Journalists and JFK-Real Dizinfo Agents at Dealey Plaza

Seth Kantor - SHNS Reporter in Dallas 11/22/63

http://www.ctka.net/2011/Journalists_&_JFK_1.html

Journalists and JFK:
Real Dizinfo Agents At Dealey Plaza
By Bill Kelly (bkjfk3@yahoo.com) , May 2011

Seith Kantor, a local Dallas reporter who was in the Press Bus in the motorcade, knew something was wrong as they rode through Dealey Plaza, but the bus driver refused to follow the rest of the motorcade to Parkland Hospital and instead drove to their original destination, the Dallas Trade Mart. [1–Kantor] Once there however, Kantor got a ride to Parkand Hospital, where he interviewed a number of local Dallas officials and had a brief conversation with Jack Ruby, who had frequently fed Kantor interesting leads he developed into feature articles. [2–WCT]. While the Warren Commission rejected Kantor’s sworn testimony that Ruby was at Parkland, Kantor did make some phone calls, including one to his editor at the Scripps-Howard News Service (SHNS), and there are records of these calls. [3–Records]

Years later, in 1975, Kantor learned that the records of one of the phone calls on that day was classified for reasons of national security, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and obtained them to find out the big secret. He discovered that after taking to his editor, he was told to call another SHNS correspondent in Florida, Harold "Hal" Hendrix. [4-Classified Records] From Florida, Hendrix supplied Kantor with detailed background information on Lee Harvey Oswald, who had just been arrested and named as the chief suspect in the assassination. Hendrix had more information in Florida than Kantor did at the scene of the crime, and we later learn why Kantor’s call to Hendrix was considered worthy of being classified for reasons of national security. [5-Hendrix]

Continued at: www.ctka.net

www.ctka.net/2011/Journalists_&_JFK_1.html

www.ctka.net

Hunter Thompson's Thoughts 11/22/63

 

The Origin Of "Fear And Loathing"

(In a letter to his friend, William Kennedy, Thompson uses the term, "Fear and Loathing", perhaps for the first time, written on the Day John Kennedy was assasinated in Dallas)

http://thedirtysouth.blogspot.com/2005/02/origin-of-fear-and-loathing.html

November, 22, 1963
Woody Creek

I am tired enough to sleep here in this chair, but I have to be in town at 8:30 when Western Union opens so what the hell. Besides, I am afraid to sleep for fear of what I might learn when I wake up. There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything - much less the fear and loathin that is on me after today's murder. God knows I might go mad for lack of talk. I have become like a psychotic Sphinx - I want to kill because I can't talk.

I suppose you will say the rotten murder has no meaning for a true writer of fiction, and that the "real artist" in the "little magazines" are above such temporal things. I wish I could agree, but in fact I think what happened today is far more meaningful than the entire contents of the "little magazines" for the past 20 years. And the next 20, if we get that far.

We now enter the era of the shitrain, President Johnson and the hardening of the arteries. Neither your children nor mine will ever be able to grasp what Gatsby was after. No more of that. You misunderstand it of course, peeling back the first and most obvious layer. Take your "realism" to the garbage dump. Or the "little magazines." They are like a man who goes into a phone booth to pull his pod. Nada, nada.

The killing has put me in a state of shock. The rage is trebled. I was not prepared at this time for the death of hope, but here it is. Ignore it at your peril. I have written Semonin, that cheap book-store Marxist, that he had better tell his boys to buy bullets. And forget the dialectic. This is the end of reason, the dirtiest hour in our time. I mean to come down from the hills and enter the fray. Tomorrow a cabled job request to "The Reporter." Failing that, the "Observer." Beyond that, God knows, but it will have to be something. From now until the 1964 elections every man with balls should be on the firing line. The vote will be the most critical in the history of man. No matter what, today is the end of an era. No more fair play. From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches. The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency. They can count me in - I feel ready for a dirty game.

Fiction is dead. Mailer is an antique curiosity. The stakes are now too high and the time too short. What, O what, does Eudora Welty have to say? Fuck that crowd. The only hope now is to swing hard with the right hand, while hanging on to sanity with the left. Politics will become a cockfight and reason will go by theboards. There will have to be somebody to carry the flag.

My concept of the new novel would have fit this situation, but now I see no hope for getting it done, if indeed, any publishing houses survive the Nazis scramble that is sure to come. How could we have known, or even guessed? I think we have come to that point.
Send word if you still exist - HST

(From "The Proud Highway: Saga Of A Desperate Southern Gentlemen")

Thanks to Robert Packer, also see: a video of Charlie Rose reading that letter on his show when he interviewed Thompson. The letter is at the end of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVxKjwJwUZ8&feature=related

http://www.urbandictionary.com/products.php?term=shitrain&defid=1314152
Urban Dictionary:

1. shitrain
1.The era of modern American global policy, drug policy and financial ruin succeding the administrations of Nixon, Regan, Bush.

2.The result of Republican polocies as described by Hunter S. Thompson actually orginating with Richard M. Nixon's destructive administration, the father of the The War on Drugs.
"The fatbellies have taken control again hurling us all into the age of the shitrain."
by Word Dr. Jun 11, 2005 share this

Also see:

http://www.youtube.com/user/shitrain

Obama Gets Secret Award for Open Government

On March 30, several hours before addressing the nation on TV about Libya, President Obama received a prestigious open-records award presented by five freedom-of-information advocate organizations for running a commendably "transparent," accessible administration.

However, news about this award came about only because the presenters leaked it to the press. As noted by the Washington Post the next day, there was no White House notice to the press; the presentation was not on the president's calendar; no photos or transcript were available; and the award was not mentioned on the White House website.

Now we have Donald Trump saying, "I have done a great service" by forcing the President to hand over his birth certificate.

Maybe Trump will become a champion of open records, and not only seek Obama's college transcripts, but also get the CIA, DOD, NSA and other government agencies to open their records on the assassination of President Kennedy.

Jesse Ventura's New Book 63 Docs

ABCNews

Digging Deeper: Jesse Ventura's Alternative Take on American History

Get a Different Perspective, Jesse Ventura's Take on American History

1 COMMENT April 4, 2011

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/excerpt-63-documents-government-read-jesse-ventura-dick/story?id=13290200&page=1

In his new book, "63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read," former wrestler turned governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura takes a close and at times disturbing look at major historical events. Ventura draws on public but often overlooked information about such events as John F. Kennedy's assassination and the 9/11 attacks, offering fresh, often intriguing insights.

