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Botany

(77,826 posts)
Fri May 15, 2026, 08:30 AM 5 hrs ago

This international criminal web is huge. Merrick Garland and "The Octopus"

(Trump is just a bit player in the largest multi generational and international criminal operation that
World has known. )

Merrick Garland and "The Octopus"
Drugs. Money laundering. Human trafficking. PROMIS. Iran-Contra. BCCI. Nuclear technology. Maxwell. Epstein. Kushner. Trump. Stolen elections. Russia. Israel. The story of how it’s all connected.

https://thiswillhold.substack.com/p/merrick-garland-and-the-octopus

To be clear: Trump’s ties to Russian mobsters predated his 2015 campaign announcement by at least 30 years. Beginning in the 1980s, Trump Tower and several of his other properties became havens for Russian oligarchs laundering money, some of whom were later tried and convicted.

The DOJ could have arrested him at any point during that period, but never did. Instead, institutions remained silent as he announced his candidacy.

And Merrick Garland could have acted swiftly in prosecuting Trump for his crimes—but he didn’t. We’ll return to that later.

Donald Trump was—and remains—one of the most dangerous threats to national security in American history, yet in 2015 the intelligence agencies chose to do nothing to stop him.

Because in protecting Trump, they were also protecting themselves.

Snip

( Thiel: Is on record as saying that we have to nullify that messy voting and democracy thing with
technology. )

This anti-democratic, government welfare queen—who colluded with Jeffrey Epstein and Russia to rig the 2016 election—and deepened his relationship with Eaton Corporation, the company with access to 70% of our election equipment just before the 2024 election, is one heartbeat away from the presidency through his bought-and-paid-for vice president, JD Vance

And to top it off, the latest tranche of Epstein files revealed that in the months leading up to the 2016 election, Epstein colluded with Peter Thiel and Russia to rig it for Donald Trump. Then, on election night 2016, Epstein sent a one word email to Peter Thiel:

“Wow.”

These companies share something else in common: they all thrive under Republican leadership, supporting military expansion and reduced oversight. Hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts are handed out when Republicans are in the majority.



34 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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This international criminal web is huge. Merrick Garland and "The Octopus" (Original Post) Botany 5 hrs ago OP
who else is attacking Trump's prosecutors, and the man who convicted the rioters Trump pardoned, released bigtree 5 hrs ago #1
Where are Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco Today? gab13by13 4 hrs ago #2
Garland delayed in prosecuting Trump after GOP tried to delay his nomination for a huge loss of time. GreenWave 4 hrs ago #4
Money, Power, Fascism -- The Octopus Kid Berwyn 4 hrs ago #3
and the Supreme Court who not only enabled Trump back into office bigtree 3 hrs ago #7
Garland did not stop the traitor nor his conspiracy. Kid Berwyn 2 hrs ago #20
charges were brought some 17 months before the election bigtree 2 hrs ago #22
In truth, it goes back to Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963. Kid Berwyn 2 hrs ago #24
Garland fell short for whatever reason and on that basis given the ramifications, was a colossal failure. Defending him KPN 39 min ago #29
counterpunch was basically a Russian tool during the 2016 election bigtree 3 hrs ago #12
CounterPunch sucks most when they publish an article I don't agree with. Kid Berwyn 2 hrs ago #21
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is doing her courageous part with the Epstein horrors on her substack. Bumbles 4 hrs ago #5
If Merrick Garland is really "one of them" then why wasn't he approved for SCOTUS? FakeNoose 3 hrs ago #6
As Is Your Prerogative. But Don't Think You KNOW Garland...... ColoringFool 3 hrs ago #9
most people who pretend he's some double agent don't know anything about the actual prosecution bigtree 3 hrs ago #11
What became of those prosecutions? CivicGrief 38 min ago #30
Garland hate guarantees clicks MorbidButterflyTat 7 min ago #33
I HAVE SAID MOST OF THIS, EVEN BCCI. AND THEN THE "WOOO! TINHAT!" COMMENTS...... ColoringFool 3 hrs ago #8
This message was self-deleted by its author bigtree 3 hrs ago #10
To people like Thiel, Musk, and their employees manipulating the data to get their and the Powers That Be .. Botany 3 hrs ago #13
I've been saying the same thing for years. Irish_Dem 2 hrs ago #18
May I suggest lonely bird 3 hrs ago #14
So glad that he prioritized avoiding the appearance of a political agenda Orrex 3 hrs ago #15
The Garland Society folks don't like this one bit. BannonsLiver 3 hrs ago #16
Garland society folks are pro prosecution of Trump bigtree 3 hrs ago #17
Bahahaha BannonsLiver 1 hr ago #25
Epstein class oligarchs irisblue 2 hrs ago #19
😬 Floyd R. Turbo 2 hrs ago #23
Bookmarking for later reading. Epstein-town? CoopersDad 1 hr ago #26
Maybe that's why it always seems like 1 step forward 2 steps back bucolic_frolic 59 min ago #27
Well, one thing cannot be denied, Garland was an Obama SCOTUS choice. Joinfortmill 53 min ago #28
True. My understanding was he selected Garland as someone the R Senate would surely approve -- part of his "team of KPN 31 min ago #31
Great post/thread Botany, even if in small or even large part it is theory. Theory is what leads to finding facts and KPN 27 min ago #32
All I know is, Trump never talks about Garland nor does he seek revenge against him thebigidea 1 min ago #34

