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Sunday, 21 December 2014

We're the bloodthirsty warmongers, not 'evil' Putin

Vladimir putin

© RIA Novosti Alexey Druzhinin



This is a time of year for memories, and the ones that keep bothering me are from my childhood, which seemed at the time to be wholly happy and untroubled.

Yet all the adults in my life still dwelt in the shadow of recent war. This was not the glamorous, exciting side of war, but the miserable, fearful and hungry aspect.


My mother, even in middle-class suburban prosperity, couldn't throw away an eggshell without running her finger round it to get out the last of the white. No butcher dared twice to try to cheat her on the weights.


Haunted all her life by rationing, she would habitually break a chocolate bar into its smallest pieces. She had also been bombed from the air in Liverpool, and had developed a fatalism to cope with the nightly danger of being blown to pieces, shocking to me then and since.


I am now beset by these ingrained memories of shortage and danger because I seem surrounded by people who think that war might be fun. This seems to happen when wartime generations are pushed aside by their children, who need to learn the truth all over again.




It seemed fairly clear to me from her experiences that war had in fact been a miserable affair of fear, hunger, threadbare darned clothes, broken windows and insolent officials. And that was a victory, more or less, though my father (who fought in it) was never sure of that.

Now I seem surrounded by people who actively want a war with Russia, a war we all might lose. They seem to believe that we are living in a real life Lord Of The Rings, in which Moscow is Mordor and Vladimir Putin is Sauron. Some humorous artists in Moscow, who have noticed this, have actually tried to set up a giant Eye of Sauron on a Moscow tower.


We think we are the heroes, setting out with brave hearts to confront the Dark Lord, and free the saintly Ukrainians from his wicked grasp.


This is all the most utter garbage. Since 1989, Moscow, the supposed aggressor, has - without fighting or losing a war - peacefully ceded control over roughly 180 million people, and roughly 700,000 square miles of valuable territory.


The EU (and its military wing, NATO) have in the same period gained control over more than 120 million of those people, and almost 400,000 of those square miles.


Until a year ago, Ukraine remained non-aligned between the two great European powers. But the EU wanted its land, its 48 million people (such a reservoir of cheap labour!) its Black Sea coast, its coal and its wheat.


So first, it spent £300 million (some of it yours) on anti-Russian 'civil society' groups in Ukraine.


Then EU and NATO politicians broke all the rules of diplomacy and descended on Kiev to take sides with demonstrators who demanded that Ukraine align itself with the EU.


Imagine how you'd feel if Russian politicians had appeared in Edinburgh in September urging the Scots to vote for independence, or if Russian money had been used to fund pro-independence organisations.


Then a violent crowd (20 police officers died at its hands, according to the UN) drove the elected president from office, in violation of the Ukrainian constitution.


During all this process, Ukraine remained what it had been from the start - horrendously corrupt and dominated by shady oligarchs, pretty much like Russia.


If you didn't want to take sides in this mess, I wouldn't at all blame you. But most people seem to be doing so.


There seems to be a genuine appetite for confrontation in Washington, Brussels, London... and Saudi Arabia.


There is a complacent joy abroad about the collapse of the rouble, brought about by the mysterious fall in the world's oil price.


It's odd to gloat about this strange development, which is also destroying jobs and business in this country. Why are the Gulf oil states not acting - as they easily could and normally would - to prop up the price of the product that makes them rich?


I do not know, but there's no doubt that Mr Putin's Russia has been a major obstacle to the Gulf states' desire to destroy the Assad government in Syria, and that the USA and Britain have (for reasons I long to know) taken the Gulf's side in this.


But do we have any idea what we are doing? Ordinary Russians are pretty stoical and have endured horrors unimaginable to most of us, including a currency collapse in 1998 that ruined millions. But until this week they had some hope.


If anyone really is trying to punish the Russian people for being patriotic, by debauching the rouble, I cannot imagine anything more irresponsible. It was the destruction of the German mark in 1922, and the wipeout of the middle class that resulted, which led directly to Hitler.


Stupid, ill-informed people nowadays like to compare Mr Putin with Hitler. I warn them and you that, if we succeed in overthrowing Mr Putin by unleashing hyper-inflation in Russia, we may find out what a Russian Hitler is really like. And that a war in Europe is anything but fun.


