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Octafish
Octafish's Journal
Octafish's Journal
May 17, 2015
From The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph Trento
Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”
Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”
The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”
At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Saigon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.
According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.
SOURCE:
“The Secret History of the CIA.” Joseph Trento. 2001, Prima Publishing. pp. 334-335.
Averell Harriman, DUers may recall, worked with Prescott Bush Sr to arm Hitler in the 1930s.
Ordering CIA to kill Diem -- or Castro -- wasn't one of them.
Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest?From The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph Trento
Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”
Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”
The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”
At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Saigon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.
According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.
SOURCE:
“The Secret History of the CIA.” Joseph Trento. 2001, Prima Publishing. pp. 334-335.
Averell Harriman, DUers may recall, worked with Prescott Bush Sr to arm Hitler in the 1930s.
May 17, 2015
AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html
Details on the actual sit-down, which to an amateur democratic detective interested in justice would seem like a lead worth pursuing:
Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history
By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)
EXCERPT...
By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.
"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.
At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."
Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.
Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.
CONTINUED...
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3
Yet, for some reason, the CIA continues to the present day to imply that it was Kennedy who did that.
Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time
Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh
By The Raleigh Telegram
RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.
SNIP...
Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.
Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.
He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.
The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.
CONTINUED...
http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311
Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer cough Shenon plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.
What the Warren Commission Didn’t Know
A member of the panel that investigated JFK’s death now worries he was a victim of a “massive cover-up.”
By PHILIP SHENON
February 02, 2015
EXCERPT...
Slawson feels betrayed by several senior government officials, especially at the CIA, whom he says he trusted in 1964 to tell the truth. He is most angry with one man—then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who assured the commission during the investigation that he knew of no evidence of a conspiracy in his brother’s death. It is now clear, as I and others have reported, that Robert Kennedy withheld vital information from the investigation: While he publicly supported the commission’s findings, Kennedy’s family and friends have confirmed in recent years that he was in fact harshly critical of the commission and believed that the investigation had missed evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy.
“What a bastard,” Slawson says today of Robert Kennedy. “This is a man I once had admiration for.”
Slawson theorizes that that attorney general and the CIA worked together to hide information about Oswald’s Mexico trip from the commission because they feared that the investigation might stumble onto the fact that JFK’s administration had been trying, for years, sometimes with the help of the Mafia, to assassinate Castro. Mexico had been a staging area for the Castro plots. Public disclosure of the plots, Slawson says, could have derailed, if not destroyed, Robert Kennedy’s political career; he had led his brother’s secret war against Castro and, as declassified documents would later show, was well aware of the Mafia’s involvement in the CIA’s often harebrained schemes to murder the Cuban dictator. “You can’t distinguish between Bobby and the CIA on this,” Slawson says. “They were working hand in glove to hide information from us.”
Although there is nothing in the public record to show that Robert Kennedy had specific evidence of a foreign conspiracy in his brother’s death, I agree with Slawson that RFK and senior CIA officials threw the commission off the trail of witnesses and evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy, especially in Mexico. Slawson also now suspects—but admits again that he cannot prove—that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the commission that bore his name, was an unwitting participant in the cover-up, agreeing with the CIA or RFK to make sure that the commission did not pursue certain evidence. Warren, he suspects, was given few details about why the commission’s investigation had to be limited. “He was probably just told that vital national interests” were at stake—that certain lines of investigation in Mexico had to be curtained because they might inadvertently reveal sensitive U.S. spy operations.
That might explain what Slawson saw as Warren’s most baffling decision during the investigation—his refusal to allow Slawson to interview a young Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico and who dealt face-to-face with Oswald on his visa application; declassified CIA records would later suggest that Oswald had a brief affair with the woman, who was herself a committed Socialist, and that she had introduced him to a network of other Castro supporters in Mexico. “It was a different time,” Slawson says. “We were more naïve. Warren would have believed what he was told.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812_Page2.html#.VN982vnF-UV
Why would CIA not want the Warren Commission, and the American public to which it reported, know the truth about its illegal assassination program?
