This is Part III of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State. You can listen to previous segments here.

Philip Giraldi joins us to discuss the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act-NDAA, the claim by the White House that it will only use this new power carefully and with due process, and contrasts that to the well-established trend of law enforcement and security agencies, which is to expand on powers granted, not to rein them in or limit them. He provides us with his assessment of the recent case of former CIA operative John Kiriakou, and discusses President Obama’s horrendous track record on civil liberties- broadening its definition of war powers, silencing critics and government whistleblowers through the repeated exploitation of the state-secrets privilege, abuses of National Security Letters, continuation of Guantanamo Prison, supporting numerous dubious terrorism prosecutions.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA and DIA counter-terrorism officer, member of the American Conservative Defense Alliance, and contributing editor at The American Conservative magazine. He has a regular column, Smoke & Mirrors, at Antiwar.com.

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This is Part II of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State. You can listen to Part I here.

Coleen Rowley joins us to share her views and thoughts on the state of the misleadingly named ‘criminal justice system’ in the United States today, and the extent to which the apparatus has been transformed into a police state. She discusses the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the implications of this law for American citizens, and the troubling fact that many Americans are not aware of the serious threats to their liberties and rights posed by this police state enabling new law. Ms. Rowley talks about the Obama Administration’s increasing control of all information outlets together with the constant use of fear-hate-greed-false pride and blind loyalty propaganda to manufacture consent for the war machine as well as a panoply of other government-corporatocracy crimes, the escalating retaliation against government whistleblowers and government secrecy, FBI abuses and Director Mueller’s quietly extended term, and more!

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

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This is Part I of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State.

Shahid Buttar joins us to discuss the continuous erosion of our civil liberties from illegal domestic surveillance to Guantanamo, NDAA and its discretionary detention provision authorizing the President to detain Americans accused by the government of supporting terrorism. Mr. Buttar talks about the many abuses committed by the unchecked Federal Bureau of Investigation, the extension of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s Term quietly and readily by Congress, its significance and troubling implications, the capacity of the FBI to be used for political purposes established since the Hoover days, the US media’s silence on this significant issue, and more!

Shahid Buttar is the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution (PCC). He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he served as executive editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal and as Professor Lawrence Lessig’s teaching assistant for Constitutional Law. In addition to his work leading BORDC, Shahid serves on the advisory bodies of the Rights Working Group, the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, and the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights. He also supports populist constitutionalism as a civil rights lawyer, independent columnist, community organizer, and hip-hop and electronica MC. In his creative capacities as a poet and musician, Mr. Buttar has performed around the world, co-founded several grassroots art and culture groups around the country, facilitated workshops for young people and emerging artists.

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This is Part III of our interview series on the New World Order. For the Part I & II interviews click here and here.

Independent investigative journalist and producer James Corbett joins us to share with us his journey to and life in Japan as a journalist, how he began the production of his ground-breaking investigative video reports, and his definition of and views on independent media. He provides us with the birth and history of Eugenics, a pseudo scientific study of the presumed racial characteristics of various societal groups with an aim to explaining why the various peoples of the world occupy the positions they do based on the notion that the rich and powerful were rich and powerful because they were genetically superior, how this junk science, pandering as it did to the most racist and elitist interests of the moneyed class, became universally accepted in the Western world, where countries began implementing laws to allow the government to sterilize those citizens it deemed to be “unfit, and how the Rockefeller-funded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute gave the Nazi regime an ideological excuse to take the idea to its logical conclusion. Mr. Corbett explains the continuation of Eugenics under the new name- crypto-eugenics, the relationship and connections between this group and the ruling class and the power players of the New World Order, the role of various NGOs in continuation and implementation of the philosophy, and more!

James Corbett is an independent journalist who has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He has been writing and producing The Corbett Report, an online multi-media news and information source since 2007. Mr. Corbett also produces exclusive weekly investigative reports for Boiling Frogs Post. His forthcoming book, Reportage: Essays on the New World Order, will be available for purchase later this year. For more information about Corbett and his background please listen to Episode 163 of The Corbett Report podcast, Meet James Corbett.

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This is part I of our interview series on the New World Order.

Andrew Gavin Marshall joins us to discuss the central role of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations in the construction of knowledge and the transformation of America from an ‘isolationist’ society to a ‘globalist’ society, and the concerted and strategic effort by these institutions in seeking to engineer and manage the social sciences to fit within the framework of an emerging American Empire. He warns about the slight and subtle process through which a potentially powerful movement such as Occupy Wall Street may be co-opted and controlled, and shares with us his 12-Point proposal for the Occupy Movement to ‘be the change.’ Mr. Marshall provides us with his view and definition of the New World Order, the role of institutions, including the NGOs, the importance of true independence in counter-movement and protests and more!

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer, covering a broad range of issues – economic, political, social, cultural, and historical – in an effort to bring a critical perspective to world events. He has authored dozens of articles, essays, and reports online and for various magazines and other publications, and is regularly interviewed by radio and television programs on a number of different issues. He recently co-edited a book with Professor Michel Chossudovsky entitled, “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century,” a collection of essays by a number of authors and researchers presenting a more critical and nuanced examination of the economic crisis that began in 2008. You can visit Mr. Marshall’s website here.

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This is part III of our interview series based on the recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling.

Professor Roberto Gonzalez joins us to discuss the high school “Spy Camp” program as part of a pilot grant from the US Office of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to create an “Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence” (IC Center) with the goal to increase the pool of future applicants for careers in the US intelligence community such as the CIA, FBI and DIA. He explains the intentions behind the program being consciously directed at schools in low income regions and where minority students are the majority. Dr. Gonzalez talks about the ethical implications of involving universities with intelligence agencies like CIA, intellectual and moral dilemmas caused by militarized culture, the highly troubling cloak of secrecy surrounding scholarships provided to target students, the impact of funding and grants on university and college educators and administrators and more!

Roberto J. Gonzalez is an associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State University whose work focuses upon the relationship between humans and their environment; science, technology, and society; militarism and culture; and anthropological ethics. He has published four books: Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca, Anthropologists in the Public Sphere: Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power, American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain, and Militarizing Culture: Essays on the Warfare State.

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This is part II of our interview series based on the recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling.

Professor Stephen Soldz joins us to discuss the central role played by psychologists in the design and implementation of the US torture program, and how the American Psychological Association (APA) has protected this involvement by issuing the highly biased 2005 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS Report). He points out the inherent bias in the Presidential Task Force membership, and cites other significant conflicts of interest by the Task Force’s unacknowledged participants. Dr. Soldz talks about the coalition of leading scholars and human rights groups from a range of fields who have joined together in spearheading a broad-based effort to annul and delegitimize the PENS Report as part of their joint effort to remove psychologists from torture and abusive interrogations.

Professor Stephen Soldz is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and public health researcher in Boston, and was a co-author of PHR’s report Experiments in Torture. He is the Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology (Psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School, and has taught at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston College, and Boston University. For more information visit the website of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology here.

Here is our guest Stephen Soldz unplugged!

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This is part I of our interview series based on the recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling.

Professor Philip Zwerling joins us to discuss his recently released book on how years after covertly funding the National Students Association, spying on suspect faculty, and dosing unsuspecting students with psychedelic drugs, the CIA is back, funding conferences on ‘intelligence ethics’, subsidizing courses for academic credit, and recruiting operatives among some the of the poorest students in the nation under the guise of protecting the homeland and combating terrorism. He describes various incentives that drive the faculty and administrators at campuses nationwide to cooperate with this new CIA-campus targeting operation. Dr. Zwerling talks about the “pilot program” authorized under the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act to establish the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), and how the PRISP students’ identities are secret as are the classes they attend, how the CIA’s funding provided to universities may explain an absence of articles critical of CIA activities in academic journals, and more!

Philip Zwerling is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Texas Pan American in Edinburg, Texas. He is the author of more than 200 magazine and newspaper articles and two books, Nicaragua: A New Kind of Revolution, and After School Theatre Programs for At Risk Teenagers, and is the editor of The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State

Here is our guest Dr. Philip Zwerling unplugged!

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We tried very hard to recruit enough supporters-contributors to offer these resource-consuming exclusive (and one-of-a-kind!) reports to everyone at all times. We counted on our thousands of regular viewers and listeners. We tried. We tried hard.

For a very few offensive people who have written to us saying, ‘Every piece of news, everything on the internet should be free….’ Let me tell you something: Those websites who claim that are engaged in real fraud, and those like you who believe it are truly ignorant (I’m actually being polite here). When you see websites that regularly publish professionally produced news-audio-video-analyses materials and do so for “free”, they are either: 1- Funded by one of several mega corporate foundations such as George Soros or Rockefellers or Ford; or, 2- Funded by dozens of ads owned by mega corporate; or, 3- Are directly funded-bribed by the Republican or Democratic HQs = The one & only ‘Establishment’. They are not free. And, their cost to you is actually far greater than any monthly subscription. Because they make you stupid. They maintain your ignorance. They fill your heads with lies, twisted and falsified information, and tons of propaganda. And, they and their bosses make millions-billions of dollars out of altering your perception. Your ignorance has enabled their profits in the billions of dollars. They make money, you are being robbed, and we all lose. Stop being ignorant. Start making sense, and then come and join us.

The not-so-bad news:  We are thinking of making our members-only podcast and video reports available to everyone at a certain point- maybe a few weeks after the original publication date, and once they are archived. Again, we need your support to accomplish that. Also, a few days after publication, the transcripts of our EyeOpener video reports will be available to all at James Corbett’s CorbettReport.Com.

The good news: If and when we reach a sufficient number of subscribers-contributors we will go back to offering our video and podcast reports to all. Again, this depends solely on our supporters-contributors. First, we will have to reach the needed number. Next, we will request our subscribers’ consent, and then we will be back to what we truly want: to independently produce unmatched reports-video and podcast, and reach as many people as we can-to inform and to pursue the needed ‘Real’ changes collectively.

Coming up: Starting this Friday, October 21, we’ll publish our exclusive podcast interview series on a very troubling, extremely important yet completely blacked out topic: CIA on Campus. The series is based on a recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling. We have already recorded the first three interview episodes with Prof. Zwerling, Prof. Soldz, and Prof. Gonzalez. I am not going to give out too much here, but suffice it to say I am very excited and looking forward to your reactions-comments. Those of you who have not subscribed yet but have been thinking-planning to do so: you may want to subscribe and have your access info ready for this ground-breaking series on the CIA’s nefarious activities and recruitment on US University-College campuses.

We will also have our EyeOpener report with James Corbett. The next topic: CIA & the Nuclear Bazaar. Again, I am going to restrain myself and not give out too much and spoil the hard-hitting video report coming soon.

We at Boiling Frogs Post have been working very hard to unearth long-censored cases and macro issues, whether on the CIA, or corporate-foundation NGOs, or under-reported cases and facts involving the drug world, or never-covered government whistleblower cases and facts. We want to do it with you. We cannot achieve our common objectives without your contributions and backing. We need you to continue and expand. Please do your share and contribute to this effort. Please do your part by contributing towards sustaining our truly independent, fearless, and completely nonpartisan alternative media – the Boiling Frogs Post. Thank you.

I believe we have given it a try and our best. We will not quit trying. We will not stop. However, if we don’t meet our goal in the next 48 hours we will have to settle for less, and that ‘less’ means limiting the viewership of our podcast series and video reports. Anyone who has a problem with that should check our appeal to our readers-viewers-listeners during the last 6 weeks. It is on record. We have tried, and we are still trying. I also invite anyone to point to a website with this level of independent and quality information, one-of-a-kind video reports and in depth podcast interviews which operates without a single corporate ad, without a dime from the corporate-foundations, and without any attachment to agenda-driven political parties. You will not find one. Not a single one. Because it doesn’t exist, it cannot exist without the will, support, and contributions from ‘the people.’ And that’s why no one really gives it a try. We do. We are. How about you?

Less than 48 hours to go, and we ‘only’ need 132 additional subscribers. Please do your share, and support a ‘true alternative’ with your subscription. Thank you.

Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds discuss the meaning of true alternative media, the role of corporate-foundations in mainstreaming the so-called alternative news, the shameful state of mainstream media as the mouthpiece for the government steered by mega corporations, the joint pseudo alternative-mainstream media black-outs on information pertaining to 9/11, government whistleblowers, secrecy, and the falsification of the truth by tentacles of our shadow government. We go on record with examples of establishment alternatives in disguise and real cases of operatives who sabotage true alternatives like Boiling Frogs Post. We talk about Boiling Frogs Post, our partners and team members, our goals, our pledge to complete independence from the corporates and their foundations, our stand on partisanship, and more!

Here are Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds unplugged & on Fire!

This is the final week of our Boiling Frogs Post subscription drive. As always I want to thank all our subscribers who believe in us; have faith in what we are doing, and have shown their support in action. We want to thank every single one of you who recognize, appreciate and support a true alternative without corporate or foundation ties.

We are entering the final week of our BFP Subscription Drive. We need 176 new subscribers to keep this home reachable to all. Please help us keep this ‘true alternative’ alive and kicking with your subscription. Without a single penny from corporate and their foundations we solely depend on you. Thank you!

We brought to our readers a sobering four-part series on U.S. Psychological Warfare, 9/11 & the American Narrative, written and presented to you by distinguished investigative authors Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald. In this series we dared to delve into the real history, context and facts long censored by mainstream authors and quasi alternatives alike. By doing this, once again we managed to ruffle some feathers, and kicked our daring content up another notch or two.

We dedicated an entire month to our podcast coverage of hard-hitting facts and proven cover-ups related to 9/11, and presented to you experts and analysts who have long been outcast by the mainstream media intimidated by naked truths. We dared their ‘marginalization tactics & threats’; they lost-our listeners won.

We have been producing and showcasing our one-of-a-kind video series on topics long-considered ‘no-no’ by the establishment and their tentacles. Our partner, James Corbett, has been delving into ‘hot-potato’ cases; from Afghanistan’s White Gold-Heroin, to the CIA-News Media joint operation and partnership. With documented facts on our side we have been sawing through their thick and crusty cover made of lies. Every day, with every single additional video viewer, we are expanding the number of those in the know, and shrinking the size of their reliable majority.

They want to continue to mislead and misinform Americans on Palestine related issues and developments-we counter that with facts presented by our distinguished and well-respected experts. They want to trick the public into trusting their tentacles in order to manufacture consent-we tear apart their web, wreck their mazes, and connect the dots back to their pockets.

That’s who we are. That’s what we’ve been doing. That’s exactly what we want to continue to be doing. That’s what Boiling Frogs Post is about. Do you like what you see here at Boiling Frogs Post? Do you want us to continue? Would you like to finally have a media outlet free of corporate ties, foundation strings, partisan alliances, and shady partnerships?

