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Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Archive — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:08:48 +0000

The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There’s no price the big banks can’t fix

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that’s trillion, with a “t”) worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it “dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets.”

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world’s largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world’s largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It’s about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia

Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.

“It’s a double conspiracy,” says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. “It’s the height of criminality.”

The bad news didn’t stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. “Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry,” CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.

But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants’ incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

“A farce,” was one antitrust lawyer’s response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.

“Incredible,” says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation’s GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it’s increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it’s no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.

If you squint incredibly hard and look at the issue through a mirror, maybe while standing on your head, you can sort of see what Wise is saying. In a very theoretical, technical sense, the actual process by which banks submit Libor data – 18 geeks sending numbers to the British Bankers’ Association offices in London once every morning – is not competitive per se.

But these numbers are supposed to reflect interbank-loan prices derived in a real, competitive market. Saying the Libor submission process is not competitive is sort of like pointing out that bank robbers obeyed the speed limit on the way to the heist. It’s the silliest kind of legal sophistry.

But Wise eventually outdid even that argument, essentially saying that while the banks may have lied to or cheated their customers, they weren’t guilty of the particular crime of antitrust collusion. This is like the old joke about the lawyer who gets up in court and claims his client had to be innocent, because his client was committing a crime in a different state at the time of the offense.

“The plaintiffs, I believe, are confusing a claim of being perhaps deceived,” he said, “with a claim for harm to competition.”

Judge Buchwald swallowed this lunatic argument whole and dismissed most of the case. Libor, she said, was a “cooperative endeavor” that was “never intended to be competitive.” Her decision “does not reflect the reality of this business, where all of these banks were acting as competitors throughout the process,” said the antitrust lawyer Sokol. Buchwald made this ruling despite the fact that both the U.S. and British governments had already settled with three banks for billions of dollars for improper manipulation, manipulation that these companies admitted to in their settlements.

Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld LLP, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs in this Libor suit, declined to comment specifically on the dismissal. But he did talk about the significance of the Libor case and other manipulation cases now in the pipeline.

“It’s now evident that there is a ubiquitous culture among the banks to collude and cheat their customers as many times as they can in as many forms as they can conceive,” he said. “And that’s not just surmising. This is just based upon what they’ve been caught at.”

Greenberger says the lack of serious consequences for the Libor scandal has only made other kinds of manipulation more inevitable. “There’s no therapy like sending those who are used to wearing Gucci shoes to jail,” he says. “But when the attorney general says, ‘I don’t want to indict people,’ it’s the Wild West. There’s no law.”

The problem is, a number of markets feature the same infrastructural weakness that failed in the Libor mess. In the case of interest-rate swaps and the ISDAfix benchmark, the system is very similar to Libor, although the investigation into these markets reportedly focuses on some different types of improprieties.

Though interest-rate swaps are not widely understood outside the finance world, the root concept actually isn’t that hard. If you can imagine taking out a variable-rate mortgage and then paying a bank to make your loan payments fixed, you’ve got the basic idea of an interest-rate swap.

In practice, it might be a country like Greece or a regional government like Jefferson County, Alabama, that borrows money at a variable rate of interest, then later goes to a bank to “swap” that loan to a more predictable fixed rate. In its simplest form, the customer in a swap deal is usually paying a premium for the safety and security of fixed interest rates, while the firm selling the swap is usually betting that it knows more about future movements in interest rates than its customers.

Prices for interest-rate swaps are often based on ISDAfix, which, like Libor, is yet another of these privately calculated benchmarks. ISDAfix’s U.S. dollar rates are published every day, at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., after a gang of the same usual-suspect megabanks (Bank of America, RBS, Deutsche, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, etc.) submits information about bids and offers for swaps.

And here’s what we know so far: The CFTC has sent subpoenas to ICAP and to as many as 15 of those member banks, and plans to interview about a dozen ICAP employees from the company’s office in Jersey City, New Jersey. Moreover, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, or ISDA, which works together with ICAP (for U.S. dollar transactions) and Thomson Reuters to compute the ISDAfix benchmark, has hired the consulting firm Oliver Wyman to review the process by which ISDAfix is calculated. Oliver Wyman is the same company that the British Bankers’ Association hired to review the Libor submission process after that scandal broke last year. The upshot of all of this is that it looks very much like ISDAfix could be Libor all over again.

“It’s obviously reminiscent of the Libor manipulation issue,” Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University, told reporters. “People may have been naive that simply reporting these rates was enough to avoid manipulation.”

And just like in Libor, the potential losers in an interest-rate-swap manipulation scandal would be the same sad-sack collection of cities, towns, companies and other nonbank entities that have no way of knowing if they’re paying the real price for swaps or a price being manipulated by bank insiders for profit. Moreover, ISDAfix is not only used to calculate prices for interest-rate swaps, it’s also used to set values for about $550 billion worth of bonds tied to commercial real estate, and also affects the payouts on some state-pension annuities.

So although it’s not quite as widespread as Libor, ISDAfix is sufficiently power-jammed into the world financial infrastructure that any manipulation of the rate would be catastrophic – and a huge class of victims that could include everyone from state pensioners to big cities to wealthy investors in structured notes would have no idea they were being robbed.

“How is some municipality in Cleveland or wherever going to know if it’s getting ripped off?” asks Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management, a fund manager who has long been an advocate of greater transparency in the derivatives world. “The answer is, they won’t know.”

Worse still, the CFTC investigation apparently isn’t limited to possible manipulation of swap prices by monkeying around with ISDAfix. According to reports, the commission is also looking at whether or not employees at ICAP may have intentionally delayed publication of swap prices, which in theory could give someone (bankers, cough, cough) a chance to trade ahead of the information.