bigtree

(94,635 posts)
1. who else is attacking Trump's prosecutors, and the man who convicted the rioters Trump pardoned, released
Fri May 15, 2026, 08:57 AM
5 hrs ago

Last edited Fri May 15, 2026, 09:51 AM - Edit history (1)

...and wants to give taxpayer money to?

It's actually Garland's critics who bear responsibility because they NEVER bothered to elevate the actual prosecutions, dismissing the prosecutions of the people Trump has pardoned as 'foot soldiers' while falsely representing to everyone they could gaslight that there wasn't an ongoing prosecution, refusing to allow actual details of the prosecutions to get more attention than their own ignorant complaints about a prosecution they could only criticize.

Who was bashing the prosecutors at the same time Trump and republicans were attacking them?

Where is the opposition to the courts which deliberately delayed the unprecedented amount of challenges and appeals to evidence that had been gathered since the fall of 2021?

Where is the opposition to the Supreme Court not only delaying their decision to negate many of the charges until right before we voted, but invented immunities that specifically lessened Trump's obvious criminality under laws that had stood for decades?

Just this sophistry. Brilliant.

The 'ass-out' defense, instead of the offense against the actual perp they were prosecuting that was lacking before we voted. You could have been highlighting their findings and progress to voters, instead all critics did was drag the prosecution in concert with Trump (this new domestic abuse thing where people find it easier to bash their own, instead of the people actually harming them).

Now the same shit. This time, conveniently dragging Garland, diverting from and actually discouraging any defense of the prosecution as the WH moves aggressively to discredit it. Neat.

Who is attacking Trump's prosecutors today, at the same time Trump is literally trying to jail them for the prosecutions and investigations critics claimed all along wasn't happening?

gab13by13

(32,740 posts)
2. Where are Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco Today?
Fri May 15, 2026, 09:13 AM
4 hrs ago

They are cowards in hiding afraid to speak out against how Krasnov has corrupted our justice department, their silence is deafening.

The people who are speaking out have to be courageous because they know they will be ruthlessly attacked by our present justice system.

Yeah I get it, there are a lot more cowards than Merrick and Lisa.

GreenWave

(12,783 posts)
4. Garland delayed in prosecuting Trump after GOP tried to delay his nomination for a huge loss of time.
Fri May 15, 2026, 09:57 AM
4 hrs ago

He got little traction climbing that ladder of corruption because the true villains had ample time to delay.

And national security, such as theft of secrets, should not tolerate the SCROTUS or Loose Cannon kicking that can way down the road.