This time I am going to start with the bad news: we have reached the end of our three-week subscription drive, and we have not made it. We have not reached our goal of having 500 new subscribers for this quarter. We have added only 286 new subscribers. In order to continue what we need is at least 200 more of you to subscribe.

I don’t want to downplay the positive side of this. We have 286 new subscribers who have committed to supporting Boiling Frogs Post. We have 286 new subscribers who believe in us; have faith in what we are doing, and have shown their support in action. We want to thank every single one of them.

Now, what are we going to do? We were hoping to reach our 500 new subscribers objective and offer every single post, podcast, and video report to everyone. But we didn’t make it. That leaves us with two options:

1-    Starting this Monday, October 3, provide our podcast interviews and videos only to Boiling Frogs Post Subscribers.

2-    Extend our subscription drive for another two weeks, and try one more time to reach our goal of 500 new subscribers.

As I have said repeatedly, we want to continue this, expand this website, yet make sure we reach as many people as possible, and offer everything to everyone, with all our materials/information/articles available to all. How is it possible to consolidate both objectives? How can we sustain this website’s operations, and remain open and available to all? Most importantly, how do we accomplish all this without a single penny from corporate ads, and without a single string attaching us to those charlatan corporate-foundations?

We all know the answer. There is only one way: your contribution, commitment and support by subscribing to Boiling Frogs Post. There is NO other way. We have to do this every quarter, and we have to expand our subscription base. For this quarter we needed 500 new subscribers. We need 200 additional subscribers to meet that objective. Per your requests and our team members’ input we are going to extend this quarter’s subscription drive by two weeks until Sunday, October 16. We have been doing our share. We want to continue to do so. Please do your share and give this real alternative a chance. Please support us by subscribing to Boiling Frogs Post. Thank You.

Peter B Collins: Our guest today is Paul Thompson, he is the author of the Terror Timeline, he is an alumnus, a graduate of Stanford university, and he has been researching 9/11 and related issues for many years. Paul Thompson, welcome to the Boiling Frogs.

Paul Thomspon: Hey, thanks for having me.

PC: I just wanted to mention as we delve into the complex issues of the events of September 11, 2001, that there were 2 key bits that prompted me to become skeptical or curious, and follow your lead in many respects to question the official story and seek the truth about 9/11. The first was when a friend who was a medical doctor and a private pilot came to me and talked to me about the disconnect between the Federal Aviation Agency and NORAD on 9/11. We may get into those details but, suffice to say, it was a sad comedy of errors and it piqued my interest. But it wasn’t until I saw the timelines that were developed by people like you, and there was some others who did similar work, that really showed the glaring inconsistencies in the official narrative and led to ask questions about the role of some of the individuals in the Bush administration, and the level of honesty, or of lack of it that we have had to encounter, including the way 9/11 Commission was used to “firm up”, the myth that had been launched right after the 9/11 attacks. Now, Paul Thompson, in recent weeks Richard Clarke, who was a key counterterrorism advisor to George W. Bush in the Bush White House, was the subject of an interview that was actually conducted a couple of years ago, but was broadcast on a public television station in Colorado. And it includes some very interesting new allegations from Clarke, essentially that he was kept in the dark on one specific piece of information regarding two of the individuals who were later alleged to have been hijackers on 9/11. Why don’t you recap for our listeners what Clarke said, and why it makes news about these issues.

PT: Well, I recommend people go check out the interview with Clarke for themselves. It’s at secrecykills.com, and it’s about 12 minutes long, so it’s not too much information to take in, and I think the whole thing was very interesting. But in short, he was the ‘counterterrorism czar’ at the time of 9/11 and for a few years before that, and that means he was the highest counterterrorism official in the United States. So he really was the top dog, and all information, all important information, was supposed to come through him, to get to his desk. And, so in this interview he says, ‘you know, there were these two hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar, and it looks now in retrospect, that for a long time, people in the CIA knew a lot about those guys, those two hijackers, and that information did not come across my desk.’ He says he was in contact with Tenet, talking to him on the phone, three, four times a day, any time there was any little bit of information, he would get a phone call from Tenet. He was receiving over 100 CIA reports a day and looking them over. There was a steady flow of information and it’s hard to think before 9/11, what would be a bigger red flag than having 2 known al-Qaeda operatives actually inside the United States? And for all of this time, nobody told him that, he claims. And so he’s quite shocked about this and quite dismayed, and he ends up coming up with a theory to explain why that happened.

PC: And his theory essentially is that the CIA was trying to work with these two Saudis, and convert them to CIA assets. And in order to ‘flip’ them, they kept this very tightly held. The other theory that surfaces for me though, Paul, is that as you mentioned Richard Clarke had served in the Clinton administration and was a holdover into the Bush White House, one of the few.

PT: Mm-hmm.

PC: And my sense is that he was not entrusted with the darkest secrets of the Republican inner circle that arrived determined to attack Iraq and Afghanistan.

PT: Well, I think to some extent that’s true, he was certainly kind of demoted, allowed to keep his job but sort of not in the inner circle. He wasn’t meeting with the principals anymore, meaning cabinet-level people like he had been in the Clinton administration. But you have to remember also that George Tenet was a holdover from the Clinton administration and he

PC: Yep.

PT: he was the head of the CIA all the way back to 1997, and this is really a lot about Tenet and the CIA hiding this information. So, you’ve got two Clinton holdovers really, who are at the center of this.

PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: And to some extent he was privy to some of this stuff that the Bush administration was doing. I had heard this interview with Richard Clarke and I was driving down the road, and I practically drove off the road I was so shocked, this was a few years ago, where he mentioned in an interview with NPR radio that around, I think it was around April, May 2001…basically, top Bush people were sitting around a table and discussing ways to have some kind of provocation to go to war with Iraq. And they were kind of brainstorming different ideas on ways to have a casus belli

PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: you know, some sort of excuse for the war. They talked about things like flying an airplane over Iraq and making sure it got shot down by the Iraqi forces, so they could use that as an excuse. So that’s some pretty wild stuff that most of the American public has never heard about and people

PC: That particular idea that was floated by, apparently, George W. Bush was in a conversation with Tony Blair. And it was British, I believe, Sir David Manning, the British Ambassador to Washington who ultimately revealed that.

PT: Mm-hmm.

PC: And it does show that they were looking for a pretext and possibly it wasn’t the first one that they had thought about or activated.

PT: Right.

PC: So Paul, as we heard this interview with Richard Clarke, many other questions come up because he does make a very precise allegation, which is, on September 4th of 2001, there was a principals meeting in the White House, and, he was not told, the principals were not told, that the CIA had informed the FBI about the presence in the united states of Alhazmi and Almidhar. And he says, ‘if they had told us, we would have found those assholes’, and he talks about what they would have done first to launching an investigation into malfeasance by the CIA for not sharing this information and secondly, that he said, ‘we would have put it out on the Associated Press and found those guys.’

PT: Mm-hmm. Well, I’d kind of like to go the whole way back to the beginning and talk about the whole story of these two guys. I think their story has not really been understood or appreciated by the American people as the importance that it really needs to have. But to just kind of mention just a little bit about what you were saying…that very day that that meeting happened, which was September 4th, one week before the 9/11 attacks; There’s a very strange mystery because there was, in the couple weeks right before 9/11 there was some information about these 2 hijackers that was finally given to the FBI after they had, the CIA, had known about these guys for 2 years.
And there was this very inexperienced FBI agent by the name of Robert Fuller, who was given the job of finding these two hijackers. The hijackers, these 2 guys, were not living under cover, using aliases, using all kinds of clever spy tactics…they were living completely openly in the United States. One of them even had his name in the San Diego phone book for crying out loud. They had bank accounts, they had credit cards, they had car registrations, they had traffic tickets…all down the line, everything in their own name. So, at that time, the United States had developed over the years a lot of databases. For instance, you can look up police database that would have anybody’s traffic tickets or arrests in there, and Alhazmi had actually been arrested a couple times for minor things. You can look up credit checks, you can look up the motor vehicle index, they have all these great, sort of private companies collecting incredible amounts of information about people, like Choicepoint was one of these. They had the hijackers’ names and addresses in that. So, he had all of these databases to look at, something like ten different databases, and he supposedly he didn’t find the names of these 2 hijackers in any of the databases which just doesn’t make any sense at all.

Immediately after 9/11, other people did checks and they found these names in pretty much all of these databases. And interestingly enough, we have a mention that says that he asked permission from someone else, from a higher up, to search the credit card database for the names of these 2 people and he was told that was not advisable, ‘not prudent, to do so at this time.’ So, you can see, there’s something very strange going on there, why on earth would they not want to be looking at databases to see if these people are in the United States. What would be the possible excuse to be telling this agent not to do that? So I would like to go all the way back to the beginning and kind of tell the whole story about these 2 hijackers.
PC: Well, go right ahead, we are all ears. So how far back would you like to go?

PT: I want to go all the way back. I think another really great, untold story, in which I have to sort of give the highlights of, is how much the United States intelligence community knew about al Quaeda before 9/11. I just want to mention something that I found, it was from a report, about 6 months after 9/11 that shows just how jaw dropping this was. And this was from a Washington Post article that talked about the capture of Abu Zubayda who supposedly is an al Quaeda big wig and he was arrested early in 2002. And I’ll quote from the article, “‘When agents found Zubaydas laptop computer’, a senior law enforcement source said, ‘They discovered that the vast majority of people he had been communicating with were being monitored under Visa warrants or international spying efforts.’ ‘Finally we got some comfort that surveillance efforts are working’, said a government official familiar with Zubaydas arrest.” So this is quite remarkable because there’s been a lot of controversy about Zubayda; was he really some important al Quaeda guy or not?

Some people think he was mentally ill. But there’s no doubt that he was sort of like a travel agent and he was in communication with a vast number of people. One of the people who said he was kind of crazy and not as important as people say, an FBI agent by the name of Dan Coleman, he said that even though he was crazy, he was constantly on the telephone talking to people all around the world. He was kind of being used, perhaps as someone who is expendable if they got caught, because he did have these mental issues. So, all around the world, all these al Quaeda operatives, we find that the vast majority of them were actually under surveillance at this time, just a short time after 9/11. So, to me, that’s a story that’s never been told, how is that al Quaeda has been able to operate as successfully as they were when they were being monitored so closely?
PC: Well, that’s a lingering question that we are going to have to deal with. So, take us back to Alhazmi and Almidhar first became evident, or, we first became aware of them as we look back forensically.

PT: Right, well, I think we have to go even further back than that. If you go all the way back to the early 1990′s, you have Osama bin Laden living in Sudan rather openly. And we know that way back then, the US intelligence community already started monitoring his satellite phone. In fact, according to one report, even way back then, they developed a technology that they got enough of his vocal recognition, so that if he called on any telephone, they would be able to go through their incredible NSA database and match that phone call with his voice. So he didn’t even have to be using his phone, any voice they’d be able to figure out that was an Osama bin Laden call.

So anyway, so he’s living there and around 2006 (1996?), this other al Quaeda operative, who’s a long time close personal friend of Osama bin Laden, starts this hub in Yemen, and this is going to play a very important role in the story of Alhazmi and Almidhar. And what was happening was that a lot of the countries where al Quaeda was operating like Afghanistan, Egypt, Somalia, different countries, the governments there, they were trying to prevent phone calls being made by militants from one country to another. So for instance, Egypt didn’t allow anybody in Egypt to call Afghanistan. They would block all those calls that they could. There was a lot of these blockages, so what a lot of the al Quaeda operatives around the world did was they used this Yemen hub as basically an al Quaeda switchboard.
They would call that hub and say, ‘I’m looking for so-and-so somewhere, and my friend’s over in Europe’, and connect me with that person. So this was just of incredible importance, this hub. Osama bin Laden himself called the hub many, many times. And what happened was the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, they all realized the great importance of this hub. So much so, that they not only monitored phone calls from the hub, but they actually physically planted bugs inside the building, and they even had a satellite in the sky that was dedicated to the hub, that would take satellite photos of anybody coming and going from the building.
This goes way back to the 1990s when they were doing this. What they also did was they had a big map of the world that they put on the wall somewhere, some FBI agents, and every time there would be a call from that hub to somewhere in the world, they would put a pin in the location to where that call was going. And so over time, they were able to map al Quaedas operations all around the world.
So you can start to see why, from this Washington Post article, they were able to say that they had the vast majority of all al Quaeda operatives around the world under surveillance. It was mostly because of this hub.

So now lets get to the Alhazmi-Almidhar part of this. It turns out that the person who owned this building and ran that hub, was actually the father in law of Khalid Almidhar, one of the hijackers. And so, Khalid Almidhar lived in the hub, his wife lived in the hub. Of course he would be off doing various operations, but he would come back from time to time, visit his wife and his extended family which was all pretty much living in that hub. And everyone in that family was pretty much al Quaeda. One report says that practically half of all of the really dangerous operatives in Yemen were all related to this one family. So, this was just like a laser being shone on this hub, on these phone calls and people in the hub, it just couldn’t be any more important. And then, at the end of, well actually all through 1999, Khalid Almidhar was coming and going, NSA was recording phone calls, the fact that he was living there. They got his name, they got the name of his good friend Nawaf Alhazmi, and then it reached a climax at the end of 2009 (1999?) when there was a series of phone calls, basically another high ranking al Quaeda leader named Khalad bin Attash, called up at the hub, called Khalid Almidhar there, and said ‘there’s an important meeting coming up in Malaysia, we want you to attend’. And he said ‘OK’. And there was also a call to Nawaf Alhazmi saying the same thing, ‘Come to the meeting in Malaysia’, and there was a call also to Salem Alhazmi, Nawafs’ brother who’s another 9/11 hijacker. He was also told to come to the meeting. All of these calls are all being recorded by the NSA. And so, they realized with the other US intelligence agencies ‘something really important is happening in Malaysia. Let’s track these guys to the meeting, record the meeting, find out what’s going on there. And that’s exactly what they do. On the way to the meeting Khalid Almidhar stops by in Dubai in the middle east and his passport, his photograph, secretly, might have been by some local people there, might have been some people breaking into this hotel room and photographing it, but for whatever reason they got his passport and it revealed that he had a Visa to come to the United States; and this is huge. Can’t get any more important information than that, because they’ve never really had any solid link of al Quaeda doing something, planning some kind of attack in the United States. This was the first really big break. So, this brings us all the way up to the Malaysia Summit.
PC: And before we go there, Paul, can I just ask you a couple of things about this hub in Yemen? Because Michael Scheuer, who was heading the Alec station, that was the al Quaeda desk, and it was named for his son Alec. He told me, and I believe he also told James Bamford that he tried to get the NSA to share transcripts of these intercepted satellite phone calls that were coming into the hub in Sanaa, in Yemen

PT: Mm-hmm.

