December 2, 2011

By Mike Barrett
Activist Post

“The information contained in our shared [genome] is so fundamental, and requires so much further research to understand its utility, that patenting it at the earliest stage is like putting up a whole lot of unnecessary toll booths on the road to discovery”, said National Institutes of Health Director and former head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins in his 2010 book The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine.

Unfortunately such toll booths were just given the go-ahead by a Federal appeals court. In a 2-1 decision issued on July 29, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overruled a lower court’s decision in Association for Molecular Pathology et al. v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office et al. holding that private companies and researchers could in fact patent genes and DNA sequences. If not overturned by the Supreme Court, this decision could have harmful impacts on patient health and could limit future genomic and scientific discoveries.

To get a better sense of what this case means and where it is going, we must take a step back and look at the history of gene patenting and the case against it. These patents harm patients and researchers, and they go against years of legal precedent holding that one cannot patent a “fact of nature.”

A Brief History of Gene Patents

Most people are shocked to learn that more than 20 percent of the human genome is patented.¹ Corporations and researchers own patents on genes that correlate diseases such as breast cancer, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, among others. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office started granting patents on human genes in the 1980s and has since granted more than 4,300 of them.

In May 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Myriad Genetics, which owned genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) that correlate with increased risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer. The ACLU named the Patent Office as a defendant, too, since it had granted these patents. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of researchers, genetic counselors, women patients, cancer survivors, breast cancer and women’s health groups, and scientific associations representing 150,000 geneticists, pathologists and laboratory professionals.

The plaintiffs claimed that genes are “facts of nature” and are therefore not patentable. Additionally, they argued that Myriad’s patents limited patients’ access to potentially life-saving genetic diagnostic tests and prevented researchers from looking at those genes to help their patients or to develop more effective and affordable tests.

The defendants argued that patents are necessary to protect the time and money invested in identifying disease-gene correlations. Myriad Genetics also claimed that its patents are on “isolated” genes and DNA sequences, and this act of isolating a gene from the genome is an inventive step and worthy of a patent. These patents, the industry claims, are necessary to bring expensive tests and products to market and improve patient health.

In March 2010, a Federal judge agreed with the ACLU and decided that DNA sequences are “facts of nature” and are therefore no more patentable than “isolated” gold from a mine or isolating a natural element. Myriad Genetics quickly appealed the decision.

Do Gene Patents Harm Patients and Innovation?

Contrary to industry claims that gene patents are necessary to bring tests and products to market, such patents are actually detrimental to patient health and researcher access to genetic information. Gene patent holders often use their exclusive control to charge excessive fees for diagnostic testing and to prevent other researchers from utilizing specific genes for research.²

Myriad Genetics, for example, charges up to $4,000 for its breast cancer diagnostic test, a price too steep for many patients and health insurance providers. If allowed, labs could run the same genetic test for only a few hundred dollars.³ Myriad also sent cease-and-desist letters to researchers who were looking at the BRCA1/2 genes in their labs, providing diagnostic tests to patients and even providing patients second-opinion tests to confirm the test provided by Myriad.

Gene patents have a detrimental impact on health care and research.⁴ Gene patents can prevent more accurate, affordable and complex diagnostic tests from being developed.⁵ A survey of genetics labs found that 53 percent stopped doing research due to concerns about patented genes,⁶ and there has been a significant decline in published material on patented genetic information.⁷ The future of personalized medicine may be crushed by the weight of gene patent thickets if a company must ask permission from hundreds of patent holders to scan a single patient’s genome.

Gene patents also drive research towards gene-to-disease correlations and away from factors that actually cause disease, such as exposure to toxic chemicals. Most genetic tests offer only an estimate of the chances for developing a particular disease and fail to account for the influence of other genes and environmental factors that cause disease.⁸ The predictive power of the test for BRCA breast cancer mutations is high for persons from families with a history of particular kinds of breast or ovarian cancer, but very low for women without a family history of breast cancer; many women who test positive for a BRCA1 mutation do not get the disease.⁹ Gene patents lock-in our knowledge on these DNA sequences to only their potential correlation to a disease while preventing others from looking at how that gene may interact with other genes or the outside environment.

Are Genes Patentable?

This brings us to the recent verdict, in which the judges were not asked to rule on whether gene patents are harmful but whether they are patentable. In this respect, the appeals court largely agreed with Myriad Genetics when it determined that “isolated DNA” is patentable since it is not found in nature and is the result of a human process. The appellate court did agree with the lower court on one point when it said the act of comparing two DNA sequences (comparing a normal gene with a mutated gene sequence to identify said mutation) was not patentable since it was simply a mental process.

The majority opinion stated that, since isolated DNA is not found in nature, the act of isolating said DNA is an inventive step worthy of a patent. Since the bonds between the specific gene and the rest of the DNA had been broken, they argued, the isolated DNA is no longer a “fact of nature” but a man-made invention.

This view fails to take into account the unique nature of DNA. As Judge Sweet said in the lower court’s decision originally invalidating the BRCA1/2 genes, the “essential characteristic” of DNA is its nucleotide sequence, which is “defined by nature and central to both its biological function within the cell and its utility as a research tool in the lab.”¹⁰ In other words, DNA sequences have naturally evolved over millennia and are important not simply for their chemical construction but for the information they code for. If the genetic code and its information were different than that found in nature, Myriad’s and others’ genetic diagnostic tests would be worthless. That is why Judge Sweet called attempts to define patented genes as novel as merely a “lawyer’s trick.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that facts of nature are not patentable. In the 1980 landmark case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the Court explained how patents can be granted to:

Anything under the sun that is made by man . . . . [T]he laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable . . . a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc²; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are manifestations of nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.¹¹ [emphasis added]

The dissenting judge in the appeals court agreed that genes are not patentable and that “extracting a gene is akin to snapping a leaf from a tree.” Since the genetic information in isolated genes is identical to that in genes found in nature, and in our bodies, it should be beyond the scope of patentability.

This case points out an interesting problem: We are asking our judges, who are experts in legal jurisprudence, no doubt, to make decisions about basic facts of biology and genetics. The two judges who supported gene patents, Judge Lourie and Judge Moore, studied chemistry and electrical engineering, respectively, before their legal careers.¹² While they must have consulted experts on the issue, we should not delegate the future of genetic research and access to our common genetic heritage to engineers and chemists. Congress, which has constitutional authority over what is patentable, should pass legislation making it clear that genes are “facts of nature” and are therefore unpatentable. Such a law would tear down the thicket of gene patent “toll booths” that are harming patient health and scientific research.

The Next Battleground

This legal battle is far from over, since the case is expected to be decided by the Supreme Court, and no matter which way the court rules, Congress will likely step in.

As Joseph Stiglitz and John Sulston explained in the Wall Street Journal, “the patenting of human genes is wrong as a matter of science and as a matter of economics.” Lets hope Congress keeps with good science, good economics and good public health policy by declaring, once and for all, that genes and DNA sequences are facts of nature, part of our common genetic heritage, and therefore unpatentable.

¹Kyle Jensen and Fiona Murray, “Intellectual Property Landscape of the Human Genome”, Science, October 14, 2005. See also Human International Genome Sequencing Consortium, “Initial Sequencing and Analysis of the Human Genome”, Nature, February 15, 2001; J. Craig Venter et al., “The Sequence of the Human Genome”, Science, February 16, 2001.

²Mildred K. Cho, Preparing for the Millennium: Laboratory Medicine in the 21st Century (American Association for Clinical Chemistry Press, 2d ed., 1998), pp. 47–58.

³Joseph Stiglitz and John Sulston, “The Case Against Gene Patents”, Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2010.

⁴See Jon F. Merz, Antigone G. Kriss, Debra G. B. Leonard and Mildred K. Cho, “Diagnostic Testing Fails the Test”, Nature, February 7, 2002; David Blumenthal et al., “University-Industry Research Relationships in Biotechnology”, Science, June 13, 1986; David Blumenthal et al., “Withholding Research Results in Academic Life Sciences”, Journal of the American Medical Association, April 16, 1997; David Blumenthal et al., “Data Withholding in Academic Genetics”, Journal of the American Medical Association, January 23/30, 2002.

⁵Gene Patents and Licensing Practices and their Impact on Patient Access to Genetic Tests, report of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society.

⁶Mildred K. Cho, Samantha Illangasekare, Meredith A. Weaver, Deborah G. Leonard and Jon F. Merz. “Effects of Patents and Licenses on the Provision of Clinical Genetic Testing Services”, Journal of Molecular Diagnostics (February 2003).

⁷Fiona Murray, Scott Stern, “Do Formal Intellectual Property Rights Hinder the Free Flow of Scientific Knowledge? An Empirical Test of the Anti-Commons Hypothesis,” prepared for the NBER Academic Science and Entrepreneurship Conference (June 2005).

⁸Michael J. Malinowski and Robin J.R. Blatt, “Commercialization of Genetic Testing Services: The FDA, Market Forces, and Biological Tarot Cards”, Tulane Law Review, vol. 71, no. 4 (1997).

⁹Wylie Burke, “Genetic Testing”, New England Journal of Medicine, December 5, 2002.

¹⁰Association for Molecular Pathology et al. v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office et al., 132, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, March 29, 2010.

¹¹Diamond v. Chakrabarty, U.S. Supreme Court, June 16, 1980.

