Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#21

By Bob Fitrakis FreePress.org January 14, 2002
Mainstream news accounts have finally fingered Battelle Memorial Institute, the spooky Dr. Strangelove Institute in Columbus, as ground zero in our domestic military-industrial anthrax scare. With five people dead and eighteen ill, Battelle's role in directing the Defense Departmentís ìjoint vaccine acquisition programî is now coming under heavy scrutiny.
Battelle, in partnership with Michigan-based Bioport, has a virtual monopoly on military anthrax vaccine production in the U.S.. British and U.S. news accounts describe Bioportís owner as a top secret British biowarfare consortium, Porton Down. Perhaps not ironically, the Chairman and CEO of the Porton Down company is Fuad El-Habri, a bin Laden family associate. Laura Rozenís interesting article for the website Salon is must reading on the subject.
Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., a former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, is one of the four-person Board of Directors of Bioport and holds a 13% interest in the company. Some investigators link the multinational investment firm and defense contractor, the Carlyle Management Group -- that was involved in managing the bin Laden family fortune prior to Sept. 11 to Bioport. Former CIA Director Frank Carlucci, -(Rumsfeld's College buddy and wrestling partner - Pat) - Bush the Elder's Chief of Staff James Baker III and the former President himself are all associated with the Carlyle Group.
As I reported in the Columbus Alive immediately after the anthrax scare began, Battelle is involved in developing a new and stronger strain of anthrax at its West Jefferson, Ohio labs. Don't be deceived by the fake farmland facades of the W. Jefferson complex. It's the center of a top secret defense project going under the name 'Project Jefferson,' according to the New York Times. The actual lab is BL-3 Anthrax Lab. The Times also confirmed that the CIA is also involved with its own top secret anthrax project called code name 'Clear Vision.'
As I noted in the Alive, the former No. 2 man in the Soviet biochemical warfare operation, Kanatjan Alibekov (now going by the alias Ken Alibek) is a classified consultant with both the CIA and Battelle. A 1998 New Yorker article pointed out the work between William C. Patrick III and Alibeck on the anthrax project.
Battelle emerged during WWII as a top secret facility because of its work on the Manhattan Project. Battelle was responsible for innovations in uranium ore that was actually milled in Columbus. Battelle and Bioport stood to get massively rich off an anthrax scare and, more than any other organization, Battelle controlled access to the Ames strain of anthrax used in the top secret military tests.
The Baltimore Sun reported that the Ames strain was also being produced at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, but more importantly, Battelle directs that program as well. The FBI investigation has led them in the direction of Patrick and Alibeck. But whether they have the will, or the authority, to investigate spook central headquarters in Columbus is another question. The New York Times on Nov. 9 already reported that the FBI made an error in the ìanthrax probeî by allowing the 'destruction of university' samples that 'may have caused clues to be lost.'
Alibek, who arrived in the U.S. in 1992, needs to be looked at very closely since news reports suggest that he had possible financial stakes in a biochemical scare. On Oct. 29, the Washington Post reported that Alibek ìhas hooked up with an Alexandria, VA company, and, supported by federal grants, opened a laboratory of 35 people. The article notes that he's 'learning to be a capitalist.'
"Hadron Advanced Biosystems Inc., Alibek's company, sports an unusual provenance for a biotechnical venture. No other company, doing any kind of work, can claim to be headed by a former No. 2 man in a vast program aimed at turning anthrax, plague, smallpox, tularemia and many other germs into weapons of war," noted the Post.
The Post explains that 'Alibek's venture is a subsidiary of Hadron Inc.... a publicly-traded 37-year-old government contractor specializing in defense and espionage work.' Rozen in Salon, pointed out that Porton Down made a 'fortune' during the Gulf War selling anthrax vaccine.
The FBI's investigation should focus on who stood to gain financially from the acknowledged domestic military-industrial anthrax terrorism.
The convergence of the Strangelovian Battelle with Bioport, the Porton Down and the role of prominent individuals like Alibek, Crowe, El-Habri and the Carlyle Group suggests that much of this is likely to be covered up. Ironically, this summer, President George W. Bush renounced long-standing calls by the Russians for mutual inspections of biochemical weapons sites like Battelle. Bush claimed that mutual inspection of U.S. biochemical technology sites by foreign scientists could risk revealing commercial trade secrets - secrets that would be worth 'a fortune' if a few people controlled the commercial rights to them during an anthrax scare.

US Military Wants Offensive BioWeapons Development
(Rensewellbeforeuse)

CIA & DOJ Thwarting 911 Inquiry Say Senate & House Members
May 4, 2002
(LAtimes)
WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers leading the investigation of intelligence agencies' failures surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are increasingly concerned that tactics by the CIA and the Justice Department are actively impeding their efforts, congressional sources said Friday.
Members of the Senate and House intelligence committees are so frustrated with the tactics, sources said, that they intend to complain directly to CIA Director George J. Tenet and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to discuss the committee's concerns with the CIA and the FBI in detail but said: "There are problems we are going to have to address." The flare-up centers on obstacles congressional investigators say the agencies have strewn in their path. The CIA, for example, has refused to allow investigators to send their contact information to agency employees by e-mail to make it easier for the employees to volunteer information, congressional sources familiar with the investigation said.
At the Justice Department, the intelligence committees' requests for records take weeks to wind their way through the department's bureaucracy and sometimes are simply not acted upon, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
The perceived heel-dragging has bogged down an inquiry that already was sidetracked last week by the resignation of its lead investigator. Congressional investigators are under pressure to complete their work before ranking Intelligence Committee members' terms expire at the end of the year.
"There's no time to waste," one source said, adding that the targets of the inquiry seem intent on exploiting that deadline. Although the agencies have cooperated somewhat, he said, their recent tactics are a significant impediment.
CIA officials flatly rejected the suggestion that they are less than cooperative. "The CIA has provided extraordinary support to the investigation staff," CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said. "We have provided thousands of pages of documents, facilitated numerous interviews, housed members of their staff in our headquarters and provided briefings on counterterrorism, all while fighting a war.
"We have had 15 members of the agency staff working full time since before there was a congressional investigation collecting material to aid their efforts."
Justice Department officials also brushed aside investigators' complaints. "The attorney general has worked cooperatively with Congress on all matters related to Sept. 11 and will continue to do so," said Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs.
Members of the intelligence committees discussed the perceived lack of cooperation in meetings this week. Describing the mood among members, one aide said, "You have to use the word 'angst.'"
By Friday, the ranking members of the committees had agreed to take the issue directly to the heads of the CIA and the Justice Department. Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Shelby, and Reps. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) were going to request meetings.
A CIA official, who asked not to be identified, said he was unaware of any planned meetings: "I can tell you that none of the leadership of these committees have called Director Tenet to advise him of any unhappiness."
The friction underscores the stakes of an investigation that could yield embarrassing details about what the nation's $30-billion intelligence community knew or didn't know leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The congressional probe was launched in February. It aims to determine whether the terrorist attacks could have been prevented, and to consider ways to improve the nation's intelligence capabilities.
Sources close to the investigation said they recently obtained documents indicating that an FBI agent in Arizona had warned headquarters concerning his suspicions about Arabs training at area aviation schools months before the attacks.
Small teams of investigators have been based at the Justice Department and the CIA, gathering documents and conducting interviews. They have come back with a litany of complaints about tactics they say are designed to slow their progress and restrict their access to documents and potential informants, sources said.
All interviews with agency employees are supervised by CIA officials who have prevented investigators even from collecting business cards or phone numbers from interview subjects, sources said.
The CIA official said employees have been urged to cooperate with the probe and that a notice listing investigators' contact information is scheduled to be distributed next week.
Investigators also complain that they have been stationed in a location at the agency where employees cannot get to their offices without passing by, and probably attracting the notice of, the CIA's congressional affairs staff.
"In a sense, they've put a wall up so no one can get to the investigators," a congressional source said.
The CIA official acknowledged that investigators were placed near the agency's congressional affairs office but said that was to assist the investigators.
Investigators also say their requests for certain documents have been rebuffed, often by agency employees who explain that they first need clearance from all other spy agencies that contributed material to the documents.
And when investigators do get to view documents, sources said, it has been only under the supervision of CIA staffers.
Former CIA officials say that they would be surprised if the agency were intentionally hindering the investigation and that much of the tension might be because of legitimate security concerns.
"In my experience, I have been absolutely astonished at the amount of detail the intelligence community and the CIA in particular give the Congress," said Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel for the CIA.
He said the only exceptions tend to be when there is a need to protect sensitive information.
As for the intelligence agency refusing to circulate investigators' contact information, Smith said, partly in jest: "Frankly, anybody at CIA who wants to leak to the committee who can't figure out how to do it" probably shouldn't be working there.