PC: and that the NSA refused. And apparently CIA was able to get one portion of the call. Let’s just say that it’s the part originating from Yemen going up to the bird. And he even made a transcript of the one side of the call that CIA was able to intercept, sent it over to NSA and said, ‘well now will you please give us the rest of it?’, and they declined. So some of this in fighting between intelligence agencies on the US side is of interest to me, because it once again suggests, as Richard Clarke has, that the top CIA officials were keeping some information about key al Quaeda operatives very, very tightly held.

PT: Right. Well, I’d say that, sort of the main explanation that people give when they talk about this kind of thing, is they talk about the infighting between these various agencies and, ‘isn’t a shame that there was so much infighting, and that’s really what prevented US intelligence from stopping the 9/11 attacks’, and certainly there was a tremendous amount of infighting that was going on. And what Richard Clarke said is that the infighting excuse is not enough; it wasn’t simply that FBI and CIA couldn’t play ball together and so forth, that there is such an egregious amount of hiding of information about these 2 hijackers that that alone doesn’t explain it. And I think that’s what I’m going to try to argue here, as we go along, is that yes there was this infighting but that alone does not explain what’s going on here. And certainly with the Yemen hub there’s a tremendous amount of hoarding of information. The NSA hardly shared anything that they were getting about this.

So, what’s interesting is that all 3 of those agencies, NSA, CIA, FBI, they realized how important this hub was, and they pretty much independently created their own ways of getting information about the hub so they wouldn’t have to rely on the other agencies. I think the CIA actually went so far as to build their own satellite antenna in the Indian ocean so that they could get the information from this hub. So, we follow that about not sharing of information, but we have to be mindful that in a way that doesn’t really apply to things, because they were gathering their own information independently of each other.
PC: Mm-hmm. And I think I may have misstated his name, it was Scheuer, Michael Scheuer. Ok, so with that said, continue your narrative and let’s go to Malaysia.

PT: I’d also like to point out that Scheuer, he left the CIA bin Laden Unit in the middle of 1999, so he is not really privy to what happens afterwards.

PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: Which is, we’re getting at the very end of ’99. So they’ve tracked these 2 people, Alhazmi and Almidhar, to the Malaysia summit. It’s not really clear if Salem Alhazmi ever attended or not, although he did go on to participate in the 9/11 attacks. Malaysia was a great place to meet because the Malaysian government, wanting to be friendly with middle eastern governments, didn’t even require a Visa from most countries to come to that country, so people could just drift in very easily. And what seems to have happened was it was kind of like an ‘al Quaeda all-star team’ arrived at this summit, and there’s some dispute over exactly who attended, and I think there’s been a deliberate obfuscation all the way until today about just who was at that meeting, but I believe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “9/11 mastermind” was at that summit.

For instance, there’s a lot of newspaper reports to that effect, and recently I came across some Wikileaks documents that came out that indicated that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lived for a whole week with Alhazmi and Almidhar in Malaysia at that time, which would seem to confirm that he was there. Then you’ve got Hambali, who’s sort of al Quaedas biggest man in Southeast Asia. He worked with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on the Bojinka plot in 1995 which was kind of an early version of the 9/11 attacks which could have killed up to 4,000 people. Very major terrorist; he was known to be a major terrorist by the time of the summit. Then you’ve got Ramzi bin Alshibh; now he’s a very interesting case because he was a member of the Hamburg cell with Mohammed Atta, and some of the other 9/11 pilots who seem to have come to this summit. German intelligence says they have credit cards of him being in Malaysia at the time, there were photographs of him taken at the summit. So that’s a big ‘what if?’. How is it that he goes to the summit and that doesn’t somehow lead to the Hamburg cell in Germany being wrapped up? Because the summit is being very heavily monitored by intelligence agencies. We’ll get back to that. But anyways, so then you’ve got him, you’ve got Alhazmi and Almidhar, the host of the summit is a person named Yazid Sufaat, who’s seemingly head of al Quaedas biological weapons program; it’s being held in his apartment. You’ve got Khalad bin Attash who’s a major operational planner, you’ve got another guy al-Nashiri, major operational planner, about a dozen guys in all. Very, very important, I don’t think there was probably ever a time before 9/11 where there was such a collection of individuals outside of Afghanistan. It was just an unparalleled intelligence opportunity.

So all these guys are gathering at this apartment of Yazid Sufaat, and what the CIA did apparently was instead of monitoring these summit attendees themselves, they had the Malaysian Special Branch, their intelligence agency in Malaysia, do the monitoring. And so the Malaysian Special Branch took photographs, the first day they actually recorded a lot of video footage, but the story is they never got into the apartment where the summit was held. They never had any audio recordings, they were only taking pictures of these people as they wandered around town, they were staying at hotels, they were going to restaurants visiting internet cafes, so on and so on. But they never actually knew what going on in the summit. Now, I don’t know if I believe that, but be that as it may, they’ve got this recording of all this going on, and at the time it was considered so important that people at the cabinet-level in the United States were being updated on a daily basis. The head of the FBI, George Tenet, head of the CIA, the National Security Advisor; it doesn’t seem it actually got all the way up to the level of president Clinton, but certainly very top level people were being told on a daily basis as this summit went on. It was a 4 day meeting. Every day they would be getting updates on what was happening at that summit. And another very important point is that this is at the very time where fear about al Quaeda was hitting a peak, because this summit just happened a few days after January 1 2000, and there was a great fear that there would be millennium attacks, to be timed at the start of the new millennium. There had been an al Quaeda operative captured as he tried to enter the US in Seattle just a couple weeks before. And so there was this great fear that al Quaeda might be planning some attacks to happen very soon in the United States. So you have this incredible worry and focus and you have all these al Quaeda big wigs all meeting right there in Yemen (Malaysia?) So, you would think that after all that, 2 of the 9/11 hijackers attending, the 9/11 mastermind attending…how is it possible that they don’t just wrap up the whole 9/11 plot based on the surveillance of the summit? That’s one of the big mysteries that’s never been explained.
PC: And so, without asking you to form some hardened conclusion, as you recite these things, is it your suspicion that the Bush administration allowed it to happen, or was some way involved in orchestrating it with these characters that they certainly had under surveillance?

PT: Well, you know, I don’t like to speculate along those lines, I don’t even think speculation is necessary, because I think as we go into more details of this Malaysia summit and these hijackers and so forth, you can put forward 3 theories: you can say there was some sort of incompetence; people dropped the ball, that there was an al Quaeda operation going forward and the Bush administration let it happen, or that they actually helped make it happen. But I think the least worst of those would be the incompetence, obviously. When you really look at this, it would have to be such a level of incompetence where you just have this right in your face over and over and over again, that that would have to be criminal incompetence, which should lead to jail terms in my opinion.

So you’re kind of, those different theories, it’s almost a moot point where you’re kind of arguing just how long do these people go to jail, you know? I kind of put it, I like to think of it in terms of a bank robbery.

Where you can think, OK, you can have a person standing there as a security guard, and the bank robber runs down the street runs into the bank; so what is the security guards role? He could be working to help the person rob the bank, it could be part of the team, or, he could be just letting it happen because he wants to see that bank robbed. Or, he could be totally incompetent and do nothing while massive amount of time goes by, and the bank gets robbed. And that’s just as bad as the other two pretty much! I mean, wouldn’t that security guard be locked up for a long time if he just waited an hour knowing that the bank is being robbed and he didn’t do anything about it? Didn’t tell anybody about it? To me, it’s just as bad, really.
PC: Mm-hmm.

PT: So, I see it as kind of– you can’t really know, you can’t really go inside these people’s heads, we don’t have enough data to really know everything, but we know enough that I think if there were to be, to this to actually come to the US courts, that people would go to jail for something. Because there’s no good excuse for why these various attacks were allowed to go forward.

Sibel Edmonds: Well, actually it even gets more confusing and complex than that, and that’s the fact that both the CIA and the State Department, because a lot of these operatives at the CIA, they worked under State Department titles. And a study from 1995, 1996, these same actors were working with, back then they were not called al Quaeda, at least not by the FBIs’ definition or the wiretaps collected at the scene, –foreign targets of the State Department. But, the same actors that we are talking about, our government people within the State Department and the CIA, this is during the Clinton years, were working with these people in Chechnya, in the Balkans, in the central Asian Caucasus. And I’m talking about working together.

PT: Right, well

SE: OK, and so the question that comes up is, they are our partners, they were our partners, in the Balkans, you know, with the conflict in Bosnia, and also in Kosovo. They were our partners with what we did with Chechnya, with Russia. They were our partners with some of the assassinations and the plots they were carrying out in places like Azerbaijan. The same people, bin Laden, Zawahiri, even some of the actors involved in this
PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: And yet, we were also monitoring them as terrorists while we were actually working with them. That’s

PT: Yeah, it’s sort of crazy when you think about it. I mean, I think that if you really start looking at the Machiavellian workings of what the US government and other governments were doing, they kind of saw things in terms of “good terrorists” and “bad terrorists”. Where you have terrorists who for whatever reason, these people are somehow doing our bidding, they are helping us out, they’re helping us achieve our goals, either wittingly or unwittingly.
A good example would be Chechnya, where, for a long time the US had a great quagmire in Viet Nam, and they liked to sort of think of Chechnya as Russia’s’ Viet Nam, and this is a big quagmire for them. They’ve got to be dealing with these Islamist militants and fighting there constantly, year after year, sapping their economy.
SE: Exactly.

PT: They’re a traditional enemy of the United States, so the more Chechnya can sap them, the more the American foreign policy experts and officials are saying, ‘hey this is a really good thing, so why would we want to stop any potential Islamist militant from going to Chechnya and fight there? Hey, instead of stopping them, let’s pretty much give them the plane tickets, have them go there, because that’s helping us out, right?’

SE: Exactly. Right.

PT: And so that’s not just with Chechnya, but that happened in a lot of other places around the world. So, you have this idea where one man’s terrorist is another persons freedom fighter, right? It’s all these labels you throw on these people, these very loaded words, I try not to use words like ‘terrorists’ if I can, because you never know exactly who really these people are, who they’re working for, really what’s going on there? It often turns out there’s double agents and all kinds of intrigue going on, like some sort of exciting spy novel. But anyways, you’ve got these good terrorists, you’ve got these bad terrorists, and it’s clear to me that there were a lot of people before 9/11 who were ‘good terrorists’ in the eyes of the United States because they were doing something that the United States thought was helpful.

In fact there’s a famous quote by Zbigniew Brzezinski, if I can get his name right, who’s the National Security Advisor way back under Carter, and he was asked in 1998 about starting the whole war in Afghanistan way back in the 1970s, because really, it looks now that the CIA kind of goaded the Soviets into attacking by putting some operatives in there, and kind of stirring people up and creating a lot of chaos. So he said, let’s see if I can find his quote here, what he said…I can’t find his exact quote offhand, but it was something to the effect of ‘what’s more important, defeating the Soviet Union or a few stirred up Muslims?’ So the idea is that in a very Machiavellian way, thinking that ‘I’m using these people to get at the Soviets and to achieve our foreign policy goals, so we certainly don’t want to stop these people, we actually want to help them, fund them, train them in some cases…
SE: Exactly.

PT: And we could go way back and look at a long history of US covert support for Islamist militants around the world.

SE: Right! And let’s say just in the 1990s, starting from the mid-1990s to 2000, and we are talking about during the Clinton administration, and we are talking about the 2 guys who are left over from that administration. We are talking about Tenet, and we are talking about Clarke. And Tenet and Clarke were also aware, not only aware, they were involved, both through the diplomatic; working through State Department, but also through these ‘black ops’ and operations in Central Asia and the Balkans. So we have those 2 guys involved in that.

PT: Mm-hmm, yea. These two people particular people, Alhazmi and Almidhar, they have a very long history of working with al Quaeda, and it goes all the way back to the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s,

SE: Exactly.

PT: it appears that they were involved n that. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also appears to have fought in Bosnia in the early 1990′s, and then it appears that later on that they made attempts at least and probably went to fight in Chechnya as well, these two: Alhazmi and Almidhar.

SE: Mm-hmm.

PT: So it could be that they might have had linkages you know, there’s a whole other story about US support working with al Qaeda

SE: They were not even called al Qaeda, at least not in the FBI. This is one of the things I kept emphasizing during my testimony with the 9/11 Commission. The Arabic unit that worked, and that includes the bombing in Nairobi, because some of the translators, with FBI agents actually went in there, I’m not going to get too deep into the details of those, but they did not even emphasize a title, the name al Qaeda.

PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: So this is the interesting from the FBI side: you mean al Qaeda did not, even though we have this stuff, yea, al Quaeda came up again in 1997, FBI didn’t even have an al Quaeda unit. And these cases, the filings for these cases were not even under ‘al Quaeda.’

PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: The al Quaeda became popular after 9/11.

PT: Right.

SE: Became a brand, it was not even being used as a title for this group, or these groups. And that’s another interesting point, at least for the FBI.

PT: Well, I don’t think the title is so important. Obviously bin Laden, he didn’t really like al Quaeda, he came up with some other long winded names for his group that he wanted to use, and eventually he kind of got, just had to acknowledge that the media was using around the world ‘al Quaeda’ so much,

SE: Exactly, US media made it like (inaudible)

PT: he said, ‘OK, we’re al Quaeda’, but that was pretty much after 9/11. It’s not really so much important what these people are called, is what they were doing and who they’re working with, in my opinion. And you can see these 2 hijackers in particular, have a long history going way back to the 1990s. I don’t want to get too much into the Bosnian conflict, but there’s good evidence the US was working hand in hand with Osama bin Laden and his supporters in Bosnia at that time. So these guys may well have had some sort of contacts with that, going way back. So when Richard Clarke in his interview says, ‘maybe they were trying to turn them’, maybe they thought that they’d already turned them, or maybe they thought that, ‘well these guys, we know them, we know all about them, these are great candidates to turn.’ I don’t know, we can just kind of speculate. (laughs) So anyways, to kind of get back to the thread of what happened at the Malaysia summit and so forth…So what’s really interesting is that, sort of the bombshell out of this, all of the summit stuff, was the fact that Khalid Almidhar had a Visa to come to the United States. And actually, Nawaf Alhazmi did too, but apparently they didn’t know about that right at that point in time. Even as the summit was going on, there were efforts to prevent the FBI from knowing about that.

SE: Before you go further, one question, because I don’t have that information. Do you know where the Visa was obtained, which embassy, where?

PT: I’m pretty sure it was in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, if I remember.

SE: OK, thank you.

PT: Which is kind of a whole other story, because that, at least historically had been used in the Afghan war to have the Mujahedeen who were fighting in Afghanistan, to get Visas for them to come to the Unites States to be secretly trained and supported over there. So, it’s, (laughs) the more you dig into this stuff, the more interesting it gets.

SE: Right, because I have a State Department whistleblower, he hasn’t been really that public and vocal, but he worked, he was actually in charge of the Visa office in Jeddah.

PT: Mm-hmm.

