December 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: CIA in NYC
by mattd 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

BACKGROUND.LONGISH.The Best Enemies Money Can Buy by Michael C. Ruppert 3:25am Wed Dec 19 '01 From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden Insider Connections and the Bush Familys Partnership with Killers of Americans The article is very well researched and highly recommended, although a little too long in my opinion. I've read the book referred to in the article below, George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, and recommend it for anybody who wants to know the truth about George Bush senior. Please read my published article about the cancer indu$try "The Cancer Racket" Thank you and merry Christmas. Gavin Phillips. The Best Enemies Money Can Buy From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden Insider Connections and the Bush Familys Partnership with Killers of Americans Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group By Michael C. Ruppert Click Here [) Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.] FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing Americas attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush familys proffr-making role in creating and arming our enemies. The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people. In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover and I am not the first to say this if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home. --- Adolph Hitler Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the 1992 book entitled, George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history is essential to understanding our era.] George W. Bushs grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitlers rise to power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally regarded as having been Hitlers private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank Corporation. Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitlers storm troopers in the 1920s. According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman International Company was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States. Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an interlocking concern with the German Steel Trust that had produced: - 50.8% of Nazi Germanys pig iron - 41.4% of Nazi Germanys universal plate - 36% of Nazi Germanys heavy plate - 38.5% of Nazi Germanys galvanized sheet - 45.5% of Nazi Germanys pipes and tubes - 22.1% of Nazi Germanys wire - 35% of Nazi Germanys explosives The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942. In 1942, Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.s stock shares all of which shares are held for the benefit of members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals of a designated enemy country. On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942 These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower. Saddam Hussein After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bushs son, George Herbert Walker Bush father of our current President authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991. A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen. ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop It is becoming increasingly clear, said a grave Ted Koppel, that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddams Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage? Baker poignantly asks. The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddams arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history. Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we dont appear to be getting any better at telling them Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. Weve learned that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait. And weve learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italys largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq. In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator. While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period, stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bushs obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in what passed for a drive-by shooting. The CJR continues: Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq, Waas wrote, is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq. Bakers CJR report also noted, On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official Christopher] Drogouls assertion that the director general of Iraqs Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him, We are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government. Three weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales produced a phone-book-sized packet of documents showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms The documents mentioned one which designed parts for Iraqs howitzers and was financed through BNL In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas writes, Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs. The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nations 11th largest defense contractor, and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party operative. On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bushs inauguration, the conservative Washington lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said: (Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea. The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors. "This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel. "Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Judicial Watch noted that even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started to destabilize that country. Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm. The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration. The Nation, on March 27, 2000 in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar wrote, In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah This story confirms at least one meeting between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story. The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elders) Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after that meeting. James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci. The WSJ story went on to note, A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden family committed $2 million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3 billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said. But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the familys overall investment with Carlyle is considerably larger In other words, Osama bin Ladens attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his family a great big pile of money. More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also notes that, During the past several years, the [bin Laden] familys close ties to the Saudi royal family prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. We would call on them to get their view of the country and what would be of interest to investors. President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1989. Our current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect dealings with Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy was funded with $50,000 from Texas investment banker James R. Bath who was also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden family. In his watershed 1992 book, The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush, award winning Texas investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Baths background, revealing connections with the CIA and major fraudulent activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took $500 billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of George W. Bush, Bath was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi, whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Ladens older brother, Salem. Another key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration after a series of scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines placed him at the brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling. The Armitage scandals all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and war materiel to potential or actual enemies of the U.S. and to the Contras in Central America. Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing during covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush familys side. Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story, called Armitage, my white son. In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to aid in its transition to capitalism. Armitages Russian work for Bush has been frequently connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 April 24, 1999] Armitage and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think tank, the Middle East Policy Council. The connections continue with Vice President Dick Cheney. Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline construction running through the new war zone is one project according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall Street Journal story a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction firm H.C. Price. A researcher named Phoenix, writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills News Agency located at www.rumormillnews.com, reported that Price subsequently changed its name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in 1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this. Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm, directing the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburtons CEO until last years election. And, according to a 2000 story from Harpers Magazine, in 1990 our current President, through a position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned by the Carlyle Group at a time when the bin Ladens were invested in Carlyle had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition, on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to place $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. As to how much of that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we do know that there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who kill Americans. Now, as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being unleashed upon them, as a few brave souls are asking whos going to get all the money the Bush Administration is borrowing from government coffers and whos going to pay for it - the above history is more than ominous. Considering that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime in Nicaragua that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same people oversaw an explosion in U.S. cocaine consumption that went from 80 metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 - considering that the CIA trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama considering that these same people have brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively contaminated by depleted uranium for the next 4 billion years and causing a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst a starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the world now given the context of the World Trade Center attacks. www.copvcia.com/stories/oct_2001/carlyle...

