Democracy Now and Amy Goodman state sponsored ? Wow ! Real research I’m sure ~

PBS is hosting the presidential debates tonight. Supposedly, candidates will be given equal time to speak and the speaking order will be drawn from a hat. Possibly Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich will not have to stand on the outskirts in this debate.

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/special/forums/

Ernest Canning IE The Bush-Nazi connection. Absolutely true and Bush senior did everything he could to suppress this information when he ran for president. His son continues by reclassifying declassified information.

81985 Anonymous poster… First off Amy Goodman is no bigot. Secondly and unlike the majority of major media in this country, Amy invites all opposition to join her show. Sadly many refuse comment or to participate. However, there is no lack on her part in giving the opposition a voice.

But since Reagan destroyed the congressionally created Fairness Act and deregulated major broadcast media in the 1980’s, there is generally no opposition from their standpoint, at least concerning key matters of importance in any major media outlet! Amy however is again an exception to this corporate rule!

When was the last time you saw Amy Goodman get a voice on any major broadcast news? Hardly ever! Hardball gave her a shot but that was out of the ordinary.

As an advocate for peace, Amy was blacklisted from participating in any major media whose biggest concerns were promoting this illegal war in Iraq for their owners, the defense contractors!

Amy has often spoken of many of the things you are talking about, but she is only a journalist, not a president or member of the UN security council.

I think you actually need to watch her show. You are way off in your appraisal of Amy Goodman.

God bless Amy Goodman and Karl Ellsberg and anyone else who believes that the truth must be told and that government officials are responsible for upholding their constitutional oaths. Had they done this in the first place, Bush and company would have been impeached by now. I’m sure of it! Hopefully someone will have the courage people like Ellsberg and Mike Gravel did and reveal what’s under the shroud of darkness created by this current administration.

Re comment #81285.  Amy Goodman is not “state funded.” Democracy Now! is listener sponsored.  She, along with Juan Gonzales and Bill Moyers, represents the best broadcast journalism has to offer not only in this nation but throughout the world.  She speaks “truth” to power, including the power of the fascist-leaning, Zionist/AIPAC lobby from which you obviously spring.  Don’t you get enough of your Zionist propaganda from the corporate media?  Do you have to infect a place called “Truth"-dig with your virulently racist ideology?

Skruff, you are half right.  UBC stock was seized by the Alien Property Custodian in 1942.  However, as revealed by Joseph Trento in “Prelude to Terror,” in 2003 the “New Hampshire Gazette” discovered in the National Archives documents which revealed that Prescott Bush “failed to divest himself of more than a dozen ‘enemy national’ relationships that continued until as late as 1951....Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators.”

So you see, Prescott continued to do business with the enemy even while son George H. W. Bush was fighting in the Pacific.

KENNEDY ASSASSINATION--PART III

Prescott Bush set upon a job for George H.W. with Henry Neil Malon and Dresser Industries, which Trento asserts “had long provided cover for the agency.” Dulles recruited George H.W., who per Trento, began “doing favors for the CIA” in 1956 after he moved to Houston and established Zapata-Offshore, which led to his involvement with the anti-Castro Cubans in which the CIA used Zapata-Offshore oil rigs as training areas in advance of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

While Trento’s sources suggest George H. W. Bush’s role was peripheral, circumstantial evidence suggests otherwise.  The names of the two repainted vessels obtained by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty for the Bay of Pigs invasion were “Houston” and “Barbara.” The top secret code name for the invasion was “Operation Zapata.”

On Nov. 29, 1963 J. Edgar Hoover directed a memo to the State Department entitled, “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963,” which revealed that on Nov. 23, 1963 FBI Agent W.T. Forsyth and Capt. William Edwards of the DIA briefed “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” The Hoover memo was unearthed by Joseph McBride of “The Nation” magazine in 1988.  When confronted, then VP Bush, through a spokesperson, denied that he had ever worked for the CIA before being appointed its director in 1975.  It was suggested that the memo referred to another “George Bush” who worked at the CIA, but a follow-up by McBride revealed that claim to be dubious.