From the Water is Wet as all Wetwork Department:
If things had gone according to plan, Nixon would've been president during the Bay of Pigs and would've sent in the Marines, along with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, making Allen Dulles and Meyer Lansky and all their rich and corrupt friends very, very happy.
President Kennedy, temporarily, put a kibosh on the warmongers' plans during the Bay of Pigs, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in Vietnam.
Hersh is running up against them today for exposing their corruptions in Afghanistan.
This is a very, very sophisticated smear of both President Kennedy and Seymour Hersh.
While CIA director Allen Dulles under Eisenhower (and Nixon) contracted the MAFIA to assassinate Castro in 1960, the Reichwing has done all it could to implicate President Kennedy. The efforts continue to the present day.
AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html
Details on the actual sit-down, which to an amateur democratic detective interested in justice would seem like a lead worth pursuing:
Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history
By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)
EXCERPT...
By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.
"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.
At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."
Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.
Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.
"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.
"And obviously no one said stop—and you went ahead."
"Yes."
"Did it bother you at all?"
"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."
CONTINUED...
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3
Yet, for some reason, the CIA continues to the present day to imply that it was Kennedy who did that.
Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time
Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh
By The Raleigh Telegram
RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.
SNIP...
Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.
Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.
He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.
The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.
CONTINUED...
http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311
Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer cough Shenon plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.
What the Warren Commission Didn’t Know
A member of the panel that investigated JFK’s death now worries he was a victim of a “massive cover-up.”
By PHILIP SHENON
February 02, 2015
EXCERPT...
Slawson feels betrayed by several senior government officials, especially at the CIA, whom he says he trusted in 1964 to tell the truth. He is most angry with one man—then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who assured the commission during the investigation that he knew of no evidence of a conspiracy in his brother’s death. It is now clear, as I and others have reported, that Robert Kennedy withheld vital information from the investigation: While he publicly supported the commission’s findings, Kennedy’s family and friends have confirmed in recent years that he was in fact harshly critical of the commission and believed that the investigation had missed evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy.
“What a bastard,” Slawson says today of Robert Kennedy. “This is a man I once had admiration for.”
Slawson theorizes that that attorney general and the CIA worked together to hide information about Oswald’s Mexico trip from the commission because they feared that the investigation might stumble onto the fact that JFK’s administration had been trying, for years, sometimes with the help of the Mafia, to assassinate Castro. Mexico had been a staging area for the Castro plots. Public disclosure of the plots, Slawson says, could have derailed, if not destroyed, Robert Kennedy’s political career; he had led his brother’s secret war against Castro and, as declassified documents would later show, was well aware of the Mafia’s involvement in the CIA’s often harebrained schemes to murder the Cuban dictator. “You can’t distinguish between Bobby and the CIA on this,” Slawson says. “They were working hand in glove to hide information from us.”
Although there is nothing in the public record to show that Robert Kennedy had specific evidence of a foreign conspiracy in his brother’s death, I agree with Slawson that RFK and senior CIA officials threw the commission off the trail of witnesses and evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy, especially in Mexico. Slawson also now suspects—but admits again that he cannot prove—that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the commission that bore his name, was an unwitting participant in the cover-up, agreeing with the CIA or RFK to make sure that the commission did not pursue certain evidence. Warren, he suspects, was given few details about why the commission’s investigation had to be limited. “He was probably just told that vital national interests” were at stake—that certain lines of investigation in Mexico had to be curtained because they might inadvertently reveal sensitive U.S. spy operations.
That might explain what Slawson saw as Warren’s most baffling decision during the investigation—his refusal to allow Slawson to interview a young Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico and who dealt face-to-face with Oswald on his visa application; declassified CIA records would later suggest that Oswald had a brief affair with the woman, who was herself a committed Socialist, and that she had introduced him to a network of other Castro supporters in Mexico. “It was a different time,” Slawson says. “We were more naïve. Warren would have believed what he was told.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812_Page2.html#.VN982vnF-UV
Why would CIA not want the Warren Commission, and the American public to which it reported, know the truth about its illegal assassination program?
