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The center’s officials who hired and renewed Garcia Covarrubias’ contracts say he was a highly qualified professor and minimize the allegations against him. “We made inquiries with people in the region, in Chile and so forth, and were never given anything negative about Jaime,” said Margaret Daly Hayes, the center’s first director. “He was vetted by the U.S. government, by the (U.S.) Embassy. They obviously didn’t have anything either or he wouldn’t have been hired.”McClatchy, however, located one of his alleged victims, who described being brutalized by him. “They submitted us to torture, twice a day. We were submerged in feces,” Herman Carrasco, who’s now a real estate agent, told McClatchy in Chile. “They stuck rifle barrels in our anuses.”According to Carrasco, the torture unfolded in October and November 1973 – lorded over by the horsewhip-wielding Garcia Covarrubias – and included electric shock administered to eyelids, genitals and other sensitive areas of the body.“He was the person who tortured us, with his face shown,” said Carrasco, who added that he’d known Garcia Covarrubias from social events before the coup. “He forced us into sexual acts, which shows that besides ferocious cruelty there was a level of psychopathic behavior.”

Despite very graphic torture accusations against Garcia Covarrubias, U.S. officials are rallying behind him.

As the center supported Garcia Covarrubias, it pushed out Andersen in retaliation, the former communications chief said.Last September, Andersen filed a complaint with the Pentagon’s inspector general, with the support of then-Sen. Carl Levin. D-Mich. An inspector general spokeswoman declined to comment. “It’s shameful that at a time the U.S. prestige as a democracy is under attack, that the National Defense University could be playing footsie with a former state terrorism agent,” Andersen said. The details uncovered about Garcia Covarrubias have prompted demands from several members of Congress for a Pentagon accounting of how he was hired and retained his job.“The American people deserve to know that adequate vetting of such individuals would be routine,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., author of the “ Leahy Law,” which restricts U.S. assistance to foreign security forces that violate human rights.

While most of the concerns focused on Garcia Covarrubias, the center also took heat in 2006 for hiring Colombian Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle. As army commander, he turned the tables in a decades-old guerrilla war while simultaneously crushing drug cartels. Ospina Ovalle left the center last year and took a post at another National Defense University school.He was hired at the request of the Colombian government and was popular with U.S. military leaders, recalls Downie, the center’s director at the time. “The Colombians wanted, for his own safety, to get him out of Colombia,” said Downie. “This is a guy we certainly wanted to have as a professor.”Human rights groups, however, criticized the general’s hiring and continued employment at the National Defense University. They point to his earlier command in Antioquia province, where right-wing paramilitaries ran roughshod and were linked to the military.“Antioquia in the late 1990s . . . is less than one degree of separation from working with the paramilitaries,” said Adam Isacson, a senior associate specializing in military matters for the Washington Office on Latin America. “If he has not, it’s some miracle that he managed to be the one clean officer.”“Having officers like that, the implicit message is that human rights takes a backseat,” said Isacson.

One can only measure success or failure by reference to what one is trying achieve. So, in practice, what have U.S. objectives been? Are these objectives still valid? If we’ve failed to advance them, what went wrong? What must we do now to have a better chance of success? Our objectives in the Middle East have not changed much over the course of the past half century or more. We have sought to 1. Gain acceptance and security for a Jewish homeland from the other states and peoples of the region; 2. Ensure the uninterrupted availability of the region’s energy supplies to sustain global and U.S. security and prosperity; 3. Preserve our ability to transit the region so as to be able to project power around the world; 4. Prevent the rise of a regional hegemon or the deployment of weapons of mass destruction that might threaten any or all of these first three objectives; 5. Maximize profitable commerce; and 6. Promote stability while enhancing respect for human rights and progress toward constitutional democracy. Let’s briefly review what’s happened with respect to each of these objectives. I will not mince words.

Israel has come to enjoy military supremacy but it remains excluded from most participation in its region’s political, economic, and cultural life. In the 67 years since the Jewish state was proclaimed, Israel has not made a single friend in the Middle East, where it continues to be regarded as an illegitimate legacy of Western imperialism engaged in racist removal of the indigenous population. International support for Israel is down to the United States and a few of the former colonial powers that originally imposed the Zionist project on the Arabs under Sykes-Picot and the related Balfour Declaration. The two-state solution has expired as a physical or political possibility. There is no longer any peace process to distract global attention from Israel’s maltreatment of its captive Arab populations. After years of deference to American diplomacy, the Palestinians are about to challenge the legality of Israel’s cruelties to them in the International Criminal Court and other venues in which Americans have no veto, are not present, or cannot protect the Jewish state from the consequences of its own behavior as we have always been able to do in the past. Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza are fueling a drive to boycott its products, disinvest in its companies, and sanction its political and cultural elite. These trends are the very opposite of what the United States has attempted to achieve for Israel.

In a stunning demonstration of his country’s most famous renewable resource — chutzpah — Israel’s Prime Minister chose this very moment to make America the main issue in his reelection campaign while simultaneously transforming Israel into a partisan issue in the United States. This is the very opposite of a sound survival strategy for Israel. Uncertainties about their country’s future are leading many Israelis to emigrate, not just to America but to Europe. This should disturb not just Israelis but Americans, if only because of the enormous investment we have made in attempts to gain a secure place for Israel in its region and the world. The Palestinians have been silent about Mr. Netanyahu’s recent political maneuvers. Evidently, they recall Napoleon’s adage that one should never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. This brings me to an awkward but transcendently important issue. Israel was established as a haven from anti-Semitism — Jew hatred — in Europe, a disease of nationalism and Christian culture that culminated in the Holocaust. Israel’s creation was a relief for European Jews but a disaster for the Arabs of Palestine, who were either ethnically cleansed by European Jewish settlers or subjugated, or both.  But the birth of Israel also proved tragic for Jews throughout the Middle East — the Mizrahim. In a nasty irony, the implementation of Zionism in the Holy Land led to the introduction of European-style anti-Semitism — including its classic Christian libels on Jews — to the region, dividing Arab Jews from their Muslim neighbors as never before and compelling them to join European Jews in taking refuge in Israel amidst outrage over the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland. Now, in a further irony, Israel’s pogroms and other injustices to the Muslim and Christian Arabs over whom it rules are leading not just to a rebirth of anti-Semitism in Europe but to its globalization.

The late King `Abdullah of Saudi Arabia engineered a reversal of decades of Arab rejectionism at Beirut in 2002. He brought all Arab countries and later all 57 Muslim countries to agree to normalize relations with Israel if it did a deal — any deal — with the Palestinians that the latter could accept. Israel spurned the offer. Its working assumption seems to be that it does not need peace with its neighbors as long as it can bomb and strafe them. Proceeding on this basis is not just a bad bet, it is one that is dividing Israel from the world, including Jews outside Israel. This does not look like a story with a happy ending. It’s hard to avoid the thought that Zionism is turning out to be bad for the Jews. If so, given the American investment in it, it will also have turned out to be bad for America. The political costs to America of support for Israel are steadily rising. We must find a way to divert Israel from the largely self-engineered isolation into which it is driving itself, while repairing our own increasing international ostracism on issues related to Israel.  

Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s recent public hysteria about Iran and his efforts to demonize it, Israel has traditionally seen Iran’s rivalry with the Arabs as a strategic asset. It had a very cooperative relationship with the Shah. Neither Israelis nor Arabs have forgotten the strategic logic that produced Israel's entente with Iran. Israel is very much on Daesh’s list of targets, as is Iran. For now, however, Israel’s main concern is the possible loss of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Many years ago, Israel actually did what it now accuses Iran of planning to do. It clandestinely developed nuclear weapons while denying to us and others that it was doing so. Unlike Iran, Israel has not adhered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or subjected its nuclear facilities to international inspection. It has expressed no interest in proposals for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. It sees its ability to bring on nuclear Armageddon as the ultimate guarantee of its existence.

To many, Israel now seems to have acquired the obnoxious habit of biting the American hand that has fed it for so long. The Palestinians have despaired of American support for their self-determination. They are reaching out to the international community in ways that deliberately bypass the United States. Random acts of violence herald mayhem in the Holy Land. Daesh has proclaimed the objective of erasing the Sykes-Picot borders and the states within them. It has already expunged the border between Iraq and Syria. It is at work in Lebanon and has set its sights on Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Lebanon, under Saudi influence, has turned to France rather than America for support. Hezbollah has intervened militarily in Iraq and Syria, both of whose governments are close to Iran. Egypt and Turkey have distanced themselves from the United States as well as from each other. Russia is back as a regional actor and arms supplier. The Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey now separately intervene in Libya, Syria, and Iraq without reference to American policy or views. Iran is the dominant influence in Iraq, Syria, parts of Lebanon, and now Yemen. It has boots on the ground in Iraq. And now Saudi Arabia seems to be organizing a coalition that will manage its own nuclear deterrence and military balancing of Ir

To describe this as out of control is hardly adequate. What are we to do about it? Perhaps we should start by recalling the first law of holes — “when stuck in one, stop digging.” It appears that “don’t just sit there, bomb something” isn’t much of a strategy. When he was asked last summer what our strategy for dealing with Daesh was, President Obama replied, “We don’t yet have one.” He was widely derided for that. He should have been praised for making the novel suggestion that before Washington acts, it should first think through what it hopes to accomplish and how best to do it. Sunzi once observed that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." America’s noisy but strategy-free approach to the Middle East has proven him right. Again the starting point must be what we are trying to accomplish. Strategy is "the discipline of achieving desired ends through the most efficient use of available means" [John Lewis Gaddis].Our desired ends with respect to the Middle East are not in doubt. They have been and remain to gain an accepted and therefore secure place for Israel there; to keep the region's oil and gas coming at reasonable prices; to be able to pass through the area at will; to head off challenges to these interests; to do profitable business in the markets of the Middle East; and to promote stability amidst the expansion of liberty in its countries. Judging by results, we have been doing a lot wrong. Two related problems in our overall approach need correction. They are “enablement” and the creation of “moral hazard.” Both are fall-out from  relationships of codependency.

Enablement occurs when one party to a relationship indulges or supports and thereby enables another party’s dysfunctional behavior. A familiar example from ordinary life is giving money to a drunk or a drug addict or ignoring, explaining away, or defending their subsequent self-destructive behavior.  Moral hazard is the condition that obtains when one party is emboldened to take risks it would not otherwise take because it knows another party will shoulder the consequences and bear the costs of failure. The U.S.-Israel relationship has evolved to exemplify codependency. It now embodies both enablement and moral hazard. U.S. support for Israel is unconditional.  Israel has therefore had no need to cultivate relations with others in the Middle East, to declare its borders, or to choose peace over continued expansion into formerly Arab lands. Confidence in U.S. backing enables Israel to do whatever it likes to the Palestinians and its neighbors without having to worry about the consequences. Israel is now a rich country, but the United States continues to subsidize it with cash transfers and other fiscal privileges. The Jewish state is the most powerful country in the Middle East. It can launch attacks on its neighbors, confident that it will be resupplied by the United States. Its use of U.S. weapons in ways that violate both U.S. and international law goes unrebuked. 41 American vetoes in the United Nations Security Council have exempted Israel from censure and international law. We enable it to defy the expressed will of the international community, including, ironically, our own.

We Americans are facilitating Israel's indulgence in denial and avoidance of the choices it must make if it is not to jeopardize its long-term existence as a state in the Middle East. The biggest contribution we could now make to Israel's longevity would be to ration our support for it, so as to cause it to rethink and reform its often self-destructive behavior. Such peace as Israel now enjoys with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians is the direct result of tough love of this kind by earlier American administrations. We Americans cannot save Israel from itself, but we can avoid killing it with uncritical kindness. We should support Israel when it makes sense to do so and it needs our support on specific issues, but not otherwise. Israel is placing itself and American interests in jeopardy. We need to discuss how to reverse this dynamic.

Moral hazard has also been a major problem in our relationship with our Arab partners. Why should they play an active role in countering the threat to them they perceive from Iran, if they can get America to do this for them? Similarly, why should any Muslim country rearrange its priorities to deal with Muslim renegades like Daesh when it can count on America to act for it? If America thinks it must lead, why not let it do so? But responsible foreign and defense policies begin with self-help, not outsourcing of military risks. The United States has the power-projection and war-fighting capabilities to back a Saudi-led coalition effort against Daesh. The Saudis have the religious and political credibility, leadership credentials, and diplomatic connections to organize such an effort. We do not. Since this century began, America has administered multiple disappointments to its allies and friends in the Middle East, while empowering their and our adversaries. Unlike the Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey, Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran. Given our non-Muslim identity, solidarity with Israel, and recent history in the Fertile Crescent, the United States cannot hope to unite the region’s Muslims against Daesh.  Daesh is an insurgency that claims to exemplify Islam as well as a governing structure and an armed force. A coalition led by inhibited foreign forces, built on papered-over differences, and embodying hedged commitments will not defeat such an insurgency with or without boots on the ground.

When elections have yielded governments whose policies we oppose, we have not hesitated to conspire with their opponents to overthrow them. But the results of our efforts to coerce political change in the Middle East are not just failures but catastrophic failures. Our policies have nowhere produced democracy. They have instead contrived the destabilization of societies, the kindling of religious warfare, and the installation of dictatorships contemptuous of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. Frankly, we have done a lot better at selling things, including armaments, to the region than we have at transplanting the ideals of the Atlantic Enlightenment there. The region’s autocrats cooperate with us to secure our protection, and they get it. When they are nonetheless overthrown, the result is not democracy or the rule of law but socio-political collapse and the emergence of  a Hobbesian state of nature in which religious and ethnic communities, families, and individuals are able to feel safe only when they are armed and have the drop on each other. Where we have engineered or attempted to engineer regime change, violent politics, partition, and ethno-religious cleansing have everywhere succeeded unjust but tranquil order. One result of our bungled interventions in Iraq and Syria is the rise of Daesh. This is yet another illustration that, in our efforts to do good in the Middle East, we have violated the principle that one should first do no harm.

