg became known as "Ishtar's" egg."
Ishtar soon became pregnant and claimed that it was the rays of the sun-god Baal that caused her to conceive.
The son that she brought forth was named Tammuz.
Tammuz was noted to be especially fond of rabbits, and they became sacred in the ancient religion, because Tammuz was believed to be the son of the sun-god, Baal. Tammuz, like his supposed father, became a hunter.
The day came when Tammuz was killed by a wild pig.
Queen Ishtar told the people that Tammuz was now ascended to his father, Baal, and that the two of them would be with the worshippers in the sacred candle or lamp flame as Father, Son and Spirit.
Ishtar, who was now worshipped as the "Mother of God and Queen of Heaven", continued to build her mystery religion.
The queen told the worshippers that when Tammuz was killed by the wild pig, some of his blood fell on the stump of an evergreen tree, and the stump grew into a full new tree overnight. This made the evergreen tree sacred by the blood of Tammuz.
She also proclaimed a forty day period of time of sorrow each year prior to the anniversary of the death of Tammuz.
During this time, no meat was to be eaten.
Worshippers were to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of Baal and Tammuz, and to make the sign of the "T" in front of their hearts as they worshipped.
They also ate sacred cakes with the marking of a "T" or cross on the top.
Every year, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, a celebration was made.
It was Ishtar's Sunday and was celebrated with rabbits and eggs.
Ishtar also proclaimed that because Tammuz was killed by a pig, that a pig must be eaten on that Sunday.
By now, the readers of this tract should have made the connection that paganism has infiltrated the contemporary "Christian" churches, and further study indicates that this paganism came in by way of the Roman Catholic System.
The truth is that Easter has nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We also know that Easter can be as much as three weeks away from the Passover, because the pagan holiday is always set as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
Some have wondered why the word "Easter" is in the the King James Bible.
It is because Acts, chapter 12, tells us that it was the evil King Herod, who was planning to celebrate Easter, and not the Christians.
The true Passover and pagan Easter sometimes coincide, but in some years, they are a great distance apart.
So much more could be said, and we have much more information for you, if you are a seeker of the truth.
We know that the Bible tells us in John 4:24, "God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
The truth is that the forty days of Lent, eggs, rabbits,hot cross buns and the Easter ham have everything to do with the ancient pagan religion of Mystery Babylon.These are all antichrist activities!
Satan is a master deceiver, and has filled the lives of well-meaning, professing Christians with idolatry.
These things bring the wrath of God upon children of disobedience, who try to make pagan customs of Baal worship Christian.
You must answer for your activities and for what you teach your children.
These customs of Easter honor Baal, who is also Satan, and is still worshipped as the "Rising Sun" and his house is the "House of the Rising Sun."
How many churches have "sunrise services" on Ishtar's day and face the rising sun in the East?
How many will use colored eggs and rabbit stories, as they did in ancient Babylon.
These things are no joke, any more than Judgement day is a joke.
I pray to God that this tract will cause you to search for more truth.
We will be glad to help you by providing more information and by praying for you.
These are the last days, and it is time to repent, come out and be separate
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Presidential Candidate: U.S. In Danger of Dictatorship
Congressman Ron Paul warns elite believe they own us and are "always prepared" to take our liberties
Infowars.net April 11, 2007 Steve Watson & Alex Jones
Presidential candidate Ron Paul has warned that the US is now at a crisis point because the people have been so neglectful of protecting their liberties and big government has been so effective in eroding them. He warned that the elite are prepared to concoct events to scare the American people and asserted that the 2008 Presidential election is a contest between the people who care about their freedoms and those who are willing to succumb to the temptations of dictatorship.Congressman Ron Paul joined Alex Jones on air this week for a full hour to discuss his ongoing Presidential campaign and give his views on what he believes the fundamental issues are in America today.
The Congressman gave a candid interview in which he discussed many topics in depth including the economy, foreign policy, the North American Union, the possibility of a draft and the situations in Iraq and Iran.
Known for what many have described as his impeccable voting record, Ron Paul is a champion of individual liberty and a strong campaigner for restoration of a true Constitutionalist form of US government, a trait that has made him a rare and popular candidate amongst people from all across the political spectrum.
When asked what he believes the overriding issue in America today is the Congressman pointed towards the erosion of personal freedoms:
"Probably it's the threat to individual liberty. because our government is growing endlessly by leaps and bounds and nobody seems to want to put a hold on it. every time government grows it is at the expense of personal liberty."
The Congressman explained that freedom is the underlying issue because the consequences of such erosion of individual liberty have a knock on effect in many different areas. Economically, for example, the country is becoming dependent, less productive and less self sustaining. "Economically the consequences will be that there's going to be a wholesale rejection of the dollar, because the world has trusted the dollar, especially since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods in 1971, when the linkage of the dollar to gold was broken, they still trusted the dollar as if it were gold, and therefore we can print the money and we can spend the money and foreign countries take our money, then loan it back to us, so they're getting a bum rap." Paul stated.
"They get a temporarily good deal but what it does is encourage us not to be productive, it encourages us not to have manufacturing any longer, we can let others do it cheaper, cheap labour, and then we buy it with cheap money. That is going to come to an end. That means later on there are going to be a lot of changes here. Domestically the interest rates are going to rise, the inflation rate, the price of all goods and services, that will rise, and the economy will weaken, so we have some very serious problems ahead."
Turning to foreign policy the Congressman asserted that his first action if he were to be elected as President would be to start to bring American troops home from all over the world.
"As a Commander in chief you could certainly handle the troops around the world. I would start talking to all our allies and tell them what the plans were and start coming home. We are now spending close to a trillion dollars maintaining our foreign policy. It's a lot bigger than most people realise if you add up the Dod, the supplementals, the interest on the money we spend and taking care of our veterans."
The Congressman made it clear that aggression abroad and America as a world police force has had a disastrous impact upon the very fabric of the country.
