Espionage, Treason, and the Congressional Fifth Column

Congress canoodles with Israeli spies to undermine Iran deal

by Justin Raimondo, March 25, 2015

The spectacle of virtually the entire Senate GOP caucus mobilizing in support of a foreign power in order to drag us into war with Iran has certainly been instructive. Not since the Federalist party plotted with the British during the War of 1812 has an American fifth column been so open about their treason.

But isn’t the "t"-word a bit hyperbolic? After all, don’t all Americans, even the worst warmongers among us, have the right to free speech? Those members of Congress were merely expressing their opinion – right?

Not so fast:
"Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.

"The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

"The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said."

To be clear: the Israelis penetrated our communications, and used other means – including "informants" presumably inside the U.S. government – to uncover details about the emerging deal with Iran, and then passed this information on, perhaps indirectly, to their congressional fifth column, including presidential aspirants Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul, all of whom then signed on to Sen. Tom Cotton’s "open letter" to Tehran.

If this isn’t treason, then the word has no meaning.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, who plotted with Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer behind the President’s back to invite Netanyahu to address Congress, said he was "shocked" and "baffled" by the news. Not by the news they spied on us – it’s well known that the Jewish state is among the most aggressive foreign adversaries our counterintelligence agencies have to fend off – but "by the fact that there were reports in this press article that information was being passed on from the Israelis to members of Congress. I’m not aware of that at all." What’s baffling, however, is Boehner’s behavior during this Israeli incursion onto American territory: why did he suddenly decide to go full wingnut and canoodle with the Israelis to bring Bibi to American shores? And how is it the Speaker has so little knowledge of what’s going on right under his nose on Capitol Hill?

"The White House discovered the operation," reports Adam Entous of the Wall Street Journal, "when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said." Those telling details then somehow found their way into conversations between the Israelis (and their American agents) and "U.S. lawmakers and others," accord to the Journal.

It’s one thing to spy, said a top U.S. official, but "it’s another thing to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy." Read More
 

Bipartisan House Bill would Repeal Patriot Act and Ban Mass Surveillance of Americans

Anyone taking odds on this congress has neither the guts or moral fiber to go against the oligarchy that owns them...and us?

Friday, March 27, 2015

Reps. Mark Pocan
and Thomas Massie

 

An ambitious bipartisan bill that would seriously roll back the federal government’s ability to conduct surveillance operations has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
HR 1466 (pdf) (the Surveillance State Repeal Act) would do away with the Patriot Act (pdf) and ban large-scale spying programs, such as the National Security Agency’s telephone metadata collection that has generated so much controversy. It is the most far-reaching anti-surveillance legislation drafted to date.

“This isn’t just tinkering around the edges, it’s a meaningful overhaul that makes sure the meaningless surveillance of emails and cell phones are done away with,” Representative Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin), one of the bill’s authors, told a briefing for congressional staffers, according to ThinkProgress. The coauthor of HR 1466 is Representative Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky).

The bill’s original co-sponsors are Democrats Alan Grayson of Florida, James McGovern of Massachusetts and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. Other supporters include libertarian organizations opposed to widespread government spying.

Patrick Eddington, national security and civil liberties policy analyst for the libertarian think tank CATO Institute, said: “All mass surveillance does is violate the rights and put a chilling effect on the American people.”

The legislation also would eliminate numerous surveillance permissions granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (pdf) amendments approved by Congress during the George W. Bush administration.

The Hill reported that the proposal is “likely to be a nonstarter for leaders in Congress, who have been worried that even much milder reforms to the nation’s spying laws would tragically handicap the nation’s ability to fight terrorists. A similar bill was introduced in 2013 but failed to gain any movement in the House.”