Kid Berwyn

(25,027 posts)
3. Money, Power, Fascism -- The Octopus
Fri May 15, 2026, 09:46 AM
4 hrs ago
Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism

The Dark Age of Money


by JAMES C. KENNEDY
CounterPunch Oct. 24, 2012

EXCERPT...

Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedman’s collective works constitute the foundation of Monetary Fascism. Knowing that the term ’Fascism’ was universally unpopular; Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics masquerade these works as ‘Capitalism’ and ’Free Market’ economics.

SNIP...

The fundamental difference between Adam Smith’s free market capitalism and Friedman’s ‘free market capitalism’ is that Friedman’s is a hyper extractive model, the kind that creates and maintains Third-World-Countries and Banana-Republics, without geo-political borders.

If you say that this is nothing new, you miss the point. Friedman does not differentiate between some third world country and his own. The ultimate difference is that Friedman has created a model that sanctions and promotes the exploitation of his own country, in fact every country, for the benefit of the investor, money the uber-wealthy. He dressed up this noxious ideology as ‘free market capitalism’ and then convinced most of the world to embrace it as their economic salvation.

SNIP...

Monetary Fascism, as conceived by Friedman, uses the powers of the state to put the interest of money and the financial class above and beyond all other forms of industry (and other stake holders) and the state itself.

SNIP...

Money has become the state and the traditional state is forced to serve money’s interests. Everywhere the Financial Class is openly lording over sovereign nations. Ireland, Greece and Spain are subject to ultimatums and remember Hank Paulson’s $700 billion extortion from the U.S. Congress. The $700 billion was just the wedge. Thanks to unlimited access to the Discount Window, Quantitative Easing and other taxpayer funded debt-swap bailouts the total transfers to the financial industry exceeded $16 trillion as of July 2010 according to a Federal Reserve Audit. All of this was dumped on the taxpayer and it is still growing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/24/the-dark-age-of-money/

Outstanding OP, Botany. Danny Casolaro died fighting the Octopus. The record shows DU was on his side.

bigtree

(94,635 posts)
7. and the Supreme Court who not only enabled Trump back into office
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:10 AM
3 hrs ago

...but is STILL in power enabling his autocratic abuses, gatekeepers on everything you outlined.

But the article in op represents the man who prosecuted Trump with TWO historic, multi-felony indictments; the man who prosecuted him and who's no longer in power as the problem.

This is little more than gaslighting with a 'cool-kid' slap at Garland, like the woman who picked Sarah Palin used to do when she sneered his name at the start of EVERY 'news' broadcast during the prosecution which she misrepresented and underreported daily.

Kid Berwyn

(25,027 posts)
20. Garland did not stop the traitor nor his conspiracy.
Fri May 15, 2026, 11:15 AM
2 hrs ago

He should’ve jailed Trump January 21, 2021 or his first day in office as AG.

Please don’t get mad for me stating it in plain English, but the reason the AG didn’t may be a question for President Biden.

bigtree

(94,635 posts)
22. charges were brought some 17 months before the election
Fri May 15, 2026, 11:35 AM
2 hrs ago

...where VOTERS shut the prosecution (who was already in court when we voted), enabled by myriad courts, including the Supreme Court which invented immunities after waiting until just before we voted to rule and allow the case to proceed.

Anyone claiming there could have been a faster prosecution on lesser charges is just talking smack; making specious claims, given that a basically airtight set of charges was derailed by the maga majority just making shit up; making law from the bench.

Hell, they didn't even make a definitive ruling on the case, just strung it out there to see what else they could lop off to save Trump from trial or conviction.

And what's really fucked up is that the Garland DOJ prosecutors aren't in power right now; the fucking Supreme Court that critics of Garland refuse to even mention ARE STILL SITTING THERE, and Garland critics who think bashing an out of power AG, along with the Trump WH, FBI, and DOJ bashing the out of power AG, STILL can't bother to even talk about their complicity, much less confront them in any material or organized way.

Hell, the only thing some of the same critics have managed to do is the same bashing of Democrats out of power, as if they're afraid to actually confront the actual people who delayed the trials; dropped the charges; obstructed the justice critics obligingly divert from.