"We have turned our own country into isolationists, diplomatically we don't talk to anybody, we have more enemies than we've ever had before and fewer allies, and at the same time our ability to defend this country is being diminished on a daily basis. We worry about borders, all around he world, we worry about borders in Korea, about borders around Iraq, and what do we do with our own borders? Here we don't do anything."
Paul then turned to the issue of the North American Union and made it clear that he believes the plans that have been secretly laid in Washington to merge the US, Mexican and Canadian economies are yet again the fallout from the souring of liberty in America.
We have behind the scenes a plan for a North American Union, that's the part that the American people are starting to wake up to, although we have a long way to go to wake up Washington. It's amazing to me how many people outside of Washington are very much aware of the plans with this North American Union, at the same time they are in total denial in Washington, except for the few behind the scenes who are laying the plans and providing the finances."
Turning to discussion of his Presidential campaign, Ron Paul championed the alternative media and the internet as vital tools in allowing him to get his message across to a multitude of people that never could have been reached before without huge injections of money:
"The internet already has been very helpful and I think it's going to be more helpful as time goes on, and that's something that is becoming more so everyday, ten fifteen years ago it wasn't so significant. The other thing is radio talks shows like what you have are very important. Almost every place I go somebody will come up to me and I'll say 'how did you get involved' and it's through your show. So there are a lot of people who have joined our campaign and have already started to show up at our events because of your encouragement."
Paul emphasized that although the bigger candidates can raise millions of dollars through special interests, a lot of that money is wasted on private jets, huge salaries, advisors, advertising and the like. So there isn't as big a gulf between he and the other candidates as people may think.
The Republican Congressman, who has been dubbed "founding father material", by his supporters has surprised some with his initial success, having gained widespread support from Libertarians, Liberals and Conservatives alike.
He stressed that you have to be in the game to have any chance of winning it, and that this not only applies to his own campaign but more importantly applies also to everyone who wishes to remain free in America.
"Time is running out and we may lose our liberties to the point where we won't have these responses." Paul stated.
"You know there's nothing that guarantees that they will allow you to air your radio show forever. They have already trampled on our rights, they talking about putting people in prison today without Habeas Corpus... If we don't preserve our fundamental freedoms we can't fight back. I'm convinced of one thing, we could all be very very poor tomorrow and have to start from scratch but if we have our freedoms and we have our sound currency and we have the government off our backs, this country would rebound so quickly."
Paul then outlined what he feels that the 2008 Presidential election is all about, and also warned that the elite are prepared to attempt to take the liberty of the people and change the course of history:
"I think they are always prepared and everyday they have more powers than before because under these emergency powers acts, the President now has more authority than ever. And the contest that is really going on in this Presidential election is are there enough of us that care about our freedoms versus those who are willing to succumb to the temptations of dictatorship. Just think of the attitude, what it was like right after 9/11 when they passed the Patriot Act, I said 'you know it's not even available, you can't even read it and we're getting ready to vote' they said 'it doesn't matter, the people want us to do something, this looks like we're doing something, it sounds good, there's no way I'm even gonna question this', so they voted for it. They got their signals from the people. it is true that there are a lot of people who wanted something done, the big question is are there more of them or more of us?" Paul commented.
in further reference to 9/11 the Congressman stated:
"I think freedom's been sliding for a long time and it got a lot worse after 9/11 and I'm always afraid of some concocted event that will scare the American people.... The people in this country need a little bit more reason to go along with the President, but unfortunately our leaders in this country too often have been able to provide the incident that unifies the country behind more militarism."
We implore our readers to listen to the entire interview here and support Ron Paul's campaign. His voting record speaks for itself and he represents a genuine chance to attempt to put things right in America today.
To support Ron Paul you can visit his website at www.RonPaul2008.com , where you can donate online or find out how to donate via other methods.
The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt
Rolling Stone April 5th EditionERIK HEDEGAARD
He was the ultimate keeper of secrets, lurking in the shadows of American history. He toppled banana republics, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion and led the Watergate break-in. Now he would reveal what he'd always kept hidden: who killed JFK
>> Who assassinated JFK? The conversation continues in our politics blog, National Affairs Daily .
O nce, when the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges recently had been constant and terrible: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate, gangrene, the amputation of his left leg. It was like something was eating him up. Long past were his years of heroic service to the country. In the CIA, he'd helped mastermind the violent removal of a duly elected leftist president in Guatemala and assisted in subterfuges that led to the murder of Che Guevara. But no longer could you see in him the suave, pipe-smoking, cocktail-party-loving clandestine operative whose Cold War exploits he himself had, almost obsessively, turned into novels, one of which, East of Farewell , the New York Times once called "the best sea story" of World War II. Diminished too were the old bad memories, of the Bay of Pigs debacle that derailed his CIA career for good, of the Watergate Hotel fiasco, of his first wife's death, of thirty-three months in U.S. prisons -- of, in fact, a furious lifetime mainly of failure, disappointment and pain. But his firstborn son -- he named him St. John; Saint, for short -- was by his side now. And he still had a secret or two left to share before it was all over.
They were in the living room, him in his wheelchair, watching Fox News at full volume, because his hearing had failed too. After a while, he had St. John wheel him into his bedroom and hoist him onto his bed. It smelled foul in there; he was incontinent; a few bottles of urine under the bed needed to be emptied; but he was beyond caring. He asked St. John to get him a diet root beer, a pad of paper and a pen.
Saint had come to Miami from Eureka, California, borrowing money to fly because he was broke. Though clean now, he had been a meth addict for twenty years, a meth dealer for ten of those years and a source of frustration and anger to his father for much of his life. There were a couple of days back in 1972, after the Watergate job, when the boy, then eighteen, had risen to the occasion. The two of them, father and son, had wiped fingerprints off a bunch of spy gear, and Saint had helped in other ways, too. But as a man, he had two felony convictions to his name, and they were for drugs. The old spymaster was a convicted felon too, of course. But that was different. He was E. Howard Hunt, a true American patriot, and he had earned his while serving his country. That the country repaid him with almost three years in prison was something he could never understand, if only because the orders that got him in such trouble came right from the top; as he once said, "I had always assumed, working for the CIA for so many years, that anything the White House wanted done was the law of the land."