Here is an excerpt from "63 Docrments the Goverment Doesn't Want You to Read":

There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment." – John F. Kennedy

This book is titled "63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read," lest we forget that 1963 was the year that claimed the life of our 35th President. The conspiracy that killed JFK, and the cover-up that followed, is the forerunner for a lot of what you're going to read about in these pages. In fact, the idea behind this book came out of writing my last one, American Conspiracies. There I presented a close look at whether or not our historical record reflects what really went on, based on facts that most of the media have chosen to ignore – from the Kennedy assassination through the tragedy of September 11th and the debacle on Wall Street. In poring through numerous documents, many of them available through the Freedom-of-Information Act (FOIA), I came to realize the importance of the public's right to know. And I decided to see what new picture might be revealed if you laid out certain documents that the powers-that-be would just as soon stay buried.

Everything in this book is in the public domain and, for the most part, downloadable from the Internet. I'm not breaking any laws by putting these documents in book form, although some of them were classified "Secret" until WikiLeaks published them. I'll get to my view on WikiLeaks in a moment, but let me begin by saying how concerned I am that we're moving rapidly in the direction President Kennedy tried to warn us about.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, there are now 854,000 American citizens with Top Secret clearances. The number of new secrets rose 75 percent between 1996 and 2009, and the number of documents using those secrets went from 5.6 million in 1996 to 54.6 million last year. There are an astounding 16 million documents being classified Top Secret by our government every year! Today, pretty much everything the government does is presumed secret. Isn't it time we asked ourselves whether this is really necessary for the conduct of foreign affairs or the internal operation of governments? Doesn't secrecy actually protect the favored classes and allow them to continue to help themselves at the expense of the rest of us? Isn't this a cancer growing on democracy?

After Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, I was heartened to see him issue an Open Government Initiative on his first full day in office. "I firmly believe what Justice Louis Brandeis once said, that sunlight is the best disinfectant," Obama said, "and I know that restoring transparency is not only the surest way to achieve results, but also to earn back the trust in government without which we cannot deliver changes the American people sent us here to make." After eight years of Bush and Cheney's secretive and deceitful ways, that sounded like a welcome relief. Obama ordered all federal agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor" of FOIA requests and so laid the groundwork to eventually release reams of previously-withheld government information on the Internet.

Well, so far it hasn't turned out the way Obama sketched it out. An audit released in March 2010 by the non-profit National Security Archive found that less than one-third of 90 federal agencies that process FOIA requests had changed their practices in any significant way. A few departments – Agriculture, Justice, Office of Management and Budget, and the Small Business Administration – got high marks for progress. But the State Department, Treasury, Transportation, and NASA had fulfilled fewer requests and denied more in the same time period. "Most agencies had yet to walk the walk," said the Archive's director Tom Blanton.

Things went downhill from there. In June 2010, the New York Times carried a Page One story detailing how Obama's administration was even more aggressive than Bush's in looking to punish people who leaked information to the media. In the course of his first 17 months as president, Obama had already surpassed every previous president in going after prosecutions of leakers. Thomas A. Drake, a National Security Agency employee who'd gone to the Baltimore Sun as a last resort because he knew that government eavesdroppers were squandering hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on failed programs, is today facing years in prison on ten felony charges including mishandling of classified information. An FBI translator received a 20-month sentence for turning over some classified documents to a blogger. And the Pentagon arrested Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst, who for openers had passed along to WikiLeaks the shocking video footage of a U.S. military chopper gunning down Baghdad civilians.

Then, in September 2010, the Obama Justice Department cited the so-called "state secrets doctrine" in successfully getting a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit on "extraordinary rendition" (a phrase that really means we send suspected terrorists to other countries to get held and tortured). In fact, Attorney General Eric Holder was hell-bent on upholding the Bush administration's claims in two major cases involving illegal detention and torture. Also in September, the Pentagon spent $47,300 of taxpayer dollars to buy up and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of Operation Dark Heart, a memoir about Afghanistan by ex-Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer Anthony A. Shaffer. We first interviewed Lt. Colonel Shaffer for American Conspiracies, because his outfit (Able Danger) had identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat long before he became the supposed lead hijacker on 9/11.

With Operation Dark Heart, publishing executives and intel outfits couldn't remember another instance where a government agency set out to get rid of a book that was already printed. Some months earlier, the Army reviewers who'd asked for and received some changes and redactions said they had "no objection on legal or operational security grounds" to the final version. But when the DIA saw the manuscript and showed it around to some other spy operations, they came up with 200-plus passages that might cause "serious damage to national security." By that time, several dozen copies of the book had already gone out to reviewers and online booksellers. (Those went on sale on eBay for between $1,995 and $4,995.)

So Operation Dark Heart was hastily reprinted with a number of paragraphs blanked out and, guess what?, it became a best-seller. Here are a few of the things that got canned, which the New York Times first pointed out. Everybody's known for years that the nickname for the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade is "the Fort." Censor that one! Another big secret - the CIA training facility is located at Camp Peary, Virginia. You can find that on Wikipedia but not anymore in this book! And did you know that Sigint stands for "Signals Intelligence?" You don't see that anymore in Operation Dark Heart. (I can't wait for the censors to pull my book from the shelves for revealing all this). Oh, and they removed a blurb from a former DIA director who called Shaffer's "one terrific book." Shaffer has now gone to court looking to have the book's complete text restored when the paperback comes out.

To Obama's credit, early in November 2010 he issued an Executive Order establishing a program to manage unclassified information that rescinded a Bush-era order designed to keep still more documents away from public scrutiny by putting new labels on them ("For Official Use Only" and "Sensitive But Unclassified.")

But soon thereafter came WikiLeaks' release of 250,000 secret State Department cables. This followed the group's disclosures earlier last year of 390,136 classified documents about the Iraq War and 76,607 documents about Afghanistan. As everybody knows, the politicians and the media commentators went ballistic over the cables being in the public domain – even though the New York Times, among others, was running front-page stories every day about their contents.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was for a moment our biggest bogeyman since Osama. Sarah Palin says he's "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands" who should be pursued "with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders." She stopped short of saying he should be hunted down like the caribou she shoots in Alaska. Hillary Clinton calls what he's done "an attack on the international community." (I've never known Palin and Clinton to be this cozy in the same bed, so to speak). Mike Huckabee called for the execution of whoever leaked the cables to WikiLeaks. Newt Gingrich referred to Assange as an "enemy combatant." Joe Biden described him as "closer to being a hi-tech terrorist" than a whistleblower, and some liberal democrats would like to see Assange sent to prison for life. He's also been labeled an old-fashioned anarchist, mastermind of a criminal enterprise and, at best, a control freak and a megalomaniac.