So, as it's almost Christmas, let us sing with some attention that bleakest and yet loveliest of carols, , stressing the lines that run 'Man at war with man hears not the love song which they bring. Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing'.


Or gloat at your peril over the scenes of panic in Moscow.


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


The war on drugs just got even more vile: Police to begin inspecting your poop, seriously

Toilet Spying

© The Free Thought Project



As the wasteful, immoral war on drugs continues in police states around the world, authorities are always looking for ways to track the use of "illicit" drugs. It's the intelligence aspect of their war, and some of the methods literally reek. Introducing "sewage epidemiology," coming soon to a community near you.


Sewage epidemiology is a rapidly expanding field that can provide information on illicit drug usage in communities, based on the measured concentrations in samples from wastewater treatment plants.




According to the American Chemical Society's report:


The war on drugs could get a boost with a new method that analyzes sewage to track levels of illicit drug use in local communities in real time. The new study, a first-of-its-kind in the U.S., was published in the ACS journal and could help law enforcement identify new drug hot spots and monitor whether anti-drug measures are working.




The thought of authorities slogging through the sludge may be comical, but it represents another example of big brother using our money to monitor our behavior. Drug consumption is a non-violent act upon oneself. The drug trade is made violent in a black market under government prohibition.

What is the rationale behind attempts at drug eradication and criminalization? It provides a means for government to assert power; it enriches the prison industry and the jackboot industry and politicians. Take these away and there is no logic to the war on drugs.


Supply is consistently available to meet demand, despite massive amounts of money and effort directed at eradicating supply and criminalizing demand.


Instead of learning from this history, however, the state continues its meaningless pursuit by turning to things such as sewage epidemiology. While some European countries put this technology to good use by monitoring sewage for environmental toxins, in the U.S. it will be used to repress its citizens.


Most information on drug use is gathered by the state through surveys, crime statistics, and drug seizures. Analyzing our bodily waste will "help law enforcement identify new drug hot spots."


After all, they have to find reasons to use all that fancy new military gear.


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Scotish orphans used in 'military experiments'

Lennox Castle Hospital

© The Express, UK

Lennox Castle Hospital is one of four Scottish institutions alleged to have been involved.



The allegations centre on at least four institutions where thousands of children are said to have been experimented upon in conditions described as "like something out of Auschwitz".

It is alleged that Porton Down, the top secret military facility in Wiltshire, was involved in trialling drugs for use in the Cold War on youngsters who were regarded as "feeble-minded".


One survivor told this newspaper he has obtained written and video evidence that he will pass to the public inquiry into historical abuse of children in care when it begins next year.


The man, now in his 50s, has been advised by lawyers to conceal his identity for his own safety until his full submission can be lodged at the inquiry announced by Scottish Education Secretary Angela Constance.


However, he was willing to divulge some of his intended testimony about the treatment he and others suffered.


He said: "Six and seven year olds were tied to racks and given electric shocks.


"I was incarcerated with orderlies armed with rubber coshes.


"We were imprisoned, experimented upon, lobotomies, you name it, they did it.


"I was there, I saw it with my own eyes.


"I was classed as a misfit, a mental oddity, made a ward of court.


"My mother was killed and I became an orphan, so they took it upon themselves to have me experimented upon."


Lennox Castle Hospital, near Lennoxtown, East Dunbartonshire, is one of four Scottish institutions alleged to have been involved.


The witness believes there may have been as many as 3,500 children who were involved in the Porton Down testing programme over the years.


He said: "They were using orphans to experiment with drugs for the Cold War.


"The drug programme ran from 1948 to 1982.


"I believe this happened throughout the UK but I'm referring to Scotland.


"I have this evidence, on paper and on film, and I will hand it to the public inquiry.


"It was like something out of Auschwitz and people will be full of revulsion when they learn the state allowed this to happen."


Lennox Castle Hospital, which closed in 2002 and is now the site of Celtic FC's training ground, was home to children and adults with learning difficulties or conditions such as Down's syndrome, as well as truants, unmarried mothers and wayward teenagers.


Some patients were sent there as children, often for the most trivial reasons, and ended up spending decades locked up.


Conditions improved after a series of damning reports and investigations, including a 1986 World in Action TV documentary which led to questions in the House of Commons.