Years had gone by when he and St. John hardly spoke. But then St. John came to him wanting to know if he had any information about the assassination of President Kennedy. Despite almost universal skepticism, his father had always maintained that he didn't. He swore to this during two government investigations. "I didn't have anything to do with the assassination, didn't know anything about it," he said during one of them. "I did my time for Watergate. I shouldn't have to do additional time and suffer additional losses for something I had nothing to do with."
But now, in August 2003, propped up in his sickbed, paper on his lap, pen in hand and son sitting next to him, he began to write down the names of men who had indeed participated in a plot to kill the president. He had lied during those two federal investigations. He knew something after all. He told St. John about his own involvement, too. It was explosive stuff, with the potential to reconfigure the JFK-assassination-theory landscape. And then he got better and went on to live for four more years.
T hey sure don't make White House bad guys the way they used to. Today you've got flabby-faced half-men like Karl Rove, with weakling names like "Scooter" Libby, blandly hacking their way through the constraints of the U.S. Constitution, while back then, in addition to Hunt, you had out-and-out thugs like G. Gordon Liddy, his Watergate co-conspirator and Nixon's dirty-tricks chief, who would hold his own hand over an open flame to prove what a real tough guy he was. It all seems a little nutty now, but in 1972 it was serious business. These guys meant to take the powers of the presidency and run amok. Hunt, an ex-CIA man who loved operating in the shadows and joined Nixon's Special Investigations Unit (a.k.a. "the Plumbers") as a $100-a-day consultant in 1971, specialized in political sabotage. Among his first assignments: forging cables linking the Kennedy administration to the assassination of South Vietnam's president. After that, he began sniffing around Ted Kennedy's dirty laundry, to see what he could dig up there. Being a former CIA man, he had no problem contemplating the use of firebombs and once thought about slathering LSD on the steering wheel of an unfriendly newspaperman's car, hoping it would leach into his skin and cause a fatal accident. But of all his various plots and subterfuges, in the end, only one of them mattered: the failed burglary at the Watergate Hotel, in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1972.
The way it happened, Hunt enlisted some Cuban pals from his old Bay of Pigs days to fly up from Miami and bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters, which was located inside the Watergate. Also on the team were a couple of shady ex-government operators named James McCord and Frank Sturgis. The first attempt ended when the outfit's lock picker realized he'd brought the wrong tools. The next time, however, with Hunt stationed in a Howard Johnson's hotel room across the way, communicating with the burglars by walkie-talkie, the team gained entry into the office. Unfortunately, on the way into the building, they'd taped open an exit door to allow their escape, and when a night watchman found it, he called the cops. The burglars were arrested on the spot. One of them had E. Howard's phone number, at the White House, no less, in his address book. Following this lead, police arrested Hunt and charged him with burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping. Abandoned by his bosses at the White House, he soon began trying to extort money from them to help pay his mounting bills, as well as those of his fellow burglars, the deal being that if the White House paid, all those arrested would plead guilty and maintain silence about the extent of the White House's involvement.
That December, his wife, Dorothy, carrying $10,000 in $100 bills, was killed in a plane crash, foul play suspected but never proved. Two years later, impeachment imminent, Nixon resigned his presidency. And in 1973, E. Howard Hunt, the man who had unwittingly set all these events in motion, pleaded guilty and ultimately spent thirty-three months in prison. "I cannot escape feeling," he said at the time, "that the country I have served for my entire life and which directed me to carry out the Watergate entry is punishing me for doing the very things it trained and directed me to do."
>> Who assassinated JFK? The conversation continues in our politics blog, National Affairs Daily .
O nce, when the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges recently had been constant and terrible: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate, gangrene, the amputation of his left leg. It was like something was eating him up. Long past were his years of heroic service to the country. In the CIA, he'd helped mastermind the violent removal of a duly elected leftist president in Guatemala and assisted in subterfuges that led to the murder of Che Guevara. But no longer could you see in him the suave, pipe-smoking, cocktail-party-loving clandestine operative whose Cold War exploits he himself had, almost obsessively, turned into novels, one of which, East of Farewell , the New York Times once called "the best sea story" of World War II. Diminished too were the old bad memories, of the Bay of Pigs debacle that derailed his CIA career for good, of the Watergate Hotel fiasco, of his first wife's death, of thirty-three months in U.S. prisons -- of, in fact, a furious lifetime mainly of failure, disappointment and pain. But his firstborn son -- he named him St. John; Saint, for short -- was by his side now. And he still had a secret or two left to share before it was all over.
They were in the living room, him in his wheelchair, watching Fox News at full volume, because his hearing had failed too. After a while, he had St. John wheel him into his bedroom and hoist him onto his bed. It smelled foul in there; he was incontinent; a few bottles of urine under the bed needed to be emptied; but he was beyond caring. He asked St. John to get him a diet root beer, a pad of paper and a pen.
Saint had come to Miami from Eureka, California, borrowing money to fly because he was broke. Though clean now, he had been a meth addict for twenty years, a meth dealer for ten of those years and a source of frustration and anger to his father for much of his life. There were a couple of days back in 1972, after the Watergate job, when the boy, then eighteen, had risen to the occasion. The two of them, father and son, had wiped fingerprints off a bunch of spy gear, and Saint had helped in other ways, too. But as a man, he had two felony convictions to his name, and they were for drugs. The old spymaster was a convicted felon too, of course. But that was different. He was E. Howard Hunt, a true American patriot, and he had earned his while serving his country. That the country repaid him with almost three years in prison was something he could never understand, if only because the orders that got him in such trouble came right from the top; as he once said, "I had always assumed, working for the CIA for so many years, that anything the White House wanted done was the law of the land."