This smacks of worse than McCarthyism – we're in a lynch mob moment, folks. Didn't Thomas Jefferson say that "information is the currency of democracy" and that, if he had to choose between government and a free press, he'd take the latter? Ron Paul is one of the only folks to have spoken up on Assange's behalf. Paul made quite a statement on the floor of the House, when he asked his colleagues what had caused more deaths – "lying us into war or the release of the WikiLeaks papers?" He added, "What we need is more WikiLeaks….In a free society, we're supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."

Paul's point is important. Nobody has died as a result of Wikileaks' disclosures, but maybe we've forgotten that the whole Iraq war was based on fake evidence manufactured by the Bush-Cheney White House and the Brits, resulting in 4,430 American troops dead and about 32,000 wounded as of early December 2010. In Afghanistan, the toll is climbing fast – close to 1,500 Americans dead and almost 10,000 wounded. This doesn't take into account, of course, the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. Do you think it's possible, as one Internet columnist has written, that Julian Assange is the scapegoat for arrogant American officials who'd rather point the finger at someone else than admit the blood on their own hands?

Personally, I think Julian Assange is a hero. It's a classic case of going after the messenger. Our diplomats get caught writing derogatory remarks and descriptions of foreign leaders, then turn around and accuse WikiLeaks of putting our country in danger. WikiLeaks is exposing our government officials for the frauds that they are. They also show us how governments work together to lie to their citizens when they are waging war.

Here are a few things we've learned from WikiLeaks' document releases that we didn't know before: The CIA has a secret army of 3,000 in Afghanistan, where the U.S. Ambassador in Kabul says there's no way to fix corruption because our ally is the one that's corrupt (one Afghan minister was caught carrying $52 million out of the country). In Iraq, there are another 15,000 civilian casualties that haven't been brought into the light, and our troops were instructed not to look into torture tactics that our Iraqi allies were using. U.S. Special Operations forces are in Pakistan without any public knowledge, and our Pakistani "allies" are the main protectors of the Taliban in Afghanistan!

I mean, let's face it: WikiLeaks exists because the mainstream media haven't done their job. Instead of holding government accountable as the "fourth branch" the founders intended, I guess the corporate media's role today is to protect the government from embassassment. Assange has pioneered "scientific journalism" (his term) – a news story is accompanied by the document it's based upon and the reader can make up his own mind. WikiLeaks' small team of reporters has unveiled more suppressed information than the rest of the world press combined! Assange is the publisher, not the one who revealed the "classified information." That's apparently Private Bradley Manning, who somehow found a security loophole and now is being held in solitary confinement at our Quantico, Virginia base facing up to 52 years in prison. Are we surprised that the United Nations' special investigator on torture is looking into whether Manning has been mistreated in custody? As for Assange, how our government wants to try him under the Espionage Act of 1917 is beyond me. Come on, he's an Australian citizen and his Internet domain is in Switzerland. (By the way, he also received the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in 2010, and the Amnesty International Media Award in 2009).

And what about these cyberspace sabotage attacks against WikiLeaks that are being carried out across national borders by our government? As far as I can determine, these are illegal under both U.S. law and international treaties. Meantime, it blows my mind that students at Columbia and Boston University and probably other institutions of "higher learning" are being warned not to read any of these documents if they want to get a government job in the future. The Office of Management and Budget sent out a memo that forbids unauthorized federal employees and contractors from accessing WikiLeaks. The Library of Congress has blocked visitors to its computer system from doing the same. The Air Force started blocking its personnel from using work computers to look at the websites of the New York Times and other publications that had posted the cables. Instead, a page came up that said: "ACCESS DENIED. Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored." Over in Iraq, our troops who'd like to even read articles about all this get a "redirect" notice on their government network telling them they're on the verge of breaking the law. And a lot of these same soldiers have security clearances that would have allowed them to see the cables before they were leaked.

Given the close ties between the government and large corporations, I can't say I'm surprised that Amazon, PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and Bank of America took action to make sure that WikiLeaks could no longer receive any money through their channels. And I can't say I'm upset that a group of young "hacktavists" calling themselves Anonymous have taken retaliatory action against some of those same companies. They call it Operation Payback. "Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets," a fellow named Coldblood posted. "As an organization we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means. We feel that WikiLeaks has become more than just about leaking of documents, it has become a war ground, the people vs. the government."

More than 500 "mirror sites" now possess all the cables, and Assange has said we ain't seen nothin' yet if he meets an untimely demise. As I write this a couple of weeks before the New Year in 2011, he's living in a friend's mansion in England and fighting extradition charges. I'm sure a whole lot more will have developed by the time this book is published. I say let the chips fall where they may as WikiLeaks puts the truth out there. If our State Department is asking diplomats to steal personal information from U.N. officials and human rights groups, in violation of international laws, then shouldn't the world know about it and demand corrective action? Maybe if they know they're potentially going to be exposed, the powers-that-hide behind a cloak of secrecy will think twice before they plot the next Big Lie.

I agree with Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. He faced charges, too, back in 1971, but they were thrown out by a judge. He'S called Private Manning a "brother" who committed "a very admirable act" if he's the one who provided the documents to WikiLeaks. "To call them terrorists is not only mistaken, it's absurd," Ellsberg said.

The book you're about to read is undertaken in the same spirit. I've divided the book into five parts, starting out first to show links between deeds our government perpetrated in the past and what's going on today. If you don't know your own history, you're doomed to repeat it. You'll come across documents on some pretty scandalous behavior, including:

• The CIA's secret assassination manual and experiments to control human behavior with hypnosis, drugs, and other methods.

• The military's Operation Northwoods, a chilling attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stage a terror attack on our own citizens and make it look like Cuba was behind it – using a hijacked airliner, no less!

• After President Kennedy was trying to get our troops out of Vietnam, the military faked the Gulf of Tonkin attacks in order to expand the war.

• Our chemical and biological warfare capability back in 1969, leading you to wonder about the real origin of things like AIDS and lyme disease.

