MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Sounds credible to me. Bureaucratic infighting has long undermined U.S. intelligence efforts.
Offering new revelations about the CIA's role in shutting down military intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal investigators and sharing some degree of blame for the 9/11 attacks.
Comments
See fourth In the News item down about CIA demanding -- and getting -- a one-year-plus exemption from a unified code on use of killer drones.
by acanuck on Sun, 01/20/2013 - 11:42pm
Huh. I can't get the article to come up. DNS problem.
I remember this story, with the brilliant female analyst who remembered Mohammed Atta from seeing a picture of him during the Able Danger project. It never went anywhere--always wondered why but it seemed the powers that be felt Tony Schaffer was a nut.
by erica20 on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 12:45am
I had to Google
Offering new revelations about the CIA's role in shutting down military intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer
I found more information, but many different sites went nowhere.
by Resistance on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 2:12am
Tenet got the Medal of Freedom for that.
Also inexplicable is why folks all over DC (except the Democrats who received the letters) were forewarned by to protect themselves with CIPRO before the first anthrax letter was even mailed. Richard Cohen:
...The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it....
by NCD on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 10:39am
I loves me some conspiracy, but I don't think the Cipro is inexplicable at all. Anyone who was listening to the "It had to be the Iraqis" line right after Sept. 11 would have gone straight to "I better get some antibiotics." And it wasn't out of the question that if there was going to be a sustained terrorist attack on the country, the next wave might be with biological weapons.
What's inexplicable to me is that Cohen tries to come up with some sort of justification for what an ass he was. (Rummy fooled us! Waah! Gosh, we were all wrong! Waah.)
Argh. Remembering the executive-sanctioned stupidity of those days just makes me frustrated all over again.
by erica20 on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 9:37pm
Of course 9/11:
(1) wasn't done by 'the Iraqi's.
(2) Bush flying dozens of Saudi's out of the country ASAP, indicating what? Iraq guilt?
(3) the Iraqi's did not have weaponized anthrax in Iraq, in the US or anywhere although we were told they did.
(4) the Bush/Cheney administration played up the anthrax attacks right after 9/11 as fodder to push for the Iraq war.
(5) the anthrax turned out to be of US government origin.
(6) it was pinned on a dead US government employee, 10 years later, (after attempts to pin on another guy failed)...there was no trial.
(7) letters were sent to Democrat Party leaders as the PATRIOT Act neared a vote.
Hard to believe it was all coincidental. It's one thing to 'think' of CIPRO, another to actually start taking it, as the White House did, see link above, starting on 9/11. It is a powerful drug.
Add in that Bush/Cheney had to be forced into investigating 9/11 by victims families, that Bush/Cheney did not give testimony to the 9/11 Commission on the record, they testified for 1 hour together not individually, to only 2 of the commissioners, with no tape and no transcript of what they said allowed for the record.
As the late Gore Vidal said, 'It is taken as an article of faith there are no conspiracies in America'.
by NCD on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 5:15pm
Now hold on a minute, ncd, I didn't say the Iraqis did the anthrax piece--I just said that anybody who believed the Iraqis were behind it would have gone for the cipro straight away.
by Erica (not verified) on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 5:33pm
Truthout still seems to have an unfixed problem with the link, but I found the article reposted (in full it seems,) here:
http://www.opednews.com/Diary/Ex-Army-Officer-Accuses-CI-by-Jon-Gold-130...
by artappraiser on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 3:34pm
This is a little strange. I looked for this story earlier today but could only find the headline/first few pgphs, so I was glad you found it in full. Now it has been deleted from the diary (Jon gold?).
Curious. What do you make of it, aa?
by Erica (not verified) on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 8:33pm
Yeah it's gone and I suspect it has something to do with the agreement with the Pentagon censoring Shaffer's book, "Operation Dark Heart".
Some people that have copies of the version that escaped censoring might write stuff on those things, and someone later requests that what they wrote be deleted.
To be honest with you, I didn't read the article carefully, but I didn't see accusations in that article that I hadn't heard before, and long ago. It really didn't strike me as anything new but rehash of old accusations and I didn't feel it was worth a lot of time.
The Pentagon has a tendency to be really nitpicky about not talking about stuff you agreed not to talk about, no matter whether it means anything or not. Though it could be the case, that doesn't mean the Pentagon has someone deleting articles with things that were censored in the book, it could also be Shaffer or his lawyer requesting deletion to avoid prosecution given he agreed to the censoring.
A warning: a quick perusal of google results for Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer suggests he's got sympathies on the right side of the aisle--Fox News likes what he has to say, he says he's very close to people in the Oath Keepers movement, he's claimed he knows Obama watched the Benghazi attack in real time in the WH Situation Room, etc
Also if you watch the beginning of this video interview of him, you'll see someone who doesn't really play the victimized whistleblower character, but jokingly suggests he was glad his book was censored because he sold more books that way, and it's also implied that he thinks they were stupid about what they censored, that what was censored didn't mean much.
In summary, my opinion is that there's no there there, no "conspiracy" worth pursuing.
by artappraiser on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 10:33pm
Or another Pentagon Papers cover up?
"Nothing to see here folks", until it brought down Nixon.
by Resistance on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 10:34pm
I had the same impression about the article, but now I wish I could read it again!
by Erica (not verified) on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 11:31pm
This link still works fine for me:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14008-ex-army-officer-accuses-cia-of-obst...
by acanuck on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 4:20pm
Weird, for me all that's there is sdsds in little letters at the upper left on a blank white page, the same as every time I've tried. Could it be that you see it on a Canadian ISP and we can't here?