Years had gone by when he and St. John hardly spoke. But then St. John came to him wanting to know if he had any information about the assassination of President Kennedy. Despite almost universal skepticism, his father had always maintained that he didn't. He swore to this during two government investigations. "I didn't have anything to do with the assassination, didn't know anything about it," he said during one of them. "I did my time for Watergate. I shouldn't have to do additional time and suffer additional losses for something I had nothing to do with."
But now, in August 2003, propped up in his sickbed, paper on his lap, pen in hand and son sitting next to him, he began to write down the names of men who had indeed participated in a plot to kill the president. He had lied during those two federal investigations. He knew something after all. He told St. John about his own involvement, too. It was explosive stuff, with the potential to reconfigure the JFK-assassination-theory landscape. And then he got better and went on to live for four more years.
T hey sure don't make White House bad guys the way they used to. Today you've got flabby-faced half-men like Karl Rove, with weakling names like "Scooter" Libby, blandly hacking their way through the constraints of the U.S. Constitution, while back then, in addition to Hunt, you had out-and-out thugs like G. Gordon Liddy, his Watergate co-conspirator and Nixon's dirty-tricks chief, who would hold his own hand over an open flame to prove what a real tough guy he was. It all seems a little nutty now, but in 1972 it was serious business. These guys meant to take the powers of the presidency and run amok. Hunt, an ex-CIA man who loved operating in the shadows and joined Nixon's Special Investigations Unit (a.k.a. "the Plumbers") as a $100-a-day consultant in 1971, specialized in political sabotage. Among his first assignments: forging cables linking the Kennedy administration to the assassination of South Vietnam's president. After that, he began sniffing around Ted Kennedy's dirty laundry, to see what he could dig up there. Being a former CIA man, he had no problem contemplating the use of firebombs and once thought about slathering LSD on the steering wheel of an unfriendly newspaperman's car, hoping it would leach into his skin and cause a fatal accident. But of all his various plots and subterfuges, in the end, only one of them mattered: the failed burglary at the Watergate Hotel, in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1972.
The way it happened, Hunt enlisted some Cuban pals from his old Bay of Pigs days to fly up from Miami and bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters, which was located inside the Watergate. Also on the team were a couple of shady ex-government operators named James McCord and Frank Sturgis. The first attempt ended when the outfit's lock picker realized he'd brought the wrong tools. The next time, however, with Hunt stationed in a Howard Johnson's hotel room across the way, communicating with the burglars by walkie-talkie, the team gained entry into the office. Unfortunately, on the way into the building, they'd taped open an exit door to allow their escape, and when a night watchman found it, he called the cops. The burglars were arrested on the spot. One of them had E. Howard's phone number, at the White House, no less, in his address book. Following this lead, police arrested Hunt and charged him with burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping. Abandoned by his bosses at the White House, he soon began trying to extort money from them to help pay his mounting bills, as well as those of his fellow burglars, the deal being that if the White House paid, all those arrested would plead guilty and maintain silence about the extent of the White House's involvement.
That December, his wife, Dorothy, carrying $10,000 in $100 bills, was killed in a plane crash, foul play suspected but never proved. Two years later, impeachment imminent, Nixon resigned his presidency. And in 1973, E. Howard Hunt, the man who had unwittingly set all these events in motion, pleaded guilty and ultimately spent thirty-three months in prison. "I cannot escape feeling," he said at the time, "that the country I have served for my entire life and which directed me to carry out the Watergate entry is punishing me for doing the very things it trained and directed me to do."
After his release, Hunt moved to Miami, where he remarried, had two more children and spent three decades living a quiet, unexceptional life, steadfastly refusing to talk about Watergate, much less the Kennedy assassination. His connection to the JFK assassination came about almost serendipitously, when in 1974 a researcher stumbled across a photo of three tramps standing in Dallas' Dealey Plaza. It was taken on November 22nd, 1963, the day of Kennedy's shooting, and one of the tramps looked pretty much like E. Howard. In early inquiries, official and otherwise, he always denied any involvement. In later years, he'd offer a curt "No comment." And then, earlier this year, at the age of eighty-eight, he died -- though not before writing an autobiography, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond , published last month. Not surprisingly, those things he wrote down about JFK's death and gave to his eldest son don't make an appearance in the book, at least not in any definitive way. E. Howard had apparently decided to take them to the grave. But St. John still has the memo -- "It has all this stuff in it," he says, "the chain of command, names, people, places, dates. He wrote it out to me directly, in his own handwriting, starting with the initials 'LBJ' " -- and he's decided it's time his father's last secrets finally see some light, for better or for worse.
O ut in eureka, a few days before his father's death, St. John is driving through town in a beat-up mottled-brown '88 Cutlass Sierra. He is fifty-two. His hair is dark, worn long, and despite his decades as a drug addict, he's still looking good. He has a Wiccan girlfriend named Mona. He's also an accomplished and soulful guitar player, leaning heavily toward Eric Clapton; he can often be found playing in local haunts during open-mike nights and is working on putting a band together, perhaps to be called Saint John and the Sinners or, though less likely, the Konspirators. He's got a good sense of humor and a large sentimental streak. The last time he saw his father, in Miami, was a week ago.
"I sat by his bedside holding his hand for about ten hours the first day," St. John says somberly. "He hadn't been out of bed in ten weeks, had pneumonia twenty-seven times in the last sixteen months. He's such a tough old motherfucker, that guy. But he had all this fluid in his lungs, a death rattle, and I thought, 'Any minute now, this is it, his last breath, I'm looking at it right here.' A couple of times my stepmom, Laura, would say, 'Howard, who is this?' He'd look at me and her, and he didn't have a clue. Other times, he would quietly say, 'St. John.' He said he loved me and was grateful I was there."