Part two delves into a series of government, military and corporate secrets, opening with excerpts from two recent reports on how our military and intelligence outfits put Nazi war criminals to work after World War Two. From there, you'll see some eye-opening documents including:

• The CIA's "Propaganda Notes" designed to shore up the Warren Commission's lone-gunman conclusion.

• How Oliver North collaborated with Panama's drug-running dictator Manuel Noriega.

•What America knew, and ignored, about the genocide happening in Rwanda in the mid-1990s.

• How we still turn a blind eye to Gulf War Illness and our veterans.

• The frightening background for our military to intervene in domestic affairs, set up "emergency relocation facilities" for our citizens, and establish a Civilian Inmate Labor Program.

• How failed inspections and ignored science are impacting our food supply and our bees, while we push to promote Monsanto's biotech agenda.

• What our military really knows about the dangers of climate change.

• How companies like CitiGroup and Koch Industries promote their "plutocracies" at the expense of the rest of us. Part Three I've called Shady White Houses, starting with "Tricky Dick" Nixon and his astounding plan to bring peace to Vietnam by pretending to nuke the Soviet Union! You'll also learn about:

• How the Bush White House stole the presidential elections in 2000 and again in 2004.

• The Obama State Department's call for our own diplomats to spy on the United Nations.

• Whether "cybersecurity" could mean the end of the Internet as we know it.

Part four focuses in on a subject I've explored a great deal in recent years, and that's whether we've been told the truth about the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

• A think tank called the Project for a New American Century anticipating "a new Pearl Harbor" to promote its agenda for "Rebuilding America's Defenses."

• Clear warnings the Bush Administration ignored that something was coming.

• The "Stand Down" order that kept our military from responding on 9/11.

• Evidence that Building 7 was taken down by a controlled demolition.

• The role of insider stock trading in advance of 9/11.

And finally, part five examines the so-called "war on terror" and the terrible price we're paying in terms of our liberties and the lives being lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'll first read excerpts from a long memo by Bush's Justice Department that subverts the Constitution by shredding a number of civil rights, followed by Bush's justification for America's torture of "unlawful combatants." * The "Media Ground Rules" that keep the truth hidden at Guantanamo.

The torture techniques, and medical experiments, being conducted there and the paper trail on the CIA's destruction of 92 torture videos.

• Decapitation of a detainee in Iraq, by our own troops!

• How the CIA "spins" the war in Afghanistan, and the fact that drugs are fueling that country's economy.

• The State Department's revelation that Saudi Arabia is actually "a critical source of terrorist funding."

•A report by the Rand Corporation showing that military force has never worked in combating terrorism.

Following the 63 documents, you'll find an Epilogue of Internet resources to use in your own pursuit of the truth about what's going on behind-the-scenes.

Here's what should concern us all: if you look back at the US Patriot Act that Congress passed almost unanimously in the wake of 9/11, the Bill of Rights was already in peril. Let me offer a brief outline of how things changed:

The First Amendment is about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to assemble. The Patriot Act says that the government is free to monitor religious and political institutions without any suspicion of criminal activity. The government can also prosecute librarians or the keepers of any other records (including journalists) related to a "terror investigation."

The Fourth Amendment speaks to our right to be secure "against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Patriot Act says the government can search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause.

The Sixth Amendment entitles anyone accused of a crime to "a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury." The Patriot Act says the government can jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.

The Sixth Amendment says an accused person has "compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." The Patriot Act says the government can monitor conversations between attorneys and clients in federal prisons and even deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.

The Sixth Amendment also says an accused criminal must "be confronted with the witnesses against him." The Patriot Act says Americans can be jailed without even being charged, let alone face any witnesses. What troubles me more than anything is how Congress can simply vote to supersede the Constitution. They're not allowed to do that, to vote in new rules arbitrarily. Changing the Constitution requires you to go through many hoops. How can we allow this kind of unprecedented change to happen?

At the same time, it's recently been reported that our government is building up a huge domestic spying network to collect information on us all, involving local police, state and military authorities feeding information into a database on people who've never been accused of wrongdoing. Homeland Security has given billions of dollars in grants to state governments since 9/11, and there are now more than 4,000 organizations in the domestic apparatus. The FBI keeps the ultimate file, with profiles on tens of thousands of Americans reported to be "acting suspiciously." (I'm sure I'm one of them.) Also the technologies we've developed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now being used by law enforcement agencies at home – hand-held fingerprint scanners, biometric data devices, unmanned aircraft monitoring our borders with Mexico and Canada.

In other words, we the taxpayers are funding our own government to keep tabs on what we do! This is outrageous, but it's been a long time coming. Our tax dollars have paid for mind control experiments and assassination attempts and fake attacks to draw us into war. Our tax dollars have funded drug runners and "extraordinary rendition" of detainees. And they've not been used in places where they should be going – like to help our veterans cope with Gulf War Syndrome and to keep the nation of Rwanda from mass genocide. What right does the government have to abuse our money like that? This is diabolical!

I've put together this book because it's become crystal-clear that our democracy has been undermined from within and it's been going on for a long time. We the people have got to wake up and start demanding accountability! Let's never forget the words of Patrick Henry: "The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

PART ONE: OUR SCANDALOUS POST-WAR HISTORY 1. THE CIA'S SECRET ASSASSINATION MANUAL

What follows are excerpts from a 19-page CIA document that was prepared as part of a coup against the Guatemalan government in 1954 and declassified in 1997. Maybe they should change the name to the CIA's "secret first degree murder manual." How is that we are allowed to kill other people if we're not in a declared war with them? Clearly this is a premeditated conspiracy involving more than one person. My big question is, who makes the call on this? To arbitrarily go out in the world and kill someone without their being charged with a crime! The thought of taking out another country's leadership is so despicable, it makes me ashamed that I'm an American. But it later was revealed that, during the Cold War, the CIA is known to have plotted against eight foreign leaders, and five of them died violent deaths. The CIA's "Executive Action" arm was involved for years in plotting with the Mob and others to murder Fidel Castro.

Are we all to believe this is simply James Bond, where agents can arbitrarily knock off people and walk away? They actually had a manual that promotes throwing people from high buildings, with "plausible denial"!

One paragraph in particular gives me pause, when I think back to what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963. "Public figures or guarded officials may be killed with great reliability and some safety if a firing point can be established prior to an official occasion," the manual instructed.