When the hell are Garland critics going to get around to defending those prosecutions and charges? I get that might be awkward, claiming they didn't happen and all.

Where's the credibility in insisting that 17 months isn't enough time to hold a trial? Why give fealty to that surrender to the myriad courts which delayed the trial?

Kid Berwyn

(25,027 posts)
24. In truth, it goes back to Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963.
Fri May 15, 2026, 11:56 AM
2 hrs ago

The truth about what has happened to democracy in the name of national security may as well be science-fiction to 99% of America. And it didn’t start with Trump, Papa Doc Bush, Scalia, Rehnquist, and Nixon. It goes to back to their owners and operators, the Robber Barons who financed Hitler.





The Real McCloy

THE CHAIRMAN: JOHN J. McCLOY; The Making of the American Establishment,
By Kai Bird (Simon & Schuster: $30; 800 pp.)


By ROBERT SHERRILL
APRIL 19, 1992, The Los Angeles Times

EXCERPT...

When McCloy took over as high commissioner of defeated Germany, he talked a tough line about crushing the many still- active Nazis. But he promptly turned to mush, permitting Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to fill his cabinet with notorious antisemites and Nazi war criminals (some of whom became McCloy’s personal friends). McCloy also vastly expanded the shameful programs begun before he got to Germany, of letting some of the worst war criminals off the hook.

He commuted two-thirds of the death sentences of mass murderers (such as the SS officer who personally executed 1,500 Jews) and radically reduced the prison sentences of doctors who had conducted experiments on death-camp inmates, of high-ranking Nazi Judges who had administered Gestapo justice, and of industrialists who had built the Nazi war machine.

McCloy freed some immediately, including Alfred Krupp, whose munitions factories had worked thousands of slave laborers to death. Krupp’s original sentence had included loss of all property; McCloy canceled that punishment and within a few years Krupp was again one of the richest industrialists in the world. Obviously McCloy’s obsequiousness toward money and power made him the wrong man to reform Nazi Germany. “Though he could understand the special culpability of the ‘big Nazis,’ ” Bird writes, “when it came to a wealthy and politically well-connected man like Krupp, he suspended his good judgment.”

As high commissioner, McCloy dabbled disastrously in the intelligence business, setting up a network of agents in Germany that included the likes of Klaus Barbie, who had shipped 78,000 French Jews to the gas chambers, and Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who had been responsible for some of the “grisliest mass killings on the Eastern Front.” Not surprisingly, many of the intelligence operations carried out under McCloy were, says Bird, “fiascos.”

CONTINUES...

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-04-19-bk-588-story.html



Mr. McCloy was joined by another “Mr. Establishment” type with extensive ties to wealthy NAZI industrialists and anti-communist NAZI spy rings, former CIA Director Allen Dulles, in service on the Warren Commission. Coincidentally. Their colleagues kept faith in the Almighty Dollar.



CIA Chief Bush Suppresses the News

By Robert Gardner
FAIR Exclusive
May/June 1999

Documents obtained by FAIR, released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), show that George Bush, as head of the CIA in 1976, tried to bottle up a news story that exposed the apparent duplicity of another former CIA chief, Richard Helms.

The story, broken on Oct. 1, 1976, by David Martin (now CBS Pentagon correspondent, then with Associated Press), revealed that Helms had given misleading testimony to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John Kennedy. Helms testified that the CIA had not "even contemplated" making contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin. Through the FOIA, Martin obtained CIA memos showing that in 1960 the agency "showed intelligence interest" in Oswald and "discussed...the laying on of interviews" with him.

When Bush saw the AP story in the Washington Star, he asked for an internal CIA review to see if the story was true (it was) and if it would "cause problems for Helms." (Helms had lied to a Senate committee about the CIA's role in subverting Chilean democracy and would later be convicted of contempt of Congress.)

After investigating, Bush assistant Seymour Bolten reported back that the exposure of Helms' false testimony to the Warren Commission would probably cause Helms "some anxious moments," though not "any additional legal problems." But Bush was assured that a "slightly better" story had resulted from an Agency phone call to AP protesting that Martin's story was "sloppy." Additionally, Bush was told that an unnamed journalist had "advised his editors . . . not to run the AP story."