SE: Until, I believe 2000-2001, and he also went to the Commission and he spoke a little bit about this stuff. He still hasn’t gotten into the names, but he actually filed complaints about people who actually they knew were confirmed terrorists, candidates, lists. Because many of these CIA operatives worked through the embassy there in Jeddah. Every time they brought it up, they would be overridden by the CIA guys in the embassy of there in Jeddah.

PT: Right.

SE: That was why I was asking.

PT: Right, so anyway you get these hijackers at the summit, then the summit starts to break up, and these people start to be scattered to the four winds. At that time, it would make sense that, normally, the CIA would normally say, ‘OK, FBI, you’re interested in what’s going on in the United States. We have information that one of these people at the summit, Khalid Almidhar, he has a Visa to come to the United States. He’s almost certainly going to use it and probably be involved in some sort of attack there.’ They knew for instance, he was involved in the embassy bombings and some other big attacks already.

That does not happen. In fact, there is somebody who drafts a cable to be sent to the FBI saying just that, that he has this Visa. His superior over rid him and basically said, ‘you can’t send that cable, you’re not allowed to send it.’ He tried later, another week or two later again and told, ‘you’re not allowed to send it.’ That same superior who told him not to send the cable turned around and sent a cable within the CIA telling everybody that the FBI had been told. You can see right there, you really see some duplicity. It goes even further than just the FBI and the CIA not getting along. We have evidence, for instance, of the CIA branch in Thailand, because these guys Alhazmi and Almidhar, they went from the Malaysian meeting, they went to Thailand. The CIA branch in Malaysia kind of asked the Thai branch, ‘what’s going on with these guys? Do you know what happened to them there in Thailand?’ And the Thai branch said, ‘we’ll have to get back to you, we don’t know what’s going on.’ Where at that point we know that the Thai was aware about this US Visa. So even within the United States, within the CIA, one branch is lying to the other branch about what they knew about these 2 particular hijackers. It’s not just a FBI/CIA turf battle kind of thing that’s going on here.

So anyway, so after about a week after the summit, these 2 hijackers, they’re from Thailand, they get on a plane, and they fly to the United States, and they immediately start living in San Diego. And Nawaf Alhazmi at least, he spends the next 2 years, basically he never leaves the United States from that point on. He just lives openly in San Diego, he’s got his number in the phone book and everything. It would be so easy to find him. Khalid Almidhar after a while, he leaves, and he actually –because as I’ve said, his father-in-law was a person who runs that Yemen hub, he actually goes back to the Yemen hub where his wife is, and he lives there for at least a month. Now remember that that hub is so monitored, anybody coming and going their picture is taken, there’s bugs inside the house, there’s so much that has not been revealed. How is it possible for Khalid Almidhar to back to that hub and live there for an entire month? He thinks that he’s with fellow al Quaeda people that he can trust. Would he not be talking about his time in the United States and what he is doing there, and the whole 9/11 plot that he’s a part of, in this very building that is a focus point of US intelligence collection efforts? How is it possible that this 9/11 plot isn’t discovered? And then you’ve got the fact that Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they’re living in San Diego, they’re making calls back and forth to this hub all the time. And they’re making other calls around, but you know, at least those calls are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. Again, how is it possible that some people don’t say, ‘hey, these 2 people are living in the United States, and probably up to no good there.’
PC: And Paul, what was the source of the funding that paid for their housing, paid for their expenses, while they were living in San Diego?

PT: (laughs) Yea, again there are just so many threads to this. I think what happens is that it’s such a complicated story that people kind of lose the thread after a while, because there’s so many tangents and things. But, it turns out that while those 2 hijackers were living in San Diego, there seems to have been a lot of money coming through the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. into sort of the wife of a friend, and it seems to have increased right when the hijackers got there. A lot of people believe that that money was actually helping to pay their living expenses, and there’s a tremendous amount of other information about these hijackers having ties with the Saudis while they were there, and by Saudis I don’t just mean Saudi citizens, I mean Saudi intelligence agents. They went to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, you know, hooked up with people there, some of whom were very radical, militant minded themselves, who were working at that consulate.

There was one particular guy named Omar al-Bayoumi, who’s a very important figure, because he was living in San Diego, and he really seems to have been some sort of Saudi intelligence agent. He had no visible means of support, yet he had some ghost job with some Saudi government kind of related company, and he was being paid a tremendous amount of money for doing no work. And he had this habit of wandering around the mosques and places where Saudis were living in the United States congregate. You have the video camera and a microphone on the camera, and he’d just be recording people willy nilly, and talking into the microphone making his observations about all the things that he was recording. Everybody in town who was in that Saudi community had basically knew that he was a Saudi government agent, and his job pretty much –you would think that the Saudi government has always been very worried about radical Islamics who come along who want to overthrow the Saudi government.

People like Osama bin Laden, who’s said all kinds of things about how they want to overthrow the Saudi royalty. So, in sort of most towns, they would have somebody like Omar al-Bayoumi, who was keeping an eye to make sure that there weren’t anti-Saudi government insurrections going on amongst Saudi students who were scattered all over the world. So, this guy, and when you go back to the Richard Clarke interview, he puts forth the theory, and he says, ‘well maybe when Alhazmi and Almidhar were living in the United States, maybe the CIA kind of handed off surveillance of these 2 people to the Saudis, and so somebody like Omar al-Bayoumi running around with his video camera would be a likely person to be keeping close eyes on these guys.
He did have all kinds of ties with these 2 people, they even lived at his place for a couple weeks when they first got there. I’ve found that there’s good evidence that Alhazmi knew that al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence agent and he disliked him and tried to stay away from him, and sort of was very wise to what this al-Bayoumi guy was doing. If the CIA was trusting monitoring these 2 incredibly important al Quaeda operatives to some guy who’s just wandering around openly known as a Saudi intelligence agent, walking around with a video camera all the time, I mean that just doesn’t seem to make any sense. Why would you do that? How could you learn any secrets about these people when you’re so openly advertising yourself as a Saudi intelligence agent?
PC: Well, and Paul, it begs the question about the role of Saudi Arabia and the royal family in funding al Quaeda, supporting their efforts. We know that the bulk of the alleged hijackers were Saudi citizens, and yet, the Bush administration gave Saudi Arabia a virtual complete pass

PT: Right.

PC: in any investigation into these events. We went into Afghanistan to distract people from Saudi Arabia.

PT: You know, there’s so many different threads in this story, and one thing that I’ve always been interested in is not only the possible whatever role the United States government and other western governments had in linkages with al Quaeda and so forth, but also, there were a lot of supporters of groups like al Quaeda in the Muslim world. People, even higher ups, billionaires in Saudi Arabia and other countries were very kind of ideological, same thinking as Osama bin Laden, and so they would be supporting these groups with a lot of money and other kinds of support. You see all along that Osama bin Laden would never have been able to keep up, even though he had some money from his inheritance from his big, rich family. It was estimated that al Quaeda cost about 30 million dollars to run every year. Not so much all these operatives running around, but sort of the training camps and there’s a whole sort of network you have to have, before you can even have any operative taking part in everything. You have to be recruiting people and so forth. So you sort of have this big operation that costs 30 million dollars a year, he would have run out of money pretty quickly. He had all these rich Sheiks living in the Middle East who were giving him a lot of money. So the question is, may have some of these Saudi contacts been aware of the 9/11 plot? May have they actually been funding some of the 9/11 hijackers? That’s a very interesting story, but I think it’s kind of a tangential story to the other story we’re talking about today, which is why doesn’t the CIA do something about these guys. What do they know about these guys and why don’t they do something about them?

One of the things about the Saudis is that the CIA knew way back that the Saudi intelligence agency had been very compromised by their support for al Quaeda. There was some people from another intelligence agency, I think the Jordanian intelligence agency one day went into the headquarters of the Saudi intelligence agency and looked around, and they saw on the computers a lot of the people actually had pictures of bin Laden as their screensavers on their computers because they were big supporters of bin Laden.
SE: Now here is another contradiction Paul, because all this time we keep hearing from the both from the media, but also from various supposed speeches by bin Laden, that he was actually a threat to the Saudi establishment, that he was absolutely feared and hated by the Saudis, and basically his number one goal was to basically get rid of the US bases from Saudi Arabia, and also the kingdom. So how do they work together? I mean you’re looking at two now almost contradictory concepts here in terms of the relationship between bin Laden and the Saudis.

PT: Well it’s so complicated, and it’s a very parallel situation in Pakistan, where you see tremendous support from Pakistan, even from the Pakistani intelligence agency to al Quaeda and related groups. And at the same time, these groups are often attacking Pakistani government buildings, and killing lots of people in Pakistan. In Saudi Arabia, it seems even royal members, high ranking members of the royal family are supporting bin Laden and al Quaeda, and Osama bin Laden’s saying, ‘down with the royal family.’ So I think a lot of this kind of ends up being intrigues and politics, where for instance you might have one faction of the Saudi royal family who thinks, ‘I would like to be king one day, and if I can use the fact that there are a huge number of people in Saudi Arabia who are supportive of bin Laden and bin Laden-type extremists, Wahabist religious beliefs, and ally with that whole faction, then that could help me get to power.’
And the same kind of thing happening in Pakistan, where you have various playing off against each other and using these militant groups as a way to get an edge. In fact, in Pakistan there are times where one faction would actually hire people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, his nephew for instance, to kill –there was an attempt where those guys tried to kill Benazir Bhutto back in the 1990s. So they’re very much involved in the intrigues and the politics of these countries which get very complicated, and people working sometimes at cross purposes, or trying to kill each other and so forth.
SE: That makes a lot of sense, especially with what you said with the divided kingdom, as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned. And I think one of the dividers there is the attitude or the stand when it comes to Israel, because where you have the old timers, you have the top layer, that actually behind the scenes, they do have good relationship with Israel. Then you have the segment there within the Saudi kingdom who are absolutely against Zionism and what’s happening in Israel. So that itself is just one other example of how divided they are within their own kingdom.

PT: Right. So to kind of keep trying make sure we stay on the focus of these Alhazmi and Almidhar characters…Richard Clarke, he’s saying that these guys may have been monitored by Saudi Arabia, but to get back to the point that I made a minute ago, that the CIA was so leery of the support that a lot of people in the Saudi intelligence agency had for al Quaeda, that they had put out a notice a couple years prior to all these events saying basically, ‘don’t trust the Saudi intelligence agency about anything having to do with bin Laden.’ So how could they then turn around and say, ‘oh, let’s just leave these 2, the first 2 al Quaeda people we ever really knew who were living in the United States, we’ll just trust the Saudi intelligence agency to keep an eye on them. I mean, that just doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t buy Richard Clarkes’ theory there. So, if you don’t buy that theory, then that leaves a gaping hole. Well, who’s looking after these 2 people when they’re living for 2 years in the United States? Did they just drop the ball so badly that they just said, ‘oh, I wonder whatever happened to those guys.’ (laughs) No one checked on them for 2 years. I don’t buy that.

SE: Neither do I.

PC: Well, at this point, I’m going to pause here and conclude part 1 of our conversation with Paul Thompson, and this’ll make it easier for our listeners to listen to and absorb, and we will continue in part 2, which will be released in short order after part 1, so that you can get all this information and listen to them at your convenience.

Russ Tice joins us to assess and explain the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) ongoing and ever-expanding domestic electronic surveillance of Americans in violation of our rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment, and the implications and dangers of the agency’s massive Data Mining technologies and practices. He provides us with his analysis of the Congressional Intelligence Authorization Act of 2012 and the vetoes issued by the White House against two provisions in the Senate version of the bill, one of which requires that the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) be confirmed by the Senate. He discusses the latest development in the case of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is suspected of leaking classified information to author and New York Times reporter James Risen, and the implications of the renewed request for a subpoena to compel Risen to testify at Sterling’s upcoming trial. Mr. Tice talks about the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the very troubling FBI-NSA information sharing-cooperation, the use of surveillance-generated information as blackmail against elected officials and more!

Russell Tice is a Former NSA Intelligence Analyst & Capabilities Operations Officer Specializing in Offensive Information Warfare (O-IW). During his nearly 20 year career with various US government agencies he conducted intelligence missions related to the Kosovo War, Afghanistan, and the USS Cole Bombing in Yemen. In 2005 Tice helped spark a national controversy over claims that the NSA and the DIA were engaged in unlawful and unconstitutional wiretaps on US citizens, and later admitted that he was one of the sources that were used in the NY Times’ reporting on the wiretap activity in December 2005. On July 26, 2006, he was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury regarding violations of federal law.

Here is our guest Russ Tice unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

We are beginning our third week in our countdown for 500 new subscribers this quarter to keep Boiling Frogs Post alive. The good news: We have added 224 new subscribers who now have committed to supporting us not only in words but in action. The bad news: we are not even halfway there.

You see, there are some things in life that are either ‘this’ way or ‘that’ way. There are certain expectations in life that can only be fulfilled with ‘one’ course of action or ‘another.’ Certain situations in life don’t allow having it ‘both ways.’ And we believe this is one of those situations.

We can’t say, on one hand, that we are disgusted, sick and tired of corporate media supported by the corporate circle and establishment money, and then not commit to supporting the very few without those corporate strings. We can’t expect to have independent information outlets free of corporate foundations ruled by Soroses-Rockefeller and Carnegies, on one hand, and then not contribute to those who are giving us exactly what we want without those shady foundation attachments.

This is Boiling Frogs Post, an independent website operating without any agenda-driven corporate foundation backing, without a single dime of corporate advertisements, and without any political party affiliation. We are struggling to make this independent information outlet possible while juggling work and family responsibilities. You the friends, readers and supporters of this forum for the irate minority are the sole determinant of our survival, continuation and further expansion. Without your contribution this true alternative will not exist. Without your direct support our options will be boiled down to the corporate mainstream media and corporate foundation pseudo alternatives.

It is time for the reality check of our expectations of independent media and information outlets. It is ‘one’ way or ‘another.’ It is either free to all but paid for and controlled by the corporate establishment, or, it is supported and sustained by us the people for us the people. The choice is ours. The decision is yours. Are you willing to support and sponsor our community? Will you help us continue and expand?

Here is how you can support us: Sign up for the Boiling Frogs Post recurring monthly or annual Subscription program to help us continue and expand this website. We need at least 276 more subscribers this quarter to make it.

Thank you for your support,

Sibel Edmonds & the Entire Boiling Frogs Post Team

For the past two years Boiling Frogs Post has been the proud home of the irate minority. When I started this website, even before completing the site’s setup, I had already picked the quote which this site’s principle was going to be based upon. In fact, this particular quote was one of the major catalysts in making the decision to launch Boiling Frogs Post:

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” – Samuel Adams

As you all know, I have been referring to our core group and supporters as our vigilant irate minority friends. The majority has been trying very hard, and most of the time successfully, to paint us, our vigilant minority group, as conspiracy theorists, fringe, loonies or worse. Two years ago I wrote about the story of the poisoned well and here are a few excerpts on the crazy majority and the vigilant minority who refrain from drinking from the poisoned well:

Today in our nation, with the help of the mainstream media and the pseudo alternative-media alike, anyone who dares NOT to drink from the well poisoned by the establishment corruption, greed, abuses and lies, tainted foreign policy agenda, and cover-ups, is destined to find himself stuffed into the same bucket of crazies, loonies, the mad and insane.