Swap prices are published when ICAP employees manually enter the data on a computer screen called “19901.” Some 6,000 customers subscribe to a service that allows them to access the data appearing on the 19901 screen.

The key here is that unlike a more transparent, regulated market like the New York Stock Exchange, where the results of stock trades are computed more or less instantly and everyone in theory can immediately see the impact of trading on the prices of stocks, in the swap market the whole world is dependent upon a handful of brokers quickly and honestly entering data about trades by hand into a computer terminal.

Any delay in entering price data would provide the banks involved in the transactions with a rare opportunity to trade ahead of the information. One way to imagine it would be to picture a racetrack where a giant curtain is pulled over the track as the horses come down the stretch – and the gallery is only told two minutes later which horse actually won. Anyone on the right side of the curtain could make a lot of smart bets before the audience saw the results of the race.

At ICAP, the interest-rate swap desk, and the 19901 screen, were reportedly controlled by a small group of 20 or so brokers, some of whom were making millions of dollars. These brokers made so much money for themselves the unit was nicknamed “Treasure Island.”

Already, there are some reports that brokers of Treasure Island did create such intentional delays. Bloomberg interviewed a former broker who claims that he watched ICAP brokers delay the reporting of swap prices. “That allows dealers to tell the brokers to delay putting trades into the system instead of in real time,” Bloomberg wrote, noting the former broker had “witnessed such activity firsthand.” An ICAP spokesman has no comment on the story, though the company has released a statement saying that it is “cooperating” with the CFTC’s inquiry and that it “maintains policies that prohibit” the improper behavior alleged in news reports.

The idea that prices in a $379 trillion market could be dependent on a desk of about 20 guys in New Jersey should tell you a lot about the absurdity of our financial infrastructure. The whole thing, in fact, has a darkly comic element to it. “It’s almost hilarious in the irony,” says David Frenk, director of research for Better Markets, a financial-reform advocacy group, “that they called it ISDAfix.”

After scandals involving libor and, perhaps, ISDAfix, the question that should have everyone freaked out is this: What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we’re forced to trust.

“In all the over-the-counter markets, you don’t really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together,” Masters notes glumly.

That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities – jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it. The problem in each of these markets is the same: We all have to rely upon the honesty of companies like Barclays (already caught and fined $453 million for rigging Libor) or JPMorgan Chase (paid a $228 million settlement for rigging municipal-bond auctions) or UBS (fined a collective $1.66 billion for both muni-bond rigging and Libor manipulation) to faithfully report the real prices of things like interest rates, swaps, currencies and commodities.

All of these benchmarks based on voluntary reporting are now being looked at by regulators around the world, and God knows what they’ll find. The European Federation of Financial Services Users wrote in an official EU survey last summer that all of these systems are ripe targets for manipulation. “In general,” it wrote, “those markets which are based on non-attested, voluntary submission of data from agents whose benefits depend on such benchmarks are especially vulnerable of market abuse and distortion.”

Translation: When prices are set by companies that can profit by manipulating them, we’re fucked.

“You name it,” says Frenk. “Any of these benchmarks is a possibility for corruption.”

The only reason this problem has not received the attention it deserves is because the scale of it is so enormous that ordinary people simply cannot see it. It’s not just stealing by reaching a hand into your pocket and taking out money, but stealing in which banks can hit a few keystrokes and magically make whatever’s in your pocket worth less. This is corruption at the molecular level of the economy, Space Age stealing – and it’s only just coming into view.

This story is from the May 9th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

17 Unanswered Questions About The Boston Marathon Bombing The Media Is Afraid To Ask

Archive — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:55:08 +0000

Will we ever learn the full truth about the Boston Marathon bombing? Personally, I have been looking into this attack for days, and I just keep coming up with more questions than answers. At this point, I honestly have no idea what really happened. Why was a bomb drill being held on the day of the attack? Why have authorities denied that a bomb drill was taking place? Were Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev acting alone? What was the nature of their previous contacts with the FBI and other federal agencies? Why did the FBI at first deny that they had been in contact with the Tsarnaev brothers previously? Why was the investigation of a mysterious Saudi national with familial links to al-Qaeda suddenly dropped shortly after the Saudi ambassador held an unscheduled meeting with Barack Obama? Why did Michelle Obama subsequently visit that mysterious Saudi national in the hospital? If you are looking for answers to these questions, I am afraid that I don’t have them at this point. But what alarms me is that the mainstream media seems to be afraid to ask any of the hard questions that they should be asking. They just seem to swallow whatever the authorities tell them hook, line and sinker without following up on any of the things in this case that simply do not seem to make sense.

So what kinds of questions should they be asking? The following are 17 unanswered questions about the Boston Marathon bombing that the media appears to be afraid to ask…

#1 Why were runners being told that a bomb squad drill was taking place during the Boston Marathon? The following is from an article by Natural News…

Alastair Stevenson is a veteran marathon runner who has competed in dozens of marathons around the world, including the London Marathon. He’s very familiar with the security typically found at marathons, and he immediately noticed something odd about the Boston marathon security.

“They kept making announcements on the loud speaker that it was just a drill and there was nothing to worry about. It seemed like there was some sort of threat, but they kept telling us it was just a drill,” he was quoted as saying by Local15TV.com.

In the interview, you’ll hear Stevenson say:

“At the start at the event, at the Athlete’s Village, there were people on the roof looking down onto the Village at the start. There were dogs with their handlers going around sniffing for explosives, and we were told on a loud announcement that we shouldn’t be concerned and that it was just a drill. And maybe it was just a drill, but I’ve never seen anything like that — not at any marathon that I’ve ever been to. You know, that just concerned me that that’s the only race that I’ve seen in my life where they had dogs sniffing for explosions, and that’s the only place where there had been explosions.”

#2 Why did authorities deny that a bomb squad drill was being held?