Congress has until June 1 to reauthorize portions of the Patriot Act that support the government’s surveillance operation. Without re-authorization of the law’s Section 215, the telephone metadata program will expire.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

House Members Move To Repeal The Patriot Act With Strongest Anti-Surveillance Bill To Date (by Lauren Williams, ThinkProgress)

U.S. To Stop Collecting Bulk Phone Data If Spying Law Expires (by Mark Hosenball, Reuters)

House Effort Would Completely Dismantle Patriot Act (by Julian Hattem, The Hill)

HR 1466 (Congress.gov) (pdf)

All Bill Information (Except Text) for H.R.1466 - Surveillance State Repeal Act (Congress.gov)

NSA Coalition Letter (pdf)

Justice Dept. Agrees to Release Secret Memo Relating to Patriot Act and Census Info (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

NSA Phone Data Collection Made No Difference to National Security (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)

Washington's Al Qaeda Ally Now Leading ISIS in Libya

 Republican senators McCain & Graham heroes to some, traitors to most. While they will not be punished by congress which acts unlawfully itself, this pair must be removed by the voters of those respective states. 

Additionally, state governors for years have condoned the respective national guard regiments to be deployed in the undeclared overseas wars upon many nations - and lives. Those unlawful acts should be nullified by governors immediately.

March 9, 2015 (Eric Draitser - NEO) - The revelations that US ally Abdelhakim Belhadj is now leading ISIS in Libya should come as no surprise to those who have followed US policy in that country, and throughout the region. It illustrates for the umpteenth time that Washington has provided aid and comfort to precisely those forces it claims to be fighting around the world.

According to recent reports, Abdelhakim Belhadj has now firmly ensconced himself as the organizational commander of the ISIS presence inside Libya. The information comes from an unnamed US intelligence official who has confirmed that Belhadj is supporting and coordinating the efforts of the ISIS training centers in eastern Libya around the city of Derna, an area long known as a hotbed of jihadi militancy.

While it may not seem to be a major story – Al Qaeda terrorist turns ISIS commander – the reality is that since 2011 the US and its NATO allies have held up Belhadj as a “freedom fighter.” They portrayed him as a man who courageously led his fellow freedom-lovers against the “tyrannical despot” Gaddafi whose security forces at one time captured and imprisoned many members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), including Belhadj.

Belhadj served the US cause in Libya so well that he can be seen receiving accolades from Sen. John McCain who referred to Belhadj and his followers as heroes. He was initially rewarded after the fall of Gaddafi with the post of military commander of Tripoli, though he was forced to give way to a more politically palatable “transitional government” which has since evaporated in that chaotic, war-ravaged country.

Belhadj’s history of terrorist activity includes such “achievements” as collaboration with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course his convenient servitude to the US-NATO sponsored rampage across Libya that, among other things, caused mass killings of black Libyans and anyone suspected of being part of the Green Resistance (those loyal to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya led by Gaddafi). Although the corporate media tried to make a martyr of Belhadj for his alleged torture via the CIA rendition program, the inescapable fact is that wherever he goes he leaves a violent and bloody wake.

While much of this information is known, what is of paramount importance is placing this news in a proper political context, one that illustrates clearly the fact that the US has been, and continues to be, the major patron of extremist militants from Libya to Syria and beyond, and that all talk of “moderate rebels” is merely rhetoric designed to fool an unthinking public.

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend…Until He Isn’t

There is ample documented evidence of Belhadj’s association with Al Qaeda and his terrorist exploits the world over. Variousreports have highlighted his experiences fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and he himself has boasted of killing US troops in Iraq. However, it was in Libya in 2011 where Belhadj became the face of the “rebels” seeking to topple Gaddafi and the legal government of Libya.

As the New York Times reported:

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was formed in 1995 with the goal of ousting Colonel Qaddafi. Driven into the mountains or exile by Libyan security forces, the group’s members were among the first to join the fight against Qaddafi security forces… Officially the fighting group does not exist any longer, but the former members are fighting largely under the leadership of Abu Abdullah Sadik [aka Abdelhakim Belhadj].

So, not only was Belhadj a participant in the US-NATO war on Libya, he was one of its most powerful leaders, heading a battle-hardened jihadist faction that constituted the leading edge of the war against Gaddafi. Nowhere was this more clearly demonstrated than when the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) took the lead in the attack on Gaddafi’s compound at Bab al-Aziziya. In this regard, LIFG was provided intelligence, and likely also tactical support, from US intelligence and the US military.

This new information about Belhadj’s association with the suddenly globally relevant ISIS certainly bolsters the argument that this writer, among many others, has made since 2011 – that the US-NATO war on Libya was waged by terrorist groups overtly and tacitly supported by US intelligence and the US military. Moreover, it dovetails with other information that has surfaced in recent years, information that shines a light on how the US exploited for its own geopolitical purposes one of the most active terrorist hotbeds anywhere in the world.

