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The trial was part Washington spectacle, part cloak and dagger. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified, as did C.I.A. operatives who gave only their first names and last initials, with their faces shielded behind seven-foot-high partitions. A scientist was referred to only by his code name, Merlin. His wife was Mrs. Merlin.Officials revealed their preferred strategies for persuading reporters not to run sensitive stories. Jurors learned that, at the C.I.A.’s office in New York, employees could easily walk out with classified documents and never be searched.

Mr. Sterling is the latest in a string of former officials and contractors the Obama administration has charged with discussing national security matters with reporters. Under all previous presidents combined, three people had faced such prosecutions. Under President Obama, there have been eight cases, and journalists have complained that the crackdown has discouraged officials from discussing even unclassified security matters.

While the administration has defended the crackdown, Mr. Holder said he believed it went too far at times when it targeted journalists. Under Mr. Holder, prosecutors seized phone records from The Associated Press, labeled one Fox News reporter a potential criminal co-conspirator for inquiring about classified information and tried to force another to testify before a grand jury.

That may be, but even if it is difficult to obtain interviews with Iranian government officials, it is extremely easy to interview Iranian experts, scholars, journalists and other authoritative voices from Tehran. Last week, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez hosted a fascinating hour-long discussion about Iran with Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator for Iran who was Iran’s ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997, and now teaches at Princeton. Just this week, CNN International’s Christiane Amanpour interviewed Tehran University Professor Sadegh Zibakalam about Tehran’s views and actions in the Iran deal. Beyond those in Iran, there are Iranian-American groups and Iranian-American experts who actually speak Farsi who don’t see the world the way Jeffrey Goldberg and Lindsey Graham do. Outside the Sunday shows, Iranian officials have been interviewed occasionally by U.S. media figures. In sum, the only way to exclude Iranian voices is if you choose to exclude them. That’s exactly what Sunday morning television programs have done, and continue to do. And it matters a great deal for several reasons.

For one, excluding the Iranian viewpoint ensures that these shows spew propaganda to the American public. Iran is talked about, almost always in demonic terms, but is almost never heard from. That means that these shows, which endlessly boast of their own “objectivity,” are in fact far more akin to state media. My Intercept colleague Jon Schwarz this week wrote an article detailing seven historically indisputable facts about what the U.S. has done to Iran — which cause some in that country to chant “Death to America” — and it went viral. Why? Because those facts, though quite well-established, are virtually never mentioned in U.S. media accounts that depict Iran as filled with irrational, primitive, inexplicable hatred for the U.S., designed to show how unstable and blindly hateful they are. That is propaganda by definition: amplifying one side’s views (the U.S. and Israeli governments’) while suppressing others’. Then there’s the ease with which those who are rendered invisible are easily demonized. For decades, the key to depicting gay people as mentally ill predators was ensuring they were never heard from, forced to be mute in the closet; once they were out in the open and understood, that demonization became impossible.

This has also been the favored foreign policy dynamic in the U.S. for decades. When Americans are killed by a foreign Muslim, we are deluged with information about the American victims and their grieving families, while we hear almost nothing about the innocent victims killed by the U.S. or its allies — not even their names. This gross imbalance in coverage creates the illusion that Americans are innocent victims of terrorism but never its perpetrators. Identically, when American journalists are imprisoned by an adversary of the U.S. government, American journalists trumpet it endlessly, while foreign journalists imprisoned for years with no trial by the U.S. government are all but disappeared. Silencing The Other Side is a key U.S. media propaganda tactic. There are all sorts of dubious claims presented about Iran, the U.S. and Israel that are treated as unchallenged truth in U.S. media discourse. The range of “debate” allowed by the U.S. media — is Obama’s deal with Iran a good idea or not? — all assumes those dubious claims about Iran to be true. But those claims are vehemently disputed in large parts of the world, certainly in Tehran. But Americans, especially the millions who get their news from Sunday morning television or from outlets whose agenda is shaped by those programs, literally have no idea about any of that, because the people who can best advocate those views — i.e. Iranians — are simply never heard from.

It’s remarkably telling that the only voices heard on Sunday morning TV shows are those who spout the U.S. government line about Iran, including officials from the repressive regimes most closely allied with the U.S. Obviously, one can find the arguments of Iranians unpersuasive or even harbor hostility to that nation’s government, but what possible justification is there for the leading Sunday morning news shows in the U.S. to simply suppress those views altogether?