As to Oswald:  During a 1977 public debate with Lane, David Attlee Phillips, the CIA’s former head of intelligence for the Western Hemisphere, after aplogizing for the agency’s attempt to malign and discredit Lane for his earlier work, “Rush to Judgment,” let slip:  “Now, I am not in a position today to talk to you about the inner workings of the CIA station in Mexico City...; but I will tell you this,...there was never a photograph taken of Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City....There is no evidence to show that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy.” This remark flatly contradicted not only the statements Phillips made to the Warren Commission but his swon testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.  Per Lane, the CIA, as it was planning the assassination, established a “false trail” that would lead to Oswald because Oswald was an FBI informant.  He contends that the purpose was to “freeze Hoover,” which it did.

KENNEDY ASSASSINATION, PART II

Afterwards, per Lane, the CIA engaged in a massive cover-up both within the Warren Commission and at a subsequent House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation.  The CIA cover-up was facilitated by its former director, Allen Dulles, who had been fired by President Kennedy only to be appointed as a key member of the Warren Commission.  The FBI’s man inside the Commission was Gerald Ford, who illegally passed on top secret infromation to Hoover’s assistant, Cartha DeLoach, noting that FBI assistance was needed to bring two dissenting Commission members to the FBI’s view that the shots that killed Kennedy had been fired from the sixth floor windowof the Texas School Book Depository.

There is a rather curious link between the Kennedy assassination and Watergate that goes beyond the Lorenz identification of Watergate burglars Hunt and Sturgis.  The connection was made by none other than H.R. Haldeman in “The Ends of Power” (1978), recounted by Lane in “Plausible Denial.” Seeking the CIAs protection from the escalating Watergate scandal, Nixon dispatched Haldeman to meet with Richard Helms.  When Haldeman was met by the usual CIA stonewalling, he told Helms, “The president asked me to tell you this entire affair may be connected to the Bay of Pigs...” Helms came unglued, gripping the arms of his chair and shouting there was no connection.  Haldeman, initially perplexed by Helm’s overreaction, observed, “It seems that in all those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs he was referring to the kennedy assassination.” Haldeman went on to note “after Kennedy was killed, the CIA loaunched a fantastic cover-up” and that the “CIA literally erased any connection between the Kennedy assassination and the CIA.”

In a sense, it may be said that the CIA was the stepchild of Nazi Germany.  As revealed by Joseph Trento in “Prelude to Terror,” its founder, Alan Dulles, did business with the Nazis before the war.  Dulles served in the OSS in Berne, Switzerland.  From 1945 to 1947, preceding the creation of the CIA, Dulles ran his own private and entirely illegal intelligence service, in which, per Trento, he “began a massive ex-Nazi recruitment campaign, using a State Department refugee office as a front.” While the US was publicly securing convictions of high level Nazis, its intelligence agences were not merely shielding but actually retaining the services of such infamous butchers as Klaus Barbie.

Dulles did not limit recruitment to former Nazis.  He set his sights on those within the American business community who financed the Nazi rise to power, including one Prescott Bush, the president’s paternal grandfather, whose involvement with the Nazis, Trento asserts, did not reflect ideological affinity.  “It “was just money"--hardly a comfort given that at the time he was supporting the Nazi war machine, Prescott’s son, George H.W. Bush was off fighting in the Pacific.  Then again, perhaps it does say something about the relative importance of money in the Bush household.

Trento reveals that after the war, as damning evidence surfaced from captured German bank records, documents made their way into a CIA file where Dulles could shield Prescott while having something he could hold over him.  Prescott then “spent most of his post-World War II life cooperating with and taking an active interest in, the most covert CIA intelligence operations.” This inluded, following Prescott’s election to the Senate, maneuvering to obtain a position on the Senate Armed Services Committee and, upon Dulles’s urging, a position on the subcommittee which oversaw the CIA.