¹²Andrew Cohen, “Like a Leaf From a Tree: The Gene Patent Ruling”, The Atlantic Online, August 1, 2011.

Related Posts:

• Monsanto PR Firm Reportedly ‘Ended’ by Anonymous
• Los Angeles votes to end corporate personhood
• Secret State Agencies: ‘No Hard Evidence’ Iran Building Nukes, March to War Continues
• FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling
• Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Crops Leading to Mental Illness, Obesity

November 30, 2011

Related Posts:

• Russia: Founder of Newspaper That Investigated Government Corruption Shot Dead
• LA police fire 90 rounds at fleeing, unarmed teen
• UK To Impose ‘Green Taxes’ On Home Improvements
• Minnesota Man Thrown in Jail for…Failing to Put Up Siding on His Home
• The Crazy Things That One Whistleblower Says Are Happening At JP Morgan Will Blow Your Mind

October 19, 2011

Source: Corbett Report – James Corbett

Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein has declinedto hold the CIA in contempt for destroying videos that it had been ordered by the courts to preserve.

The case revolves around 92 videos, depicting hundreds of hours of interrogations of detainees. The tapes allegedly contained evidence of torture, and the CIA was ordered by numerous courts to produce the videos in relation to lawsuits arising from torture allegations. The 9/11 Commission also demanded that the tapes be produced. Instead, the agency destroyed them.

Although the Obama Justice Department had already decided last year that no criminal charges would be filed for this blatant obstruction of justice, Judge Hellerstein’s recent ruling insures that the agency will not even face civil sanctions or so much as a contempt order for willfully breaking the law.

In his ruling, Judge Hellerstein, the very judge who had ordered the CIA to produce the tapes in September of 2004, notes that the agency had instead provided a description of what they say was on the tapes and “implemented new protocols” to insure that they don’t destroy evidence again, so there is no need to hold them accountable in any way.

Judge Hellerstein’s decision is not without precedent.

In 2010, Obama’s Office of Legal Council wrote a memo arguing the legality of Obama’s secret list of assassination targets, a list that apparently includes American citizens who have not been convicted or even charged of a crime. The memo was used as the legal justification for the extrajudicial assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen who the President ordered murdered early last year.

Now, the Obama White House is arguing that they don’t even have to show the justification for ordering the unconstitutional assassination of one of its own citizens.

Still, concerned citizens are attempting to challenge the Obama regime’s power grabs in court.

Earlier this year, Senator Wyden revealed that the federal government has a secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act that allows the government much more power than is suggested by the wording of the act itself.

When Charlie Savage of the New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the interpretation, he was denied on the basis that the interpretation is classified.

Last week, Savage and the Times sued the federal government for refusing to release the documents. The case is currently before Judge William Pauley of the US District Court.

Related Posts:

• Police Departments Plan to Equip Drones with Rubber Bullets and Tear Gas
• Chicago police accused of planting evidence in ‘Molotov cocktail’ plot
• Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
• U.S. lets China bypass Wall Street for Treasury orders
• NATO Summit 2012: Ballistic Missile Shield to be Put in Place

October 12, 2011

By Tony Cartalucci – BLN Contributing Writer

Federal entrapment snares another dupe and brings hundreds of millions to the brink of war.

“…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

This suggests that this option might benefit from being held in abeyance until such time as the Iranians made an appropriately provocative move, as they do from time to time. In that case, it would be less a determined policy to employ airstrikes and instead more of an opportunistic hope that Iran would provide the United States with the kind of provocation that would justify airstrikes. However, that would mean that the use of airstrikes could not be the primary U.S. policy toward Iran (even if it were Washington’s fervent preference), but merely an ancillary contingency to another option that would be the primary policy unless and until Iran provided the necessary pretext.” -page 84-85 of “Which Path to Persia?” Brookings Institution, 2009.

Apparently, manufacturing such a “necessary pretext” to unilaterally bomb a nation of 70 million is now also a part of US foreign policy toward Iran. An oafish fabrication announced this week by Attorney General Eric Holder, consisted of an Iranian-American used-car salesman that “allegedly” attempted to hire an undercover US DEA agent, posing as a Mexican Los Zetas gangster, to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would add “nobody could make that up, right?” Wrong.

The Fortune 500-funded US policy think-tank, Brookings Institution, in 2009 made it quite clear that the US would pursue its interests across the Middle East and would not tolerate a strong, assertive Iran standing in the way. Brookings would acknowledge in their report, however, that Iran sought neither to confront the United States militarily, nor desired to provoke the West into attacking the Islamic Republic, and even declared that Iran’s nuclear threat was more the deterrence it would present toward future US acts of aggression rather than hyped claims of proliferation or unilateral first-strikes.

Many of the enumerated options explored in the Brookings report for destabilizing and overthrowing the Iranian government had already been in the process of being carried out even before the report was published in 2009. This included funding, arming, and training US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization (#28 on the list), Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK.) To date, covert support, weapons and funding have already made it into MEK’s hands, and select members of the terrorist organization have even received specialized training on US soil. US policy makers, after admitting MEK had the blood of US soldiers and civilians on its hands and that it has “undeniably” conducted terrorist attacks, shockingly wants to remove it from the US foreign terrorist organization list so that it can be worked with more closely in toppling the Iranian government.

Below, Brookings clearly authored this policy now being fully executed:

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.
Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.” page 117-118 of “Which Path to Persia?” Brookings Institution, 2009

While Attorney General Eric Holder feigns outrage over Iran’s “alleged” role in an “alleged” bombing plot, and its violation of “international norms,” it turns out that the US has been in reality, carrying out just such a campaign of armed terror on Iranian soil for years. Adding insult to injury, Eric Holder is currently under investigation for his role in running thousands of military-grade weapons over the US-Mexican border, where they were used by mass-murdering drug gangs to terrorize people across Mexico and even to kill US agents. One might wonder how many “international norms” that has violated.

That the current “alleged” plot pinned on Iran revolves around yet another undercover federal agency conducting a long-term sting operation defies belief. That we are expected to believe one of Iran’s most elite military forces left such a sensitive, potentially war-starting operation to a used-car salesman and a drug gang reported in the papers daily for its involvement with US government agencies (and who turns out to actually be undercover DEA agents) is so ridiculous it can only be “made up” as Secretary Clinton puts it. More accurately, it is the result of an impotent US intelligence community incapable of contriving anything more convincing in the face of an ever awakening American public, to bolster its morally destitute agenda. The cartoonish nature of the plot and the arms’ length even its proponents treat it with to maintain plausible deniability is indicative of a dangerously out of control ruling elite and an utterly incompetent, criminally insane government.

It might be noted that this is yet another example of a “terrorist plot” conjured up by federal agencies, hyped by politicians and the media, and leveraged to propel foreign and domestic policy the public and the world at large have already soundly rejected. Two other notable examples include the Portland “Christmas Tree Bomber” used to terrorize the city into rejoining the FBI’s Joint Terror Task Force, and the more recent “RC Plane Bomber” who was entrapped by FBI agents in order to keep the fraud that is the “War on Terror” alive.

For a more in-depth look at this latest hoax, please see, “Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake” at Anti-War.com.

Related Posts:

• Corporate-Fascists Clamor for Iran War
• CONFIRMED: Terrorist Organization Trained on US Soil by US Military
• Feds Charge Man As Enemy Combatant Supporting Terrorism For Uploading Youtube Video
• Boom: The Student Loan Debt Time Bomb
• Windows 8: Millions of PCs Will Get Kill Switches for the First Time

As The Washington Post reported last month, the “commingling” of CIA officers, JSOC paramilitary troops and contractors “occupy an expanding netherworld between intelligence and military operations” where “congressional intelligence and armed services committees rarely get a comprehensive view.”

Or any “view” at all, which is precisely what the CIA and Pentagon have long desired; an oversight-free zone where American policymakers operate, as Dick Cheney infamously put it, on the “dark side,” a position fully-embraced by the “hope and change” administration of Barack Obama.

Awlaki’s state-sponsored killing, like the May 2 murder of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, resurface many unanswered questions concerning the 9/11 attacks, the so-called trigger for America’s global “War on Terror.”

But before turning to those issues, it is necessary to take a detour and examine administration actions; specifically the deliberations undertaken by Obama’s national security team which culminated in Awlaki’s death.

White House “Death Panel”

Unlike the fantasies of the corporate-controlled Tea Party who charged during the run-up to the White House sell-out of health care reform that the administration would create “death panels” to deny care to the elderly, it has since emerged that Team Obama has stood-up the authentic article.

According to The Washington Post, President Obama’s Justice Department “wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting” of Awlaki. The Post reports that the memorandum “was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi.”

That memorandum, according to The New York Times, was drafted in June 2010, some six months after Awlaki had been placed on the White House hit list, by Office of Legal Counsel attorneys “David Barron and Martin Lederman.”

Both former OLC lawyers are prominent “liberals” from prestigious universities; Barron at Harvard and Lederman at Georgetown University.

Ironically enough, in several scholarly articles they had railed against the previous administration’s adaptation of the “Unitary Executive Theory” promulgated by “torture memo” authors Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Under Bush, OLC opinions were used to justify everything from warrantless wiretapping, the domestic deployment of the military to arrest Americans, to the torture and indefinite detention of “terrorist” suspects at the Guantánamo Bay prison gulag and CIA “black sites.”

