Former FBI Agent Joe Trimbach to Red Nation: Don’t Glorify an Unrepentant Killer

Leonard Peltier: Still Defiant, Still Guilty

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In a December 23, 2009 press release, the former FBI Special Agent in Charge, Joesph H. Trimbach asks the Indian organization Red Nation not to glorify the unrepentant murderer Leonard Peltier:

In a letter to an organization that advocates on behalf of Native Americans, former FBI Agent Joseph H. Trimbach admonished the group for awarding their first annual humanitarian award to convicted killer Leonard Peltier. The group, Red Nation, gave the award to Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), at a film festival in November. Peltier serves two life sentences for the 1975 murders of FBI Agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams. Trimbach and his son, John, authored a book about the Peltier trial and what they call the "transformation from killer to saint."

The letter, addressed to Red Nation founder Joanelle Romero, calls on the group to rescind the award and give it to a Native American worthy of such an honor. John Trimbach claims that Peltier's efforts to compare his incarceration to the historic oppression of Native people is nothing but a propaganda ruse designed to mask his guilt.

Trimbach said that it was a disgrace to give such an award to someone who is the antithesis of what the award is supposed to symbolize. "This accolade is supposedly for Peltier's 'lifelong commitment to indigenous and human rights' and his leadership in alleviating 'abuse among Native people.' Red Nation is obviously misinformed about the facts of this double murder. From the day he was convicted, Peltier has done nothing but lie about his involvement in Native issues, beginning with his role in the American Indian Movement. He has has spent his entire criminal career lying to people about his so-called activism behind bars."

Trimbach added that the decision to honor an unrepentant killer is especially nonsensical given the wealth of information that renders Peltier's claims to mere falsehoods and fables. "There's a good reason why every court that has looked at this murder case has found against Peltier. They see right through his lies."

Peltier has recently set up a non-profit corporation that Trimbach says only diverts needed funds away from Indian Country. "This is so objectionable to both Natives and non-Natives who are aware that Peltier uses his made-up victim story to fool people into contributing to his defense fund. This money, from all over the world, could have and should have been used to alleviate genuine Indian hardship and suffering." Trimbach also charges that Peltier has gotten away with piggybacking on pressing Native issues in a self-centered and greedy scam, making it doubly harmful to true Indian causes. "Peltier has maliciously trivialized the seriousness of genuine issues facing Indian Country, all in the name of his own glorification. He bilks his fellow Native Americans out of their hard-earned money, and then returns the favor by doling out some of this money to his friends and supporters. He has no shame."

Trimbach adds that the notoriety given Peltier is due mostly to author Peter Matthiessen's controversial bestseller, In The Spirit of Crazy Horse. "This book is written in the blood of Peltier's victims; it does little more than make a mockery of the Crazy Horse legacy and true Indian heroism. The Red Nation group should come to grips with the damage wrought by this book, particularly when it has been repeatedly exposed as a pack of lies. By the same token, Red Nation should be held accountable for their endorsement of a cold-blooded murderer."

The Trimbachs call on all Peltier supporters to donate to the Red Cloud school and other institutions on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. "It's time to provide assistance that the Peltier fund has diverted away from people truly in need," says Joe Trimbach. "We want to replace the funds that Peltier's cause has essentially stolen from reservation Indians."

In his letter to Red Nation, Trimbach reminded the group that Peltier once interrogated fellow AIM member Anna Mae Aquash by putting a loaded gun in her mouth and calling it "truth serum." Aquash was subsequently murdered after Peltier's leaders decided that she was guilty of being an FBI informant. Trimbach says that Aquash was never an informant. "If Anna Mae had been working for us, she would still be alive today because we would have pulled her out of that dangerous situation. It is a shame that Peltier and the old AIM leadership continue to get away with lying about their role in her demise."

The Trimbachs' book implicates AIM leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks in the conspiracy that led to the beating, rape, and execution of Aquash in 1975. The alleged triggerman, former AIM member John Graham, is scheduled for trial in February 2010. "Justice for Anna Mae is long overdue," notes John Trimbach. "I hope the organizers at Red Nation sleep soundly at night, while the spirit of Anna Mae cries out for justice. Her death remains a sobering reminder of the true AIM legacy and the evil behind Peltier's propaganda machine. It is not too late for Red Nation to wash their hands of the Peltier myth of innocence. Their time is surely better spent educating people about poverty and neglect on the reservations. Red Nation owes it to their members to be informed about the Peltier murders. There's really no excuse for honoring an unrepentant killer."

The Trimbachs' historical expose, American Indian Mafia, documents the major court findings of fact in the Peltier murder trial and reveals much about Peltier's claimed alibis.

John M. Trimbach
Trimbach & Associates, Inc.
Atlanta
770-883-5086

First Url: Book Synopsis

Second Url: AIM Myth Busters

Book Title: American Indian Mafia, An FBI Agent's True Story About Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM)

Journalists - Click here for a Review Copy of American Indian Mafia, An FBI Agent's True Story About Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM)

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Did Russian "Hacker Patriots" Embarrass Proponents of Global Warming at the Climactic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia?

Global Temperature Record according to the Climactic Research Institute (CRU)

"When four years ago, then President Vladimir Putin was weighing his options on the Kyoto Protocol the Russian Academy of Sciences strongly advised him to reject it as having 'no scientific foundation.' He ignored the advice and sent the Kyoto pact to Parliament for purely political reasons."--The Hindu (7-10-08) [Note: the Russian Academy of Sciences is a signatory to the Joint science academies’ statement on growth and responsibility: sustainability, energy efficiency and climate protection.]

The media and the blogs are debating the significance of a scandal called "Climategate."

According to the blog Atlas Shrugs (11-20-09), a "Russian entity" hacked into the server of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and briefly posted a file with embarrassing e-mails and documents on a Tomsk (Томск) server called TomCity. The file soon disappeared, but not before the information had been downloaded by climate change skeptics in the West. The Russian InfoCentre (11-24-09), citing Science and Technology (11-23-09), posted this article in English:

Russian hackers have cracked the server of the University of East Anglia, which dealt with climate change and global warming problems, and found that research resuts [ie results]were forged.

Hackers have stolen the correspondence between University staff members and made it public on the Internet. Researchers have been discussing the ways to forge data in order to correspond with the idea of global warming.

The real data surprisingly shows the decrease of Earth’s average annual temperatures. The University of East Anglia confirms the theft, but refuses to give any comments on the correspondence.

To read Russian-language media reports about this scandal use the Google translation toolbar and read these articles in the "news" on Rambler.ru Here is a search under Российские хакеры Томск (Russian hackers Tomsk). Here is a Rambler.ru "news" search for Фил Джонс (Phil Jones, the scientist at the center of the CRU controversy). Here is a Rambler.ru "news" search for ФСБ хакеры Томск [FSB (domestic state security) hackers Tomsk].

Gazeta.ru (11-23-09) has a long discussion of the scandal and reports:

Предположительно, взлом серверов университета был совершенхакерами из России, так как архив был выложен на один из ftp-серверов города Томска. Сейчас этот адрес закрыт, но материалы уже распространились по другим веб-сайтам, в основном англоязычным.

[Presumably, the hacking of the servers of the University was committed by hackers from Russia; in addition, the archive was posted on one of the ftp-servers in the city of Tomsk. Now this address is closed, but the materials have already spread to other websites, mainly English-speaking.]

The Guardian (11-27-09) also reports on the hackers and claims:

Computer hackers who broke into the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) server at the University of East Anglia had access to its systems for more than a month.

The full data – covering 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents in which the most recent document and email is dated 12 November – came to wider notice when a copy was posted on a web server in Russia on 19 November.

But a month earlier a BBC weatherman who had expressed doubts about climate change on his blog was sent a sample of the email exchanges, suggesting the hackers already had access to the private system...

The university declined to answer questions about the setup and security of the computers used by CRU scientists, but security experts say there are only three tenable explanations for how the server was hacked: a determined break-in by an external hacker; that one of the CRU or university systems was accidentally "compromised" by a computer virus or other "malware"; or it was an "inside job" by a disaffected member of university staff. The latter is viewed as the least likely.

Climate change deniers have seized on the disclosures, claiming they proved that the scientists had colluded to manipulate climate data and that they called into question the evidence for human-driven global warming.

Leading scientific bodies and governments have dismissed the charges, insisting there is clear evidence that humans are to blame for global warming.

The first leak occurred after 9 October, when one of the BBC's regional weathermen, Paul Hudson, wrote an article arguing that for the last 11 years there had not been an increase in global temperatures. On 12 October he was forwarded a "chain of emails", including some which subsequently appeared in the hacked documents. Last night the BBC confirmed Hudson had been forwarded emails written by two of the scientists, but refused to disclose the source.

"Paul spotted that these few e-mails were among thousands published on the internet following the alleged hacking of the UEA computer system," said a BBC spokesman.

After sending Hudson the sample, nothing more emerged from the hackers for a month. Then early on 17 November someone hacked into the RealClimate website, used by climate scientists to explain their work. Using a computer in Turkey, they uploaded a zip file containing all 4,000 emails and documents. But within a couple of minutes Gavin Schmidt, the website's co-founder, realised something was wrong and shut down the site. The file had been online for 25 minutes but had not been picked up.

On 19 November the hackers used a computer in Saudi Arabia to post a link on The Air Vent – a website popular with climate change sceptics – pointing to a fresh copy of the zip file, this time stored on a Russian web server. At that point it was finally picked up by blogs and news organisations around the world. [See full text.]

The purloined e-mails seem to suggest that the scientists were manipulating the data on global warming, but the scientists claim that the hackers were "cherry-picking" the e-mails.

We may know what the truth is soon because the Telegraph (11-28-09) reports:

Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data - dubbed Climategate - have agreed to publish their figures in full...

The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, "stolen" by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.

The publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre. The full data, when disclosed, is certain to be scrutinised by both sides in the fierce debate.

But what were the motives of the "Russian hackers" who posted the embarrasing kompromat (compromising information) on the Internet? According to an article in the New York Times (10-21-07) Russian hackers tend to have ties to organized crime outfits. Sometimes criminals operate Internet service providers (ISP's) in Russia.

For example, E-Week Europe (10-21-09) reports that the infamous criminal Internet service provider Russian Business Network (RBN) was hosting child pornography:

RBN's systems were used to host child pornography and at its peak, according to SOCA, the organisation hosted around one third of all the "pay-per-view" child pornography in the world. The rest of the illegal network was devoted to malware including systems to control botnets.

"What we are tallking about is a purpose-built criminal ISP - built for and used by criminals...

Russia expert Dr. Paul Goble has written an article about Russian hackers titled Window on Eurasia: FSB Encourages, Guides Russia’s ‘Hacker-Patriots’ (5-31-07).

According to Dr. Goble, the state security and Kremlin also commit cyber-crimes:

The FSB (state security) and quite possibly elements within the Kremlin itself have been encouraging Russian “hacker-patriots” to launch denial of service attacks on websites that official Moscow does not like, according to a leading Russian investigative reporter who specializes on security issues...

Such arrangements provide the Russian government with plausible deniability while achieving the ends that its officials quite publicly indicate they seek. In 2002, [Russian journalist Andrei] Soldatov notes, Tomsk students launched a denial of service attack at the “Kavkaz-Tsentr” portal, a site whose reports about Chechnya angered Russian officials. The FSB office in Tomsk put out a special press release saying that what the students had done was a legitimate “expression of their position as citizens, one worthy of respect.”

Over the next several years, Russian hackers attacked a variety of other sites...

Russia’s “hacker-patriots” have not limited themselves to attacks on websites linked to Chechnya or foreign states. They have also attacked extremist groups like the National Bolshevik Party, moderate opposition groups like “the Marc of Those Who Disagree,” and mainstream media outlets like “Kommersant” and “Ekho Moskvy.”

In all these cases, Soldatov suggests, the FSB with its Center for Information Security as well as the National Anti-Terrorist Committee did not have to use their own in-house resources to attack objectionable websites; they could simply point the growing community of “hacker-patriots” in the right direction...

[Soldatov observes] that “it is not excluded” that “certain groups of activists are being guided not by the special services but by the administration of the president”...[See full text.]

Some Russian scientists, such as the Russian geologist and member of the Academy of Sciences Andrei Kapitsa, have spoken out against the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

The Hindu (7-10-2008) observes:

Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO2 emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis. Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated greenhouse gases, and mainly CO2, that cause climate change. “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”...

The hypothesis of anthropogenic greenhouse gases was born out of computer modelling of climate changes. Russian scientists say climate models are inaccurate since scientific understanding of many natural climate factors is still poor and cannot be properly modelled. Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ocean Studies, and many other Russian scientists maintain that global climate depends predominantly on natural factors, such as solar activity, precession (wobbling) of the Earth’s axis, changes in ocean currents, fluctuations in saltiness of ocean surface water, and some other factors, whereas industrial emissions do not play any significant role. Moreover, greater concentrations of CO2 are good for life on Earth, Dr. Sorokhtin argues, as they make for higher crop yields and faster regeneration of forests...

