Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

"I can't confirm or deny whether such a program exists or whether the president signed it, but it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime," said Bruce Riedel, a recently retired CIA senior official who dealt with Iran and other countries in the region.
A National Security Council spokesperson, Gordon Johndroe, said, "The White House does not comment on intelligence matters." A CIA spokesperson said, "As a matter of course, we do not comment on allegations of covert activity."

The sources say the CIA developed the covert plan over the last year and received approval from White House officials and other officials in the intelligence community.

Officials say the covert plan is designed to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program and end aid to insurgents in Iraq.

"There are some channels where the United States government may want to do things without its hand showing, and legally, therefore, the administration would, if it's doing that, need an intelligence finding and would need to tell the Congress," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official.

Current and former intelligence officials say the approval of the covert action means the Bush administration, for the time being, has decided not to pursue a military option against Iran.

"Vice President Cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike," said former CIA official Riedel, "but I think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides."

The covert action plan comes as U.S. officials have confirmed Iran had dramatically increased its ability to produce nuclear weapons material, at a pace that experts said would give them the ability to build a nuclear bomb in two years.

Riedel says economic pressure on Iran may be the most effective tool available to the CIA, particularly in going after secret accounts used to fund the nuclear program.

"The kind of dealings that the Iranian Revolution Guards are going to do, in terms of purchasing nuclear and missile components, are likely to be extremely secret, and you're going to have to work very, very hard to find them, and that's exactly the kind of thing the CIA's nonproliferation center and others would be expert at trying to look into," Riedel said.

Under the law, the CIA needs an official presidential finding to carry out such covert actions. The CIA is permitted to mount covert "collection" operations without a presidential finding.

"Presidential findings" are kept secret but reported to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other key congressional leaders.

The "nonlethal" aspect of the presidential finding means CIA officers may not use deadly force in carrying out the secret operations against Iran.

Still, some fear that even a nonlethal covert CIA program carries great risks.

"I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran," said Vali Nasr, adjunct senior fellow for Mideast studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"And this covert action is now being escalated by the new U.S. directive, and that can very quickly lead to Iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow," Nasr said.

Other "lethal" findings have authorized CIA covert actions against al Qaeda, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Also briefed on the CIA proposal, according to intelligence sources, were National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams.

"The entire plan has been blessed by Abrams, in particular," said one intelligence source familiar with the plan. "And Hadley had to put his chop on it."

Abrams' last involvement with attempting to destabilize a foreign government led to criminal charges.

He pleaded guilty in October 1991 to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress about the Reagan administration's ill-fated efforts to destabilize the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in Central America, known as the Iran-Contra affair. Abrams was later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush in December 1992.

In June 2001, Abrams was named by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to head the National Security Council's office for democracy, human rights and international operations. On Feb. 2, 2005, National Security Advisor Hadley appointed Abrams deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy, one of the nation's most senior national security positions.

As earlier reported on the Blotter on ABCNews.com, the United States has supported and encouraged an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, that has conducted deadly raids inside Iran from bases on the rugged Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan "tri-border region."

U.S. officials deny any "direct funding" of Jundullah groups but say the leader of Jundullah was in regular contact with U.S. officials.

American intelligence sources say Jundullah has received money and weapons through the Afghanistan and Pakistan military and Pakistan's intelligence service. Pakistan has officially denied any connection.

A report broadcast on Iranian TV last Sunday said Iranian authorities had captured 10 men crossing the border with $500,000 in cash along with "maps of sensitive areas" and "modern spy equipment."

A senior Pakistani official told ABCNews.com the 10 men were members of Jundullah.

The leader of the Jundullah group, according to the Pakistani official, has been recruiting and training "hundreds of men" for "unspecified missions" across the border in Iran.

Will Republicans Destroy Themselves Before They Destroy America?

lew rockwell.com
The fallout now taints us all.

As everyone except for a dwindling band of Bush supporters now knows, the US is in a terrible situation in Iraq from which it cannot extract itself. For Bush and Cheney, their own pride and delusion are more compelling than US casualties, the destruction of Iraq and its people, and the inflaming of sectarian strife and anti-American violence throughout the Middle East.