This of course begs the question: if Awlaki’s murder was “legal,” why then was the authorization to do so reached in camera by officials following a deliberative process which can’t be shared with the public because of “national security”?

The answer should be chilling and shocking to all Americans: because the nucleus of a death squad state recalling those stood-up in Chile and Argentina during the “dirty war” period of the 1970s may now exist.

Reuters disclosed that Americans “are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.”

“There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel,” reporter Mark Hosenball wrote, “which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council. … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”

According to Reuters, “targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC ‘principals,’ meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval.”

A “former official” told Hosenball that “one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to ‘protect’ the president,” i.e., provide Obama legal cover under the thin veneer afforded by “plausible deniability.”

McClatchy News reported that “broadly speaking” White House orders to kill Awlaki were based on claims that “the nation’s inherent right of self-defense [is] recognized under international law.” However, “international law also imposes limits: Targeted killing is banned except to protect against ‘concrete, specific and imminent’ danger.”

And although the administration now claims that Awlaki was targeted for death because “his role in AQAP had gone ‘from inspirational to operational’,” Reuters disclosed that “officials acknowledge that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki’s hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.”

In fact, the White House has failed to provide any proof whatsoever that Awlaki posed an “imminent danger” to the United States, although there is considerable evidence that he was on the radar of U.S. and allied secret state intelligence agencies for more than a decade, had close ties to several of the 9/11 hijackers and could have been picked up and indicted at any time.

Instead, federal law enforcement officials gave Awlaki a green light to leave the United States, unlike thousands of innocent Muslim-Americans swept-up and detained by the FBI in the post-9/11 hysteria that followed the attacks.

A “former military intelligence officer who worked with special operations troops to hunt down high-value terrorism targets,” told the right-wing Washington Times: “I think it’s pretty easy to understand why they didn’t take him alive. Would you want to deal with the hassle of trying to put him on trial, an American citizen that has gotten so much press for being the target of a CIA kill order? That would be a nightmare. The ACLU would be crawling all over the Justice Department for due process in an American court.”

That about sums up the dominant mindset of an Empire in sharp decline: the rule of law and due process for criminal suspects reduced to a “hassle.”

Slouching Towards Dictatorship

Obama’s national security team justified whacking Awlaki, as with their earlier hit on Osama Bin Laden, by referencing the Bush-era Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), hastily passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“A decade later,” McClatchy reported, “the Obama administration contends that this wartime authority remains even if it’s evolved for reasons the administration won’t fully elucidate.”

The relevant section of AUFM reads: “IN GENERAL — That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” (emphasis added)

Readers will undoubtedly note that in passing the resolution, Congress not only ceded its authority to declare war to the Executive Branch but also planted the seeds of the administration’s preemptive war doctrines along with an unprecedented expansion of its domestic surveillance powers.

More pertinently, is the reason why the administration “won’t fully elucidate” how the Bush-era AUMF “evolved” chiefly due to the fact that secret annexes now exist which authorize the killing of Americans, not only in Yemen or other “War on Terror” fronts, but right here in the United States itself?

After all, it’s not beyond the Obama administration to play fast and loose with the truth or hide repressive policies under layers of top secret presidential “findings” or a multitude of CIA and Pentagon black programs, as did the previous Bush government.

Recall that during the run-up to the reauthorization of three expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil libertarians decried the use of secret legal memos justifying everything from unchecked access to internet and telephone records to the deployment of government-sanctioned malware on private computers during “national security” investigations.

Recall too, that the Obama administration, as The New York Times disclosed in June, handed the FBI “significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.”

These “news rules,” the Times averred, will give agents “more latitude” to investigate citizens even when there is no evidence they have exhibited “signs of criminal or terrorist activity.”

It gets worse.

Last month, The New York Times revealed that the FBI “is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped.”

Under these new standards, the Bureau may deem someone a “known or suspected terrorist,” not based on evidence gathered through a criminal investigation, but solely if officials have “particularized derogatory information,” including that derived from First Amendment protected activities, to support to support an individuals’ watch listing or placement on a “no-fly” list.

One administration wag, speaking on condition of anonymity because to do otherwise would reveal “closely held deliberations within the administration,” but did so anyway because this was clearly a sanctioned leak to stenographer Peter Finn, told The Washington Post that “what constitutes due process in [the Awlaki case] is a due process in war.”

“The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi,” Finn wrote, “or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.”

We now know, thanks to Reuters, that authorization came from a White House death panel, an extra-constitutional committee of anonymous officials operating outside the rule of law.

As we have seen since Barack Obama took office, as under the previous Bush government, the Constitution is a meaningless scrap of paper with some words on it, duly trotted out on national holidays only to be cast aside in practice; that is, when it isn’t used as a rhetorical hammer against assorted “new Hitlers” or geopolitical rivals whose resources corporate America seek to “liberate.”

Dead Men Tell No Tales

As toxic to democratic norms and the rule of law as the Awlaki affair clearly is, there are underlying parapolitical themes surrounding his murder which strengthen suspicions that what took place in Yemen on September 30 is more than just another story about an overt power grab by the Executive Branch.

While the government and media continue to cover-up the role played by the CIA and other secret state agencies in alleged intelligence “failures” leading up to the 9/11 attacks, evidence suggests that the Awlaki killing, as with last May’s murder of former bête noire and on-again, off-again ally, Osama Bin Laden, may have been a “clean-up” operation designed to remove inconvenient witnesses with knowledge of Agency involvement in the plot.

As Antifascist Calling reported nearly two years ago in the wake of the aborted 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day over Detroit, a plot for which Awlaki was accused of orchestrating, though evidence can’t be supplied because it’s “secret,” The Washington Post disclosed that Awlaki had extensive contacts with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar and Hani Hanjour who “had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church.”

In a series of 2010 articles (here, here, here and here), I reported on the stark parallels between September 11 and the Flight 253 affair.

Similar to the 2001 attacks we were told “changed everything,” far from being a failure to “connect the dots,” intelligence and law enforcement officials possessed sufficient information that should have prevented accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding that plane and placing the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk.

And wile Awlaki wasn’t given a free pass by the administration in that botched attack, earlier government failures to apprehend him certainly set the stage.

According to History Commons, “shortly before the [FBI] investigation [into Awlaki's alleged ties to the now-shuttered Holy Land Foundation] is closed,” in 2000, Awlaki “is beginning to associate with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar shortly before the investigation ends.”

“For instance,” History Commons avers, “on February 4, one month before the FBI investigation is closed, al-Awlaki talks on the telephone four times with hijacker associate [and suspected Saudi intelligence agent] Omar al-Bayoumi.”

“The 9/11 Commission will later speculate that these calls are related to Alhazmi and Almihdhar, since al-Bayoumi is helping them that day, and that Alhazmi or Almihdhar may even have been using al-Bayoumi’s phone at the time. Al-Bayoumi had also been the subject of an FBI counterterrorism investigation in 1999.”

Keep in mind that at least two of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, figure prominently in recent revelations by researcher Kevin Fenton, the author of Disconnecting the Dots.

In a recent conversation with Boiling Frogs Post’s Sibel Edmonds and Peter B. Collins, Fenton said that during the course of his investigation, drawn from the Congressional 9/11 Joint Inquiry, the 9/11 Commission, the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report, and the CIA’s still-redacted Inspector General’s report, he discovered that the CIA had deliberately withheld information from the FBI that the future hijackers had entered the United States with multiple entry visas issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Even though the Agency had identified the pair as international terrorists who attended a 2000 Al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia where they and others, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Khallad Bin Attash, one of the principle architects of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, planned the assault on the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks, they kept this from the FBI, information that could have led straight to the heart of Al-Qaeda’s “planes operation.”

Fenton provides substantial evidence that the CIA’s Alec Station Director Richard Blee and deputy, Tom Wilshire, concealed intelligence from investigators, concluding this “information was intentionally omitted in order to allow an al-Qaeda attack to go forward against the United States.”

As part of this continuing cover-up, Awlaki’s ties to the 9/11 hijackers were far more extensive than secret state officials have led us to believe.

In fact, although the Obama administration has justified killing Awlaki with false claims that he was AQAP’s “external operations” chief, his role before 9/11 was substantially more significant from an investigatory perspective: that of a “fixer,” first in San Diego where he assisted Saudi spook Omar al-Bayoumi in “settling” Alhazmi and Almihdhar, and later in Falls Church, Virginia, where he did the same for Hani Hanjour.

In 2002, Newsweek revealed that “some federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9-11 hijackers, sent by Al Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives.”

“Two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar,” Newsweek disclosed, “al-Bayoumi’s wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars.

Payments arrived “in the form of cashier’s checks, purchased from Washington’s Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family.”

With startling similarities to the Awlaki case, ten days after the attacks, al-Bayoumi is picked up by British authorities in London, where he had relocated in July 2001, at the request of the FBI. Although his phone calls, bank accounts and associations are scrutinized, the Bureau claim they found no connections to terrorism.

The Washington Post will report that by 2002 the FBI had concluded, the same year Awlaki leaves the U.S., “that no evidence could be found of any organized domestic effort to aid the hijackers.”