When four years ago, then President Vladimir Putin was weighing his options on the Kyoto Protocol the Russian Academy of Sciences strongly advised him to reject it as having “no scientific foundation.” He ignored the advice and sent the Kyoto pact to Parliament for purely political reasons: Moscow traded its approval of the Kyoto Protocol for the European Union’s support for Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation. Russian endorsement was critical, as without it the Kyoto Protocol would have fallen through due to a shortage of signatories. It did not cost much for Russia to join the Kyoto Protocol since its emission target was set at the level of 1990, that is, before the Russian economy crashed following the break-up of the Soviet Union. According to some projections, Russia will not exceed its target before 2017. Notwithstanding this, the Russian scientific community is vocal in its opposition to the Kyoto process.

“The Kyoto Protocol is a huge waste of money,” says Dr. Sorokhtin. “The Earth’s atmosphere has built-in regulatory mechanisms that moderate climate changes. When temperatures rise, ocean water evaporation increases, denser clouds stop solar rays and surface temperatures decline.”

Academician Kapitsa denounced the Kyoto Protocol as “the biggest ever scientific fraud.” The pact was lobbied by European politicians and industrialists, critics say, in order to improve the competitiveness of European products and slow down economic growth in emerging economies. “The European Union pushed through the Kyoto Protocol in order to reduce the competitive edge of the U.S. and other countries where ecological standards are less stringent than in Europe,” says ecologist Sergei Golubchikov.

Russian scientists deny that the Kyoto Protocol reflects a consensus view of the world scientific community. Academician Kapitsa complains that opponents of the man-caused global warming are routinely denied the floor at international climate forums.

“A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace,” the scientist says. “As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact.”

Critics concede that the thrust of the Kyoto Protocol is towards promoting energy-saving technologies, but then, they argue, it should have been just that — a protocol on energy efficiency and energy conservation. The problem with the Kyoto process, critics say, is that it shifts the emphasis away from genuine ecological problems, such as industrial, air and water pollution, to the wasteful fight against harmless gases.

“Ecological treaties should seek to curb emissions of sulpher dioxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and other highly-toxic pollutants instead of targeting carbon dioxide, which is a non-toxic gas whose impact on global warming has not been proved,” says Dr. Golubchikov...

[Russian scientists] cite U.S. global weather reports as indicating that global temperatures have stopped rising since the turn of the century. “The global warming in 1970-1998 was merely a phase in the 60-year cycles of natural warming and cooling,” Dr. Bashkirtsev says.

Russian climate researchers working in Antarctica confirm that temperatures on the sixth continent have been declining in recent years. According to geographer Nikolai Osokin, the ice cover in Antarctica, which accounts for 90 per cent of the global ice stock, has overall been growing.

This year global temperatures have been showing a distinct downward trend, and according to the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in May “the globe was cooler than at any time since January 2000.” [See full text.]

Academician Kapitsa has longstanding disagreements with English scientists. According to the Times Higher Education (10-16-98):

Kapitsa doubts that man's activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, can greatly affect global temperature or ozone levels. "Global warming as a result of man's activities does not exist," he told a London conference earlier this year. "People who say it does have predicted temperatures would get higher for the past 20 years, but globally this has not happened."...

"I gave a lecture in Cambridge a couple of years ago on the myths of global warming and of the ozone hole, but not one of my opponents would come and discuss the issue with me," he says. "It is disappointing, but the facts are against them. I am for discussion not dictatorship in the academic world."...

Andrei Kapitsa is adamant that man's activities can have only a negligible effect on the earth's temperature, which is governed almost entirely, he believes, by solar and volcanic activity. His views differ from those of many scientists, who see an inextricable link between global warming and the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels.

Kapitsa is not alone. After the Kyoto agreement on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, thousands of United States scientists signed a petition saying there was "no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing I catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate".

Kapitsa believes it is time for more open academic debate on the subject. He argues that 90 per cent of the world's carbon is dissolved in the oceans. A 0.50 C rise in global temperature would warm the water, causing it to release dissolved carbon dioxide.

The historic climatic record, Kapitsa says, does link higher temperatures with a rise in carbon dioxide. But he says that it is the rise in temperature that releases the carbon, not the other way round. Despite an 80 per cent increase in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the past 40 years, global temperatures have been stable, he says.

In fact, Kapitsa believes that more carbon, and therefore more photosynthesis and plant growth, could be a good thing: "If you are using less carbon fuel, you will have less harvest, and people could starve in the third world.

Russia's President Medvedev has appointed Russia's chief meteorologist, Alexander Bedritsky (Александр Бедрицкий), his new adviser on climate. Bedritsky serves as the president of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Putin's weatherman believes that global warming is a fact but that the effect is unpredictable. Russia in the World profiled Bedritsky's views on global warming in a recent article. Use the translation feature on the Google toolbar to read about Bedritsky's views.

I am not qualified to discuss the science of global warming, but I do think it is important to be skeptical not only of the motives of the CRU scientists -- who seem to be fudging their figures, suppressing evidence, and bullying their opposition -- but of the sponsors and motives of the unknown Tomsk hackers. The Russian media seems quite proud of these Tomsk hackers. The hackers described themselves as "honest men," but we don't even know who they are. VESTI.KZ predicted that we might be hearing again from the hackers. I am going to reserve judgement until all of the data from the CRU becomes available to scientists because this scandal seems like a clasic case of kompromat.

Wikipedia's "Climategate" entry catalogues the dismissive reactions of many scientific organizations and individual scientists to this scandal. For example:

The American Meteorological Society stated that the incident did not affect the society's position on climate change. They pointed to the breadth of evidence for human influence on climate, stating "For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited."

Military Law and the Case of Dr. Nidal Hasan

"[No] military execution order can be carried out without the president’s signature."

The New York Times (11-15-09) has published an interesting article about military law and the difficulties of defending the Fort Hood mass-murderer Dr. Nidal Hasan. On page 2, the article explains:

If the government does seek the death penalty, as is likely, a panel of 12 officers of equal or higher rank than the defendant must deliver a unanimous verdict, and must also be unanimous in imposing a death sentence. If even one member of the panel disagrees on a death sentence, a sentence of life in prison would result. (In addition, no military execution order can be carried out without the president’s signature.)

Rapists and Murderers in the American Indian Movement

"There was talk of the rape of young white and Indian women at the [American Indian Movement (AIM)] camp. One Lakota elder, fluent in the Lakota language, said during the occupation, 'All they do is smoke dope and make the women take their pants down.'"---Lakota journalist Tim Giago

The AIMsters John Graham and Thelma Rios have now been indicted by the state of South Dakota for the December 1975 kidnapping and murder of the Canadian Indian Anna Mae Aquash. Graham has also been charged with raping Aquash.

Richard Marshall, the former bodyguard of the buffoonish AIMster-turned-actor Russell Means, will stand trial for the Aquash murder separately in federal court. Marshall is accused of providing Graham with the gun that was used to kill Aquash. Russell Means's former bodyguard is a previously convicted killer who served time for the murder of Martin Mountileaux in the men's room of a Scenic, South Dakota, bar.

But the rape-murder of Anna Mae Aquash may not have been an isolated incident for the AIMsters. There are allegations that during the 1973 occupation of the Lakota village of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, American Indian movement "heroes" may have also raped and even murdered a number of young women.

The fake Indian, fake scholar, discredited ex-professor, and AIM apologist Ward Churchill describes the AIM's terrorist take-over of an American Indian town and their reign of terror as if it were a slumber party. Compare Ward Churchill's whitewash of the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee with Mrs. Gildersleeve's eyewitness testimony of her family's ordeal at the hands of the AIMsters.

The Lakota journalist Tim Giago explains:

The mainstream media made heroes of the occupiers of Wounded Knee. They became legends in their own minds. Even today there is still talk among the Lakota people of Pine Ridge that some terrible things took place within the AIM camp at Wounded Knee. There were rumors of other murders within the confines of the encampment. There was talk of the rape of young white and Indian women at the camp. One Lakota elder, fluent in the Lakota language, said during the occupation, "All they do is smoke dope and make the women take their pants down." There is a strong suspicion among some Pine Ridge residents that there are other bodies buried in secret graves at Wounded Knee including the body of an African American man named Perry Ray Robinson who apparently entered the camp at Wounded Knee in 1973 and has not be seen or heard from since.

Retired FBI agent Joe Trimbach and his son John, the authors of American Indian Mafia, say that the AIMster Leonard Crow Dog is worried that the remains of people "disappeared" by the American Indian Movement (AIM) during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee might be discovered buried in the ruins of the village.

The Trimbachs observe:

In one of his more lucid moments, AIM's...spiritual advisor, Leonard Crow Dog, warned that at least seven spirits haunt the village ruins. He urged a land purchase of the area in order to prevent a gastly discovery. To illustrate, Crow Dog drew lines in the sand while explaining to this Indian, "There's a Mexican, an Italian, a black man, three white women..." Could these be the forgotten souls AIM leaders do not want people to know about? Was it feared their departure might compromise internal security, should they decide to cooperate with authorities once safely inside a hospital recovery room?...With the possible exception of [the black man Perry Ray Robinson], the deaths remain mysteries (American Indian Mafia p. 323. The book is available in hard-copy or as a searchable e-book).

Daniel Pearl's Parents Disappointed with Justice Department's Decision to Try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a Civilian Court

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."---9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

The Hill (11-14-09) reports:

The family of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl expressed disappointment with the Obama administration's decision to try the professed killer of their son, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a civilian court.

A statement provided to The Hill late Saturday night, signed by the foundation created by Pearl's parents, Ruth and Judea Pearl, said:

"We are sorry to learn of the Justice Department decision to try KSM in a NYC Federal Court.

We are respectful of the legal process, but believe that giving confessed terrorists a worldwide platform to publicize their ideology sends the wrong message to potential terrorists, inviting them in essence, to resort to violence and cruelty in order to gain publicity.

We believe that justice is better served if the trial of KSM, the confessed murderer of Daniel Pearl, be held in closed session."

Why Didn't the Relationship Between Dr. Nidal Hasan and Anwar al-Aulaqi Raise Flags at the FBI?

"Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism expert who has consulted with the FBI and the Defense Department...said only a 'breakdown' could explain the FBI's failure to dig deeper when it discovered late last year that Hasan was communicating by e-mail with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric in Yemen...

'Everybody at the FBI knows who Anwar al-Awlaki is,' Kohlmann said. "In the world of jihadis, this guy is Bruce Springsteen.'"---Dallas Morning News (11-13-09)

According to media accounts, the mass-murdering Fort Hood traitor Dr. Nidal Hasan was reportedly in contact with the American-born al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Aulaqi (Awlaki), pictured above. According to the 9-11 Commission Report, al-Aulaqi is also an American citizen.

Although the FBI has posted a press release about Dr. Hasan, they have not officially named al-Aulaqi as Dr. Hasan's contact. Still, the unnamed "subject" of the JTTF investigation described in the FBI press release seems to be al-Aulaqi, an American citizen. As the FBI press release notes, "[T]he government remains limited in what information can be disclosed publicly about a U.S. citizen under investigation."

It is not yet clear why investigators did not consider Dr. Hasan a security risk since they were aware of his contacts. It is not clear why they decided Dr. Hasan's communications with these unnamed people were nothing but "research being conducted by Major Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center." It is also not clear why the FBI describes his communications as "research" while other media reports claim Dr. Hasan was looking for "spiritual and religious guidance."

Fox News (11-11-09) reports:

Though officials discovered Hasan's e-mails to the imam, one government counterterrorism investigator said the messages suggested he was seeking "spiritual and religious guidance."

The Dallas Morning News (9-13-09) has published an interesting article about Dr. Nidal Hasan's financial support of Islamist terrorists. The article notes:

Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism expert who has consulted with the FBI and the Defense Department, noted that Hasan is a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, with no known family ties to Pakistan. Kohlmann said that leaves only two reasons for the psychiatrist to wire money to the South Asian country: to support charity or to support jihad.

Westerners who want to give to a legitimate Pakistani charity typically would do so by putting money in a U.S. or British bank account, he added.

"It raises huge alarm bells," Kohlmann said of Hasan's reported wire transfers...

Dennis Lormel, a former FBI special agent who directed the agency's efforts to identify sources of terrorist financing, said investigators would take note of the large amount of disposable income Hasan apparently had. He made more than $90,000 a year, had no wife or dependents, and paid about $300 a month for a tiny apartment.

"It seems like there is a lifestyle that was beneath his means," said Lormel, now a managing director for IPSA International, a consultant to banks on combating money laundering. "Where is the money going?"

Lormel said Hasan could have used several channels to wire money abroad, including remittance services that cater to immigrant workers who send money to their native countries. If that were the case, there may be documentation of the transaction, Lormel and others said.

Banks and other money transmitters must tell the Treasury Department if an individual sends more than $10,000 outside the country.