David Talbot on Hollywood

The coverup continues: The Kennedys in Hollywood

The "Kennedys" miniseries is the latest proof tinseltown just can't handle the truth. I should know

By David Talbot http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/04/01/kennedys_in_hollywood/

Although it lasted a mere 1,000 days, the Kennedy presidency has been entombed under 1,000 layers of junk history. Now -- with the 50th anniversary of JFK's brief reign upon us, and the half-century mark coming up on his 1963 assassination -- we will soon be neck deep in Kennedy sludge. A flurry of Kennedy projects are in various stages of production in Hollywood, which has long been dazzled by the family's glamour. But none of them promises to go beneath the surface and capture the deeper essence of their tragic story. When it comes to the Kennedys, Hollywood still can't handle the truth.

The first Camelot drama out of the chute is "The Kennedys," the controversial miniseries that was canceled by the History Channel under pressure from Carolyn Kennedy and historians, who argued that the channel should at least make some effort to root the story in, well, history. This was a quaint argument, since the History Channel abandoned history long ago in favor of ice-road truckers, gator wrestlers and other reality sideshows. But the network owners were sufficiently embarrassed by the ruckus to dump the series. "The Kennedys" then took a long, downward trip through television's alimentary canal, ending up in some dark cavity called the Reelz Channel. The six-episode series begins plopping out on Sunday.

"The Kennedys" is a hatchet job pure and simple. The saga is produced by Joel Surnow, which is sort of like Mel Gibson making "The Anne Frank Story." Surnow is the right-wing, Dick Cheney fluff boy who brought us "24," the show that told America not to adjust its dials, that the Constitution was now obsolete. The Camelot noir miniseries, which wallows in mobsters, mistresses and self-medication, is basically the Kennedys as Sopranos, minus the good writing and direction. The early reviews have not been kind, even in the normally charitable Hollywood trade press. "The whole thing," Variety gagged, "plays like a bad telenovela filtered through a 'History for Dummies' text."

All right, I admit, I'm a little bitter. I had a dog in this fight, a rival Hollywood project. I'm the author of a 2007 bestseller about the Kennedy brothers that tells the story of Robert Kennedy's secret quest to solve JFK's murder. My book, "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years," focuses on the brothers' heroic struggle with the national security state to ease America away from the nuclear brink and end the Cold War. I show that Bobby Kennedy became the country's first conspiracy theorist after his brother's assassination, immediately suspecting that the same CIA and Pentagon officials with whom they had bitterly dueled were behind JFK's murder. Bobby realized that he couldn't bring President Kennedy's killers to justice unless he fought his way back to the White House. RFK's presidential campaign in 1968 was not only a fight for the soul of America -- a country poisoned by war and racial strife -- it was a breathtakingly bold, and ultimately fatal, confrontation with his brother's assassins.

This, to me, is the most dramatic story to tell about the Kennedys. They tried to save America, and they were killed by the Saurons who have kept our country in a permanent state of fear and war for the past half-century -- virtually my entire life. It's a grand epic, as old as ancient Rome, as beautiful and horrible as Shakespeare.

The executives at Lionsgate, one of the bigger independent studios in Hollywood, saw it the same way and they optioned my book for a TV miniseries in 2008. They treated "Brothers" as a hot property, the ultimate political thriller. Joining forces with a high-profile producer -- Sid Ganis, then president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- and an A-list TV writer, the studio began aggressively pitching "Brothers" to TV networks. Jon Hamm -- the star of Lionsgate's hit series "Mad Men" -- was chatted up as the perfect JFK. No wardrobe changes necessary.

The traveling "Brothers" road show roamed all over the entertainment capital. Because of the industry names attached to the project, we got high-level meetings at HBO, Showtime, ABC and Starz, among other stations of the Hollywood cross. At one point, Todd Haynes was interested in directing, before peeling away to do "Mildred Pierce."

There was buzz, there was excitement, there was love in the room. And then nothing. Chris Albrecht -- the programming wizard who had made HBO not just television ("The Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," etc.) and then resurfaced at Starz -- talked about making "Brothers" the centerpiece of his first season at his new network home. Albrecht was all Roy Cohn, hooded-eye intensity, and fuck-'em-let's-do-this swagger. And then, he had a sudden change of heart. The fearless TV mogul didn't want to compete with the Joel Surnow miniseries, or at least that was the explanation. In Hollywood there are always murky back stories.

Yes, I know -- "It's Chinatown, Jake" -- get over it. There are a million sad stories in Naked Hollywood. But something seemed rigged here, as one network after the next turned down "Brothers" -- something political under the surface. Oliver Stone, whom I met somewhere along the way, told me in a matter-of-fact tone, "'Brothers' will never get made in this town." Stone knew something about the subject. His "JFK," released back in 1991, was the last movie to offer a deep and brave interpretation of the Kennedy tragedy. For his efforts, Stone was so savagely pilloried, he still hasn't fully recovered his reputation or -- it seems to me -- his political self-confidence.

Apparently, Stone knew what he was talking about. Now, three years after Lionsgate bought the rights to "Brothers," my book is an orphan in Hollywood, owned by nobody but me. Meanwhile, a slew of other Kennedy projects have rushed forward. A low point in my Hollywood tragicomedy came when the screenwriter of the widely reviled Surnow miniseries, a man named Stephen Kronish, tried to defend himself against the rising chorus of criticism by citing "Brothers" as one of his sources. This is the very definition of adding insult to injury.

Now, in addition to Surnow's "The Kennedys," Matt Damon is preparing to play Bobby in yet another bland biopic; Leonardo DiCaprio is working on a Kennedy conspiracy movie based on Lamar Waldron's books -- heavy tomes that propose such a convoluted explanation for the JFK assassination that they make "Inception" look linear in comparison; and, worst of all, Tom Hanks' Playtone company is preparing an assassination miniseries for HBO based on celebrity prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's massive phone book, "Reclaiming History," which took a whopping 1,648 pages to argue that Lee Harvey Oswald did it all by himself, and was still unconvincing.

For the past 50 years, every Kennedy drama except Oliver Stone's has fallen into the same predictable categories. They are either safe -- i.e., weepy valentines to the suffering, stoic family -- or sleazy (see Surnow above). When filmmakers do screw up their courage to dig a little deeper, they invariably end up blaming the Mafia for killing Jack and changing American history. Yes, the mob played a role in Dallas. But the crime lords never participated in anything this epic without their overlords -- the CIA, their longtime partners in crime.

Here's my advice to the viewing public as the Kennedy mudslide begins. Run, and don't look back. There is nothing you need in these movies and TV "events" to understand the true Kennedy story.