Last night, Professor Ulf Schmidt of the University of Kent, Britain's leading expert on human experimentation at Porton Down, said he had never heard of a drug trial programme involving orphans.


He added: "That is not to say these experiments didn't happen, but I would be very cautious in dealing with these allegations.


"Some stories have appeared and reappeared over the past 50 years, including a similar one about drug testing and euthanasia involving elderly people that was eventually shown to be false."


Six years ago hundreds of veterans who 'volunteered' to take part in tests at Porton Down were offered £3million in compensation.


They were exposed to nerve agents, such as sarin gas, and hallucinogens, such as LSD.


In the most infamous case, from 1953, Ronald Maddison took part in a trial of what he believed was a cold remedy, but died within an hour of having sarin dabbed on his arm.


Other Porton Down experiments included spraying bacteria over the south coast of England and dropping cancer-causing particles from planes.


And Gruinard Island in Wester Ross had to be sealed off for almost 50 years after it was contaminated with anthrax during the Second World War.


Porton Down is the home of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, an agency of the Ministry of Defence.


A spokeswoman said: "We are not aware of any tests involving children at Portown Down and have seen absolutely no evidence to back up these claims."


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Four-year old Virginia preschooler handcuffed, shackled, taken to sheriff's office for misbehaving


© WND



Officials at a Virginia school turned an allegedly misbehaving 4-year-old preschooler over to law enforcement, where he was put in handcuffs and shackles and ordered to talk to jail inmates, according to a legal group intervening in the case.

The unnamed student, who was enrolled in the pre-kindergarten program at Nathanael Greene Primary School, in Stanardsville, Virginia, was removed from the classroom Oct. 16 after allegedly "becoming agitated and throwing several items onto the floor."


"That such extreme restraints would even be contemplated in a case such as this points to a failure by those in leadership to provide the proper guidance to school personnel in what forms of restraint and force are appropriate when dealing with students, especially the youngest and most ," said a letter sent this week to school district officials by John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, which was asked by the mother to intervene.


"It is imperative that Green County Public Schools take steps to assure [the student's mother] and the rest of the community of parents and concerned citizens that what happened to [the student] will not happen again to him or other students of similar age," Whitehead said.


The letter said policies should make it clear that handcuffing, shackling and other "excessive restraint techniques are never appropriate when dealing with children of tender years."


"Under the circumstances, Green County Public Schools should also rescind the suspension imposed upon [the student] and remove any indication of the incident from [the student's] records. The trauma [the student] has endured, which continues to cause him nightmares and may forever taint his experience and thoughts about school, should not be compounded by a blemish on his record."


Whitehead asked for a response to the letter by Dec. 30.


School officials declined to respond to a message left by WND requesting comment.


When the conflict with the student arose Oct. 16, his mother was called, and she informed the school she was on her way to the school.


However, school personnel then called a Greene County deputy sheriff to confront the preschooler, which agitated the student further.


"The officer escalated the situation by treating the 4-year-old as if he were being arrested: handcuffing [the student] and transporting him in a police car to a Greene County sheriff's office," the letter said.


There, the officer "forced [the 4-year-old] to speak with persons who had been arrested in an apparent attempt to 'scare straight' the preschooler," the letter said.


"No child, particularly children of tender years who are as emotionally fragile as [the student] should have to endure the shock and fright that accompanies handcuffing and shackling," the letter said. "These extreme forms of restraint are meant to be used only in those instances where law enforcement officers would be endangered by their proximity to unencumbered persons who pose a risk of violence."


The letter noted that not only has a psychologist confirmed the incident could have "long-term consequences," the school's actions also may have been a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable seizures.


"It is self-evident that handcuffing and shackling a four-year-old by a law enforcement officer is excessive, unwarranted and unnecessarily traumatizing," the letter said.


"That it was a sheriff's deputy and not a public school official who handcuffed and shackled this 4-year-old does not detract from the fact that this mother entrusted her son to the care of school officials, trusting them to care for him as she would, with compassion, understanding and patience," said Whitehead, author of "A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State."


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


WikiLeaks releases classified CIA agents tips on infiltrating EU, Schengen


© Sputnik/ Iliya Pitalev



The US Central Intelligence Agency has issued advice for its agents on how to infiltrate international passport control systems, including in the European Union and the Schengen area, according to two previously undisclosed documents published by WikiLeaks on Sunday.