Congress is complicit in the great strategic blunder. Republican flag-wavers led Americans like lemmings into the abyss. The Democrats have already abandoned the electorate that gave them Control of Congress six months ago in the false hope that the Democrats would corral the White House Moron and lead America out of the abyss.

Like the Republicans, the Democrats serve the few special-interest groups that benefit, or believe that they benefit, from the war. By now we all know who these groups are: the oil industry, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby, AIPAC. This contrived war, based on lies and deception, serves no other interest.

There is no longer any question whatsoever, not a single sliver of doubt, that Americans were deceived into this disastrous war. The President of the United States lied to the American people, as did the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Undersecretary of Defense, as did every neoconservative in the Bush administration, think tanks, and media.

The fact that the American people were lied to and deceived does not absolve them from blame. The lie was transparent, the logic nonexistent, the true facts available and easy to discover.

America failed, because the American people failed. The American people failed, because their self-righteousness and their hubris made them easy saps for deception.

Even now after five years of a disastrous policy, Republicans cannot accept the facts about the US invasion and failed occupation of Iraq. At the recent "debate" between Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina, US Representative Ron Paul dared to tell the truth. Rep. Paul said that our difficulties in the Middle East are "blowback" from our government’s determined attempts to exercise hegemony over the Middle East.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a person who sunk so low as to frame innocents while serving as US Attorney in order to boost his name recognition, played the self-righteous card to extreme. How dare Ron Paul suggest that US policy toward Muslims has anything whatsoever to do with attacks on the US! With all the outrage he could muster, Giuliani asked Rep. Paul "to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that."

The thunderous applause from the Republican audience to Giuliani’s put-down of the only honest person present underlines that the Republican Party is incapable of leadership to end a futile and lost war that under international standards is a war crime, an unprovoked naked aggression based entirely on lies, deception and a secret agenda.

At other times, the Republican audience applauded in support of torture and greeted John McCain’s protest against the practice with cold silence.

In the opening years of the 21st century the Republicans have made it clear that they are willing to sacrifice the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to wage "war against terrorism." This willingness makes the Republican Party a more dangerous threat to Americans than Muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorists cannot destroy our country’s reputation, trash our civil liberties and wreck our system of accountable government, but the Republican Party has done a thorough job of it.

The Democratic Party is complicit in the Republican Party’s crimes, but unlike the Republican electorate, the Democratic electorate does not support the occupation, the domestic police state measures, and the Bush administration’s decision to send more combat troops to Iraq. Although none of the current frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination are independent of the special interests that benefit from the war, it might still be possible for a Democrat to emerge who will represent the Democratic electorate instead of the special interests.

Republican support for Bush’s contrived war against Iraq has diminished the Republican Party. Intelligent and decent people have abandoned the party, which has morphed into a Brownshirt Party with which fewer people are willing to be associated. The diminished Republican ranks will make it difficult for the party to steal any more elections.

If we are fortunate, Republicans will complete their self-destruction before they extinguish the Constitution and destroy America.

Microsoft develops 'big brother' software

THE INQUIRER
BACKROOM BOFFINS at Microsoft have had a breakthrough in developing software which can accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing patterns in your web browsing history.

The big idea is to prevent people from protecting their online identity by telling porkies about their personal details.

According to New Scientist, Volish software engineer Jian Hu from Microsoft's research lab in Beijing said that there are strong correlations between the sites that people visit and their personal characteristics. For example, 74 per cent of women seek health and medical information online, while only 58 per cent of men do. And 34 per cent of women surf the internet for information about religion, whereas 25 per cent of men do the same.

Another Volish boffin said that Hua-Jun Zeng said software could get its raw information from a new type of "cookie" program that records the pages visited or even your own cache of web pages. So far the software can only guess gender and age with any accuracy, the next stage is to predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your location.

Debunkers Deny Existence Of NAU, JFK Conspiracy

Attitude of blind denial and dismissal threatens future of America
infowars

A recent Seattle Times article that scoffs at the very thought of a North American Union being implemented and dismisses it as a conspiracy theory sums up the biggest threat to freedom in America today, blind ignorance in the face of troubling facts.