Recall that new information linking some members of the Saudi royal family and its intelligence apparatus to the attacks has recently surfaced. Last month, The Miami Herald revealed that two weeks before the kamikaze assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a Saudi family “abruptly vacated their luxury home near Sarasota, leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter–and an open safe in a master bedroom.”

Investigative reporters Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen learned that “law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights–including leader Mohamed Atta–in discoveries never before revealed to the public.”

“Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil,” Summers and Christensen wrote, “new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn’t reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.”

In a follow-up piece that significantly advanced the story, researcher Russ Baker reported on the WhoWhatWhy web site “that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.”

Building on information first disclosed by the Herald, Baker, the author of Family of Secrets, reports that this “now-revealed link” between those who consorted with the hijackers in Florida “and the highest ranks of the Saudi establishment, reopens questions about the White House’s controversial approval for multiple charter flights allowing Saudi nationals to depart the U.S., beginning about 48 hours after the attacks, without the passengers being interviewed by law enforcement–despite the identification of the majority of the hijackers as Saudis.”

Is there a pattern between the hands-off treatment afforded well-connected Saudis and Anwar al-Awlaki’s casual, and inexplicable, flight from the United States?

“After 9/11″ History Commons points out, “the FBI will question al-Awlaki, and he will admit to meeting with Alhazmi several times, but say he does not remember what they discussed. He will not claim to remember Almihdhar at all.” Other accounts suggest that the relationship was much closer.

“The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry,” History Commons avers, “claim that Alhazmi and Almihdhar ‘were closely affiliated with [al-Awlaki] who reportedly served as their spiritual adviser during their time in San Diego. … Several persons informed the FBI after September 11 that this imam had closed-door meetings in San Diego with Almihdhar, Alhazmi, and another individual, whom al-Bayoumi had asked to help the hijackers’.”

“Around August 2000,” History Commons reports, “al-Awlaki resigns as imam and travels to unknown ‘various countries.’ In early 2001, he will be appointed the imam to a much larger mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. During this time frame, Alhazmi, Almihdhar, and fellow hijacker Hani Hanjour will move to Virginia and attend al-Awlaki’s mosque there.”

Anecdotally, in 2003 Newsweek reports: “Lincoln Higgie, an antiques dealer who lived across the street from the mosque where Aulaqi used to lead prayer, told Newsweek that he distinctly recalls the imam knocking on his door in the first week of August 2001 to tell him he was leaving for Kuwait. ‘He came over before he left and told me that something very big was going to happen, and that he had to be out of the country when it happened,’ recalls Higgie.”

The antiques dealer later told The New York Times, that when he learned that Awlaki would be permanently leaving San Diego, “he told the imam to stop by if he was ever in the area–and got a strange response.” Higgie said, “‘I don’t think you’ll be seeing me. I won’t be coming back to San Diego again. Later on you’ll find out why’.”

Although the FBI suspected Awlaki “had some connection with the 9/11 plot,” authorities claim there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him, nor can he be deported because he’s an American citizen. And when the Bureau hatched an ill-conceived plan to arrest him on an obscure charge of “transporting prostitutes across state lines,” that plan collapsed when Awlaki left the U.S. in March 2002.

“But on October 10, 2002,” History Commons reports, “he makes a surprise return to the U.S.” Although his name is on a terrorist watch list and he is detained by Customs’ officials when he lands in New York, they are informed by the FBI that “his name was taken off the watch list just the day before. He is released after only three hours.”

“Throughout 2002,” History Commons informs us, Awlaki is the “subject of an active Customs investigation into money laundering called Operation Greenquest, but he is not arrested for this either, or for the earlier contemplated prostitution charges. At the time, the FBI is fighting Greenquest, and Customs officials will later accuse the FBI of sabotaging Greenquest investigations.”

Awlaki again leaves the U.S., this time for good. Although the FBI admits they were “very interested” in Awlaki, they fail to stop him leaving the country. One FBI source told U.S. News and World Report, “We don’t know how he got out.”

Inexplicably however, it was not until 2008 that secret state officials concluded that Awlaki was an Al-Qaeda operative! This beggars belief, and raises the question as to why he was allowed to leave in the first place. It certainly can’t be for lack of evidence or that when Awlaki set-up shop, first in London and finally in Yemen, he is continually under surveillance by British, Yemeni and American intelligence agencies.

Although interviewed four times by the FBI after September 11, the Bureau concluded, according to The New York Times, that Awlaki’s “contacts with the hijackers and other radicals were random.”

Other investigators however, disagreed. “One detective,” the Times reported, whose name has been scrubbed from 9/11 Commission files, told staff that he believed Awlaki “was at the center of the 9/11 story.” At the time of the Flight 253 affair, I wrote that “despite, or possibly because of these dubious connections he was allowed to leave the country.”

In fact, the curious disinterest exhibited by authorities in bringing Awlaki to ground following September 11, were neither “errors in judgement” nor “mistakes” by overtaxed investigators but are rather, a modus operandi which suggests that Awlaki and others were part of a CIA domestic operation which allowed the 9/11 plot to go forward.

Nothing in what I have written above should be construed as justification for the extrajudicial assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. In fact, the opposite conclusion can be drawn. The available evidence indicates that Awlaki could have been arrested multiple times. At the least serious end of the criminal justice spectrum he could have been charged with providing “material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” to whit, Al-Qaeda, and legally taken out of circulation.

That he wasn’t and continued to operate freely as a propagandist, despite substantial corroboration from multiple law enforcement sources that he was a key figure in the pre-9/11 domestic support network, suggests that Awlaki may have been a double agent, albeit one who had decidedly gone “off the reservation.”

Awlaki’s handling by authorities raise serious questions about just how extensive U.S. support for Al-Qaeda was prior to, and possibly even after the September 11 attacks, particularly in resource-rich global hot-spots.

As numerous journalists and researchers have painstakingly documented, Al-Qaeda, allied terrorist outfits and international narco-trafficking networks have a long, sordid history of supporting U.S. covert operations that targeted America’s geopolitical rivals even as Bin Laden’s far-flung organization plotted to attack the United States itself.

In this light, Awlaki’s “targeted killing” as with the earlier hit on Osama Bin Laden, may be part of a larger CIA/Pentagon operation to remove inconvenient participants and witnesses from the scene who might have a thing or two to say about the crimes and intrigues hatched by the imperialist Empire.

After all, dead men tell no tales…

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano’s Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

Related Posts:

• Secret State Agencies: ‘No Hard Evidence’ Iran Building Nukes, March to War Continues
• Britain: CIA Lobbies for Secret Courts
• The Ford Foundation and the CIA
• New York State Set to Add All Convict DNA to Its Database
• Afghanistan: Special Forces Under CIA Control Would be Considered Spies, Allowing White House to Claim U.S. Troops Have Been Withdrawn

October 5, 2011

By Michael Snyder
BlacklistedNews.com

Could Fast and Furious be the scandal that brings down the Obama administration?  With the full knowledge of the Department of Justice, ATF agents facilitated the sale of thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and dropped all surveillance of those weapons once they crossed the border.  Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been used to shoot U.S. border control agents.  Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been found at dozens of crime scenes in Mexico.  Nobody has been held accountable for this scandal yet.  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been stonewalling all efforts by members of Congress to look into Fast and Furious.  A CBS reporter that has been aggressively investigating this story was recently screamed at and cussed at by a high ranking official that works in the White House.  It has become abundantly clear that the Obama administration desperately wants to hide what went on during Operation Fast and Furious.  So will they succeed or will we eventually find out the truth?

What you are about to read should shock the living daylights out of you.  The U.S. government purposely armed Mexican drug cartels with thousands of guns and then ordered agents not to follow the weapons across the border.

This should be a story that the mainstream media is pounding on every single day.

But they aren’t.

In fact, they are mostly ignoring it.

However, if the truth starts getting out and the American people start grasping what really happened this thing could become absolutely huge.

In fact, this could end up being Obama’s Watergate.

The following are 22 shocking facts about the scandal that could bring down the Obama administration….

#1 During Operation Fast and Furious, ATF agents purposely allowed thousands of guns to be sold to individuals that they believed would get them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

#2 ATF agents were specifically ordered not to intercept the guns before they crossed the border.  The following is a brief excerpt from a CBS News reportthat detailed the fierce objections that many ATF agents expressed when they were ordered to stand down….

On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn’t want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF’s watchful eye. “The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That’s how many guns were sold – including some 50-calibers they let walk.”

50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: “Negative. Stand down.”

CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. “It got ugly…” said one. There was “screaming and yelling” says another. A third warned: “this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed.”

#3 Operation Fast and Furious remained a secret until the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.  Two guns that were sold during Operation Fast and Furious were found at the scene of the murder.

#4 ATF Special Agent John Dodson was one of the first to blow the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious.  Dodson explained to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011 that many ATF agents were becoming extremely frustrated when they were ordered to cut off surveillance on the weapons that were being sold because they knew “that just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico.”

#5 It appears that Operation Fast and Furious began some time around September 2009.  At that time, the ATF began pressuring gun shops near the border with Mexico to participate in a new covert operation that was being set up.  The gun store owners were told to help the ATF get guns into the hands of people that would take them back to the Mexican drug cartels.

The following description of the mechanics of Operation Fast and Furious comes from a recent Los Angeles Times article….

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard’s Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

#6 In some gun stores, cameras were set up so that top ATF officials could actually watch these transactions take place.  Back in June, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa stated the following….

“Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and himself watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47 variants.”

#7 It has also come out that in some cases ATF agents were actually the ones buying the guns and getting them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.  The following is how author Michael A. Walsh recently explained this in an article in the New York Post….

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

#8 According to the Los Angeles Times, guns that were purchased during Operation Fast and Furious have “turned up at dozens of additional Mexican crime scenes, with an unconfirmed toll of at least 150 people killed or wounded.”

#9 Mexican authorities were never informed that thousands upon thousands of guns were being allowed into Mexico.

#10 Authorities in Mexico have asked the U.S. government over and over to explain what in the world happened during Operation Fast and Furious but they have not been given an adequate answer.  In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration has not even responded to questions from the attorney general of Mexico….

Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general and a longtime favorite of American law enforcement agents in Mexico, told The Times that she first learned about Fast and Furious from news reports. And to this day, she said, U.S. officials have not briefed her on the operation gone awry, nor have they apologized.

#11 U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been withholding key documentsabout Fast and Furious from Congress and has been consistently stonewalling U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley and other members of Congress that have attempted to look into this matter.

#12 The acting director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, had been cooperating with the investigation.  At the end of August he was suddenly transferred to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy.

#13 Several other key officials that were heavily involved in Operation Fast and Furious actually got promoted.

#14 On May 3rd, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified under oath in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious.  During that testimony, Holder made the following statement….

“I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

#15 Since that time, a large amount of evidence has come out that Holder was not telling the truth.  For example, a recent Fox News article discussed some of the very revealing memos about Fast and Furious that have been discovered recently….

However, newly discovered memos suggest otherwise. For instance, one memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center “beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010,”

#16 Holder now claims that he simply misunderstood the question.  He now says that he had heard of Operation Fast and Furious previously but that he was not aware of the specific details.

#17 Emails exchanged between two Department of Justice officials last October make it abundantly clear that high level officials at the DOJ were very aware of what was going on…

Two Justice Department officials mulled it over in an email exchange Oct. 18, 2010. “It’s a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but is a significant set of prosecutions,” says Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty replies “I’m not sure how much grief we get for ‘guns walking.’ It may be more like, “Finally they’re going after people who sent guns down there.”

#18 House Republicans are now asking for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate whether or not U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress during his recent testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious.

#19 U.S. Representative Darrell Issa believes that those involved in the Fast and Furious gun trafficking operation may have violated international arms trafficking agreements and could potentially face very serious criminal charges.

#20 U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is absolutely convinced that a major coverup is going on….

“But I can tell you this. They’re doing everything they can, in a fast and furious way, to cover up all the evidence or stonewalling us. But here’s the issue, if he didn’t perjure himself and didn’t know about it, the best way that they can help us, Congressman Issa and me, is to just issue all the documents that we ask for and those documents will prove one way or the other right or wrong.”

#21 Did Barack Obama ever know about Operation Fast and Furious?  He says that he did not authorize the program.  On March 22, 2011 Obama made the following statement….

“I did not authorize [Fast and Furious]. Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that’s the case, then we’ll find — find out and we’ll hold somebody accountable.”

#22 CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson claimed on the Laura Ingraham show the other day that officials in the Obama administration were literally screaming and yelling at her for aggressively investigating the Fast and Furious scandal….

Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”

Where there is smoke there is usually fire.

Something about this whole thing really stinks.

It would be a shame if Operation Fast and Furious is allowed to be swept under the rug.

The weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious are going to be used to kill a lot of people.  The legacy of this scandal will be felt on both sides of the border for years to come.

The Mexican government deserves some answers.

The American people deserve some answers.

Hopefully we will get some.

Related Posts:

• Mexico arrests figure in Fast and Furious gun-smuggling scandal
• New York City Surveillance Center Staffed with Employees from Large Wall Street Firms
• Bush Regime Also Carrried Out Gun-Walking Program: Wide Receiver, Possibly Others
• Biden To Welcome Accused Organ Trafficker To White House
• Boom: The Student Loan Debt Time Bomb

September 27, 2011

Source: Washington’s Blog

Governments Sometimes Twists Science to Promote Policy Objectives

Anyone who paid any attention to the claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the Gulf oil spill or theFukushima nuclear accident knows that the government often twists science to promote certain policy objectives, such as drumming up support for the invasion of Iraq or becoming a booster for nuclear power and big oil (and thus downplaying the damage from nuclear accidents and oil spills).

President’s National Medal of Science winner Lynn Margulis notes that the scientific method is to follow the facts where they lead, to adopt the theory which has the most proof, and to discard theories which are contradicted by the facts.

Margulis says that – in the case of 9/11 – the government has adopted theories which are backed byvery little evidence, and refused to look at the most likely theory – the one backed by overwhelming evidence.

New Theory on Towers’ Collapse

Live Science reported last week:

A materials scientist has come up with a more scientific explanation for the mystery booms, and says his model of the Twin Towers collapse leaves no room for conspiracies. “My model explains all the observed features on 11th September: the explosions, molten metal coming out of the window, the time passing between the crash and the collapse, the fact that the explosions took place in a floor below the place it was burning, and the rapid collapse,” Christen Simensen of SINTEF, a research organization in Norway, told Life’s Little Mysteries.

As detailed in the new issue of Aluminum International Today, Simensen argues that molten aluminum from the airplane bodies chemically reacted with water in the buildings’ sprinkler systems, setting off the explosions that felled the Twin Towers.

When each jet cut its way into a building, it took with it parts of walls and ceilings, Simensen said. Steel bars in those walls would have gashed its fuel tanks, which would have caught fire. With the plane positioned somewhere in the middle of the building, blanketed in debris and with no route for heat to escape, the temperature would have rapidly escalated, reaching 660 degrees Celsius (1,220 degrees Fahrenheit), the melting point of aluminum — of which there was 30 tons in each plane fuselage — within an hour. The molten aluminum would then have heated up further to between 800 and 850 C (1,470 and 1,560 F).

“Then molten aluminum becomes [as liquid as] water and has so much heat that it will flow through cracks in the floor and down to the next floor,” Simensen explained in an email. There was an automatic sprinkler system installed in each ceiling, and it was filled with water. “When huge amount of molten aluminum gets in contact with water, a fierce exothermic reaction will take place, enormous amount of hydrogen is formed and the temperature is locally raised to 1,200 to 1,500 C,” or 2,200 to 2,700 F.

Chaos rapidly ensues: “A series of explosions will take place and a whole floor will be blown to pieces,” he wrote. “Then the top part of the building will fall on the bottom part, and the tower will collapse within seconds.” This is what Simensen believes happened in the two World Trade Center towers.

This isn’t obscure chemistry, Simensen says; the U.S. Aluminum Association has recorded 250 accidental molten aluminum/water explosions worldwide since 1980. “Alcoa in Pittsburgh [the worldwide leader in aluminum production] has done a series of such explosions in special laboratory in order to understand what can prevent such explosions and what are the most dangerous situations,” he wrote. “For instance they let 30 kilograms [66 pounds] of aluminum react with 20 liters [5.3 gallons] of water, which resulted in a large hole 30 meters [98 feet] in diameter, and nothing left of the laboratory.”

Why Do We Need a New Theory?

Simensen’s theory has received wide-spread media attention.

Most of the coverage focuses on the theory having the potential to explain the explosions and sudden collapse of the Twin Towers, and thus to debunk the conspiracy theories that the Twin Towers and World Trade Center Building 7 were brought down by controlled demolition.

But this means that the official explanation for why the trade centers collapsed on 9/11 is inadequate … and doesn’t take into account the explosions or sudden collapse of the 3 buildings. In other words, the very fact that there is such a buzz about this theory shows that many don’t believe the “official” explanation really explains the collapse of the 3 buildings.

The New Theory Contradicts the “Official” Explanation

The “official” explanation assumes that the aluminum from the airplanes which crashed into the Twin Towers formed hundreds of thousands of shotgun-like blasts, pointed in all directions, to which sheared off all the fireproofing in a broad section on several floors.

That would have to happen quickly – before the metal was heated. Instead, Simensen’s theory hinges on the assumption that the aluminum from the planes cascaded down all at once – causing explosions when it hit water.

Not the First Novel Theory

As I noted in 2008, this is not the first novel theory about the collapse:

First it was the “new phenomenon” of “thermal expansion”.

Now, Sergei Dudarev, of the UK Atomic Energy Agency, says the Twin Towers collapsed due to “unusual magnetic forces“.

Specifically, as described by the BBC, Mr. Dudarev argues that:

“The peak in this pliability is at 911.5C, but begins at much lower temperatures, at around 500C (932F) - a temperature often reached during building fires.

The steel backbone of the Twin Towers was probably exposed to temperatures close to this, when insulating panels – meant to protect the buildings’ structural frame – were dislodged by the impacts of the hijacked planes.

The roaring fire mid-way up the building heated the steel struts, and once temperatures rose above 500C the structure became elastic, and collapsed under the force of the floors above.”

Is he right?

Well, as noted in Appendix A of The World Trade Center Building Performance Study:

In the mid-1990s British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cardington to investigate the behavior of steel-framed buildings. These experiments were conducted in a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900 C (1,500-1,700 F) in three of the tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600 C (1,100 F), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.