Bolten complained to Bush: "This is another example where material provided to the press and public in response to an FOIA request is exploited mischievously and in distorted form to make the headlines." One might more accurately describe it as an occasion where George Bush's CIA pressured one news outlet to back away from an accurate story while using an asset in the press corps to suppress it in another.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1491



I don’t think US citizens should be considered “Enemies of the State” for upholding the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.



Angus Mackenzie: "Secrets: The CIA's War at Home"

EXCERPT...

A month later someone at the CIA leaked the news of MHCHAOS to Sy Hersh at the New York Times. The story, while sparse, made public the fact that the agency was spying on its citizens. Gerald Ford, in office for less than five months, directed William Colby to issue a report on MHCHAOS to Henry Kissinger. As Mackenzie writes, evidently Ford was not informed that Kissinger was well aware of the operation. He adds:

Because of MHCHAOS and Watergate, Congress began to investigate the CIA. On September 16, 1975 Senators Frank Church and John Tower called Colby to testify at a hearing about CIA assassinations. Colby showed up carrying a CIA poison dart gun, and Church waved the gun before the televison cameras. It looked like an automatic pistol with a telescopic sight mounted on the barrel. Producers of the evening news recognized this as sensational footage, and just as surely Colby recognized his days as director were numbered. He had not guarded the CIA secrets well enough.


Colby was fired on November 2, 1975. His successor was George Herbert Walker Bush.....

Mackenzie's account of Bush's rise and and his fall when Carter assumed office is brief, but intriguing. There is much, much more in Secrets about CIA efforts throughout the years in guarding their work from the public in this under-recognized work. The epilogue is entitled "The Cold War Ends and Secrecy Spreads." Mackenzie closes by writing:

Only recently in the history of the world's oldest republic has secrecy functioned principally to keep the American people in the dark about the nefarious activities of their government. The United States is no longer the nation its citizens once thought: a place, unlike most others in the world, free from censorship and thought police, where people can say what they want, when they want to, about their government. Almost a decade after the end of the cold war, espionage is not the issue, if it ever really was. The issue is freedom... Until the citizens of this land aggressively defend their First Amendment rights of free speech, there is little hope that this march to censorship will be reversed. The survival of the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights is at stake.

Succumbing to brain cancer before he turned fifty, Mackenzie sadly did not live to see the meteoric rise of the internet, nor did he live to see 9/11 and the current Bush Administration and their obsessive devotion to secrecy.

This work has relevance to the current situation regarding the agency's efforts to keep George Joannides' records secret.

SOURCE: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10617



Jimmy Carter tried weaning the US off fossil fuels. So the Petrodollars got together with the former spooks to dump Carter and foist a half century of Trickle Down on the nation.



From...

The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld

By Prof Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 10, 2014
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 12, Issue 10, No. 5

EXCERPT...

The Safari Club Milieu: George H.W. Bush, Theodore Shackley, and BCCI

The usual account of this super-agency’s origin is that it was

the brainchild of Count Alexandre de Marenches, the debonair and mustachioed chief of France’s CIA. The SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage)…. Worried by Soviet and Cuban advances in postcolonial Africa, and by America’s post-Watergate paralysis in the field of undercover activity, the swashbuckling Marenches had come to Turki’s father, King Faisal, with a proposition…. [By 1979] Somali president Siad Barre had been bribed out of Soviet embrace by $75 million worth of Egyptian arms (paid for… by Saudi Arabia)….95

Joseph Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations,… With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed… the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”.96

Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who were then forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by perhaps the most controversial of them all: Theodore Shackley.