At the moment, Saint doesn't have a job; his felonies have gotten in the way. He has to borrow money to put gas in his Cutlass. Beach chairs substitute for furniture in the tiny apartment where, until recently, he lived with an ex-girlfriend, herself a reformed meth addict, and two kids, one hers, one theirs. "I would've loved to have lived a normal life," he says. "I'm happy with who I am. I don't have any regrets. But all the shit that happened, the whole thing, it really spun me over."
And not only him but his siblings, too -- a brother, David, who has had his own problems with drugs, and two older sisters, Kevan and Lisa, who still hold their father responsible for the tragedy of their mom's death. Dorothy Hunt was staunchly loyal to her husband and, after his arrest, helped him with his plans to blackmail the White House. On December 8th, 1972, carrying $10,000 in what's regarded as extorted hush money and, some say, evidence that could have gotten Nixon impeached, she boarded United Airlines Flight 553 from Washington to Chicago. The plane crashed, killing forty-three people onboard, including Dorothy. The official explanation was pilot error, but St. John doesn't believe it. He thinks that the Nixon White House wanted to both get rid of his mother and send a message to his father. Nonetheless, he says he tries not to place blame.
"She got on that plane willingly and lovingly, because that's the kind of woman she was," he says. "They had lots of marital problems, but when it came down to it, she had his back, and she could hang in there with the big dogs. She was really pissed at Nixon, Liddy, all those guys, and she was saying, 'We're not going to let them hang you out to dry. We're going to get them. Those motherfuckers are going to pay.' So I've never held what happened against him. I had bitterness and resentment, but I always knew he did what he had to do given the circumstances."
And at times, he even seems to think of his dad with pride: "Did you hear that the character that Tom Cruise plays in the Mission: Impossible movies is named after him? Instead of Everette Hunt, they named him Ethan Hunt. I know he's been portrayed as kind of an inept, third-rate burglar, but burglary wasn't really his bag. My dad was a really good spy, maybe a great spy."
But then he starts talking about what it was like growing up the eldest son of Everette Howard Hunt, and a different picture emerges. "He loved the glamorous life, cocktail parties, nightclubbing, flirting, all that," Saint says. "He was unfaithful to my mom, but she stayed with him. He was a swinger. He thought of himself as a cool dude, suave, sophisticated, intellectual. He was Mr. Smooth. A man of danger. He was perfect for the CIA. He never felt guilt about anything."
I n the early days of the cold war, the CIA's mandate was simple: to contain the spread of communism by whatever means necessary; it was tacitly given permission to go about its dirty business unfettered by oversight of any kind. For much of the Cold War, it was answerable to no one. And if you were lucky enough to become one of its agents, you had every right to consider yourself a member of an elite corps, a big swinging all-American dick like no other.
The middle-class son of a Hamburg, New York, attorney, E. Howard Hunt graduated from Brown University in 1940 with a bachelor's in English, joined the Navy during World War II, served in the North Atlantic on the destroyer Mayo , slipped and fell, took a medical discharge and wound up in China working under "Wild" Bill Donovan in the newly formed Office of Strategic Services. When the OSS was transformed into the CIA, Hunt jumped onboard. He loved action as much as he hated communism, and he soon began operating with a level of arrogance entirely typical of the CIA. He was instrumental, for instance, in planning the 1954 coup in Guatemala that overthrew the left-leaning, democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, and ushered in forty years of military repression, which ultimately cost 200,000 Guatemalans their lives. Years later, when asked about the 200,000 deaths, E. Howard said, "Deaths? What deaths?" Like Saint says, he never felt guilt about anything: "He was a complete self-centered WASP who saw himself as this blue blood from upstate New York. 'I'm better than anybody because I'm white, Protestant and went to Brown, and since I'm in the CIA, I can do anything I want.' Jew, nigger, Polack, wop -- he used all those racial epithets. He was an elitist. He hated everybody."
In the early Fifties, his father could often be seen cruising around in a white Cadillac convertible; he loved that car. He also loved his cigars and his wine and his country clubs and being waited on by servants and having his children looked after by nannies. He was full of himself and full of the romantic, swashbuckling, freewheeling importance of his government mission. He had quite an imagination, too. When he wasn't off saving the world from Reds, he spent much of his time in front of a typewriter, hacking out espionage novels, some eighty in all, with titles such as The Violent Ones ("They killed by day, they loved by night") and I Came to Kill ("They wanted a tyrant liquidated, and cash could hire him to do it").
Wherever E. Howard was stationed -- he'd pop up Zelig-like in hot spots from Japan to Uruguay to Spain -- he and his family lived lavishly and well, all presumably to lend credence to his cover job as a high-ranking embassy official. One estate was as large as a city block, and one dining table as long as a telephone pole, with the parents sitting at distant opposite ends. Sadly, he treated his children the way he and the CIA treated the rest of the world. They were supposed to bend to his will and otherwise be invisible. God forbid during a meal one of them should speak or rattle a dish.
"Whenever I made a sound, he looked at me with those hateful, steely eyes of his, a look of utter contempt and disgust, like he could kill," St. John says. "He was a mean-spirited person and an extremely cruel father. I was his firstborn son, and I was born with a clubfoot and had to have operations. I suffered from petit-mal seizures. I was dyslexic and developed a stutter. For the superspy not to have a superson was the ultimate disappointment, like, 'Here's my idiot son with the clubfoot and glasses. Can we keep him in the closet, Dorothy?' "
Later, E. Howard moved the family to the last home it would ever occupy as a family, in Potomac, Maryland. It was called Witches Island. It was a rambling affair, with a horse paddock, a chicken coop, the Cold War bonus of a bomb shelter, and a fishing pond across the way. E. Howard wanted Saint to attend a top-flight prep school and one night took him to a dinner at St. Andrew's School, to try and get his son enrolled. In the middle of the meal, Saint leaned over to his dad and whispered, "Papa, I have to go to the bathroom." His father glared at him. Pretty soon Saint was banging his knees together under the table. "Sit still," his father hissed. Saint said, "Papa, I really have to go."
