One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
Showing posts with label color revolutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label color revolutions. Show all posts
You will rarely read a book written in a more courageous,
intelligent, and blunt manner about profoundly pressing world problems
than this one. Paul Craig Roberts is a phenomenon; no issue, no matter
how controversial, escapes his astute analysis. He writes with a
tornadic power and logic that convinces as it challenges. Driven by a
passionate concern for the horrible direction of the world – especially
the United States government’s responsibility for so much of its
wretchedness – he is relentless in roiling the waters of ignorance and
complacency in which so many Americans float.
A former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the
Reagan administration and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Paul
Craig Roberts (image right) has escaped all easy labels to become a
public intellectual of the highest order. He is a prolific critic of
U.S. foreign and domestic policies, with a special emphasis on the
nefarious influence of the neoconservatives from the Reagan through the
Obama administrations. A savage critic of the mainstream corporate
media – he calls them “presstitutes” – he dissects their propaganda and
disinformation like a truth surgeon and penetrates to the heart of
issues in a flash.
The Neoconservative Threat To World Order is a compendium of
his essays written between February 2014 and July 2015. Most of them
deal with Washington’s destabilization of Ukraine and its ongoing
threats against Russia. Roberts sees this new Cold War as rooted in the
neoconservative doctrine of world hegemony. He correctly argues that
this is based on the Wolfowitz Doctrine, written in 1992 by
neoconservative Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (a signatory of
the 1997 Project for the New American Century), which became the
blueprint for NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders and the growing
threat of nuclear war that we are faced with today. In the preface he
writes:
Once in place the Wolfowitz Doctrine resulted in the
Clinton regime abandoning the guarantees that the George H. W. Bush
administration had given to Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch
to the East. In violation of the U.S. government’s word, former Warsaw
Bloc countries were incorporated into NATO. Then NATO was used to
attack Yugoslavia and Serbia. Then the George W. Bush regime withdrew
the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and began locating
anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders. Washington
orchestrated “color revolutions” in the former Russian provinces of
Georgia and Ukraine. When the Orange Revolution failed to deliver
Ukraine into Washington’s hands, Washington spent $5 billion cultivating
Ukrainian politicians and creating pro-American Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) that were used in Washington’s 2014 overthrow of
the elected government of Ukraine.
Read chronologically, these essays reward a careful reader with an
understanding of the progressively menacing steps taken by the Obama
administration, including the announcement that the United States is
sending battle tanks, heavy equipment, and thousands of troops to be
permanently stationed in Eastern European countries surrounding Russia.
If the shoe were on the other foot and Putin was sending the same to
Canada, Cuba, and Mexico, one would hear howls of outrage emanating from
the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post, etc., media
stenographers for Washington.
In essay after essay Roberts’ analyses give the lie to the Western
media’s misleading reporting on Ukraine and its demonization of Russia.
He sees these developments as leading to war unless the
neoconservatives are “removed from foreign policy positions in the
government and media …. The warmonger neoconservatives must be removed
from Fox ‘News,’ CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall
Street Journal, and in their places independent voices must replace
propagandists for war. Clearly none of this is going to happen, but it
must if we are to escape Armageddon.”
So the reader is enlightened but not encouraged. But this is not
Roberts’ fault. He is being truthful. He is a Cassandra warning of
future disasters if people don’t awaken from “a false reality created
for them by their rulers.” He admits that he struggles with people’s
reluctance to seek truth every time he writes a clarifying essay. Yet
he is of two minds – hopeless and hopeful. He intimates that even if
people awaken, the neoconservatives will maintain their power in
government and media. Yet he stalwartly soldiers on, hoping to change
minds, which suggests he believes at some level that changing minds has a
chance of changing structures of power and ideology. His vacillation in
this regard is understandable.
“People ask for solutions,” he writes, “but no solutions are possible
in a dis-informed world. Populations almost everywhere are
dissatisfied, but few have any comprehension of the real situation. Before there can be solutions, people must know the truth about the problem. For those inclined to be messengers, it is largely a thankless task …. Aspirations and delusions prevail over truth.”