This is all you need to know. The Kennedys died for a reason. They died because they told America that our enemies were human, like us, and loved their children too. They died because they vowed to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces, and because they told the generals who wanted to launch a nuclear war over Cuba that they were mad. While Barack Obama outsources his presidency to Wall Street, the Pentagon and the CIA, John Kennedy tried to tell his fellow citizens that we must no longer dominate the world.

This is what you need to know. The Kennedys died for America's sins.

David Talbot is the founder of Salon and the author, most recently, of "Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America" (Simon & Schuster) and "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years." More: David Talbot

JFK Act Congressional Overisght Hearings

 

Sunshine Week is Underway and the Congressional Oversight Committee will be holding a full committee hearing from 9am-11am on St. Patrick's Day - Thursday, March 17, 2011 on the subject of “The Freedom of Information Act: Crowd-Sourcing Government Oversight.”

Those scheduled to testify include: Miriam Nisbet - NARA; Daniel Metcalfe – Collaboration on Government Secrecy; Tom Fitton – Judicial Watch; Rick Blum – Sunshine in Government; Angela Canterbury – Project on Open Government Oversight.

This hearing may be televised in the USA on CSPAN live or delayed at another time.

It will be a good time to view the committee at work and see how such hearings are conducted, so when they finally get around to holding a hearing on the JFK Act we know what to expect.

The two on-line petitions we have going requesting the committee hold hearings - include the original petition to the Democrats (with over 350 signatures JFK ACT Oversight Hearings - Signatures) and the more recent one (with nearly 200 JFK Act Oversight Hearings - Signatures), which will be presented to the Committee chairman and subcommittee chairmen and other members of the committee this week.

Thanks to all who have signed on. If you have yet to sign the petition you can do now or within the next week JFK Act Oversight Hearings Petition, and send the link to those friends you know who would like to sign it.

www.petitiononline.com/112263/petition.html.

We also are requesting that people privately fax a letter to the Chairman of the Committee (Issa) requesting to be notified when a JFK Act Oversight Hearing is scheduled so arrangements can be made to attend or review the proceedings on CSPAN.

Here's my one-page letter that will give you an idea of what to day. If the committee gets 100 such faxes or letters mailed to them, they will hold a hearing, and you can be one who makes a difference. While some people may be shy about signing a public petition, your confidentially will be maintained and you can still have an impact by sending a one-page, polite fax and mailed letter to the Committee, as I have done.


Open Letter to the Chairman of the House Oversight Committeeof the USCongress Rep. Darrell Issa (R. Calf

Rep. Darrell Issa (R. Calf.)
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5074 /Fax: (202) 225-3974

Dear Rep. Issa,

As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, you are responsible for holding public hearings that oversee the laws of the United States, including the JFK Act of 1992 and the work of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), that has yet to be given any oversight since the Review Board was dissolved over fifteen years ago.

The last time the Republicans controlled the Committee they didn’t conduct any oversight at all for over a decade, and the few years that the Democrats were in control they appeared sympathetic but “didn’t want torock the boat.” Well now you are in the driver’s seat, and are threatening to hold oversight hearings every week, and if you do, then oversight of the JFKAct should be given a top priority.

It is an important subject that many Americans are concerned about, and there will be an increase in interest with the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy administration. There are many questions that deserve to be addressed, including why Secret Service records were intentionally destroyed after they were requested by the ARRB, why other important assassination records were destroyed, how national security records could go missing without any investigation of their disposition, and why significant numbers of records are still wrongfully and illegally being withheld.

This is a non-partisan issue supported by both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, conspiracy and non-conspiracy advocates alike, and is of serious concern to the majority of Americas who have lost their confidence in the government.

I believe you will take this issue seriously and request to be notified, if and when you decide to schedule an oversight hearing on the JFK Act, so I can make arrangements to attend and review the proceedings that will be of interest to all Americans.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter,

William Kelly Billkelly3@gmail.com


For those who are serious about utilizing and applying the Congressional Oversight powers to the JFK Act, you should get a copy and read this pamplet, The Art of Congressional Oversight: A User’s Guide To Doing It Right (2009, POGO – Project On Government Oversight) with Chapter One available on line here: http://pogoarchives....k/chapter-1.pdf

http://www.pogo.org/cots/

http://pogoarchives....ok/contents.pdf

Contents
Introduction 5
Chapter 1:
Recognizing Responsibility and Power 7
The legal basis for congressional oversight 8
Key principles of congressional oversight 8
Measure you Congressional IQ 11
Additional Reading12

Chapter 2:
Beginning Your Investigation 15
Deciding what type of oversight investigation you want topursue 16
Checking your committee’s rules 16
Studying what is already available 17
Narrowing your search 18
Using case studies to exemplify systematic failures 18
Finding the instances of wrongdoing (waste, fraud, or abuse)19
Getting a hold of the documentation 19
Cultivating contacts within the agencies and companies youcover 20
Listening to insiders and whistleblowers 20
Getting out of the office 20
Utilizing the media 21
An Investigative Case Study: Not Sweeping it Under the Rug22

Chapter 3:
Utilizing Resources 25
Tapping into other investigator’s reports 25
Working with insiders and whistleblowers 26
Reaching out to other experts 29
Finding publicly available information 31
Additional Reading 31

Chapter 4
Conducing the Investigation and Prepping for thehearing 33
Keeping your boss engaged 34
Being mindful of potential procedural objections to yourinvestigation 35
Deciding on your media strategy ahead of time 36
Considering legislative fixes before and after the hearing36
Consulting with House or Senate Legal Counsel 37
Establishing Process 37
Being Patient 38
Knowing your issue 38
Interviewing your subject ahead of time 39
Giving the witnesses or agencies zero excuse for notcooperating 39
Not being fooled by pseudo-classifications 41
Exerting Congress’s right to information 41
Using Congress’s oversight arsenal 43
Additional Reading47

Chapter 5:
The Hearing and Beyond 49
Engaging the media 49
Scripting the hearing 51
Not letting the hearing be the end 58
Additional Reading 60
Endnotes 61
Additional Resources 65

http://pogoarchives....k/chapter-1.pdf

A. The Right Balance of Power: The Responsibility of CongressionalOversight 65
B. Federal Contracting: Investigative Tips 72
C. Contracting Resources and Publicly Available Information75 c
D. Congressional Tip Sheet on Access to ClassifiedInformation 81

Members of the Subcommittee on Information/NARA and Technology

The Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform.