"The European Union's Schengen biometric-based border-management systems pose a minimal identity threat to US operational travellers because their primary focus is illegal immigration and criminal activities, not counter-intelligence," reads one of the documents, dated January 2012.


The CIA advice booklet, entitled "Schengen Overview", gives detailed information on customs procedures in the Europe and threats they pose to agents using false documents. While biometric systems are currently not used for people with US documents, this could possibly change in 2015, increasing the "identity threat level", according to the CIA.


The second document, dated September 21, 2011, gives advice on how to pass airports screenings across the world.


The manual, titled "Surviving Secondary", notes that airport watch lists may include names of confirmed or suspected intelligence agents and lists a number of signs that could disclose one's identity, such as apparent nervousness and inability to speak the language of the passport-issuing country.


The document also lists special security procedures in a number of international airports and underlines that a "consistent, well-rehearsed, and plausible cover is important for avoiding secondary selection and critical for surviving it."


According to the manual, accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn could help make the false identity more plausible.


In a highlighted box entitled "The Importance of Maintaining Cover - No Matter What", the CIA describes a situation where an intelligence officer was selected for secondary screening in a EU country, possibly due to "overly casual dress inconsistent with being a diplomatic-passport".


When the CIA officer's bag screened positive for traces of explosives, he presented a cover story on having engaged in counter-terrorism training in Washington DC. Even though local security officials initially concluded that the agent had trained in a terrorist camp, he "consistently maintained" his cover story and was eventually allowed to proceed with his travels.


The publication of the two travel advice documents is the second release within the WikilLeak's so-called CIA Series, which is set to continue next year.


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Introducing Alfreda Bikowsky: Senior officer at the CIA and otherwise known as "The unidentified Queen of torture"


© Sergey Petrov / shutterstock



NBC News yesterday called her a "key apologist" for the CIA's torture program. A follow-up article dubbed her "The Unidentified Queen of Torture" and in part "the model for the lead character in 'Zero Dark Thirty.'" Yet in both articles she was anonymous.

The person described by both NBC and is senior CIA officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. Multiple news outlets have reported that as the result of a long string of significant errors and malfeasance, her competence and integrity are doubted - even by some within the agency.


is naming Bikowsky over CIA objections because of her key role in misleading Congress about the agency's use of torture, and her active participation in the torture program (including playing a direct part in the torture of at least one innocent detainee). Moreover, Bikowsky has already been publicly identified by news organizations as the CIA officer responsible for many of these acts.


The executive summary of the torture report released by the Senate last week provides abundant documentation that the CIA repeatedly and deliberately misled Congress about multiple aspects of its interrogation program. Yesterday, reported that one senior CIA officer in particular was responsible for many of those false claims, describing her as "a top al Qaeda expert who remains in a senior position at the CIA."


NBC, while withholding her identity, noted that the same unnamed officer "also participated in 'enhanced interrogations' of self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah and ordered the detention of a suspected terrorist who turned out to be unconnected to al Qaeda, according to the report."


's Jane Mayer, writing yesterday about the NBC article, added that the officer "is still in a position of high authority over counterterrorism at the C.I.A." This officer, Mayer noted, is the same one who "dropped the ball when the C.I.A. was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11 attacks; she gleefully participated in torture sessions afterward; she misinterpreted intelligence in such a way that it sent the C.I.A. on an absurd chase for Al Qaeda sleeper cells in Montana. And then she falsely told congressional overseers that the torture worked." Mayer also wrote that the officer is "the same woman" identified in the Senate report who oversaw "the months-long rendition and gruesome interrogation of another detainee whose detention was a case of mistaken identity."


Both news outlets withheld the name of this CIA officer even though her identity is widely known among journalists, and her name has been used by various media outlets in connection with her work at the CIA. Both articles cited requests by the CIA not to identify her, even though they provided details making her identity clear.


In fact, earlier this year, identified Bikowsky by name, describing her as a CIA analyst "who was tied to a critical intelligence-sharing failure before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the botched 2003 'rendition' of an innocent German citizen thought to be an al-Qaeda operative." That report led to both McClatchy and independent journalist Marcy Wheeler raising questions about the propriety of Bikowsky's former personal lawyer, Robert Litt, playing a key role in his current capacity as a top government lawyer in deciding which parts of the torture report should be released.