And Underwriters Laboratories tested the steel components at the Twin Towers and found they could withstand fires for hours without failure:

“NIST contracted with Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. to conduct tests to obtain information on the fire endurance of trusses like those in the WTC towers…. All four test specimens sustained the maximum design load for approximately 2 hours without collapsing… The Investigation Team was cautious about using these results directly in the formulation of collapse hypotheses. In addition to the scaling issues raised by the test results, the fires in the towers on September 11, and the resulting exposure of the floor systems, were substantially different from the conditions in the test furnaces. Nonetheless, the [empirical test] results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11.” (NIST, 2005, p. 140).

Other fire tests have also failed to cause failures, collapses or “unusual magnetic forces” at high temperatures.

[And no previous office fires - even ones which burned much hotter and much longer - caused the collapse of a modern steel-framed building]

The 2005 Madrid skyscraper fire “reached 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 F), said Javier Sanz, head of Madrid firefighter” (see pictures here), and lasted some 20 hours. Indeed, the fires in the Twin Towers were much cooler than many office fires, as indicated by the color of the flames and the black smoke pouring out of the windows.

As Steve Watson notes:

We have previously pointed to the innumerable number of buildingsthat have suffered roaring fires across the majority of their floors for hours and remained standing. Seemingly the steel beams in these buildings were not subjected to the same “unusual magnetic forces”.

Furthermore, a far more extensive fire occurred in WTC 1 itself, prior to enhanced fireproofing of the building, on February 13, 1975. The fire burned at much higher temperatures for three hours and spread over six floors, including 65% of the 11th floor and the building core, yet it caused no significant damage to the steel structure and no trusses had to be replaced. There were no “unusual magnetic forces” present on that day.

***

Furthermore, referring to the collapses, the original NIST report concludedthat ‘the existing condition of the fireproofing prior to aircraft impact and the fireproofing thickness on the WTC floor system did not play a significant role’”.

Any “thermal expansion” at the World Trade Center was not a new phenomenon, but something that building designers and fire safety engineers have taken into account for decades if not hundreds of years.

Likewise, any “magnetic forces” at the WTC should have been less severe than those present in fire safety tests and actual office building fires, which have never before led to complete collapses. Indeed, despite the apparently advanced science which Mr. Dudarev hints at, he actually admits this is nothing new:

“He said blacksmiths had exploited this property for hundreds of years”.22*

Is the New Theory Right?

So the previous “novel” theories didn’t pan out. But what about Simensen’s new theory?

Initially, Simensen admits that the new theory doesn’t explain the destruction of World Trade Center building 7, which wasn’t hit by an airplane and which suffered only minor fires before mysteriously falling on 9/11.

And the above-quoted Live Science article notes:

Simensen’s new collapse model has not gained immediate acceptance by proponents of earlier models.

“Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is usually the best,” said Thomas Eagar, a materials scientist at MIT who has also studied the fall of the towers. “I do not see any merit to this new, more-complex explanation.

***

Eagar also objects to the notion that the aluminum, if it did melt, would definitely have reacted with the water it encountered. Most of the time when water is sprayed on molten aluminum, “there is no explosion because the water turns to steam and excludes the oxygen, preventing the growth of the combustion,” he said.

***

Roughly 1,600 architects and structural engineers across the country, who have banded together in a group called “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,” say it does not fully account for the buildings’ collapses. With so many people looking for answers, Simensen’s alternative theory is likely to receive further attention and study.

Moreover, while Simensen talks about explosions at or below the level of the planes, there is credible eyewitness testimony of explosives well above the floor hit by the planes:

• The Chief of NY Fire Department (Citywide Tour Commander) said “there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse” (page 4)

• A police officer stated “you would hear a loud boom go off at the top of tower one. As the building continued to burn and emergency equipment kept on responding stirring up the dust and debris in the streets. After approximately 15 minutes suddenly there was another loud boom at the upper floors, then there was a series of smaller explosions which appeared to go completely around the building at the upper floors. And another loud earth-shattering blast with a large fire ball which blew out more debris and at that point everyone began to run north on West Broad Street.” (page 5, which is page 2 of a hand-written memorandum)(

• The Chief of the NY Fire Department (Citywide Tour Commander) said “there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse” (page 4)

• A paramedic captain stated “somewhere around the middle of the world trade center there was this orange and red flash coming out initially it was just one flash then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode the popping sound and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as could see these popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger going both up and down and then all around the building”

Simensen’s theory can’t explain these explosions.

(In addition, several eyewitnesses report hearing explosions at the base of the building before the planes hit. See this and this. See hundreds of additional eyewitness statements of explosions well away from the area of the planes’ impact here and here).

In addition, scientists say that the lower section of the Twin Towers was designed to support several times the weight of the upper block, that the upper section of the North Tower did not, in fact, crush the lower portion, and that the crushing theory is even more improbable with the South Tower.

And peer-reviewed scientific papers claim that extremely high-tech, military-grade explosive materials known as nano-thermate were found in the rubble and dust from the World Trade Center. See this andthis. If true, Simensen’s proposed aluminum-water reaction cannot account for the existence of such materials.

Michael Rivero argues:

“The reaction [Simensen] is talking about is one in which hot aluminum will ‘steal’ oxygen from water, leaving hydrogen gas. There are two problems with this theory, of course.

The first is the hydrogen gas is very light and floats upward even faster than helium. The ruins of the World Trade Towers were ‘porous’ and as the smoke trails prove, there was a strong wind from the side. This means that hydrogen could not collect together anywhere in any amounts enough to cause an explosion, certainly not down in the basements, where some explosions were reported.

Second, even under the most ideal of circumstances of perfect mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, impossible in the natural atmosphere and under those conditions, hydrogen may burn fast but does not detonate. Recall the destruction of the Hindenburg. Huge fire, no ‘bang.’

So this latest official ‘explanation’ is a desperate attempt to reconcile eyewitness reports and video recordings of explosions (like the one that initiates the collapse of building 7) with the rapidly collapsing official story.

***

Finally, given that aluminum is a rather common building material, why have we not seen such water and aluminum explosions before or since 9-11?”

And officials admit that the fires in the Twin Towers were not very hot, and yet dozens of firemen, structural engineers and emergency responders say that they saw molten steel in the rubble of the World Trade Center for months after 9/11, even though it was sprayed with enormous quantities of water. Steel melts at a much higher temperature than aluminum, and the government admits that the fires were not hot enough to have melted the steel (and a professor emeritus of physics has shown that the collapse of the buildings could not have melted the steel).

So how does a government spokesman explain the molten steel? He denies its existence:

This shows once again that the government and its defenders are twisting the science around 9/11 to meet policy – rather than scientific – objectives.

The introduction of novel theory after novel theory to explain what many top structural engineers,mechanical engineers, architects and physicists say can only be a controlled demolition shows the desperation of the government to explain away the most probable hypothesis.

And see this.

Note: This essay is not necessarily arguing that controlled demolition brought down 3 buildings on 9/11. It is, however, arguing that – just as with Iraq, the Gulf oil spill, and Fukushima, wild-eyed scientific theories are being promoted which have no basis in fact, and the most likely hypotheses are not being examined by the government.

Related Posts:

• Study: FDA allowed oil-tainted seafood onto market
• Japan: Plutonium Discovered 28 Miles from Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant
• Boom: The Student Loan Debt Time Bomb
• Windows 8: Millions of PCs Will Get Kill Switches for the First Time
• Obama-appointed US trade adviser linked to illegal deal in Congolese gold

CIA Wants Court to Invoke Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) in Case Involving Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla

September 13th, 2011

Via: Narco News:

The fingerprints of the CIA have surfaced in a controversial federal criminal case pending in Chicago against Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, an alleged kingpin in the Sinaloa “drug cartel.”

US government prosecutors filed pleadings in the case late last week seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not surface in public court proceedings.

“The government hereby requests that the Court conduct a pretrial conference … pursuant to CIPA … at which time, the government will be prepared to report to the Court and defendant [Zambada Niebla] regarding the approximate size of the universe of classified material that may possibly be implicated in the discovery and trial of this case,” states a motion filed on Friday, Sept. 9, by US prosecutors in the Zambada Niebla case.

CIPA, enacted some 30 years ago, is designed to keep a lid on the public disclosure in criminal cases of classified materials, such as those associated with CIA operations. The rule requires that notice be given to the judge in advance of any move to introduce classified evidence in a case so that the judge can determine if it is admissible, or if another suitable substitution can be arranged that preserves the defendants right to a fair trial.

“That is a very reasonable conclusion [that the CIA is likely involved in this case in some way],” says a former federal agent familiar with national security procedures. “Seeking CIPA protection, yup, there is hot stuff to hide.”

Zambada Niebla, extradited to the US in February 2010 and now facing narco-trafficking charges in federal court in Chicago, claims in pleadings in his case that the US government entered into a pact with the leadership of the Mexican Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization that supposedly provide its chief narcos with immunity in exchange for them providing US authorities with information that could be used to target other narco-trafficking organizations.

…

Interestingly, there also is a Guantanamo Bay connection in the Zambada Niebla case that might lead to some classified information surfacing in his case.

Zambada Niebla, as the US government-described “logistics coordinator” for the Sinaloa organization, is linked to alleged Sinaloa organization money-launderer Pedro Alfonso Alatorre Damy via a Gulfstream II jet (tail number N987SA) that crashed in Mexico in late 2007 with some four tons of cocaine onboard.