Did 22 British "Star Wars" Researchers really ALL Commit Suicide?
Fifty-year-old Alistair Beckham was a successful British aerospace- projects engineer. His specialty was designing computer software for sophisticated naval defense systems. Like hundreds of other British scientists, he was working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as Star Wars. And like at least 21 of his colleagues, he died a bizarre, violent death.
It was a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon in August 1988. After driving his wife to work, Beckham walked through his garden to a musty backyard toolshed and sat down on a box next to the door. He wrapped bare wires around his chest, attached the to an electrical outlet and put a handkerchief in his mouth. Then he pulled the switch.
With his death, Beckham's name was added to a growing list of British scientists who've died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances since 1982. Each was a skilled expert in computers, and each was working on a highly classified project for the American Star Wars program. None had any apparent motive for killing himself.
The British government contends that the deaths are all a matter of coincidence. The British press blames stress. Others allude to an ongoing fraud investigation involving the nation's leading defense contractor. Relatives left behind don't know what to think.
"There weren't any women involved. There weren't any men involved. We had a very good relationship," says Mary Beckham, Alistair's widow. "We don't know why he did it...if he did it. And I don't believe that he did do it. He wouldn't go out to the shed. There had to be something...."
The string of unexplained deaths can be traced back to March 1982, when Essex University computer scientist Dr. Keith Bowden died in a car wreck on his ay home from a London social function. Authorities claim Bowden was drunk. His wife and friends say otherwise.
Bowden, 45, was a whiz with super-computers and computer- controlled aircraft. He was cofounder of the Department of Computer Sciences at Essex and had worked for one of the major Star Wars contractors in England.
One night Bowden's immaculately maintained Rover careened across a four-lane highway and plunged off a bridge, down an embankment, into an abandoned rail yard. Bowden was found dead at the scene.
During the inquest, police testified that Bowden's blood alcohol level had exceeded the legal limit and that he had been driving too fast. His death was ruled accidental.
Wife Hillary Bowden and her lawyer suspected a cover-up. Friends he'd supposedly spent the evening with denied that Bowden had been drinking. Then there was the condition of Bowden's car.
"My solicitor instructed an accident specialist to examine the automobile," Mrs. Bowden explains. "Somebody had taken the wheels off and put others on that were old and worn. At the inquest this was not allowed to be brought up. Someone asked if the car was in a sound condition, and the answer was yes."
Hillary, in a state of shock, never protested the published verdict. Yet, she remains convinced that someone tampered with her husband's car. "It certainly looked like foul play," Hillary maintains.
Four years later the British press finally added Bowden's case to its growing dossier. First, there appeared to be two interconnected deaths, then six, then 12--suddenly there were 22.
Take 37-year-old David Sands, a senior scientist at Easams working on a highly sensitive computer-controlled satellite- radar system. In March 1987 Sands made a U-turn on his way to work and rammed his car into the brick wall of a vacant restaurant. His trunk was loaded with full gasoline cans. The car exploded on impact.
Given the incongruities of the accident and the lack of a suicide motive, the coroner refused to rule out the possibility of foul play. Meanwhile, information leaked to the press suggested that Sands had been under a tremendous emotional strain.
Margaret Worth, Sand's mother-in-law, claims these stories are totally inaccurate. "When David died, it was a great mystery to us," she admits. "He was very successful. He was very confident. He had just pulled off a great coup for his company, and he was about to be greatly rewarded. He had a very bright future ahead of him. He was perfectly happy the week before this happened."
Like many of the bereaved, Worth is still at a loss for answers. "One week we think he must have been got at. The next week we think it couldn't be anything like that," she says.
This wave of suspicious fatalities in the ultrasecret world of sophisticated weaponry has not gone unnoticed by the United States government. Late last fall, the American embassy in London publicly requested a full investigation by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD).
Members of British Parliament, such a Labour MP Doug Hoyle, copresident of the Manufacturing, Science & Finance Union, had been making similar requests for more than two years. The Thatcher government had refused to launch any sort of inquiry.
"How many more deaths before we get the government to give the answers?" Hoyle asks. "From a security point of view, surely both ourselves and the Americans ought to be looking into it."
The Pentagon refuses comment on the deaths. However, according to Reagan Administration sources, "We cannot ignore it anymore."
Actually, British and American intelligence agencies are on the situation. When THE SUNDAY TIMES in London published the details of 12 mysterious deaths last September, sources at the American embassy admitted being aware of at least ten additional victims whose names had already been sent to Washington. The sources added that the embassy had been monitoring reports of "the mysterious deaths" for two years.
English intelligence has suffered several damaging spy scandals in the 20 century. The CIA may suspect the deaths are an indication of security leaks, that Star Wars secrets are being sold to the Russians. Perhaps these scientists had been blackmailed into supplying classified data to Moscow and could no longer live with themselves. One or more may have stumbled onto an espionage ring and been silenced.
As NBC News London correspondent Henry Champ puts it, "In the world of espionage, there is a saying: Twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action."
Where SDI is concerned, a tremendous amount is at stake. In return for the Thatcher government's early support of the Star Wars program, the Reagan Administration promised a number of extremely lucrative SDI contracts to the British defense industry--hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars the struggling British economy can little afford to lose.
Britain traditionally has one of the finest defense industries in the world. Their annual overseas weapons sales amount to almost $250 billion. The publicity from a Star Wars spy scandal could seriously cut into the profits.
It would appear that only initial promises made to Prime Minister Thatcher hold the U.S. from cutting its losses and pulling out. A high-ranking American source was quoted in the SUNDAY TIMES saying, "If this had happened in Greece, Brazil, Spain, or Argentina, we'd be all over them like a glove!"
The Thatcher government's PR problem is that the scandal centers around Marconi Company Ltd., Britain's largest electronics-defense contractor. Seven Marconi scientists are among the dead.
Marconi, which employs 50,000 workers worldwide, is a subsidiary of Britain's General Electric Company (GEC). GEC managing director Lord Wienstock recently launched his own internal investigation.
Yet, the GEC and the Ministry of Defense still contend that the 22 deaths are coincidental. A Ministry of Defense spokesman claims to have found "no evidence of any sinister links between them."
However, an article in the British publication THE INDEPENDENT claims the incidence of suicide among Marconi scientists is twice the national average of mentally healthy individuals. Either Marconi is hiring abnormally unstable scientists or something is very wrong.
Two deaths brought the issue to light in the fall of 1986. Within weeks of each other, two London-based Marconi scientists were found dead 100 miles away, in Bristol. Both were involved in creating the software for a huge, computerized Star Wars simulator, the hub of Marconi's SDI program. Both had been working on the simulator just hours before their death. Like the others, neither had any apparent reason to kill himself.
Vimal Dajibhai was a 24-year-old electronics graduate who worked at Marconi Underwater Systems in Croxley Green. In August 1986 his crumpled body was found lying on the pavement 240 feet below the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.
An inquest was unable to determine whether Dajibhai had been pushed off the bridge or whether he had jumped. There had been no witnesses. The verdict was left open. Yet, authorities did their best to pin his death on suicide.
Police testified that Dajibhai had been suffering from depression, something his family and friends flatly denied. Dajibhai had absolutely no history of personal or emotional problems.
Police also claimed that the deceased had been drinking with a friend, Heyat Shah, shortly before his death, and that a bottle of wine and two used paper cups had been found in his car. Yet, forensic tests were never done on the auto, and those who knew Vimal, including Shah, say that he had never taken a drink of alcohol in his life.
Investigating journalists found discrepancies in other evidence. "A police report noted a puncture mark on Dijabhai's left buttock after his fall from the bridge," explains Tony Collins, who covered the story for Britain's COMPUTER NEWS magazine. "Apparently, this was the reason his funeral was halted seconds before the cremation was to take place.
"Members of the Family were told that the body was to be taken away for a second postmortem, to be done by a top home- office pathologist. That's not normal. Then, a few months later, police held a press conference and announced that it hadn't been a puncture mark after all, that it was a wound caused by a bone fragment.
"I find it very difficult to reconcile the initial coroner's report with what the police were saying a few months later," Collins contends.
Officials didn't fare any better with the second Bristol fatality. Police virtually tripped over themselves to come up with a motive for the apparent--and unusually violent--suicide of Ashaad Sharif.
Sharif was a 26-year-old computer analyst who worked at the Marconi Defense Systems headquarters in Stanmore, Middlesex. On October 28, 1986, he allegedly drove to a public park not far from where Dajibhai had died. He tied one end of a nylon cord around a tree and tied the other end around his neck. Then he got back into his Audi 80 automatic, stepped on the gas and sped off, decapitating himself.
Marconi initially claimed Sharif was only a junior employee, and that he had nothing to do with Star Wars. Co-workers stated otherwise. At the time of his death, Sharif was apparently about to be promoted. Also, Ashaad reportedly worked for a time in Vimal Dajibhai's section.
The inquest determined that Sharif's death was a suicide. Investigating officers maintained that the man had killed himself because he'd been jilted by an alleged lover. Ashaad hadn't seen the woman in three years.
"Sharif was said to have been depressed over a broken romance," Tony Collins explains. "But the woman police unofficially say was his lover contends that she was only his landlady when he was working for British Aerospace in Bristol. She's married, has three children, and she's deeply religious. The possibility of the two having an affair seems highly unlikely--especially since Sharif had a fiancee in Pakistan. His family told me that he was genuinely in love with her."
Police suddenly switched stories. They began to say that Sharif had been deeply in love with the woman he was engaged to, and that he'd decapitated himself because another woman was pressuring him to call off the marriage.
Authorities claimed to have found a taped message in Sharif's car "tantamount" to a suicide note. On it, officers said, he'd admitted to having had an affair, thus bringing shame on his family. Family members who've heard the tape say that it actually gave no indication of why Sharif might want to kill himself.
Sharif's family was told by the coroner that it was "not in their best interest" to attend the inquest.
"It's been almost impossible to get to information about deaths that should be in the public domain," Tony Collins laments. "I've been given false names or incorrect spellings, or I've not been told where inquests have taken place. It's made it very difficult for me to try to track down the details of these cases."
In the Sharif case, two facts stand out: Ashaad had no history of depression, and there was absolutely no reason for him to be in Bristol.
A widely help theory among the establishment press is that the mysterious deaths are stress-related accidents or suicides. Such theories may not be far off the mark.
According to a high-ranking British government official, for the past year and a half the Ministry of Defense has been secretly investigating Marconi on allegations of defense- contract fraud--overcharging the government, bribing officials. The extensive probe has required most of the MoD's investiga- tive resources, conceivably reaching as far as Marconi's sub- contractors and into MoD research facilities such as the Royal Military College of Science and the Royal Air Force Research Center.
Almost all of the dead scientists were associated with one or more of these establishments.
If Marconi employees were being forced by management to perform or to cover up illegal activities, it may be that the stress did indeed get to them.
"In America, there are considerable incentives for people to blow the whistle if they're being asked to perform illegal acts like ripping off the government," a confidential source in Parliament explains. "However, in this country there have been perhaps 20 people who've blown the whistle, and none of them have ever worked again. They didn't receive any compensation. Here, you don't get any recognition. You get threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. They can fire you. Then they can take away your home and get you blacklisted.
"It's an impossible position to be placed in," the source adds. "It's quite conceivable that these people could have killed themselves because they felt terribly ashamed of what they'd done. For that matter, some of the accidents or suicides could have been men who'd taken bribes but who couldn't face the embarrassment of public disclosure."
If Marconi was systematically defrauding the government for millions of pounds each year, perhaps an employee stumbled upon incriminating evidence and had to be done away with. It would be easy enough to make it look like an accident.
Consider the peculiar death of Peter Peapell, found dead beneath his car in the garage of his Oxfordshire home. Peapell, 46, worked for the Royal Military College of Science, a world authority on communications technology, electronics surveillance and target detection. Peapell was an expert at using computers to process signals emitted by metals. His work reportedly included testing titanium for its resistance to explosives.
On the night of February 22, 1987, Peapell spent an enjoyable evening out with his wife, Maureen, and their friends. When they returned home, Maureen went straight to bed, leaving Peter to put the car away.
When Maureen woke up the next morning, she discovered that Peter had not come to bed. She went looking for him. When she reached the garage, she noticed that the door was closed. Yet she could hear the car's engine running.
She found her husband lying on his back beneath the car, his mouth directly below the tail pipe. She pulled him into the open air, but he was already dead.
Initially, Maureen thought her husband's death an accident. She presumed he'd gotten under the car to investigate a knocking he'd heard driving home the night before, and that he'd gotten stuck. But the light fixture in the garage was broken, and Peter hadn't been carrying a flashlight.
Police had their own suspicions. A constable the same height and wieght as Peter Peapell found it impossible to crawl under the car when the garage door was closed. He also found it impossible to close the door once he was under the car.
Carbon deposits from the inside of the garage door showed that the engine had been running only a short time. Yet, Mrs. Peapell had found the body almost seven hours after she'd gone to bed.
The coroner's inquest could not determine whether the death was a homicide, a suicide or an accident. According to Maureen Peapell, Peter had no reason to kill himself. They had no marital or financial problems. Peter loved his job. He'd just received a sizable raise, and according to colleagues, he'd exhibited "absolutely no signs of stress."
We may never know what is killing these scientists. Everyone has a theory.
The National Forum Foundation, a conservative Washington D.C., think tank, believes the deaths are the work of European- based, left-wing terrorists, such as those who took credit for gunning down a West German bureaucrat who'd negotiated Star Wars contracts. The group also claims the July 1986 bombing death of a researcher director from the Siemens Company--a high-tech, West German electronics firm. They have yet to take credit for any of the scientists.
A more outrageous theory suggests that the Russians have developed an electromagnetic "death ray," with which they're driving the British scientists to suicide. A supermarket tabloid contends the ultrathin waves emitted by the device interfere with a person's brain waves, causing violent mood shifts, including suicidal depres- sion.
The genius of such a weapon is that the victim does all the dirty work and takes all the blame. Yet, if the Soviets have actually developed such a weapon, why waste it on 22 British defense workers?
Are the scientists victims of a corrupt defense industry? Have they been espionage pawns? Are the deaths nothing more than an extraordinary coincidence? Guess.