Thankless as the task may be, Roberts elucidates many issues besides Ukraine, so these essays
can also be read as self-standing analyses: 9/11 and the anthrax
attacks, the case for impeachment of U.S. presidents, war crimes by U.S.
officials, American “exceptionalism,” Operation Gladio, “Washington’s
Iraq ‘Victory’,” European governments’ collusion with the U.S., the CIA
and its media control, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the war on terror,
false flag attacks, etc. His reach is capacious and his analysis
penetrating. He questions, probes, presents facts, and admits when
facts are not conclusive. Impeccably logical – and straightforward – he
forces the reader to reevaluate their understanding of these issues.And he references other fine writers and researchers who support and extend his points.
While correct about the rise in power and evil influence of the
neoconservatives over the past thirty years or so, I think Roberts’
understanding of the machinations of secret deep state forces going back
to Operation Gladio and the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK,
suggests he knows that the neocons are but a recent example of an old
problem. The US drive for hegemony has deep roots and a long history.
Wall Street, the banks, and the CIA have been entwined for many, many
decades. Overthrowing governments, propaganda, assassinations, and
instigating wars are their specialty. None of this is the exclusive
bailiwick of neoconservatives; they are just a current, execrable
example. Behind them, and liberals and conservatives of all stripes, sit
powers that transcend nomenclature. I’d like to see him give more
emphasis to U.S. strategy as a long-standing continuum, though this does
not detract from his astute analysis of the neoconservatives. After
all, these essays were written on the fly as the neocons policies were
being carried out by the “liberal” Democrat Obama.
Dr. Roberts is a truth teller and a genuine patriot. Truth is his
country. In a speech he gave in Mexico while accepting the International
Award for Excellence in Journalism, he said, “In the United States
journalists receive awards for lying for the government and the
corporations…. Once a journalist sacrifices Truth to loyalty to a
government, he ceases to be a journalist and becomes a propagandist.”
So if you want truth, read The Neoconservative Threat to World Order. It’s journalism at its best.
A
crowd of angry pro-Russian demonstrators, as well as police and media,
accompany Ukrainian MP Petro Poroshenko as he walks through the streets
of the Crimean city of Simferopol. (image by ALEXEY FURMAN / NBC NEWS)
Time waits for no one, but apparently will wait for Crimea. The speaker
of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, has confirmed there
will be a referendum on greater autonomy from Ukraine on May 25. Until then, Crimea will be as hot and steamy as carnival in Rio --
because Crimea is all about Sevastopol, the port of call for the Russian
Black Sea fleet. If the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a bull, this is the red
flag to end all red flags. Even if you're deep in alcohol nirvana
dancin' your troubles away at carnival in Rio -- or New Orleans, or
Venice, or Trinidad and Tobago -- your brain will have registered that
NATO's ultimate wet dream is to command a Western puppet Ukrainian
government to kick the Russian navy out of its base in Sevastopol. The
negotiated lease applies until 2042. Threats and rumors of reneging it
have already emerged. The absolute majority of the Crimean peninsula is populated by
Russian speakers. Very few Ukrainians live there. In 1954, it took only
15 minutes for Ukrainian Nikita Krushchev -- he of the banging shoe at
the UN floor -- to give Crimea as a free gift to Ukraine (then part of
the USSR). In Russia, Crimea is perceived as Russian. Nothing will
change that fact. We're not facing a new Crimean War -- yet. Only up to a point. NATO's
wet dream is one thing; it is quite another to pull it off -- as in
ending the Russian fleet routinely leaving Sevastopol across the Black
Sea through the Bosphorus and then reaching Tartus, Syria's
Mediterranean port. So yes, this is as much about Syria as about
Crimea. The new Ukrainian Orange, Tangerine, Campari, Aperol Spritz or Tequila
Sunrise revolution seems so far to have answered NATO's prayers. But
it's a long and winding road for NATO to reenact the 1850s and remix the
original Crimean War. For the foreseeable future, we will be drowning in a white sea of
platitudes. As in Pentagon supremo Chuck Hagel "warning" Russia to stay
out of the turmoil, while NATO's defense ministers issue the requisite
pile of statements that no one reads "showing support" for the new
leadership, and corporate shills reassure the populace this is not a new
Cold War.[1] Dance to my strategy, suckers
Where's H L Mencken when we
need him? No one ever lost money underestimating the mendacity of the
Pentagon/NATO/CIA/State Department system. Especially now, when