#3 According to The Mirror, the FBI is reportedly “hunting” a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were allegedly a part of…

A source close to the investigation said: “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.

“They were too advanced. Someone gave the brothers the skills and it is now our job to find out just who they were. Agents think the sleeper cell has up to a dozen members and has been waiting several years for their day to come.”

If that is the case, why are authorities in Boston adamantly insisting that the two brothers were acting alone?

#4 CBS News is reporting that the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev back in 2011. The mother of the two Tsarnaev brothers insists that the FBI had been in contact with them for up to five years. At first, the FBI denied any previous contact with the two suspects. Will we ever learn the true scope of the previous relationship between the FBI and the Tsarnaev brothers?

#5 Debka is reporting that the Tsarnaev brothers were “double agents” which had been “hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which, helped by Saudi financial institutions, had spread across the restive Russian Caucasian.” Could this possibly be true? If so, will the American people be told the truth about these links?

#6 According to their uncle, there were “mentors” that “radicalized” the Tsarnaev brothers. So precisely who were those “mentors”?

#7 What happened during Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s trip to Dagestan and Chechnya last year?

#8 Were the Tsarnaev brothers in contact with a rebel leader named Doku Umarov who is known as “Russia’s Bin Laden”?

#9 Did Tamerlan Tsarnaev post a video on YouTube last summer that expresses a belief that the 12th Imam, Mahdi, will soon come and that an Islamic army with black flags with arise out of a province in Iran known as Khorasan?

#10 Why aren’t we being told that the “pressure cooker bombs” used in the Boston Marathon attacks are very similar to the kind of pressure cooker bombs that are commonly used in the Middle East?…

The Daily Beast has confirmed with U.S. counter-terrorism officials that the bombs placed Monday at the marathon were made from pressure cookers, a crude kind of explosive favored by insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A recipe for a bomb that uses the pressure cooker was part of the debut issue of Inspire, the English-language online magazine of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

#11 Initially we were told that Saudi national Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi was a “person of interest” in the case. But now he is scheduled to leave the country with the full blessing of the U.S. government. Why is there such a rush to get him out of the United States?

#12 Why aren’t we being told that Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi was photographed with two other Saudis in the vicinity of the Boston marathon bombings?

#13 Why aren’t we being told of the shocking familial links that Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi has to known members of al-Qaeda? The following is from research complied by Walid Shoebat…

Many from Al-Harbi’s clan are steeped in terrorism and are members of Al-Qaeda. Out of a list of 85 terrorists listed by the Saudi government shows several of Al-Harbi clan to have been active fighters in Al-Qaeda:

#15 Badr Saud Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
#73 Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
#26 Khalid Salim Uwaid Al-Lahibi Al-Harbi
#29 Raed Abdullah Salem Al-Thahiri Al-Harbi
#43 Abdullah Abdul Rahman Muhammad Al-Harbi (leader)
#60 Fayez Ghuneim Humeid Al-Hijri Al-Harbi
Source: http://aalhameed1.net/vb/showthread.php?t=1565

Then you have Al-Harbi clan members in Gitmo:

Salim Salman Awadallah Al-Sai’di Al-Harbi
Majid Abdullah Hussein Al-Harbi
Muhammad Abdullah Saqr Al-Alawi Al-Harbi
Ghanem Abdul Rahman Ghanem Al-Harbi
Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awfi Al-Harbi
Source: http://www.muslm.net/vb/showthread.php?169019-أسماء-(90)-سعودياً-لا-زالوا-محتجزين-في-جوانتانامو

There are specific Saudi clans that are rife with members of Al-Qaeda, which makes it quite alarming as to why nearly a hundred thousand student visas are issued to these. Americans are clueless as to clan ties when it comes to terrorism.

#14 Why did U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have a private meeting with a Saudi foreign minister shortly after Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi was identified as a potential suspect?

#15 Why did Barack Obama hold an unscheduled meeting with the ambassador from Saudi Arabia shortly after Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi was identified as a potential suspect?

#16 Why did Michelle Obama visit Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi in the hospital?

#17 Why did numerous mainstream media outlets openly suggest that “right-wing extremists” were behind the bombings in the immediate aftermath of the attack?

via EndofTheAmericanDream.com

April 16, 2013 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: More Boston Bombing Evidence & Cover-Up, Changing Facts, Family Guy Clip Censored, Arrests? Nevermind!

MaxMaverick — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:00:20 +0000

YouTube Censors Family Guy Clip Which Predicted Boston Marathon Attack

Confirmed: Bomb squad drill was under way at Boston marathon

Eyewitness: Authorities “Must Have Known” About Bombing

Meanwhile… THE MAINSTREAM IGNORES THE DRILL!!!!

Boston Marathon bombing: Feds raid apartment, police seek rental van

Other News:

IRS Promises To Abandon Warrant-less Email Spying After Public Outcry

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Every Week Night 12-1am EST (9-10pm PST)

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April 15, 2013 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: Boston Marathon False Flag Bombing Analyzed, ‘Live Drill’ Denials, Related News

MaxMaverick — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:00:57 +0000

Establishment Media Exploits Boston Marathon Terror

Boston Marathon: Bombing Drill Coincided With Explosions

UM Coach: Bomb Sniffing Dogs Were at Start, Finish Lines for “Drill”

Mass Casualty Mobile Tablet Deployed For Use In Boston Marathon 3 days In Advance

FAA orders no-fly zone over Boston explosion site

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act marked up in secret

IBM Sends 200 Execs To Capitol Hill To Demand The Right To Send Your Private Info To The NSA

Why Is Gold Crashing?