"I ended up pissing in my pants at the dinner," Saint says. "Can you imagine how humiliating that was? Unbelievable." He didn't get into St. Andrew's. He ended up settling for a lower-tier boarding school called St. James, near Hagerstown, Maryland. His second year there, in 1970, after being repeatedly molested by a teacher, he broke down and told his mother what was going on. She told his father. And rumor had it that E. Howard came up to St. James with a carload of guns to make the teacher disappear. "He was really, really pissed off," says Saint. "He wanted to kill." In any case, at the school, neither the teacher nor St. John was ever seen again.
That same year, his father retired from the CIA after being relegated to the backwaters for his role in the Bay of Pigs. He went to work as a writer for a PR firm. He was bored and missed the hands-on action of the CIA.The following year, however, his lawyer pal Chuck Colson, who was special counsel to Nixon, called him up with an invitation to join the president's Special Investigations Unit as a kind of dirty-tricks consultant. He signed on. He really thought he was going places.
A round the time of st. john's Miami visit in 2003 to talk to his ailing father about JFK, certain other people were also trying to get things out of E. Howard, including the actor Kevin Costner, who had played a JFK-assassination-obsessed DA in the Oliver Stone film JFK and had become somewhat obsessed himself. Costner said that he could arrange for E. Howard to make $5 million for telling the truth about what happened in Dallas. Unbeknown to St. John, however, Costner had already met with E. Howard once. That meeting didn't go very well. When Costner arrived at the house, he didn't ease into the subject. "So who killed Kennedy?" he blurted out. "I mean, who did shoot JFK, Mr. Hunt?"
E. Howard's mouth fell open, and he looked at his wife. "What did he say?"
"Howard," Laura said, "he wants to know who shot JFK."
And that ended that meeting, with E. Howard grumbling to himself about Costner, "What a numskull."
But then St. John got involved, and he knew better how to handle the situation. For one thing, he knew that his stepmother wanted to forget about the past. She didn't want to hear about Watergate or Kennedy. In fact, E. Howard swore to Laura that he knew nothing about JFK's assassination; it was one of her preconditions for marriage. Consequently, she and her sons often found themselves in conflict with St. John.
"Why can't you go back to California and leave well enough alone?" they asked him. "How can you do this? How dare you do this? He's in the last years of his life."
But Saint's attitude was, "This has nothing to do with you. This stuff is of historical significance and needs to come out, and if you're worried that it'll make him out to be a liar, everybody knows he's a liar already. Is this going to ruin the Hunt name? The Hunt name is already filled with ruination."
So when Saint arrived in Miami to talk to his dad, the two men spent a lot of time waiting for Laura to leave the house. Saint painted the living room and built a wheelchair ramp. In the mornings, he cooked breakfast. In the afternoons, he plopped a fishing hat on E. Howard's head and wheeled him around the neighborhood. They drank coffee together. And watched lots of Fox News. And when Laura finally left, they talked.
Afterward, another meeting was arranged with Costner, this time in Los Angeles, where the actor had fifty assassination-related questions all ready to go. (The actor declined comment for this article.) Though the $5 million figure was still floating around, all Costner wanted to pay E. Howard at this point was $100 a day for his time. There would be no advance. St. John called Costner.
"That's your offer? A hundred dollars? That's an insult. You're a cheapskate."
"Nobody calls me a cheapskate," said Costner. "What do you think I'm going to do, just hand over $5 million?"
"No. But the flight alone could kill him. He's deaf as a brick. He's pissing in a bag. He's got one leg. You want him to fly to Los Angeles and for $100 a day? Wow! What are we going to do with all that money?!"
"I can't talk to you anymore, St. John," Costner said. And that was the end of that, for good. It looked like what E. Howard had to say would never get out.
O ne evening in Eureka, over a barbecue meal, St. John explains how he first came to suspect that his father might somehow be involved in the Kennedy assassination. "Around 1975, I was in a phone booth in Maryland somewhere, when I saw a poster on a telephone pole about who killed JFK, and it had a picture of the three tramps. I saw that picture and I fucking -- like a cartoon character, my jaw dropped, my eyes popped out of my head, and smoke came out of my ears. It looks like my dad. There's nobody that has all those same facial features. People say it's not him. He's said it's not him. But I'm his son, and I've got a gut feeling."
He chews his sandwich. "And then, like an epiphany, I remember '63, and my dad being gone, and my mom telling me that he was on a business trip to Dallas. I've tried to convince myself that's some kind of false memory, that I'm just nuts, that it's something I heard years later. But, I mean, his alibi for that day is that he was at home with his family. I remember I was in the fifth grade. We were at recess. I was playing on the merry-go-round. We were called in and told to go home, because the president had been killed. And I remember going home. But I don't remember my dad being there. I have no recollection of him being there. And then he has this whole thing about shopping for Chinese food with my mother that day, so that they could cook a meal together." His father testified to this, in court, on more than one occasion, saying that he and his wife often cooked meals together.
St. John pauses and leans forward. "Well," he says, "I can tell you that's just the biggest load of crap in the fucking world. He was always looking at things like he was writing a novel; everything had to be just so glamorous and so exciting. He couldn't even be bothered with his children. That's not glamorous. James Bond doesn't have children. So my dad in the kitchen? Chopping vegetables with his wife? I'm so sorry, but that would never happen. Ever. That fucker never did jack-squat like that. Ever."