Americans used to believe that we could best lead by example. We and those in the Middle East seeking nonviolent change would all be better off if America returned to that tradition and forswore ideologically motivated hectoring and intervention. No one willingly follows a wagging finger. Despite our unparalleled ability to use force against foreigners, the best way to inspire them to emulate us remains showing them that we have our act together. At the moment, we do not. In the end, to cure the dysfunction in our policies toward the Middle East, it comes down to this. We must cure the dysfunction and venality of our politics. If we cannot, we have no business trying to use an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver to fix things one-third of the way around the world. That doesn’t work well under the best of circumstances. But when the country wielding the screwdriver has very little idea what it’s doing, it really screws things up.

Insurance (most likely the paperwork of Obamacare) contributed 8,500 jobs. As so few can purchase homes, “real estate rental and leasing” contributed 8,500 jobs. Professional and business services contributed 67,000 jobs, but 57% of these jobs were in employment services, temporary help services, and services to buildings and dwellings.   That old standby, education and health services, accounted for 33,700 jobs consisting mainly of ambulatory health care services jobs and social assistance jobs of which three-quarters are in child day care services.   The other old standby, waitresses and bartenders, gave us 32,800 jobs, and amusements, gambling, and recreation gave us 3,500 jobs.

In other words, the economy did not gain 288,000 new jobs last month.   But let’s assume the economy did gain 288,000 jobs and exam where the claimed jobs are reported to be. Of the alleged 288,000 new jobs, 16,000, or 5.5 percent are in manufacturing, which is not very promising for engineers and blue collar workers.  Growth in goods producing jobs has almost disappeared from the US economy.  As explained below, to alter this problem the government is going to change definitions in order to artificially inflate manufacturing jobs. In June private services account for 82 percent of the supposed new jobs.  The jobs are found mainly in non-tradable domestic services that pay little and cannot be exported to help to close the large US trade deficit. Wholesale and retail trade account for 55,300 jobs.  Do you believe sales are this strong  when retailers are closing stores and when shopping malls are closing?

Another indication that there has been no recovery is that Sentier Research’s index of real median household income continued to decline for two years after the alleged recovery began in June 2009.   There has been a slight upturn in real median household income since June 2011, but income remains far below the pre-recession level.   The Birth-Death model adds an average of 62,000 jobs to the reported payroll jobs numbers each month. This arbitrary boost to the payroll jobs numbers is in addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ underlying assumption that unreported jobs lost to business failures are matched by unreported new jobs from new business startups, an assumption that does not well fit an economy that fell into recession and is unable to recover.   John Williams concludes that in current BLS reporting, “the aggregate average overstatement of employment change easily exceeds 200,000 jobs per month.”

Local government, principally education, gave us 22,000 jobs.   So, where are the jobs for university graduates?  They are practically non-existent. Think of all the MBAs, but June had only 2,300 jobs for management of companies and enterprises. Think of the struggle to get into law and medical schools.  There’s no job payoff. June had jobs for 1,200 in legal services, which includes receptionists and para-legals.  Where are all the law school graduates finding jobs? Offices of physicians (mainly people who fill out the mandated paperwork and comply with all the regulations, which have multiplied under ObamaCare) hired 4,000 people.  Outpatient care centers hired 700 people.  Nursing care facilities hired 2,400 people.  So where are the jobs for the medical school graduates? Aside from all the exaggerations in the jobs numbers of which ShadowStats.com has informed us, just taking the jobs as reported, what kind of economy do these jobs indicate:  a superpower whose pretensions are to exercise hegemony over the world or an economy in which opportunities are disappearing and incomes are falling?

Do you think that this jobs picture would be the same if the government in Washington cared about you instead of the mega-rich? Some interesting numbers can be calculated from table A.9 in the BLS press release.  John Williams advises that the BLS is inconsistent in the methods it uses to tabulate the data in table A.9 and that the data is also afflicted by seasonal adjustment problems.  However, as the unemployment rate and payroll jobs are reported regardless of their problems, we can also report the BLS finding that in June 523,000 full-time jobs disappeared and 800,000 part time jobs appeared. Here, perhaps, we have yet another downside of the misnamed Obama “Affordable Care Act.”  Employers are terminating full-time employment and replacing the jobs with part-time employment in order to come in under the 50-person full time employment that makes employers responsible for fringe benefits such as health care. Americans are already experiencing difficulties making ends meet, despite the alleged “recovery.”  If yet another half million Americans have been forced onto part-time pay with consequent loss of health care and other benefits, consumer demand is further compressed, with the consequence, unless hidden by statistical trickery, of a 2nd quarter negative GDP and thus officially the reappearance of recession.

What will the government do if a recession cannot be hidden?  If years of unprecedented money printing and Keynesian fiscal deficits have not brought recovery, what will bring recovery?  How far down will US living standards fall for the 99% in order that the 1% can become ever more mega-rich while Washington wastes our diminishing substance exercising hegemony over the world? Just as Washington lied to you about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Waco, and any number of false flag or nonexistent attacks such as Tonkin Gulf, Washington lies to you about jobs and economic recovery.  Don’t believe the spin that you are unemployed because you are shiftless and prefer government handouts to work.  The government does not want you to know that you are unemployed because the corporations offshored American jobs to foreigners and because economic policy only serves the oversized banks and the one percent. Just as the jobs and inflation numbers are rigged and the financial markets are rigged, the corrupt Obama regime is now planning to rig US manufacturing and trade statistics in order to bury all evidence of offshoring’s adverse impact on our economy.

The federal governments Economic Classification Policy Committee has come up with a proposal to redefine fact as fantasy in order to hide offshoring’s contribution to the US trade deficit, artificially inflate the number of US manufacturing jobs, and redefine foreign-made manufactured products as US manufactured products.  For example, Apple iPhones made in China and sold in Europe would be reported as a US export of manufactured goods. Read Ben Beachy’s important report on this blatant statistical fraud in CounterPunch’s July 4th weekend edition: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/04/we-didnt-offshore-manufacturing/ China will not agree that the Apple brand name means that the phones are not Chinese production. If the Obama regime succeeds with this fraud, the iPhones would be counted twice, once by China and once by the US, and the double-counting would exaggerate world GDP. For years I have exposed the absurd claim that offshoring is merely the operation of free trade, and I have exposed the incompetent studies by such as Michael Porter at Harvard and Matthew Slaughter at Dartmouth that claimed to prove that the US was benefitting from offshoring its manufacturing.  My book published in 2012 in Germany and in 2013 in the US, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, proves that offshoring has dismantled the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an opportunity society and is responsible for the decline in US economic growth. The lost jobs and decline in the middle class has contributed to the rise in income inequality, the destruction of tax base for cities and states, and loss of population in America’s once great manufacturing centers.