Every Week Night 12-1am EST (9-10pm PST)

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April 9, 2013 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: DoJ Cries Espionage, Spying MobileApps, Wikileaks Kissinger Cables, Katt Williams Illuminati, Bird Flu Bio-Weapon, Anonymous Attacks Israel

MaxMaverick — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:00:52 +0000

Obama’s 7th Espionage Act Case Against a Non-Spy

Study: Mobile phone apps view private data more than necessary

Wikileaks – The Kissinger Cables

Katt Williams: “We Are Against the Illuminati at Our Own Detriment”

Chinese Colonel Says Latest Bird Flu Virus Is U.S. Biological Weapon

Big Pharma made $711 billion overcharging seniors and disabled

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11 Secret Documents Americans Deserve to See

Archive — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:32:14 +0000

Many documents produced by the U.S. government are confidential and not released to the public for legitimate reasons of national security. Others, however, are kept secret for more questionable reasons. The fact that presidents and other government officials have the power to deem materials classified provides them with an opportunity to use national security as an excuse to suppress documents and reports that would reveal embarrassing or illegal activities.

I’ve been collecting the stories of unreleased documents for several years. Now I have chosen 11 examples that were created—and buried—by both Democratic and Republican administrations and which cover assassinations, spying, torture, 50-year-old historical events, presidential directives with classified titles and…trade negotiations.

1. Obama Memo Allowing the Assassination of U.S. Citizens

When the administration of George W. Bush was confronted with cases of Americans fighting against their own country, it responded in a variety of ways. John Walker Lindh, captured while fighting with the Taliban in December 2001, was indicted by a federal grand jury and sentenced to 20 years in prison. José Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 and held as an “enemy combatant” until 2006 when he was transferred to civilian authority and, in August 2007, sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to support terrorism. Adam Gadahn, who has made propaganda videos for al-Qaeda, was indicted for treason in 2006 and remains at large.

After he took over the presidency, Barack Obama did away with such traditional legal niceties and decided to just kill some Americans who would previously have been accused of treason or terrorism. His victims have included three American citizens killed in Yemen in 2011 by missiles fired from drones: U.S.-born anti-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, an al-Qaeda propagandist from North Carolina, and Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

Obama justified his breach of U.S. and international law with a 50-page memorandum prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Attorney General Eric Holder argued that the killing of Awlaki was legal because he was a wartime enemy and he could not be captured, but the legal justification for this argument is impossible to confirm because the Obama administration has refused to release the memo.

2. The Obama Interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FBI, in pursuit of spies and terrorists, to order any person or entity to turn over “any tangible things” without having to justify its demands by demonstrating probable cause. For example, a library can be forced to reveal who borrowed a book or visited a web site. According to Section 215, the library is prohibited from telling anyone what it has turned over to the FBI.

The Obama administration has created a secret interpretation of Section 215 that goes beyond the direct wording of the law to include other information that can be collected. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was briefed about this secret interpretation, urged the president to make it public. “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon,” he said. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.”

Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, also a Democrat, have implied that the Obama administration has expanded the use of Section 215 to activities other than espionage and terrorism. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Wyden and Udall wrote that “there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”
3. 30-page Summary of 9/11 Commission Interview with Bush and Cheney

You would have thought that, in the interests of the nation, the Bush administration would have demanded a thorough investigation of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the deadliest assault ever on U.S. soil. Instead, they fought tooth and nail against an independent investigation. Public pressure finally forced President George W. Bush to appoint a bipartisan commission that came to be known as the 9/11 Commission. It was eventually given a budget of $15 million…compared to the $39 million spent on the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton investigation. When the commission completed its work in August 2004, the commissioners turned over all their records to the National Archives with the stipulation that the material was to be released to the public starting on January 2, 2009. However, most of the material remains classified. Among the more tantalizing still-secret documents are daily briefings given to President Bush that reportedly described increasingly worried warnings of a possible attack by operatives of Osama bin Laden.

Another secret document that the American people deserve to see is the 30-page summary of the interview of President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney conducted by all ten commissioners on April 29, 2004. Bush and Cheney refused to be interviewed unless they were together. They would not testify under oath and they refused to allow the interview to be recorded or transcribed. Instead the commission was allowed to bring with them a note taker. It is the summary based on this person’s notes that remains sealed.

4. Memos from President George W. Bush to the CIA Authorizing Waterboarding and other Torture Techniques

Four days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush signed a “memorandum of notification” (still secret) that authorized the CIA to do what it needed to fight al-Qaeda. However the memo did not address what interrogation and torture techniques could be used on captured suspects. By June 2003, Director George Tenet and others at the CIA were becoming worried that if their seemingly illegal tactics became known to the public, the White House would deny responsibility and hang the CIA out to dry. After much discussion, Bush’s executive office handed over two memos, one in 2003 and another in 2004, confirming White House approval of the CIA interrogation methods, thus giving the CIA “top cover.” It is not known if President Bush himself signed the memos.

5. 1,171 CIA Documents Related to the Assassination of President Kennedy

It’s been 49 years since President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, yet the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) insists that more than one thousand documents relating to the case should not be released to the public until NARA is legally required to do so in 2017…unless the president at that time decides to extend the ban. It would appear that some of the blocked material deals with the late CIA agent David Phillips, who is thought to have dealt with Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City six weeks before the assassination.

6. Volume 5 of the CIA’s History of the Bay of Pigs Fiasco

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, CIA historian Dr. Jack B. Pfeiffer compiled a multi-volume history of the failed US attempt to invade Cuba in April 1961. In August 2005, the National Security Archive at George Washington University, citing the Freedom of Information Act, requested access to this history. The CIA finally released the information almost six years later, in July 2011. However it refused to release Volume V, which is titled “CIA’s Internal Investigation of the Bay of Pigs Operations.” Although more than 50 years have passed since the invasion, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Volume V is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act because it “is covered by the deliberative process privilege” which “covers documents reflecting advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated.”