That aircraft was allegedly purchased with Sinaloa organization drug money laundered through Alatorre Damy’s casa de cambio business and a U.S. bank. And that same aircraft was reportedly suspected of being used previously as part of the CIA’s “terrorist” rendition program and allegedly made a number of trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005, according to media reports and an investigation spearheaded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

In addition, the Gulfstream II was purchased less than two weeks before it crashed in Mexico by a duo that included a U.S. government operative who allegedly had done past contract work for a variety of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, according to a known CIA asset (Baruch Vega) who is identified as such in public court records. The four tons of cocaine onboard of the Gulfstream II at the time of its crash landing, according Vega, was purchased in Colombia via a syndicate that included a Colombian narco-trafficker named Nelson Urrego, who, according to Panamanian press reports and Vega, is a U.S. government (CIA) asset.

Related Posts:

• ‘Fast and Furious’ Linked to Immunity Deal Between U.S. and Sinaloa Cartel, Trafficking Defendant Alleges in Court Papers
• CIA operations in Iran underway to take out Tehran bigs in mission to dismantle weapons program
• A 25 Billion Dollar Secret: The NY Fed, Goldman & The AIG Cover-Up
• Police Departments Plan to Equip Drones with Rubber Bullets and Tear Gas
• Chicago police accused of planting evidence in ‘Molotov cocktail’ plot

September 13, 2011

Related Posts:

• Study concludes Gulf War syndrome involves real brain damage
• Biden To Welcome Accused Organ Trafficker To White House
• Afghanistan: Special Forces Under CIA Control Would be Considered Spies, Allowing White House to Claim U.S. Troops Have Been Withdrawn
• Set Up Cameras Around Your House, Let Company Monitor Them for Marketing Purposes
• Report: “Israel Kidnapped 380 Palestinians In February”

Related Posts:

• I am sick and tired of hearing about 9/11 and terrorism!
• You Only Believe the Official 9/11 Story Because You Don’t Know the Official 9/11 Story
• Breaking News: Nikola Tesla Testifies at NY Grand Jury on 9/11
• Breaking News: Nikola Tesla Testifies at NY Grand Jury on 9/11
• The Most Important Issue in the History of the Universe

Source: Reuters

Ten years after al Qaeda’s attack on the United States, the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission’s investigative records remain sealed at the National Archives in Washington, even though the commission had directed the archives to make most of the material public in 2009, Reuters has learned.

The National Archives’ failure to release the material presents a hurdle for historians and others seeking to plumb one of the most dramatic events in modern American history.

The 575 cubic feet of records were in large part the basis for the commission’s public report, issued July 22, 2004. The commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was established by Congress in late 2002 to investigate the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the pre-attack effectiveness of intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the government’s emergency response.

In a Reuters interview this week, Matt Fulgham, assistant director of the archives’ center for legislative affairs which has oversight of the commission documents, said that more than a third of the material has been reviewed for possible release. But many of those documents have been withheld or heavily redacted, and the released material includes documents that already were in the public domain, such as press articles.

Commission items still not public include a 30-page summary of an April 29, 2004 interview by all 10 commissioners with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, conducted in the White House’s Oval Office. This was the only time the two were formally questioned about the events surrounding the attacks. The information could shed light on public accounts the two men have given in recent weeks of their actions around the time of the attacks.

Several former commission staff members said that because there is no comprehensive effort to unseal the remaining material, portions of the records the commission had hoped would be available by now to scholars and the public instead will remain sealed indefinitely.

In 2004 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean said publicly that he was eager for most of the records to be released as quickly as possible. In a Reuters interview last week, Kean said he was not aware until told by Reuters that only a small portion of the records have since been unsealed, and he saw no justification for withholding most of the unreleased material.

Kean said the commissioners had agreed on the January 2, 2009 date for release so that the material would not come out until after the 2008 elections. “We didn’t want it to become a political football,” he said.

Read Full Article Here

Related Posts:

• Military officer’s 9/11 case against Bush officials to be heard April 5
• Report: Bush order allowing murder of US citizens abroad still in effect
• Bush says slow reaction on 9/11 was deliberate decision
• Fed Audit Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Loans
• U.S. intelligence agencies agree: no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons program

September 4th, 2011

Via: CBS:

CBS News has obtained a series of emails that show the White House had more information on ATF’s controversial Fast and Furious operation than previously disclosed. But administration officials insists nobody at the White House knew specifically that ATF was allowing guns to “walk” into the hands of suspected gun traffickers for Mexican drug cartels.

ATF allegedly allowed more than two thousand assault rifles and other weapons to fall into the hands of suspects from late fall of 2009 through 2010.

The emails indicate three White House officials were briefed on gun trafficking efforts that included Fast and Furious. The officials are Kevin O’Reilly, then-director of North American Affairs, now assigned to the State Department; Dan Restrepo, senior Latin American advisory; and Greg Gatjanis, a national security official.

Related Posts:

• Fast And Furious: 22 Shocking Facts About The Scandal That Could Bring Down The Obama Administration
• Biden To Welcome Accused Organ Trafficker To White House
• U.S. Gives Israel Advanced Weapons to Delay War with Iran
• Afghanistan: Special Forces Under CIA Control Would be Considered Spies, Allowing White House to Claim U.S. Troops Have Been Withdrawn
• And Now… ‘State Department Quietly Warning Region on Syrian WMDs’

August 28, 2011

Police emergency squad trained at Utøya scenario 22 July

Editor’s Note: The following is a rough Google translation of an article by Aftenposten in Norway

Only 26 minutes after training for emergency squad was closed, went car bomb in the government quarter.

Only hours before Anders Behring Breivik began shooting children on Utøya, concluded the police emergency squad an exercise where they practiced an almost identical situation.

aftenposten.no | Aug 29, 2011

By ANDREAS GROUND FOSS

The four days in advance, and also the same Friday that the attack was carried out, trained police special unit on an ongoing terror campaign that was approximately equal to the situation that hours later, met the 22 police officers in the emergency squad on Utøya.

Aftenposten is confirmed from key sources in the management of the Oslo police that exercise was terminated at 15 that same Friday.

All officers from the emergency squad that participated in the government quarter after car bomb and later came ashore on Utøya and arrested Anders Behring Breivik, had earlier that same day and in the days ahead participated in training on a very similar scenario.

So did the police so far to stop the exercise until they had trained on the reality.

Related

• Norwegian Police Confirm Drill Identical to Breivik’s Attack
• Norwegian Police Conducted Drill For A “Practically Identical Scenario” Right Before The Utoya Attack

The training shall thereafter Aftenposten know, have gone straight into the met police in Tyrifjorden the same day: a mobile terrorist attack in which one or more perpetrators only goal is to shoot as many people as possible and then shoot the police when they arrive.

- It was very close to the answer key. Chance would have it that way, says a key police source, who declined to quoted by name.

Massacre

The police should not have trained in a scenario with as many victims as they met on Utøya.

Police special unit trains continuously. But every quarter, the “blocks” where they train to different types of scenarios.

These are different scenarios police envisions might occur where the emergency squad must be inserted. There may be actions indoors, in cities or out in other environments.

According to police, this is a scenario they train on several times a year and has trained for several years, especially after some events in other countries.

26 minutes

Only 26 minutes after training for emergency squad was closed, went car bomb in the government quarter. Emergency Squad was early room.

At 17.30 was the staff of the Oslo police told a shooting at Utøya. They attached so much trust in the message that the emergency squad sat in the cars they already had in its ministries and cars that came from the police station at Grønland in Oslo.

On the way they struggled to reach the North Buskerud Police District, but at 18.02, six minutes before they arrived, they contact and agreed to meet at Storøya.

There were seven people from the emergency squad and three officers from Nordre Buskerud Police District into a 4.9 meter long rubber dinghy. This was so heavily loaded that it began taking in water. The police were assisted by a civilian boat and drove towards Utøya.

Related Posts:

• LA police fire 90 rounds at fleeing, unarmed teen
• OnStar Family Link to let Mom and Dad play Big Brother just like the Government
• DARPA’s Director Will Soon Be a Google Executive
• Pink Slime For School Lunch: Government Buying 7 Million Pounds Of Ammonia-Treated Meat For Meals
• FBI LulzSec Hacker Informant: Hacking Groups Government Black Op?

WTC targeted on FEMA book covers (click images for full size)
1997	1999

Related Posts:

• FEMA and Your ‘Federal Family’
• John McCain: Founding Father of the Terrorist Emirate of Benghazi
• New York City Surveillance Center Staffed with Employees from Large Wall Street Firms
• US missiles ‘hit Iranian village’
• Judge Declares Law Governing Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Unconstitutional

August 24, 2011

By Michael Snyder – BLN Contributing Writer

How many times have you heard the mainstream media dismiss certain points of view as “conspiracy theories”?  It seems as though one of the easiest ways to brush something off is to label it as something that only “conspiracy theorists” would believe.  Well, you know what?  A whole lot of the time the “conspiracy theorists” are right and the mainstream media is wrong.  In fact, we owe a great debt to “conspiracy theorists” because they will go places and investigate things that the mainstream media would never even touch.  The reality is that the mainstream media only tells us what the government and the big corporations want us to hear, and much of the time it is those in the alternative media that are left with the task of trying to figure out what the real truth is.  So don’t look down on conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorists.  In a world where almost everything we are told is a lie, the truth can be very difficult to find.