From the Water is Wet as all Wetwork Department:
If things had gone according to plan, Nixon would've been president during the Bay of Pigs and would've sent in the Marines, along with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, making Allen Dulles and Meyer Lansky and all their rich and corrupt friends very, very happy.
President Kennedy, temporarily, put a kibosh on the warmongers' plans during the Bay of Pigs, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in Vietnam.
Hersh is running up against them today for exposing their corruptions in Afghanistan.
May 16, 2015
Judy ''Put the Knee Pads into Neocon'' Miller?
She was one of the last people to email Dr. David Kelly. Then, from jail, Scooter Libby himself reminded her of her role as one of the Aspens, roots connected underground. Judy's all about Truthy.
May 16, 2015
Remember John KOKAL?
He ended up dead from a fall the top of the State Department, reportedly just after voicing his reasons to his superiors. Another "suicide" whose sudden, if convenient, passing made it easier for the warmongers and war profiteers to make another killing on yet another day. As it was never covered in the national press, Mr. Kokal's story and death after publicly opposing the Iraq invasion is now largely forgotten. His death should be investigated as a murder.
May 16, 2015
They play the left on Rupert Murdoch’s TV
By Steve Rendall
FAIR, March 1, 2012
Fox News co-host and contributor Bob Beckel has called for the assassination of WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange (“A dead man can’t leak stuff”—Follow the Money, 12/6/10), for furnishing guns to school children (“If you give your kid a gun, no bullying”—Five, 1/5/12) and for militant opposition to the “War on Christmas,” which is “completely out of hand” (Five, 12/9/11).
These views are anything but out of place on Fox News, where hosts and commentators are known for fantasizing about murdering progressives (FAIR Blog, 11/10/10), deifying gun ownership (Beck, 6/29/11) and courageously confronting those who would wish them happy holidays (O’Reilly Factor, 11/17/11).
But Beckel is presented as a left-leaning voice on Fox, a counterweight to the network’s army of right-leaning talkers. And he’s far from an atypical specimen there.
As one of five co-hosts on Fox’s new program the Five, Beckel is supposed to serve as foil to four conservative co-hosts. That’s the theory. In reality, Beckel more than occasionally joins his conservative counterparts. (Typically, Five panelists include former George W. Bush aide Dana Perino, Fox News Red Eye anchor Greg Gutfield, Fox legal commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle and Fox Business Network host Eric Bolling.)
For instance, when Beckel’s colleague Bolling (Five, 12/14/11) recounted how he’d kicked a representative from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) off his Fox Business show (Follow the Money,12/12/11) for opposing the display of a nativity scene at a Texas courthouse, Beckel bluntly approved: “Good.” When Five co-host Greg Gutfield (12/9/11) compared FFRF to a woman who’d once demanded that he put out his cigarette, Beckel’s only response was, “Did you deck her?”
Discussing charges that GOP Rep. Mark Foley (Fla.) had exchanged inappropriate messages with male congressional pages (Hannity & Colmes, 10/2/06), Beckel suggested that Foley, because he’s gay, should have been kept away from pages to begin with, likening him to a notorious bank robber: “If Willie Sutton is around some place where a bank is robbed, then you’re probably going to say, ‘Willie, stay away from the robbery.’”
CONTINUED...
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/with-fox-news-liberals-who-needs-conservatives/
I find it interesting what ''Liberals'' FOX News allows on-air.
With Fox News Liberals, Who Needs Conservatives?They play the left on Rupert Murdoch’s TV
By Steve Rendall
FAIR, March 1, 2012
Fox News co-host and contributor Bob Beckel has called for the assassination of WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange (“A dead man can’t leak stuff”—Follow the Money, 12/6/10), for furnishing guns to school children (“If you give your kid a gun, no bullying”—Five, 1/5/12) and for militant opposition to the “War on Christmas,” which is “completely out of hand” (Five, 12/9/11).