Kohlmann said only a "breakdown" could explain the FBI's failure to dig deeper when it discovered late last year that Hasan was communicating by e-mail with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric in Yemen.

The U.S.-born imam exhorted Western Muslims in January to practice jihad – often translated as "holy war" – by donating money.

Al-Awlaki worked several years ago at a northern Virginia mosque that Hasan and some of the 9/11 hijackers attended. Federal authorities have investigated the cleric's ties to terrorists since the 1990s but never brought charges against him.

"Everybody at the FBI knows who Anwar al-Awlaki is," Kohlmann said. "In the world of jihadis, this guy is Bruce Springsteen."

After the Fort Hood massacre, the cleric said on his blog that Hasan was "a hero."

Walter Reed officials "worried they might be 'discriminating' against Hasan because of his seemingly extremist Islamic beliefs"

"Put it this way," says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."---NPR (11-11-09) citing a doctor at Walter Reed Army Hospital

As I have noted in my two previous posts, both security and military officials seem to have dropped the ball in the case of the mass-murdering Islamist terrorist and traitor Dr. Nidal Hasan. Even though the Army knew Dr. Hasan was an unstable, anti-American Islamist and the FBI knew he was communicating with our enemies, they didn't do anything. Because the Army and FBI didn't act, thirteen soldiers were needlessly slaughtered, and more than 30 were injured.

National Public Radio (11-11-09) has published an amazing article about the mass-murdering Islamist terrorist Dr. Nidal Hasan. The article claims that officials at Walter Reed Army Hospital saw that Dr. Hasan was dangerous but didn't do anything. They just passed him along to Fort Hood. The Walter Reed officials "worried they might be 'discriminating' against Hasan because of his seemingly extremist Islamic beliefs." Actually, they are supposed to discrimate against people with extremist Islamic beliefs because those are our enemies.

National Public Radio (11-11-09) reports:

Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others last week during a shooting spree at Fort Hood. One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic?

"Put it this way," says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole"...

Both fellow students and faculty were deeply troubled by Hasan's behavior — which they variously called disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid. The officials say he antagonized some students and faculty by espousing what they perceived to be extremist Islamic views. His supervisors at Walter Reed had even reprimanded him for telling at least one patient that "Islam can save your soul"...

One official involved in the conversations had reportedly told colleagues that he worried that if Hasan deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he might leak secret military information to Islamic extremists. Another official reportedly wondered aloud to colleagues whether Hasan might be capable of committing fratricide, like the Muslim U.S. Army sergeant who, in 2003, killed two fellow soldiers and injured 14 others by setting off grenades at a base in Kuwait.

...[S]ome of Hasan's supervisors and instructors had told colleagues that they repeatedly bent over backward to support and encourage him, because they didn't have clear evidence that he was unstable, and they worried they might be "discriminating" against Hasan because of his seemingly extremist Islamic beliefs.

...[T]he officials involved in deliberations this year reportedly were not aware, as some top Walter Reed officials were, that intelligence analysts had been tracking Hasan's e-mails with at least one suspected Islamic extremist since December 2008.
And finally, Hasan was about to leave Walter Reed and USUHS for good and transfer to Fort Hood, in Texas. Fort Hood has more psychiatrists and other mental specialists than some other Army bases, so officials figured there would be plenty of co-workers who would support Hasan — and monitor him.

Dr. Nadil Hasan's Treason

"A senior government official tells ABC News that investigators have found that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had 'more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI' than just radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The official declined to name the individuals but Congressional sources said their names and countries of origin were likely to emerge soon.

Questions already surround Major Hasan's contact with Awlaki, a radical cleric based in Yemen whom authorities consider a recruiter for al Qaeda. U.S. officials now confirm Hasan sent as many as 20 e-mails to Awlaki. Authorities intercepted the e-mails but later deemed them innocent or protected by the first amendment.

The FBI said it turned over the information to the Army, but Defense Department officials today denied that. One military investigator on a joint terror task force with the FBI was shown the e-mails, but they were never forwarded in a formal way to more senior officials at the Pentagon, and the Army did not learn of the contacts until after the shootings."---ABC News (11-11-09)

According to media reports, the evil, traitorous, mass-murdering, Islamist fanatic Dr. Nidal Hasan was communicating with a known al-Qaeda operative named Anwar al-Aulaqi (Awlaki). According to the 9-11 Commission Report, al-Aulaqi is also an American citizen. See my previous article about Dr. Hasan and al-Aulaqi.

Today, Fox News (11-11-09) reports that an unnamed government investigator claimed that they couldn't do anything about Dr. Hasan's communications because he appeared to be seeking "spiritual and religious guidance" from al-Aulaqi. Of course, al-Aulaqi reportedly advocates suicide bombing as a religious duty.

Fox News (11-11-09) reports:

Investigators would have been "crucified" over First Amendment rights if they had launched a full-scale probe into e-mails Fort Hood massacre suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly sent to a radical imam, a government investigator told Fox News.

Today I read a now-deleted FBI press release (11-9-09) [see updated FBI press release (11-11-09)] about Dr. Hasan. According to the 11-9 press release, the FBI and the JTTF (Joint Terrorist Task Force) didn't seem to think Dr. Hassan's communications were anything to worry about because they appeared related to his medical "research."

The FBI press release didn't mention the name Anwar al-Aulaqi, and it didn't claim that Dr. Hasan was communicating with their target for "spiritual and religious guidance." Perhaps this is because al-Aulaqi has rights as an American citizen, or perhaps the target of the JTTF was not al-Aulaqi at all.

I think that anyone in the Army who is deliberately communicating with a known al-Qaeda operative is extremely dangerous. I don't understand why communicating with an al-Qaeda operative isn't a crime for an Army doctor, and I don't understand how this communication is medical "research."

Some media reports suggest that Dr. Hasan was "small potatoes" compared to other targets and that there will soon be a "blizzard" of arrests. I certainly hope so, but this "blizzard" will be cold comfort for the families of the soldiers shot and killed or wounded at Fort Hood.

The now-deleted FBI press release (11-9-09) [see the updated FBI press release (11-11-09)] states:

Major Hasan came to the attention of the FBI in December 2008 as part of an unrelated investigation being conducted by one of our Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs). JTTFs are FBI-led, multi-agency teams made up of FBI agents, other federal investigators—including those from the Department of Defense—and state and local law enforcement officers.

Investigators on the JTTF reviewed certain communications between Major Hasan and the subject of that investigation and assessed that the content of those communications was consistent with research being conducted by Major Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center. Because the content of the communications was explainable by his research and nothing else derogatory was found, the JTTF concluded that Major Hasan was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning. Other communications of which the FBI was aware were similar to the ones reviewed by the JTTF.

Well, I think that Dr. Hasan is a traitor, not a researcher. According to the U.S. Code:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Article III Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason as follows:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Of course, Dr. Hasan is not only a traitor but an Islamist terrorist and a mass-murderer. I am sure there are many of considerations that I am unaware of; but from where I sit, it seems that lots of people really blew it.

Dr. Nidal Hasan Attended a Conference with Homeland Security Experts at George Washington University

"US authorities are investigating reports that Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood attacker, attended a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, that was also frequented by two of the Islamic terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks in 2001...The Virginia mosque’s imam at the time was Anwar al-Aulaqi, a Muslim radical who saw Islam and America as enemies. Hasan is thought to have attended at least one of Aulaqi’s lectures before the imam left for his native Yemen."---London Times (11-7-09)

UPDATE (11-11-09): Articles on Nidal Hasan by The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC (scroll down), CBS, ABC, Brian Ross at The Blotter (ABC), Department of Defense, and the FBI.

According to press accounts, Army psychiatrist Dr. Nidal Hasan, who allegedly massacred soldiers at Fort Hood on Thursday, November 5, may have written on a website that being an Islamist suicide bomber is akin to an American soldier falling on a grenade to save fellow soldiers. According to news reports, Dr. Hasan may have written on the Internet that people should strap on bombs and go to Times Square.

It seems to me that Dr. Hasan didn't have a bomb, so he used the guns he illegally brought onto the post instead. Still, Dr. Hasan was basically a suicide bomber. His relatives are claiming that he was harassed in the Army because he was Muslim; however, a person who knew Dr. Hasan said the psychiatrist drew negative attention to himself with his pro-terrorist ideology. Dr. Hasan was given every opportunity by the Army. He was given a free medical education in exchange for serving in the Army. Even if some soldiers were harassing him, he could have reported this. After all, Dr. Hasan was a physican and an American Army officer, not a schoolboy.

A T.V. report claimed that Dr. Hasan's imam told the media that the psychiatrist wanted the imam to find him a Muslim wife who would wear a hijab, a garment that totally covers up a woman's body and face. Dr. Hasan was 39 and unmarried.

The London Telegraph (11-7-09) reports:

Adnan Haider, a retired professor of statistics, recalled how at their first meeting last year, a casual introduction after Friday prayers, Hasan immediately asked the academic if he knew "a nice Muslim girl" he could marry.

"It was a strange thing to ask someone you have met two seconds before. It was clear to me he was under pressure, you could just see it in his face," said Prof Haider, 74, who used to work at Georgetown University in Washington. "You could see he was lonely and didn't have friends.

"He is working with psychiatric people and I ask why the people around him didn't spot that something was wrong? When I heard what had happened I actually wasn't that surprised."

Indeed, many of the characteristics attributed to Hasan by acquaintances – withdrawn, unassuming, brooding, socially awkward and never known to have had a girlfriend – have also applied to other mass murderers.

According to the London Times (11-7-09):

US authorities are investigating reports that Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood attacker, attended a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, that was also frequented by two of the Islamic terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Funeral services for Hasan’s mother, Hanan, were held at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church in 2001. In April of that year Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, later identified as being among the 9/11 hijackers, paid several visits to the mosque, the largest in the vicinity of Washington DC. The two Saudi Arabians were on the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon.

The Virginia mosque’s imam at the time was Anwar al-Aulaqi, a Muslim radical who saw Islam and America as enemies. Hasan is thought to have attended at least one of Aulaqi’s lectures before the imam left for his native Yemen.

In London, the Telegraph (11-7-09) is reporting:

Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.

I vaguely recall reading that al-Aulaqi pretended to be a moderate Muslim after 9-11. I vaguely remember advice he gave Americans in National Geographic right after 9-11. I vaguely recall that he advised that we not attack Bin Laden in Afghanistan because this would only inflame Muslims against America. I can't remember if he was quoted in this article or if he actually wrote the article.

I remember reading that al-Aulaqi falsely claimed to be an American citizen, but the 9-11 Commission Report (p. 221) says that al-Aulaqi was born in New Mexico and is thus an American citizen. The 9-11 Commission Report mentions Aulaqi 30 times. In 2002, he ran off to Yemen.

Here is an old U.S. News and World Report (6-13-04) article about al-Aulaqi and his possible links to al-Qaeda. U.S. News (6-13-04) notes that Aulaqi blamed the 9-11 attacks on Israel in his National Geographic article:

Al-Awlaki and his followers blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks. "There is an expectation that Muslims should apologize for something that they never did," al-Awlaki told National Geographic magazine in September 2001.

The probe of the 9/11 attacks soon led Washington FBI agents back to San Diego, where they found that al-Awlaki had twice been busted for soliciting prostitutes in 1996 and 1997 but had avoided jail time. Al-Awlaki has previously described these charges as "bogus." But FBI agents hoped al-Awlaki might cooperate with the 9/11 probe if they could nab him on similar charges in Virginia. FBI sources say agents observed the imam allegedly taking Washington-area prostitutes into Virginia and contemplated using a federal statute usually reserved for nabbing pimps who transport prostitutes across state lines. But in March 2002, al-Awlaki abruptly left the country for Yemen. "When he left town, it was as if the air went out of the balloon," says one FBI source. Al-Awlaki briefly returned to the United States in October 2002, but federal authorities did not have sufficient cause to detain him, even though his name popped up on a terrorist "lookout" database.

In the U.S. News article, his name is spelled al-Awlaki. Here is a Wikipedia entry about Anwar al- Awlaki/al-Aulaqi. I guess I will have to see if I still have that old issue of National Geographic so I can see what al-Aulaqi actually said.

Years ago an author named Paul Sperry also posted an article about al-Aulaqi. According to Sperry, al-Aulaqi lived at various addresses in Colorado, California, and Virginia.

The Washington Post (2-27-08) has a very informative 2008 article detailing al-Aulaqi's connections to al-Qaeda titled "Imam From Va. Mosque Now Thought to Have Aided Al-Qaeda."

The Washington Post (2-27-08) article states:

U.S. officials are saying for the first time that they believe that Aulaqi worked with al-Qaeda networks in the Persian Gulf after leaving Northern Virginia [in 2002]. In mid-2006, Aulaqi was detained in Yemen at the request of the United States. To the dismay of U.S. authorities, Aulaqi was released in December.

"There is good reason to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies," said a U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity...