According to the recent reports, Belhadj is directly involved with supporting the ISIS training centers in Derna. Of course Derna should be well known to anyone who has followed Libya since 2011, because that city, along with Tobruk and Benghazi, were the centers of anti-Gaddafi terrorist recruitment in the early days of the “uprising” all through the fateful year of 2011. But Derna was known long before that as a locus of militant extremism. FINISH READING

▶ The Problem With Voting for ‘Conservatives’ - YouTube

The Freedom Index - The New American

Published on Mar 9, 2015

JBS CEO Art Thompson's weekly news video update for March 9 - 15, 2015.

In this week's Analysis Behind the News video, JBS CEO Art Thompson demonstrates the problem with those in Congress who obey the Constitution only 80 percent of the time. He also introduces a new pamphlet focusing on how trade agreements have hurt our military readiness.

 

John McCain's Terrorist Friends

1st pub. CV on 05.29.13
My Catbird Seat May 29, 2013 

"The Israel lobby’s involvement in all this is somewhat obscure, but WINEP has been on the scene providing quotes and rationales for US intervention, and now with the Israeli air strikes and all this talk of Hezbollah propping up a supposedly faltering Assad, it’s clear why: the Israelis want to use this opportunity to take out another of their enemies.

They lured us into attacking Iraq, and now they are insisting we go after Iran – but as an appetizer, so to speak, they’re inviting us to first gobble up Syria before partaking of the main course."

While Clinton Hid Emails, $6 Billion Went Missing in Her State Dept.

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Aaron Dykes

(Truthstream Media)

Editor’s Note: Do you think she’ll finally change that Twitter avatar?

The political world is swarming over revelations that Hillary Clinton hid her emails during her time as Secretary of State.

She apparently went so far in shielding her official correspondence from public scrutiny that her team set up the private domain @clintonemail.com, used cover names for family members and reportedly ran a server for the mail client out of her home. Hillary publicly tweeted to dispel concerns about secrecy, dubiously claiming ‘I want the public to see my email.’

But serious concerns have been raised about her trail of secrecy, and the potential for classified information to have been exposed to foreign entities, spies, hackers and the like:

“The former Secretary’s tweet does not answer questions about why this was not done when she left office, the integrity of the emails while she controlled them, the scheme to conceal them, or the failure to provide them in logical course,” said committee spokesman Jamal Ware. (source)

Perhaps the most serious accusation facing Clinton is that she may have breached one of the fundamental tenets of classified information. J William Leonard, former director of the body that keeps watch over executive branch secrets, the Information Security Oversight Office, told the Guardian that if Clinton had dealt with confidential government matters through her personal email, that would have been problematic. “There is no such thing as personal copies of classified information. All classified information belongs to the US government and it should never leave the control of the government.” (source)

After all, it was the infamous hacker ‘Guccifer’ who revealed the @clintonemail.com scheme, not GOP enemies or ‘accountable’ officials in government.

Otherwise, would the world have ever known?

But Wait, There’s More… Much More Being Covered Up

But the emails – if they are ever disclosed to the public – are not the half of it.

They are the proverbial tip of the iceberg of secrecy.

Recall that not even a year ago, it was quietly disclosed that the Hillary Clinton State Dept. “misplaced” more than $6 billion dollars that remain unaccounted for. The Washington Times reported about the losses under Sec. Clinton:

The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts during the past six years, mainly during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, according to a newly released Inspector General report.

The $6 billion in unaccounted funds poses a “significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” according to the report.

Truthstream Media.com reported:

The obvious implication here is to cover up corruption and sweetheart deals, such as contracts to spouses and friends, with missing documents in numerous government contracts for the war in Iraq and much more:

The situation “creates conditions conducive to fraud, as corrupt individuals may attempt to conceal evidence of illicit behavior by omitting key documents from the contract file,” the report concluded.

It would seem very little was account for – by definition – since the Clinton State Dept. had a vacancy for the critical Inspector General position, responsible for oversight and department spending, during the ENTIRE 5 year tenure of Hillary Clinton there.