7. National Security Decision Directives with Classified Titles

The day before he left the White House on January 20, 1993, President George H. W. Bush issued National Security Directive (NSD) #79, a document so secret that even its title remains classified almost 20 years later. The same goes for National Security Directive #77, issued a few days earlier, as well as four others issued in 1989 (#11, 13a, 19a and 25a). If the “a”s are any indication of the subjects, it is worth noting that NSD 13 dealt with countering cocaine trafficking in Peru; NSD 19 dealt with Libya and NSD 25 with an election in Nicaragua.

President Ronald Reagan also issued six NSDs with classified titles, and President Bill Clinton issued 29. President George W. Bush issued two such NSDs, presumably shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. President Barack Obama has issued at least seven Presidential Policy Directives with classified titles.

8. Major General Douglas Stone’s 700-Page Report on Prisoners Held in Afghanistan

Marine Corps General Douglas Stone earned positive reviews for his revamping of detention operations in Iraq, where he determined that most of the prisoners held by the United States were not actually militants and could be taught trades and rehabilitated. Based on his success in Iraq, Stone was given the task of making an evaluation of detainee facilities in Afghanistan. His findings, conclusions and recommendations were included in a 700-page report that he submitted to the U.S. Central Command in August 2009. According to some accounts of the report, Stone determined that two-thirds of the Afghan prisoners were not a threat and should be released. However, three years after he completed it, Stone’s report remains classified.

9. Detainee Assessment Briefs for Abdullah Tabarak and Abdurahman Khadr

In 2011, WikiLeaks released U.S. military files known as Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), which describe the cases of 765 prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay. However, there were actually 779 prisoners. So what happened to the files for the other fourteen? Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, has noted that two of the fourteen missing stories are especially suspicious: those of Abdullah Tabarak and Abdurahman Khadr.

Tabarak, a Moroccan, was allegedly one of Osama bin Laden’s long-time bodyguards, and took over bin Laden’s satellite phone in order to draw U.S. fire to himself instead of to bin Laden when U.S. forces were chasing the al-Qaeda leader in the Tora Bora mountains in December 2001. Captured and sent to Guantánamo, Tabarak was mysteriously released, sent back to Morocco in July 2003, and set free shortly thereafter.

Abdurahman Khadr, the self-described “black sheep” of a militant family from Canada, was 20 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan and turned over to American forces. He has said that he was recruited by the CIA to become an informant at Guantánamo and then in Bosnia. When the CIA tried to send him to Iraq, he refused and returned to Canada. His younger brother, Omar, was 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan and accused of killing an American soldier, Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, during a firefight. He was incarcerated at Guantánamo for almost ten years until he was finally released to Canadian custody on September 29, 2012.

10. FBI Guidelines for Using GPS Devices to Track Suspects

On January 23, 2012, in the case of United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that attaching a GPS device to a car to track its movements constitutes a “search” and is thus covered by the Fourth Amendment protecting Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” But it did not address the question of whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies must obtain a warrant to attach a GPS device or whether it is enough for an agent to believe that such a search would turn up evidence of wrongdoing.

A month later, at a symposium at the University of San Francisco, FBI lawyer Andrew Weissman announced that the FBI was issuing two memoranda to its agents to clarify how the agency would interpret the Supreme Court decision. One memo dealt with the use of GPS devices, including whether they could be attached to boats and airplanes and used at international borders. The second addressed how the ruling applied to non-GPS techniques used by the FBI.

The ACLU, citing the Freedom of Information Act, has requested publication of the two memos because they “will shape not only the conduct of its own agents but also the policies, practices and procedures of other law enforcement agencies—and, consequently, the privacy rights of Americans.”

11. U.S. Paper on Negotiating Position on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas

The subject of international trade negotiations is one that makes most people’s eyes glaze over. So why is the Obama administration fighting so hard to keep secret a one-page document that relates to early negotiations regarding the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), an accord that was proposed 18 years ago and about which public negotiations ended in 2005? All we know is that the document “sets forth the United States’ initial proposed position on the meaning of the phrase ‘in like circumstances.’” This phrase “helps clarify when a country must treat foreign investors as favorably as local or other foreign investors.”

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Center for International Environmental Law, DC District Judge Richard W. Roberts ordered the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to release the document, but the Obama administration has refused, claiming that disclosure “reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security” because all the nations involved in the failed negotiations agreed to keep all documents secret until December 31, 2013…“unless a country were to object to the release of one of its own documents at that time.” Judge Roberts ruled that the USTR has failed to present any evidence that release of the document would damage national security.

Most likely, the Obama administration is afraid that release of the document would set a precedent that could impede another secret trade negotiation, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, which seeks to establish a free trade zone among the U.S., New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and possibly Canada, Mexico and Japan.

Did CIA and State Department Run Illegal Arms Trafficking in Benghazi?

Archive — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:29:07 +0000

New details have emerged that shed light on the chaos that embroiled the Benghazi mission on 9/11/2012 that led to the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans at the hands of the very anti-Qaddafi rebels that Stevens formally liaised with for the CIA.

It wasn’t a secret that Ambassador Christopher Stevens played a key role in Libya’s “Arab Spring.” During the course of the revolution that ultimately toppled Muammar Qaddafi, Stevens’ built a relationship with the Libyan rebels and it’s this experience that made him the frontrunner for the Libyan ambassadorship. Stevens’ history of working with Libyan radicals provided the perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to covertly move newly purchased weapons from Libya’s freedom fighters to Syrian insurgents via ships through Turkey.

In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked “Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens’ life.”

Former CIA officer Clare Lopez said, “That means Stevens was authorized by the U.S. Department of State and the Obama administration to aid and abet individuals and groups that were, at a minimum, allied ideologically with al-Qaeda, the jihadist terrorist organization that attacked the homeland on the first 9/11, the one that’s not supposed to exist anymore after the killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2011.”