Those driven by pure, agenda-free, and nonpartisan civil liberties motives are coined as die-hard unrealistic idealists.

Those in government who dare to come forward, speak up, and tell the truth are labeled as disgruntled whistleblowers.

Those groups who fight for accountability and demand justice are dismissed as extremists.

Those activists who dare to ask for ‘real’ investigations in matters such as 9/11 are grouped and stuffed in a bucket as insane conspiracy theorists.

Those real investigative journalists and reporters who have defied the ‘dictation,’ refusing to become stenographers, have found themselves jobless and without paid outlets to publish.

Two years later here we are still, the vigilant irate minority. And that’s not all. There is another common stand and bond that holds us together. We also happen to be a politically homeless bunch. What do I mean by that? Well, just take a look at what we’ve been saying and doing for the last two years. We fought and opposed the previous regime under Bush. We’ve been countering, exposing and fighting the current regime under Obama; since day one of his presidency. We are looking at the actors on the warm-up stage for the upcoming elections, and shaking our heads in disgust.

We all know too well about the establishment presenting their puppets in two different costumes and under two different labels: Democrats & Republicans. We realize the mockery of democracy and that having a choice is about the establishment giving the people their two choices-the two sides of the same coin, and saying ‘here you go; pick from the two and we get ours either way!’ That’s what I mean by the nonpartisan minority here; a politically homeless group.

We are aware of the pseudo terrorism script being sold to our nation as the pretext for our establishment’s objective of perpetual wars. We do see through the fables, fantasies and lies marketed to our nation’s crazy majority by the mainstream and pseudo alternative media.

Just take a look at the coverage provided to you by Boiling Frogs Post in the past two years. Look at the list of 54 guests and issues we have presented to you in our Boiling Frogs Podcast Interview Series. Check out our editorial series covering issues ranging from corporate-foundations & their puppet NGOs, to Police State Practices, to 9/11 censored facts, to … Watch our recent exclusive video series-the EyeOpener, daring to delve into ‘no-no’ cases from Afghan Heroin to the Israel Lobby, and see if you can find anything like it in mainstream or pseudo alternative outlets. While you are at it go over the hard-hitting original political ‘toons presented to you by our award-winning cartoonist Paul Jamiol here at Boiling Frogs Post for the past two years.

Boiling Frogs Post has been the home of the vigilant irate minority. It has been the home for politically homeless people like you and me who refuse to drink from the poisoned well. This home is independent. This home is nonpartisan. We do not receive a single penny from corporate-foundation shills or corporate advertisement trap setters. This home relies only on the support provided by a like-minded irate minority like you.

We are starting our Week 2 Subscription Drive Countdown. As you can see we still have a long way to go but only 2 more weeks in which to do it. In order to continue this website and offer our content to everyone out there we need subscribers. We need 500 new subscribers for this quarter to make this happen. Please do your share and help us continue by subscribing to Boiling Frogs Post today. Thank you.

This is Part 3 of our three-part one-of-a-kind interview series with author and researcher Paul Thompson. For additional background information please visit the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project at HistoryCommons.Org.

Paul Thompson joins us to discuss one of the most blacked-out and censored aspects of Al-Qaeda-CIA connections: The partnership and alliance between the CIA and Al Qaeda and their joint operations in Central Asia, Balkans and Caucasus throughout the 1990’s. Mr. Thompson talks about Al-Qaeda’s Balkans operations, running training camps, money-laundering, and drug running networks in the region, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and his residence in Bulgaria in order to help manage the Al Qaeda effort in nearby Bosnia, the Al Qaeda cells in Chechnya and Azerbaijan, BCCI and more!

Paul Thompson is the author of the Terror Timeline, a compilation of over 5,000 reports and articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. His research in the field has garnered over 100 radio and TV interviews. Mr. Thompson holds a psychology degree from Stanford University obtained in 1990. For the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project visit HistoryCommons.Org

Here is our guest Paul Thompson unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

‘I am aware of the case and I will include it in my nightly news roundup this evening. However, first I have to go and find a REPUTABLE news source that has provided coverage on this.’

Very quickly, another e-mail followed, asking me,

‘What are you trying to say? That XYZ is not reputable?! Don’t be ridiculous. It’s outrageous. What is this…some sort of a boycott?!’

I thought about this for a few minutes, then, went and checked my nightly news posts and the sources for the last ten weeks, five nights a week. Guess what? I’ve been boycotting these jerks! How about that?! I guess it had not occurred to me in those terms until last week with that reporter’s e-mail. And to make it official, I am going to announce it with pride:

Boiling Frogs Post does not provide coverage or generate hits for the highly dependent and influenced, unreliable and already proven illegitimate mainstream media players. You may consider this an official boycott.

Does this mean it takes me much longer and costs me more time and energy to research and find far more reputable alternative sources for noteworthy news and editorials every night? You bet. Let me give you an example. For that Liebowitz & Israel Espionage story I found far more accurate and comprehensive coverage. And that’s what I published for you that same day. Not only that, in addition to the newsworthy information I also helped show how ‘news & info’ gets to be twisted, sanitized and then delivered by the same top culprits in the MSM. Here is my alternative to the garbage printed by the dependent NY Times:

This is what we mean by providing alternative and completely independent news, editorials, interviews and video at Boiling Frogs Post. To continue this and to be successful at it we must remain ‘Independent.’ This means: not a penny from the corporate media. Not a cent from corporate foundations from Soros to Rockefellers to Carnegie. It also means ‘zero’ partisanship and no party alliances. Then, how do we make this happen??!!

We solely depend on you to exist, continue, move forward, and expand. So please do your share and support us with your subscription. Let us show that it is ‘possible.’ Thank you.

Filmmakers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy join us to discuss their extensive research, interviews and findings which have resulted in the unmasking of three former top CIA officials- George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee- and their role in withholding intelligence on two key 9/11 hijackers and subsequent cover-ups. Duffy and Nowosielski provide us with a detailed account of their new interview with former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and his allegations against the CIA officials- Tenet, Black and Blee – accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence from the White House, the FBI, Immigration and the State and Defense Departments. They discuss two key CIA analysts who were instrumental in this cover up, a joint statement issued by the three accused CIA officials in response to Clarke’s allegations, and more!

Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy produced the film “Press for Truth,” which documented the journey of four 9/11 widows as they lobbied the Bush White House to convene an independent commission to probe the attacks. They recently launched a new transparency web site SecrecyKills.com.

Here are our guests Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

We say ‘we don’t want corporate media.’ We know that Corporate-Foundation sponsored quasi alternative information sites are equally suspect and under the influence. We admit to the destructive nature of partisan groupings when it comes to news and analyses forums. We want a website that is completely free of corporate money and advertisements, totally detached from agenda-driven foundational sponsorship, and absolutely nonpartisan.

Well, we got it, and here we are: The Boiling Frogs Post. We solely depend on you to exist, continue, move forward, and expand. Please do your share and support us with your subscription. Let us show that it is ‘possible.’

Last month I provided you with a heads up on coming changes, improvements and expansions to the Boiling Frogs Post. We are now ready to begin the third phase of this independent and nonpartisan website for the members of our irate minority community. A little more than two years ago I started this site as a simple blog. To my surprise (pleasant surprise, that is), very quickly, my simple little ‘blog spot’ began to gain the attention of like-minded readers and supporters. Together we raised this ‘blog spot’ to more of a ‘site.’ And we kept growing. I then began forming partnerships with like-minded friends: Those free of corporate attachments, foundation strings, and partisan blinders:

Peter B Collins and I have been bringing you our one of its kind podcast interview series; with no commercials, and no corporate or foundation sponsorship.

Paul Jamiol has been presenting to you hard-hitting and critical thought provoking editorial-political cartoons.

Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald have brought you un-matched analyses and articles on issues rarely-touched by mainstream and pseudo alternatives.

Beginning in July this year we started providing you with a nightly news and editorial roundup. Every weeknight we publish a comprehensive list of significant news articles and truly independent critical editorial pieces, selected and filtered from the best and most independent sources. You may have noticed the absence of bologna sold as news by publications such as The New York Times and Washington Post. Call it a kind of a boycott, if you like

Also last July I formed a new partnership with James Corbett of Corbett Report. James has already produced for us five original investigative video reports. He has been working on several additional investigative projects, and we are ready to publish these reports back-to-back starting this week

We have also brought on board other independent analysts and authors such as Bill Bergman and Linda Lewis, who will be providing you with analyses on issues that have been sinking our country.

On the not-so-exciting technical front: we have upgraded our server and hosting services – including cloud hosting services for our streaming videos, and we now have ‘real’ database management software which will be utilized to provide our members with additional and improved services. One of the first services we’ll be providing in the coming weeks is our BFP Monthly Newsletter, and another is the upcoming members’ exclusive forum.

Now comes the most important question: How do we continue and expand all these services and coverage? How can we afford to produce original and independent weekly podcast and video shows? How can we continue to bring in original work from independent experts and analysts? How do we maintain and manage this website? Most importantly, and by that I mean ‘the most’ important question: How do we do all this without receiving a single penny in corporate money, without getting any support from agenda-driven corporate foundations, while defying all partisan and status quo boundaries? How?

I’ll tell you how: through your support and contributions. As simple as that; nothing less-nothing more. This site depends exclusively on your contributions. Without your support there won’t be a Boiling Frogs Post. Without your contribution we won’t be able to bring to you podcast interviews or investigative video reports. Without your subscriptions I won’t be able to spend the time it takes to manage this great forum.

Last March, after our month-long fundraising round I presented to you our results, dilemma, and possible course of action. Now I am presenting you with the only two ways I know to maintain, continue, and expand this website:

1- In the next three weeks gather a sufficient number of monthly or annual subscribers to continue and expand this website, and still have all our content, including podcast and video reports, available to everyone and anyone. We need a minimum of 500 new subscribers per quarter to achieve this.

2- In the absence of a sufficient number of subscribers at the end of this three week period, make our podcast and video reports available only to our subscribers.

It is really hard to balance our two objectives: Produce quality podcast-video and editorial information, have it available to as many people as possible, and at the same time have enough funding to sustain the information production and maintenance of this website. That’s why we are starting this three-week subscription campaign – to see whether we can achieve both objectives. We need to have 500 new subscribers per quarter to keep the site and all its content available to all.

You, Boiling Frogs supporters, will be the sole determinant. Help us continue and expand this unique information venue by subscribing to our annual or monthly contribution program. Please Subscribe Now:

You can subscribe to Boiling Frogs Post with a contribution of a minimum recurring annual payment of $50, or a minimum recurring monthly payment of $5.

Thank you for all your support,

Sibel Edmonds & Boiling Frogs Post Team

Last month I provided you with a heads up on coming changes, improvements and expansions to the Boiling Frogs Post. We are now ready to begin the third phase of this independent and nonpartisan website for the members of our irate minority community. A little more than two years ago I started this site as a simple blog. To my surprise (pleasant surprise, that is), very quickly, my simple little ‘blog spot’ began to gain the attention of like-minded readers and supporters. Together we raised this ‘blog spot’ to more of a ‘site.’ And we kept growing.  I then began forming partnerships with like-minded friends: Those free of corporate attachments, foundation strings, and partisan blinders:

Peter B Collins and I have been bringing you our one of its kind podcast interview series; with no commercials, and no corporate or foundation sponsorship.

Paul Jamiol has been presenting to you hard-hitting and critical thought provoking editorial-political cartoons.

Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald have brought you un-matched analyses and articles on issues rarely-touched by mainstream and pseudo alternatives.

Beginning in July this year we started providing you with a nightly news and editorial roundup. Every weeknight we publish a comprehensive list of significant news articles and truly independent critical editorial pieces, selected and filtered from the best and most independent sources. You may have noticed the absence of bologna sold as news by publications such as The New York Times and Washington Post. Call it a kind of a boycott, if you like

Also last July I formed a new partnership with James Corbett of Corbett Report. James has already produced for us five original investigative video reports. He has been working on several additional investigative projects, and we are ready to publish these reports back-to-back starting this week

We have also brought on board other independent analysts and authors such as Bill Bergman and Linda Lewis, who will be providing you with analyses on issues that have been sinking our country.

On the not-so-exciting technical front: we have upgraded our server and hosting services – including cloud hosting services for our streaming videos, and we now have ‘real’ database management software which will be utilized to provide our members with additional and improved services. One of the first services we’ll be providing in the coming weeks is our BFP Monthly Newsletter, and another is the upcoming members’ exclusive forum.

Now comes the most important question: How do we continue and expand all these services and coverage? How can we afford to produce original and independent weekly podcast and video shows? How can we continue to bring in original work from independent experts and analysts? How do we maintain and manage this website? Most importantly, and by that I mean ‘the most’ important question: How do we do all this without receiving a single penny in corporate money, without getting any support from agenda-driven corporate foundations, while defying all partisan and status quo boundaries? How?

I’ll tell you how: through your support and contributions. As simple as that; nothing less-nothing more. This site depends exclusively on your contributions. Without your support there won’t be a Boiling Frogs Post. Without your contribution we won’t be able to bring to you podcast interviews or investigative video reports. Without your subscriptions I won’t be able to spend the time it takes to manage this great forum.

Last March, after our month-long fundraising round I presented to you our results, dilemma, and possible course of action. Now I am presenting you with the only two ways I know to maintain, continue, and expand this website:

1- In the next three weeks gather a sufficient number of monthly or annual subscribers to continue and expand this website, and still have all our content, including podcast and video reports, available to everyone and anyone. We need a minimum of 500 new subscribers per quarter to achieve this.

2- In the absence of a sufficient number of subscribers at the end of this three week period, make our podcast and video reports available only to our subscribers.

It is really hard to balance our two objectives: Produce quality podcast-video and editorial information, have it available to as many people as possible, and at the same time have enough funding to sustain the information production and maintenance of this website. That’s why we are starting this three-week subscription campaign – to see whether we can achieve both objectives. We need to have 500 new subscribers per quarter to keep the site and all its content available to all.

You, Boiling Frogs supporters, will be the sole determinant.  Help us continue and expand this unique information venue by subscribing to our annual or monthly contribution program. Please Subscribe Now:

You can subscribe to Boiling Frogs Post with a contribution of a minimum recurring annual payment of $50, or a minimum recurring monthly payment of $5.  

Thank you for all your support,

Sibel Edmonds & Boiling Frogs Post Team

This is Part II of our three-part one-of-a-kind interview series with author and researcher Paul Thompson. For additional background information please visit the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project at HistoryCommons.Org and Richard Clarke’s interview by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski at SecrecyKills.Com.