It was the longest vacancy in the entire history of the department. In February 2012, a year before Clinton left office in February 2013, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported:

The longest vacancy has been at the State Department, which has gone 1,484 days—over four years—without a permanent IG, at a time when the Department has taken on the responsibility and challenge of managing scandal-prone private security contractors in war zones. As of today, there are seven IG positions that have been vacant for more than a year.

So much for the already absurd ‘most transparent administration ever’ claim of the Obama Administration.

That means no one even pretended to keep Sec. Clinton and her department accountable during her reign.

After Hillary stepped down, embroiled in “what difference does make” Benghazi bullsh*t, and John Kerry took over, one Steve A. Linick was appointed as Inspector General of the State Dept. As IG, Linick discovered $6 billion in unaccounted funds “due to improper filing of contracts during the past six years.”

What else will be found – with an as-yet untold covert role by the State Dept. in the meddling of Libya, Egypt, Syria and other players in the Arab Spring uprising, the covert financing of jihadi rebels as well as ISIS, and in the mounting tensions with Russia, China and other key players around the world?

How much more has been kept secret – beyond just emails – that the public will never know about?

But alas, I guess secrecy and the Clintons have long gone together like peas and carrots, peanut butter and jelly or power and abuse.

via truthstreammedia

A Lone Wolf President & His Executive Orders

Can the president rewrite federal laws? Can he alter their meaning? Can he change their effect? These are legitimate questions in an era in which we have an unpopular progressive Democratic president who has boasted that he can govern without Congress by using his phone and his pen, and a mostly newly elected largely conservative Republican Congress with its own ideas about big government.

These are not hypothetical questions. In 2012, President Obama signed executive orders that essentially said to about 1.7 million unlawfully present immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthdays and who are not yet 31 years of age that if they complied with certain conditions that he made up out of thin air they will not be deported.

In 2014, the president signed additional executive orders that essentially made the same offer to about 4.7 million unlawfully present immigrants, without the age limits that he had made up out of thin air. A federal court enjoined enforcement of the 2014 orders last month.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission — the bureaucrats appointed by the president who regulate broadcast radio and television — decreed that it has the authority to regulate the Internet, even though federal courts have twice ruled that it does not.

Also last week, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, whose director is appointed by the president, proposed regulations that would outlaw the only mass-produced bullets that can be fired from an AR-15 rifle. This rifle has been the target of the left for many years because it looks like a military weapon; yet it is a lawful and safe civilian rifle commonly owned by many Americans.

This week, the president’s press secretary told reporters that the president is seriously thinking of signing executive orders intended to raise taxes on corporations by directing the IRS to redefine tax terminology so as to increase corporate tax burdens. He must have forgotten that those additional taxes would be paid by either the shareholders or the customers of those corporations, and those shareholders and customers elected a Congress they had every right to expect would be writing the tax laws. He has eviscerated that right.

What’s going on here?

What’s going on is the exercise of authoritarian impulses by a desperate president terrified of powerlessness and irrelevance, the Constitution be damned. I say “damned” because when the president writes laws, whether under the guise of administrative regulations or executive orders, he is effectively damning the Constitution by usurping the powers of Congress.

The Constitution could not be clearer.

Article I, section 1 begins, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Obama actually asked Congress to write the laws he is now purporting to write, and Congress declined, and so he does so at his peril.

In 1952, President Truman seized America’s closed steel mills because steel workers went on strike and the military needed hardware to fight the Korean War. He initially asked Congress for authorization to do this, and Congress declined to give it to him; so he seized the mills anyway. His seizure was challenged by Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., then a huge operator of steel mills. In a famous Supreme Court decision, the court enjoined the president from operating the mills.

Youngstown is not a novel or arcane case. The concurring opinion by Justice Robert Jackson articulating the truism that when the president acts in defiance of Congress he operates at his lowest ebb of constitutional power and can be enjoined by the courts unless he is in an area uniquely immune from congressional authority is among the most highly regarded and frequently cited concurring opinions in modern court history. It reminds the president and the lawyers who advise him that the Constitution imposes limits on executive power.

The president’s oath of office underscores those limits. It requires that he enforce the laws faithfully. The reason James Madison insisted on using the word “faithfully” in the presidential oath and putting the oath itself into the Constitution was to instill in presidents the realization that they may need to enforce laws with which they disagree — even laws they hate.