DOSSIER OF DEATH
AUTO ACCIDENT--Professor Keith Bowden, 45, computer scientist, Essex University. In March 1982 Bowden's car plunged off a bridge, into am abandoned rail yard. His death was listed as an accident.
MISSING PERSON--Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Godley, 49, defense expert, head of work-study unit at the Royal Military College of Science. Godley disappeared in April 1983. His father bequeathes him more than $60,000, with the proviso that he claim it be 1987. He never showed up and is presumed dead.
SHOTGUN BLAST--Roger Hill, 49, radar designer and draftsman, Marconi. In March 1985 Hill allegedly killed himself with a shotgun at the family home.
DEATH LEAP--Jonathan Walsh, 29, digital-communications expert assigned to British Telecom's secret Martlesham Health research facility (and to GEC, Marconi's parent firm). In November 1985 Walsh allegedly fell from his hotel room while working on a British Telecom project in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (Africa). He had expressed a fear for his life. Verdict: Still in question.
DEATH LEAP--Vimal Dajibhai, 24, computer-software engineer (worked on guidance system for Tigerfish torpedo), Marconi Underwater Systems. In August 1986 Dajibhai's crumpled remains were found 240 feet below the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. The death has not been listed as a suicide.
DECAPITATION--Ashaad Sharif, 26, computer analyst, Marconi Defense Systems. In October 1986, in Bristol, Sharif allegedly tied one end of a rope around a tree and the other end around his neck, then drove off in his car at high speed. Verdict: Suicide.
SUFFOCATION--Richard Pugh, computer consultant for the Ministry of Defense. In January 1987 Pugh was found dead, wrapped head-to- toe in rope that was tied four times around his neck. The coroner listed his death as an accident due to a sexual experiment gone awry.
ASPHYXIATION--John Brittan, Ministry of Defense tank batteries expert, Royal Military College of Science. In January 1987 Brittan was found dead in a parked car in his garage. The engine was still running. Verdict: Accidental death.
DRUG OVERDOSE--Victor Moore, 46, design engineer, Marconi Space Systems. In February 1987 Moore was found dead of a drug overdose. His death is listed as a suicide.
ASPHYXIATION--Peter Peapell, 46, scientist, Royal Military College of Science. In February 1987 Peapell was found dead beneath his car, his face near the tail pipe, in the garage of his Oxfordshire home. Death was due to carbon-monoxide poisoning, although test showed that the engine had been running only a short time. Foul play has not been ruled out.
ASPHYXIATION--Edwin Skeels, 43, engineer, Marconi. In February 1987 Skeels was found dead in his car, a victim of carbon-monoxide poisoning. A hose led from the exhaust pipe. His death is listed as a suicide.
AUTO ACCIDENT--David Sands, satellite projects manager, Eassams (a Marconi sister company). Although up for a promotion, in March 1987 Sands drove a car filled with gasoline cans into the brick wall of an abandoned cafe. He was killed instantly. Foul play has not been ruled out.
AUTO ACCIDENT--Stuart Gooding, 23, postgraduate research student, Royal Military College of Science. In April 1987 Gooding died in a mysterious car wreck in Cyprus while the College was holding military exercises on the island. Verdict: Accidental death.
AUTO ACCIDENT--George Kountis, experienced systems analyst at British Polytechnic. In April 1987 Kountis drowned after his BMW plunged into the Mersey River in Liverpool. His death is listed as a misadventure.
SUFFOCATION--Mark Wisner, 24, software engineer at Ministry of Defense experimental station for combat aircraft. In April 1987 Wisner was found dead in his home with a plastic bag over his head. At the inqust, his death was rules an accident due to a sexual experiment gone awry.
AUTO ACCIDENT--Michael Baker, 22, digital-communications expert, Plessey Defense Systems. In May 1987 Baker's BMW crashed through a road barrier, killing the driver. Verdict: Misadventure.
HEART ATTACK--Frank Jennings, 60, electronic-weapons engineer for Plessey. In June 1987 Jennings allegedly dropped dead of a heart attack. No inquest was held.
DEATH LEAP--Russel Smith, 23, lab technician at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. In January 1988 Smith's mangled body was found halfway down a cliff in Cornwall. Verdict: Suicide.
ASPHYXIATION--Trevor Knight, 52, computer engineer, Marconi Space and Defense Systems. In March 1988 Knight was found dead in his car, asphyxiated by fume from a hose attached to the tail pipe. The death was ruled a suicide.
ELECTROCUTION--John Ferry, 60, assistant marketing director for Marconi. In August 1988 Ferry was found dead in a company-owned apartment, the stripped leads of an electrical cord in his mouth. Foul play has not been ruled out.
ELECTROCUTION--Alistair Beckham, 50, software engineer, Plessey. In August 1988 Beckham's lifeless body was found in the garden shed behind his house. Bare wires, which ran to a live main, were wrapped around his chest. Now suicide note was found, and police habe not ruled out foul play.
ASPHYXIATION--Andrew Hall, 33, engineering manager, British Aero- space. In September 1988 Hall was found dead in his car, asphyxiated by fumes from a hose that was attached to the tail pipe. Friends said he was well liked, had everything to live for. Verdict: Suicide.

Snipe Hunting In Afghanistan? British Troops sent on "Wild Goose" Chase?
CNN.com
5-6-2
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The latest mission to pursue al Qaeda and Taliban fighters is drawing chuckles from American forces -- not for its objective, nor for its methods, but for its name. In a tiny case of cultures clashing, "Operation Snipe," a name chosen by Britain, fails to take into account the existence of a more jocular American tradition: the "snipe hunt."
What exactly is a snipe hunt? It depends on where you come from -- or which dictionary you're reading. Webster's defines the snipe as "any of various usually slender-billed birds" -- the accepted British meaning. But The Dictionary of American Slang calls it "a nonexistent animal," and says a snipe hunt is sending out someone on a wild-goose chase. The quest to clear up the confusion led a reporter on what at times appeared to be a snipe hunt of his own Friday.
It began with the British peacekeepers in Kabul, who were oblivious to the linguistic gaffe involved in the new operation's moniker. "It's a game bird, a bit like pheasant," said Lt. Col. Neil Peckham of Wiltshire, England. "It would be a bird that is hunted as part of an organized shoot."
And in the United States? Capt. Bill Peoples of the U.S. Army, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, stood silent for a few moments, then exploded."You have got to be kidding!" he bellowed, angrily waving his arm. "I'm not going to answer that question." He said a few other things, too -- less polite things -- but asked that they not be published. Then he kicked the reporter off his base.
Britain, Peoples said once he calmed down, "is a coalition partner of ours, and I don't think it's right for us to make fun of what they name their operations."Fair enough, but the question remained.
Joe Crowley, an aid worker from Morgan Hill, California, had a clue: "I think it means maybe to search for something that doesn't exist?" Maj. Steve Daugherty of Clarksville, Tennessee, was more confident." You just send somebody to find something that doesn't exist so you can have some fun at their expense," he said.
The American Dictionary of Slang says that in a snipe hunt, "an uninitiated person is left to watch for a 'snipe' ... while his supposed hunting companions, the hoaxers, leave him to discover the joke." That's the meaning Col. Wayland Parker learned the hard way at his Jacksonville, Florida, high school." They took all the new guys out to the beach on a snipe hunt," he said. "Of course, not a single snipe showed up and we were left there to figure it out on our own. I waited there for a couple of hours." Then he leaned closer." Believe it or not, they actually have snipes here in Afghanistan," he confided. "If you go out to the stadium, we'll herd them in to you."
British troops have told the Americans to stop being so silly, and just let them get on and finish the Operation so they get Operation Haggis, Operation Doris and then Operation Osama.