The McClatchy article identified Bikowsky by name as the officer who "played a central role in the bungled rendition of Khaled el-Masri. El-Masri, who was revealed to be innocent, claimed to have been tortured by the agency." El-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped from Macedonia and tortured by the CIA in Afghanistan, was released in 2003 after it was revealed he was not involved in al Qaeda.


Back in 2011, John Cook, the outgoing editor of The Intercept, wrote an article at Gawker, based on the reporting of Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, naming Bikowsky and pointing to extensive evidence showing that she "has a long (if pseudonymous) history of being associated with some of the agency's most disastrous boondoggles," including a key role in the CIA's pre-9/11 failure to notify the FBI that two known al Qaeda operatives had entered the country.


Earlier that year, the Associated Press reported that a "hard-charging CIA analyst [who] had pushed the agency into one of the biggest diplomatic embarrassments of the U.S. war on terrorism" (the rendering for torture of the innocent El-Masri) was repeatedly promoted. Despite internal recommendations that she be punished, the AP reported that she instead "has risen to one of the premier jobs in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center."




The article named her as "Frances," explaining that the AP "agreed to the CIA's request to refer to Frances by her middle name because her first is unusual."

Bikowsky's name, and her long string of controversial actions, have become such an open secret that she even has her own lengthy, detailed Wikipedia page. The entry describes her as a "career Central Intelligence Agency officer who has headed . . . the Global Jihad unit."


In the months leading up to the release of the torture report, the CIA and the White House fought to prevent the Senate even from assigning pseudonyms to the CIA officers whose actions are chronicled in the report. The Senate ultimately capitulated, making it difficult to follow any coherent narrative about what these officers did.


As Mayer wrote in yesterday's article:




Readers can speculate on how the pieces fit together, and who the personalities behind this program are. But without even pseudonyms, it is exceedingly hard to connect the dots. . . . [W]ithout names, or even pseudonyms, it is almost impossible to piece together the puzzle, or hold anyone in the American government accountable. Evidently, that is exactly what the C.I.A. was fighting for during its eight-month-long redaction process, behind all those closed doors.




Naming Bikowsky allows people to piece together these puzzles and hold American officials accountable. The CIA's arguments for suppression of her name are vague and unpersuasive, alluding generally to the possibility that she could be the target of retaliation.

The CIA's arguments focus on an undefined threat to her safety. "We would strongly object to attaching anyone's name given the current environment," a CIA spokesperson, Ryan Trapani, told in an email. In a follow-up voicemail he added: "There are crazy people in this world and we are trying to mitigate those threats."




However, beyond Bikowsky, a number of CIA officials who oversaw and implemented the program have already been publicly identified - indeed, many of the key architects of the program, such as Jose Rodriguez, are frequent guests on news programs.

Trapani also argued that the Senate report is "based only upon one side's perspective on this story" and that an article about Bikowsky "doesn't require naming a person who's never had a chance to rebut what's been said about them." When asked for the CIA's rebuttal - or Bikowsky's - to the critical portrayal of her in the Senate report, Trapani declined to offer one. He noted that CIA Director John Brennan had disputed the report's contention that the agency had misrepresented the value of the interrogation program.


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Oswald and Atta: Erratic, protected, seeking attention -- CIA patsies




Atta and Oswald: CIA suckers.



Graeme MacQueen's new book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception , reveals stunning links between the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks that immediately followed. The book also reviews some of the interesting actions taken by alleged hijacker leader, Mohamed Atta, in the years preceding 9/11. These actions suggest that Atta was trying to leave the people he encountered with memories that would support the official myth. In the few years before JFK's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald engaged in similar attention-seeking actions. Considering this leads to the discovery that Oswald and Atta had a lot in common.

The legend of Mohamed Atta describes a man who seemed to be everywhere at once. In just the two years before 9/11, Atta reportedly lived and/or plotted in Germany, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan (via Turkey and Pakistan), Oklahoma, Las Vegas, Spain, and numerous locations in Florida. Oswald also traveled extensively in the years before the JFK assassination - back and forth from California to Japan, to New Orleans, Dallas, and Fort Worth, to Mexico City, and to Minsk and Moscow.