After 9/11, Aulaqi publicly condemned the attacks. But in comments published in English on Sept. 17, 2001, on IslamOnline, Aulaqi suggested that Israelis may have been responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that the FBI "went into the roster of the airplanes and whoever has a Muslim or Arab name became the hijacker by default."

Weeks after leaving the United States in the spring of 2002, he posted an essay in Arabic titled "Why Muslims Love Death" on the Islam Today Web site, lauding the fervor of Palestinian suicide bombers. Months later he praised them in English at a lecture in a London mosque that was recorded on videotape.

Perhaps we will hear more about the alleged relationship between al-Aulaqi, who praised suicide bombers, and the evil Dr. Hasan as the investigation of this mass murder goes forward.

If Dr. Hasan was working for the enemy and taking care of American soldiers with war-related psychiatric problems, he would even have been in an excellent position to collect intelligence from the young soldiers in his care. If he did this, I think that's pretty clearly treason. Certainly murdering American soldiers who were going to the Middle East might also be considered aid and comfort to the enemy.

Dr. Nidal Hasan also seems to have attended a conference at George Washington University in Washington D.C. sponsored by a think tank called the "Homeland Security Policy Institute."

The conference was titled:

Thinking Anew—Security Priorities for the Next Administration

PROCEEDINGS REPORT OF THE HSPI PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION TASK FORCE

April 2008-January 2009

On page 29 the report notes that one of the people who attended the conference was Nidal Hasan. His affiliated organization is the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine.

I wonder if Dr. Hasan was spying on these scholars, security experts, and medical people who give advice on Homeland Security. Dr. Hasan obviously was not sympathetic to the cause of Homeland Security. He seems like a traitor to me.

One of the people at the conference was Dr. Paul Joyal. He is a famous expert on the KGB who was shot in the groin as he got out of his car in the driveway of his home on March 1, 2007. You can search Joyal (scroll down) on this blog to read about him. Dr. Joyal was shot not long after he accused the KGB of poisoning the defector Alexander Litvinenko with polonium.

Speaking on Dateline on February 25, 2007, Mr. Joyal said of Litvinenko's murder:

"A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: 'If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you — in the most horrible way possible."

I don't think that Dr. Hasan "snapped" because of anti-Muslim prejudice. Dr. Hasan was an officer who had received his medical education at the expense of the military. He was a person who was failing in his career and didn't want to be sent to the war in order to care for young, brave soldiers. He was a loser, a coward, a terrorist, and a traitor.

"Tam O'Shanter" by Robert Burns

"Weel-mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet,
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet,
Whiles glow'rin round wi' prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares;
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry."---"Tam O'Shanter" by Robert Burns

Americans might be reminded of the chase scene in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" when they see the picture above, but actually the illustration depicts Robert Burns's magnificent narrative poem "Tam O'Shanter."

Robert Burns, Scotland's national bard, published "Tam O'Shanter" in 1790; but it very probably was the inspiration for Washington Irving's Halloween favorite, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1818).

Read "Tam O'Shanter" while you listen to the late Professor David Daiches of Edinburgh University read this magnificent poem aloud (#4) on the site of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Professor Daiches was of Lithuanian Jewish descent, but he loved Scotland and basically "rewrote Scottish literary history." His father, a rabbi, was Judiaism's chief representative in Scotland, according to his obituary in The Times (7-25-05).

The Times obituary notes:

[T]he war stranded [Daiches] in Chicago, and it was a relief when, in 1943, he got war work with British Information Services in New York. From there, after a year, he was transferred to the embassy in Washington

...[Daiches] was recruited to the team of eight that edited The Norton Anthology of English Literature (1962). He went on contributing to revised editions of this mighty compendium for a couple of decades, and as it became a standard textbook in countless US colleges it became a healthy source of income.

Lithuanian Jewery was totally destroyed by the Holocaust, but luckily a priceless remnant was spared when the Daiches family immigrated. The gifted Jewish scholar Professor David Daiches made invaluable wartime contributions to democracy and to our appreciation of Scottish, English, and American literature.

WARDO!

Once there was a plagiarist who wouldn’t say his prayers,

And ghostwrote under “hats” at night away up stairs,

‘Till the MIM all heard him holler and the Black Bloc heard him bawl,

But when they turned the ‘puter on, he wasn’t there at all!

They searched him in the chat rooms, on-line, and in the press,

(And even down in Gitmo, the Drudge Report suggests).

But all they ever found of him was just his pants and round-abouts...

COINTELPRO will get ya if ya don’t watch out!!

Listen to "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving

"In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic...."

Click the little horn and listen to Washington Irving's famous ghost story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," at PublicLiterature.org Many of the classics on this site have linked to audio books from Libravox.org. You can even volunteer to be a reader.

First published in 1820, Washington Irvings's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the companion tale "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) are still enjoyed today. You can also listen to the actor Walter Huston read adaptations of both stories at Kiddie Records Weekly.

I think that Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" bears a suspicious resemblance to Robert Burns's 1790 narrative poem "Tam O'Shanter." I think that's called "artistic license." Read the poem and then listen to David Daiches of Edinburgh University read "Tam O'Shanter" (#4) and see what you think!

For a stroll down memory lane, check out other offerings at Kiddie Records Weekly. The site notes:

Many of these recordings were extravagant Hollywood productions on major record labels and featured big time celebrities and composers.

For example, check out Sidney Greenstreet's portrayal of the madman Montresor in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (week 21), or "The Sorcerer's Apprentice for Children." Kiddie Records observes:

Although French composer Paul Dukas' 1897 symphonic poem was already quite well known and popular, it was made particularly famous by it's inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film, Fantasia. Today, few can hear the piece without picturing Mickey Mouse dressed in a red robe and his master's magical hat.

Public Literature.org includes an audio version of H.G. Wells's Halloween sci-fi favorite "War of the Worlds" (1898) and Mary Shelly's Gothic novella Frankenstein (1818). The Wikipedia entry notes that Shelly's novel "is often considered the first fully realised science fiction novel due to its pointed, if gruesome, focus on playing God by creating life from dead flesh."

You may also enjoy listening to Jane Austen's parody of the Gothic, Northanger Abbey. Wikipedia notes:

The most famous parody of the Gothic is Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey (1818) in which the naive protagonist, after reading too much Gothic fiction, conceives herself a heroine of a Radcliffian romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side, though the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. Jane Austen's novel is valuable for including a list of early Gothic works since known as the Northanger Horrid Novels.

One of my favorite stories is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem," which is included in the audio version of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Wikipedia has an interesting entry about this story and a link to "The Final Problem." You can listen Basil Rathbone read the story here. You can listen to Basil Rathbone read other Sherlock Holmes stories at the Internet Archive.

Ladies and Germs!

"The health department shut down the food-and-beverage operation at the shop, Vox Pop, in January, because of $29,000 in unpaid fines going back to 2007...The Jan. 28 inspection also turned up eight violations, including 'evidence of mice or live mice' and 'conditions conducive to vermin.'”--New York Times (3-16-2009)

According to Barnes and Noble, the crackpot 9-11 Truther Sander Hicks (search Hicks on this blog and scroll down) seems to have published a book titled Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health (2006). The synopsis of the book claims:

The sixth Critical Art Ensemble book offers a radical reframing of the rhetoric surrounding germ warfare. After refuting the idea that massive biological attack is a probable future occurrence, the book goes on to argue that biological weapons programs primarily serve the economic interests of the military-security complex, squandering resources needed to fight the massive loss of life each year from emerging infectious diseases. The book also includes two appendices examining the case of the U.S. Justice Department against Steve Kurtz, for which the original manuscript of the book was seized in the state's investigation.

On the other hand, Amazon says Marching Plague was written by the Critical Art Ensemble and published by a radical publisher called Autonomedia. Perhaps the actual author is Sander Hicks, but since the Critical Art Ensemble describes itself as a "collective," the actual authorship of Marching Plague is a bit murkey.

Critical Art Ensemble links Marching Plague to a turgid, poorly-composed project position paper titled "Bodies of Fear in a World of Threat." The position paper refers to "the authors" (presumably of Marching Plague) and opines:

CAE's opinion is a simple one. We believe that biowarfare "preparedness" is a euphemism for biowartech development and the militarization of the public sphere. Preparedness, as it now stands, is a madness that continues because it gets votes for politicians, audiences for media venues, profits for corporations, and funds for militarized knowledge production. If there is any real threat to our bodies and health, it is not coming from weaponized germs, but from the institutions that benefit from this weaponization.

Of course, the anonymous Simple Simons of this simple position paper--and perhaps of Marching Plague--don't know the first thing about the dangers of biological agents. Certainly Sander Hicks, who is credited as the author of Marching Plague by Barnes and Noble, is not a scientist with expertise in biological warfare, public health, or emerging infectious deseases. He started a Brooklyn coffee shop called Vox Pop that was closed down in January by the Health Department because of unsanitary conditions.

According to The New York Times (3-16-2009):

The health department shut down the food-and-beverage operation at the shop, Vox Pop, in January, because of $29,000 in unpaid fines going back to 2007.

Vox Pop is also three months behind on the rent. The telephone has been disconnected. And the person who was hired in December to straighten things out has never been paid.

...[A] health inspector walked into the Cortelyou Road shop, at the corner of Stratford Road. That visit was a follow-up to a Jan. 7 inspection that found, among other things, that Vox Pop’s permit had expired. The Jan. 28 inspection also turned up eight violations, including “evidence of mice or live mice” and “conditions conducive to vermin.” Ms. Ryan said those problems were in a part of the basement that was not used for food storage, and were corrected immediately, as were other issues the health department cited. But there remained fines from the earlier inspections — fines that were not paid while Mr. Hicks was in charge.

Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's Anthrax Conspiracy Theory

"[A]rticles I found on the Internet indicated [Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg] believed that the anthrax mailings were some kind of sinister plot involving a 'rogue scientist' and masterminded by the Bush Administration to undermine the BTWC in order to cover up America's secret and illegal biological weapons programs."--Ed Lake [Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks Home]

When the FBI revealed in August 2008 that the late Dr. Bruce Ivins was their suspect in the anthrax mailings, some people were suspicious and unhappy. The paranoid Maoist MIM grumbled as he quoted what the deceitful sociopathic anthrax murderer Bruce Ivins told his friends (A.P. 8-6-08):

Another case seemed rushed along just in time for elections. “Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.

Even today, the disreputable conspiracy theorist and 9-11 Truther Sander Hicks continues to malign Dr. Steven Hatfill with fabricated anthrax canards, although a letter dated 11-4-02 that the Justice Department sent to to Senator Charles Grassley explains:

When the FBI conducted a consensual search of Dr. Hatfill's apartment on June 25, 2002, in Frederick, Maryland, the mainstream media immediately interpreted this search as confirmation of all the speculation that had been previously circulating about Dr. Hatfill. The FBI was asked whether Dr. Hatfill was a suspect in the case and when an arrest was anticipated. It was under these circumstances that unnamed sources at the FBI first described Steven Hatfill as one of many "persons of interest". ... The phrase was never used by the FBI or the Department of Justice to draw media attention to Dr. Hatfill. On the contrary, the phrase was used to deflect media scrutiny from Dr. Hatfill and to explain that he was just one of many scientists who had been inteviewed by the FBI and who were cooperating with the anthrax investigation.

The retired computer scientist and researcher Ed Lake explains in a post titled "Steven J. Hatfill And The Clueless Media" why he thinks that the FBI Amerithrax investigation initially focused so much attention on the Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill.

According to Mr. Lake, Dr. Hatfill was targeted by a scientist named Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg because he was a strong opponent of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention:

[Dr. Hatfill] is an outspoken opponent to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC). He publicly demonstrated the ease with which biological weapons could be created. He was actively convincing people that terrorists were the biggest threat - not secret government projects run by the CIA.

According to Mr. Lake, Dr. Rosenberg, a founder and Director of the Federation of American Scientists Chemical and Biological Weapons Program, was a strong supporter of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) who believed that the U.S. government was secretly and illegally making weaponized anthrax. Of course, as I observed in my first post on the anthrax mailings, the anthrax that was mailed in fall of 2001 was not weaponized at all.

According to Mr. Lake's post "Steven J. Hatfill And The Clueless Media" (6-10-03), Dr. Rosenberg believed:

[S]omeone from an illicit U.S. bioweapons program obtained anthrax from that program and sent it through the mail to undermine the position of those in favor of the BTWC.

Mr. Lake also has an interesting post titled "Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's 'Political Campaign'" (7-30-03). Mr. Lake begins his article by observing:

From the very beginning I viewed Barbara Hatch Rosenberg as just another crackpot conspiracy theorist. All the tell-tale signs were there. When she first made headlines in the anthrax case in November 2001 by making a speech at the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) in Geneva, the articles I found on the Internet indicated she believed that the anthrax mailings were some kind of sinister plot involving a "rogue scientist" and masterminded by the Bush Administration to undermine the BTWC in order to cover up America's secret and illegal biological weapons programs. Those are the types of accusations found in most conspiracy theories.