Lee: What do you think about Tor? Do you think that everyone should be familiar with it, or do you think that it’s only a use-it-if-you-need-it thing? Snowden: I think Tor is the most important privacy-enhancing technology project being used today. I use Tor personally all the time. We know it works from at least one anecdotal case that’s fairly familiar to most people at this point. That’s not to say that Tor is bulletproof. What Tor does is it provides a measure of security and allows you to disassociate your physical location. … But the basic idea, the concept of Tor that is so valuable, is that it’s run by volunteers. Anyone can create a new node on the network, whether it’s an entry node, a middle router, or an exit point, on the basis of their willingness to accept some risk. The voluntary nature of this network means that it is survivable, it’s resistant, it’s flexible. [Tor Browser is a great way to selectively use Tor to look something up and not leave a trace that you did it. It can also help bypass censorship when you’re on a network where certain sites are blocked. If you want to get more involved, you can volunteer to run your own Tor node, as I do, and support the diversity of the Tor network.]

Lee: So that is all stuff that everybody should be doing. What about people who have exceptional threat models, like future intelligence-community whistleblowers, and other people who have nation-state adversaries? Maybe journalists, in some cases, or activists, or people like that? Snowden: So the first answer is that you can’t learn this from a single article. The needs of every individual in a high-risk environment are different. And the capabilities of the adversary are constantly improving. The tooling changes as well. What really matters is to be conscious of the principles of compromise. How can the adversary, in general, gain access to information that is sensitive to you? What kinds of things do you need to protect? Because of course you don’t need to hide everything from the adversary. You don’t need to live a paranoid life, off the grid, in hiding, in the woods in Montana. What we do need to protect are the facts of our activities, our beliefs, and our lives that could be used against us in manners that are contrary to our interests. So when we think about this for whistleblowers, for example, if you witnessed some kind of wrongdoing and you need to reveal this information, and you believe there are people that want to interfere with that, you need to think about how to compartmentalize that.

Tell no one who doesn’t need to know. [Lindsay Mills, Snowden’s girlfriend of several years, didn’t know that he had been collecting documents to leak to journalists until she heard about it on the news, like everyone else.] When we talk about whistleblowers and what to do, you want to think about tools for protecting your identity, protecting the existence of the relationship from any type of conventional communication system. You want to use something like SecureDrop, over the Tor network, so there is no connection between the computer that you are using at the time — preferably with a non-persistent operating system like Tails, so you’ve left no forensic trace on the machine you’re using, which hopefully is a disposable machine that you can get rid of afterward, that can’t be found in a raid, that can’t be analyzed or anything like that — so that the only outcome of your operational activities are the stories reported by the journalists. [SecureDrop is a whistleblower submission system. Here is a guide to using The Intercept’s SecureDrop server as safely as possible.]

And this is to be sure that whoever has been engaging in this wrongdoing cannot distract from the controversy by pointing to your physical identity. Instead they have to deal with the facts of the controversy rather than the actors that are involved in it. Lee: What about for people who are, like, in a repressive regime and are trying to … Snowden: Use Tor. Lee: Use Tor? Snowden: If you’re not using Tor you’re doing it wrong. Now, there is a counterpoint here where the use of privacy-enhancing technologies in certain areas can actually single you out for additional surveillance through the exercise of repressive measures. This is why it’s so critical for developers who are working on security-enhancing tools to not make their protocols stand out.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: The White Helmets are just one component of the new NGO Complex.

“It was unclear whether Mr. Saleh’s name might have shown up on a database, fed by a variety of intelligence and security agencies and intended to guard against the prospect of terrorism suspects slipping into the country.” ~ New York Times Mark Toner, State Department spokesperson: “And any individual – again, I’m broadening my language here for specific reasons, but any individual in any group suspected of ties or relations with extremist groups or that we had believed to be a security threat to the United States, we would act accordingly. But that does not, by extension, mean we condemn or would cut off ties to the group for which that individual works for.” http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=792ODrhwKkk So we come back to the initial question.  Why is the tragic death of a passionate and ambitious politician being exploited? Why are all political parties in the UK endorsing the Jo Cox fund to provide financial assistance for an organisation the UK Government is already funding and training? Why are the public once more being used as political pawns to further our government’s imperialist objectives inside Syria and their covert, illegal, proxy intervention of a sovereign nation via both terrorist forces and phony humanitarian first responders?