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 4:27pm
This really bugs me. I'll just cut and paste the whole damn article as a new In the News item, OK?
by acanuck on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 4:37pm
I'm thinking conspiratorially now, I'm thinking you should ask Genghis if he minds if you did that....and that it's not up to me to decide for you. If I were you, though, I would do it, fair use, as a comment, not a blog post.
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 4:51pm
I got it now at this link, which is different from the link you are using:
http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=14008&Itemid=228
I got that a roundabout way, by going to the author's page:
http://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/48121
So it suggests that it is a site issue with Truthout
Note, though, that they are not regular writers for Truthout, this is their only piece
And reading it again, I do not find anything new, just elaboration on old right-wing conspiracy theories and memes on the whole "Able Danger" thing.
Says right in the beginning that Shaffer worked with Judicial Watch on this whole thing. Judicial Watch is a bunch of wingnuts, right-wing wingnuts, an organization founded by wingnut Larry Klayman with money from vast-right-wing-conspiracy-leader Richard Mellon Scaife, to help people sue the Clinton administration (including Paula Jones) in numerous ways until they could get one to stick enough for impeachment The sources of most of the "Able Danger" stories in the past are all right-wing libertarian conservative nuts who previously thought Vince Foster was murdered and who later became Tea Party supporters.
I have a new conspiracy theory about the non-working link: that Truthout decided they didn't want the article easily accessible after an email from David Brock telling them they were publishing wingnut stuff.
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 5:33pm
Wing nutty stuff doesn't bother me. I admire their zeal, if not their boringly simplistic conclusions.
by Erica (not verified) on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 12:19am
Aa, I get the sdsds as well--but then when I refresh the page, the full article comes up. I also noted that the full article is back up at truthout. (Or at least I think it's the full article--it would be interesting to compare what first went up with what's up now.)
i don't know if the article was pulled from us ISPs, or if acanuck was able to see it because of different page refreshers on different computers.
curiouser and curiouser.
by Erica (not verified) on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 5:28pm
Damage Control?
People might distrust the government and it would interfere with the "You know what" agenda.
Hahahaha
Maybe its all about government intrusion spyware??
You don't need a search warrant if the people freely enter the site?
by Resistance on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 5:48pm
Resistance, I have to admit I thought about you when I saw that! eek!
by erica20 on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 8:42pm
I remember my grandmother always saying "There is nothing hidden, which shall not be openly seen; nor anything secret, which shall not be known."
I believe, eventually the cover ups will be exposed, and we'll have another crisis of confidence in our government.
Another repeat of the conclusion of the Nixon Years. Where Ford pardoned Nixon for the good of the country? Yeah right, more like good for the Party? Or the powerful?
by Resistance on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 12:53am
In Nixon's case, was there anything we didn't really know? I remember the summer of Watergate hearings - would it have helped the country to have 2 more? People actually went to jail in that scandal, Nixon's reputation never recovered despite his efforts.
Where we needed hearings was Iran-Contra, where Reagan's White House told the special prosecutor to fuck off, and Cap Weinberger lied to him with impunity. This success led directly to the Cheney years, when the Constitution became just an inconvenience, and Scooter Libby had all his chatty class Washington media buddies writing in to support his character and illegal activities.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 2:50am
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
I would have liked to have known, what was on the 18½ minute gap that President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, “accidently erased”
by Resistance on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 7:05am
But a trial wouldn't have told us that either - "just an accident". (though perhaps with 2013 sound forensics we might find traces on the tape)
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 7:36am
Just FWIW in geek evidence world (if anything,) I didn't try refreshing today, but I did try several times yesterday and it didn't help.
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 7:58pm
I know, I did the same thing--the refreshing did not work until today.
by erica20 on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 8:40pm
"sdsds.exe" is mostly identified as a threat.
Google the letters for yourself.
by Resistance on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 5:45pm
Reading the article has me thinking about how the administration could not have taken seriously the warnings about al q, especially if they knew aq personnel were in the usa. Unless they thought, for whatever reason, that aq would not be a problem.
Which made me think about the long-standing ties between the bush fam and the Saudis. Perhaps the admin thought, possibly with some reassurance from saudi friends, that obl simply wouldn't screw over his own extended family by pulling off an attack on us soil, with a Saudi-friendly president in office and the promise of a pro-Saudi economic future for the ME.
except that Osama did. He screwed them all. Which is why bush was so shocked, and why the admin was initially so desperate to blame it all on the Iraqis, trying desperately to speed up the pnac plan to invade Iraq. But in the end there was nothing for it but to go into Afghanistan, and hey, maybe something good could come of it.....
i know it sounds like a conspiracy screenplay. But I like it.
also I just came across a 2001 article about a wealthy Saudi family who were living in a gated community in Sara sota. They left in a hurry a few days before 9/11, and after they left, their house was visited by none other than the soon-to-be highjackers. Will post tomorrow. Would that be news? Old news, if so.
by Erica (not verified) on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 12:03am
I don't think hijackers showed up there - it was just suspect that they left the house a few days before 9/11 as if they ran to the store for milk. Later the FBI let them sell off the house without showing up for questioning.
The exodus of Saudis post-9/11 with no interviews was rather disturbing - while the rest of the country was going through shock & inconvenience, we had to keep our buds above the fray.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 2:56am
New evidence shows that the hijackers did go to that house after the family left but before 911--I posted the article in News. Please comment--I'm curious about the whole thing!
by erica20 on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 4:12pm
Unless someone can better explain the meaning of the term sdsds?
I think it would be advisable to do a full security check on your computer systems.
These other site may have shut down the link, realizing the threat?
by Resistance on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 1:10am
I have all those treacherous "asdfasdf" pages.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 3:06am