Afghan 'Operation Snipe' To Rescue US And Canadian Troops?
By Fakhar-ur-Rehman
FrontierPost.com - Pakistan
5-6-2
ISLAMABAD - Joined by the US and Canadian troops, more than 2000 British-led Special Commando forces under "Operation Snipe" are gearing up efforts to launch a major attack to rescue around 76 soldiers who were arrested by the Taliban and Al Qaida forces during the battle in the snow covered Arma Peaks of Paktia Province in March this year, highly credible sources have confided to The Frontier Post.
Both Diplomatic and Afghan sources have said, "the majority of the soldiers are of American nationality but there are some Canadian troops also".
US believes that the Taliban forces are keeping them in hidden in the south eastern part of Afghanistan.
Earlier reports had suggested that 18 allied soldiers were taken hostage by the Taliban forces during severest clashes which took place during March at Shah-e-Kot in Gardez where the fighting came to an end only when 400 US-led Allied troops had to withdraw in order to provide safe passage to the Al Qaida and Taliban forces to ensure the safety of US soldiers arrested by the opposition forces.
Afghan sources said that the US led forces had agreed to withdraw yielding to the three conditions forwarded by the Taliban forces.
One that the all US-led forces will withdraw with no aerial attacks to ensure safe passage to all Taliban forces and that all more than 350 Taliban and pro-Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamu Bay in Cuba will be set free.
While United States did not act on releasing the Afghan and non-Afghans alleged to have links with Al Qaida, it did provide a safe passage.
So far the fate of the 76 US soldiers is not known despite all efforts to trace them through satellite, diplomatic sources added.
These sources said during the Operation Snipe each and every area in the tribal belt will be combed where aerial military strike could not be ruled out.
But this has been ruled out by Pakistan in categorical terms.
Foreign Office Spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said "no question" of military air strikes in the tribal areas.
"Neither US has asked nor we have given any such permission, it is out of question," he said while talking The Frontier Post.
President General Pervez Musharraf Saturday ruled out any possibility of Al Qaida regrouping in Pakistan believing that alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was still in Afghanistan but might be dead already.
The political situation in the tribal areas particularly in North Waziristan has become charged following the tribesmen warned to launch war against raids by the Pakistani and US forces on religious institutions in pursuit of Taliban and Al Qaida members.
Though United States has admitted very less casualties during her seven-month war against terrorism since October 7, 2001 but it is estimated that it has suffered around 400 casualties in Afghanistan and many dead bodies of the soldiers are lying on the US combat ships in the Arabian Sea.
Afghan sources maintained that on October 20, 2001 during a night commando operation in Kandahar, US had suffered more than 90 casualties.
Later, Al Qaida and Taliban have caused more than 50 casualties at Tahktapul, which lies between Kandahar and Spin Boldak.
In March this year, during bloodiest battle at Shahi-e-Kot of Paktia Province, the Taliban forces claimed to have destroyed 13 military helicopters and killed 180 US soldiers.

Cosmic catastrophe 'a certainty':Sooner or later, a catastrophe from space will wipe out almost all life on Earth.
8 May, 2002
(BBCNEWS)

Eta Carinae will explode soon but luckily it is not pointing our way
According to Dr Arnon Dar, of the Technion Space Research Institute, Israel, a particular type of exploding star going off anywhere in our region of the Universe would devastate our planet.
Using the latest statistics and calculations, he argues that a supermassive star collapsing at the end of its lifetime would form a black hole and send out a beam of destructive radiation and particles that would sterilise any planet in its path.
The odds are that any planet in our galaxy would be affected about once every one hundred million years. "It is a certainty; the timescales are comparable to mass extinctions seen in Earth's geological record," Dr Dar told BBC News Online.
No hiding place
Supermassive stars, those with a mass substantially greater than our Sun, are scattered throughout the galaxy. It is thought that when they collapse at the end of their lives, they eject an intense beam of radiation, called gamma-rays, into space.
So powerful are these gamma-rays, and the energetic sub-atomic particles that follow in their wake, that they could have a major influence on life in our galaxy.
"If such a beam were to strike Earth, the effects would be totally devastating, unlike anything we could imagine," Dr Dar said.
On the side of Earth facing the explosion, searing shock waves will begin to rip through the atmosphere igniting infernos when they reach the ground.
Within moments of the arrival of the radiation from deep space, the atmospheric temperature will begin rising rapidly, wreaking havoc with global weather systems.
Destructive 'daughters'
All organic material on the surface of Earth will start to burn. Survivors will cower in caves and buildings. But the worst is yet to come.
The initial gamma-ray burst will last a fraction of a second. Almost immediately afterwards will come the cosmic rays, which will drench our planet for days. There will be no hiding place.
Cosmic rays are highly energetic particles travelling through space at almost the speed of light. They will slam into the atmosphere, depositing vast amounts of energy and creating swarms of destructive "daughter" particles.
These particles, called muons, will penetrate hundreds of metres into rocks so that few caves will offer protection and even deep-sea creatures will be affected by lethal doses of radiation.
The Earth's ecosystem will be destroyed. "The few who might survive will wish they had died," said Dr Dar. "They will struggle, forlornly, on a wrecked planet."
Dr Dar points out that many of the great extinctions that regularly punctuate the Earth's history are consistent with being caused by a devastating influx of radiation from space.
Threatening stars
"Direct proof that it happened this way is lacking at present," he said, "but many people are looking for it."
There is some good news! Because the gamma-ray bursts from collapsing supermassive stars are shot across the cosmos in narrow beams, probably no more than a degree across, most of them will miss the Earth.
However, the latest statistics suggest once every one hundred million years or so, we will be unlucky. Curiously, this is about the rate of global extinctions on Earth.
At the moment, astronomers do not know which star to watch. Stars, like the supermassive Eta Carinae, visible in the Southern Hemisphere, are likely to explode and send out a gamma-ray burst sometime in the next million years or so. But this particular star is not pointing in our direction.
Undoubtedly, there is a star that is, but as yet astronomers have not found it. But even if they do, will we get any warning?
"Not with our current understanding of science," said Dr Dar, "but then science progresses. Perhaps, one day we will be able to tell which stars are threatening."

Did the CIA set up the suicidal Heaven's Gate Cult to test Mind Control techniques?
Heaven's Gate was not made up of young, male 18-24 year-old computer programmers, and it didn't start in the 1990s. It was not a "cyber religion."
The media covering this story presented most of the initial facts incorrectly, as usual. Heaven's Gate started back in the 1970s, and I highly recommend that people who are interested in its early history read Jacques Vallee's Messengers of Deception, who documented the techniques of the flying saucer 'missionaries' "Bo" and "Peep" back in 1975, when they were calling their group "Human Individual Metamorphosis." (Besides HG, there have been many UFO-based religions, including the Raelians and "UMMO.") The basic fact is that most of the members of HIM/Heaven's Gate were middle-aged, of both genders, and recruited from college campuses back in the 60s and 70s. Even back in 1975, Applewhite's doctrines emphasized the transience of the human form, and the abnegation of physicality.
Reading "MoD" may be a good thing for another reason, because Vallee makes two critical points that are as important today as they were back then. One is that many of the "flying saucer cults" may be the product of intelligence agencies wishing to test psychological warfare techniques. Many people have compared HG to Jonestown, which has also been suspected of being a CIA 'project.' However, Jonestown remains a different creature for one important reason: there were many cult members who were killed quite involuntarily by machine guns when they refused the poisoned kool-aid, whereas it appears that all HG members consented to their cocktail of barbiturates and vodka in order to shed their "containers" for the coming spacecraft. But HG, like Jonestown, might have been a 'test' to see how long a cult could be kept 'underground' before being 'activated' -- or, more properly, 'deactivated.'
Another is that the existence of groups with irrational beliefs about UFOs is a good reason to intensify rational inquiry of the phenomenon, rather than curtail it. Suppression and ridicule of scientific inquiry of the UFO phenomenon leaves it in the hands of the irrational, unscientific, and fanatical; worse, in the hands of people who may want to use it as a belief system for manipulating and controlling people's actions. Hillary Clinton committed typical fallacious reasoning by lumping together HG with interest in UFOs, because groups who believe dogmatically in extraterrestrial salvation are not the same thing as groups who are interested in rational inquiry of an unknown phenomenon.
The cult did not recruit people using the Internet. (I believe that the word "cult" does apply to this group because they used psychological manipulation, prevented members from having any contact with their families or outsiders, and followed a charismatic and dogmatic leader.) It did not view the Internet with any sort of spiritual reverence or connect it with ideas of transcendence: they designed Web sites because they wanted to have economic support without having contact with "worldly things," and this was an easy way to do so. Their major source of "information" about the Hale-Bopp "spacecraft" was probably not the Internet or Art Bell's radio show (more about him, anon) but instead a science fiction writer who they believed to be a prophetic figure.
Art Bell and the Internet are not responsible for this mass suicide. Neither is Courteney Brown, in all fairness...
The unfortunate fact about this case is that it has resulted in the usual howls for censorship. Of course, as usual, these people don't realize you can't shut down Usenet, where many of the Hale-Bopp rumors "flew," but they probably will demand that their legislators try. As for Art Bell, like the Internet, he is just a messenger. He always emphasizes that listeners to his show make up their own minds about phenomena - which is the proper zetetic attitude. It was Courteney Brown and Whitley Streiber who dropped the 'bombshells' about Hale-Bopp on his radio show. Other people have been circulating this information for a while.
My feeling is that the mass suicide was merely a matter of timing. However the group came to their belief about the spacecraft behind the comet (and I suspect they were "fed" it - they didn't just happen to hear it one day), they probably would have found another reason later to "shed their containers" if they had not come to believe in that. Shedding their bodies was necessary for reaching the "higher level," so they would have done so eventually, no matter what. Applewhite did not have cancer, but most people agree he was in poor health. The coincidence of the comet and Holy Week probably gave him the motivation to take his followers into the "plunge," so to speak. If people believe suicide is justified in their doctrine, then they will inevitably settle on something as the "sign" to proceed. Applewhite also believed apparently that his group, following "Waco," might also be targeted by the government soon.
As for Courteney Brown: I heard his version of the story (he had been accused of stealing Hale-Bopp images from the University of Hawaii for his Project Foresight web site prior to his association with the whole HG "affair") at the "Project Awareness 1997" conference, and I am not certain of what to make of it. Brown says Foresight remote viewers detected an object behind the comet. Brown also claims he was sent a roll of film with images of the comet as well as a spacecraft behind it by an astronomer. That was the source of the Web site images. He hedged over the question of whether those images had been altered prior to his receiving them. He will not reveal the identity of that astronomer, but claimed at the conference that he still doesn't doubt the veracity of the person; instead he thinks the astronomer was manipulated in order to set him up and to "discredit remote viewing."
I am not sure what to make of any of Brown's claims; having read Cosmic Voyage I am still curious as to where in South America or under Santa Fe Baldy the Martians are living, why (or how much) they look like native americans, and why Brown somehow keeps insisting on not providing any sort of confirmation to his claims. Does remote viewing exist, regardless of whether Brown is a fraud, a one-time cheat, or completely honest? Yes. But I simply am not interested in remote viewers continuing to resist providing any sort of empirical evidence for their claims, so that those of us who are non-remote viewers can test them by other means. I also suspect that remote viewing is a somewhat more limited talent than the extravagant ability that Brown describes, where a person can view any event at any point in space and time and know the thoughts of all beings that are present. That is what the dictionary would define as "omniscience."
The HG members are solely responsible for their own actions. They chose to end their own lives based on incorrect information and misguided beliefs. Incorrect information can be found in every medium - newspapers and TV shows as well as talk radio and on the Internet. Brown, Bell, and the aforementioned science fiction writer (I don't remember his name; I did see him on a weekly news show; he claimed to have a special mark on his chest; he said HG members followed him around at book signings) are not responsible. Applewhite did not coerce them with force or machine guns. The CIA or other agencies may have been manipulating Applewhite or he may have been working for them. No one knows. The true lesson from the HG mass suicide is, once again, "belief is the enemy."
Heaven's above. What will those who think of "they" think of next? "The CIA makes me sad"?