For the most part economists have turned a blind eye. Economists serve the globalists.  It pays them well. The corruption in present-day America is total. Psychologists and anthropologists serve war and torture. Economists serve globalism and US financial hegemony. Physicists and chemists serve the war industries. Physicists and computer geeks serve NSA. The media serves the government and the corporations. The political parties serve the six powerful private interest groups that rule the country. No one serves truth and liberty. I predict that within ten years truth and liberty will be forbidden words uttered only by “domestic extremists” who are a threat that must be exterminated without due process of law. America has left us.  We now have the tyranny of the Orwellian state that rules, not by the ballot box and Constitution, but by force and propaganda.

The nine Tor directory servers receive especially close monitoring from the NSA's spying software, which states the "goal is to find potential Tor clients connecting to the Tor directory servers." Tor clients linking into the directory servers are also logged."This shows that Tor is working well enough that Tor has become a target for the intelligence services," said Sebastian Hahn, who runs one of the key Tor servers. "For me this means that I will definitely go ahead with the project.”

While the German reporting team has published part of the XKeyscore scripting code, it doesn't say where it comes from. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden would be a logical pick, but security experts are not so sure."I do not believe that this came from the Snowden documents," said security guru Bruce Schneier. "I also don't believe the TAO catalog came from the Snowden documents. I think there's a second leaker out there."If so, the NSA is in for much more scrutiny than it ever expected.

Peter Haisenko’s study is corroborated by the Russian Ministry of Defense which pointed to a Ukrainian Su-25 jet in the flight corridor of the MH17, within proximity of the plane. Ironically, the presence of a military aircraft is also confirmed by a BBC  report conducted at the crash site on July 23. All the eyewitnesses  interviewed by the BBC confirmed the presence of a Ukrainian military aircraft flying within proximity of Malaysian Airlines MH17 at the time that it was shot down: 

Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when … Eyewitness #2: … And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it. Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one. Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands]. BBC Report below

The original BBC Video Report published by BBC Russian Service on July 23, 2014 has since been removed from the BBC archive.  In a bitter irony, The BBC is censoring its own news productions. Media Spin The media is now saying that a missile was indeed fired but it was not the missile that brought down the plane, it was the shrapnel from the missile which punctured the plane and then led to a loss of pressure.  According to Ukraine’s National security spokesman Andriy Lysenko in a contradictory statement, the MH17 aircraft “suffered massive explosive decompression after being hit by a shrapnel missile.”  (See IBT, Australia) In an utterly absurd report, the BBC quoting the official Ukraine statement  says that:

The downed Malaysia Airlines jet in eastern Ukraine suffered an explosive loss of pressure after it was punctured by shrapnel from a missile. They say the information came from the plane’s flight data recorders, which are being analysed by British experts. However, it remains unclear who fired a missile, with pro-Russia rebels and Ukraine blaming each other. Many of the 298 people killed on board flight MH17 were from the Netherlands. Dutch investigators leading the inquiry into the crash have refused to comment on the Ukrainian claims.

The shrapnel marks should be distinguished from the small entry and exit holes “most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile” fired from a military aircraft. These holes could not have been caused by a missile attack as hinted by the MSM. While the MSN is saying that the “shrapnel like holes” can be caused by a missile (see BBC report above), the OSCE has confirmed the existence of what it describes as “machine gun like holes”, without however acknowledging that these cannot be caused by a missile. In this regard, the GSh-302 firing gun operated by an Su-25 is able to fire 3000 rpm which explains the numerous entry and exit holes. According to the findings of Peter Haisenko: If we now consider the armament of a typical SU 25 we learn this: It is equipped with a double-barreled 30-mm gun, type GSh-302 / AO-17A, equipped with: a 250 round magazine of anti-tank incendiary shells and splinter-explosive shells (dum-dum), arranged in alternating order. The cockpit of the MH 017 has evidently been fired at from both sides: the entry and exit holes are found on the same fragment of it’s cockpit segment (op cit)

The accusations directed against Russia including the sanctions regime imposed by Washington are based on a lie. The evidence does not support the official US narrative to the effect that the MH17 was shot down by a BUK missile system operated by the DPR militia.

ust in case the “pivoting to Asia” gang starts harboring funny ideas about the Middle Kingdom as well, China is massively investing in bouncing lasers off satellites; satellite-hitting missiles; silent submarines that surface beside US aircraft carriers without detection; and a made in China anti-missile missile that can hit a reentering satellite moving faster than any ICBM. In a nutshell; Beijing knows the US surface fleet is obsolete - and undefendable. And needless to add, all of these Chinese modernizing developments are proceeding way faster than anything in the US.

Part VII focusses on the history and central role of Al Qaeda as a US intelligence asset. Since the Soviet-Afghan war, US intelligence has supported the formation of various jihadist organizations. An understanding of this history is crucial in refuting the official 9/11 narrative which claims that Al Qaeda, was behind the attacks. Part VIII centers on the life and death of 9/11 “Terror Mastermind” Osama bin Laden, who was recruited by the CIA in the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war. This section also includes an analysis of the mysterious death of Osama bin Laden, allegedly executed by US Navy Seals in a suburb of Islamabad in May 2011. Part  IX  focusses on “False Flags” and the Pentagon’s “Second 9/11″. Part X examines the issue of “Deep Events” with contributions by renowned scholars Peter Dale Scott and Daniele Ganser. Part XI  examines the structure of 9/11 propaganda which consists in “creating” as well “perpetuating” a  “9/11 Legend”. How is this achieved? Incessantly, on a daily basis, Al Qaeda, the alleged 9/11 Mastermind is referred to by the Western media, government officials, members of the US Congress, Wall Street analysts, etc. as an underlying cause of numerous World events. Part XII focusses on the practice of 9/11 Justice directed against the alleged culprits of the 9/11 attacks. The legitimacy of 9/11 propaganda requires fabricating “convincing evidence” and “proof” that those who are accused actually carried out the attacks. Sentencing of Muslims detained in Guantanamo is part of war propaganda. It depicts innocent men who are accused of the 9/11 attacks, based on confessions acquired through systematic torture throughout their detention. Part  XIII focusses on 9/11 Truth.  The objective of 9/11 Truth is to ultimately dismantle the propaganda apparatus which is manipulating the human mindset. The 9/11 Reader concludes with a retrospective view of 9/11 ten years later.

PART  I Timeline: What Happened on the Morning of September 11, 2001 Nothing Urgent: The Curious Lack of Military Action on the Morning of September. 11, 2001 - by George Szamuely – 2012-08-12 Political Deception: The Missing Link behind 9-11 - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2002-06-20 On the morning of September 11, Pakistan’s Chief Spy General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged “money-man” behind the 9-11 hijackers, was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence committees. 9/11 Contradictions: Bush in the Classroom - by Dr. David Ray Griffin – 2008-04-04 9/11 Contradictions: When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker? - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-04-24 VIDEO: Pilots For 9/11 Truth: Intercepted Don’t miss this important documentary, now on GRTV - 2012-05-16

PART II What Happened on the Planes “United 93″: What Happened on the Planes? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-05-01   Phone Calls from the 9/11 Airliners Response to Questions Evoked by My Fifth Estate Interview - by Prof David Ray Griffin – 2010-01-12 Given the cell phone technology available in 2001, cell phone calls from airliners at altitudes of more than a few thousand feet, were virtually impossible Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-04-01 Ted Olson’s report was very important. It provided apparent “evidence” that American 77 had struck the Pentagon.