Paul Thompson joins us to discuss the latest revelations by former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and his explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials – George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee – accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence about two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who had entered the United States more than a year before the attacks. He provides us with the most comprehensive history and context to date on Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 with three other terrorists and flew the jetliner directly into the Pentagon killing 189 people. Mr. Thompson takes us through a mind-boggling journey through the Yemen Hub, the highly critical Malaysia Summit, Thailand, USS Cole bombing, CIA’s Alec Station, NSA, FBI and beyond!

Paul Thompson is the author of the Terror Timeline, a compilation of over 5,000 reports and articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. His research in the field has garnered over 100 radio and TV interviews. Mr. Thompson holds a psychology degree from Stanford University obtained in 1990. For the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project visit HistoryCommons.Org

Here is our guest Paul Thompson unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing directly.

This is Part I of our three-part one-of-a-kind interview series with author and researcher Paul Thompson. For additional background information please visit the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project at HistoryCommons.Org and Richard Clarke’s interview by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski at SecrecyKills.Com.

Paul Thompson joins us to discuss the latest revelations by former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and his explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials – George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee – accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence about two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who had entered the United States more than a year before the attacks. He provides us with the most comprehensive history and context to date on Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 with three other terrorists and flew the jetliner directly into the Pentagon killing 189 people. Mr. Thompson takes us through a mind-boggling journey through the Yemen Hub, the highly critical Malaysia Summit, Thailand, USS Cole bombing, CIA’s Alec Station, NSA, FBI and beyond!

Paul Thompson is the author of the Terror Timeline, a compilation of over 5,000 reports and articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. His research in the field has garnered over 100 radio and TV interviews. Mr. Thompson holds a psychology degree from Stanford University obtained in 1990. For the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project visit HistoryCommons.Org

Here is our guest Paul Thompson unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Lorie Van Auken joins us and shares with us her reflections ten years on about the events of 9/11 and her loss. She discusses the still- classified 28 pages of the JICI dealing with terrorist financing, the 9/11 families’ stalled lawsuit to bankrupt the terrorists and the direct interventions by the White House to protect the Saudi regime against the justice-seeking families, and the many uninvestigated questions and facts covered up by the 9/11 commission. She questions our current many-fronted wars and the senselessness of the occupation of and our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan with Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden both dead, while our economy is crashing here at home. Ms. Van Auken talks about the three versions of the NORAD timeline, the passage of the Patriot Act as a vehicle to erode our civil liberties, NSA’s illegal wiretapping of our domestic communications under the guise of security, and more!

Lorie Van Auken, the mother of two children, lost her husband Kenneth Van Auken in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. She is one of the “Jersey Girls” who, along with Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, and Patty Casazza, fought the Bush administration for a commission to investigate the attacks. Ms. Van Auken is also a member of the September 11 Advocates.

Here is our guest Lorie Van Auken unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

-We moved BFP to a new Hosting company.

-We upgraded our server package and monthly hosting services.

-We are in the middle of making our website Mobile Compatible, to enable you to get to the site on the go.

-We have purchased several software packages and Plug INS to be used for our upcoming video-audio services and Database management- operations.

It may sound pretty simple for those of you who are tech and website savvy, but let me tell you, it has been anything but smooth and easy for me. The following words come fairly close to describing the process for tech-challenged me with limited resources: frustrating, agitating, at times bewildering, and sometimes even depressing! You are looking at a woman who still doesn’t own any of the current jazzed up mobile devices. My simple cell phone was made in 2005, and my very rarely used laptop is at least 6 years old. Do you get the picture? No IPhone, no IPad or whatever else is out there the names of which I don’t even know. Okay; okay.

On the positive front here is what I have been planning and working on with my partners:

Two weeks ago I added our BFP Select Evening News & Editorials feature, and you have seen it 5 weeknights for two weeks. That too expanded a bit to include nightly select videos, nightly quote and funnies. I have to admit I love doing it. Is it time consuming? Yes, but definitely important and worth it.

We now have a partnership agreement with James Corbett to produce exclusive video reports for BFP. You have already watched 4 test videos on FBI Secret Files; Corporate Foundations; Obama Transparency Award; and the Murdoch Scandal. Again, it’s been a pleasure working with James, a partner who I respect, who is highly professional, an excellent investigative researcher and writer, eloquent, articulate, nonpartisan, and 100% independent.

We just published our 50^th Boiling Frogs Podcast interview. I’ve had a meeting and several discussions with Peter B Collins on how to present these 60-minute solid interviews weekly without commercials-advertisement, and expand from there.

We now have two incredible researchers and analysts, Julia Davis and Bill Bergman, who will contribute to BFP regularly. And of course, we have had the honor of having our award-winning Paul Jamiol contribute fabulous and original political toons regularly to BFP for almost two years.

We are also planning to add a members’ interactive news and discussion forum, where members can post news related items and other political discussion topics on our areas of interest such as: Our hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy, police state practices and news, civil liberties and related activism, government whistleblowers, 9/11, etc.

To sum it up, for our coming Boiling Frogs chapter, we are planning to offer you exclusive weekly video reports and podcast interviews, an interactive members’ forum, weekly editorial-political cartoons, select nightly news-editorials-video round up, weekly investigative research and analyses, and other articles and commentaries.

Now, the question of how are we going to make these plans-objectives possible?

Last March, after our month-long fundraising round I presented to you our results, dilemma, and possible course of action:

I run our fundraising campaign only once a year and for 4 weeks. Unfortunately, as far as our modest fundraising objective goes, we are about halfway there, and this, after finishing our third week. Considering the average rate of contributions we’ve been receiving (so far), we need at least 150 more of you to make it. Now, some people ask, ‘why don’t you run the campaign quarterly or bi-annually?’ My answer is not a complicated one: I really don’t like doing this; I would rather run a longer campaign and get it over with for the year. BUT, I try to listen to my friends and members of our irate minority club, so here are my options in need of your two-cents to come to a decision:

Extend the countdown campaign by another two weeks, and keep this as annual fundraising campaign

Bite the bullet and run a fundraiser campaign 2 or 3 times a year

There are other options and methods such as : Explain your idea

After our less than successful fundraising round, and after receiving your feedbacks, consulting with our partners, and thinking very hard about various ways to make this site and its objectives possible, I have decided on a plan; a course of action that will allow us to continue this site and expand. And based on this plan, starting in the next two weeks or so, we’ll be implementing the following methods to help maintain and expand this site and its features:

Boiling Frogs Subscription Program

Boiling Frogs Post will begin a subscription program and offer its subscribers our exclusive video and podcast interview weekly series, and access to select exclusive articles purchased from outside journalists. We are also planning and designing an exclusive interactive forum for our members.

Our subscription sum will be modest, and we’ll offer our subscribers two payment options: Annual and recurring monthly payments.

Donations to Boiling Frogs Post

Boiling Frogs Post will continue to offer our regular evening news and editorial round up, weekly political-editorial cartoons, in house articles and investigative research, and other discussion series to everyone. And these posts will be made possible only through donations from our readers and supporters. Those of you who cannot, or choose not to, subscribe to our video-podcast-forum program, are encouraged to donate whatever you can to help sustain this website for the irate minority club. We appreciate your donations no matter the amount or frequency, and we are always thankful for your support.

…

I apologize in advance for any minor disruption we may possibly have during the next two weeks while we complete the transfer and reconfiguration of our site, and thank you for your understanding and patience. And now, your turn: Please give us your take and suggestions on the coming chapter for Boiling Frogs Post.

Sibel Edmonds

James Bamford joins us to discuss the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the government’s overreach in bringing espionage charges against him, and the Obama Administration’s unprecedented level of retaliation against government whistleblowers. He discusses the Obama Administration’s shift from military wars to covert-secret wars, the increased use of the CIA as a war branch, and Obama’s violation of the Presidential War Powers Act. Mr. Bamford talks about the CIA operations in Yemen and the use of cluster bombs there as early as December 2009, the implications of WikiLeaks, the absurdity of Obama’s Nobel Peace Award and his recently given Transparency Award, the ineffectiveness and uselessness of NSA in monitoring Osama Bin-Laden’s activities, the absence of real coverage and analyses in the US Mainstream Media, and more!

James Bamford is one of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books include “The Puzzle Palace,” “Body of Secrets,” “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies,” and most recently “ The Shadow Factory”. Mr. Bamford coproduced NOVA’s “The Spy Factory”, which was based on his latest book. He has written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. His 2005 Rolling Stone article “The Man Who Sold the War” won a National Magazine Award for reporting. He also spent a decade as the Washington investigative producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, as a distinguished visiting professor.

Here is our guest James Bamford unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Russ Baker joins us to discuss the case of the former Israeli Spy Chief Meir Dagan, who contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment, considers a military attack on Iran “a stupid idea”, and criticizes Israel for having failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians by foolishly ignoring the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 border lines. He talks about the Obama administration’s harsh and hawkish stand on Iran, the evidence pointing to a plan to create an “Arab Spring” for the Good Old Boys—CIA, banks, and oil companies, the poor journalism by the mainstream media in covering Libya and the alleged crimes committed by Qaddafi as a part of a larger disinformation effort of the sort that has always been part and parcel of war, and more!

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Family of Secrets- – the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. He has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, and is the founder of WhoWhatWhy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization.

Here is our guest Russ Baker unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Paul Craig Roberts joins us to discuss the September 11 terrorist attacks as the defining event of our time, which has launched our nation on interminable wars of aggression, a domestic police state where the American President is a Caesar and completely above the law. He describes the US corporate media’s role today, which is to serve the government and the interest groups that empower the government, their astonishing blackout on legitimate investigations regarding 9/11 such as the investigation results supported by more than 1500 architects, and how currently the majority of Americans are ruled by propaganda and with little regard for truth and little access to it. Mr. Roberts talks about the conflicting, ever-changing and in many ways dubious accounts of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Military Industrial Complex’ need for the next ‘black hat,’ the question of China, and more!

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has been reporting on executive branch and cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. He has written or co-written eight books, contributed chapters to numerous books, and has published many articles in journals of scholarship. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Mr. Roberts has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy, and has been a critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations. His writings frequently appear on OpEdNews, Prisonplanet.com, Antiwar.com, Lew Rockwell’s web site, CounterPunch, and the American Free Press.

Here is our guest Paul Craig Roberts unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Pepe Escobar returns to our show to discuss the ever-changing, constantly-shifting, and holes-filled script in the US raid that allegedly killed Osama bin Laden. He reports on the news accounts on the Arab uprising in Egypt and the rarely reported realities of the Libya War, the conflicted responses of the United States to the uprising in Egypt and Libya versus those in other places such as Bahrain and Tunisia, and the hypocritical stand on Saudi Arabia. Mr. Escobar talks about the US assembly line of Boogiemen used as catalysts for conflicts and wars, the conflicting accounts on the Bin Laden Death Operation that have been completely censored by the US media and the official narrative as an elaborate PSYOP, the critical turning point in US-Pakistan relations and the China factor in the region, the Central and South Asia geopolitics factor, and more!

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News Network. He is an investigative journalist with three decades of experience in covering politics and conflicts around the globe. He’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering stories and cases from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination. Mr. Escobar has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of three must-read books: Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge, and Obama Does Globalistan.

Here is our guest Pepe Escobar unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Dr. Aland Mizell joins us to discuss the controversial Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen and his rapidly expanding cult globally and here in the United States. He provides us with a rarely discussed biography of Gulen and his movement, the cult’s objective of reviving the Ottoman Empire’s glory and Gulen Missionaries expansion into Central Asia and further around the world. He talks about Imam Gulen’s charter school empire in the United States, operated under absolute secrecy, the Turkish Missionaries’ Lobbyists targeting US federal and state governments, Gulen’s CIA connections and historical joint operations, the connection between Gülen and the Unification church- aka the Moon-cult, the oath of secrecy taken by all Gulen cult members, and more. Also, in the second half of our show we are joined by Bill Thacket, a parent of one of Gulen Charter Schools’ former students.

Aland Mizell earned his master’s degrees in political science and public administration and a doctorate in political science with an emphasis on politics and religion. Having lived and worked at an educational institution in Central Asia for nearly a decade he brings experiential evidence to his studies and initiatives. He reads and speaks several languages, adding to the breadth of his three-decades of research on Islam with a focus on the Gulen movement. He is the founder of Minority Care International (MCI), a nongovernmental organization with the mission of assisting deprived minorities, and serves as its president and CEO. Dr. Mizell is a frequent contributor to Kurdish Media, speaking on behalf of the Kurds, as well as presenting to the Kurdish American Youth Organization on the importance of education. For select samples of Dr. Mizell’s articles click here, here, and here.

Here is our guest Dr. Aland Mizell unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald join us to talk about their recently released book, Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire. They discuss the origins of the Taliban and the array of armed groups in AfPak that are lumped together as “Taliban” by US media and politicians. Gould-Fitzgerald talk about Pakistan’s double play, the struggle for oil and gas that is the basis for the conflict, pipeline politics, the confused or even lack of strategy in the senseless costly war, the current corruption ridden puppet regime in Afghanistan, Obama administration’s drone-mania, their 8-point plan for ending the US occupation, and more!

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Their latest book Crossing Zero: The AFPAK War at the Turning Point of American Empire published by City Lights in March 2011 focuses on the nuances of the Obama administration’s evolving military and political strategy, those who have been chosen to implement it, and the long-term consequences for the U.S. and the region.

Here are our guests Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald unplugged!

*For the history of democracy in Afghanistan, and a detailed recounting of the US support for the Mujahiddin during the 1980′s Soviet occupation, creating some of the “blowback” seen in the current US occupation, listen to Peter B Collins’ recent interview of the Gould-Fitzgerald duo here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Grant F. Smith joins us to discuss Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, a 2009 Council on Foreign Relations book authored by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. He tells us about rarely discussed “massive non-market subsidies and distortions” designed and implemented to benefit Israel, such as an agreement with the Pentagon for Israel to provide goods and services to the US military, and gain access to the US military procurement system, and other congressionally approved agreements that create jobs in Israel rather than in the US. Mr. Smith talks about AIPAC, Israel’s vast network of legal and illegal campaign contributions, their influence and propaganda infrastructure with the US media, and more!

Grant F. Smith is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy, America’s Defense Line: The Justice Department’s Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government and Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal. He is a contributor to Radio France Internationale and Voice of America’s Foro Interamericano, and has appeared on BBC News, CNN, and C-SPAN.