"Forget conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, black helicopters, Sept. 11, 2001. This is the big one." writes Philip Dine

"We're talking about the secret plan to build a superhighway, a giant 10- to 12-lane production, from the Yucatán to the Yukon. This "SuperCorridor" would allow the really big part of the plan to take place: the merging of the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico. Say goodbye to the dollar, and maybe even the English language.

The rumor is sweeping the Internet, radio and magazines, spread by bloggers, broadcasters and writers who cite the "proof" in the writings of a respected American University professor, in a task force put together by the Council on Foreign Relations and in the workings of the Commerce Department. "

Dine goes on to surmise that the entire subject of the North American Union is an urban myth that "feeds on American fear of immigration and globalization".

The John Birch Society has an excellent response to Dine, which goes something along the lines of:

If the NAU is a myth why is it that...

* 18 states have introduced resolutions calling on their federal representatives to halt work on the North American Union (they include Virginia and South Carolina)
* 3 of these states (Idaho, Montana and Oklahoma) have passed their resolutions
* Oklahoma, which is in the path of the NAFTA superhighway component of the North American Union passed their resolution in the Senate 97-0. (see Basic Search Form link - top left - type in SCR10 )
* 22 U.S. Congressmen, including NC's Virginia Foxx and Walter Jones, along with all three Republican Congressmen running for President, have signed on as co-sponsors of HCR40, which calls on the executive branch to end all work on the North American Union and NAFTA superhighway
* Even the Sierra Club of Canada is sounding the alarm against the North American Union

We would add that if the North American Union is a myth why is it that Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) documents released under the FOIA show that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under this program to "integrate" and "harmonize" with administrative law in Mexico and Canada, just as has become commonplace within the EU.

The documents contain references to upwards of 13 working groups within an entire organized infrastructure that has drawn from officials within most areas of administrative government including U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Mr Dine simply dismisses the SPP by quoting a spokesman for the Commerce Department who describes SPP as "standard intergovernmental diplomacy and coordination that occurs all the time". The fact is though that standard intergovernmental coordination is required by law to adhere to Congressional oversight, something which the SPP agreement completely bypassed.

Dine also calls the slated single North American currency, the amero, a myth despite the fact that Robert Pastor, "the American University professor to whom conspiracy theorists point as 'the father of the NAU'" as he puts it, has authored a book and chairs confabs promoting the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

Just a conspiracy theory huh? Not according to Steve Previs of Jefferies International who stated on CNBC, "I think one thing for people who are dollar based need to focus on is the Amero, that's the one thing that nobody is talking about that I think is going to have a big impact... on everybody's life in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico..."

The recent news that the United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership that will see regulatory standards "harmonized" and will lay the basis for a merging of the US and EU into one single market , is also presumably a conspiracy theory.

The most telling aspect of Dine's Seattle Times article is his immediate connection of The NAU to " conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination ", a sure fire way of spotting a debunkaholic from a mile off.

A recent poll indicates that 80% of Americans believe the JFK murder was a conspiracy, older polls have been as high as 90% - are all these people misinformed or are they simply aware that the facts do not fit the story they have been sold on that issue?

For further clarification of what constitutes a debunkaholic, witness a classic piece of debunking here on the JFK assassination by a former Clinton official and lobbyist for the nation of Pakistan prior to 9/11, Lanny Davis:

Davis cites little green men and suggests that anything posted on the internet is a conspiracy. He also states that rattling around the internet now is the absurd suggestion that new evidence indicating a conspiracy in the JFK murder has come to light. He fails to mention that the new information comes from a former top FBI scientist along with Texas A&M University researchers and was reported in the Washington Post. Davis also neglects to mention new revelations from E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator, who admitted on his deathbed that he was part of a CIA conspiracy to assassinate JFK.

This is the mind set of the debunker. It has become all too easy for those who do not have the strength of character to stand up and be counted to dismiss anything they do not like the sound of as urban myth or conspiracy theory.

While there are many valiant truthseekers and active minds among us, on the opposite side a whole generation of debunkers has also emerged. A society of people who almost instinctively seize upon any issue and automatically explain any worrisome aspects as untrue or misunderstood because to do otherwise would mean having to set aside a great deal of their lives to search hard to find out what is really happening in the world around them.