PART III What Caused the Collapse of The WTC Buildings and the Pentagon? The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True - by Dr. David Ray Griffin – 2006-01-29 The official theory about the Twin Towers says that they collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires Evidence Refutes the Official 9/11 Investigation: The Scientific Forensic Facts - by Richard Gage, Gregg Roberts – 2010-10-13 VIDEO: Controlled Demolitions Caused the Collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings on September 11, 2001 - by Richard Gage – 2009-09-20 VIDEO: 9/11: The Myth and The Reality Now on GRTV - by Prof. David Ray Griffin – 2011-08-30 Undisputed Facts Point to the Controlled Demolition of WTC 7 - by Richard Gage – 2008-03-28 VIDEO: 9/11 Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out See the trailer for this ground-breaking film on GRTV - 2011-08-03 9/11: “Honest Mistake” or BBC Foreknowledge of Collapse of WTC 7? Jane Standley Breaks Her Silence - by James Higham – 2011-08-18 The Collapse of WTC Building Seven. Interview. Comment by Elizabeth Woodworth - by David Ray Griffin – 2009-10-17   Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in Plain Sight: The 9/11 “Official Story” and the Collapse of WTC Building Seven - by Prof David Ray Griffin – 2010-05-30 Besides omitting and otherwise falsifying evidence, NIST also committed the type of scientific fraud called fabrication, which means simply “making up results.” VIDEO; Firefighters’ Analysis of the 9/11 Attacks Refutes the Official Report - by Erik Lawyer – 2012-08-27 VIDEO: Pentagon Admits More 9/11 Remains Dumped in Landfill - by James Corbett – 2012-03-01 The Pentagon revealed that some of the unidentifiable remains from victims at the Pentagon and Shanksville sites on September 11, 2001 were disposed of in a landfill. 9/11: The Attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 The Official Version Amounts to an Enormous Lie - by Thierry Meyssan – 2012-08-16

PART IV Lies and Fabrications: The 9/11 Commission Report A National Disgrace: A Review of the 9/11 Commission Report - by David Ray Griffin – 2005-03-24 The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571 Page Lie - by Dr. David Ray Griffin – 2005-09-08 September 11, 2001: 21 Reasons to Question the Official Story about 9/11 - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-09-11 911 “Conspiracy Theorists” Vindicated: Pentagon deliberately misled Public Opinion Military officials made false statements to Congress and to the 911 Commission - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-08-02 The 9/11 Commission’s Incredible Tales Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93 - by Prof. David Ray Griffin – 2005-12-13 9/11 and the War on Terror: Polls Show What People Think 10 Years Later - by Washington’s Blog – 2011-09-10

PART  V Foreknowledge of 9/11   VIDEO: The SECRET SERVICE ON 9/11: What did the Government Know? Learn more on this week’s GRTV Feature Interview - by Kevin Ryan, James Corbett – 2012-04-10 9/11 Foreknowledge and “Intelligence Failures”: “Revealing the Lies” on 9/11 Perpetuates the “Big Lie” - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-14 “Foreknowledge” and “Failure to act” upholds the notion that the terrorist attacks (“act of war”) “waged by Muslims against America” are real, when all the facts and findings point towards coverup and complicity at the highest levels of the US government. Foreknowledge of 9/11 by Western Intelligence Agencies - by Michael C. Ruppert – 2012-08-21

PART XII Post 9/11 “Justice” IRAN ACCUSED OF BEING BEHIND 9/11 ATTACKS. U.S. Court Judgment, December 2011 (Havlish v. Iran) - by Julie Lévesque – 2012-05-11 U.S. Court Judgment, December 2011 (Havlish v. Iran) “American Justice”: The Targeted Assassination of Osama Bin Laden Extrajudicial executions are unlawful - by Prof. Marjorie Cohn – 2011-05-10 ALLEGED “MASTERMIND” OF 9/11 ON TRIAL IN GUANTANAMO: Military Tribunals proceed Despite Evidence of Torture - by Tom Carter – 2012-05-30 U.S. Military Drugged Detainees to Obtain FALSE Confessions Self-confessed 9/11 “mastermind” falsely confessed to crimes he didn’t commit - by Washington’s Blog – 2012-07-15 911 MILITARY TRIAL: Pentagon Clears Way for Military Trial of Five charged in 9/11 Attacks - by Bill Van Auken – 2012-04-06 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial will convict us all - by Paul Craig Roberts – 2009-11-25

PART VII 9/11 and the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) Political Deception: The Missing Link behind 9-11 - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2002-06-20 On the morning of September 11, Pakistan’s Chief Spy General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged “money-man” behind the 9-11 hijackers, was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence committees. 9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan and the Soviet-Afghan War to George W Bush and September 11, 2001 - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2010-09-09 Osama bin Laden was recruited by the CIA in 1979. The US spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings.     The Central Role of Al Qaeda in Bush’s National Security Doctrine “Revealing the Lies” on 9/11 Perpetuates the “Big Lie” - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2007-07-12 September 11, 2001: America and NATO Declare War on Afghanistan NATO’s Doctrine of Collective Security - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2009-12-21   America’s Holy Crusade against the Muslim World. - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2010-08-30 What is now unfolding is a generalized process of demonization of an entire population group

Osamagate - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2001-10-09 The main justification for waging this war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future. The “Demonization” of Muslims and the Battle for Oil - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2007-01-04 Muslim countries possess three quarters of the World’s oil reserves. In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent of total oil reserves.   Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11? - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-09-10 Much of US foreign policy since 9/11 has been based on the assumption that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11.   New Documents Detail America’s Strategic Response to 9/11 Rumsfeld’s War Aim: “Significantly Change the World’s Political Map” - by National Security Archive – 2011-09-12

PART VIII The Alleged 9/11 Mastermind: The Life and Death of  Osama bin Laden Who Is Osama Bin Laden? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2001-09-12   VIDEO: The Last Word on Osama Bin Laden - by James Corbett – 2011-05-24 Osama bin Laden: A Creation of the CIA - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-05-03 Interview with Osama bin Laden. Denies his Involvement in 9/11 Full text of Pakistani paper’s Sept 01 “exclusive” interview - 2011-05-09 Where was Osama on September 11, 2001? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2008-09-11 On September 10. 2001, Osama was in a Pakistan military hospital in Rawalpindi, courtesy of America’s indefectible ally Pakistan Osama bin Laden, among the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives”: Why was he never indicted for his alleged role in 9/11? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-09-17 Osama bin Laden: Already Dead… Evidence that Bin Laden has been Dead for Several Years - by Prof. David Ray Griffin – 2011-05-02 The Mysterious Death of Osama bin Laden: Creating Evidence Where There Is None - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-08-04 The Assassination of Osama bin Laden: Glaring Anomalies in the Official Narrative Osama was Left Handed… - by Felicity Arbuthnot – 2011-05-11 The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden - by Fidel Castro Ruz – 2011-05-07 Dancing on the Grave of 9/11. Osama and “The Big Lie” - by Larry Chin – 2011-05-05

PART  IX  ”False Flags”: The Pentagon’s Second 9/11 The Pentagon’s “Second 911″ “Another [9/11] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against some known targets” - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-08-10 The presumption of this military document, is that a Second 911 attack “which is lacking today” would usefully create both a “justification and an opportunity” to wage war on “some known targets Crying Wolf: Terror Alerts based on Fabricated Intelligence - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-08-20 This is not the first time that brash and unsubstantiated statements have been made regarding an impending terror attack, which have proven to be based on “faulty intelligence”.