• Republicans

Chair: Rep. James Lankford (OK-5)
Vice Chair: Rep. Mike Kelly (PA-3)
Jason Chaffetz (UT-3)
Tim Walberg (MI-7)
Raul Labrador (ID-1)
Pat Meehan (PA-7)
Blake Farenthold (TX-27)

• Democrats
Gerald Connolly, Virginia, Ranking Member
Christopher Murphy, Connecticut
Stephen Lynch, Massachusetts

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has legislative jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, the government procurement process, federal personnel systems, the Postal Service and other matters. Our primary responsibility, however, is oversight of virtually everything government does – from national security to homeland security grants, from federal workforce policies to regulatory reform and reorganization authority, from information technology procurements at individual agencies to government-wide data security standards.

US Army Psy-Ops

US Army Psy-Ops - Persuade - Change - Influence

Christian Science Monitor:

Allegations in Rolling Stone this week – that a US military officer may have been ordered to manipulate a congressional delegation visiting Afghanistan, by collecting information on their backgrounds and voting records – is creating a stir inside and outside the defense community over the proper roles of "psychological operations" (PSYOP) specialists.

The problem, say some senior military officials, is the often-complex distinctions between PSYOP specialists and public affairs officers, who routinely prepare background dossiers on visiting officials. The distinctions are further blurred, they add, by an increasingly media-savvy American military eager to influence “hearts and minds” both abroad and at home.

Troops specializing in PSYOP have clear legal boundaries. Targeting Americans, for example, is strictly off limits for military PSYOPs specialists. “Public affairs is really informing and providing information to a broad audience, including the American public,” explains a senior military official, who asked to speak on background because he is not authorized to talk to the press. “Psychological operations is purely about influencing the behavior of foreign target audiences.”

Think you know Asia? Take our geography quiz.

Was the PSYOP-trained officer asked to dig into the background of the visiting congressional delegation “because of his training?” If so, he says, “That would definitely be a concern.”

The American Civil Liberties Union condemned the military’s alleged actions. The Defense Department’s use of PSYOP to manipulate members of Congress and target Americans with military propaganda is a clear violation of the law, they said. The ACLU called on Congress to investigate.

“If found to be true, these revelations are alarming. Using U.S. military intelligence assets designed for manipulating our enemies against our own elected officials is a brazen and chilling abuse of power that directly threatens the core democratic principle of civilian control over the military," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, in a statement released Friday.

While the prospect of an officer trained to manipulate psyches using those skills on elected members of Congress is galling to some within the military, others wonder whether it was an innocent mistake or even all that wrong.

Context is key, says Matt Armstrong, a specialist on military strategic communications with the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California.

Rolling Stone claims that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who is in charge of training Afghan troops, asked his team of PSYOP officers to create profiles of a visiting congressional delegation, including their voting records, “likes and dislikes,” and “hot button issues.” It's a common request of public affairs officers, who routinely put together dossiers that include a biographical sketch and articles written by visiting officials, for example.

“You could argue that he was just being prepared,” says USC's Mr. Armstrong.

If General Caldwell used his information operations cell to prepare for the Congressional delegation visit, says the senior military official, that “was a mistake, because it could very easily have created the impression that professionals were being used to PSYOP” visiting senators – in other words, the officer adds, using their skills on fellow Americans to “present selected truths in order to influence [and] target behavior.”

Legitimate foreign PSYOP targets include more than just enemy combatants, say officials. PSYOP specialists may direct messages to foreign civilian populations – to explain how the US-waged war in Afghanistan may actually benefit Afghans, by providing them with more security or access to health care, for example. PSYOP messages are often true, officials note.

Of course, psychological operations have long been associated with creepy or nefarious undertakings. The military acknowledged this last year, when it dropped the term “psychological operations” and instead began using the term “military information support operations" – with the decidedly less-intimidating acronym MISO. The military also engages in military deception, MILDEC in Pentagon parlance, which involves putting out false information to influence or demoralize enemy forces.

While there is widespread agreement within the US military that troops should not target Americans or allies with PSYOP messages – even when they are truthful – sometimes it is difficult to avoid, say senior military officials, particularly given the widespread use of Facebook and Twitter by the US military.

According to Rolling Stone, Caldwell asked Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, a National Guardsman and MISO specialist, "How do we get these guys to give us more people? … What do I have to plant inside their heads?"

Was that an explicit request for ways to manipulate the visiting senators? Caldwell “may simply have meant, ‘I want to know what Senator McCain was thinking, so I can answer his question,” says Armstrong.

Using MISO specialists for this sort of public affairs work may simply reflect a lack of understanding about their role. “A lot of senior leaders don’t have one understanding of what information operations is,” says a senior military officer who specializes in information operations.

A former senior defense official adds, “There are lots of very fine distinctions in this area. Many activities fall into the large bucket of persuasion and influence, from painting rocks to preparing pretty PowerPoint slides to developing and implementing targeted PSYOP plans against a specific target.” He wished not to be named because he still works with the military.

It will take “a real expert and real investigation to figure out whether any specific activities crossed any specific lines," he adds.

Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin, who was part of the visiting delegation, was philosophical in his response this week. “For years, I have strongly and repeatedly advocated for building up Afghan military capability because I believe only the Afghans an truly secure their nation’s future. I have never needed any convincing on this point,” he said. “I am confident that the chain of command will review any allegation that information operations have been improperly used in Afghanistan.”

THE ROLLING STONE STORY:

By Michael Hastings
FEBRUARY 23, 2011 11:55 PM ET

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The Runaway General: The Rolling Stone Profile of Stanley McChrystal That Changed History

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

Photos: Psy-Ops and the General

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one."

King David's War: How Gen. Petraeus Is Doubling Down on a Failed Strategy

When Holmes and his four-man team arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009, their mission was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban and the local Afghan population. But the following month, Holmes began receiving orders from Caldwell’s staff to direct his expertise on a new target: visiting Americans. At first, the orders were administered verbally. According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their "hot-button issues." In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to "refine our messaging."

Congressional delegations – known in military jargon as CODELs – are no strangers to spin. U.S. lawmakers routinely take trips to the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they receive carefully orchestrated briefings and visit local markets before posing for souvenir photos in helmets and flak jackets. Informally, the trips are a way for generals to lobby congressmen and provide first-hand updates on the war. But what Caldwell was looking for was more than the usual background briefings on senators. According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a "deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds." The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. "How do we get these guys to give us more people?" he demanded. "What do I have to plant inside their heads?"