The White Helmets are perhaps being demonstrated to be the most crucial component of the US and NATO shadow state building inside Syria.  Led by the US and UK this group is essential to the propaganda stream that facilitates the continued media and political campaign against the elected Syrian government and permits the US and NATO to justify their regime of crippling economic and humanitarian sanctions against the Syrian people. If this latest mechanised ‘NGO’ blueprint is successful then we could see it being re-deployed as key to future neo-colonialist projects. The White Helmets are a direct intra-venus line into the terrorist enclaves within Syria, acting as a conduit for information, equipment and medical support to maintain the US NATO forces. Is this the future of warfare, is this the “swarming” outlined in a 2000 report produced by the RAND Corporation and entitled: Swarming and the Future of Conflict. “The emergence of a military doctrine based on swarming pods and clusters requires that defense policymakers develop new approaches to connectivity and control and achieve a new balance between the two. Far more than traditional approachesto battle, swarming clearly depends upon robust information flows. Securing these flows, therefore, can be seen as a necessary condition for successful swarming.”

An important “previously unpublished interview with Jo Cox” was released today by Adam Barnett.  In this interview Jo Cox makes a clear statement regarding the way the UK Government should be maximising the use of their assets, the White Helmets, inside Syria: “Second thing: many organisations, whether it’s the White Helmets or others, have got really creative ideas about how to operate under the siege and civil war conditions. They’ve got really interesting ideas about channelling money, getting aid in, thinking creatively about how they operate, which DfID [Department for International Development] should be listening to. [emphasis added] And then the third thing is about giving airtime to civil society groups, making sure that they get more time on panels– and making sure this is representative of the diversity of civil society views as well, whether that’s women’s groups, or the White Helmets, or NGOs, or just doctors or people who are literally trying to get on with making society function in response to the humanitarian crisis.” Is this why we are seeing what is, in effect, crowd funding for  proxy war? Do we really want to look back and be “judged by history” for enabling conflict and state terrorism, violating international law and invading sovereign nations.  Are we prepared to accept the consequences of such actions, consequences that should be taken by our governments alone but are now being diffused outwards to the general public.  Is this an attempt by our government to disassociate themselves from their criminal actions?

Vanessa Beeley speaks to Mike Robinson of UK Column about recent executions of Syrian Arab Army soldiers celebrated by White Helmet operatives.” Watch:

“Speaking to Mnar Muhawesh on ‘Behind the Headline,’ investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley pulls back the curtain on the anti-Assad ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘moderate rebels,’ revealing a carefully calibrated propaganda campaign to drive US intervention in the war-torn country.” Watch:

Video made by Hands Off Syria in Sydney Australia based upon the research of Vanessa Beeley on the White Helmets. Watch: http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k6hSS6xBTw Mint Press: US Propaganda War in Syria: Report Ties White Helmets to US Intervention “White Helmets primary function is propaganda” reported an independent journalist, who tied the group to George Soros and the controversial advocacy group Avaaz.” Change.org Petition: Do NOT give 2016 Nobel Peace Prize to Syria White Helmets This petition has currently garnered 1370 signatures. The White Helmets have received over $ 40 million in funding from the US Government [USAID] and the UK Foreign Office despite their claims of being “fiercely independent and accepts no money from governments, corporations or anyone directly involved in the Syrian conflict.” Sputnik: Soros Sponsored NGO in Syria Aims at Ousting Assad not Saving Civilians “One of the largest humanitarian organizations operating in war-torn Syria – the White Helmets – has been accused of being an anti-government propaganda arm that encourages direct foreign intervention.” 21st Century Wire: Syria’s White Helmets, War by Way of Deception Part 1 This piece examines the role of the Syria Civil Defence aka,’The White Helmets’ currently operating in Syria and take a closer look at their financial sources and mainstream media partners in order to better determine if they are indeed “neutral” as media moguls proclaim these “humanitarians” to be.