But Obama rejects the Youngstown decision and the Madisonian logic. Here is a president who claims he can kill Americans without due process, spy on Americans without individualized probable cause, start wars on his own, borrow money on his own, regulate the Internet, ban lawful guns, tell illegal immigrants how to avoid the consequences of federal law, and now raise taxes on his own.

One of the safeguards built into the Constitution is the separation of powers: Congress writes the laws, the president enforces the laws, and the courts interpret them. The purpose of this separation is to prevent the accumulation of too much power in the hands of too few — a valid fear when the Constitution was written and a valid fear today.

When the president effectively writes the laws, Congress is effectively neutered. 

Yet, the reason we have the separation of powers is not to protect Congress, but to protect all individuals from the loss of personal liberty. Under Obama, that loss has been vast. Will Congress and the courts do anything about it?

COPYRIGHT 2015 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

source 10thACtr

Being a CFR Member Makes Gen. Petraeus: Too Big to Jail

MORE ON THE PETRAEUS CRIMES AND COVERUP BELOW-

Exclusive: While lesser Americans face years in jail for leaking secrets – even to inform fellow citizens of government abuses – retired Gen. David Petraeus gets a misdemeanor wrist-slap for exposing covert officers and lying about it, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was jailed just for trying to ask Petraeus a question.

By Ray McGovern

The leniency shown former CIA Director (and retired General) David Petraeus by the Justice Department in sparing him prison time for the serious crimes that he has committed puts him in the same preferential, immune-from-incarceration category as those running the financial institutions of Wall Street, where, incidentally, Petraeus now makes millions. By contrast, “lesser” folks – and particularly the brave men and women who disclose government crimes – get to serve time, even decades, in jail.

Gen. David Petraeus in a photo with his

biographer/mistress Paula Broadwell.

(U.S. government photo)

Petraeus is now a partner at KKR, a firm specializing in large leveraged buyouts, and his hand-slap guilty plea to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets should not interfere from his continued service at the firm. KKR’s founders originally worked at Bear Stearns, the institution that failed in early 2008 at the beginning of the meltdown of the investment banking industry later that year.

 

Despite manifestly corrupt practices like those of subprime mortgage lenders, none of those responsible went to jail after the 2008-09 financial collapse which cost millions of Americans their jobs and homes. The bailed-out banks were judged “too big to fail” and the bankers “too big to jail.”

Two years ago, in a highly revealing slip of the tongue, Attorney General Eric Holder explained to Congress that it can “become difficult” to prosecute major financial institutions because they are so large that a criminal charge could pose a threat to the economy – or perhaps what he meant was an even bigger threat to the economy.

Holder tried to walk back his unintended slip into honesty a year later, claiming, “There is no such thing as ‘too big to jail.’” And this bromide was dutifully echoed by Holder’s likely successor, Loretta Lynch, at her confirmation hearing in late January.

Words, though, are cheap. The proof is in the pudding. It remains true that not one of the crooked bankers or investment advisers who inflicted untold misery on ordinary people, gambling away much of their life savings, has been jailed. Not one.

And now Petraeus, who gave his biographer/mistress access to some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and then lied about it to the FBI, has also been shown to be too big to jail. Perhaps Holder decided it would be a gentlemanly thing to do on his way out of office – to take this awkward issue off Lynch’s initial to-do list and spare her the embarrassment of demonstrating once again that equality under the law has become a mirage; that not only big banks, but also big shots like Petraeus – who was Official Washington’s most beloved general before becoming CIA director – are, in fact, too big to jail.

It strikes me, in a way, as fitting that even on his way out the door, Eric Holder would not miss the opportunity to demonstrate his propensity for giving hypocrisy a bad name.

A Slap on Wrist for Serious Crimes

The Justice Department let David Petraeus cop a plea after requiring him to admit that he had shared with his biographer/mistress eight black notebooks containing highly classified information and then lied about it to FBI investigators. Serious crimes? The following quotes are excerpted from “U.S. v. David Howell Petraeus: Factual Basis in support of the Plea Agreement” offered by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division:

“17. During his tenure as Commander of ISAF in Afghanistan, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS maintained bound, five-by-eight-inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences, and briefings. … A total of eight such books (hereinafter the “Black Books”) encompassed the period of defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’S ISAF [Afghanistan] command and collectively contained classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’s discussions with the President of the United States of America. [emphasis added]

“18. The Black Books contained national defense information, including Top Secret//SCI and code word information.”