Here is our guest Grant Smith unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Nick (Nicholas) Merrill joins us to recount his ‘surreal’ experience as the first American to stand up and challenge the FBI’s National Security Letters, living under FBI gag orders for the past six years, and being identified only as ‘John Doe’ in court documents. Mr. Merrill relates what made him resist the FBI order, and dicusses the unconstitutionality of these practices- government warrantless surveillance and searches, and violations of American’s liberties and privacy. He talks about the implications of the issuance of 50000 FBI national security letters per year seeking information on ordinary Americans and US businesses, our nation’s descent towards a police state, the importance of speaking out and resisting these government practices that violate our constitutional rights, our moral obligation to protect our liberties and privacy as a nation, his goals to raise public awareness on these issues, and ways to deal with them through his recently established nonprofit organization, and more!

Nick Merrill is the founder of Calyx Internet Access and the Calyx Institute. He was the first person to file a constitutional challenge against the National Security Letters statute in the USA PATRIOT Act. After receiving a National Security Letter from the FBI, he sued the FBI and DOJ and became the plaintiff in the lawsuit Doe v. Ashcroft filed on behalf of a formerly unknown ISP owner by the ACLU against the U.S. federal government. Mr. Merrill never complied with the FBI’s NSL request, and eventually – several years into the lawsuit – the FBI decided it no longer wanted the information it had demanded and dropped its demand for records. However for several years after dropping the demand, the FBI continued to prevent him from publicly speaking about the NSL, or even from being publicly identified as the recipient of the NSL. Because National Security Letters are accompanied by an open-ended, life-long gag order, Merrill was unable to be identified in court papers as the plaintiff in the case and instead was referred to as “John Doe”. In 2010, after more than 6 years, Nick Merrill was partially released from his gag order and allowed to reveal his identity, although he still cannot reveal what information the FBI sought from him.

Here is our guest Nick Merrill unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Corey Pein recounts the creation of the recently launched groundbreaking site warisbusiness.com, a nonpartisan site covering military contracting, the global arms trade and the lobby, and how he began the project with two assumptions: The first- a lot of people are making money from war, while enjoying the comforts of anonymity (such people were once plainly called profiteers), and the second: Privatizing war inevitably prolongs it, creating what economists call a “perverse incentive.” Mr. Pein discusses the bought out generals and the militarization of the economy, and the latest on the ‘Rent-A-Generals’ exposé. He talks about scandals such as Mina Corp and the subsequent cover up, US Embassies as marketing arms of military corporations, the win-win outcome of elections for the Pentagon contractors and arms makers, Wikileaks, and more!

Corey Pein is an award-winning investigative reporter and long-form narrative journalist who writes about the military industrial complex, money, politics and violence from London, UK. Previously, he has lived in New Mexico, Oregon, Georgia and in Southeast Asia. His latest project is warisbusiness.com, a startup news site covering military contracting and the global arms trade. Mr. Pein has worked on staff at Columbia Journalism Review, Willamette Week, the Santa Fe Reporter and IHT ThaiDay, and contributed to Salon, Slate, The American Prospect, and CounterPunch, among others.

Here is our guest Corey Pein unplugged!

Note- Boiling Frogs selects warisbusiness.com as the best website of 2010!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

James Babb recounts the creation of the grassroots effort We Won’t Fly, and how he and cofounder George Donnelly, two regular dads, founded the group to oppose the full-body airport “porno”-scanners on grounds of privacy, ineffectiveness and health, and demand that the airlines make their maximum lobbying effort in support of customers’ rights and liberties. He discusses the ineffective and dangerous aspects of the TSA Security Theater as a top-down and lumbering bureaucracy, and the intimidation and humiliation of passengers for this false sense of security. Mr. Babb talks about the goal of his group, alternatives to flying, their next Opt Out project, and more!

James Babb is the co-founder of We Won’t Fly, an informal collaborative effort opposing the full-body airport “porno”-scanners on grounds of privacy, ineffectiveness and health. As an independent, grassroots effort, We Won’t Fly is not affiliated with any political party, corporation, politician or think tank. The group has pledged to stop flying ‘until the porno-scanners are history.’

Here is our guest James Babb unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Glenn Walp discusses his recently published book, Implosion at Los Alamos: How Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Ups Jeopardize America’s Nuclear Weapons Secrets , and describes major lapses in security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where scientists developed the world’s first atomic bomb back in 1945. Through well-documented facts and first hand experiences, Mr. Walp provides us with an alarming exposé on America’s vulnerability to those who may now be in possession of our most sensitive nuclear weapons secrets.  He talks about several high profile security lapses and the corruption, thievery and cover-ups he uncovered during his investigations at Los Alamos Lab, the bungled investigation of the Wen Ho Lee case, his experience as a whistleblower, his motivation to write this book, and more.

Glenn Walp worked as the Office Leader of the Office of Security Inquiries at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he denuded major crimes, mismanagement, corruption, and cover-up, as well as crucial security and safety breeches. His exposures helped result in 3 Congressional Hearings, the firings/reassignments of 19 lab officials, and that the contract to manage Los Alamos be put up for bid for the first time since the beginning of the Manhattan Project. Walp is a 35-year veteran law enforcement officer, working 29 years with the Pennsylvania State Police, retiring as Commissioner, and a member of the Governor’s Cabinet, and being the Chief of Police for 2 entities in Arizona. He has a BA in criminology, MA in criminal psychology and a PhD in criminal justice, and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and Executive Institute. He is the author of recently published Implosion at Los Alamos.

Here is our guest Glenn Walp unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Carlos Miller provides us with an overview of the history, purpose and mission of his award-winning website Photography is Not a Crime. He talks about First Amendment violations against photographers throughout the country, which occur on a shockingly regular basis, and illustrates this alarming trend with documented incidents and examples. Mr. Miller tells us about abuses and misinterpretation of State Wiretapping Laws, the recent attention given to these abuses by the mainstream media and the previous lack of coverage, the increased power of ordinary citizens due to the internet, and more.

Carlos Miller is a multimedia journalist based in Miami. In 2007, after he was arrested for photographing a group of Miami police officers against their wishes, Miller launched Photography is Not a Crime. He was charged with nine misdemeanors and spent 16 hours in the county jail. Miller, a 10-year veteran reporter, originally intended to document his trial with his blog, but soon began documenting abuses against other photographers throughout the country. Some of these incidents ended in arrest. Most of them were intimidation against the photographer. But each and every one of these incidents was a complete First Amendment violation against the photographer. Over a year’s time, Photography is Not a Crime has become a trusted destination for First Amendment news as it relates to photography, videography and writing, and the site has been mentioned in publications such as the New York Times, Fox News, The Chicago-Sun Times, The Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and the Miami New Times, who called his blog one of “Miami’s best blogs”. When Miller went to trial last year, he was acquitted of all charges except resisting arrest without violence. Acting as his own lawyer, Miller appealed the decision and that case is currently pending.

Here is our guest Carlos Miller unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Professor Francis Boyle discusses the October 2001 anthrax attack, the technology behind the letter to Senator Daschle, and assesses the case based on his years of expertise with
America’s bio-weapons programs, and as an expert who was responsible for drafting the
Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. He discusses possible motivations behind the anthrax attacks, including those held by criminal elements within the US government to foment a police state, and the investigation that never was. Professor Boyle talks about Israel war crimes as crimes against humanity, and more.

Francis Boyle is a human rights lawyer and professor of law at the University of Illinois. As an internationally recognized expert, Professor Boyle serves as counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine. He is the author of several books, including The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence published by Clarity Press. Click here for a more detailed bio.

Here is our guest Professor Francis Boyle unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Naomi Wolf discusses the fascist shift in the United States, how the state of our liberties has been getting worse under the Obama administration, and how President Obama has assumed the same position as Bush on States Secrets Privilege, unlawful detention and torture, and other similar assaults on our liberties. Ms. Wolf talks about the deplorable state of our two-party system and alternative approaches, the hypocritical silence of liberal antiwar activists, the need for new grassroots institutions and approaches to take back our civil liberties, and more.

Naomi Wolf is an author, activist and political consultant. She is known as an avid advocate of feminist causes and progressive politics, with a more recent emphasis on arguing that there has been a deterioration of democratic institutions in the United States. In The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Wolf takes a historical look at the rise of Fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a Fascistic group (or government) to destroy the democratic character of a nation-state and subvert the social/political liberty previously exercised by its citizens. The book details how this pattern was implemented in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and elsewhere, and analyzes its emergence and application in American political affairs since the September 11 attacks.

Here is our guest Naomi Wolf unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Update – March 3: We are one third of the way there; 700 more needed! We can do it – together.

In October 2009 I launched Boiling Frogs Post with one purpose in mind: To establish a venue for investigative articles, editorials, analyses, discussions, and interviews on issues largely censored and blacked out by the media. After four months of a successful trial phase this venue is now ready to enter its next stage, and for that it needs your support.

Boiling Frogs Post is solely dependent on its readers, and has no ties to any institution, foundation, organization or corporation. This is the only model I see fit to be called an independent news and views venue, untainted by external pressures, special interests or partisan flavoring.

Our authors and analysts present their work, not agenda scripts or special recipes handed to them for creation of a particular propaganda to serve a particular interest. And, our weekly commercial-free Podcast Show hosts the voices of noteworthy guests on topics long-muffled and quashed by the mainstream media and their minions on lower levels posing as alternatives.

I’m happy to report that in the four months since the launching of Boiling Frogs Post we have accomplished and delivered every single objective set prior to the launching this site. I am proud to have established a distinguished team of journalists, analysts, authors, and an editorial cartoonist whose work is based on truth and real issues.

Whether it is going after hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy practices, the ever revolving doors of foreign lobbies, or our stomped upon and continuously assaulted civil liberties, our work transcends the webs put in place by partisanship and special interests and agendas.

Here are a few examples of our work:

Sibel Edmonds- The Makings of a Police State Series

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed- Yemen, Energy Crisis & the Nigerian Crutch Bomber Series

Mizgin Yilmaz- Richard Armitage Series

Dr. William Weaver – The Impulse to Secrecy: The Glomar Response

Peter Lance: Fort Hood & the KSM Trial Series

Sibel Edmonds- Op-ed Series

In this short time span the Boiling Frogs Show has been able to present you with over 20 distinguished experts and whistleblowers from the fields of journalism, intelligence, grassroots activism, academia, and foreign policy. Here is a list of select interviews:

James Bamford on NSA & Illegal Domestic Wiretapping

Pepe Escobar on the Current Energy Crisis & the Quest for Central Asia-Caspian Region

Russ Baker on the Concept of Shadow Government and the Real Power Centers in the US

Daniel Ellsberg on Obama Presidency & Whistleblowers

Andy Worthington on America’s Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay

Chris Hedges on the US Media & the Empire of Illusion

Coleen Rowley on Accountability, Whistleblowers & Activism

I believe during this four-month trial phase Boiling Frogs Post has established a solid track record with what it has accomplished, and a view of what it can accomplish given your support and backing. We are now ready to begin our next phase, during which we will continue to provide what you have seen, read, and listened to thus far, and additionally, will present exclusive video clips and investigative stories.

This site will continue and expand only with your direct support. I am asking every one of you to consider yourself as the one who can make this possible, that without your active support this real alternative site will not continue or exist, and that without your help those who consider truly independent channels like this ‘impossible to survive and flourish’ will be proven right, and with that we will all lose. So please do your share, and contribute whatever you can now.

Our countdown to receive your support and donations begins today. No donation is either too small or too large. Please donate what you can to keep this home of the irate minority alive, and thank you for all you do.

Sibel Edmonds

Founder & Publisher, Boiling Frogs Post

Please Donate Now

In October 2009 I launched Boiling Frogs Post  with one purpose in mind: To establish a venue for investigative articles, editorials, analyses, discussions, and interviews on issues largely censored and blacked out by the media. After four months of a successful trial phase this venue is now ready to enter its next stage, and for that it needs your support.

Boiling Frogs Post is solely dependent on its readers, and has no ties to any institution, foundation, organization or corporation. This is the only model I see fit to be called an independent news and views venue, untainted by external pressures, special interests or partisan flavoring.

Our authors and analysts present their work, not agenda scripts or special recipes handed to them for creation of a particular propaganda to serve a particular interest. And, our weekly commercial-free Podcast Show hosts the voices of noteworthy guests on topics long-muffled and quashed by the mainstream media and their minions on lower levels posing as alternatives.

I’m happy to report that in the four months since the launching of Boiling Frogs Post we have accomplished and delivered every single objective set prior to the launching this site. I am proud to have established a distinguished team of journalists, analysts, authors, and an editorial cartoonist whose work is based on truth and real issues.

Whether it is going after hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy practices, the ever revolving doors of foreign lobbies, or our stomped upon and continuously assaulted civil liberties, our  work transcends the webs put in place by partisanship and special interests and agendas. Here are a few examples of our work:
 

• Sibel Edmonds- The Makings of a Police State Series
• Dr. Nafeez Ahmed- Yemen, Energy Crisis & the Nigerian Crutch Bomber Series
• Mizgin Yilmaz- Richard Armitage Series
• Dr. William Weaver – The Impulse to Secrecy: The Glomar Response
• Peter Lance: Fort Hood & the KSM Trial Series
• Sibel Edmonds- Op-ed Series

 
In this short time span the Boiling Frogs Show has been able to present you with over 20 distinguished experts and whistleblowers from the fields of journalism, intelligence, grassroots activism, academia, and foreign policy. Here is a list of select interviews:
 

• James Bamford on NSA & Illegal Domestic Wiretapping
• Pepe Escobar on the Current Energy Crisis & the Quest for Central Asia-Caspian Region
• Russ Baker on the Concept of Shadow Government and the Real Power Centers in the US
• Daniel Ellsberg on Obama Presidency & Whistleblowers
• Andy Worthington on America’s Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay
• Chris Hedges on the US Media & the Empire of Illusion
• Coleen Rowley on Accountability, Whistleblowers & Activism

 
I believe during this four-month trial phase Boiling Frogs Post has established a solid track record with what it has accomplished, and a view of what it can accomplish given your support and backing. We are now ready to begin our next phase, during which we will continue to provide what you have seen, read, and listened to thus far, and additionally, will present exclusive video clips and investigative stories.

This site will continue and expand only with your direct support. I am asking every one of you to consider yourself as the one who can make this possible, that without your active support this real alternative site will not continue or exist, and that without your help those who consider truly independent channels like this ‘impossible to survive and flourish’ will be proven right, and with that we will all lose. So please do your share, and contribute whatever you can now.

Our countdown to receive your support and donations begins today. No donation is either too small or too large. Please donate what you can to keep this home of the irate minority alive, and thank you for all you do.

Sibel Edmonds

Founder & Publisher, Boiling Frogs Post

Phil Weiss provides us with his experience and analysis of the US media’s stand, and their one-sided coverage and one-sided censorship on issues and cases related to Israel and the Israel lobby. He discusses the parallels between the tactics used in Gaza by Israelis and those implemented during the holocaust. Mr. Weiss talks about the Jewish identity question around the Israel lobby, the Obama administration’s hypocritical stand on and lame no-response response to the Goldstone Report, the importance of Jewish money and the Israel lobby to Obama and the Democrats, the recent changing perception of Israel, and much more!