PART X “Deep Events” and State Violence The Doomsday Project and Deep Events: JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11 - by Prof. Peter Dale Scott – 2011-11-22 The Doomsday Project is the Pentagon’s name for the emergency planning “to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis.” JFK and 9/11 Insights Gained from Studying Both - by Dr. Peter Dale Scott – 2006-12-20 In both 9/11 and the JFK assassination, the US government and the media immediately established a guilty party. Eventually, in both cases a commission was set up to validate the official narrative. Able Danger adds twist to 9/11 9/11 Ringleader connected to secret Pentagon operation - by Dr. Daniele Ganser – 2005-08-27 Atta was connected to a secret operation of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in the US. A top secret Pentagon project code-named Able Danger identified Atta and 3 other 9/11 hijackers as members of an al-Qaida cell more than a year before the attacks. 9/11, Deep State Violence and the Hope of Internet Politics - by Prof. Peter Dale Scott – 2008-06-11 The unthinkable – that elements inside the state would conspire with criminals to kill innocent civilians – has become thinkable… Al Qaeda: The Database. - by Pierre-Henri Bunel – 2011-05-12

PART XI Propaganda: Creating and Perpetuating the 9/11 Legend September 11, 2001: The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11: Creating the Osama bin Laden “Legend” - by Chaim Kupferberg – 2011-09-11 THE 9/11 MYTH: State Propaganda, Historical Revisionism, and the Perpetuation of the 9/11 Myth - by Prof. James F. Tracy – 2012-05-06   Al Qaeda and Human Consciousness: Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda…. An Incessant and Repetitive Public Discourse - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2012-03-24 9/11 Truth, Inner Consciousness and the “Public Mind” - by James F. Tracy – 2012-03-18

PART VI Insider Trading and the 9/11 Financial Bonanza 9/11 Attacks: Criminal Foreknowledge and Insider Trading lead directly to the CIA’s Highest Ranks CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed Firm that handled “Put” Options on UAL - by Michael C. Ruppert – 2012-08-13 The 9/11 Attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC): Unspoken Financial Bonanza - by Prof Michel Chossudovsky – 2012-04-27 SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: Insider Trading 9/11 … the Facts Laid Bare - by Lars Schall – 2012-03-20 Osama Bin Laden and The 911 Illusion: The 9/11 Short-Selling Financial Scam - by Dean Henderson – 2011-05-09

PART XIII 9/11 Truth Revealing the Lies,  Commemorating the 9/11 Tragedy VIDEO: Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-01 VIDEO: AFTER 9/11: TEN YEARS OF WAR Special GRTV Feature Production - by James Corbett – 2011-09-08

Then several years later the US encouraged South Korean incursions into Communist North Korea in order to manipulate North Korea into responding in kind. Guaranteeing South Korea full UN support, when the baited North Koreans retaliated by moving two miles inside the South Korean border, that June 1950 “transgression” immediately became the false pretense used to initiate the Korean War.

in August 1964 President Johnson lied to the American people with the bogus claim that a US Navy ship was attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin to launch America’s longest running war in history (that is until this century’s everlasting war of terror). That false flag cost near 60,000 American lives and over 3 million dead Southeast Asians, in addition to being the first US humiliating war defeat in its history, marking the first of many consecutive losses.

The smaller, less intensive military campaigns of Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the First Gulf War, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo were all jingoistic saber rattling manipulations of imperialistic Empire overpowering far weaker opponents to take down former US allied dictators (or in the case of Saddam Hussein a preliminary step to the father-son neocon tag team), balkanizing a divide and conquer strategy for global hegemony and imperial war profiteering from the always lucrative drug trafficking trade.

Meanwhile, the only true winners of all wars is the oligarch owned and controlled central banking cabal and its Wall Street 500. Once American Empire wreaks military havoc to achieve another ravaged failed state, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, a second invasion that becomes the permanent occupation arrives in the form of IMF and World Bank loans. When the war destroyed nation cannot pay the bankster cabal’s loan shark extortion, privatization through transnational corporations rapidly descends as economic hit men-vultures move in for the final kill. The game’s been rigged, set up so no one but the filthy, gluttonous, bloodthirsty, psychopathic vampires comprising the ruling elite can possibly win from all this rigged warring death and destruction.

The Zionist neocon creation with a little help from their Saudi-Israeli evil axis friends pulled off the coup of the century on 9/11, massacring 3,000 Americans as their sacrificial lambs, setting into motion the fabricated war on terror masking their actual war on Islam to ensure that a constant fresh supply of made-by-the-USA enemy materializes to justify permanent global violence. During the near ten years that Americans fought in Iraq near a half million Iraqis lost their life, mostly innocent civilians. That toll has only since risen with war still raging. The Islamic State jihadists that the US-Saudi-Israeli unholy alliance secretly created, trained, armed and has funded (just as it did al Qaeda for decades) invaded Iraq last June and is currently in control of more area in Iraq than the weak US puppet government in Baghdad with no end of sectarian violence in sight. Afghanistan looks no better with the puppet Kabul government holding less territory than the surging Taliban that has been waiting for the US military exodus by December 2014 leaving 10,800 US military advisors still remaining behind.

The proxy wars leaving Libya as a corrupt and lawlessly violent failed state and Syria a stalemated quagmire with Islamic State mercenaries our not-so-secret friendly boots on the ground still unable to topple and remove Assad from power. Meanwhile, near a quarter of a million people have died in the war in Syria and an astounding 6.5 million have been displaced in that colossal human tragedy supported and caused by the United States.

War court translators are provided by one of two Defense Department contractors paid by the Pentagon unit that runs the war court, called the Office of the Convening Authority for Military Commissions. It’s run by retired Marine Maj. Gen. Vaughn Ary, a former military lawyer. The contractors are Leidos and All World.Ary’s office provides a list of qualified translators to the Office of Military Commissions Defense unit, and, in the capital cases, each one gets a dedicated translator assigned to the team. Teams can object to the choice, and have done so in the past, as unsuitable, according to earlier war court sessions.The war court’s Chief Defense Counsel, Air Force Col. Karen Mayberry, said after the court session Monday that the translator sitting with Bin al Shibh in court was not permanently assigned to his team, or the 9/11 case. The Bin al Shibh team had lost its translator after an FBI investigation secretly questioned Sept. 11 defense team members. Monday’s translator, the one that Bin al Shibh said he recognized from a CIA prison, had worked for years on war court defense teams, but none with the Sept. 11 death-penalty case, according to Mayberry. Monday’s translator was filling in for this session because, although the Bin al Shibh team had chosen a new team translator, the new permanent translator had not yet gotten a security clearance, which can be a lengthy process.

