Friday, August 8, 2008

"Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president."

The charge in Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World, that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein with lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta is so explosive, it caused White House press spokesman Tony Fratto to mimic Nixon administration Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. (Fratto called Suskind's book "gutter journalism", Ziegler called Woodward & Bernstein's Watergate investigation "shabby journalism".) The aftermath of the media spotlight and the subsequent political blowback caused his sources to backtrack on their support of Suskind's charge. In response, Suskind did something he describes as "contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist" by releasing transcripts of his interviews with one of his sources, Rob Richer. It is worth reading it all to get a sense of context, but this exchange sticks out:

Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.

Ron: Yeah, right.

Rob: But he didn't say that specifically. I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.
http://www.ronsuskind.com/thewayoftheworld/transcripts/

Philip Giraldi has a source that both confirms and refutes portions of this statement:

An extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community has informed me that Ron Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct but that a number of details are wrong.

The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source. Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.

My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen. It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/08/07/suskind-revisited/

Exactly how did this "shop around the vice president" specialize in such activity? I believe William Pitt gives the best description:

WHIG, and its intention to sell an unnecessary war to a shell-shocked public, is only half the story. The other half of the manipulative sales team could be found in the neighborhood occupied by the Department of Defense. The Office of Special Plans, or OSP, was created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld specifically to second-guess and reinterpret intelligence data to justify war in Iraq. Think of it like baseball: the OSP pitched, and WHIG caught.

The OSP was on no government payroll and suffered no Congressional oversight. Their tainted information and interpretations overtopped the Iraq data being provided by the State Department and CIA. The OSP was able to accomplish this thanks to devoted patronage from high-ranking members of the administration, most prominently Vice-President Cheney.

The highest levels of the OSP were staffed by heavy-hitters like Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Cheney before joining the Pentagon. When the OSP wanted to intimidate analysts into shaping conclusions to fit the already-made war decision, Cheney went to CIA headquarters on unprecedented visits. Once there, he demanded "forward-leaning" interpretations of the evidence. When Cheney was unable to go to the CIA, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, went in his place.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101705I.shtml

Or if anyone wants to dig deeper into OSP and their "B Team", CTEG, here's a direct link to my 2nd edition of American Judas:

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-judas-2nd-edition-investigate.html

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

"The Ripist" Speaks; FBI Coaching is "Duley" noted.

Thank you Glenn Greenwald, Larisa Alexandrovna and all the vigilant watchdogs over at Democratic Underground for all your probing. It was Glenn Greenwald's great piece today:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/05/anthrax/index.html?source=rss

That led me to the testimony regarding the peace order that Ivin's "theripist" Jean Duley was seeking:


Ivins was supposed to have a permanent commitment hearing at Sheppard Pratt, but Duley said his attorney advised him to check himself in voluntarily so that he may leave when he wished. Drawbaugh told the court he probably was being released from the hospital as the hearing was going on. --

She decided to get the peace order after an FBI agent working the case suggested it.

Drawbaugh: "At this time, Ms. Duley, are you fearful for your personal safety?"

Duley: "I am and so is the FBI."

Drawbaugh: "OK. And can you tell the court why it is based on what you have testified to during the course of since July 9 that you are fearful of your safety?"

Duley: "As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually attempted to murder several other people either through poisoning. He is a revenge killer. When he feels he that he has been slighted or has had ... especially towards women ... he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killing. He has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic homicidal killer."

Roberts granted the temporary peace order and set a hearing for a final peace order Thursday -- a day before Duley was set to testify against Ivins before a federal grand jury. The court ordered Ivins not to abuse or contact Duley or go to her home or job. The order was dismissed Thursday after Ivins' apparent suicide.

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=78406

My initial questions: She's fearful of her safety since July 9, yet she doesn't file for a peace order until the FBI tells her to?! He's attempted to murder several people through poisoning since 2000? Did he just happen to slip that nugget to her and neglect to mention "Oh, by the way, I mailed out all that anthrax after 9/11 too"? Or did she find that out from those "several top psychiatrists"?

Puhleeze. I want to know if there is one sentence she uttered that wasn't coached out of her by the FBI.