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Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by Meyer Wolfsheim 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, David Honig wrote: > Can't spam be repelled by not forwarding email not encrypted to > the remailer's key? Who is to say that spammers won't use remailer clients that automatically encrypt to the remailers' keys? Using remailer clients should be *easy*. Saying "this is too hard for the average spammer to figure out" isn't acceptable. -MW-

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George Mason's groaning in his grave
by mattd 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues00/may00/mason.html in September 1787 as the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered at the State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia to sign the new Constitution. Only three present refused to add their names. One of them was the Virginian George Mason. Because the Constitution created a federal government he felt might be too powerful, and because it did not end the slave trade and did not contain a bill of rights, he withheld his support from the document he had played so large a role in crafting. In 1776, Mason, then 51, had been appointed to a committee charged with drafting a "Declaration of Rights" for Virginia. From the writings of English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), Mason had come to a then-radical insight: that a republic had to begin with the formal, legally binding commitment that individuals had inalienable rights that were superior to any government. One other committee member did play a significant role: Mason's young friend James Madison, who kept his (and Mason's) friend Thomas Jefferson apprised of Mason's progress in drafting the declaration. Mason's work began, "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights...namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Jefferson's U.S. Declaration of Independence included the immortal words of what may be the most famous political statement in history: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." In 1787, toward the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Mason proposed that a bill of rights preface the Constitution, but his proposal was defeated. When he refused to sign the new Constitution, his decision baffled some and alienated others, including his old friend, George Washington. Mason's stand nonetheless had its effect. At the first session of the first Congress, Madison introduced a Bill of Rights that paralleled Mason's Declaration of Rights of 1776. Abstract of an article by Stephan A. Schwartz, originally published in the May 2000 issue of Smithsonian. All rights reserved. Please read."To few realise the vast debt we owe george mason." harry s truman.

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Oregon Link to 9-11?
by John Young 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

Fox News reports that a senator from Oregon says there is a link of the state to 9-11. No other details provided by the senator. Anybody know more about this or have a link? Wonder if this has anything to do with ISTAC.gov the CIA station allegedly in Bend, OR. ISTAC has been visiting Cryptome over the past few days, which is either a new friend who saw my grand jury testimony about the station, read the trial transcript, has been perusing i-net archives, is a front for Safeweb or Privsec, or a federal sniffer spoofing ISTAC and setting poisoned bait. ISTAC, a national department of the CIA, according to anonymous, does interception work, and has at least two stations, one eastern US and the one in Bend, OR. Scott Mueller, according to his sworn testimony, has nothing to do with his namesake cut-out. Listen, this may be a vicious rumor, but I was told yesterday there is a site on the Net, or a newsgroup message, which claims that Cryptome is the most reviled Web site among intel agencies. Has anybody seen this hard sought highest of praise? Need that for a long-sought motto, ad banner, tatoo, singalong, Xmas card to an in-law.