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like [Edwin] Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with [former DCI Richard] Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. … Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to [CIA] resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced.97

Kevin Phillips has suggested that Bush on leaving the CIA had dealings with the bank most closely allied with Safari Club operations: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In Phillips’ words,

After leaving the CIA in January 1977, Bush became chairman of the executive committee of First International Bancshares and its British subsidiary, where, according to journalists Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin in their 1992 book ‘False Profits’ [p. 345], Bush ‘traveled on the bank’s behalf and sometimes marketed to international banks in London, including several Middle Eastern institutions.’98

Joseph Trento adds that through the London branch of this bank, which Bush chaired, “Adham’s petrodollars and BCCI money flowed for a variety of intelligence operations”99

It is clear moreover that BCCI operations, like Khashoggi’s before them, were marked by the ability to deal behind the scenes with both the Arab countries and also Israel.100

It is clear that for years the American deep state in Washington was both involved with and protected BCCI. Acting CIA director Richard Kerr acknowledged to a Senate Committee “that the CIA had also used BCCI for certain intelligence-gathering operations.”101

Later, a congressional inquiry showed that for more than ten years preceding the BCCI collapse in the summer of 1991, the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the Customs Service, and the Department of Justice all failed to act on hundreds of tips about the illegalities of BCCI’s international activities.102

Far less clear is the attitude taken by Wall Street banks towards the miscreant BCCI. The Senate report on BCCI charged however that the Bank of England “had withheld information about BCCI’s frauds from public knowledge for 15 months before closing the bank.”103

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-the-deep-state-and-the-wall-street-overworld/5372843







George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: [font size="5"][font color="green"]As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.[/font color][/font size]

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

SNIP...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified. The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.



Emphasis added.

KPN

(17,500 posts)
29. Garland fell short for whatever reason and on that basis given the ramifications, was a colossal failure. Defending him
Fri May 15, 2026, 01:25 PM
39 min ago

is kind of ludicrous. I'm not sure why anyone would so emphatically do that. It's not a question of objectivity, thoughtfulness or even understanding. The result is what is important, and the result is monumentally disastrous.

bigtree

(94,635 posts)
12. counterpunch was basically a Russian tool during the 2016 election
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:28 AM
3 hrs ago

...how'd that work out?

See: "The Alice Donovan Affair"

Kid Berwyn

(25,027 posts)
21. CounterPunch sucks most when they publish an article I don't agree with.
Fri May 15, 2026, 11:26 AM
2 hrs ago

Like the late co-founder Alexander Cockburn and his chum, Noam Chomsky, argued no conspiracy in Dallas as “JFK was the same as LBJ.”

I don’t think so.

The OCTOPUS in Dallas: Poppy involved in JFK Assassination

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5456280

FakeNoose

(42,359 posts)
6. If Merrick Garland is really "one of them" then why wasn't he approved for SCOTUS?
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:07 AM
3 hrs ago

I don't think this story holds water because PBO proposed Garland for SCOTUS and the Repukes voted him down. YES to Chump being in with Russian mobsters and all the rest .... I'm objecting to including Garland being included with that group.

ColoringFool

(1,046 posts)
9. As Is Your Prerogative. But Don't Think You KNOW Garland......
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:14 AM
3 hrs ago

You don't.

Shakespeare had a line in "Macbeth"----

"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it."

bigtree

(94,635 posts)
11. most people who pretend he's some double agent don't know anything about the actual prosecution
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:26 AM
3 hrs ago

...because, they never bothered to look, which I think is much more damning.

I mean, really, the man who prosecuted well over a thousand white supremacist, Trump-supporting rioters, convicting them on charges up to sedition, isn't associated with ANY of the criminals some are pretending would partner with him.

CivicGrief

(297 posts)
30. What became of those prosecutions?
Fri May 15, 2026, 01:26 PM
38 min ago

I don’t think Garland was conspiring with anyone, but he didn’t treat the moment with the urgency it deserved. If an insane man leads a bunch of insane people to attempt to overturn a legitimate election can’t be prosecuted before he runs for president again we are (and we are) fucked. If the system worked as expected (which is what is presumed), then the system needs to change. But it’s too late for that. Yay, you are right.

ColoringFool

(1,046 posts)
8. I HAVE SAID MOST OF THIS, EVEN BCCI. AND THEN THE "WOOO! TINHAT!" COMMENTS......
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:11 AM
3 hrs ago

BEGIN!!