Obama’s weapon buyback program in Libya

Couple this with the weapon buyback program offered by the Obama administration and there’s a recipe for catastrophe.

Shortly after the October 2011 death of Qaddafi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Tripoli that the U.S. was committing $40 million to help Libya “secure and recover its weapons stockpiles.” Department of State Assistant Secretary Andrew Shapiro confirms DOS had a weapons buy-back program in Libya that was also supported by the UK who gave $1.5 million, the Netherlands gave $1.2 million, Germany gave about $1 million and our neighbor to the north, Canada gave $1.6 million to purchase the deadly arsenal that went missing after the fall of Qaddafi.

The State Department was specifically looking to acquire the 20,000 MANPADS (they are commonly known as man-portable air shoulder-fire missiles) that went missing once Qaddafi was killed.

State Department Assistant Secretary, for Political-Military affairs, Andrew Shapiro said, they did not know how many MANPADs remained missing, but admitted it was a significant number.

“Many militia groups remain reluctant to relinquish them,” Shapiro said. He did say that the U.S. has recovered about 5,000 MANPADs earlier this year.

Repeated calls and emails went unanswered to the State Department and Shapiro regarding an update on the weapon buyback program as well as what the State Department did with the weapons they purchased.

Russia and China complained of U.S. arms trafficking in Syria

Another curious piece to this puzzle is Russia. Did they have a part to play inside Benghazi and was presidential contender, Mitt Romney right that Russia remains a threat to the U.S.? (Story by this reporter here)

The Russian response, under former KGB Cold War foe Valdimir Putin, who was visibly incensed last fall when a jubilant crowd of rebels murdered his ally, Muammar Qaddafi, has described the event as “repulsive and disgusting.”

Shortly after the death of U.S. ambassador in Libya, numerous Russian commentators used social media to describe their position on the destabilization in Libya.

“The democratized residents of Libya thanked the staff of the American Embassy for its support,” one Tweet read. “This is what you call exporting democracy, it seems. America gives Libya a revolution, and Libyans, in return, kill the ambassador.”

Aleksei K. Pushkov, the head of Russia’s parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote via Twitter: “Under Qaddafi they didn’t kill diplomats. Obama and Clinton are in shock? What did they expect – ‘Democracy?’ Even bigger surprises await them in Syria,” aNew York Times story read in September.

It is no secret that Putin disagreed with the West’s view of Syrian ruler Assad. When Putin was Prime Minister, he delivered a scathing criticism of the Libya bombing by NATO and left the impression that under his leadership it would have never happened.

It’s also worth pointing out that Russia and China have consistently opposed any military intervention in Syria. Russia and its allies have repeatedly warned the West that efforts to aid Syrian rebels would only bring more bloodshed to an already embattled region. Also, the Russians have been demanding a cessation of U.S. aid to the Syrian rebels fighting President Assad, again noting that any military aid would destabilizes the entire region, and could have serious economic consequences for Russia.

Even Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cautioned the West against arming the Syrian rebels. However, theArab Times news agency said, “Western officials say that Russia’s vetoes have abetted the Syrian violence by encouraging Assad to pursue an offensive with his Russian-supplied armed forces to crush the popular revolt. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are believed to have funded arms shipments.”

Case in point, in late August Russia said there was increasing evidence that Syrian rebels were procuring large numbers of Western-made weapons. They even suggested that America and other EU countries were spurring the violence in Syria.

So was Benghazi a message delivered by the Russians to end U.S. gun-running by executing Ambassador Stevens, the kingpin between the armed groups, the Libya stockpiles, and the shipments to Turkey?

Reports are abundant and U.S. acknowledged guns went to Al Qaeda

Despite evidence to the contrary, a State Department spokeswoman rejected the idea of arms trafficking, saying Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi for diplomatic meetings, and the opening of a new cultural center.

The State Department response rings hollow, however, since the Times of London reported that a Libyan Al Entisar ship was found carrying at least 400 tons of cargo. “Some of it was humanitarian, but also reportedly weapons, described by the report as the largest consignment of weapons headed for Syria’s rebels on the frontlines.”

Middle East expert, Walid Phares confirmed the ship was carrying “a lot of weapons.”

Also former CIA Director Porter Goss told Fox News that some of the weapons from the Libya uprising are making their way to Syria. Goss claimed that the U.S. intelligence is aware of the networking given their presence in Benghazi and throughout the region.

“I think there’s no question that there’s a lot of networking going on. And … of course we know it,” he said. Unfortunately, many of those weapons shipped through Turkey to Syria ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda.

Not so long ago, America armed the Taliban with shoulder-fire missiles to fight a proxy war against the Russians only to find those weapons being used to kill Americans during the “war on terror.” This illustrates once again that arming enemies is never a good idea.

Middle East experts contend the Muslim Brotherhood and its proxy, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) leader Abdulhakim Belhadj, were in direct contact with Stevens and provided information as to which rebel groups in Libya and Syria deserved American trust and more importantly, weapons.

Proof comes from the 2010 classified cablefrom Stevens that read in part: “Development Foundation brokered talks with imprisoned members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) that led to the release earlier this year of about 130 former LIFG members. The GOL (Government of Libya) considers the program an important means to signal willingness to reconcile with former enemies, a significant feature of Libya’s tribal culture.”

The Business Insider wrote a story focusing on the export of fighters. “If the new Libyan government was sending seasoned Islamic fighters and 400 tons of heavy weapons to Syria through a port in southern Turkey—a deal brokered by Stevens’ primary Libyan contact during the Libyan revolution—then the governments of Turkey and the U.S. surely knew about it.