Philip Weiss is an investigative journalist who has written for The Nation, The New York Observer, The American Conservative, Harper’s Magazine, and New York Times Magazine among other publications. He is the author of American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps and an editor of the website Mondoweiss, which covers the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Here is our guest Phil Weiss unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Chris Hedges gives us a quick sketch of his latest book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle”. He discusses the real role of the US media as one of the main culprits in promoting a sense of exceptionalism by disseminating fantasy, and poisoning civil and political discourse with entertainment and trivia. He talks about the spectacle surrounding Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign and his function as a brand just like any other commercial commodity brand advertised and promoted by corporations, the last decade’s coup d’état in slow motion, and much more!

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He has written nine books, including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, and the best-selling American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. He spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and served for eight years as the Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times, where he shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, for coverage of terrorism. Hedges also received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. His weekly column is published on Truthdig

Here is our guest Chris Hedges unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

We are delighted to announce a great addition to our team. Dr. Bill Weaver, who specializes in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy, has joined Boiling Frogs Post. Bill has been my mentor, a good friend, and a senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). I consider him one of the top nonpartisan experts when it comes to government secrecy and excessive classification, states secrets privilege, and intelligence and law enforcement agencies related whistleblowers. On Monday, January 11, I’ll post a great piece by Bill on ‘the Glomar Response.’ Here is a bit more on Bill Weaver:

Bill Weaver served in U.S. Army signals intelligence for eight years in Berlin and Augsburg, Germany in the late 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently received his law degree and Ph.D. in politics from the University of Virginia, where he was on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. He is presently Professor and Director of the Center for Law and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. He specializes in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Political Science Quarterly, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization and other journals. He has co-authored several books on law and political theory.  His most recent book, co-authored with Robert Pallitto, is Presidential Secrecy and the Law (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

Boiling Frogs Show

As expected, our latest Podcast interview featuring Dan Ellsberg was a great hit. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to it here is the link: Podcast #18. Coming up next week – our interview with Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, and the following week we’ll have Andy Worthington. This Thursday, Peter and I are scheduled to interview author and journalist Chris Hedges. Let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask Chris.

Also, on Monday, one of our video project team members, Katrina Rill, will be flying from California to New Jersey where she’ll be working on our project with Kristina Borjesson for two weeks. Please wish her a smooth flight and eventless TSA process. As are many prospective fliers she is dreading the process, and who could blame her?!

This week, due to my daughter’s nasty cold, I didn’t have a chance to add my own brief analysis and comments on our select weekly news and links of interest. Instead I’ll leave you with a few links and excerpts, and await your comments and responses. Is that a deal? Good. Here they are:

Obama’s Yemeni odyssey targets China

A year ago, Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh made the startling revelation that his country’s security forces apprehended a group of Islamists linked to the Israeli intelligence forces. “A terrorist cell was apprehended and will be referred to the courts for its links with the Israeli intelligence services,” he promised.

Saleh added, “You will hear about the trial proceedings.” Nothing was ever heard and the trail went cold. Welcome to the magical land of Yemen, where in the womb of time the Arabian Nights were played out.

…

Is Obama so incredibly forgetful of his own December 1 speech outlining his Afghan strategy that he violated his own canons? Certainly not. Obama is a smart man. The intervention in Yemen will go down as one of the smartest moves that he ever made for perpetuating the US’s global hegemony. It is America’s answer to China’s surge.

A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is “marking territory” – like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.

…

This is a fairly well written piece and provides a bit more context than our usual media blurbs over here. You can read the entire article by M K Bhadrakumar at Asia Times here.

Another related article:

Russia, China keep toehold in Yemen

Russia has stolen a march over the United States in the multimillion-dollar arms market in cash-strapped Yemen, whose weapons purchases are being funded mostly by neighboring Saudi Arabia. The Yemeni armed forces, currently undergoing an ambitious modernization program worth an estimated $4 billion US, are equipped with weapons largely from Russia, China, Ukraine, eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.

…

Yemen receives assistance under several US-funded programs, including Foreign Military Financing, International Military Education and Training, Non-Proliferation, Anti-terrorism and De-mining, and Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.

But the proposed military aid to Yemen – all of it gratis – along with US arms supplies, is negligible compared with weapons, military training and technical expertise from non-US sources.

…

I think you know why I find it interesting. It’s never really about terrorism or human rights…basically it always boils down to: chase the money angle, strategic location for that money angle, and the resources bringing about that money. So who is next? My bet would be: CENTRAL ASIA. How about Iran? I’m sure we can arrange for some Al-Qaeda presence rumor over there, add some ‘concerns’ over human rights abuses, and maybe a little bit of war on drugs or something like that, and voila! You can read the piece here, and let me know what you think.

Speaking of Iran, this must be raising many flags within establishment quarters, and causing worryies over ‘what could be ours that seems to be becoming theirs’:

Russia, China, Iran redraw energy map

The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran’s northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan’s vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is “apocalypse now” for the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?

…

The Turkmen-Iranian pipeline mocks the US’s Iran policy. The US is threatening Iran with new sanctions and claims Tehran is “increasingly isolated”. But Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s presidential jet winds its way through a Central Asian tour and lands in Ashgabat for a red-carpet welcome by his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, and a new economic axis emerges. Washington’s coercive diplomacy hasn’t worked. Turkmenistan, with a gross domestic product of US$18.3 billion, defied the sole superpower (GDP of $14.2 trillion) – and, worse still, made it look routine.

There are subplots, too. Tehran claims to have a deal with Ankara to transport Turkmen gas to Turkey via the existing 2,577km pipeline connecting Tabriz in northwestern Iran with Ankara. Indeed, Turkish diplomacy has an independent foreign-policy orientation. Turkey also aspires to be a hub for Europe’s energy supplies. Europe may be losing the battle for establishing direct access to the Caspian.

…

Read the article here.

Here is another one; this one on our consistent Modus Operandi:
US forges alliance with Saddam Hussein officers to fight al-Qaeda

American counter-terrorism specialists and Saddam Hussein’s former intelligence officers have forged an unlikely alliance in Yemen to tackle al-Qaeda.

The two sides were enemies on the battlefield just seven years ago but have been brought together by the failings of Yemen‘s security and intelligence apparatus, according to diplomatic and military sources in the country.

Although mutual suspicions linger, the collaboration is said to have achieved some intelligence breakthroughs and helped instil greater efficiency and professionalism within the most elite Yemeni counterterrorism outfit.

Co-operation with the former Baathist officers, who fled Iraq in the wake of the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam, is expected to grow further in the wake of the failed terror attack in the skies above Detroit. …

I wonder how many express a ‘huh?!’ reaction…

Okay, here is something different, and if viewed from the appropriate angle it is sadly-comical:

EU nations divided on use of airport body scanners

Fearing a rift with the United States, the European Union said Thursday it may force resistant member states to use the full-body scanners being pushed by the Obama administration in the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing.

Britain, the Netherlands and Italy already have joined Washington in announcing plans to install more of the devices — which can “see” through clothing — in the aftermath of the attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

But there are deep divisions among European nations, with countries such as Spain and Germany calling the scanners intrusive and a potential health risk.

…

And finally here is a well-written story about how our law enforcement agencies go about recruiting Muslim informants, and how they retaliate against those who refuse to be recruited:

Spy or Say Goodbye

After Imam Foad Farahi refused to become a federal informant, the government tried to destroy him.

For Farahi, an Iranian citizen who had lived in the United States for more than a decade, it was simply another month of Ramadan in Florida. Then, around 5 p.m., as he neared his apartment, he saw two men standing outside. They were waiting for him.

“We’re from the FBI,” one of the men said.

“OK,” he responded.

They wanted to know about José Padilla and Adnan El Shukrijumah, two South Florida men linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network. Padilla, the so-called “Dirty Bomber,” was arrested in May 2002 and initially given enemy combatant status. He eventually stood trial in Miami and was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Shukrijumah is a Saudi Arabian and an alleged al Qaeda member whose last known address was in Miramar. The FBI is offering up to $5 million for information leading directly to his capture.

…

“We want you to work with us,” Farahi remembers an agent telling him.

And this is when the imam’s five-year battle with the federal government began.

“I have no problem working with you guys or helping you out,” Farahi recalls telling them. He could keep them informed about the local Muslim community or translate Arabic. But the relationship, he insisted, would need to be public; others would have to know he was helping the government.

But that wasn’t what the FBI had in mind, Farahi says. The agents wanted him to become a secret informant who would investigate specific people. And they knew Farahi was in a vulnerable position. His student visa had expired, and he had asked the government for a renewal. He had also applied for political asylum, hoping one of those legal tracks would offer a way for him to stay in the United States indefinitely.

“We’ll give you residency,” the agents promised. “We’ll give you money to go to school.”

Farahi considered the offer for a moment and then shook his head.

“I can’t,” he told them.

…

Farahi soon discovered that the FBI’s offer wasn’t optional. The federal government used strong-arm tactics — including trying to have him deported and falsely claiming it had information linking him to terrorism — in an effort to force him to become an informant, he says.

The imam has resisted the government and took his political asylum case to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

“As long as you’re not a citizen, there are lots of things [the government] can do,” says Ira Kurzban, Farahi’s attorney. “They can allege you’re a terrorist and try to bring terrorist charges against you, or they can get you deported.”

…

This is an interesting story with many ramifications. I suggest you check it out here.

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Please help us spread the word, invite your irate friends and associates to visit and join this site, and bring in your views, analyses and feedback in our comments section.

A few Interesting News Items

Crackdown on Terrorism in Xinjiang

There is an interesting news item on Xinjiang which was picked up by only a very few in the US media:

“Police in China’s far west have launched a crackdown on terrorism and stepped up a hunt for suspects who took part in deadly ethnic riots there four months ago, the regional public security ministry said Tuesday.

Hundreds have already been arrested and nine people sentenced to death following the July 5 riots, which saw Uighurs (WEE’-gurs) attacking Han Chinese in the regional capital of Urumqi. Nearly 200 people were killed in those attacks and in the revenge killings of Uighurs by Han Chinese in the days that followed.

Uighurs are a Turkic Muslim ethnic group linguistically and culturally distinct from China’s majority Han. The Uighurs see Xinjiang as their homeland and resent the millions of Han Chinese who have poured into the region in recent decades. A simmering separatist campaign has occasionally boiled over into violence in the past 20 years.

China says overseas Uighur separatists orchestrated the riots to worsen ethnic divisions and bolster their campaign for independence but the government has provided little evidence to back up its claim.”

The Chinese government doesn’t want to provide any evidence because right now they don’t want that kind of an international incident. However, anyone who knows about this conflict and the related developments would know that the overseas orchestrators are: number One – the United States – followed by Turkey and Pakistan’s ISI. Unfortunately, thanks to our media, mainstream and alternative alike, very few people in the US have ever heard of this ongoing saga.

EU to Kiss & Make Up with Tashkent

This development reported by Asia Times is not that unrelated to the piece above.

“The worsening Afghan war has brought some good news for Uzbekistan. On Tuesday, the European Union announced it was lifting a four-year old arms embargo against Uzbekistan. The EU imposed wide-ranging sanctions in 2005 after Uzbek troops fired on civilians during an uprising in the city of Andizhan in Ferghana Valley, and Tashkent rejected calls by Western countries for an international inquiry into those killings. Tuesday’s decision completes an incremental process stretched over the past year or so on the EU’s part to kiss and make up with Tashkent.

…

Aside from the veracity of the EU claim, the reality is that Europe not only blinked first, it also bent its knees while doing so. Brussels kept a straight face, though, assuring the world audience that it would “closely and continuously observe the human-rights situation in Uzbekistan … [and] assess progress made by the Uzbek authorities.”

…

Clearly, no story quite ends in the Central Asian steppes. There is always a sub-plot, often more than one. It is against this complex backdrop that the uniqueness of Uzbekistan – a cradle of Islamic culture and civilization – needs to be grasped. The West learned the hard way that the pre-requisite of an effective engagement in Central Asia is a full-fledged relationship with the regime in Tashkent.”

I encourage you to read the entire article. As I’ve emphasized repeatedly there is no real coverage of this simmering region by the media in the United States. Asia Times is one of a very few news publication with consistently solid and thorough coverage of this highly important area.

Scowcroft’s Pimping Business

Here is an item totally hidden in one of McClatchy’s blog pages. Thanks to one of our readers who brought it to my attention:

“There’s nothing like litigation to crack open a window into a secretive world of power and intrigue. All those lovely depositions and legal documents…

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer kept alive a lawsuit filed by the Scowcroft Group against Toreador Resources Group. That’s Scowcroft, as in former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former CIA deputy operations director James Pavitt and former undersecretary of state Arnold Kanter and former assistant secretary of state Walter H. Kansteiner III and…

The Scowcroft Group says that Toreador failed to pay it an agreed-upon “success fee” for a deal involving the purchase by a Turkish company of the South Akcakoca Sub-Basin natural gas concession.

Scowcroft contends the work included:

“obtaining necessary Turkish government approvals for the…transaction…and ensuring the Turkish Ministry of Energy’s endorsement of the transaction and the rapid governmental approval of the transaction.”

Begging the question: just how does one go about “ensuring the Turkish Ministry of Energy’s endorsement”?[Emphasis Added]

The deal closed last year for $55 million, and the Scowcroft Group says it is owed $850,000. Judge Collyer declined to dismiss the case, which means unless it settles there should be a lot more information on the public record about how an international consulting firm does its business.”

Those of you familiar with my case know all about Mr. Scowcroft’s Lobby business for Turkey and his chairmanship of The American Turkish Council (ATC). Just like AIPAC, without having to register under FARA, Mr. Scowcroft has been serving the Turkish business, government and operatives’ businesses (includes ANY kind of business) for years, and with NO scrutiny. This sheds a tiny bit of light on how these kinds of pimping operations go. To put it simply:

The pimps here are a former national security adviser, a former CIA deputy operations director, a former undersecretary of state, and a former assistant secretary of state. Just like any good ole ordinary pimp these pimps want their commission for facilitating business transactions. Except these particular pimps have been milking their past positions, and thanks to our media only God knows how their ongoing access to those pimps-to-be who are still in the government is contributing to their lucrative pimping business…

Boiling Frogs Interviews

Our upcoming interview episodes include Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald on Afghanistan, Joe Lauria talking about the latest involving the United Nation, Mizgin Yilmaz on Kurdish related issues and Turkey, and Kristina Borjesson on the worse than sorry state of the US media today.

One of our upcoming guests is Andy Worthington, author of the Guantanamo Files, The first book to tell the story of every man trapped in Guantanamo. Andy lives in the UK, but will be in the US for the screening of ‘Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo.’ I’ll attend the screening in Washington DC at the New America Foundation. I know the film will be screened in other US locations, including on the West Coast; check it out if you are interested.