Despite the sensitivity of the notebooks and existing law and regulations, Petraeus did not surrender them to proper custody when he returned to the U.S. after being nominated to become the Director of the CIA. According to the Court’s “Factual Basis,” Petraeus’s biographer/mistress recorded a conversation of Aug. 4, 2011, in which she asks about the “Black Books.” The Court statement continues:

“ [Petraeus] ‘Umm, well, they’re really – I mean they are highly classified, some of them.  … I mean there’s code word stuff in there.’ … On or about August 27, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS sent an email to his biographer in which he agreed to provide the Black Books to his biographer. … On or about August 28, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWEL PETRAEUS delivered the Black Books to a private residence in Washington, D.C. where his biographer was staying. … On or about September 1, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS retrieved the Black Books from the D.C. private residence and returned them to his own Arlington, Virginia home.” [emphasis added]

I would think it a safe guess that Petraeus’s timing can be attributed to his awareness that his privacy and freedom of movement was about to be greatly diminished, once his CIA personal security detail started keeping close track of him from his first day on the job as CIA Director, Sept. 6, 2011.

“32. On or about October 26, 2012, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS was interviewed by two FBI special agents. … [He] was advised that the special agents were conducting a criminal investigation. … PETRAEUS stated that (a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer. These statements were false. Defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS then and there knew that he previously shared the Black Books with his biographer.” [emphasis added]

Lying to the FBI? No problem. As “Expose Facts” blogger Marcy Wheeler immediately commented: “For lying to the FBI – a crime that others go to prison for for months and years – Petraeus will just get a two point enhancement on his sentencing guidelines. The Department of Justice basically completely wiped out the crime of covering up his crime of leaking some of the country’s most sensitive secrets to his mistress.” [emphasis added]

Talk about “prosecutorial discretion” or, in this case, indiscretion – giving Petraeus a fine and probation but no felony conviction or prison time for what he did! Lesser lights are not so fortunate. Just ask Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for disclosing information to the public about U.S. war crimes and other abuses. Or Edward Snowden, who is stuck in Russia facing a U.S. indictment on espionage charges for informing the people about pervasive and unconstitutional U.S. government surveillance of common citizens.

Or former CIA officer John Kiriakou who was sent to prison for inadvertently revealing the name of one Agency official cognizant of CIA torture. Here’s what Neil MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said then: “The government has a vital interest in protecting the identities of those involved in covert operations. Leaks of highly sensitive, closely held and classified information compromise national security and can put individual lives in danger.”

When, on Oct. 23, 2012, Kiriakou acquiesced to a plea deal requiring two-and-a-half years in federal prison, then CIA Director Petraeus sent a sanctimonious Memorandum to Agency employees applauding Kiriakou’s conviction and noting, “It marks an important victory for our agency …  there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.” [emphasis added]

Consequences for Kiriakou but not, as we now know, for Petraeus.

If you feel no discomfort at this selective application of the law, you might wish to scroll or page back to the “Factual Basis” for Petraeus’s Plea Agreement and be reminded that it was just three days after his lecture to CIA employees about the sanctity of protecting the identity of covert agents that Petraeus lied to FBI investigators – on Oct. 26, 2012 – about his sharing such details with his mistress.

Why Did Petraeus Do It?

Old soldiers like Petraeus (indeed, most aging but still ambitious men) have been known to end up doing self-destructive things by letting themselves be flattered by the attentions of younger women. This may offer a partial explanation – human weakness even in a self-styled larger-than-life super-Mensch. But I see the motivation as mostly vainglory. (The two are not mutually exclusive, of course.)

Looking back at Petraeus’s record of overweening ambition, it seems likely he was motivated first and foremost by a desire to ensure that his biographer would be able to extract from the notebooks some juicy morsels he may not have remembered to tell her about. This might enhance his profile as Warrior-Scholar-“King David,” the image that he has assiduously cultivated and promoted, with the help of an adulating neocon-dominated media.