Bin al Shibh and the other four men are accused of helping to orchestrate, train, and arrange travel for the 19 men who hijacked four U.S. passenger aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The prosecutor is seeking their execution, if they are convicted. The CIA held and interrogated them for three to four years in secret overseas prisons before they were brought to Guantánamo in September 2006. But even once they got here, they continued to be in CIA custody, according to the Senate report. Jay Connell, attorney for Baluchi, 37, said Sunday it is still not known when the agency relinquished control of the men, who are held in a secret prison called Camp 7.

The sanctions which were implemented against Russia in July 2014 include selected Russian citizens, the Russian military sector and industries involved in dual-use products and services, the Russian oil and the financial sectors. It is noteworthy that the regime of sanctions against Russia was predominantly promoted by the administrations of the United States and the United Kingdom. In response, Russia, in August 2014, imposed a one-year-long ban on imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheeses, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from Australia, Canada, the European Union, Norway, and the United States. It is noteworthy that German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on Monday, January 7, received his French, Ukrainian and Russian counterparts in the German Foreign Minister’s guest house. The quartet agreed to continue discussions on how to break the stall-mate between the conflicting parties in Ukraine within the Normandy Framework. It was this framework, with participation of the OSCE and the EU, that led to the Minsk Accord and the ceasefire agreement in Ukraine on September 5, 2014.

While corrosion is the No. 1 cause of pipeline spills, a sizable number of pipelines at water crossings have ruptured or been endangered by river scour. Among them: ► The Poplar (Jan. 2015) and Silvertip (July 2011) pipeline failures on the Yellowstone River. ► More than 20 pipeline river crossings in Montana were found to be "dangerously close to exposure" during inspections of nearly 90 pipeline crossings in 2011, according to one report. Many of them have since been reburied significantly deeper. The Poplar pipeline was not among the crossings tagged as being close to exposure. ► Nearly half of the 55 oil and gas pipelines that cross the Missouri River were found to have sections buried 10 feet or less below the riverbed, according to the Wall Street Journal. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey, meanwhile, found that the Missouri riverbed had deepened by nine to 41 feet in 27 places because of severe scouring during the 2011 floods. ► An Enterprise Products Partners LLP pipeline that was uncovered by river scouring and ruptured in August 2011. The line spilled more than 28,350 gallons of a gasoline additive into the Missouri River in Iowa. ► A June 2012 spill in Alberta, Canada, where an oil pipeline owned by Plains Midstream Canada failed along the Red Deer River and released more than 122,000 gallons of light crude. Investigators concluded that the pipe was uncovered by scour during high flood waters and subjected to vibrations from the river flow that led a weld to fail.

Three Enbridge Corp. crude oil pipelines crossing Minnesota's Tamarac River were exposed by floodwater erosion years ago, and were still exposed in mid-2014. None of the pipes had failed at that point, but one was being propped up by steel legs, according to an MPR News account. Federal regulations aren't much help. The only rule that addresses pipe burial at major river crossings requires petroleum pipelines to be laid at least four feet below the riverbed at the time of construction. Once a pipeline's installed, there are no requirements regarding burial depth. There is no rule requiring exposed pipelines to be reburied, though a spill under those conditions would invite regulatory penalties for leaving the line exposed to hazards. What's more, federal rules put the pipeline companies in charge of identifying all threats that could cause a spill in highly populated or environmentally sensitive areas, and the companies get wide latitude in deciding what to do about them, according to Rebecca Craven, program manager at the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit group that tracks pipeline risks and regulations.

Indeed, the required four-foot minimum initial burial depth for pipelines can be completely eliminated by natural erosion over time or by a single flood event. Active free-flowing rivers can carve with enough ferocity to lower their riverbeds by 20 feet or shift the waterway onto an entirely new path, which can add new stresses to the pipeline or put the river over pipe that has less cover or lacks reinforcement or protective cement casings. The hotly debated Keystone XL oil pipeline project would cross nearly 2,000 rivers, streams and reservoirs in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, according to one estimate. The route takes the pipe across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, where owner TransCanada has pledged to install the pipeline 35 feet below the riverbeds.

See Also: Ruptured Yellowstone Oil Pipeline Was Built With Faulty Welding in 1950sIce Hinders Cleanup of Yellowstone Oil Pipeline SpillExxon Overlooked, Masked Safety Threats in Years Before Pegasus Pipeline BurstDilbit in Exxon's Pegasus May Have Contributed to Pipeline's Rupture

China, a participant at the nuclear talks with Iran, has consistently urged a negotiated solution and decried efforts to place sanctions which have not been endorsed by the United Nations on Iran.

Again, these are the findings of the Army's investigation into Sergeant Bergdahl's disappearance; they are not the apologies or fantasies of his legal team, Marines turned anti-war peaceniks like myself, or Obama fawning conspirators. The details behind these facts are contained in the Army's report, authored by Major General Kenneth Dahl, which has not been publically released, but hopefully will be made available to the public after Sergeant Bergdahl's preliminary hearing next month or, if the desertion and misbehavior charges are pursued, during his court martial. Just what events Sergeant Bergdahl witnessed that would compel him to risk his life, traveling unarmed through enemy controlled territory, to provide information to an American general, are not presently known. We do know that the unit Sergeant Bergdahl belonged to underwent serious disciplinary actions both before and after Sergeant Bergdahl's capture, that several of his unit's leaders were fired and replaced both prior to and subsequent to his capture, and, from communications between Sergeant Bergdahl and his family prior to his capture, Sergeant Bergdahl was sickened and distraught over the actions of his unit, including its possible complicity in the death of an Afghan child. It is quite possible Sergeant Bergdahl left his unit to report a war crime(s) or other serious crime(s) committed by American forces. He may have been trying to report a failure of his immediate leadership or it may have been something, in hindsight, that we would now consider trivial. Such an action on Sergeant Bergdahl's part would help to explain why his former platoon mates, quite possibly the very men whom Sergeant Bergdahl left to report on, have been so forceful in their condemnation of him, so determined not to forgive him for his disappearance, and so adamant in their denial to show compassion for his suffering while a prisoner of war.