21st Century Wire: Part II. Syria’s White Helmets, “Moderate” Executioners The NGO hydra has no more powerful or influential serpentine head in Syria than the Syria Civil Defence aka The White Helmets who, according to their leader and creator, James Le Mesurier, hold greater sway than even ISIS or Al Nusra confabs over the Syrian communities. This article explores the White Helmet involvement in terrorist executions of civilians particularly in Aleppo. 21st Century Wire: Humanitarian Propaganda War Against Syria – Led by Avaaz and the White Helmets “The White Helmets in their haste to point the finger of blame at Moscow, managed to tweet about Russia’s air strikes several hours before the Russian Parliament actually authorized the use of the Air Force in Syria.” ~ Sott.net UK Column: Syria White Helmets “Mike Robinson speaks to Vanessa Beeley about the so-called NGO, the White Helmets. Are they really the humanitarian first responder organisation they claim to be?” Watch: http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLa9ztvAGWw Eva Bartlett: Human Rights Front Groups Warring on Syria This page will continue to expand as more so-called “Human Rights” groups are outed for propagating anti-Syria war rhetoric and false allegations against the Syrian government and Syrian Arab Army.  As it is, the list of players is quite extensive.  Below, I’ll list the known HR front people and groups (many, if not most, with links to the US State Department and criminals like George Soros). Ron Paul Institute: Syria the Propaganda Ring We have demonstrated that the White Helmets are an integral part of the propaganda vanguard that ensures obscurantism of fact and propagation of Human Rights fiction that elicits the well-intentioned and self righteous response from a very cleverly duped public. A priority for these NGOs is to keep pushing the No Fly Zone scenario which has already been seen to have disastrous implications for innocent civilians in Libya, for example. Dissident Voice: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators “But White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention.”

Prof Tim Anderson: Syrian Women Denounce the White Helmets “A range of Syrian women have denounced the US-UK funded group the ‘White Helmets’, led by a former British soldier and recently revealed to be financed by USAID. They come from all the country’s communities (e.g. Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Christian) but, like most Syrians, prefer to identify simply as Syrian.” Khamenei.ir: Interview with Prof. Tim Anderson NATO’s Dirty War on Syria “The ‘White Helmets’ are a Wall Street creation, funded and led by the US and the UK, to give ‘humanitarian’ cover to the al Qaeda groups they support.” AlternativeView7:  Syria: White Helmets Exposed “We live in a world governed by propaganda where the majority of media mouthpieces are gagged by those who own them and only permitted to release information that serves the narrative of the ruling elite or Imperialist powers.”

Please note that the child that is rescued is very clean considering she has allegedly been buried under the rubble of “regime” bombing raids..we do not in any way wish to detract from the heroic work of the true first responders on the ground in Syria, the real Syria Civil Defence and the Red Crescent who are never mentioned in the western media but we do wish to draw your attention to the propaganda methods being employed to amplify US and NATO narratives that are insisting upon “regime change.”

We will add to the above articles and interviews as they become available.  Vanessa Beeley has just completed a speaking tour of the UK and Iran during which she highlighted the role of the NGO complex in general and the White Helmets in particular as a new breed of predatory humanitarianism being unleashed against target nations. Videos of her talks will be published as soon as they become available from the AV7 conference and Frome Stop War.

Author Vanessa Beeley is a special contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a US Peace Council delegate and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

During proceedings brought before the high court in London, lawyers representing the former Jfit prisoners suggested the interrogation centre could be regarded as "Britain's Abu Ghraib".

Next month, the high court will hear a judicial review of the MoD's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the abuses. Human rights groups and lawyers for the former prisoners say the UK government is obliged to hold an inquiry to meet its obligations under the European convention on human rights – and particularly under article three of the convention, which protects individuals from torture.After a hearing, the high court highlighted matters supporting the allegations of systemic abuse. These included:• The same techniques being used at the same places for the same purpose: to assist interrogation.• The facilities being under the command of an officer.• Military doctors examining each prisoner at various stages in their detention.• Investigations by the Royal Military police that were concluded without anyone being held to account.

One other thing: Chief strategist Benenson shows how pathetic the Bernie Sanders campaign was on this issue. He says that the only voters who care about foreign policy are Republicans. It would be a year before Bernie made Israel a wedge issue, in the New York primary debate, when he dared to say that Benjamin Netanyahu is not right all the time, and Clinton had no response. That moment was brave, reluctant, and spasmodic. Had Bernie worked the Israel issue, there was political capital to be made. And everyone in the Clinton braintrust knew it. Don’t mention Israel with dem activists. Bernie followed the same script, pretty much.

Gotta keep going here. Here’s another leaked email to campaign chair John Podesta from his daughter Megan Rouse in May 2015, headlined “Israel”: I’ve heard a concern from some folks who care deeply about Israel that Hillary will be the president “most unfriendly to Israel in our history, worse than Obama.” Thoughts on how I might respond in conversation? Podesta wrote back: That’s a bit crazy. Obama developed a real feud with Bibi, but she has been a staunch defender of Israel since her Senate days. Probably her very best supporters are Haim Saban, and Danny Abraham who would not be with her if she wasn’t totally committed to Israeli security. Eli Clifton offers the moral of this story: “Podesta’s acknowledgement that two of Hillary Clinton’s key donors condition their support on her support of Israel’s security is a striking moment of candor from Podesta, but a statement which is consistent with her previous actions to placate the concerns of her biggest financial backers.”