Ukrainian policy seems to have been subcontracted by the Obama
administration to the likes of neo-con Victoria "F**k the EU" Nuland,
married to Dubya darling neo-con Robert Kagan. As Immanuel Wallerstein has already observed,[2] Nuland, Kagan and the
neo-con gang are as much terrified of Russia "dominating" Ukraine as of a
slowly emerging, and eventually quite possible, geopolitical alliance
between Germany (with France as a junior partner) and Russia. That would
mean the heart of the European Union forging a counter-power to the
dwindling, increasingly wobbly American power. And as the current embodiment of wobbly American power, the Obama
administration is really in a class by itself. They are now lost in
their own, self-concocted "pivot" maze. Which pivot comes first? That
one to China? But then we need to pivot to Iran first -- to end that
Middle East distraction. Or maybe not. Take this latest sound bite by US Secretary of State John Kerry, on
Iran: "We took the initiative and led the effort to try to figure out if
before we go to war there actually might be a peaceful solution." So suddenly it's not about a nuclear deal to be possibly attained in
2014 anymore; it's about "if before we go to war." It's about bombing a
possible deal so the Empire may bomb a country -- again. Or maybe that's
just a wet dream supplied by the Likudnik puppet masters. The great Michael Hudson has speculated that "multi-dimensional chess"
might be "guiding US moves in the Ukraine." Not really. It's more like
if we can't pivot to China -- yet -- and if the pivot to Iran is going
to fail anyway (because we want it to), we might as well pivot somewhere
else. Oh yes, that pesky place that prevented us from bombing Syria;
it's called Russia. And all that under the profound guidance of Victoria
"F**k the EU" Nuland. Where's a neo-Aristophanes to chronicle these
marvels? And never forget US corporate media. That CNN hack has been Amanpouring
lately about the Budapest Agreement -- stressing Russia should stay out
of Ukraine. Well, visibly a horde of producers at
ratings-falling-to-the-floor CNN have not even read the Budapest Agreement which,
as University of Illinois professor Francis Boyle has noted, "also
states that the US, Russia, Ukraine, and UK need to immediately jointly
'consult' -- meaning meet at least at the foreign minister level." So who pays the bills?
The new prime minister of
Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is -- what else -- a "technocratic
reformer," code for Western puppet.[3] Ukraine is a (torn) basket case.
The currency has fallen 20% since the start of 2014. Millions of
unemployed Europeans know the European Union does not have the dough to
bail out the country (perhaps Ukrainians could ask former Italian prime
minister Silvio Berlusconi for some tips). In Pipelineistan terms, Ukraine is an appendix to Russia; it's Russian
gas that transits through Ukraine to European markets. And Ukrainian
industry depends on the Russian market.
Let's take a closer look at the new Aperol Spritz "revolutionary"
wallet. Every month, the natural gas import bill from Russia is roughly
US$1 billion. In January, the country also had to spend $1.1 billion in
debt repayment. Foreign currency reserves plunged to $17.8 billion from
$20.4 billion. Ukraine has a minimum debt repayment of no less than $17
billion in 2014. They even had to cancel a $2 billion eurobond issue
late last week.
Frankly, Russian President Vladimir Putin -- aka Vlad the Hammer --
must be grinning like the Cheshire cat. He could simply erase the
significant 33% discount on natural gas imports he gave Kiev late last
year. Rumor after rumor already state -- ominously -- that the Aperol
Spritz revolutionaries won't have the cash to pay pensions and public
servants' salaries. In June comes a monster payment to a bunch of
creditors ($1 billion in debt will mature). Afterwards, it's bleaker
than north Siberia in winter.
The US offer of $1 billion is risible. And all this after the "'F**k
the EU' strategy" of Victoria Nuland torpedoed an Ukrainian transitional
government -- by the way, negotiated by the EU -- which might have kept
the Russians on board, money-wise.
Without Russia, Ukraine will totally depend on the West to pay all its
bills, not to mention avoid being bankrupt. That amounts to a whopping
$30 billion until the end of 2014. Unlike Egypt, they cannot dial the
House of Saud's number and ask for some juicy petrodollars. That $15
billion loan from Russia promised recently could come in handy -- but
Moscow must get something in return.
The notion that Putin will order a military attack on the Ukraine
should be billed to US corporate media's sub-zoological intellectual
quotient. Vlad the Hammer just needs to watch the circus -- as in the
West squabbling about where to get those billions to be squandered in a
(torn) basket case. Or the International Monetary Fund churning out yet
another dreadful "structural adjustment" to send Ukraine's population
back to the Paleolithic.