Another early critic of Dr. Rosenberg is David Tell, who voiced skepticism of Dr. Rosenberg's science and her "crackpot" conspiracy theories in an article he published in The Weekly Standard (4-29-02):

[T]his veteran molecular biologist's sensational pronouncements betray a surprisingly uncertain grasp of contemporary genetic research and clinical protocols concerning Bacillus anthracis. And a surprisingly limited familiarity with anthrax-related military and civil-defense projects around the world. And a surprisingly unscientific, even Oliver Stone-scale, incaution about the "facts" at her disposal. Rosenberg claims the FBI has known the anthrax mailer's precise identity for months already, but has deliberately avoided arresting him--indeed, may never arrest him--because he "knows too much" that the United States "isn't very anxious to publicize." Specifically, according to an account the hazel-eyed professor offered on BBC Two's flagship "Newsnight" telecast March 14, the suspect is a former federal bioweapons scientist now doing contract work for the CIA.

Mr. Lake published a book titled Analyzing The Anthrax Attacks (2005). I wonder if he will publish a second book when the National Research Council scientists finish their extensive review of the science behind the Amerithrax investigation.

Who Is the Teacher-Detective Candy Hamilton?

In December 1975, the American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Anna Mae Aquash, the Canadian Indian mother of two young schoolgirls (above), was kidnapped, interrogated, raped, and murdered. Before her murder, she was held at the Rapid City office/house of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committe (WKLDOC). This organization defended AIM members for crimes they were accused of during their cowardly 1973 terrorist attack on the historic village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

One theory for the motive behind the Aquash murder is that the AIM thought Aquash was an FBI informant. Aquash might also have been able to link Leonard Peltier to the 6-26-75 murder of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Indian reservation. People who want an honest, fact-based account of what happened to Anna Mae Aquash should read American Indian Mafia by Joseph and John Trimbach, the AIM Myth Busters blog, and the Aquash file at News from Indian Country.

One Indian AIMster, Arlo Looking Cloud, is already in prison for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash. Three more people have been indicted by state and federal authorities: Richard Marshall, John Graham, and Thelma Rios. It is possible that more important AIMsters will be indicted for complicity in Anna Mae's brutal murder. Information about the backgrounds of Marshall, Graham, and Rios can be found by searching this blog. Marshall, for example, is the former bodyguard of Russell Means and has already served time for another murder.

When Looking Cloud was tried and convicted of the Aquash murder in 2004, Candy Hamilton, a teacher, Hollywood film consultant, and political activist who had once worked as a media specialist or propagandist for the WKLDOC, testified about who was at the apartment of Thelma Rios's mother and about who subsequently attended the meeting of AIMsters who were holding Aquash at the WKLDOC house/office.

Candy Hamilton testified that she couldn't understand any of the discussion in the front room:

I could hear voices, but I didn't hear any of the conversation.

Hamilton testified that she stayed upstairs most of the day and saw Anna Mae Aquash only briefly when she (Hamilton) went to the kitchen and briefly spoke with her very distraught friend who was getting a cup of coffee.

Hamilton told the court the names of most of the people in the front room. She said she didn't remember the last name of a "legal worker" nicknamed "Red."

I found the teacher's testimony about the last day of her friend's life insincere and unconvincing. She didn't seem like an innocent teacher or a dedicated Indian rights activist to me. If Hamilton were Anna Mae's true friend and a real Indian rights activist, why didn't she call the police or help her friend escape?

I first read the name Candy Hamilton in a 1985 article written by the discredited former professor Ward Churchill and published in the KGB-sponsored Covert Acton Information Bulletin. According to a KGB archivist named Vasili Mitrokhin and the British scholar Christopher Andrews, the CAIB specialized in writing defamatory articles about the CIA and FBI. The former KGB archivist Mitrokhin also revealed that the AIM lawyer and writer Mark Lane had a relationship with the Soviet KGB through Soviet journalists such as Genrikh Borovik, the brother-in-law of KGB chief Kryuchkov, one of the main plotters who orchestrated the kidnapping Gorbachev and his wife during the 1991 coup attempt.

Churchill claimed in his propagandistic CAIB article that an independent researcher named Candy Hamilton was his source for his apocryphal claim that FBI-backed death squads had murdered 342 Indians on Pine Ridge. That's some fancy detective work for a teacher!

As far as I know, independent researcher Hamilton, who has a master's degree, has never published any documentation about these supposed 342 murders. Still, as far as I know, independent researcher Candy Hamilton has never disputed what the discredited Ward Churchill attributes to her. This claim that the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Indians has no credibility because it was published by the KGB and written by a dishonest "scholar" who has finally been fired from his tenured position at the University of Colorado.

During the 2004 Looking Cloud trial, Hamilton testified that she teaches at the Black Hills State University (BHSU) in the career learning center. An Internet profile of Hamilton posted by the South Dakota Arts Council also notes that she has a master's degree and served as a consultant on the film Incident at Oglala and Life of Leonard Peltier:

Candy Hamilton is a published poet and story writer. In addition to completing her master’s degree at USD, Hamilton has worked as a researcher for film companies, serving as a consultant to the films Incident at Oglala and Life of Leonard Peltier. Her poetry has been included in Woven on the Wind (2001), Prairie Peaks and Skies (1998) and a variety of other collections. Her articles and stories have been published in Christian Science Monitor, People, South Dakota Magazine and Winds of Change, among others. An instructor for the Career Learning Center in Rapid City and Black Hills State University, Hamilton’s residencies will focus on the impact of reading on writing and vice versa, using sensory descriptions to enliven short fiction, personal essays and poetry. Using the five physical senses and emotions improves writing. Reading skills, vocabulary, observation skills and general communication create strong writing. Residency activities may include collecting family stories and developing family reading/writing time. Presentations are available for adults or children.

I thought it was interesting that the story writer Hamilton was a consultant for the propagandistic film Incident at Oglala because it was possibly another connection between her and Ward Churchill: I once read that AIMster Robert Robideau claimed that "the now infamous Mr. X segment filmed for Incident at Oglala was made in Ward Churchill's home."

Like Candy Hamilton, the discredited ex-professor Ward Churchill has also taught at BHSU in Spearfish, South Dakota. Ward Churchill even claims he was travelling though Pine Ridge Indian reservation to take up a faculty position at Spearfish when he witnessed the FBI searching for the killers of two FBI agents.

It seems to me that the story writer Candy Hamilton---like Ward Churchill---is really a propagandist, not an Indian rights activist. She is certainly not what Ward Churchill called her: an independent researcher. According to Hamilton's own testimony in court, she worked as a media person on behalf of the WKLDOC.

How did Candy Hamilton protect Anna Mae's rights? The teacher didn't help her friend, the mother of two little schoolgirls, at all. She just claimed that she didn't know what was being discussed in the WKLDOC house or that her friend was in danger.

If Candy Hamilton was so oblivious that she didn't suspect that a murder plot against an Indian woman was being hatched in the WKLDOC office/house right under her nose, how did this teacher-detective ever manage the amazing feat of discovering that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians in the wilderness of of Pine Ridge?

Story writer Candy Hamilton works as a teacher, but in my opinion she is really a propagandist who whitewashes the crimes of the AIM/WKLDOC and Leonard Peltier. The story writer is very good at making propaganda, too. She even consults on Hollywood movies! It's hard for me to understand how a teacher-story writer who is so brilliant that she uncovers 342 FBI-backed murders and so clever that she is a consultant to Hollywood movies would be so oblivious that she didn't notice what was happening to her friend in the WKLDOC house.

I wonder why this teacher-story teller, who claims to be an activist for Indian issues, feels called to make propaganda films that whitewash AIM/WKLDOC killers. I would like to know how she became a "source" for Ward Churchill's risible claim that the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Pine Ridge Indians.

Hopefully, when the guilty are tried for Anna Mae's murder, the prosecutor will ask the brilliant story teller and writing teacher, who supposedly documented 342 FBI-backed murders and who consulted for Hollywood, some of the questions that trouble me about her court testimony and about her subsequent career as an independent researcher and Hollywood consultant.

I just can't get over the fact that the amazing teacher-detective supposedly documented the murders of 342 Indians but couldn't be more helpful in uncovering the killer of just one Indian mother, her friend Anna Mae Aquash, whose murder was plotted in the WKLDOC office while she was there.

Washington Bureau Chiefs Defend Fox News

Fox News (10-23-09) reports:

The Obama administration on Thursday failed in its attempt to exclude Fox News from participating in an interview of an administration official, as Republicans on Capitol Hill stepped up their criticism of the hardball tactics employed by the White House.

The Treasury Department on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the network pool except Fox News. The pool is the five-network rotation that for decades has shared the costs and duties of daily coverage of the presidency and other Washington institutions.

But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks consulted and decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included. The pool informed Treasury that Fox News, as a member of the network pool, could not be excluded from such interviews under the rules of the pool.

The administration relented, making Feinberg available for all five pool members and Bloomberg TV.

The pushback came after White House senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday that Fox News is not a real news organization and other news networks "ought not to treat them that way."

Media analysts cheered the decision to boycott the Feinberg interview unless Fox News was included, saying the administration's gambit was taking its feud with Fox News too far. President Obama has already declined to go on "Fox News Sunday," even while appearing on the other Sunday shows.

"I'm really cheered by the other members saying "No, if Fox can't be part of it, we won't be part of it,'" said Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, calling the move to limit Feinberg's availability "outrageous."

"What it's really about to me is the Executive Branch of the government trying to tell the press how it should behave. I mean, this democracy -- we know this -- only works with a free and unfettered press to provide information," he said.

Several top White House advisers have appeared on other news channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news network. [Full text]

Anthrax Investigation Researcher Ed Lake Reviews the 9-11 "Truthers"

A retired computer specialist named Ed Lake has been keeping track of the anthrax investigation on his very informative site for many years. Mr. Lake maintains a large archive of media commentary about the anthrax mailings. He explains how early errors in the scientific analysis of the anthrax used in the attacks led to a lot of mistaken speculation.

Mr. Lake has also followed the campaign against the Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill here and here. According to Mr. Lake:

The Hatfill "investigation" was purely political and based upon "tips" from conspiracy theorist scientists who claimed the FBI was "covering up" for Dr. Hatfill when the FBI's investigation found nothing to tie him to the mailings. The Ivins investigation, on the other hand, was the result of years of detailed scientific analysis followed by an equally detailed criminal investigation.

Although Dr. Hatfill has won lawsuits and has been publically exonerated of complicity in the anthrax mailings, he is once again being maligned by unsubstantiated rumors and accused of killing black Africans with anthrax by 9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks, a disreputable conspiracist who publishes the lies and ridiculous alibis of a convicted car-bomber and a convicted pedophile and child-pornographer.

On 10-18-09, Mr. Lake commented on the conspiracy theories of the 9-11 "Truthers" in his Thoughts and Comments:

October 18 - 2009...[O]ver a month ago, in September, a group of "Truthers" with various issues held a 3-day conference at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, New York City. It appears that the same pattern I've seen elsewhere held true at that conference: No two of the speakers seem to argue the exact same issue. I believe that is almost the perfect definition of the word "babble"...

It's difficult to summarize their issues in just a few words, but it appears they had a holocaust denier, an ex-CIA spy who thinks Dick Cheney had something to do with 9/11, an economist who talked about money-laundering, terrorism and 9/11, a lawyer with issues about how money is created, a musician/ investigative journalist who writes about "The U.S. Government’s Shepherding of the 9/11 Hijackers," an investigative journalist with issues about child-abuse and the Bush Administration, and a lawyer who believes in many different conspiracy theories. At least two of them talked about the anthrax attacks.

It's interesting that these people and others on the "Lunatic Fringe" all claim to be looking for "the truth," yet none seems to be looking for the same "truth." What each one really seems to be looking for is an audience, people they can try to convert to their specific belief.

It also appears that they have absolutely no interest in coherency or understanding. Coherency and understanding are what the other side is looking for.

Contrast their rantings with the methodology of the people on "the other side," i.e., the people who are looking for the facts and who are trying to make coherent sense of the facts.

The people looking to make coherent sense of the facts began with meetings where they discussed the best ways to gather the facts, the best ways to learn the significance of the facts, the best ways to validate the facts and the best ways for top experts in various scientific and investigative areas to assemble their specific facts and fit them into a coherent whole that everyone can understand.

They then set about implementing their plans. They collected data, they tested the data, they organized the data and they discussed the data to get mutual understanding and agreement on the significance of the data.

When data collection and analysis was complete, they gave presentations where the entire issue is summarized, and then the various speakers talked about their particular areas of expertise and their work in assembling the coherent whole.