Canada Sad Over U.S. Rejection of World Court
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada, one of the prime movers behind the creation of the world's first international criminal court, on Monday said it was disappointed by Washington's decision to abandon the tribunal.

Photo:An Israeli robot drags a badly wounded Palestinian

An Israeli bomb squad robot drags a badly wounded Palestinian man on the road near Megiddo junction in the northern Israel, May 8, 2002. The suspected suicide bomber was seriously wounded in northern Israel on Wednesday when explosives he was carrying blew up prematurely Israeli security sources said. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, under pressure to crack down on militants, ordered Palestinian security forces to foil any attempt to attack Israeli civilians. Photo by Stringer/Israel/Reuters

US close to default on national debt. If we default, we take the rest of the world with us (BostonGlobe via Fark)
WASHINGTON (AP) Congress needs to extend the government's authority to borrow or risk defaulting on the national debt, which would cloud U.S. securities, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Wednesday.
O'Neill made his latest pitch for swift congressional action on raising the debt ceiling in a speech to Republicans gathered at the Capitol Hill Club.
He has repeatedly asked Congress to boost the debt ceiling by $750 billion, but the request has become stuck in a political fight over the budget. The limit now stands at $5.95 trillion.
Treasury last week said it can shift some funds to avoid hitting the debt ceiling in mid-May. But those maneuvers won't be useful in late June, raising the prospect of a default on payments to bondholders.
''If we run into the ceiling that's really bad,'' O'Neill said in remarks to the Republican Main Street Partnership. ''Because world capital markets will say they knew they needed to do it and they've know for six months that they needed to do it and they didn't do it and that casts a shadow on the good faith and credit of the United States.''
If the government were to miss payments on debt coming due, it would be technically in default on the $5.95 trillion national debt. That would cast a cloud over U.S. securities, now considered the world's safest investment, and would mean the government would be forced to pay billions of dollars in higher interest payments on the national debt in future years.
Economists and other experts don't think that would happen because Congress is sure to eventually raise the debt ceiling.
O'Neill appeared to agree.
''It's not a question of whether we are going to do it or not. It's just a question of how close to the cliff we're going to run before we do what we know we need to do,'' he said.
To help replenish coffers, the Treasury sold $11 billion worth of 10-year notes out of bids totaling $23.7 billion on Wednesday.

Dark and Dangerous International Conspiracy
(worldmessenger.20m.com)
The WTC/Pentagon attacks were a frame-up
designed to benefit members of, at least, these four groups:
1) People profiting from the opium trade of the Northern Alliance druglords and the money-laundering
through global investment channels that the opium trade and the derivative heroin trade supports;
2) People seeking control of the $4 trillion worth of oil and natural gas in Central Asia;
3) People seeking to win back support to increasingly unpopular Sharonist policies in Israel;
4) People arraigned before a grand jury on charges of fixing gold prices, illegal involvement in oil swaps between Kazakhstan
and (sanctioned) Iran, and bribery in cases where all incriminating documentary evidence was stored in FBI files
and data banks in one of the twin towers of the WTC.
All four of these groups have fluid secret channels of communication through networked integration of banking, politics,
the CIA and Mossad connections. The fact is if one of these groups was complicit, the other three would have to be also.
Here are three independently developed arguments for the four groups:
Mossad and the CIA were supporting traffick in Afgan-opium-derived heroin - devoting public resources to protect and assist
the suppliers and distributors of the multi-trillion-dollar, money-laundered, drug revenue deposits, backing the global investments of
American and Britsih elite finance. The Afgan Northern Alliance druglords grow 70 to 90 percent of the worlds opium, the prime
ingredient of heroin. The opium which is moved across the small China-Afgan boarder for processing and distribution by the giant
People's Liberation Army - that amazing transnational corporation- Triad drug cartel-and military super military establishment all
in one. Against the tremendous- stake interests this giant outlaw network, the morally conservative Taliban had been erradicating
Afgan opium production, supressing supply to druglords and the drug-revenue flow money- laundering establishment bankers
and global investors alike. Thus "crisis" became the initial motivation of a renegade group of CIA and/or Mossad in
seeking ways to defeat Afganistan's Talibanist government.
Next, the Russian and Kazakh mafias have criminal ties to U.S. executive James Giffen in Kazakhstan - a man under investigation
by a New York grand jury in the months before September 11 for illegal involvement in an oil swaps between Kazakhstan and (sanctioned)
Iran - source: the Aug. 9 New Yorker Magazine for a full account of this by Seymour Hersh- and all of the evidence for this crime was
being kept at the WTC on the 20th through 25th floor of one of the twin towers where the FBI had its New York Offices. And
James Giffen is the key man everyone has to go through to get any oil agreement with Kazakhstan - including any pipelines
built that would traverse Afganistan.
Giffen certainly understood - if he did not originate the idea - that if he could/can get operatives (even "captured" vengeful Islamic
activists whose rage could be shaped and directed to use of terror) to destroy the FBI offices in the WTC building and the
documentation evidence it contained, then he would be escape grand jury indictment - and, as an powerful added benefit,
the (framed) Taliban would get replaced with a regime in Afganistan that would permit a pipeline to be built - preferably
a Northern Alliance druglord government that would harmonize with Giffen's own unethical (murderous) entrepreneural style.
(See the New Yorker article fordetails of Giffen's history)
So far this super-crime scheme involves only a small group of people - Russian Mafia and perhaps a Giffen - renegade CIA
or a Giffen "dark-side" Mossad link. But other, even more powerful players may have had involvement - certainly they
stood to gain tremendously if the Sept.11 frame-up were successfully accomplished.
Prior to September 11 charges had been brought against Alan Greenspan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan & Co. and other powerful
American financial figures and instiutions - reportedly a very well-documented case - over the fixing of gold prices,
with evidence stored by the FBI on the FBI floors of the WTC! These parties would not only profit heavily from both oil and
drug monies circulating through their great financial instiutions, but they also would gain from avoiding one of the most threatening
lawsuits ever to confront the U.S. financial establishment (realize what a guilty verdict in this case would mean to these leading
financial families and to the Establishment in general!) - these parties would welcome predictable and certainly substantial
benefits from the the destruction of the evidence in the WTC and of some of the witnesses and researchers on the case as well.
US Economy gets a very convenient clean slate by destroying evidence.
Just two days before the attacks we had issued an urgent electronic bulletin warning that, as a result of many years of manipulation
of gold prices by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and major investment banks, and a $30 trillion derivatives bubble on the verge of
bursting, the U.S. economy was in peril of an immediate and cataclysmic crash. That crash now has a convenient explanation.
On 9-11, the day of the attack, there was a meeting in Basel Switzerland at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
The BIS is known as the bank for world's central bankers - is also the world "policeman" of the gold trade. All G-10 central
banks were represented on the day of the attack. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was there, safely out
of harm's way. A critical hearing in a suit brought by the Gold Anti Trust Action Committee (GATA) - which alleges BIS
collusion in the rigging of gold prices - was scheduled to be heard in U.S. District court in Boston on October 9th.
In another coincidence, the headquarters of Comex, the precious metals trading exchange, was destroyed in the attacks,
along with whatever records were kept there. The central banks of many nations also had WTC offices and some also had
vaults in the basement. Estimates of the amount of gold stored in the WTC range from a low of $100 million to a high of $16 billion.
The status of the gold is unknown at this time. What is known is that there are futures options on gold amounting to roughly five
times the actual amount of physical gold in existence.
The destruction of records in the attacks was not limited to banking records. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
maintained investigative offices at the WTC. At the time of the attack the SEC was investigating, among others, Credit Suisse
- a major player in the gold trade - for massive irregularities connected to the Wall Street Bubble. The Wall Street Journal
on September 13 reported the destruction of the regional enforcement office of the SEC, located in 7 World Trade Center.
~ Mike Ruppert - COPVCIA 9/24/01
"China white" heroin distributed by the People's Liberation Army, made from Afgan opium, links all banker and oilman
to the corrupt and renegade, the secret state agencies, CIA, FBI, and Mossad. Agents of either agency may have seen this
opportunity for mutual gain and found the way - having profiles of each of the players - to propose the Sept.11 frame-up
as the best "solution" to each of players most troublesome problems, while making enormous profits besides.
Note that the Bush's are tied to both the CIA and oil, and through Mena Arkansas drug smuggling and through the Iran-Contra
drugs and arms deals etc. (drugworld investigator Daniel Hopsicker, as well as Noam Chomsky and many others have exposed
this thoroughly - at least in the broad strokes necessary to support this reconstruction of the crime.)
(The facts of the drug connections are known to everyone from the Russians, to the John Birchers, to Wired Magazine, Harpers, New Yorker, the Village Voice,the Nation, and Rolling Stone Magazine, all having explored the drug - Establishment connections in great detail.)