Crimea could even stage its own delayed carnival, voting not only for
more autonomy but to leave the (torn) basket case altogether. In this
case, Putin will even get Crimea for free -- Krushchev-style. Not a bad
deal. Thanks to that oh so strategic "F**k the EU" Russian "pivot."
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His regular column, "The Roving Eye," is widely read. He is an analyst for the online news channel Real News, the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He argues that the world has become fragmented into "stans" -- we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. He has published three books on geopolitics, including the spectacularly-titled "Globalistan: How the Globalised World Is Dissolving Into Liquid War".
His latest book is "Obama Does Globalistan."
“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
Wikileaks Is The “Cognitive Infiltration” Operation Demanded by Cass Sunstein
Awareness is growing around the world that the Wikileaks-Julian Assange theater of the absurd is radically inauthentic – a psyop. Wikileaks and its impaired boss represent a classic form of limited hangout or self-exposure, a kind of lurid striptease in which the front organization releases doctored and pre-selected materials provided by the intelligence agency with the intent of harming, not the CIA, nor the UK, nor the Israelis, but rather such classic CIA enemies’ list figures as Putin, Berlusconi, Karzai, Qaddafi, Rodriguez de Kirchner, etc.
In Tunisia, derogatory material about ex-President Ben Ali leaked by Wikileaks has already brought a windfall for Langley in the form of the rare ouster of an entrenched Arab government.
Obama White House NSC Russia Director Michael McFaul Deploying IMF Shock Therapist Boris Nemtsov as Wheelhorse of Feeble “Stop Putin in 2012″ Bid.
At Foggy Bottom and Langley, a manic fit has been building since the flight of Ben Ali. US imperialist planners now believe they can re-launch their shopworn model of the color revolution, CIA people-power coup, or postmodern putsch against a whole series of countries in the Arab world and far beyond, including Italy. The color revolutions had been looking tarnished lately, as a result of the failure of the Twitter Revolution in Iran back in June 2009. Previously, the Cedars Revolution of 2005 had failed in Lebanon. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine had been rolled back with the ouster of NATO-IMF kleptocrats Yushchenko and Timoshenko. In Georgia, the Roses Revolution was increasingly discredited by the repressive and warmongering regime of fascist madman Saakashvili.
US Seeks to Mobilize a New Generation of Young Nihilists Across the Globe
But now, NSC, State, and CIA believe that the color revolution has a new lease on life, thanks to their estimate that the United States, because of Wikileaks and Assange, has captured the imagination of a new generation of young nihilists across the globe who are described as the post-9/11 generation, estranged from governments and opposition parties, and thus ready to follow Langley’s peroxide Pied Piper.
Assange started his intensive deployment phase this year with video of a Class A US war crime in Iraq, which was very graphic but which dealt with an incident which was already widely known. The second document dump focused on Iraq, but now the targeting had shifted to Prime Minister Maliki, and the Iranian asset whom the US by some strange coincidence was trying to oust as leader of Iraq in favor of the US puppet Allawi. With the third document dump, this time involving State Department cables, we found out much derogatory gossip about such classic CIA targets as Russian prime minister Putin, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, the Russian-Italian strategic alliance, President Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, and President Karzai of Afghanistan, along with jabs at supposed US allies who need to be kept off-balance and dependent, including the Saudi Arabian royal family, French President Sarkozy, and others. Wikileaks thus directs the vast majority of its fire against figures who are part of the CIA’s enemies list.
No Equal Time for CIA Covert Operations
Assange also provides a splendid pretext for draconian censorship and limitations on the freedom of the internet. The totalitarian liberal Senator Feinstein wants to bring back Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Espionage Act of 1917 in honor of Assange. Assange must be seen not as an activist, not as a journalist, and not as an entertainer, but rather as a spook. John Young of Cryptome, according to some reports, has denounced Wikileaks, to which he formerly belonged, as a CIA front. In a December 29 RT interview, Young described the internet as “a very large-scale spying machine.”1 The internet is indeed a vast battlefield, where the intelligence agencies of the US-UK, China, Israel, Russia, and many others clash every hour of the day, with commercial spies, hackers, anarchists, cultists, mercenary trolls, and psychotics all getting into the act as well. Intelligence agencies deliberately feed real and doctored material to various websites, sometimes using their own disgruntled employees as cutouts, conduits, and go-betweens. This means among other things that Bradley Manning cannot be taken at face value, although it is also clear that he like anyone else should not be tortured.