Then I checked back with a fantastic thread started by autorank on DU:

Anthrax, Bruce Ivins Case Research-Resource Thread - Update & Rate Please
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3728633

In post 115, autorank has a great comment on the story:

From your link to the Frederick Post story above -

Ivins and hospitalization:

"Ivins was supposed to have a permanent commitment hearing at Sheppard Pratt, but Duley said his (Ivins) attorney advised him to check himself in voluntarily so that he may leave when he wished. Drawbaugh told the court he probably was being released from the hospital as the hearing was going on. --

"This is wrong, lacks any logic. You don't "check" yourself in to preserve the option to leave - IF YOU ARE A DANGER TO SELF AND OTHERS. That's the law everywhere. If there was a worry on Ivins and/or his attorney's part that he'd be detained once in the hospital, the voluntary or involuntary commitment would not be the issue. The issue would focus on the evaluation that took place. The fact that Ivins checked in, understandable given the intensity of the pressure, could be an argument in favor of his mental stability, e.g., 'he was so confident that he wasn't unstable, he checked himself into a major psychiatric hospital knowing that they'd release him after a respite period.'

That's what's bothersome about so much with Duley, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. By the logic of Duley's statement from Frederick paper, we would have this situation: Ivins voluntarily checks himself in at Shepard Pratt. They decide that he is all those things that she says he is. They want him to stay but Ivins says, 'Sorry, you can't make me do that since I checked myself in voluntarily which means, NO MATTER WHAT YOU FOUND ABOUT ME, I get to leave since I voluntarily admitted myself.'

And what's a "permanent commmittment?" You are given a life sentence in psychiatric care. People do get better. So by Duley's logic - Ivins is "permanently committed." He has a total recovery. They decide it was some chemical that caused a temporary break. But they can't let him go since he's "permanently committed." Give me a break!


In response to this, sfexpat2000 and suffragette refer to a thread with links to the audiotapes of Duley's testimony and the revelation as reported by Scott Creighton that where Bruce Ivins was concerned, "she was helping the FBI FRAME HIM"-!!!

Most of reporting uncritically based on Duley's restraining order hearing audio
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3724189

To quote vickiss on a thread I started, "Do all government employees below the WH level have the same middle name? Patsy?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3730203

The plot thickens...

Monday, August 4, 2008

Grand Jury Investigating the Anthrax Attacks? Who's the Prosecutor?

Everyone who followed closely the trickle of information coming out of the grand jury investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame and blown cover of Brewster, Jennings & Associates knew who was in charge of that investigation long before Scooter Libby was ever indicted. Hell, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was so famous that the anticipation of who would be indicted and when created a new term in the lexicon of the blogosphere: Fitzmas. What came as a surprise to me in the wake of the "suicide" of anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins as he was supposedly about to be indicted for the attacks that killed five people in the months after 9/11 is that there was a grand jury investigating the matter at all.


Anthrax Indictment May Have Been Weeks Away
by Dina Temple-Raston

Government investigators tell NPR that they were still several major legal steps away from indicting army researcher Dr. Bruce Ivins for the 2001 anthrax attacks when he killed himself this past week.

While they had written up the case and told officials at the Department of Justice they were prepared to go forward, the department had not yet approved the case. What is more, the evidence against Ivins had not yet been presented in its entirety to a grand jury and jurors had not yet been asked to vote on an indictment. That process could have taken weeks.

more...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93241941&ft=1&f=2


So who is in charge of investigating this? And who was cross-examining this person?


August 03, 2008
Jean C. Duley... tell us again...

Okay, well the more research I do into the now infamous Ms. Jean C. Duley - the "therapist" who filed a restraining order against the alleged anthrax attacks suspect Bruce E. Ivins - the more her story sounds like a whole load of crap.

Let's rehash Ms. Duley's role in the whole saga.
According to The Smoking Gun, documents they obtained and posted show that Ms. Duley filed a restraining order request against Bruce Ivins on July 24th. In that complaint, she wrote the following (the errors are hers):
client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats & actions toward theripist. Dr. David Irwin his psychiatrist called him homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions will testify with other details FBI involved, currently under investigation & will be charged with 5 capital murders. I have been subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury August 1, 2008 in Washington, D.C.

snip

Okay, I give up. Why did this woman have to spend all her money on attorneys? She clearly filed the restraining order herself. So how is it that she incurred any attorney fees? Unless, of course, her boyfriend means that she incurred attorney fees for her DUI jury trial in 06 and ongoing fees relating to her probation? Why did Ms. Duley lose her job? Is it because as a "therapist" working with drug addiction cases, she was found driving under the influence?