These views are anything but out of place on Fox News, where hosts and commentators are known for fantasizing about murdering progressives (FAIR Blog, 11/10/10), deifying gun ownership (Beck, 6/29/11) and courageously confronting those who would wish them happy holidays (O’Reilly Factor, 11/17/11).
But Beckel is presented as a left-leaning voice on Fox, a counterweight to the network’s army of right-leaning talkers. And he’s far from an atypical specimen there.
As one of five co-hosts on Fox’s new program the Five, Beckel is supposed to serve as foil to four conservative co-hosts. That’s the theory. In reality, Beckel more than occasionally joins his conservative counterparts. (Typically, Five panelists include former George W. Bush aide Dana Perino, Fox News Red Eye anchor Greg Gutfield, Fox legal commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle and Fox Business Network host Eric Bolling.)
For instance, when Beckel’s colleague Bolling (Five, 12/14/11) recounted how he’d kicked a representative from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) off his Fox Business show (Follow the Money,12/12/11) for opposing the display of a nativity scene at a Texas courthouse, Beckel bluntly approved: “Good.” When Five co-host Greg Gutfield (12/9/11) compared FFRF to a woman who’d once demanded that he put out his cigarette, Beckel’s only response was, “Did you deck her?”
Discussing charges that GOP Rep. Mark Foley (Fla.) had exchanged inappropriate messages with male congressional pages (Hannity & Colmes, 10/2/06), Beckel suggested that Foley, because he’s gay, should have been kept away from pages to begin with, likening him to a notorious bank robber: “If Willie Sutton is around some place where a bank is robbed, then you’re probably going to say, ‘Willie, stay away from the robbery.’”
CONTINUED...
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/with-fox-news-liberals-who-needs-conservatives/
May 16, 2015
The Size of the Bank Bailout: $29 Trillion
EXCERPT...
But something like this position was on display last week when the Federal Reserve criticized reports claiming that the total size of its emergency facilities was $7.77 trillion. The Fed argued that these reports overstated the size of the facilities because they added up all the loans extended despite the fact that many were short term loans that we simply rolled over. According to the Fed, the best thing to do is look at the total amount outstanding at one one time, which was just $1.7 trillion.
Just like the guy who only had one drink…at a time.
The counter to this is that the need to keep borrowing under what are supposed to be short term facilities shows just how badly financial institutions were faring during the financial crisis.
“The amount of overnight lending reflects how broken our financial system really is. A well capitalized, moderately leveraged system does not require this massive liquidity from a central bank — interbank lending should be sufficient. What the data reveals is that the financial sector remains dangerously under-capitalized and overleveraged,” Barry Ritholz writes at the Big Picture.
Recently, a pair of PhD students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City tried to assess the total size of the Fed’s commitments—not just loans made, but asset purchases as well. The bottom line: a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion.
That figure has, in turn, been criticized by economist James Hamilton who argued, incredibly, that the Fed’s bailout commitment under one facility was zero because all the money was paid back.
CONTINUED...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45674390
So Taibbi was off in 2003. Compared to those saying Uncle Sam turned a profit, he was sage. He also reported the truth as he knew it.
May 15, 2015
''No WMDs here!'' Bartcop used to call him the ''Giggling Mass Murderer.''
No way. No how. Not gonna support unconstitutional unitary executive warmonger can't find weapons of mass destruction anywhere horsefeathers.
Of course, Bush had called off the drones to track bin Laden BEFORE 9/11.
Nothing about that, anywhere, almost, anymore.
May 15, 2015
Good memory, yours! Remember when Bush told the Gold Star mom ''not to sell her medal on eBay?''
The little turd from Crawford was sore busy with his wit when he gave his ''commemorative coin'' to Goldstar mother and says: "Don't go selling it on eBay."
The guy said that in the White House to a woman whose son died in Iraq for no reason Bush or anyone ever gave to the American people.
The great DUer UTUSN noted the moment:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1828225
May 15, 2015
''When everybody is thinking alike, nobody is doing any thinking.'' -- Gen. George S. Patton
I agree too: Thinking for yourself makes for good policy.