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RE: CIA in NYC
by Gil Hamilton 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

Peter Trei writes: > > Young[SMTP:jya@pipeline.com] > > Now whether bin Laden, or whoever planned the attack, > > knew of this, or suspected it, could enrich the speculation > > about why the towers were targeted. >Remember to apply Occam's razor occasionally. The WTC >towers were one of the best known landmarks around the world, were filled >with people, stood well clear of the surrounding buildings, and symbolized >the globalization/ >Americanization of the world UBL hates. > >The WTC towers were (from UBLs presumed viewpoint) >about the best US targets he could have picked, simply from >a PR, ideology, and practicality standpoint. The presence of a CIA office >in a neighbouring building was not required to make the WTC towers target >#1. Brings to mind something my 10-year old pointed out to me soon after 9/11. He likes to play computer war games in the Command and Conquer / Red Alert series. Apparently, when you're playing the bad guys in one of the games and attacking the US, one of your first assignments is to wipe out the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Wonder if UBL is getting royalties from the game manufacturer? - GH _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.

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Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by Faustine 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 From: "Faustine" <faustine(a)lokmail.net> Marcel wrote: >Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them did have nightmares about the > Constitution. Not as a piece of paper dancing around on Mickey Mouse legs or > whatever the hell you're getting at, but as an idea repersenting the rule > of law that was going to lead to them being jailed for murder. Which > unfortunately never happened, but so it goes. >>Thanks for proving my point. (For the intellectually impaired: the >>Constitution never DOES anything. Your magical belief in its virtues is >>equivalent to pagan's beliefs in idols: they accomplish nothing. A law must >>be backed by force - and it's the FORCE that does this or that, not the >>law.) Of course. I'm not disagreeing with you here at all-- and in fact, I made a similar point in a discussion here a week or so ago. The rule of law is worthless without a mechanism to back it up; what could be more obvious? But without it the weak, stupid, moral and isolated are entirely at the mercy of the strong, clever, ruthless and organized. Without the Constitution, the government would be nothing more (and no better than) an incredibly powerful gang. You think there's abuse of power now, what do you suppose would happen with no law to stand in their way of stamping out whoever they damn well pleased? If there were no law and you opposed such a monstrous supergang, do you really expect you would come out ahead? Or even stay alive? How? Serious questions. >>I'm not objecting to the language; English is fine. I'm objecting to >>delusions. Laws don't ACT, no matter what language you're using. I never said they did: through the mechanism of the judicial system (backed up by the aptly named "law enforcement") they serve as a check on people acting to destroy society. The Founders had it right all along, you can't blame them for the complete hash subsequent administrations made of the American system. >You should rely more on your guns and less on your papers. Isn't that precisely what all corrupt, evil and tyrranical police and statist government officials everywhere say? I'm sure Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and every two-bit petty dictator since the beginning of time would agree with you. ~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - -Thomas Paine -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPB+vo/g5Tuca7bfvEQLSFACcCuN0NM2UEWtPkgou4xXppoAXyisAn33d CLiHC5fnhluRssyTeCE9XGzr =ISWp -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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CIA in NYC
by John Young 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