Another portion of the 2010 classified cable says, “Libya also cooperates closely with Syria, particularly on foreign fighter flows. Syria has transferred over 100 Libyan foreign fighters to the GOL’s custody over the past two years, including a tranche of 27 in late 2007. Our assessment is that the flow of foreign fighters from Libya to Iraq and the reverse flow of veterans to Libya has diminished due to the GOL’s cooperation with other states and new procedures. Counter-terrorism cooperation is a key pillar of the U.S.-LIBYA bilateral relationship and a shared strategic interest.”

Crowds outside Benghazi mission were presumed buy-back customers

It’s been months since the 9/11 Benghazi attack and no official conclusions have been released. After last week’s Congressional closed-door intelligence briefing, many lawmakers emerged wondering why Ambassador Stevens was not more concerned with the growing boisterous rebel crowd outside the mission’s gates shortly before the attack that would kill him?

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Defense Intelligence Agency operative Anthony Shaffer says he knows the answer. “The Ambassador was expecting a weapon buyback deal shortly before the attack. That knowledge played a role in the slow response and created the initial confusion in Benghazi.”

U.S. rendered no aid to Stevens despite President’s “render all aid” order

While there was no shortage of second-guessing in the White House Situation Room, military leaders in charge of quick response teams a half-a-world away sprang into action upon receipt of the consulate’s 911 call and readied the troops for a real-world rescue.

“As the events were unfolding, the Pentagon began to move special operations forces from Europe to Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily. U.S. aircraft routinely fly in and out of Sigonella and there are also fighter jets based in Aviano, Italy. But while the U.S. military was at a heightened state of alert because of 9/11, there were no American forces poised and ready to move immediately into Benghazi when the attack began,” the Military Timesreported.

It’s also been reported that on the fateful day in Libya, CIA/SEALs had a laser target trained on the enemy firing mortar rounds at the compound. The Pentagon has listed numerous explanations as to why the trained SEALs would use the lasers. However, they conveniently omitted the key component—the expectation that U.S. help was seconds away. The “fog of spin” from the Obama administration, no matter how creative, cannot conceal the truth. If fighter aircraft were dispatched to assist Ambassador Chris Stevens and other consulate personnel, a former Naval pilot says, “The paper trail would be a mile long. Not only do the pilots have to file logbook reports, but the ground crew, the crew arming the jets with appropriate weapons and the Italian air controllers would have exhaustive records.”

The President told a KUSA Denver reporter that the minute he found out about the Benghazi attack he directed all available diplomatic and military resources to secure American consular personnel.

Unfortunately for the CIA/SEALs fighting off the Ansar al-Shariah terrorists, the jets would never arrive. The fact, CIA/SEALs were painting their lasers on the enemy targets shortly after midnight, five hours before their eventual deaths, indicates they were expecting air support. And why would they be waiting for air support? Because the trained SEALs knew the oplans (operations plans) and military protocol for this exact operation once they requested the assistance.

U.S. did not undertake an immediate FBI investigation as in USS Cole attack

“There is clear precedence for conducting an investigation into this type of terrorist attack – we faced similar circumstance with the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in October of 2000 in Aden, Yemen,” Shaffer described. “We had to work rapidly to put a qualified team on the ground to investigate one of the most severe acts of terror in the pre-9/11 era. Many of the perpetrators of this attack were eventually killed, captured or eliminated via Predator drone strikes… but in the case of the Benghazi attack there HAS NOT been a rapid or expansive effort made by this White House to establish a clear path forward and begin the hard work of bringing justice to those who died and those who attacked and looted the weapons from the CIA annex -weapons that include Surface to Air missiles that can be used to down civilian airliners.”

The FBI’s own press information concerning the response to the USS Cole bombing in 2000 highlights some key differences between the Benghazi incident and Yemen.

“We quickly sent to Yemen more than 100 agents from our Counterterrorism Division, the FBI Laboratory, and various field offices. Director Louis Freeh arrived soon after to assess the situation and to meet with the President of Yemen. On November 29, a guidance document was signed between the U.S. State Department and the Yemeni government setting protocols for questioning witnesses and suspects. FBI and Yemeni investigators proceeded with interviews, and a large amount of physical evidence was shipped back to the FBI Laboratory for examination.”

So what is the difference between the attack in Yemen against the USS Cole and the terror attack in Benghazi? Shaffer says, “CIA.”

“The CIA and State Department worked to keep FBI out of Benghazi because they knew as soon as the FBI showed up, an aggressive investigation would reveal the details of the CIA mistakes and wrongdoings.”

Was Ambassador Stevens still a CIA agent?

Speculation is nothing new inside the beltway, but several questions surround Ambassador Chris Stevens real/past employer. If he were working as a CIA agent he would be in violation of international diplomatic protocols by running an arms trafficking program under diplomatic cover.

Judge Napolitano offered this scenario to the Washington Times. “Now we can connect some dots. If Stevens was a CIA agent, he was in violation of international law by acting as the U.S. ambassador. And if he and his colleagues were intelligence officials, they are not typically protected by Marines, because they ought to have been able to take care of themselves.”

Further ties to the intelligence world comes from a 2010 leaked Wikileaks classified cable that highlights the topics Mr. Stevens would be discussing to assist Libyans full reintegration to the international community.

The main issues include; Internal political issues, bilateral relations, human rights, counter-terrorism cooperation, Sub-Saharan Africa, regional issues including Iraq and Iran, and energy sector and commercial opportunities.

In the classified cable Stevens describes Libya as a “strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent…Worried that fighters returning from Afghanistan and Iraq could destabilize the regime, the GOL has aggressively pursued operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry, an blunt the ideological appeal of radical Islam.”

However, since this explanation lends itself to possible criminal actions requiring jail time, and since the CIA doesn’t post a roster of their agents, American’s will undoubtedly remain in the dark.