N ot that it was all bad back then, in Potomac, at Witches Island. E. Howard played the trumpet, and his son was into music too, so sometimes the pair went down to Blues Alley, in Georgetown, to hear jazz. Back home, E. Howard would slap Benny Goodman's monster swing-jazz song "Sing, Sing, Sing" on the turntable, and the two would listen to it endlessly. And then, sometimes, during the stomping Harry James horn solo, E. Howard would jump to his feet, snapping his fingers like some cool cat, pull back his shirt sleeves, lick his lips and play the air trumpet for all he was worth. It was great stuff, and St. John loved it. "I would sit there in awe," he says. But the best was yet to come.
It was well past midnight on June 18th, 1972. Saint, eighteen years old, was asleep in his basement bedroom, surrounded by his Beatles and Playboy pinup posters, when he heard someone shouting, "You gotta wake up! You gotta wake up!"
When he opened his eyes, Saint saw his father as he'd never seen him before. E. Howard was dressed in his usual coat and tie, but everything was akimbo. He was a sweaty, disheveled mess. Saint didn't know what to think or what was going on.
"I don't need you to ask a lot of questions," his father said. "I need you to get your clothes on and come upstairs."
He disappeared into the darkness. Saint changed out of his pajamas. Upstairs, he found his father in the master bedroom, laboring over a big green suitcase jumble-filled with microphones, walkie-talkies, cameras, tripods, cords, wires, lots of weird stuff. His father started giving him instructions. Saint went to the kitchen and returned with Windex, paper towels and some rubber dishwashing gloves. Then, in silence, the two of them began wiping fingerprints off all the junk in the suitcase. After that, they loaded everything into E. Howard's Pontiac Firebird and drove over to a lock on the C&O Canal. E. Howard heaved the suitcase into the water, and it gurgled out of sight.
They didn't speak on the way home. St. John still didn't know what was going on. All he knew was that his dad had needed his help, and he'd given it, successfully.
The next day, dressed in one of his prep-school blazers, he drove to a Riggs Bank in Georgetown and met his father inside the safety-deposit-box cage. His father turned him around, lifted his blazer and shoved about $100,000 in cash down the back of his pants. The boy made it home without picking up a tail. Then his father had him get rid of a typewriter. Saint put the typewriter in a bag, hoofed it across the Witches Island property onto the neighboring spread and tossed it into the pond where he and his brother David used to go fishing.
"Don't ever tell anybody you've done these things," his father said later. "I could get in trouble. You could get in trouble. I'm sorry to have to put you in this position, but I really am grateful for your help."
"Of course, Papa," Saint said.
Everything he had done, he'd done because his father and his gang of pals had botched the break-in at the Watergate Hotel. Soon his mother would be killed in a plane crash, and his father would be sent to jail, and Nixon would resign, and his own life would fracture in unimaginable ways. But right now, standing there with his father and hearing those words of praise, he was the happiest he'd ever been.
Y ears later, when saint started trying to get his father to tell what he knew about JFK, he came to believe the information would be valuable. He both needed money and thought he was owed money, for what he'd been through. Also, like many a conspiracy nut before him, he was more than a little obsessed.
"After seeing that poster of the three tramps," he says, "I read two dozen books on the JFK assassination, and the more I read, the more I was unsure about what happened. I had all these questions and uncertainties. I mean, I was trying to sort out things that had touched me in a big way."
Touched him and turned him upside down, especially the death of his mother. He had been particularly close to her. She was part Native American and had sewed him a buckskin shirt that he used to wear like a badge of honor, along with a pair of moccasins. At the same time, Saint feels that he never got to know her. She told him that during World War II, she'd tracked Nazi money for the U.S. Treasury Department, and Saint believes that early in her marriage to his father, she may have been in the CIA herself, "a contract agent, not officially listed." But he isn't sure about any of it, really.
"In our family, everything was sort of like a mini-CIA," he says. "Nothing was ever talked about, so we grew up with all of these walls, walls around my father, walls around my mother, walls around us kids, to protect and insulate us. You grow up not knowing what really happened. Like, who was my mom, for Christ's sake? Was she a CIA agent? What was her life really like?" The one thing he does know is that when she died, so in large part did the Hunt family.
Once his father went to prison, Saint moved to Wisconsin, where he worked in a potato-processing plant and spent the rest of his time dropping acid. In 1975, he moved to the Oakland, California, area, started snorting coke and for five years drove a bakery truck. He was in a band and hoped to become a rock star, though touring alongside Buddy Guy was about the biggest thing that ever happened. Then he gave up coke and took up meth and a while later started dealing meth. Twenty years flew by. He had wild sexual escapades; he shacked up with two sisters -- "nymphs," he calls them. But mainly his life, like his father's, was a rolling series of misfortunes. He received insurance money after his mom died, and bought a house; a week later, it burned down in some drug-related fiasco. His brother David followed a similar path; leaving boarding school, he hooked up with Saint, and together they set about snorting and dealing away the years.
Finally, in 2001, on the heels of two drug busts, Saint decided to go straight. With his ex-girlfriend, their daughter and her son, he stayed in a series of shelters, then took them to live in Eureka, several hours north of Oakland. He's since earned a certificate in hotel management, but jobs don't last. And the questions and uncertainties about his father continue to circulate in his head.
"In some ways we turned out similarly," he says. "He was a spy, into secrets and covert activity. I became a drug dealer. What has to be more covert and secret than that? It's the same mind-set. We were just on opposite sides of the -- well, actually, in our case, I guess we weren't even on opposite sides of the law, were we?" T hat time in miami, with saint by his bed and disease eating away at him and him thinking he's six months away from death, E. Howard finally put pen to paper and started writing. Saint had been working toward this moment for a long while, and now it was going to happen. He got his father an A&W diet root beer, then sat down in the old man's wheelchair and waited.
E. Howard scribbled the initials "LBJ," standing for Kennedy's ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under "LBJ," connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that's never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer's name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer's name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales' name, with a line, the framed words "French Gunman Grassy Knoll."