Atta was involved in many notable events in a short period before 9/11. Among other things, he annoyed airport employees, was bitten by a dog , consumed alcohol and cocaine, lived with an exotic dancer , and killed a cat and her litter of kittens. He got pulled over for driving without a license, got drunk and swore at a waiter, and abandoned a plane on the runway . In some of these cases Atta interacted with police and the risk for police interactions was there in almost every case.


Some of Atta's reported actions suggest that he was trying to leave clues. One such incident, occurring around April of 2000, involved his attempt to seek a U.S. government loan to help him purchase and modify a crop dusting plane for large-scale chemical use. In his one-hour encounter with Johnell Bryant, a federal employee from whom he was seeking the loan, Atta talked about security at the World Trade Center and buildings in Washington. He went on to talk about his connection to Al Qaeda and his admiration for Osama bin Laden. The most vivid memory Bryant had of Atta was his extremely dilated pupils - a symptom of drug abuse.


In his interaction with Bryant, Atta made a big deal about a picture of Washington D.C. in her office. Bryant said that Atta acted like he wanted that picture very badly. Johnell said that Atta's "emotions kept going up and down, up and down" and he became agitated when she would not sell him the picture or give him the $650,000 loan to buy the plane and equip it with the large chemical tank. To emphasize his displeasure and heighten the experience, Atta suggested that he might cut her throat. Those are certainly not the actions of someone trying to keep a highly secret terrorist plot from being discovered.


Atta's antics continued until the day before 9/11, when he made an inexplicable last-minute trip to Portland, Maine, leaving with only 75 minutes to catch the flight that he allegedly had carefully planned to hijack in Boston. He conveniently left the most incriminating evidence possible in his luggage.


Like Atta, Lee Harvey Oswald was busy making himself visible before he allegedly assassinated the President of the United States. His activities in that regard are described well in James Douglass' book, JFK and the Unspeakable . In fact, reports about Oswald suggest that, like Atta, he was too busy to have been only one person. Whoever it was, the person posing as Oswald made a number of attempts to draw attention his way.


Oswald's strange behavior in the summer of 1963 provided evidence that he was trying to be noticed. In New Orleans, he engaged in pro-Castro activities by pretending to be the head of the local chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee - but he was its only member. This appears to have been a superficial attempt to support what would become the official line that communists were behind the JFK assassination.


Oswald went to Mexico City in the fall of 1963. During this visit he allegedly made phone calls and visits to both the Cuban and Soviet embassies. He is also reported to have written a letter to a known KGB agent who specialized in assassinations. The CIA monitored such communications closely and it is interesting to consider that 9/11 investigation leader Porter Goss was a CIA operative in Mexico City that same year. In any case, whether true or not, Oswald's reported actions there indicate that he was working to provide a more recent history for himself as a communist operative or supporter.


Another such incident occurred in the last week of September 1963, when strangers visited Silvia Odio, a 26-year-old Cuban immigrant, in her Dallas apartment. They told Silvia that they were members of an anti-Castro group that her parents were involved in. Sylvia was suspicious, but the visitors said they had come to introduce her to an American named Leon Oswald, who accompanied them. A couple of days later, Sylvia got a phone call from one of them who asked, "What do you think of the American? He's great but kinda nuts. He told us we don't have any guts, you Cubans, because President Kennedy should have been assassinated right after the Bay of Pigs."


Sylvia was disturbed by the visit and the call, and she wrote to her father in prison who wrote back that he knew none of the visitors. When Sylvia heard of President Kennedy's assassination on the radio - before any mention of Oswald had been made - she was convinced that "Leon Oswald" did it and she reported it to authorities. The FBI interviewed Sylvia in December 1963. Although her testimony was not included in the Warren Report, the incident was clearly meant to connect Oswald to the assassination plot.


Apart from their world travels and attempts to be noticed, Atta and Oswald had other important things in common. For one, both of them appeared to be above the law. That is, they both committed crimes and yet they were not held accountable.