Skruff, from your comment I think it is safe to assume that you never read Mark Lane’s “Plausible Denial,” that you, like most Americans, never heard of Marita Lorenz or of the significance of the Feb. 6, 1985 verdict rendered in a Florida federal court in the case of Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby.  Sad, because they entail facts “every” American should know; facts that you will not see released as part of the CIA “family jewels.”

KENNEDY ASSASSINATION--PART I

Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby was a libel action brought by Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt against former CIA officer Victor Marchetti and his publisher, Liberty Lobby, for an article that implicated Hunt in the Kennedy assassination.  Attorney Mark Lane defended the publisher, contending that the article was true. 

Ms. Lorenz was at one time Fidel Castro’s girlfriend--that is until the former head of the Cuban Air Force, Frank Fiorini aka Frank Sturgis, convinced her to flee Cuba to the US where she was recruited into the CIA based on a lie that Castro intended to kill her and her son.

During the trial, after Lane’s blistering cross-examination demolished Hunt’s credibility and his claim that he had been in Washington DC on the day of the assassination, Lane read Lorenz’s sworn deposition testimony into the record.

Lorenz testified, on direct, that she, along with Sturgis, Jack Patrick Hemming, Orlando Bosch & Alexander Rorke, Jr. traveled by way of a two-car caravan from Miami to Dallas in Nov. 1963.  One of the two cars was loaded with weapons.  Shortly after they arrived at a Dallas motel on Nov. 21, 1963, Hunt showed up; handed Sturgis an envelope filled with cash.  Hunt remained about 45 minutes.  Approximately one hour after Hunt left, another individual arrived.  Jack Ruby!

Lorenz said she had not been provided with the identity of the target of the operation; only knew that it was “big” and that she was to act as a decoy.  Having second thoughts, she persuaded Sturgis to drive her to the airport.  She flew back to Miami.

Hunt’s lawyer, concerned with the impact this had on Hunt’s denial that he was in Dallas, did not know when to leave well enough alone.  He asked Lorenz whether she had spoken to Sturgis about the the event after the assassination.  She had.  Sturgis told her she had missed “the really big one,” adding:  “We killed the President that day.  You could have been a part of it--you know, part of history.  You should have stayed.  It was safe.  Everything was covered in advance.  No arrests, no real newspaper investigation.  It was all covered, very professional.”

The jury found for Liberty Lobby.  Although jury foreperson Leslie Armstrong, when approached by the press, made it clear the jury was convinced the CIA had killed Kennedy and that Hunt was a part of it, a reporter pressed Armstrong about “actual malice.” Armstrong noted, per the judge’s instructions, “actual malice” is a part of every libel case, but here the jury did not need to reach the issue because they were convinced the Marchetti article was true.

That evening, a Miami TV station, owned by the Washington Post & Newsweek, reported only on Armstrong’s remark that actual malice is an essential element of every libel case.  Testimony and a verdict which should have been banner headlines, screaming across the front pages of every newspaper in the US was treated by the corporate-owned media as a non-event.

Lane’s “Plausible Denial” presents a thoughtful, fact-filled, persuasive and sustained argument of a likely CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, which Lane contends was brought on because Kennedy, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster, had planned to dismantle the CIA following an expected 1964 electoral victory and had issued National Security Action memo 263 on Oct. 2, 1963 containing a blueprint for the total withdrawel from Vietnam.

Amy, as usual you provide the remedial alternative and for that I am grateful....

#81763 by ctbrandon on 6/27 at 8:16 am
‘I agree with the other posters here who have expressed the opinion that Gravel, Kucinich, and Paul are the only 3 options we have in 2008.”

Just to be clear, and perhaps ctbrandon you are, Paul is a libertarian, and while thoughtful and right on the issue of US interventionism and the pathologies of US empire policies, it would be best to look before leaping; on topics of health care and domestic well being his policy disposition differs rather drastically with Kucinich.