The following are 14 conspiracy theories that the media now admits are conspiracy facts….

#1 Fukushima Uninhabitable

Back in April, I published an article entitled “Much Of Northern Japan Uninhabitable Due To Nuclear Radiation?“  At the time, almost everyone in the mainstream media was insisting that Fukushima was nothing like Chernobyl and that those that lived near Fukushima would be able to return to their homes fairly soon.

Well, it turns out that those of us that feared the worst were right after all.  Just consider the following quote from the New York Times….

Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.

#2 U.S. Military Attack On Libya

At the beginning of this year, nobody would have dreamed that the U.S. military would have attacked Libya this year.

But it happened.  At first those that tried to warn about an upcoming conflict with Libya were called kooks, and even up until recently many in the media were still trying to deny that NATO was arming and training the rebels.

Well, the truth is that NATO had special forces on the ground even before the conflict began.

The “rebel groups” (which include large numbers of al-Qaeda fighters) would have been soundly defeated by Gaddafi if not for relentless air strikes by the U.S. military and NATO.

Instead of a straightforward invasion like we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military and NATO systematically developed, trained and equipped “rebel groups” within the country and have used them as the ground forces for this campaign.

That way the goals of the U.S. and EU could still be achieved, but in the end they would have less blood on their hands.

As the conflict winds down, now even the New York Times is admitting that we have trained and equipped the rebels….

“We always knew there would be a point where the effectiveness of the government forces would decline to the point where they could not effectively command and control their forces,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss confidential details of the battle inside Tripoli.

“At the same time,” the diplomat said, “the learning curve for the rebels, with training and equipping, was increasing. What we’ve seen in the past two or three weeks is these two curves have crossed.”

Sadly, there is still a very good chance that U.S. troops could end up on the ground in Libya.
Many prominent officials are already calling for the U.S. and the EU to provide occupation forces.  Richard Haas, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has authored an opinion piece for the Financial Times entitled “Libya Now Needs Boots on the Ground“.

If that happens, it will likely end up being a situation very similar to what we have today in Iraq.

#3 Widespread Use Of RFID Chips In Humans

The doubters said it would never happen.  They said we would never see the day when RFID chips were implanted in humans on a widespread basis.

Well, today there are examples of this all over the world.  One of the most stunning examples recently has come out of Mexico.  According to the Washington Post, “thousands of worried Mexicans” have been having “satellite and radio-frequency tracking products” implanted in their skin in order to protect themselves against abduction.

#4 $2000 Gold

It was only a matter of months ago that we were told that gold was “in a bubble” at $1400 or $1500 an ounce.

Well, gold recently crossed the $1900 an ounce barrier, and appears poised to go much higher as global financial instability intensifies.

#5 Obama Wants To Impose Backdoor Amnesty

Those that warned that Barack Obama was going to impose amnesty for illegal immigrants by executive fiat were called “nuts” and “conspiracy theorists”.

Well, it has happened.  The Obama administration has now instituted “backdoor amnesty” for illegal immigrants and even plans to provide them with work permits.

#6 U.S. Government Provides Weapons For Mexican Drug Cartels

For a long time there were those that claimed that the U.S. government was providing guns to Mexican drug cartels, but nobody wanted to listen.

Well, it is all now a matter of public record.  It turns out that the U.S. government facilitated the transfer of thousands of guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

The following is a brief excerpt from a CBS News report that discusses the fierce opposition that many ATF agents expressed to allowing thousands of guns to be given into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels….

On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn’t want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF’s watchful eye. “The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That’s how many guns were sold – including some 50-calibers they let walk.”

50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: “Negative. Stand down.”

CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. “It got ugly…” said one. There was “screaming and yelling” says another. A third warned: “this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed.”

Amazingly, three of the key ATF officials involved in putting thousands of guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels were recently promoted.

#7 Fluoride Is Harmful

Incredibly, the federal government is finally admitting that high levels of fluoride in our drinking water can be harmful.  In fact, the feds have reduced the “recommended amount” of fluoride in our drinking water for the first time in 50 years.

We probably won’t see them ban fluoride any time soon, but for them to even acknowledge a problem with fluoride is a major step.  In a recent article on CNN, it was reported that the federal government is now saying that high levels of fluoride in the water have now officially been linked with fluorosis….

The Department of Health and Human Services and Environmental Protection Agency are proposing the change because of an increase in fluorosis — a condition that causes spotting and streaking on children’s teeth.

#8 The Federal Reserve Favors The Big Banks

We were always told by the media that the Federal Reserve was “above politics” and that it did not show favoritism.

Well, we all know now that the Fed is deeply corrupt and about the only people that they actually help are their friends.

It turns out that the Federal Reserve very quietly showered the big banks and their friends with hundreds of billions of dollars in loans at rates that were substantially below market during the financial crisis.  While Wall Street was being flooded with easy loans, none of the small banks that were deeply suffering and no average Americans got any money.

#9 Cell Phones Linked To Cancer

For years, “conspiracy theorists” have been claiming that cell phone use can cause cancer.

Well, the mainstream media is starting to catch up.  Some very startling scientific studies have come out recently that are hard to ignore.

The following is an excerpt from a recent CNN article about one of these studies….

At the highest exposure levels — using a mobile phone half an hour a day over a 10-year period — the study found a 40 percent increased risk of glioma brain tumors.

#10 The Credit Rating Agencies Are Corrupt

We have all been taught that the credit rating agencies are supposed to be objective.

But in the real world things are not that simple.

For example, just a short time after long-term U.S. government debt was downgraded, the head of Standard & Poor’s is resigning, and is being replaced by Douglas Peterson, the former COO of Citigroup.

Do you think the former COO of Citigroup is going to come down hard on his former comrades over at the big Wall Street banks?

Also, a whistleblower has come forward with some stunning revelations about Moody’s.  The following is what former analyst William Harrington says was going on over at that credit agency during the financial crisis….

“The track record of management influence in committees speaks for itself — it produced hollowed-out (collateralized debt obligation) opinions that were at great odds with the private opinions of committees and which were not durable for even a short period after publication”

#11 Prescription Drugs Kill A Lot Of Americans

Growing up, I never even imagined that prescription drugs could be dangerous.  I had complete faith in the medical community and the government to only allow drugs on the market that were fully tested and proven to be 100% safe.

Well, I was dead wrong.  The truth is that adverse reactions to prescription drugs kill a huge number of Americans every year.  A recent Vanity Fair article entitled “Deadly Medicine” began with the following statement….

Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas–on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese–in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves?

#12 Bisphenol-A Is Linked To Infertility

A very common chemical known as bisphenol-A is found in thousands upon thousands of our plastic products.  It also turns out that it has some really nasty effects on the human body.

Fortunately, some in the mainstream media are beginning to acknowledge this.  Back in October, one of the largest UK newspapers published an article entitled “Bisphenol-A now linked to male infertility” which made the following unequivocal statement about the dangers of BPA….

Bisphenol-A (BPA), known as the “gender bending” chemical because of its connection to male impotence, has now been shown to decrease sperm mobility and quality.

#13 The “Super Congress” Is In The Pocket Of Wall Street Interests

The amount of money that has been donated to the campaigns of those on the “Super Congress” is absolutely astounding.

Just check out what a recent CNBC article had to say about the matter….

Overall, according to the center’s research, the dozen super committee members have raised more than $50 million from the finance, insurance and real estate sector since the 1990 election cycle.

How much influence do you think 50 million dollars is going to buy?

#14 The Targeting Of Christian Groups

We are increasingly hearing from the Obama administration and some members of Congress that we need to be really concerned about “homegrown terrorists” and “Christian extremists”.

For example, during a recent Congressional hearing U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee warned that “Christian militants” might try to “bring down the country” and that such groups need to be investigated.

In addition, according to a shocking document obtained by Oath Keepers, the FBI is now instructing store owners to report many new forms of “suspicious activity” to them.  According to the document, “suspicious activity” now includes making “extreme religious statements” and believing in “radical theology”.

Not only that, a Department of Homeland Security report on “right wing extremism” from April 2009 lists the following people as potential terrorists….

-those that believe in “end times” prophecies

-those that believe abortion is wrong

-those that stockpile food, ammunition or weapons

-those that are against same-sex marriage

-those that believe in “New World Order” conspiracy theories

I don’t know about you, but when the federal government starts targeting people based on their religious beliefs, that makes me very nervous.

This world is officially going crazy.  So don’t blame “conspiracy theorists” for wanting to dig around and get the facts.  The mainstream media sure doesn’t give us much of the truth.

As the world continues to fall apart and as the propaganda from the mainstream media gets even more blatant, the hunger for the truth is only going to grow.

Who knows?  Perhaps before it is all over you will be a “conspiracy theorist” too.

Related Posts:

• The Future For Most Americans: Pathetic Jobs, Bad Debts And A Crappy Economy
• U.S. Sues to Stop AT&T Deal – A Surprisingly Swift Move or Disinformation?
• I am sick and tired of hearing about 9/11 and terrorism!
• Where was Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001?
• You Only Believe the Official 9/11 Story Because You Don’t Know the Official 9/11 Story