Forgot to mention above: REX-84 stood for READINESS EXERCISE 1984, one in a series of Military-Civilian operations involving the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The idea was to round up "illegal immigrants" escaping civil wars in Central America, meaning US anti-war protesters. When the thing went public -- thanks to Jack Brook's questions based on a Miami Herald reporter's findings -- people paid attention. The story's devolved over the decades to where the disinformation outweighs what matters. Bill Moyers referred to it in his "Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis" documentary.
May 15, 2015
by Michael Smallberg
Project on Government Oversight, April 21, 2015
After years of investigating the well-oiled revolving door between the federal government and the businesses it oversees, we thought we’d seen it all.
But even our jaws hit the floor when we learned that Daniel Poneman had taken a job as the head of Centrus Energy Corp.
Poneman served from May 2009 to October 2014 as the number two official at the Department of Energy (DOE), in charge of more than 100,000 federal and contractor employees and a budget of just under $30 billion. Less than six months after leaving his government post, Poneman was named the president and CEO of Centrus, where he’ll be making as much as $1.7 million a year. He took charge of the company earlier this month.
If the name Centrus doesn’t ring a bell, that’s because it was known as the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) until last March, when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Before it went under, USEC had enjoyed decades of special treatment from DOE and other government offices. Like its predecessor, Centrus is likely to need a lifeline from U.S. taxpayers in order to stay afloat. With Poneman now on board, the company may be able to utilize his cachet to attract future government bailouts, no matter the potential taxpayer losses.
Poneman’s rapid transition to a high-paying job with Centrus has drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are questioning whether government ethics rules are strong enough to safeguard the integrity of DOE actions that affect the company’s bottom line. Company and government records reviewed by the Project On Government Oversight add to the picture, showing how Poneman and DOE took positions—on issues such as the downblending of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that has been declared excess to military needs—that favored USEC/Centrus, a supplier of low enriched uranium (LEU), and the nuclear power industry in general. The records show how the revolving door blurs the lines between the government and the corporate world, enabling an official in Poneman’s position to enrich himself and the industry he used to oversee.
CONTINUED...
http://www.pogo.org/our-work/articles/2015/the-revolving-door-goes-nuclear.html
Money is why "Integrity is for Paupers."
It's a Revolving Door. Take nuclear, please.
The Revolving Door Goes Nuclearby Michael Smallberg
Project on Government Oversight, April 21, 2015
After years of investigating the well-oiled revolving door between the federal government and the businesses it oversees, we thought we’d seen it all.
But even our jaws hit the floor when we learned that Daniel Poneman had taken a job as the head of Centrus Energy Corp.
Poneman served from May 2009 to October 2014 as the number two official at the Department of Energy (DOE), in charge of more than 100,000 federal and contractor employees and a budget of just under $30 billion. Less than six months after leaving his government post, Poneman was named the president and CEO of Centrus, where he’ll be making as much as $1.7 million a year. He took charge of the company earlier this month.
If the name Centrus doesn’t ring a bell, that’s because it was known as the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) until last March, when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Before it went under, USEC had enjoyed decades of special treatment from DOE and other government offices. Like its predecessor, Centrus is likely to need a lifeline from U.S. taxpayers in order to stay afloat. With Poneman now on board, the company may be able to utilize his cachet to attract future government bailouts, no matter the potential taxpayer losses.
Poneman’s rapid transition to a high-paying job with Centrus has drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are questioning whether government ethics rules are strong enough to safeguard the integrity of DOE actions that affect the company’s bottom line. Company and government records reviewed by the Project On Government Oversight add to the picture, showing how Poneman and DOE took positions—on issues such as the downblending of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that has been declared excess to military needs—that favored USEC/Centrus, a supplier of low enriched uranium (LEU), and the nuclear power industry in general. The records show how the revolving door blurs the lines between the government and the corporate world, enabling an official in Poneman’s position to enrich himself and the industry he used to oversee.
CONTINUED...
http://www.pogo.org/our-work/articles/2015/the-revolving-door-goes-nuclear.html
Money is why "Integrity is for Paupers."
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