Thieves World:MARC RICH and Credit Suisse et al---FINGERED BY A LETTER
2/28/01
(Skolnickreports.com)
The monopoly press reportedly is interested in a strange letter that has surfaced. It names specific persons and events and it relates to the apparent murder of Clinton White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., July, 1993, the manipulation of the gold markets by Marc Rich in combination with large financial forces, as well as tied to huge illicit funds money laundered by the Bush family in combination with Bill Clinton as their little-publicized crony and confederate.
In the letter, our editorial comments to update those who might not be knowledgeable are in brackets. Visit our website story for more details on the how and why murder of Foster, "Greenspan Aids and Bribes Bush Family".
THE LETTER, verbatim as received
22nd day of January, 2001 A.D. To U.S. President George W. Bush U.S. Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno U.S. Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder U.S. Federal Judge David L. Russell U.S. White House Counsel Bernie Nausbaum [Clinton White House] Estate/U.S. W/H Deputy Counsel Vince Foster, Jr. U.S. DoJ Attorney- John Russell S.E.C. Chairman, Arthur Levitt Dresdner Banque, COB, Bernhard Walter Deutche Banque AG, COB, Rolf-Ernst Brewer Georgio Bomio, Esquire Central Authority for U.S. Requests Division of International Legal Assistance Federal Office For Police Matters Bundesrain 20, 3003 Bern, Switzerland Credit Suite, COB Guy Studor, et al Former Director/FBI William Sessions [who was sacked on flimsy grounds the day before Foster was murdered] SAC Bill Lecates SAC Glen Speedy SAC Jeb McGruder SAC Gary Small [followed by bracket, identifying them] Section V [asterisk after Speedy identifying him as]U.S. Secret Service, Nashville, TN, USA U.S. DoJ C.L. Ford, Esq. cc Frank B. Ingram (FBI SA 32 NY) U.S. Dept. of the Treasury/U.S. Custom Service Rick Reynolds (S.E. Asia ops SA 233 MS) U.S. Dept. of the Treasury/U.S. Customs Service _____________[name left out]/(S-31-IANO) U.S. Dept. of the Treasury Office of Internal Affairs/Sector V-New Orleans FROM Ambassador Leo E. Wanta/Stillpoint.ops Diplomatic Passport No. 04362 & 12535 Ministry of Foreign Affairs
IN THE MATTER OF (A) MARC RICH- Visit in Lausanne, Switzerland at Hotel Au Lac with Ms Lorrayne Fine (1) of L.H. Financial(Tel Aviv & Johannesburg, SA); (2) of Ameritrust Corporation (USA) as Corporate Secretary & Account Signatorie at Credit Suisse, Lausanne, Switzerland; (3) of Ameritrust (Suisse) Societe as Director and Corporate Co-Ordinator with Suisse Banque- as to Private Contract between Humewood Enterprises (London & Dublin) and Ameritrust Corporation (USA) for Prime Banque Guartanees (PABag/icc 400/500/600)- Aggregate Amount of US Dollars Five Trillion with rollovers and extensions- as authorized by U.S. Government entities-and International Banking Groupe, et al.--
Marc Rich at Hotel Au Ladc Lausanne further discussed the scheduled meeting with Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, Jr. on 07 July 1993, as to (1) Children's Defense Fund "set-aside" allocations of US Dollars Two Hundred and Fifty Million (US $ 250,000,000.00), through Credit Suisse Banque, Agent for Ameritrust Corporation (USA); [see our website story, New/Old White House Gang] (2) Suisse newlly-organized "AmeriTrust (Suisse) Societe" to meet Suisse Tax Regulations, as to PBG transactions as authorized under Title 18 USA Sec.6/USG Proprietary Corporations- and endorsed through USGovt entities. (3) New lodging at Hotel de la Pax, Geneva for (07 July 1993) (A) Vince Foster Groupe (B) Frank B. Ingram (SA 32 NV) (C) Rick Reynolds (SA 233 MS) (D) Consul General Giovanni Ferro (E) Italia Judge Pierre Liugi (F) Italia Secret Police Erika Ruffo (G) Somalia President Haji Mohammed Hashi Haile of Mogedishij, et al (H) Ms Lorrayne Fine (Mossad) and her daughter from Johannesburg SA (I) Banque Paribas Vice Chairman, Antonio Salvatorie, et al.
When U.S. Treasury Rick Reynolds observed Marc Rich on Lorrayne's Hotel Patio; no one was certain that Lorrayne had advised him of Reynolds/Ingram/Wanta planned attempts to travel by Laussane boat ferry across to French Casino, 45 minutes across Lake- with L. Fine, g. Ferro, Fine's daughter, L. Wanta, et al.
Please Note FBI Director William Sessions had authorized this groupe to take Marc Rich, if and when, he was out of Switzerland for "tax evasion". Bill Lecates also authorized F.B. Ingram to take down Marc Rich if the opportunity came available. [Editorial note President Clinton by unceremoniously sacking Sessions, the day before the later Foster murder, put a stop to FBI Director William Sessions' elite unit investigating high criminal offenses by both Clinton, former President George Herbert Walker Bush and his sons Neil, Jeb, and George W., little-known business cronies of Clinton, as well as other top-level criminals jointly with Bush/Clinton gang. The gang included Clinton White House Senior Advisor Rahm Emanuel, who is also reportedly Acting Deputy Station Chief for North America of Israeli Intelligence, The Mossad, of which Ms Fine ostensibly was an operative. Rahm, now a Managing Director in Chicago of reputed worldwide money laundry operation Wasserstein Perella & Co., specializing in laundering huge funds through the Chicago markets for the Red Chinese and the Red Chinese Secret Police. See our previous website stories.]
Our U.S. Groupe (Intel) was also involved in the T.A. Trace Analysis Lab in Morges, Switzerland (Dr. John Lutz) as to Bulgaria delivery of Red Mercury 20/20 to Iraq via Trieste Port. Israeli Zvi Margelit, et al., were also delivering RM 2020 to Iraqi Military via this travel plan & Andras Szasze et al. (See Thieves World, by Claire Sterling, Simon & Shuster, NY-1994 release) [Editorial note Sterling, a CIA front operative, unfairly condemns Leo E. Wanta in her book, yet Wanta played a key role in wrecking the Soviet government in the Soviet Ruble caper of 1990 which is highly detailed in that book. Also note Red Mercury is the ingredient in "suitcase" nuclear devices that can be carried around by terrorists. ABC Network high-paid propagandist, Barbara Walters, has reportedly been a sizeable stockholder in Israeli weapons manufacturers that apparently sell diabolical weapons to all comers, Red Chinese, terrorist organizations, and such. As we have pointed out in some of our website stories, ABC News has received the CIA subsidy, since 1988-89, once had by CBS News, for ABC News to run their foreign bureaus as a vacuum pump of intelligence data for the American CIA.]
It was not known in July, 1993, that Suisse Surete, Interp[ol, et al., was aware of our intel to take down Marc Rich- until Suisse Surete arrested Somali Ambassador Leo Wanta for failure to pay alleged, and bogus, Wisconsin Tax Assessments for 1982 and 1988-thus the Sessions arrest warrants for Marc Rich were illegally discovered- and I believe resolved in the murder of (1) Vince Foster (Washington, DC, USA) (2) Freddie Woodruff (Tbilisi, Georgia) [An American CIA official] (3) J.J. Smith (Mexico City) (4) Lino Burys (Hong Kong) (5) etc., etc. (AA) Further, Ms.Fine was aware of the oil activities of Commerce Secretaary Ron Brown, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Somali Ambassador Wanta as to Operation Restore Hope, 90 Million Barrels of Saudi light crude oil as bid contracted to Marvelous Investments Limited Hong Kong-as assigned to- White Cloud Petroleum Corporation (Delaware) c/o Bank of New York for Delivery to Houston, Texas, USA [White Cloud was/is reportedly owned by the George Herbert Walker Bush Family] (BB) Purchase of Ciga Hotels and properties- (CC) Purchase of Credito Italiano Bank et al., (DD) Rome American Hospital (Roma) facilities, (EE) U.S. Treasury Note Procuremejnt/delivery via London Treaty Porivisons in favour of AmeriTrust Corporation (USA), Marvelous Investments, Ltd. (HK/BVI), New Republic/USA Financial Group, Ltd.Gesellschaft of Wien, Austria-Europa [Vienna, Austria] (FF) Certain forex currency transactions as authorized under 18 USC Sec. 6 et al. (GG) Certain Suisse & European Property purchases, as well as other European trade companies/societes-
Our intel and related corporate documentary evidence and exhibits are readily available to interested parties; on a "need to know basis", due to the sensitivity involved. Respectfully submitted under penalty of perjury, Ambassador Leo E. Wanta DPP #04362 & 12535 22 Jan 2001 AD. Approved by /s/ Rich Reynolds, Rick Reynolds (SA 233 MS) U.S. Dept. of the Treasury /s/ Frank B. Ingram Frank B. Ingram (SA 32 NV) U.S. Dept. of the Treasury.
[Editorial notes The exposure widely of the details in this letter would tend to expose the Bank of England together with a Wall Street cabal including Goldman Sachs & Co., implicated in forcing down the price of Gold so as to attempt to save certain huge hedge funds borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars on what is known as "gold carry" or "gold carriage" arrangements. That is, a low price of gold, below the cost of production of the most efficient mines, enables certain huge speculators to borrow tremendous funds for as a little as one per cent. A party to this huge Price-Fixing Fraud has been Alan Greenspan as the head of the conspiratorial Federal Reserve masquerading as a "U.S. Government" entity when it is a private-owned, private run group of alleged banks issuing paper money masquerading as the "U.S. Dollar".
As to the contents of the letter and what is involved, both Time Magazine and Newsweek Magazine are aware of it as is ABC and CBS News. ABC and CBS have a severe hang-up conflict of interest because of the Israeli-"Red Mercury" nuclear suitcase bomb matters involved. Newsweek is owned and operated by the British who have a substantial interest in covering up these matters to protect huge British interests, including the Bank of England and others. Newsweek's Michael Isikoff who is reportedly aware of the letter is a reputed asset of The Mossad, Israeli Intelligence, going back to the time he helped kill stories reportedly, as part of Newsweek's sister publication the Washington Post. ABC is a proprietary operation linked to the American CIA which subsidizes, for intelligence gathering and spying, ABC News' foreign bureaus. ABC as earlier mentioned has Barbara Walters with a substantial interest to reportedly kill any story about the letter because of her reputed financial linkage with sizeable Israeli weapons manufacturers and "Red Mercury". As we have discussed in other items on our website, Foster ran a secretive "Gold Bank" in the Caribbean for intelligence agencies and together with his sidekick, Hillary Rodham Clinton, worked worldwide money laundry deals based on smuggled gold bullion. Any mass media admission that they lied to us about the death of Foster, earlier claiming it was "suicide" when they knew all along it was murder, would inevitably bring up the smuggled gold matter as well as the gold Price-Fixing matter. See our website item about the Roger D'Onofrio Affair, as discussed by foreign wire service bureaus, early December, 1995; involved jointly criminal activities of the Vatican Bank once headed by Bishop Paul Marcinkus originally from the Chicago-area mafia enclave of Cicero and their First National Bank of Cicero, later re-named several times. See our website story about the Giannini Family.
To silence Wanta, he was framed with the connivance of Tommy Thompson when he was Governor of Wisconsin and part of the CIA's reputed operation Children's Defense Fund. See our website story, Old/New White House Gang. Tommy Thompson is now part of the cabinet of alleged "President" George W. Bush, who some consider to be an "imposter" President. The oil-soaked, spy-riddled monopoly press has a lot to lose by dealing with the different situations in the letter.
The liars and whores of the press have not even begun to tell us the details of the massive worldwide fraud and murders implicated with protected espionage agency darling MARC RICH.