This is also fantastic. When “Bibi” — no one calls him Benjamin Netanyahu in Dem circles– won reelection in the Israeli elections in March 2015, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta asked Paul Begala for his take on Netanyahu’s victory. Wow is Begala a whiz. He worked for Yitzhak Herzog, who lost; and he wrote back in part: Just as patterns of immigration are moving the US left, patterns of immigration are moving Israel right. I have never seen anything like Bibi’s furious surge to the right in the last 4 days. Nothing like it in America. He had robo-calls calling the President “Hussein Obama, the Muslim,” he had ads saying the Arabs will vote in droves. He accused Herzog of wanting to divide Jerusalem. Bibi did not win because of Iran. He won because of race. He cannibalized the smaller parties on the right: Bennett’s Jewish Home lost 4 seats, Shas lost 4 seats, Lieberman’s party lost 5 seats, United Torah lost 1. That is a 14 seat decline on the right. Bibi gained 10… All the smart guys in Tel Aviv thought Bibi was having a nervous breakdown. In the US you could never get away with those kind of racist appeals. But, man, did it work.

There’s really only one thing to say about this email. Begala is on television all the time slashing Donald Trump. Has he ever told American audiences that Benjamin Netanyahu is a racist in a way that no American politician could be? Not even Trump? And Israel is a place of creeping fascism (as Moshe Ya’alon and Yair Golan have explained)? Begala doesn’t say that because of emails 1 and 2 in this post; “Bibi” is necessary for the maintenance of the American establishment as it now stands. And President Clinton has promised: “I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.” Another leaked email says that Clinton says reaching out to Netanyahu, I mean Bibi, is “near the top” of her list of priorities. I wonder why.

Trump employing a “wag the dog” strategy, in which he highlights his leadership on an international crisis to divert attention from domestic political problems, is reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s threats to attack Serbia in early 1999 as his impeachment trial was underway over his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky. (Clinton also was accused of a “wag-the-dog” strategy when he fired missiles at supposed Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.)

Trump’s advisers, in briefing the press on Thursday night, went to great lengths to highlight Trump’s compassion toward the victims of the poison gas and his decisiveness in bombing Assad’s military in contrast to Obama’s willingness to allow the intelligence community to conduct a serious review of the evidence surrounding the 2013 sarin-gas case. Ultimately, Obama listened to his intelligence advisers who told him there was no “slam-dunk” evidence implicating Assad’s regime and he pulled back from a military strike at the last minute – while publicly maintaining the fiction that the U.S. government was certain of Assad’s guilt. In both cases – 2013 and 2017 – there were strong reasons to doubt Assad’s responsibility. In 2013, he had just invited United Nations inspectors into Syria to investigate cases of alleged rebel use of chemical weapons and thus it made no sense that he would launch a sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs, guaranteeing that the U.N. inspectors would be diverted to that case. Similarly, now, Assad’s military has gained a decisive advantage over the rebels and he had just scored a major diplomatic victory with the Trump administration’s announcement that the U.S. was no longer seeking “regime change” in Syria. The savvy Assad would know that a chemical weapon attack now would likely result in U.S. retaliation and jeopardize the gains that his military has achieved with Russian and Iranian help. The counter-argument to this logic – made by The New York Times and other neocon-oriented news outlets – essentially maintains that Assad is a crazed barbarian who was testing out his newfound position of strength by baiting President Trump. Of course, if that were the case, it would have made sense that Assad would have boasted of his act, rather than deny it.

Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media.

Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.” Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike. “The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.” Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public. “People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”

Regarding this week’s events, Trump’s desperation to reverse his negative media coverage and the dubious evidence blaming Assad for the Idlib incident could fit with the “Wag the Dog” movie from 1997 in which an embattled president creates a phony foreign crisis in Albania.

In the movie, the White House operation is a cynical psychological operation to convince the American people that innocent Albanian children, including an attractive girl carrying a cat, are in danger when, In reality, the girl was an actor posing before a green screen that allowed scenes of fiery ruins to be inserted as background. Today, because Trump and his administration are now committed to convincing Americans that Assad really was responsible for Tuesday’s poison-gas tragedy, the prospects for a full and open investigation are effectively ended. We may never know if there is truth to those allegations or whether we are being manipulated by another “wag the dog” psyop.