If the objective had been a purely scientific finding, there might already be unanimous agreement on what they found. In the Amerithrax investigation, however, the individual experts can only agree that their particular findings are accurate, since much of the time they didn't know what other scientists were doing. They may still have questions about how and where their findings fit in the overall scheme of things, but they generally understand the need for validation of the coherent whole as well as each part of the coherent whole--which is why they are doing their best to aid the review of the science of the Amerithrax case being done by The National Academies of Science (NAS).

Of course, the scientific investigation is only part of the Amerithrax investigation. The "coherent whole" must also include everything that can be known about the anthrax attacks of 2001 and who was responsible. The things which cannot be known must still fit into the coherent whole. The coherent whole cannot be coherent if it includes impossiblities. For example, we cannot know what was going on inside the brain of a person who died without telling everyone what he was thinking. But it is sufficient to know he could have had a motive to do what the facts say he did. Also, if years of seaching found no travel records, we may not know exactly how he got from Point A to Point B at some critical point in time, but we can be confident that it is not impossible for him to have traveled from Point A to Point B, because all the known facts indicate he did indeed move from Point A to Point B at that specific time and no facts conclusively say otherwise.

There are no known facts which say that it would have been impossible for Dr. Ivins to have committed the crime. So, what we need now is to see the "coherent whole" of all the known facts--from the science and from the criminal investigation--to allow the interested public to understand how all the major conclusions were reached. In particular, we need to understand how the conclusion was reached that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer and that he acted alone.

In a perfect world, everyone who views the coherent whole--the summary of the entire case--would fully agree on the findings. In our imperfect world, many of those who currently have other theories will probably continue to believe their own theories, regardless of what the facts say.

So, our imperfect world can be expected to produce two things: (1) a coherent summary of the case which will be accepted by the vast majority of people who study it, and (2) a small bunch of conspiracy theorists and True Believers with little agreement on anything except that they all disagree with the coherent summary of the case.

FBI Sting Nabs Maryland Scientist Stewart David Nozette for Attempted Espionage

"The FBI document, signed by Special Agent Leslie G. Martell, says Nozette in January 2009 told a colleague "that if the United States government tried to put him in jail" on an unrelated matter, Nozette would move to Israel or another unidentified foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows."---CNN (10-19-09)

The FBI (10-19-09) is reporting that a Maryland scientist named Stewart David Nozette has been arrested for attempted espionage after he provided classified information to a person he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer. In fact, the "Israeli intelligence officer" was an undercover FBI agent.

The FBI (10-19-09) site states:

The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.

Does this mean that Nozette never really spied for Israel? If so, why did the FBI orchestrate this sting? That's still a mystery. Perhaps he was targeted because of the "unrelated matter" mentioned in the CNN article, above. The interesting CNN quote does not appear in the FBI press release.

The FBI (10-19-09) reports:

A Maryland scientist who once worked in varying capacities for the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been arrested for attempted espionage...

A criminal complaint unsealed today in the District of Columbia charges Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, with attempted espionage for knowingly and willfully attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information relating to the national defense of the United States to an individual that Nozette believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case...

According to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, Nozette received a Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences from MIT in 1983, and worked at the White House on the National Space Council, Executive Office of the President, in 1989 and 1990. He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that purportedly discovered water on the south pole of the moon. Nozette also worked at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from approximately 1990 to 1999 where he designed highly advanced technology. At the Department of Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department Top Secret and Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information clearances. Department of Energy clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

Nozette was also the President, Treasurer and Director of the Alliance for Competitive Technology (ACT), a non-profit corporation that he organized in March 1990. Between January 2000 and February 2006, Nozette, through his company ACT, entered into several agreements to develop advanced technology for the U.S. government. Nozette performed some of this research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Virginia, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. From 1989 through 2006, Nozette held security clearances as high as Top Secret and had regular, frequent access to classified information and documents related to the U.S. national defense.

According to the affidavit, on Sept. 3, 2009, Nozette was contacted via telephone by an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI (UCE). During that call, Nozette agreed to meet with the UCE later that day at a hotel in Washington D.C. According to the affidavit, Nozette met with the UCE that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence.

Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information. Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The UCE explained to Nozette that the Israeli intelligence agency, or “Mossad,” would arrange for a communication system so that Nozette could pass information to the Mossad in a post office box. Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information to the UCE and asked for an Israeli passport.

According to the affidavit, Nozette and the UCE met again on Sept. 4, 2009, in the same hotel. During the meeting, Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that, although he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall the classified information to which he had been granted access, indicating that it was all still in his head. In the meeting, Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, specifying that he preferred to receive cash amounts “under ten thousand” so he didn’t have to report it. At the conclusion of this meeting, Nozette allegedly informed the UCE, “Well I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ...they don't expect me to do this for free.”

On or about Sept. 10, 2009, undercover FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box for Nozette. In the letter, the FBI asked Nozette to answer a list of questions concerning U.S. satellite information. The undercover agents also provided a $2,000 cash payment for Nozette. The serial numbers of the bills were recorded. Nozette retrieved the questions and the money from the post office the same day.

On or about Sept. 16, 2009, Nozette was captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the designated post office box in the District of Columbia. The next day, FBI agents retrieved the sealed manila envelope that Nozette had dropped off and found, among other things, a one-page document containing answers to the questions posed by the undercover agents and an encrypted computer thumb drive. One of answers provided by Nozette contained information classified as Secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. In addition, Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

Also on or about Sept. 17, 2009, undercover FBI agents left a second letter in the post office box for Nozette. In the letter, the FBI asked Nozette to answer another list of questions concerning U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000 in the post office box. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money from the post office box later that same day.

On or about October 1, 2009, Nozette was filmed on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. Later that day, FBI agents retrieved the manila envelope left by Nozette and found a second set of answers from him. The answers contained information classified as both Top Secret and Secret that concerned U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

This investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with assistance from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. [See full text.]

9-11 Truther Sander Hicks Recycles Discredited "Bioevangelist" Anthrax Canards about Steven Hatfill

9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks being escorted out of a Loveland, Colorado coffee shop for being disprutive on private property---Denver Post (11-10-07)

"I owe an apology to Dr. Hatfill...the job of the news media is supposed to be to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Instead, I managed to afflict the afflicted."---Nicholas Kristof, New York Times (8-27-08)

A letter dated 11-4-02 that the Justice Department sent to to Senator Charles Grassley explains:

When the FBI conducted a consensual search of Dr. Hatfill's apartment on June 25, 2002, in Frederick, Maryland, the mainstream media immediately interpreted this search as confirmation of all the speculation that had been previously circulating about Dr. Hatfill. The FBI was asked whether Dr. Hatfill was a suspect in the case and when an arrest was anticipated. It was under these circumstances that unnamed sources at the FBI first described Steven Hatfill as one of many "persons of interest". ... The phrase was never used by the FBI or the Department of Justice to draw media attention to Dr. Hatfill. On the contrary, the phrase was used to deflect media scrutiny from Dr. Hatfill and to explain that he was just one of many scientists who had been inteviewed by the FBI and who were cooperating with the anthrax investigation.

Never-the-less, Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times, the Justice Department, the FBI, and others were sued by the U.S. Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill because they publicly named him as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case. Kristof also suggested that Dr. Hatfill was a racist and wrote in the New York Times that Dr. Hatfill "served in the armed forces of two white racist governments." Just search the linked articles for the word "racist" a few times.

A radical New York "Jewish" organization called "The Jewish Defense Organization" (JDO) further demonized the Army scientist Dr. Hatfill for his alleged racism. David Tell of The Weekly Standard (9-16-02) observes on page 2:

[V]isitors to the [JDO] website--every American reporter on the anthrax beat has surely been there--immediately discover that its top-featured section ... includes a lovingly imagined account of some future day, very soon, when "Dr. Steven 'Mengele' Hatfill," having first "attempted suicide," will be "awakened at 4 a.m. and transported to a cold, damp, and dirty holding cell," then tried, convicted, and given a lethal injection, "just like the lethal injection his former boss, Wouter Basson, gave to hundreds of black South Africans." This and much, much else besides is contained in an extraordinary, 50-some-page, always expanding dossier, "soon to be a paperback book," entitled The Bioevangelist and purporting to prove that "he did it."

Now the musty old JDO Bioevangelist conspiracy theory about "Dr. Steven 'Mengele' Hatfill" is being exhumed by the odious 9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks.

Hicks is an apologist for a convicted Dallas car-bomber, the late James H. Hatfield, whose long criminal career was exposed by The Texas Monthly (10-99), 60 Minutes (2-13-2000), and The Washington Post (3-19-2000).

Pamela Colloff, the author of the article in The Texas Monthly, also complained that passages in the original St. Martin's edition of Fortunate Son had been plagiarized from her own work! In her article "Bio Hazard: Exposing the disgraced author of a discredited book on George W.," Colloff observes:

[Fortunate Son] is littered with unattributed quotes from newspapers and magazines, a technique that allowed Hatfield to give readers the impression that he had conducted extensive research ... of the seventeen people I contacted whom Hatfield listed as sources, not one recalled ever having been interviewed by him.

Hicks is also an apologist for the convicted Denver child pornographer and pedophile, Delmart Vreeland. In 2005, Hicks published The Big Wedding. The book cited Vreeland, who had been arrested for child pornography and other crimes in 2004, as a source for the conspiracy theory that the government was complicit in 9-11.

According to the Denver Channel (10-24-08):

A man with an international following has been sentenced to 336 years to life in prison after he was convicted of luring two boys into performing sex acts and making child pornography....

Vreeland was arrested in October 2004 for numerous charges including child prostitution. Witnesses reported that Vreeland provided drugs and alcohol to two teenage boys, and then induced them to perform sex acts and make child pornography for the promise of thousands of dollars and a drum set. The victims reported Vreeland to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

Detectives conducted an extensive background search on Vreeland and learned that he was wanted in several states and Canada. He has over 40 aliases and an extensive criminal history dating back over 20 years...

Douglas County authorities called Vreeland an international "folk hero" and conspiracy theorist who claimed that while he was incarcerated in a Canadian Jail in 2001 he forewarned Canadian officials of the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Vreeland has claimed to be a U.S. spy, a covert operative, and a Naval Intelligence Officer, all of which have been proven false, according to investigators. U.S. Naval records show that in 1986 Vreeland was kicked out of basic training for his inability to conform to military regulations."

Vreeland has continually claimed to have information on terror plots and high profile murder and kidnapping cases. However, Douglas County detectives and the FBI state that Vreeland's claims have no merit, and he is not a credible source of information.

The mudslinging conspiracist (not microbiologist) Sander Hicks now claims that the FBI's cutting-edge forensics in the anthrax case is "junk science" and that the former Army scientist (and multi-millionaire) Dr. Steven Hatfill is a "fascist" who deliberately infected black people in Africa with anthrax. Hicks's allegation about Dr. Hatfill's supposedly genocidal impulses appears on Youtube (10-2-09). [See an earlier article about this anthrax canard here.]

Sander Hicks is a shill for criminals. His book The Big Wedding depicts the despicable and now-imprisoned Denver con-artist, child-pornographer, and pedophile Delmart Vreeland as a government "whistleblower" who was "framed" for revealing that 9-11 was an "inside job." Ironically, Hicks is now promoting the anti-government pedophile conspiracist Nick Bryant. According to Bryant, there was a "national pedophile network that pandered children to America’s power elite" and there is a "cover-up" of this crime "by state and federal law enforcement."

The government is protecting pedophiles. Where have I heard that canard before?

Really, this conspiracy theory is so absurd. The whole ridiculous lie about government-protected pedophiles seems to be no more than an updated version of the infamous anti-Semitic blood libel, which alleges that the blood of kidnapped children is being made into matzo balls.

Sander Hicks recently interviewed Nick Bryant, who spoke at Hicks's "We Demand Transparency" conference. The conference offered a veritable smorgasborg of conspiracy theories.

But the not-very-sincere Sander Hicks was less than transparent about one thing: If the government is protecting pedophiles, why did the FBI, the judge, and the jury send the international criminal and child pornographer Delmart Vreeland---one of the "sources" for the moronic 9-11 "Trutherisms" that appear in Hick's 2005 book The Big Wedding---to prison for 336 years?

It seems to me that Sander Hicks is the one who is conspiring to protect a pedophile, not the government. It is Sander Hicks who is "covering up" for the pedophile and child pornographer by using The Big Wedding to promote Vreeland's ludicrous and desperate alibi that he was "framed" for his crimes because he was really a Navy whistleblower who claimed that elements in the Bush government were behind 9-11.

The ridiculous notion that the government is complicit in 9-11 is also expresed at the end of a psychologically revealing 2003 play Sander Hicks wrote called Sarcoxie and Sealove. A ghost called "Coby," who is modelled after the late car-bomber James Hatfield, says to a political candidate modelled after George Bush:

Two months after I "ODed" & died, the world ended for 3000 New Yorkers. Did they tell you that would happen?