I don't know what to make out of all of this. Is this woman jumping on the bandwagon hoping to pen a book deal or something? Is she simply lying? Is she telling the truth about Ivins? Is she as nutty as she claims him to be? I don't know. What I think, however, is that if this witness was dragged into a court in which I was the defense attorney, her credibility would quickly be shot down. Somehow, I think, we will soon see a Fox Noise exclusive interview with this woman and her boyfriend who will "reveal" what it is that they know. At this point, I am not buying this story and I am not sure why the media has jumped on her claims as though they were gospel.

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/08/jean-c-duley-te.html

OK, so we have a prosecutor who subpoenaes this piece of work. Now that the patient of this "theripist" is dead, what will become of the grand jury? Will we ever find out who testified and what they said unless indictments are issued? And why isn't the prosecutor treating Brian Ross of ABC News the same way Patrick Fitzgerald treated Judy Miller for refusing to reveal her sources?

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

more...http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

Remember there was a SCOTUS precedent set in 1972:

Finally, if the confidential information relates to criminal activity, the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1972 (in Branzburg vs. Hayes) that should a grand jury investigating the crime need the information, the journalist must turn it over — despite the freedom of the press guaranteed under the 1st Amendment.

No reporter can enter into an agreement that violates that law. Rather, an agreement of confidentiality is subject to it. The so-called news person's privilege, just like the attorney-client privilege or a president's executive privilege, is a qualified privilege. When a judge holds a reporter in contempt for violating the law, that judge is merely upholding the law of the land.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-sources6feb06,0,6080347.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

So who is upholding the law of the land now?!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Focus Should be on Cheney in the Wake of the Anthrax Suspect "Suicide"

In the past couple days there have been some revelations that have been very illuminating regarding our own Number Two squatting in the White House. Seymour Hersh, who has been vigilant in reporting Cheney's lust for an attack on Iran before the voters at long last kick him out of 1600 Pennnsylvania Avenue, had some fascinating new details to tell yesterday:

EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them»

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. (Emphasis added)

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

more...

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/


Seeing that Cheney has the inclination to initiate a false flag operation of Americans killing Americans where Iran is concerned, can we find an example where Cheney might be involved in a false flag operation that was carried out? We need only look deeper into the implications of the reported suicide of the anthrax suspect Bruce E. Ivins. Glenn Greenwald has updated a remarkable expose today:

Friday Aug. 1, 2008 05:36 EDT

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).

snip

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

snip

UPDATE III: See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios write: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about what this warning was based on?"

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

This is some damning information against ABC News. I hope this helps ignite a public uproar against them to release the identities of these "four well-placed and separate sources". Is it possible that one of them was Bruce E. Ivins? He certainly was "well-placed" enough to comment on the phony bentonite-positive test results on the anthrax. And who is Richard Cohen's "high government official"? Could that official be one of ABC News' "well-placed" sources? And how might Cheney be involved in this? I can only answer the last question:

White House Mail Machine Has Anthrax
By Sandra Sobieraj
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2001; 8:11 p.m. EDT

snip

At least some White House personnel were given Cipro six weeks ago. White House officials won't discuss who might be receiving the anthrax-treating antibiotic now.

On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved. (Emphasis added)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011023/aponline201158_000.htm


The first set of anthrax letters were postmarked on September 18, 2001, one week after Cheney and his staff started taking Cipro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks


We need to be prepared to raise holy hell if the FBI decides to close shop in the wake of the Ivins "suicide" by declaring his guilt as a "lone nut". We've heard that dismissive song to many times in the past to take it on face value. I put the word "suicide" in quotes because in the wake of Glenn Greenwald's revelations there are simply too many connected "well-placed and separate sources" caught in a bald-faced lie who would benefit from having a patsy silenced. Only a full, thorough and independent investigation will verify the truth. But don't hold your breath. As X instructed Garrison in the movie JFK, "Stir the shit storm".