Congressional hearings have produced no info on the Benghazi attack

Compelling evidence names the Benghazi’s mission as the headquarters for another U.S. arms trafficking business deal gone wrong. The mission is also the scene where U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, two former SEALs and one State Department Information Officer were murdered.

Keeping that statement in mind, the Benghazi disaster takes a new angle, one that could have derailed President Obama’s reelection.

Normally international gun trafficking is a punishable crime, but sadly, not only is Benghazi, Libya another U.S. sanctioned-weapons buyback program paying jihadist large sums of money to turn in their stolen arsenal, but it appears that Ambassador Stevens acted as a point man to move those newly-repurchased weapons into the hands of Syrian rebels, many of whom are affiliated with al-Qaeda.

This made for Hollywood movie script includes all the action, violence and drama required for today’s bloodthirsty audience—except it is real. The State Department provided the Benghazi mission with the diplomatic cover, or the comprehensive alibi, required for the Central Intelligence Agency to operate covertly in the jihadi-rich North African region.

If this is true, one could conclude that the attack on the Benghazi mission was a counterinsurgency operation launched by terrorists that opposed another American-installed government in the Middle East.

Conclusion

Other than closed-door hearing leaks from members of Congress, American citizens are still no closer to learning what exactly happened in Benghazi. Nor are they privy to “why” the terrorist organization that worked with the U.S., specifically Ambassador Stevens, would turn their weapons on the mission.

Perhaps Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will provide more details when she testifies before the House and Senate later this month. However most politicos agree she will provide more “fog of spin” the Obama administration is standing by.

The only new update is the arrest of a suspected terrorist this weekend in Egypt.

Most major media outlets reported that Egyptians detained Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad, a former Egyptian jihad member that was released from prison in 2011. It’s alleged that he is the leader of Jamal network that operates terror-training camps in Egypt and Libya and who wanted to set up al-Qaeda inside Egypt. But like everything connected to Benghazi, U.S. officials haven’t been cleared to interrogate convicted terrorist who may be responsible for the death of four Americans.

For more Libya stories: http://www.examiner.com/article/barack-you-re-no-ronald-reagan-and-benghazi-is-proof

http://www.washingtonguardian.com/benghazi-predictable

Homeland Security and FBI Release Document Once Again Labeling Photographers as Potential Terrorists

Archive — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:26:24 +0000

Photographers are still being classified as potential terrorists in a newly released document from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

The “Roll Call Release,” dated November 13, 2012 and titled “Suspicious Activity Reporting: Photography,” gives a vague reference to a single example where a terrorist may have used cameras to plan attacks.

“In late 2000 and early 2001, convicted al-Qaida operative Dhiren Barot took extensive video footage and numerous photographs of sites in downtown New York City and Washington DC in preparation for planned attacks.”

But then it goes on to list three other examples where people were detained for using cameras in airports, parking garages and shopping malls – which the report describes as “consistent with pre-operational activity and attack planning” – that turned out to have nothing to do with terrorist activity.

But the feds still refer to these detainments as a sign of success because they served for “awareness and training purposes” – as if they need any more training to harass innocent photographers.

And although Barot was convicted of planning attacks, authorities could not connect a video he recorded of the World Trade Center to the actual 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Barot undertook reconnaissance missions in the UK and US in 2000 and 2001, during which he filmed buildings including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington DC and the Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York.

Although there was no evidence that he had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the US, one clip, played in court, showed the World Trade Centre with someone imitating the noise of an explosion in the background.

Barot was also known to visit public libraries to plan possible attacks, so perhaps visiting your local library will soon be regarded as suspicious.

Labeling photographers as potential terrorists has been rampant since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but in 2010, after forcing a man to the ground for video recording a federal courthouse in New York City, the Department of Homeland Security agreed to a settlement, acknowledging that photographing federal buildings is not a crime.

But that still didn’t stop the feds for spreading the message that photographers should be deemed suspicious, including funding municipalities to produce propaganda videos.

Two months ago, it began encouraging citizens to photograph other citizens who take suspicious photographs in order to report them to Homeland Security.

In October, the FBI visited a Houston man at home after he had been seen taking photos near a refinery. He had only been taking pictures of a brewing storm for the National Weather Service.

In 2008, security expert Bruce Schneier wrote his famous “War on Photography” article, in which he stated the following:

Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography.

Thanks to Massachusetts Private Eye for the heads up on this story, who found it on an interesting site called Public Intelligence that collects these types of documents, including one from February 2011 where a man was detained in Seattle for “suspicious iPhone photography.”

April 8, 2013 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: IRS Spying, Sirius Mini-Alien, N. Korea Transmits, Joe Biden NWO, Sovereign Citizens, Berkeley Brainwaves

MaxMaverick — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:00:17 +0000

IRS to monitor Facebook, Twitter for tax cheats

‘Sirius,’ Steven Greer’s Film, Claims To Unveil Tiny ‘Alien’ Humanoid

Secret Transmission Detected From North Korea, There’s MORE!

MSNBC Host: Your Kids Belong to the Collective

Joe Biden Calls for a “New World Order”

Police teach tactics for handling ‘sovereign citizens’

A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood

Berkeley researchers authenticate your identity with just your brainwaves

How We Create Reality

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April 5, 2013 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: DEA Liars, Protecting from Pesticides, Interspecies Telepathy, Meditation Compassion, Defining WMDs, Gun Control Facts, New Leaks Org

MaxMaverick — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 22:00:08 +0000

Ways to Protect Children From Pesticides

DEA Accused Of Leaking Misleading Info Falsely Implying That It Can’t Read Apple iMessages

Inter-species Telepathy: Human Thoughts Make Rat Move

Proof: Meditation Makes You More Compassionate

Federal Government Redefines Rocket-Propelled Grenade as “Weapon of Mass Destruction”

Gun Control Info Graphic Explained

Bigger than Wikileaks – the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – Offshore Expose’

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