In fact, the real James Hatfield was a career criminal who killed himself with an over-dose of prescription drugs the summer before 9-11 because he was arrested for computer fraud while he was on parole for the car-bombing. Hatfield didn't want to be sent back to prison for life. Sander Hicks was discredited after he published a book the con-man Hatfield wrote called Fortunate Son. The book claimed, based on an anonymous source, that George W. Bush was arrested for cocaine possession. Hatfield and Hicks would later claim in a press conference that the anonymous source was none other than Karl Rove, who supposedly sat in a boat on a lake with a known car-bomber and told him that President George W. Bush was arrested for cocaine possession.

Ironically, Hicks accuses the U.S. government of complicity in the 9-11 bombings, but Hicks is the one who was an apologist for the convicted con-man and car-bomber James Hatfield. Ironically, Hicks accuses the U.S. government of complicity in child abuse, but Hicks is the one who was an apologist for the convicted Denver child abuser, pedophile, child-pornographer and congenital liar Delmart Vreeland.

Sander Hicks says we need to "demand transparency" and the "truth." Perhaps we should start by having a little more transparency and truth about Sander Hicks.

So far, the New York Times and Nick Kristof aren't defending the afflicted Dr. Hatfill from the mendacious Sander Hicks; but luckily, the much-maligned Dr. Hatfill seems more than capable of defending himself from the canards of conspiracists.

FBI Chief to Indian Museum: Support Truthful Native American History

Photo of Peter Matthiessen, author

"I just want Director Gover to know that there is only one side to the story: the factual side...I hope you will take the occasion of the museum's gala celebration to allow me, as well as the Indian witnesses in American Indian Mafia, the opportunity to counter Peter Matthiessen's unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero."---Joseph H. Trimbach, former Special Agent in Charge, FBI (10-7-09)

Today, John M. Trimbach issued a press release (10-13-09) that criticizes Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse for its "unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero." The press release follows a letter (10-7-09) sent to Dr. Kevin Gover, the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian.

Video Clip: Click to Watch
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

In a letter to the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, former FBI Agent in Charge Joseph H. Trimbach writes that a book sold in the museum's bookstore denigrates Native American history by depicting a murderer as a Native American leader. The book, Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, exonerates convicted killer Leonard Peltier, who is now serving life sentences for the 1975 murders of two FBI Agents. The letter, dated October 7, 2009, to Director Kevin Gover (Pawnee, Comanche) coincides with the Smithsonian's celebration of the museum's five-year anniversary.

Trimbach contends that Matthiessen's book falsifies Indian history and glorifies Peltier by comparing him to Chief Crazy Horse. Trimbach writes that his 2007 book, American Indian Mafia, takes issue with attempts to "portray Peltier's cowardice and evil as Indian heroism and virtue." Native journalist Tim Giago wrote that Trimbach's book exposes In the Spirit of Crazy Horse as a "fraud." Native newspaper publisher Paul DeMain says that Mafia helps expose Peltier's "false cry for human rights."

Peltier was convicted in 1977 of the execution-style murders of Ron Williams and Jack Coler, two young Agents under Trimbach's supervision. Peltier's 2009 parole board concluded that he is undeserving of parole and that releasing him would promote disrespect for the law. The board cited infractions committed by Peltier behind bars, including his armed escape from Lompoc prison in 1979, which resulted in the shooting death of another escapee. Peltier refuses to release his score sheet from his July 28 parole hearing, a document that lists other reasons why the board found against him. Trimbach read a statement to Peltier at his hearing and told him that the issue of his guilt was settled over 30 years ago and that accepting responsibility for his crimes and asking for forgiveness constitute his only real chance for parole. Peltier has lost all of his appeals.

Following Peltier's recent hearing, held at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, his lawyer Eric Seitz met with supporters outside the prison. Seitz complained that previous boards have been unyielding in their insistence on good behavior and contrition before considering parole for his client. "It's just a very wooden position," said Seitz. "Kill an FBI Agent–live the rest of your life in prison." Trimbach noted Seitz's comments and added, "I wonder how the widows of other murdered law enforcement officers would feel if their husbands' remorseless killers were freed. The idea that keeping unrepentant murderers behind bars is a 'wooden position' is simply asinine."

For the last 30 years, Peltier has collected money from people all over the world who believe that he was unjustly convicted of the murders. Some estimates put the amount at over a hundred million dollars. In his letter to Director Gover, Trimbach says that Peltier has parlayed his Indian ancestry into a criminal enterprise by collecting money from unsuspecting donors under false pretense. The funds are supposed to be used for Peltier's defense and to "raise awareness" but apparently go to his friends and supporters. Trimbach alleges that the fund exists under tax-exempt status in violation of IRS regulations and reporting requirements. "To make matters worse," Trimbach writes, "proceeds from the sale of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse go directly to Peltier's not-for-profit corporation, with no accountability." Trimbach believes that both Peltier and Matthiessen are aware of the misappropriation.

"It sickens me to think of all that money going to waste when it could have been used to alleviate genuine hardship on the reservation," says Trimbach. He believes Director Gover owes it to his patrons to have the museum bookstore carry American Indian Mafia to refute "Peltier's lies." Trimbach stops short of calling for an outright ban on Matthiessen's book, saying he is not in favor or censorship. "I just want Director Gover to know that there is only one side to the story: the factual side." Trimbach concluded his letter, "I hope you will take the occasion of the museum's gala celebration to allow me, as well as the Indian witnesses in American Indian Mafia, the opportunity to counter Peter Matthiessen's unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero."

For more information, please visit American Indian Mafia.

John M. Trimbach
Trimbach & Associates, Inc.
Atlanta
770-883-5086

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Book Title: American Indian Mafia, An FBI Agent's True Story About Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM)

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Former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph H. Trimbach Writes to Dr. Kevin Gover, Director of the National Museum of the American Indian

The introduction and open letter dated 10-7-09 that follow were originally posted on Aim Myth Busters (10-12-09) and are re-posted here with permission. Today, John M. Trimbach, the son of Joseph H. Trimbach, followed up with a press release (10-13-09). The press release are commentary are in my next post.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Letter asks the National Museum of the American Indian to Support Truthful Indian History and Exposes Leonard Peltier Fund Fraud

In a letter to the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, former FBI Agent in Charge Joseph H. Trimbach asks for the Director's help in supporting truthful Native American history. The letter also raises questions about the legality of Leonard Peltier's legal defense funds. On April 28, 2008, Peltier's sister, Betty Ann Solano, filed articles of incorporation for the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee. The fund was previously known as the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Peltier's funds are filed under nonprofit corporations in possible violation of IRS tax regulations and disclosure requirements. Peltier has thus far refused to publicly disclose his financial records.

October 7, 2009

Mr. Kevin Gover, Director
National Museum of the American Indian
PO Box 23473
Washington, DC 20026

Dear Mr. Gover,

Congratulations on the fifth anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum showcases a masterful display of Indian culture and artistry and has become a wonderful addition to the Smithsonian. It has come to my attention, however, that the museum bookstore sells a book that falsifies Indian history by depicting a murderer as an Indian hero. Peter Matthiessen’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse glorifies convicted killer Leonard Peltier and places him on a pedestal alongside the brave and noble Chief Crazy Horse. My account of what happened, American Indian Mafia, takes issue with this attempt to portray Peltier’s cowardice and evil as Indian heroism and virtue. I cite several Native Americans who honor the truth and who contributed to setting the historical record straight. Award-winning Native journalist Tim Giago wrote that American Indian Mafia “takes apart” In the Spirit of Crazy Horse “and exposes it for the fraud that it is. It is refreshing to finally hear the other side of the story.” Paul DeMain, editor of News from Indian Country, says that my book helps expose Peltier’s foggy alibis and false cry for human rights.

Mr. Gover, I was the FBI Agent in Charge when, on June 26, 1975, Peltier gunned down two of my Agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. After the men were injured and disarmed, Peltier executed both of them with his assault rifle. We know this because of the evidence presented at his trial and because Peltier later boasted about shooting 28-year-old Ron Williams in the face at point-blank range as he sat pleading for his life and trying to save Jack Coler, his injured partner. Peltier’s recent parole board concluded that he is undeserving of parole based on his behavior behind bars. I read a statement to Peltier at his July 28 hearing; and I can assure you that he remains defiant, manipulative, and utterly unrepentant.

Despite losing all his appeals, Peltier and his lawyers have fooled many people into believing that he was framed for the murders. Rather than accept responsibility for his crimes, Peltier exploits his Indian ancestry by sponsoring a fraudulent defense fund under the shelter of a tax-exempt organization. Over the last 30 years, Peltier has collected millions of dollars abusing the charitable instincts of people who care about genuine Indian suffering and hardship. Donors have no idea that this money is doled out to Peltier’s friends and supporters. Proceeds from the sale of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse also go directly to Peltier’s not-for-profit corporation, with no accountability.

Mr. Gover, the National Museum of the American Indian is a cultural gem that has enlightened and educated millions of visitors, but having Matthiessen’s book on display in your bookstore is a conspicuous blot on an otherwise fine collection of Indian literature. It is bad enough to invoke the spirit of Crazy Horse in defense of a murderer, but it is even worse to profit from this charade under the guise of authentic Indian history.

I am not in favor of censorship, but I believe you owe it to your patrons to present “both sides of the story.” Please consider making my historical account available in your bookstore so that people will have access to a fact-based rebuttal to Peltier’s lies. I hope you will take the occasion of the museum’s gala celebration to allow me, as well as the Indian witnesses in American Indian Mafia, the opportunity to counter Peter Matthiessen’s unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero.

Regards,

Joseph H.Trimbach

AmericanIndianMafia.com

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Weather Underground Terrorist Bill Ayers Reportedly Claims He Wrote President Obama's Memoir "Dreams from My Father"

I wrote Dreams From My Father...Michelle [Obama] asked me to...and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties...I really wrote it.---Weather Underground Terrorist Bill Ayers on Monday, October 5, 2009

Dr. Jack Cashill has written a series of articles that make the case that the terrorist Bill Ayers helped write President Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father.

In support of his thesis, Dr. Cashill can now cite (10-1-09) the words of biographer Christopher Anderson, who wrote in his best-seller Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage:

These oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes were given to Ayers...Thanks to help from veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Book.

Dr. Cashill subsequently reported (10-8-09):

Christopher Andersen, author of the new best-seller Barack and Michelle: Portrait of An American Marriage, told Sean Hannity that Bill Ayers did indeed lend a major assist to the writing of Barack Obama's acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. [See more about Anderson's book here.]

Cashill also reports that a blogger named Anne Leary confronted Bill Ayers at Washington's Reagan Airport and that he claimed he had written the President's book.

Ayers reportedly told Leary, the blogger at Back Yard Conservative (10-6-09):

I wrote Dreams From My Father...Michelle [Obama] asked me to...and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties...I really wrote it.

Leary writes that she told Ayers:

[W]hy would I believe you, you're a liar.

He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting the proceeds.

9-11 Truther Sander Hicks Accuses Scientist Steven Hatfill of Deliberately Infecting Black Africans with Anthrax

9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks being removed by the police from private property in Loveland, Colorado---Denver Post (11-10-07)

"[V]aguely sourced "suspicions" that [Steven] Hatfill helped the racists kill black people with germs...[are] very hard to find, as it happens. And, oddly enough, what little, shaky evidence there is...inevitably traces...back to...an outfit called the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO).

That group's current role as a central clearinghouse of Hatfill demonology is never acknowledged by mainstream reporters [see for example, Nicholas Kristof of the NYT] who make use of the material -- and for obvious reasons. JDO is located at the farthest, shadowy margins of American public life. It was founded in the 1980s as a radical, breakaway faction of Meir Kahane's already-quite-radical Jewish Defense League (JDL) by a man named Mordechai Levy. And under Levy, JDO has established a long record of scurrilous, sometimes even homicidal attacks on its real or imagined enemies."-- Weekly Standard (9-16-02/page 2)

9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks has accused an early FBI "person of interest" in the anthrax mailings, scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill, of being a "fascist" who deliberately infected black people in Africa with anthrax. Hicks's allegation about Dr. Hatfill's supposedly genocidal impulses appears on Youtube (10-2-09) and is discussed in an earlier post that primarily treats Hick's ludicrous claim that the FBI anthrax forensics is "junk science."

Hicks's anthrax canard about the Army scientist Steven Hatfill sounds a lot like ex-professor Ward Churchill's fabricated canard that the U.S. Army deliberately infected the Mandan with smallpox or the now-acknowledged KGB canard that the U.S. Army made AIDS to kill black people.

Hicks's anthrax canard may have its antecedents in propaganda disseminated following the anthrax mailings by an an extremist organization called the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO) and a series of conspiracist articles penned by NYT writer Nicholas Kristof.