So there it was, according to E. Howard Hunt. LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had long been speculated upon. But now E. Howard was saying that's the way it was. And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only shooter in Dallas. There was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the Corsican Mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in other assassination theories.
"By the time he handed me the paper, I was in a state of shock," Saint says. "His whole life, to me and everybody else, he'd always professed to not know anything about any of it. But I knew this had to be the truth. If my dad was going to make anything up, he would have made something up about the Mafia, or Castro, or Khrushchev. He didn't like Johnson. But you don't falsely implicate your own country, for Christ's sake. My father is old-school, a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, and that's the last thing he would do."
Later that week, E. Howard also gave Saint two sheets of paper that contained a fuller narrative. It starts out with LBJ again, connecting him to Cord Meyer, then goes on: "Cord Meyer discusses a plot with [David Atlee] Phillips who brings in Wm. Harvey and Antonio Veciana. He meets with Oswald in Mexico City. . . . Then Veciana meets w/ Frank Sturgis in Miami and enlists David Morales in anticipation of killing JFK there. But LBJ changes itinerary to Dallas, citing personal reasons."
David Atlee Phillips, the CIA's Cuban operations chief in Miami at the time of JFK's death, knew E. Howard from the Guatemala-coup days. Veciana is a member of the Cuban exile community. Sturgis, like Saint's father, is supposed to have been one of the three tramps photographed in Dealey Plaza. Sturgis was also one of the Watergate plotters, and he is a man whom E. Howard, under oath, has repeatedly sworn to have not met until Watergate, so to Saint the mention of his name was big news.
In the next few paragraphs, E. Howard goes on to describe the extent of his own involvement. It revolves around a meeting he claims he attended, in 1963, with Morales and Sturgis. It takes place in a Miami hotel room. Here's what happens:
Morales leaves the room, at which point Sturgis makes reference to a "Big Event" and asks E. Howard, "Are you with us?"
E. Howard asks Sturgis what he's talking about.
Sturgis says, "Killing JFK."
E. Howard, "incredulous," says to Sturgis, "You seem to have everything you need. Why do you need me?" In the handwritten narrative, Sturgis' response is unclear, though what E. Howard says to Sturgis next isn't: He says he won't "get involved in anything involving Bill Harvey, who is an alcoholic psycho."
After that, the meeting ends. E. Howard goes back to his "normal" life and "like the rest of the country . . . is stunned by JFK's death and realizes how lucky he is not to have had a direct role."
After reading what his father had written, St. John was stunned too. His father had not only implicated LBJ, he'd also, with a few swift marks of a pen, put the lie to almost everything he'd sworn to, under oath, about his knowledge of the assassination. Saint had a million more questions. But his father was exhausted and needed to sleep, and then Saint had to leave town without finishing their talk, though a few weeks later he did receive in the mail a tape recording from his dad. E. Howard's voice on the cassette is weak and grasping, and he sometimes wanders down unrelated pathways. But he essentially remakes the same points he made in his handwritten narrative.
Shortly thereafter, Laura found out what had been going on, and with the help of E. Howard's attorney put an end to it. St. John and his father were kept apart. When they did see each other, they were never left alone. And they never got a chance to finish what they'd started. Instead, the old man set about writing his autobiography and turned his back on his son. He wrote him a letter in which he said that Saint's life had been nothing but "meaningless, self-serving instant gratification," that he had never amounted to anything and never would. He asked for his JFK memos back, and Saint returned them, though not before making copies.
There is no way to confirm Hunt's allegations -- all but one of the co-conspirators he named are long gone. St. John, for his part, believes his father. E. Howard was lucid when he made his confession. He was taking no serious medications, and he and his son were finally on good terms. If anything, St. John believes, his father was holding out on him, the old spy keeping a few secrets in reserve, just in case.
"Actually, there were probably dozens of plots to kill Kennedy, because everybody hated Kennedy but the public," Saint says. "The question is, which one of them worked? My dad has always said, 'Thank God one of them worked.' I think he knows a lot more than he told me. He claimed he backed out of the plot only so he could disclaim actual involvement. In a way, I feel like he only opened another can of worms." He takes a deep breath. "At a certain point, I'm just going to have to let it go."
O ut in Eureka, Saint has been reading an advance copy of E. Howard's autobiography, American Spy . In it, his father looks at LBJ as only one possible person behind the JFK killing, and then only in the most halfhearted, couched-and-cloaked way. He brings up various other possibilities, too, then debunks each of them.
But of all the shadings and omissions in the book, the only one that truly upsets St. John has to do with the happiest moment in his life, that time in 1972, on the night of the Watergate burglary, when he helped his father dispose of the spy gear, then ran money for him and ditched the typewriter.
The way it unfolds in the book, St. John doesn't do anything for his dad. And it's E. Howard himself who dumps the typewriter.
"That's a complete lie," Saint says, almost shouting. "A total fabrication. I did that. I mean, he never took me aside and thanked me in any kind of deep emotional way. But I'm the one who helped him that night. Me! And he's robbing me of it. Why?"
Like so many other things, he will never know why, because the next day, on January 23rd, in the morning, in Miami, the old spymaster dies.
Later in the day, Saint started reading a few of the obituaries.
One starts off, "Sleazebag E. Howard Hunt is finally dead."
"Oh, God," Saint says and goes looking for how The New York Times handled his father's death. The obit reads, "Mr. Hunt was intelligent, erudite, suave and loyal to his friends. But the record shows that he mishandled many of the tasks he received from the CIA and the White House. He was 'totally self-absorbed, totally amoral and a danger to himself and anybody around him. . . .' "
"Wow," Saint says. "I don't know if I can read these things. I mean, that is one brutal obituary."
But the Times is right, of course. E. Howard was a danger to anybody around him, and any list of those in danger would always have to include, right at the top, his firstborn son, St. John.
>> Who assassinated JFK? The conversation continues in our politics blog, National Affairs Daily .