There are reasons to believe that Oswald might have been subjected to CIA mind-control experiments using LSD in the late 1950s. In any case, in 1959 he defected to the Soviet Union. At the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, he reportedly told officials that he planned to give radar secrets to the Soviets. That, of course, would have been treason. Oswald lived in the Soviet Union for three years and married a young Russian woman. In June 1962, he was not only allowed to return to the United States, the U.S. government loaned him money to return , never prosecuted him, and claimed to have never even debriefed him.

Although Mohamed Atta 's pre-9/11 crimes were not so dramatic, he enjoyed the same unbelievable luck with regard to lack of prosecution or interrogation. In 1995, Atta was investigated by German authorities for drug-related offenses yet was never charged. There is evidence that Atta continued to use drugs, as was suspected of Oswald. Atta's stripper girlfriend, Amanda Keller, said that he "had massive supplies of cocaine" which he restocked whenever needed at one of the flight schools he frequented in Florida. Keller said that during the time she dated him, she saw Atta do cocaine on multiple occasions.


Atta should have also been wanted for abandoning a stalled aircraft on a busy runway at Miami International Airport, in December 2000. Although the Federal Aviation Administration threatened to investigate the matter and hold him accountable, the whole thing was mysteriously dropped .


Three months before 9/11, a warrant was issued for Atta's arrest in Florida. Having been stopped earlier by Florida police and cited for not having a driver's license, the warrant was issued because Atta failed to show up at court for the hearing. Yet not only was he not arrested, Atta spent the next few months flying all over the U.S. using his real name without being stopped or questioned. He was pulled over again in July - this time for speeding - in Delray Beach, Florida. Instead of being arrested on the outstanding warrant (supposedly still not entered in the computer system more than a month later,) Atta was simply given a warning.


If the Delray Beach police had checked his immigration status, they would have found that Atta's visa had expired - another crime. A month after that, Atta's rental car was queried by police in Broward County, Florida. The existing arrest warrant still did not generate interest, despite the fact that Atta had rented the car in his own name. When Atta bought his flight ticket for 9/11, the outstanding arrest warrant was still in effect and his visa had been expired for over two months. It turned out that violating visa regulations was common for many of the alleged hijackers, yet it never caused them problems.


People have often wondered if Oswald was a CIA employee. Whether or not that was true, or can be proven, several of Oswald's associates were CIA employees. For example, Oswald's "best friend" in Dallas, George DeMohrenschild, admitted that he was connected to the Dallas office of the CIA. Another close friend of Oswald and his wife was Ruth Paine, in whose house much of the incriminating evidence was found. Paine's sister worked for the CIA and Oswald's wife later said that Paine was sympathizing (or associated) with the CIA.


Similarly, Mohamed Atta had associations with people linked to the CIA. For example, Luai Sakra, an informant for the CIA, was reportedly in contact with Atta before 9/11. Sakra's lawyer later said that his client admitted to helping the alleged hijackers. Moreover, it is known that the CIA made efforts to recruit another of Atta's friends. This was Mamoun Darkazanli, who along with Atta was a member of the Hamburg Al-Qaeda cell.


By early 2000, Atta was under CIA surveillance. At the time, he began contacting flight schools in the United States. This included communicating with and visiting airports in Oklahoma. Those activities led Atta to the same locations as persons of 9/11 interest such as University of Oklahoma president David Boren and Stratesec CEO Wirt D. Walker, whose company provided security for facilities related to 9/11.


The man who trained Zacarias Moussaoui, the sole person convicted of crimes related to 9/11, now occupies the same airport hangar as Walker's companies did in the years before and after 9/11. Coincidentally, while Atta and Marwan Alshehhi were learning to fly at Huffmann Aviation in Venice, Florida, "A CIA front company called Air Caribe was also operating out of the very same hangar at Venice airport." The southwest Florida area near Venice, where Atta and the alleged hijackers spent so much time, was home to a long history of CIA and drug trafficking operations.


Lee Harvey Oswald and Mohamed Atta had much in common. They both traveled extensively in the time leading up to their respective crimes and both sought attention in ways that would implicate them in those crimes. They were both suspected of using illicit drugs. They both seemed to be protected by authorities when they might have been prosecuted before accomplishing their tasks, and they were both associated with CIA-linked entities. Officially the biggest difference between them is that one was part of a conspiracy and one was not, but the evidence indicates that they were both operating within wider deceptions controlled by powerful people.


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