REPOST:Nazis and the Republican Party
Investigative reporter Christopher Simpson says in BLOWBACK that after World War II, Nazi émigrés were
given CIA subsidies to build a far-right-wing power base in the U.S. These Nazis assumed prominent positions
in the Republican Party's "ethnic outreach committees." Simpson documents the fact that these Nazis did not
come to America as individuals but as part of organized groups with fascist political agendas. The Nazi agenda
did not die along with Adolf Hitler. It moved to America (or a part of it did) and joined the far right of the
Republican Party.
Simpson shows how the State Department and the CIA put high-ranking Nazis on the intelligence payroll "for
their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare," among other purposes. The most important Nazi
employed by the U.S. was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's most senior eastern front military intelligence officer. After
Germany's defeat became certain, Gehlen offered the U.S. certain concessions in exchange for his own
protection. Gehlen promoted hyped up cold war propaganda on behalf of the political right in this country, and
helped shape U.S. perceptions of the cold war.
Journalist Russ Bellant (OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY) shows that
Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Nazi war collaborator, built the Republican émigré network. Pasztor, who served as
adviser to Republican Paul Weyrich, belonged to the Hungarian Arrow Cross, a group that helped liquidate
Hungary's Jews. Pasztor was founding chairman of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.
Two months before the November 1988 presidential election, a small newspaper, Washington Jewish Week,
disclosed that a coalition for the Bush campaign included a number of outspoken Nazis and anti-Semites. The
article prompted six leaders of Bush's coalition to resign.
According to Russ Bellant, Nazi collaborators involved in the Republican Party included:
1.Radi Slavoff, GOP Heritage Council's executive director, and head of "Bulgarians for Bush." Slavoff was a
member of a Bulgarian fascist group, and he put together an event in Washington honoring Holocaust
denier, Austin App.
2.Florian Galdau, director of GOP outreach efforts among Romanians, and head of "Romanians for Bush."
Galdau was once an Iron Guard recruiter, and he defended convicted Nazi war criminal Valerian Trifa.
3.Nicholas Nazarenko, leader of a Cossack GOP ethnic unit. Nazarenko was an ex-Waffen SS officer.
4.Method Balco, GOP activist. Balco organized yearly memorials for a Nazi puppet regime.
5.Walter Melianovich, head of the GOP's Byelorussian unit. Melianovich worked closely with many Nazi
groups.
6.Bohdan Fedorak, leader of "Ukrainians for Bush." Fedorak headed a Nazi group involved in anti-Jewish
wartime pogroms.
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article on the Bush team's inclusion of Nazis (David Lee Preston, "Fired Bush
backer one of several with possible Nazi links," September 10, 1988.) The newspaper also ran an investigative
series on Nazi members of the Bush coalition. The article confirmed that the Bush team included members
listed by Russ Bellant.
Journalist Martin A. Lee, has written for The Nation, Rolling Stone, The San Francisco Chronicle, and other
publications. In THE BEAST REAWAKENS, Lee confirms that during both the Reagan and Bush years, the
Republican Party's ethnic outreach arm recruited members from the Nazi émigré network.
Lee says that the Republican Party's ethnic outreach division had an outspoken hatred of President Jimmy
Carter's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), an organization dedicated to tracking down and prosecuting Nazi
war collaborators who entered this country illegally. Former Republican Pat Buchanan attacked Carter's OSI
after it deported a few suspected Nazi war criminals.
According to Lee, public relations man Harold Keith Thompson was principal U.S. point man for the postwar
Nazi support network known as die Spinne, or the Spider. In the late 40s and early 50s, Thompson worked as
the chief North American representative for the remaining National Socialist German Worker's Party and the
SS. Lee writes that the wealthy Thompson gave generously to Republican candidates Senator Jesse Helms and
would-be senator Oliver North. Thompson's money gained him membership in the GOP's Presidential Legion
of Merit. Lee says Thompson also "received numerous thank-you letters from the Republican National
Committee." Those letters are now in the Hoover Institute Special Collections Library.
Christopher Simpson writes in BLOWBACK that in 1983, Ronald Reagan presented a Medal of Freedom, the
country's highest civilian honor, to CIA émigré program consultant James Burnham. Burnham was a
psychological warfare consultant who promoted something called "liberationism." Just before the 1952 election,
the CIA worked up a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign aimed at selling Americans on expanding
cold war activities in Europe. Part of the guiding theory (given the name "liberationism") was the idea that
certain Nazi leaders from World War II should be brought in as "freedom fighters" against the USSR.
Reagan said that Burnham's ideas on liberation "profoundly affected the way America views itself and the
world," adding, "I owe [Burnham] a personal debt, because throughout the years of traveling on the
mashed-potato circuit I have quoted [him] widely." Reagan may not have known Burnham's theories were
based on his work on projects that enlisted many Nazi collaborators, but it seems that Reagan's CIA Director
Casey or former CIA Director, Vice President George Bush, would have informed him.
At a May 9, 1984 press conference, Simon Wiesenthal said, "Nazi criminals were the principal beneficiaries of
the Cold War." The cold war mentality, hyped by Reinhard Gehlen and other Nazis, became the shelter for tens
of thousands of Nazi criminals. Helping the far right in this country to promote cold war hysteria became the
Nazi war criminals "reason for being." As Christopher Simpson says, the cold war became those criminals'
means "to avoid responsibility for the murders they had committed."
Journalist Seymour Hersh says Christopher Simpson's BLOWBACK is "the ultimate book about the worst
kind of cold war thinking, in which some of our most respected statesmen made shameful decisions that they
mistakenly believed to be justified." To this day, says Simpson, the U.S. intelligence agencies hide the scope of
their post-World War II collaboration with Nazi criminals.
Are Republicans like George H. W. Bush, Oliver North, and Jesse Helms, aware they have been assisted by
Nazi collaborators? Bush once worked for the CIA and should have known about the nature of the Nazis in his
'88 campaign. No doubt he knows the history of Nazi/CIA collaboration. Whether or not Bush knew of the
fascists' involvement in his campaign, the Republican Party should have done a far better screening job. One
thing is certain: The intelligence agencies know the scope and extent of Nazi involvement with the political
right in this country. It is a shame they keep it hidden from the majority of the American people.

The Middle East Conflict- Has it Been Engineered by Extremist Rightwing Christians and Zionists Hoping to "Force" the "Rapture"?