Assange is now famous, it might be argued. But the Wall Street controlled media can make anyone famous, from Lady Gaga to Justin Bieber to Snooki, and this is what they have done with Assange. It is wrong to capitulate to the demagogic power of these media by making it appear that there might be some legitimate value to Assange. Up to now, the CIA has been organizing color revolutions using Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and so forth as vehicles. Now they think they have a cult figure whom they can sell to the youth bulge in the Arab world and other developing countries, where most of the population is under 30. This is an operation which must be exposed.
Most recently, Wikileaks has played a role in the CIA’s new “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia by publishing some State Department cables about the sybaritic luxury and lavish lifestyle of the Ben Ali clan, leading to the downfall of that regime. The CIA is now gloating that with the help of Wikileaks it can now topple all the Arab regimes at will, from Mubarak to Qaddafi to Bouteflika, and replace them with new and more pliable puppets eager to clash with Iran, Russia, and China
If Assange ever launches his much-touted doomsday machine against the Bank of America or some other financial institutions, we will be justified in asking that the Securities and Exchange Commission make public the extent of short interest in those stocks by certain hedge funds, especially those controlled by George Soros. And as far as Assange’s attacks on the Vatican are concerned, they fit neatly into four centuries of British intelligence warfare against the Holy See, going back to Guy Fawkes and Lord Robert Cecil’s Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and beyond. Not much new or radical here.
Wikileaks: No Serious Derogatory Information about US, UK, Israel
It is illuminating that none of Assange’s document dumps have revealed any notable scandals involving Great Britain or Israel. No US public figures have had to resign because of anything Wikileaks has done. No major ongoing covert operation or highly placed agent of influence has been blown. After all these months, there are still no US indictments against Assange, even though we know that a US grand jury will readily indict a ham sandwich if the US Attorney demands it. If the CIA had wanted to silence Assange, they could have subjected him to the classic kidnapping aka rendition, meaning that he would have been beaten, drugged, and carted off to wake up in a black site prison in Egypt, Poland, or Guantanamo Bay. Otherwise, the CIA could have had recourse to the usual extralegal wetwork. We must also assume that the new US Cybercommand with its vast resources would have little trouble shutting down the Wikileaks mirror sites, no matter how numerous they might be. The same goes for Anonymous and other flanking organizations of Wikileaks. But these considerations are purely fantastic. Assange emerges today as the pampered darling and golden boy of The New York Times, Der Spiegel. The Guardian, El Pais — in short, of the entire Anglo-American official media Wurlitzer. He reclines today in baronial splendor in the country house of a well-connected retired British officer who should be quizzed by the media about his ties to British intelligence. The radical-chic world, from Bianca Jagger to Michael Moore, is at Assange’s feet.
Cass Sunstein Present at the Creation of Wikileaks
Wikileaks was apparently founded in 2006. Originally, the group was programmed to attack China, and its board was heavily larded with fishy Chinese dissidents and “democracy” activists from the orbit of the Soros foundations. Interestingly, the first big publicity breakthrough for Wikileaks in the mainstream US media was provided by an infamous totalitarian liberal today ensconced in the Obama White House – none other than Cass Sunstein. In Sunstein’s op-ed published in the Washington Post of February 24, 2007 under the title “Brave new Wikiworld,” we read: “Wikileaks.org, founded by dissidents in China and other nations, plans to post secret government documents and to protect them from censorship with coded software.” How interesting that Sunstein was present at the creation of the new Wikileaks psywar operation!
This is the same Sunstein who today heads Obama’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In his January 2008 Harvard Law School Working Paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” Sunstein infamously demanded that the United States government deploy groups of covert operatives and pseudo-independent agents of influence for the “cognitively infiltration of extremist groups” – meaning organizations, activists and Internet websites who espouse beliefs which Sunstein chooses to classify as “false conspiracy theories.”
Wikileaks = Cass Sunstein’s Program for Cognitive Infiltration In Action
It should be clear that Assange and Wikileaks are precisely the practical realization of Sunstein’s program for “cognitive infiltration” shock troops to counteract and overwhelm any real mass understanding of oligarchical domination in the modern world, and any discussion of what kind of economic policies are needed to secure a recovery from the present world depression.