According to experts on intelligence policy, asking a psy-ops team to direct its expertise against visiting dignitaries would be like the president asking the CIA to put together background dossiers on congressional opponents. Holmes was even expected to sit in on Caldwell’s meetings with the senators and take notes, without divulging his background. "Putting your propaganda people in a room with senators doesn’t look good," says John Pike, a leading military analyst. "It doesn’t pass the smell test. Any decent propaganda operator would tell you that."

At a minimum, the use of the IO team against U.S. senators was a misuse of vital resources designed to combat the enemy; it cost American taxpayers roughly $6 million to deploy Holmes and his team in Afghanistan for a year. But Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban. "We called it Operation Fourth Star," says Holmes. "Caldwell seemed far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the Afghans. We were there to teach and train the Afghans. But for the first four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about targeting the NATO populations." At one point, according to Holmes, Caldwell wanted to break up the IO team and give each general on his staff their own personal spokesperson with psy-ops training.

The Insurgent's Tale: A Soldier Reconsiders Jihad

It wasn’t the first time that Caldwell had tried to tear down the wall that has historically separated public affairs and psy-ops – the distinction the military is supposed to maintain between "informing" and "influencing." After a stint as the top U.S. spokesperson in Iraq, the general pushed aggressively to expand the military’s use of information operations. During his time as a commander at Ft. Leavenworth, Caldwell argued for exploiting new technologies like blogging and Wikipedia – a move that would widen the military’s ability to influence the public, both foreign and domestic. According to sources close to the general, he also tried to rewrite the official doctrine on information operations, though that effort ultimately failed. (In recent months, the Pentagon has quietly dropped the nefarious-sounding moniker "psy-ops" in favor of the more neutral "MISO" – short for Military Information Support Operations.)

Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by Congress to prevent the State Department from using Soviet-style propaganda techniques on U.S. citizens. But when Holmes brought his concerns to Col. Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for the Afghan training mission run by Caldwell, the discussion ended in a screaming match. "It’s not illegal if I say it isn’t!" Holmes recalls Breazile shouting.

In March 2010, Breazile issued a written order that "directly tasked" Holmes to conduct an IO campaign against "all DV visits" – short for "distinguished visitor." The team was also instructed to "prepare the context and develop the prep package for each visit." In case the order wasn’t clear enough, Breazile added that the new instructions were to "take priority over all other duties." Instead of fighting the Taliban, Holmes and his team were now responsible for using their training to win the hearts and minds of John McCain and Al Franken.

On March 23rd, Holmes emailed the JAG lawyer who handled information operations, saying that the order made him "nervous." The lawyer, Capt. John Scott, agreed with Holmes. "The short answer is that IO doesn’t do that," Scott replied in an email. "[Public affairs] works on the hearts and minds of our own citizens and IO works on the hearts and minds of the citizens of other nations. While the twain do occasionally intersect, such intersections, like violent contact during a soccer game, should be unintentional."

In another email, Scott advised Holmes to seek his own defense counsel. "Using IO to influence our own folks is a bad idea," the lawyer wrote, "and contrary to IO policy."

In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesman for Caldwell "categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors." But after Scott offered his legal opinion, the order was rewritten to stipulate that the IO unit should only use publicly available records to create profiles of U.S. visitors. Based on the narrower definition of the order, Holmes and his team believed the incident was behind them.

Three weeks after the exchange, however, Holmes learned that he was the subject of an investigation, called an AR 15-6. The investigation had been ordered by Col. Joe Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. The 22-page report, obtained by Rolling Stone, reads like something put together by Kenneth Starr. The investigator accuses Holmes of going off base in civilian clothes without permission, improperly using his position to start a private business, consuming alcohol, using Facebook too much, and having an "inappropriate" relationship with one of his subordinates, Maj. Laural Levine. The investigator also noted a joking comment that Holmes made on his Facebook wall, in response to a jibe about Afghan men wanting to hold his hand. "Hey! I’ve been here almost five months now!" Holmes wrote. "Gimmee a break a man has needs you know."

"LTC Holmes’ comments about his sexual needs," the report concluded, "are even more distasteful in light of his status as a married man."

Both Holmes and Levine maintain that there was nothing inappropriate about their relationship, and said they were waiting until after they left Afghanistan to start their own business. They and other members of the team also say that they had been given permission to go off post in civilian clothes. As for Facebook, Caldwell’s command had aggressively encouraged its officers to the use the site as part of a social-networking initiative – and Holmes ranked only 15th among the biggest users.

Nor was Holmes the only one who wrote silly things online. Col. Breazile’s Facebook page, for example, is spotted with similar kinds of nonsense, including multiple references to drinking alcohol, and a photo of a warning inside a Port-o-John mocking Afghans – "In case any of you forgot that you are supposed to sit on the toilet and not stand on it and squat. It’s a safety issue. We don’t want you to fall in or miss your target." Breazile now serves at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he works in the office dedicated to waging a global information war for the Pentagon.

Following the investigation, both Holmes and Levine were formally reprimanded. Holmes, believing that he was being targeted for questioning the legality of waging an IO campaign against U.S. visitors, complained to the Defense Department’s inspector general. Three months later, he was informed that he was not entitled to protection as a whistleblower, because the JAG lawyer he consulted was not "designated to receive such communications."

Levine, who has a spotless record and 19 service awards after 16 years in the military, including a tour of duty in Kuwait and Iraq, fears that she has become "the collateral damage" in the military’s effort to retaliate against Holmes. "It will probably end my career," she says. "My father was an officer, and I believed officers would never act like this. I was devastated. I’ve lost my faith in the military, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone joining right now."

After being reprimanded, Holmes and his team were essentially ignored for the rest of their tours in Afghanistan. But on June 15th, the entire Afghan training mission received a surprising memo from Col. Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. "Effective immediately," the memo read, "the engagement in information operations by personnel assigned to the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan is strictly prohibited." From now on, the memo added, the "information operation cell" would be referred to as the "Information Engagement cell." The IE’s mission? "This cell will engage in activities for the sole purpose of informing and educating U.S., Afghan and international audiences…." The memo declared, in short, that those who had trained in psy-ops and other forms of propaganda would now officially be working as public relations experts – targeting a worldwide audience.

As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another $2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen. Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.