These are, indeed, some refreshing and inspiring news. But they point to a small aspect of the corruption that seems to engulf the federal government.

Yes, federal employees need to be prodded to honor their commitment to the U.S. constitution. But they also ought to be warned that as part of the inevitable clean-up, those who set up, facilitated or tolerated corruption will be at risk of swift firing.

As entire pans of the government, such as the oversized military, will shut down, and as the remaining agencies will experience a strong drive towards teamwork, quality, productivity and public service, the federal payroll will shrink dramatically, and those with unethical records will be prime layoff candidates.

Love,

The residents of Alaska should be commended for sending a man of the calibre of Mike Gravel to the U.S. Senate.

Unlike the residents of Mississippi....another Blog.

This is yet another DEE-LIGHTFUL piece of news. I had NO IDEA that Mr. Gravel was so instrumental in getting these papers not only published, but into the record. It DOES read like a John Grisham novel, and really far more spine-tingling, because it’s TRUE. And, all he did to finally GET it into the record. That took some brilliant manuvers and serious courage.

I understand how much that took, along with the standard abuse that Beacon Press got for publishing it....it’s all so surreal, except that it’s real.

I don’t know that Mr. Gravel is such a “dark horse”. We just haven’t known that much about him before now. Since we know more now, (the interview that he had here on Truthdig was really impressive), so I think he CAN close a gap, especially among the increasing numbers of voters who simply cannot trust the status-quo candidates, and may just be learning about him. So, we’ll have to see. He sounds like the perfect solution, if only because he’s been able to maintain his independence. That’s what I’m afraid Obama may be losing. So, maybe Barak could take up like an apprenticeship under Mr. Gravel, and be ready to take the reigns on a restructured and repaired government in 2012.

I mean, Mr. Gravel has already said that he won’t run for more than one term, and that’s really all he needs to get things back in order, so that a next generation guy like Obama could handle. Mr. Gravel would be doing us a great service.

Ernest,
I will make a point of seeing the video on someone else’s computer, and I am familiar with Steven Jones. Do some research on this brave man to see the ream job they did on him after he made his research known almost immediately following 911. Shameful, truly shameful. There was a lot of pressure from the right to have him removed from his position. Just goes to show what these murderous deceitful neo-cons will do to those speaking truth to power. Watch your backs folks. These people can be trusted as far as Mickey Rooney could shot-put a city bus...but don’t give in to the tyranny.

A truly great piece. Thank you Truthdig, thank you Amy Goodman. I would love a video or transcriptof this meeting between Mike Gravel and Daniel Ellsberg. This chapter in American courage is genuinely inspiring and should be taught to everyone. But instead this bit of history is still being energetically ignored and denied

Unfortunately if this scenario were repeated today the Supreme Court would probably side with the government evildoers.

I agree with the other posters here who have expressed the opinion that Gravel, Kucinich, and Paul are the only 3 options we have in 2008. I firmly believe that the majority of Americans would agree, if they could turn off the TV long enough to become informed.

brandon
http://www.actforyourself.org

Paul, the video entails a lecture given by Professor Steven E. Jones.  There is no available transcriptthat I am aware of, but if there was one, it wouldn’t begin to do it justice.  Among the many, many things that Prof. Jones does is to demolish both official theories and alternative theories that had been advanced to explain the collapse of the towers, especially WTC 7, to anything other than controlled demolition.  His academic explanations are accompanied by video presentations of comparative means by which buildings collapse, e.g. earthquake, controlled demo.  The one comparison he could not present was high rise buildings collapsing as a result of fire, the official explanation for the collapse of WTC 1, WTC 2 & WTC 7. (WTC 7 was not struck by an aircraft).  These are the only instances known to man where such a collapse has been attributed to fire.  (In the past, I had always postulated that even if it were controlled demolition, al Qaeda could have been responsible.  Professor Stevens demolishes that possibility, at least as it applies to WTC 7).