This knowledge may explain why the Taliban believed Sergeant Bergdahl had fallen behind on a patrol rather than deserted. If he truly was deserting, than Sergeant Bergdahl most likely would have told the Taliban disparaging information about US forces in an attempt to harvest friendship and avoid torture, but if he was on a personal mission to report wrongdoing, than he certainly would not relate such information to the enemy. This may explain why Sergeant Bergdahl told his captors a lie rather than disclose his voluntary departure from the platoon outpost. This would also justify why Sergeant Bergdahl left his base without his weapon or equipment. Before his departure from his outpost, Sergeant Bergdahl asked his team leader what would happen if a soldier left the base, without permission, with his weapon and other issued gear. Sergeant Bergdahl's team leader replied that the soldier would get in trouble. Understanding Sergeant Bergdahl as not deserting, but trying to serve the Army by reporting wrongdoing to another base would explain why he chose not to carry his weapon and issued gear off of the outpost. Sergeant Bergdahl was not planning on deserting, i.e. quitting the army and the war, and he did not want to get in trouble for taking his weapon and issued gear with him on his unauthorized mission.

This possible exposure to senior leaders, and ultimately the media and American public, of civilian deaths or other offenses would also account for the non-disclosure agreement Sergeant Bergdahl's unit was forced to sign after his disappearance. Non-disclosure agreements may be common in the civilian world and do exist in military fields such as special operations and intelligence, but for regular infantry units they are rare. Sergeant Bergdahl's capture by the enemy, possibly while en-route to reveal war crimes or other wrongdoings, would certainly be the type of event an embarrassed chain of command would attempt to hide. Such a cover up would certainly not be unprecedented in American military history.Similar to the assertions made by many politicians, pundits and former soldiers that Sergeant Bergdahl deserted because, to paraphrase, he hated America and wanted to join the Taliban, the notion that he cooperated and assisted the Taliban while a prisoner of war has also been debunked by the Army's investigation. We know that Sergeant Bergdahl resisted his captors throughout his five years as a prisoner of war. His dozen escape attempts, with full knowledge of the risks involved in recapture, are in keeping with the Code of Conduct all American service members are required to abide by during captivity by the enemy.

In his own words, Sergeant Bergdahl's description of his treatment reveals a ghastly and barbaric five years of non-stop isolation, exposure, malnutrition, dehydration, and physical and psychological torture. Among other reasons, his survival must be attested to an unshakeable moral fortitude and inner strength. The same inherent qualities that led him to seek out an American general to report "disturbing circumstances" could well be the same mental, emotional and spiritual strengths that kept him alive through half a decade of brutal shackling, caging, and torture. It is my understanding the US military's prisoner of war and survival training instructors are studying Sergeant Bergdahl's experience in order to better train American service members to endure future experiences as prisoners of war. Susan Rice, President Obama's National Security Advisor, was roundly lampooned and criticized last year for stating that Sergeant Bergdahl "served with honor and distinction". It is only the most callous and politically craven among us who, now understanding the torture Sergeant Bergdahl endured, his resistance to the enemy that held him prisoner, and his adherence to the US military's Code of Conduct for five years in horrific conditions, would argue that he did not serve with honor and distinction.

A TSA spokesperson declined to comment on the criteria obtained by The Intercept. “Behavior detection, which is just one element of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) efforts to mitigate threats against the traveling public, is vital to TSA’s layered approach to deter, detect and disrupt individuals who pose a threat to aviation,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Since its introduction in 2007, the SPOT program has attracted controversy for the lack of science supporting it. In 2013, the Government Accountability Office found that there was no evidence to back up the idea that “behavioral indicators … can be used to identify persons who may pose a risk to aviation security.” After analyzing hundreds of scientific studies, the GAO concluded that “the human ability to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance.” The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security found in 2013 that TSA had failed to evaluate SPOT, and “cannot ensure that passengers at United States airports are screened objectively, show that the program is cost-effective, or reasonably justify the program’s expansion.” Despite those concerns, TSA has trained and deployed thousands of Behavior Detection Officers, and the program has cost more than $900 million since it began in 2007, according to the GAO.

The 92-point checklist listed in the “Spot Referral Report” is divided into various categories with a point score for each. Those categories include a preliminary “observation and behavior analysis,” and then those passengers pulled over for additional inspection are scored based on two more categories: whether they have “unusual items,” like almanacs and “numerous prepaid calling cards or cell phones,” and a final category for “signs of deception,” which include “covers mouth with hand when speaking” and “fast eye blink rate. Points can also be deducted from someone’s score based on observations about the traveler that make him or her less likely, in TSA’s eyes, to be a terrorist. For example, “apparent” married couples, if both people are over 55, have two points deducted off their score. Women over the age of 55 have one pointed deducted; for men, the point deduction doesn’t come until they reach 65. Last week, the ACLU sued TSA to obtain records related to its behavior detection programs, alleging that they lead to racial profiling. The lawsuit is based on a Freedom of Information Act request the ACLU filed last November asking for numerous documents related to the program, including the scientific justification for the program, changes to the list of behavior indicators, materials used to train officers and screen passengers, and what happens to the information collected on travelers.

“The TSA has insisted on keeping documents about SPOT secret, but the agency can’t hide the fact that there’s no evidence the program works,” said Hugh Handeyside, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. Being on the lookout for suspicious behavior is a “common sense approach” that is used by law enforcement, according to TSA. “No single behavior alone will cause a traveler to be referred to additional screening or will result in a call to a law enforcement officer (LEO),” the agency said in its emailed statement. “Officers are trained and audited to ensure referrals for additional screening are based only on observable behaviors and not race or ethnicity.” One former Behavior Detection Officer manager, who asked not to be identified, said that SPOT indicators are used by law enforcement to justify pulling aside anyone officers find suspicious, rather than acting as an actual checklist for specific indicators. “The SPOT sheet was designed in such a way that virtually every passenger will exhibit multiple ‘behaviors’ that can be assigned a SPOT sheet value,” the former manager said.

The signs of deception and fear “are ridiculous,” the source continued. “These are just ‘catch all’ behaviors to justify BDO interaction with a passenger. A license to harass.” The observations of a TSA screener or a Behavior Detection Officer shouldn’t be the basis for referring someone to law enforcement. “The program is flawed and unnecessarily delays and harasses travelers. Taxpayer dollars would be better spent funding real police at TSA checkpoints,” the former manager said. A second former Behavior Detection Officer manager, who also asked not to be identified, told The Intercept that the program suffers from lack of science and simple inconsistency, with every airport training its officers differently. “The SPOT program is bullshit,” the manager told The Intercept. “Complete bullshit.”

Effects operations are used to disseminate deception and disruption online. A full catalog of JTRIG’s capabilities as of 2012 can be seen here. Operation QUITO, the group’s operation to support the Foreign Office’s “goals relating to Argentina and the Falkland Islands” is called a “pioneering effects operation.” That operation, still in the planning stages, had undergone “a significant amount of prep work” and was “almost complete” as of 2009.

GCHQ’s mission regarding the Falkland Islands also appears to extend beyond just Argentina and involve regional leaders and attitudes. A November 2011 workshop on “Mission Driven Access” gathered staff to “build on pioneering work already done” and tried to develop new ideas for real world scenarios. One such scenario: “GCHQ has consistently underperformed on Brazil, with growing concerns that [South] American attitudes on the Falklands are swinging behind Argentina. A forthcoming Ministerial visit to Chile provides an opportunity to counter the trend. The Foreign Office are looking for advice.”