LET'S HEAR ALL THE INSULTING AND MOCKING "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS" REMARKS NOW!



Response to ColoringFool (Reply #8)

Botany

(77,826 posts)
13. To people like Thiel, Musk, and their employees manipulating the data to get their and the Powers That Be ..
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:37 AM
3 hrs ago

… desired outcome is not that hard. The very 1st article by “This Will Hold” substack “They rewired
the election” still stands as solid to me. Harris won. What is the real conspiracy theory is that all
the glitches, hanging chads, voter caging (true the vote), mail in votes discarded by the U.S.P.S, under-
votes, voter I.D. laws, poll closings, signature match problems on mail in ballots, people dropped from
voter rolls, strange results such as North Carolina, bullet ballots, the influence of bad actors be they
international such as Russia or domestic such as the fossil fuel industries in our elections, gerryman-
dered districts, Citizens United, and purposeful misinformation almost always favors the Republicans
isn’t real election rat fucking.


Irish_Dem

(82,239 posts)
18. I've been saying the same thing for years.
Fri May 15, 2026, 11:07 AM
2 hrs ago

And suffered all kinds of insults for it.

Keep
Speaking the truth.
Even if people are not ready to hear it.

lonely bird

(3,027 posts)
14. May I suggest
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:43 AM
3 hrs ago

Tom Burgis’s Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

It goes into the connections between world financial centers and dictators and criminals.

Orrex

(67,374 posts)
15. So glad that he prioritized avoiding the appearance of a political agenda
Fri May 15, 2026, 10:45 AM
3 hrs ago

Really dodged a bullet on that one,

bigtree

(94,635 posts)
17. Garland society folks are pro prosecution of Trump
Fri May 15, 2026, 11:00 AM
3 hrs ago

Last edited Fri May 15, 2026, 12:24 PM - Edit history (1)

...anti-Garland society folks dragged Trump's prosecutors to the point where their anti-Garland campaign was more prominent than the TWO historic, multi-felony indictments against the former president.

First AG in history to make that happen, I think, at least in modern times.

In fact, the anti-Garland society is STILL working overtime to divert attention away from those indictments, basically pretending they don't exist; aren't still basically there for prosecution in the future; and, basically enabling a WH who is actively engaged in discrediting and trying to make those charges disappear.

When the fuck will the anti-Garland society get around to defending those charges and prosecutions?

BannonsLiver

(20,844 posts)
25. Bahahaha
Fri May 15, 2026, 12:42 PM
1 hr ago

Thanks for confirming that the GS is absolutely real! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

I’m hoping to be invited to a meeting someday. I mean sure this is an organization dedicated to defending a milquetoast, spineless, ineffectual federalist society loving weasel, but the meetings are bound to be entertaining.

bucolic_frolic

(55,761 posts)
27. Maybe that's why it always seems like 1 step forward 2 steps back
Fri May 15, 2026, 01:05 PM
59 min ago

and why news stories push against us much of the time.

KPN

(17,500 posts)
31. True. My understanding was he selected Garland as someone the R Senate would surely approve -- part of his "team of
Fri May 15, 2026, 01:33 PM
31 min ago

rivals" bent. Well intended, but if Biden's choice for AG was a slap back at Rs for rejecting Obama's choice, it really kind of backfired as far as outcome for the good old US-of-A.

KPN

(17,500 posts)
32. Great post/thread Botany, even if in small or even large part it is theory. Theory is what leads to finding facts and
Fri May 15, 2026, 01:37 PM
27 min ago

acting on them. And we got a whole hell of a lot that we have to act on -- or else.

Thanks for sharing!

thebigidea

(13,581 posts)
34. All I know is, Trump never talks about Garland nor does he seek revenge against him
Fri May 15, 2026, 02:04 PM
1 min ago

Considering how petty he is, that speaks volumes. I don't buy into the conspiracy theories on the substack, but I know Trump does not consider Garland worth ranting about or tying up in nuisance legal cases like he has for everyone else who crossed him or dared to investigate him.

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