If you don’t have dial-up or other video-link access, surely you have a friend who does.  From your past kind words, I think you know that I am a fact-based individual.  Trust me when I tell you this may be the single most important video you will “ever” watch.  You have to “see” it.

Mike Gravel is my choice with Ron Paul as VP...as independents it could happen.
Alex Jones’ article on Mineta’s expose on 9/11 Cheney standing down on the pentagon crises is very worrisome.
http://www.infowars.com/index.html

Hey Ernest,
Since I am what many in this world think don’t exist ‘A poor American’, and only have dial-up making it impossible to view film links (or even listen to streamed music), is there a text copy to the link you posted? I know it won’t be as impactful as video, but at least I can compare it to other research I’ve done. I’m glad to see your opinion has now been swayed to the correct (notice I didn’t say ‘right’) side, however.

I just can’t say enough about Amy Goodman. She is such an example for what American’s need to set within themselves as being a “TRUE PATRIOT!”

I don’t know what they pay you Amy, but you definately need a raise for all the good work you do.

Thankyou for putting Gravel in the spotlight, Amy; he has had much too little of that. When I watched the Democratic presidential debates I was appalled at how little time was spent on the candidates with courage to speak the truth. After the debates (LOL) were over I saw all the other candidates interviewed, with the notable exceptions of Gravel & Kucinich, the two I really wanted to see & hear from.

This just goes to show, as many have claimed, the MSM is no longer doing ‘fair & balanced’ reporting, but are direct participants in the election process, stooges for funding, and have their own political agenda. When people claim the MSM media are Neo-con Republican & AIPAC controlled, some citizens would do well to do a bit of investigation (with an open mind) before claiming this statement to be a liberal inaccuracy. After all, as a major factor in the controversy, who owns the large media outlets?

The full potential of a Democracy Now has never been realized, but I don’t rule out the possibility. Elections can be stolen (there is ample evidence, actual & statistical, in Bush’s history), but an informed aroused populace is a beast the neo-cons dare not face.

This CON-mander-AND-Thief will never be a hero of mine, but Gravel & Kucinich (and people like Amy Goodman) deserve recognition as such.

911truthdotorg.  As you know, in the past I had criticized you for what I saw as an obsessive preoccupation with 9/11.  No more!

What changed my mind was not the video Loose Change which I have previously seen as it lacked a solid academic foundation.  If you haven’t already done so, link to the following:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=964034652002408586

It not only points strongly towards official complicity but places Cheney right at the center of it.

By the way, Dennis Kucinich has announced that he intends to conduct hearings this September to look into questions that were not resolved by the 9/11 commission.

If anyone but Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul or Mike Gravel gets elected in 2008, we are doomed.

It’ll just be more of the same with the rest of the republicrats.

Google videos: 9/11 Press for truth, Loose Change 2nd Edition

Truths, Truths, I do not need no stinking truths, our government needs to be exposed for what it is.  The truth will set us free.  Secrecy is the rule instead of the exception at the White House, us the people need to be represented instead of special interests. 

Thank you Amy for bringing Gravel to more folks attention.

Gravel is the man who can do it, my support for him has increased knowing that he endured the tremendous pressure and wrath of the powers that be.  My hat goes off to Gravel, one of the few candidates running for president that has something that has been absent in the White House for a long time. Integrity.

We need people in government who are not afraid to expose corruption or the failure of past policies.  It is only through exposure that change can occur.  With these thoughts in mind, it is clear that the Iraq war needs to end and it needs to end now.  To date, the war has cost over $340 billion dollars—money which could have been spent much more wisely and with better end results.  It is estimated, for example, that the expenditure of a mere $19 billion would eliminate starvation and malnutrition worldwide.  In a time when the current defense budget is $522 billion, the goal of eradicating world hunger is clearly well within reach.  Thus, it is clear that the occupation of Iraq needs to end, and it needs to end now without regard to what this will do to United States interest in Iraq’s oil.  There are simply much more important issues that need to be addressed.