The debunker generation, the fallout from a fast food culture of rampant consumerism, culturally and spiritually exhausted yet still yearning for more and more in less and less time, would rather look away than face the reality of what is really unfolding before their eyes.

Worse still are the high priests of the debunking generation who seem to declare themselves as some kind of pseudo psychologists, who rather than debate the bare facts of an issue will continually slip into an analysis of the internal mind. These debunkers dismiss anything they don't want to hear as "comfort seeking" or "reality escapism" conspiracy. 9/11 truthers for example are often roundly categorized as "people who want to believe they cannot do anything about the dangers we face in the world because they are too lazy and so invent theories and fit the facts to them".

The great irony here of course is that it is the debunkers themselves who are guilty of the crimes they have charged everyone else with and not the other way round.

Related article: 9/11 Debunkers Hide From Slam Dunk Evidence Of Controlled Demolition

Debunkaholic Michelle Malkin Was A 9/11 Truther

Neo-Con Fox News poster child who called truth movement a virus grilled official story in 2002 column
PRISONPLANET
Echoing the sheer hypocrisy of fellow debunkaholic George Monbiot, Michelle 'put every Muslim in a concentration camp' Malkin, who routinely attacks the 9/11 truth movement, was herself a truther, and wrote a column just six months after the attack in which she harshly questioned the official story.

Last week, Malkin appeared on Fox News' Big Story with John Gibson to smear the 9/11 truth movement as a "virus" and called for Ron Paul to be kicked out of the debates for associating with "9/11 conspiracy nut Alex Jones."

Deliciously ironic therefore it is to have uncovered one of her columns from 2002 , by way of the website michellemalkinisanidiot.com , in which she grills the official story, sounding far more like a "truther" than her incarnation today as a Neo-Con pin-up girl spouting phony indignation at Alex Jones and other 9/11 truth movement leaders.

Here are some of the highlights from her March 8 2002 piece, entitled 'Just Wondering'.

What really happened on United Airlines Flight 93? As the Philadelphia Daily News reported back in November, many folks in Shanksville, Pa., where the hijacked Boeing 757 crashed, believe the plane was shot down. The eight-mile-wide debris field seems to bolster claims of an on-board explosion. So did the discovery of a one-ton chunk of the plane's engine far from the rest of the crash site - which some say points to evidence that a heat-seeking missile targeted the flight.

What really happened on American Airlines Flight 11? Did one of the hijackers have a gun on board? Was it planted before the flight took off, or was it smuggled on? Either way, shouldn't someone be held accountable if such an egregious security breach did in fact take place? Investigative reporter Paul Sperry, formerly of Investor's Business Daily and now with Worldnetdaily.com, scooped the mainstream press by exposing a high-level, internal report from the Federal Aviation Administration. It detailed the alleged shooting of Flight 11 passenger Daniel Lewin by hijacker Satam Al Suqami.

According to the document, which was later obtained by the Washington Post, USA Today, and others, an onboard flight attendant reported in a phone call that "one bullet was reported to have been fired" during the flight, killing Lewin before the plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. FAA officials dismissed the leaked memo as a draft and claimed that the very specific report of gunfire - including the names of the victim, shooter, and their precise seat numbers -- was an editing error.
Just a typo, huh?

So what changed Michelle? Did you drink the Neo-Con cool aid or was it an intimate call from your friend Bill O'Reilly that swung it?

Malkin on Fox News badmouths 9/11 truth with John "the albino vampire" Gibson

Needless to say you look very stupid now.

Back in February we exposed another establishment shill , George Monbiot, as a total hypocrite after he echoed the claim that 9/11 truth was a virus and bashed Loose Change.

Shortly after the publication of his London Guardian rant, we uncovered one of Monbiot's earlier articles in which he questioned the official myth tat 19 Muslim hijackers executed the attack. Monbiot even went to the lengths of deleting the article from his own website in an attempt to hide his "truther" history but the piece remained elsehwere on the web.

Rest assured, next time Malkin or Monbiot open their mouths to trash 9/11 truth we will throw this back in their faces - but it hardly seems necessary to rebut these people as Malkin and the rest of the debunkaholics seem to do an awfully good job of making themselves look like complete idiots with no effort on our behalf.