NED, receives virtually all its financing from the US government ($5 billion in total since 1991 ), but it likes to refer to itself as an NGO (Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO. Its long-time intervention in Ukraine is as supra-legal as the Russian military deployment there. Journalist Robert Parry has observed: For NED and American neocons, Yanukovych’s electoral legitimacy lasted only as long as he accepted European demands for new “trade agreements” and stern economic “reforms” required by the International Monetary Fund. When Yanukovych was negotiating those pacts, he won praise, but when he judged the price too high for Ukraine and opted for a more generous deal from Russia, he immediately became a target for “regime change.” Thus, we have to ask, as Mr. Putin asked – “Why?” Why has NED been funding 65 projects in one foreign country? Why were Washington officials grooming a replacement for President Yanukovych, legally and democratically elected in 2010, who, in the face of protests, moved elections up so he could have been voted out of office – not thrown out by a mob? Yanukovych made repeated important concessions, including amnesty for those arrested and offering, on January 25, to make two of his adversaries prime minister and deputy prime minister; all to no avail; key elements of the protestors, and those behind them, wanted their putsch.

Carl Gershman, president of NED, wrote last September that “Ukraine is the biggest prize”. The man knows whereof he speaks. He has presided over NED since its beginning, overseeing the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004), the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005), the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005), the Green Revolution in Iran (2009), and now Ukraine once again. It’s as if the Cold War never ended. The current unbridled animosity of the American media toward Putin also reflects an old practice. The United States is so accustomed to world leaders holding their tongue and not voicing criticism of Washington’s policies appropriate to the criminality of those policies, that when a Vladimir Putin comes along and expresses even a relatively mild condemnation he is labeled Public Enemy Number One and his words are accordingly ridiculed or ignored. On March 2 US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned Russia’s “incredible act of aggression” in Ukraine (Crimea) and threatened economic sanctions. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.” Iraq was in the 21st century. Senator John Kerry voted for it. Hypocrisy of this magnitude has to be respected.

but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls "Right-wing": the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods;

authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.

George Bernard Shaw in 1933: Extermination must be put on a scientific basis if it is ever to be carried out humanely and apologetically as well as thoroughly... If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.

But something else happened to all the intelligence agencies during the war - MI6 as well as MI5. As they grew massively in size they became riddled with factions and infighting. And because all this happened behind a wall of secrecy, there was little to stop things becoming vicious and poisonous.The journalist Phillip Knightley has written a really good history of spies - called The Second Oldest Profession. In it he quotes an agent describing what happened during the war years:"The whole organisation was riddled with nepotism - dim, dreary people of utter unmemorability; sub-men who were doubled up with other sub-men to create an illusion of strength and only doubled the weakness; others made memorable only by poisonous, corrupt malevolence or crass, mulish stupidity; the whole run by a chain of command remarkable for its feebleness. The entire service was decrepit and incompetent."

The case that really shocked Mrs Thatcher was the traitor Geoffrey Prime. In the 1970s he had worked at the top secret listening centre GCHQ and had been selling all it's secrets to the Russians.

And yet again it wasn't MI5 who uncovered his treachery - it was the local police in Cheltenham.In 1982 a policeman came to his house enquiring about his car - a rather distinct two-tone brown and white Mk IV Cortina - a which had been seen in the vicinity of an assault on a young girl.Prime told the policeman that he had been at home all day. But that evening he and his wife Rhona went for a drive to the top of Cleeve Hill. As they sat in the twilight Prime told Rhona that he was the man the police were looking for. And not only that, he was also a Russian spy.

Prime was a paedophile - and had used spying techniques to monitor the activities of thousands of young girls around Cheltenham. He had created a vast set of index cards which showed when the girls were most likely to be alone at home. He then went round to their houses in his two tone Cortina and sexually assaulted them.Despite this Prime had been positively vetted six times. Even the Russians got worried about his paedophile activities and seemed to want to dump him. In 1980 Prime had gone to Vienna to meet the KGB. Instead of meeting him secretly as they normally did, the Russians took him openly to the best restaurants where they knew Western intelligence agents would recognise them as KGB agents.But even then noone noticed them - or Prime.Prime's wife Rhona wrestled with her conscience - and in the end went to the police and told them everything about Prime. He was sent to jail for 35 years for spying and 3 years for the assaults on young girls - which says a lot about the priorities of the British establishment at that time.

The cases of Bettaney and Prime revealed not only just how incompetent MI5 was - but also how sad and seedy the secret world of spies really was.