David Tell of The Weekly Standard (9-16-02) notes on page 2:

Hatfill has lived in two different African countries formerly ruled by white minority regimes, and he appears in the past to have claimed a "military background" or "combat experience" in one of those countries, and "reserve" and "consultant" relationships with the army of the other. What these claims might mean, and what part of them is true, are wide open questions that probably can't and won't be settled until Hatfill comes forward with a clarification. For now, he is operating under an attorney's instructions not to answer media inquiries about his past. So there remains a quite considerable leap of speculation between what is known for certain about Hatfill's student days, on the one hand, and the widely circulating charge, on the other, that he "served in the armed forces of two white racist governments," as New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has put it. Documentary and testimonial corroboration of this "fact" (sometimes attached to vaguely sourced "suspicions" that Hatfill helped the racists kill black people with germs) [See Kristof articles] is very hard to find, as it happens. And, oddly enough, what little, shaky evidence there is, insofar as anyone ever bothers to cite it, inevitably traces from -- or through, or back to -- an outfit called the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO).

That group's current role as a central clearinghouse of Hatfill demonology is never acknowledged by mainstream reporters who make use of the material -- and for obvious reasons. JDO is located at the farthest, shadowy margins of American public life. It was founded in the 1980s as a radical, breakaway faction of Meir Kahane's already-quite-radical Jewish Defense League (JDL) by a man named Mordechai Levy. And under Levy, JDO has established a long record of scurrilous, sometimes even homicidal attacks on its real or imagined enemies. One day in August 1989, for example, when process servers attempted to present him with legal papers in a libel action brought against the JDO by a leader of the rival JDL, Levy mounted the roof of a Manhattan apartment building and opened fire on his visitors with an automatic rifle, missing the intended targets and wounding a 69-year-old bystander instead. For which crime Levy was sent to prison. More recently, in April 2000, Levy pled guilty to charges of assault after a 12-year-old boy told police that the man had kicked him in the face and testicles.

Levy and the JDO have not yet threatened Dr. Hatfill with bodily harm, though visitors to the organization's website -- every American reporter on the anthrax beat has surely been there -- immediately discover that its top-featured section... includes a lovingly imagined account of some future day, very soon, when "Dr. Steven 'Mengele' Hatfill," having first "attempted suicide," will be "awakened at 4 a.m. and transported to a cold, damp, and dirty holding cell," then tried, convicted, and given a lethal injection, "just like the lethal injection his former boss, Wouter Basson, gave to hundreds of black South Africans." This and much, much else besides is contained in an extraordinary, 50-some-page, always expanding dossier, "soon to be a paperback book," entitled The Bioevangelist and purporting to prove that "he did it."

To wit: Hatfill is a "Nazi" who "participated in genocide." Hatfill's "mentor" at the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine was supposedly one Robert Burns Symington, "father of Rhodesia's biological warfare program." Hatfill helped Symington and the "white supremacist regime" start an epidemic of anthrax "in the latter phase of Zimbabwe's liberation war." The White Man having lost that war, Hatfill then took his wares to the "Medical Special Operations Battalion of the South African Army founded in 1981 by Wouter Basson," the Afrikaner regime's notorious biowarfare capo. While in South Africa, Hatfill was a "close associate of Eugene Terre Blanche," head of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement and a convicted murderer. And so on.

Trouble is, nothing in the many, impressive-looking footnotes appended to The Bioevangelist substantiates these assertions. Nothing links Hatfill to Robert Burns Symington. Nothing links Symington to anthrax, and nothing explains how Hatfill, then a first-year medical student with no biochemical laboratory training, could have helped Symington weaponize anthrax spores in the first place. Nothing links Hatfill to a "Special Operations Battalion" in South Africa. Nothing links Hatfill to Wouter Basson. And nothing links Hatfill to Eugene Terre Blanche (Terre Blanche denies the connection) -- except a risibly amateurish South African news-service story, which cites a photograph that no one can find, and an unnamed "former colleague" who says Hatfill once claimed to have run a Resistance Movement training session (whose leader denies that).

Trouble is, too, that transparent innuendo like this -- in sanitized, journalism-school, "some say," "is alleged" form -- has now entered the American news-media bloodstream (thanks most prominently to New York Times columnist Kristof), casting an awful cloud of "racism" over Steven Hatfill's head. [See Kristof articles.]

Asked by e-mail for his name, and for additional evidence to buttress his case against Hatfill the "Nazi," the author of The Bioevangelist has sent The Weekly Standard a reformatted version of the same essay, with many additional but entirely peripheral citations, and he has identified himself as A.J. Weberman....

During the 1970s, A.J. Weberman was briefly famous (in certain circles) for having decided, by virtue of extremely close, drug-fueled analysis of the lyrics to Bob Dylan songs, that Dylan was a heroin addict. In an effort to prove the point, Weberman then began collecting . . . things. He took out newspaper classified ads: "If anyone has a sample of Dylan's urine, please send it to me." He once broke into Dylan's home to confront the singer. And, most notably, he developed a habit of going through Dylan's garbage can and publicizing whatever he found. Weberman retains a casual interest in Dylan even today, it would seem. (A Dylan song plays in the background on the JDO Bioevangelist web page, if you have the right browser.) But Weberman eventually suspended his full-time practice of Dylan "garbology," moving on to the trash bins of such as Jackie Kennedy and Norman Mailer. And Weberman then, at some point, abandoned garbology altogether -- and hooked up with Mordechai Levy and the JDO.

It was from the rooftop of A.J. Weberman's apartment building that Levy sprayed lower Manhattan with automatic rifle fire that day in 1989; the two men were named co-defendants in the libel action Levy was attempting to evade. And it was with A.J. Weberman as named co-defendant that Levy and his organization were very recently and successfully sued for libel again -- by a man whom JDO's website had called a "pathological liar" and "psychopath." Six months ago, a Brooklyn, New York, jury unanimously assigned Weberman responsibility for $300,000 of a total $850,000 judgment. [Full text.]

President Peacenik Wins the Nobel

"Larry Grathwohl, an FBI mole within the Weathermen, connected [Bill] Ayers to the planning — and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, to the execution— of a police station bombing in San Francisco in February 1970 that killed one officer [Brian McDonnell, above] and injured two others."---David Freddoso, National Review Online (8-18-08)

President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I think that the President is a phony who let the terrorist Bill Ayers pen his memoir Dreams from My Father.

For information about Obama's ghostwritten memoir, read the articles posted by Dr. Jack Cashill and search my site for Cashill, Ayers, and Mao. Bill Ayers, a Maoist, was born on December 26, Mao's birthday. Perhaps that is why he chose Mao as his spiritual father.

In his memoir Fugitive Days, Ayers makes a huge deal of the fact that his own birth "just missed" Jesus's birthday, Christmas. Read Ayers's twisted Christmas Day description his pregnant mother as a bomb about to explode. Ayers never mentions that his birthday is the same day as his spiritual father Mao's birthday, but the imagery in this passage suggests that this date has great symbolic significance for for the Maoist terrorist Ayers.

Dreams also suggests that there is a symbolic linkage between the narrator's absent father and the son's birthday. Obama describes receiving a phone call around his 21st birthday from a relative in Kenya who tells him that his father has been killed in a car accident. Linking the father's death with Obama's 21st birthday clearly suggests that this event was a rite of passage for Obama. But was it? The date of the father's death is never noted. We only learn that this death was near Obama's 21st birthday. The father's death is all about Obama. In the opening of both Dreams and Fugitive Days, the narrators detail phone calls announcing the violent death of a loved one.]

A blogger named Anne Leary describes her chance meeting on Monday, October 5, 2009, with Bill Ayers at Reagan Airport. She claims that Ayers stated that he wrote Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father:

Then, unprompted he said--I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh, so you admit it. He said--Michelle asked me to. I looked at him. He seemed eager. He's about my height, short. He went on to say--and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties. So I said, stop pulling my leg. Horrible thought. But he came again--I really wrote it, the wording was similar. I said I believe you probably heavily edited it. He said--I wrote it. I said--why would I believe you, you're a liar.

He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting the proceeds.

It would seem that the little Lord of Lake Forest Academy has morphed into something of a capitalist roader.

President Obama says he is "humbled" by being named as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. If so, perhaps the President should dedicate his Peace Prize to the peace officer Brian McDonnell. After all, the suspected authors of Brian's murder are the President's terrorist friends, the Maoist Weathermen bombers Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Ayers and Dohrn called policemen like Brian "pigs." Obama's mentors weren't (and aren't) for peace. They wanted the communists to win. Read their 1974 revolutionary manifesto Prairie Fire.

I remember when Weather made bombs and blew up Judge Murtagh's house on 2-21-70 as his children slept. Bernardine Dohrn took credit for bombing the judge, his wife, and children.

Weather Underground terrorist Dohrn is a vicious, twisted creature who gloated about the murdered victims of Charles Manson:

Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach! Wild!

Since the President's Attorney General Eric Holder frees terrorists, I wouldn't be too surprised if our so-called "peacemaker" pardons the convicted killer of two FBI agents Leonard Peltier, who pens death-threats against the FBI from his prison cell. Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, the young FBI peace-keepers, were protecting Indians from criminals on Pine Ridge when they were murdered by the robber Peltier and his gang of criminals. Will our so-called "peacemaker" President Obama pardon this murderer of peacemakers?

The President let a communist terrorist write his phony-baloney memoir, but he told teachers in Virginia that he wrote it himself.

As writer Jack Cashill (9-28-09) observes:

I've written two books," Obama told a crowd of students and teachers in Virginia last year. "I actually wrote them myself.

You're nothing but a liar, Mr. President! And you sure aren't humble. You are are arrogant. You lied to those teachers! I read Dreams from My Father and Ayers's Fugitive Days. Bloody Bill the Bomber authored your apocryphal memoir! A humble person would admit that he lied.

The White House comment site claims:

President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.

Instead of calling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, "The White House," perhaps it should be renamed "The Home of the Whopper."

Thelma Rios Pleads Not Guilty in the 1975 Murder of Anna Mae Aquash

"The 64-year-old Rios and John Graham are accused in state court of taking part in the kidnapping and killing of [Anna Mae] Aquash [pictured above]. Prosecutors say Aquash was killed because she was a suspected government informant against the American Indian Movement."---Rapid City Journal (10-6-09)

Hopefully, all those who played a role in this vicious murder will eventually have to face the court; and the truth will come out.

The former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joe Trimbach observes (9-16-09):

[T]he indictment [of Rios] shows that prosecutors are moving closer to indictments against AIM leaders and their lawyers....

The trail of evidence could lead to Peltier's former boss, AIM co-founder Dennis Banks.

Rios-Conroy was indicted in part because of a phone call she allegedly made saying that Aquash was found guilty of being an informant. The phone call led to the abduction, rape, and murder of Aquash after a final interrogation. Prosecutors believe Graham raped Aquash in Rios-Conroy's Rapid City apartment. Rios-Conroy's former boyfriend, Bruce Ellison, is a named co-conspirator. Ellison was a lawyer for the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committee (WKLDOC), a group that defended AIM leaders in court. Ellison allegedly questioned Aquash as she sat tied to a chair in his Rapid City WKLDOC office.

In 2001, Ellison testified before a UN Human Rights Commission and called for an investigation of the FBI for what he claimed were 60 "uninvestigated" reservation killings. One of the cases he cited was the Aquash murder. AIM leaders and lawyers have accused the FBI of backing a tribal "goon squad" that murdered AIM members and supporters. Many of these deaths, however, have since been exposed as having been instigated and committed by AIM members or were the result of deaths not attributed to inter-tribal violence. One of the dead, Michelle Tobacco, was a nine-month old victim of child abuse. Several of the deaths were found to be alcohol-related.

Trimbach's book, American Indian Mafia, implicates another WKLDOC lawyer, Kenneth Tilsen, in the Aquash murder. Tilsen took possession of Aquash's wallet near the time of her death but says he cannot remember details from that period. Trimbach's book includes a letter Tilsen mailed to Aquash's relatives in which he writes that the wallet came to him "through a circuitous route." According to Paul DeMain, editor of News from Indian Country, WKLDOC files from that period have been purged from public archival records. Another lawyer, Charles Abourezk, was closely associated with AIM leader Russell Means during the period when Means's relatives were allegedly plotting against Aquash. Abourezk and Means are rumored to have been in the Wanblee area the night of the murder. Means's former bodyguard, Richard Marshall, awaits trial in federal court. Marshall, an ex-convict for murder in a separate case, stands accused of providing the weapon and bullets Graham allegedly used to execute Aquash.

The Rios-Conroy indictment indicates that prosecutors have established a stronger link between Aquash's final hours and her encounters with Ellison and several AIM members. Says Trimbach, "I think all of this will lead to more indictments. It's long overdue, but justice for Anna Mae might finally become a reality."

KEVN Fox News (10-5-09) reports:

Themla Rios of Rapid City pleaded not guilty to murder charges Monday in Seventh Circuit Court. Rios, along with John Graham, is accused of the murder of Anna Mae Aquash on the Pine Ridge Reservation back in 1975. Rios was arraigned on newly filed state charges Monday. She pleaded not guilty to charges of murder while in commission of a felony and premeditated murder. If convicted on those charges, Rios faces life in prison without parole. [See full text]