In line with Sunstein’s recipe, Assange is a self-declared enemy of 9/11 truth. As Assange told Belfast Telegraph reporter Matthew Bell last July, “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” In other words, Assange argues that the truth about 9/11 truth is not nearly as radical as the various scandals which Wikileaks claims to expose. But the scandals Assange is offering target mostly the adversaries of the CIA.
Assange must also be seen as a deeply troubled individual and a possible psychopath. He has the ravaged emotional complexion that we might expect from an alumnus of one of the many MK-Ultra operations. He reportedly spent several years in the menticidal Anne Hamilton-Byrne cult (also known as The Family and Santiniketan) near Melbourne, Australia. Here little children were separated from their parents and made to ingest LSD, Anatensol, Diazepam, Haloperidol, Largactil, Mogadon, Serepax, Stelazine, Tegretol, Tofranil, and other potent psychopharmaca. Dozens of children were told that Hamilton-Byrne was their real mother, and had their hair dyed blond. Anne Hamilton-Byrne reportedly regarded blond hair as a sign of racial superiority. Careful observers will have noted that Assange’s hair is sometimes blond, sometimes more brownish, raising the question of whether his grooming practices are a residue of his time with Hamilton-Byrne, whom he says he does not remember. When other kids were getting cookies and milk, was Assange being lobotomized by LSD and other potent psychopharmaca dished up by Hamilton-Byrne? There is evidence pointing in that direction.
With Assange, we thus have the tragic spectacle of the emotionally mutilated product of a CIA (or MI-6) covert operation of 40 years ago, who has now been given a prominent role in a key counter-insurgency ploy of the present time. Will the youth of the world, already burned by their recent fatuous obsession with Obama, be duped again by such an impaired individual?
The Precedent: Pentagon Papers Whitewashed CIA, Blamed Army, Demonized Kennedy
Assange’s revelations mainly involve communications labeled Confidential or Secret, and which in reality would be over-classified if marked Official Use Only. In other words, Assange is in reality a purveyor of low level cable traffic, not of earth-shattering secrets. This reminds us of an earlier CIA limited hangout operation, the one known as the Pentagon Papers. This was a carefully screened selection of historical documents, supplemented by outright forgeries, relating to the Vietnam War and compiled by Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb, both of whom have gone on to glittering careers in the imperialist foreign policy establishment – Gelb became president of the Council on Foreign Relations, while Halperin serves today as chief political officer of the Soros wolfpack of foundations. The papers were leaked by former RAND Corporation official Daniel Ellsberg, who had been a very bellicose hawk in Vietnam before a suspicious Damascus Road conversion to pacifism, and then published in the US establishment press – similarly to Assange today. There was nothing in the Pentagon papers which a casual reader of LeMonde or Corriere della Sera did not already know. But, as Mort Sahl later said, left liberals have generally had very few heroes, so they battened on to Ellsberg and lionized him – led by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and some others. (This is a syndrome which we see again today: at the moment when Obama’s treacherous sellout on the Bush tax cuts was providing a final disillusionment for many gullible left libs, Assange arrived on the scene as their new Savior. Not by chance, Ellsberg has now designated Assange as his own reincarnation, and thus surely the new Messiah.)
The Pentagon papers had been carefully selected by the CIA itself to cover up CIA war crimes in Vietnam, blaming these on the US Army wherever possible, while also obscuring the CIA’s massive program of drug production and narcotics smuggling. The Pentagon Papers systematically hid the salient political fact of the entire Vietnam era, which is that President John F. Kennedy before he was assassinated was preparing to end the de facto US combat role in that country. Instead, Kennedy was systematically demonized and smeared, emerging as the villain of the piece. Needless to say, the Pentagon papers throw no light whatsoever on the CIA role in the Kennedy assassination – in the same way that Assange’s various document dumps tell us nothing of importance about 9/11, the Rabin assassination, Iran-contra, the 1999 bombing of Serbia, the Kursk incident, the various CIA color revolutions, or many of the other truly big covert operations of the past decades.
The limited hangout is not new; it was described in a secret memorandum by Venetian intelligence chief Paolo Sarpi to the Venetian Senate in 1620 as the art of “saying something good about somebody while pretending to be saying something bad.” That is the common denominator of the CIA’s limited hangout operations from Ellsberg to Philip Agee to Assange, with so many other “former” CIA operatives turned “whistleblowers” along the way.