Weather Warfare:A New World Order weapon could trigger climate change
MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY
(towardfreedom.com)
The important debate on global warming proceeding under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change. In addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the world's climate can now be modified by a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." In fact, both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the world's weather.
In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of "Star Wars," otherwise known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability to potentially trigger floods, droughts, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
While there is no evidence that this deadly technology has been used yet, surely the UN should be addressing the issue of "environmental warfare" alongside the debate on the climatic impacts of greenhouse gases. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilizing the agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.
Owning the Weather
Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use has never been explicitly part of the UN agenda on climate change. Neither the official delegations nor the environmental action groups participating in the November 2000 Hague Conference on Climate Change (CO6) raised the broad issue of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification techniques" (ENMOD) as relevant to an understanding of climate change.
The clash between official negotiators, environmentalists, and US business lobbies has centered on Washington's outright refusal to abide by commitments on carbon dioxide reduction targets under the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The protocol calls for nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent to become effective between 2008 and 2012. (For details, go to www.globalwarming.net/gw11.html.) Yet, the impacts of military technologies on the world's climate aren't an object of discussion or concern. Narrowly confined to greenhouse gases, the ongoing debate on climate change serves Washington's strategic and defense objectives.
World-renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirms that "US military scientists are working on weather systems as a potential weapon." As The Times of London reported on November 23, 2000, "The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods."
In the 1970s, former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted in his book Between Two Ages, "Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised ... . Techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm."
Marc Filterman, a former French military officer, has outlined several types of "unconventional weapons" using radio frequencies. According to a 1999 report in Intelligence Newsletter, he refers directly to "weather war," indicating that the US and the Soviet Union had already "mastered the know-how needed to unleash sudden climate changes (hurricanes, drought) in the early 1980s." These technologies make it "possible to trigger atmospheric disturbances by using Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radar."
A simulation study of future defense "scenarios," described in a report by the Air University of the US Air Force, calls for "US aerospace forces to Ôown the weather' by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. In the US, weather modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels."
Bombarding the Atmosphere
Based in Gokoma, Alaska, and jointly managed by the US Air Force and Navy, HAARP is part of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry under the SDI. Operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, it constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere."
In The Military's Pandora's Box, Dr. Nicholas Begich, a scientist actively involved in the campaign against HAARP, describes it as "a super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere (upper layer of the atmosphere) by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything - living and dead."
Bertell depicts HAARP as "a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet."
Although presented as a program of scientific and academic research, Begich notes that US military documents suggest HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." Without explicitly referring to the program, the Air University study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar.
According to Bertell, HAARP is part of an integrated weapons system with potentially devastating environmental consequences. "It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere," she notes. "It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction, which is separately being planned by the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature."
The military implications of combining these projects are alarming. The ability of the HAARP/Spacelab/rocket combination to deliver very large amounts of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, is frightening. The project, adds Bertell, is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer.
In addition to weather manipulation, HAARP has a number of related uses. According to Begich, "HAARP could contribute to climate change by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency rays. Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could also affect people's brains, and effects on tectonic movements cannot be ruled out."
More generally, it has the ability to modify the world's electro-magnetic field. As Don Herskovitz explained in the August 1993 issue of the Journal of Electronic Defense, it's part of an arsenal of "electronic weapons" which US military researchers consider a "gentler and kinder warfare." According to Herskovitz, "electronic warfare" is defined by the US Department of Defense as "military action involving the use of electromagnetic energy."
Avoiding the Issues
According to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, "States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." In addition, an international convention ratified by the UN General Assembly in 1977 bans "military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects."
Both the US and the Soviet Union were signatories to the convention, which defines "environmental modification techniques" as referring to any technique for changing - through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes - "the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere or of outer space." Yet, the UN, disregarding the 1977 environmental modification convention as well as its own charter, has decided to exclude climatic changes resulting from military programs from its agenda.
Responding to a report of Maj Britt Theorin, Swedish member of the European Parliament and a longtime peace advocate, the parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy held public hearings on the HAARP program in February 1998. The committee's subsequent Motion for Resolution, submitted in January 1999, "considers HAARP by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body; [the Committee] regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to give evidence to the public hearing into the environmental and public risks [of] the HAARP program."
The committee's request to draw up a "Green Paper" on "the environmental impacts of military activities," however, was casually dismissed on the grounds that the European Commission lacks the required jurisdiction to delve into "the links between environment and defense." In short, Brussels was anxious to avoid a showdown with Washington.
Fully operational
HAARP is part of the weapons arsenal of the New World Order under SDI. From military command points in the US, entire national economies could potentially be destabilized through climatic manipulations. More important, the latter can be implemented without the knowledge of the enemy, at minimal cost, and without engaging military personnel and equipment as in a conventional war.
To advance US economic and strategic interests, for example, it could be used to selectively modify climate in different parts of the world, resulting in the destabilization of agricultural and ecological systems. It's also worth noting that the US Department of Defense has allocated substantial resources to the development of intelligence and monitoring systems on weather changes.
While there's no concrete evidence that HAARP has been used, scientific findings suggest that it's fully operational. If so, it could potentially be applied by the US military to selectively modify the climate of an "unfriendly nation" or "rogue state" with a view to destabilizing its national economy.
Agricultural systems in both developed and developing countries are already in crisis as a result of New World Order policies such as market deregulation and commodity dumping. Amply documented, IMF and World Bank "economic medicine" imposed on the Third World and the countries of the former Soviet bloc has largely contributed to the destabilization of domestic agriculture. In turn, the provisions of the World Trade Organization have supported the interests of a handful of Western agri-biotech conglomerates in their quest to impose genetically modified seeds on farmers throughout the world.
In that context, climatic manipulations under the HAARP program (whether accidental or deliberate) would inevitably exacerbate these changes by weakening national economies, destroying infrastructure, and potentially triggering the bankruptcy of farmers over vast areas. Surely, national governments and the UN should address the possible consequences of this and other "non-lethal weapons" on climate change.
Michel Chossudovsky teaches economics at the University of Ottawa and is the author of The Globalization of Poverty

Brits Plan to Break Altitude Balloon Flight Record
May 6, 2002
(Source: BBC)
Two British flyers plan to build the largest balloon ever and fly it to a new altitude record this summer. Colin Prescot and Andy Elson, will attempt to set a new world balloon altitude record in July.
They are aiming to reach an altitude of 132,000 feet in the largest helium balloon ever constructed. Their QinetiQ 1 balloon will be 400 times the size of a typical hot-air balloon and as tall as the Empire State Building.
To assist them in their attempt, Russian space suit manufacturer Zvezda, has been advising them and building their suits. The Russian spacesuits are tailored for the complicated environments the mission will encounter including sun and shade, dramatic changes in temperature and the need for flexibility.
The ascent will be made with an open flight deck and their suits will have to protect them from the elements. The whole trip is expected to last 12 hours.

The spacesuits make the mission possible, by supplying pure oxygen to breathe and maintaining a constant pressure. The crew will remain seated all the time. The base of the platform includes crumple zones to absorb the impact of a normal or emergency landing, with Andy and Colin protected above.
Above about 40,000 feet a pressurized suit is essential. At that altitude breathing 100% oxygen is no longer sufficient to support life, because the partial pressure in the lungs is low enough that the body cannot absorb enough of the gas to maintain its functions. An individual would quickly suffer from hypoxia and ultimately die.
At about 63,000 feet, the ambient air pressure is so low, theoretically blood will boil. Prescot and Elson plan to go almost twice that high.
Dr. Richard Crowther, of QinetiQ, told BBC News Online: "The environment that Andy and Colin will encounter will be similar in terms of atmosphere, temperature and pressure to the surface of Mars."

BOOK BLURB:"The Stargate Conspiracy"-Revealing the truth behind extraterrestrial contact,
military intelligence and the mysteries of Ancient Egypt.
(by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince)
The Stargate Conspiracy exposes the most insidious, disturbing - and successful - mass manipulation of our times. Designed to bring us, hearts, minds and souls under the total control of the conspirators, this sinister programme has ruthlessly exploiting our New Age cravings for signs and wonders - even hijacking the predicted return of ancient gods.
The Conspiracy...
Its central focus is the belief that the gods of the ancient world were extraterrestrials who created and civilised the human race, that they're back - and that, communicating through special chosen ones, they are actively directing the way we think.
However, The Stargate Conspiracy reveals that this romantic and exciting scenario was in fact the brainchild of the West's most powerful intellectual agencies. Designed to become a new religion for the 21st century, its real purpose is political - to make us easier to control.
Centred on the search for lost secrets of the pyramid builders, this extraordinary true story reveals the links between US scientific intelligence agencies, Mars and ancient Egypt. For almost 50 years, like Frankenstein's monster, this conspiracy has been put together from cultish - but astonishingly powerful - belief systems, culminating in the emergence of a new fundamentalism that is gathering strength by feeding on Millennium fever.
Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince reveal the secret agenda that unites apparently independent authors and researchers - including top names with millions of readers worldwide - and which is targeted to all of us. The Stargate Conspiracy reveals that even the genuine mysteries of the gods themselves have been hijacked by powerful cabals - which include top industrialists, politicians, scientists and intelligence agencies such as MI5 and the CIA - in order to fulfill their secret agenda. At the heart of this conspiracy is the belief that the ancient Egyptian gods were - and are - extra terrestrial beings, that certain key people are in contact with them, and that they are about to return through the 'stargate' between our world and theirs.
Are we prepared for the imminent return of the gods? And will we be expected unquestioningly to accept the conspirators as our spokesmen? Or is this an exercise in mass manipulation designed to make us support the conspirators? As they calculatedly whip up Millennium fever, triumphantly persuading us that they alone know how to talk to the gods, this book serves as a serious warning to mankind.
The Main Points:
*Over the last few years, the public has come to accept specific ideas about the 'message' of ancient Egypt, largely due to the works of certain high-profile authors. But we demonstrate that many of the principles of this 'New Egyptology' are not only based on false-premises, but have also been used by others as part of a secret long-term agenda.
*We reveal the shadowy presence of US government agencies behind the current interest in the Giza plateau.
*An essential part of this plot is the alleged link between ancient Egypt and a lost civilisation on Mars, based on the discovery of supposedly artificial features on that planet. We show that this view is seriously flawed, and that the intelligence agencies are actively encouraging the promotion of a meaningful Egypt-Mars connection.
*We show that key people in the promotion of the 'message' of Egypt and Mars are involved in a cultish cabal who believes they are in direct contact with extraterrestrial intelligences from Sirius who claim to be the gods of ancient Egypt. This group, which has existed for almost fifty years, has included many famous names, multimillionaires and cutting-edge scientists. It has also, disturbingly, had a profound influence on the decision-making of certain world leaders...
*The Stargate Conspiracy reveals that this group was in fact cynically and deliberately manipulated from the first by the CIA - and that this programme is ongoing.
*We trace the inspiration for the conspiracy back to the ideology of certain extreme right-wing occult movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
*We conclude that the conspirators are deliberately harnessing the most profound and cherished beliefs of today's society - from fundamentalist Christianity and the 'message' of ancient civilisations to the alien abduction scenario - to create a new, more widely acceptable religion for the post-Millennial West. We reveal that, underlying the apparently acceptable tenets of this religion is an insidious right-wing ideology., the true danger lurking inside the Trojan Horse of its New Age image.
*However, even though the manipulators have abused and hijacked the ancient Egyptian mysteries for their own ends, that does not mean that there are no such mysteries.
We reveal the ground-breaking research that provides a plausible answer to the most enduring questions about the ancient Egyptians' achievements and beliefs - and, explosively, uncover the true nature of the gods themselves... "

Fans love Clones; critics are not so hot (contains spoilers)
"This second generation of Star Wars characters all sound like Keanu Reeves delivering a soliloquy from Hamlet. Alas, poor Star Wars, I knew it well."

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