The report a while back in the NY Times on the secret CIA station located in 7 World Trade Center, claimed its primary role was to surveil UN members and staff. And its cover was the Secret Service office in the building (which also housed NYC's Emergency Operations). Couple of things on that. The building, which was only a few years old, is reported to have collapsed due to high heat of oil storage tanks, a small tank on the upper floor to serve NYC Emergency Operations, and an unsually large tank in the basement. The building owner, Larry Silverstein, who leased the WTC towers, says the basement tank was for emergency power. Period. However, while many buildings have emergency power systems, few have the size of tanks in 7 WTC. Which may indicate that the building housed a variety of operations needing uninterruptable power, and which, in turn, could explain why NYC put its emergency operations center there despite public ridicule for putting it on a high floor, of a glass walled building, next to a likely terrorist target. Moreover, it is unlikely that the purpose of the CIA station was only that made public to the Times. More likely is that the public story is a cover for what the station did. One possibility is that it engaged in communication interceptions, if not transmissions to agents as well, and could have made use of the antennas atop WTC 1, or antennas cloaked by the public antennas. Now whether bin Laden, or whoever planned the attack, knew of this, or suspected it, could enrich the speculation about why the towers were targeted. Certainly it would take no comsec genius to perform analysis of what was coming and going atop the towers, or that may have been going on under cover of the tower's emissions. All the public emissions could have been discounted and the remainder subject to detailed scrutiny. Perhaps the ordinary mujahadeen couldn't do that kind of analysis but certainly a slew of other nations could. As well as private comsec companies, of which there are dozens in NYC peddling their services to US and foreign clients. So, if the CIA was surveilling these private security companies, along with the comms of the UN members, it may well be that countersurveillance picked up the snoops and the information was peddled to assassins or used to justify engaging hit squads to take out the transgressors. Finally, oil storage tanks are required by building and fire codes to have especially durable fire-proofed enclosures, the design based on the size of the tank and any expected worse case scenario. At least this is the case when a facility is subject to municipal regulations. Which we know the WTC was not. Whether the Center's unusual vulnerability attacted the attack is a fair question. But don't expect any findings to be made public is this is the case, for that might require delving into which operations in the Center invited retaliation by those who had been attacked by them.

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RE: CIA in NYC
by Trei, Peter 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

> Young[SMTP:jya@pipeline.com] > > > The report a while back in the NY Times on the secret > CIA station located in 7 World Trade Center, claimed > its primary role was to surveil UN members and staff. > And its cover was the Secret Service office in the > building (which also housed NYC's Emergency > Operations). [...] > Now whether bin Laden, or whoever planned the attack, > knew of this, or suspected it, could enrich the speculation > about why the towers were targeted. > [...] > But don't expect any findings to be made public is this > is the case, for that might require delving into which > operations in the Center invited retaliation by those > who had been attacked by them. > John: Remember to apply Occam's razor occasionally. The WTC towers were one of the best known landmarks around the world, were filled with people, stood well clear of the surrounding buildings, and symbolized the globalization/ Americanization of the world UBL hates. The WTC towers were (from UBLs presumed viewpoint) about the best US targets he could have picked, simply from a PR, ideology, and practicality standpoint. The presence of a CIA office in a neighbouring building was not required to make the WTC towers target #1. I used to work at 101 Barclay Street, across the street from WTC #7. I watched it going up from my office window. I hated the building - it blocked my view south. 101 Barclay seems to have survived with little damage, possibly because WTC7 shielded it from the falling debris of #1 & #2, and later #7 fell almost staight down. Peter Trei ============================================================================ ================ This e-mail, its content and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the addressee(s) and are PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL. Access by any other party is unauthorized without the express prior written permission of the sender. If you have received this e-mail in error you may not copy, disclose to any third party or use the contents, attachments or information in any way, Please delete all copies of the e-mail and the attachment(s), if any and notify the sender. Thank You. ============================================================================ ================

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Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by David Honig 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

At 06:56 PM 12/17/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Trei, Peter wrote: > >> Yes, I have read the letter - they need to treat input from known remailers >> differently due to worries over spam and flooding attacks, so they treat >> other known remailers as priviliged sources of high volume traffic. Can't spam be repelled by not forwarding email not encrypted to the remailer's key? >> This does not invalidate my point - that such special treatment could lead >> a remop into legal problems. We have two different problems, with mutually >> undesirable solutions. > >If the sending node doesn't know about the destination node, how does it >konw where to send the traffic (even if the sender provides the address)? >The reality is that the remailers must 'know' of each other one way or >another. Simply being part of a 'remailer network' (anonymous or not) >tends to already put one in a 'conspiratorial' situation. Isn't it sufficient for a remailer node to publicly broadcast its existance (and the protocols it handles)? This seems to work and there is no cooperation required --just a one-way broadcast. Mere advertising is not evidence of a conspiracy.

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Chuck Schumer wants to invade privacy of gun buyers, open NICS database
by Declan McCullagh 18 Dec '01

18 Dec '01

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> -----

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