Petraeus’s presidential ambitions have been an open secret. And with his copping a plea to a misdemeanor, his “rehabilitation” seems to have already begun. He has told friends that he would like to serve again in government and they immediately relayed that bright hope to the media.

Sen. John McCain was quick to call the whole matter “closed.” A strong supporter of Petraeus, McCain added this fulsome praise: “At a time of grave security challenges around the world, I hope that General Petraeus will continue to provide his outstanding service and leadership to our nation, as he has throughout his distinguished career.”

And Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings’ neocon military specialist who rarely gets anything right, spoke true to form to the New York Times: “The broader nation needs his advice, and I think it’s been evident that people still want to hear from him. … People are forgiving and I know he made a mistake. But he’s also a national hero and a national treasure.”

The “mainstream media” is trapped in its undeserved adulation for Petraeus’s “heroism.” It is virtually impossible, for example, for them to acknowledge that his ballyhooed, official-handout-based “success” in training and equipping tens of thousands of crack Iraqi troops was given the lie when those same troops ran away (the officers took helicopters) and left their weapons behind at the first sight of ISIL fighters a year ago.

Equally sham were media claims of the “success” for the “surges” of 30,000 troops sent into Iraq (2007) and 33,000 into Afghanistan (2009). Each “surge” squandered the lives of about 1,000 U.S. troops for nothing – yes, nothing – except in the case of Iraq buying time for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to get out of town without a clear-cut defeat hanging around their necks.

Many of the supposed successes of Petraeus’s Iraqi “surge” also predated the “surge,” including a high-tech program for killing top militants such as Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the formation of the so-called Sunni Awakening, both occurring in 2006 under the previous field commanders. And, Bush’s principal goal of the “surge” – to create political space for a fuller Sunni-Shiite reconciliation – was never accomplished. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Surge Myth’s Deadly Result.”]

And last, it is important to note that David Petraeus does not have a corner on the above-the-law attitudes and behavior of previous directors of the CIA. The kid-gloves treatment he has been accorded, however, will increase chances that future directors will feel they can misbehave seriously and suffer no serious personal consequence.

The virtual immunity enjoyed by the well connected – even when they lie to the FBI or tell whoppers in sworn testimony to Congress (as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has done) – feeds the propensity to prioritize one’s own personal ambition and to delegate a back seat to legitimate national security concerns – even basic things like giving required protection to properly classified information, including the identity of covert officers.

One might call this all-too-common syndrome Self-Aggrandizing Dismissiveness (SAD). Sadly, Petraeus is merely the latest exemplar of the SAD syndrome. The unbridled ambitions of some of his predecessors at CIA – the arrogant John Deutch, for example – have been equally noxious and destructive. But we’ll leave that for the next chapter.

Full Disclosure: Petraeus has not yet answered McGovern’s letter of Feb. 3 regarding why McGovern was barred from a public speaking event by Petraeus in New York City on Oct. 30, 2014, and then was roughly arrested by police and jailed for the night. McGovern wonders if Petraeus failed to respond because he was pre-occupied working out his Plea Agreement.

Ray McGovern worked for a total of 27 years in all four of CIA’s main directorates. He served under seven Presidents and nine CIA Directors, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He now works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.

source consortiumnews

PETRAEUS  FILES

Charleston Voice: Petraeus Affair: Shirtless FBI Pic Appears to Be ...

Nov 21, 2012 ... Petraeus Affair: Shirtless FBI Pic Appears to Be Playful - ABC News.

Charleston Voice: General Petraeus may have been officially ...

Sep 9, 2013 ... Another special forces veteran, retired Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had ...

Charleston Voice: Cover-up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Nov 11, 2012 ... “What I do know is that an integral part of that firewall involved having information on Petraeus that would potentially damage his career, legacy ...

Charleston Voice: CIA-Sponsored Trolls Monitor Internet & Interact ...

Nov 29, 2012 ... Petraeus is seeking to better the CIA's ability to create online identities for undercover spies. Currently, each internet user has a digital footprint ...

Traitors Within the Gates: CFR's Military Membership Roster

Oct 6, 2014 ... GEN David Petraeus - Director CIA (Aug. 2011) Resigned 11/9/12 Admitted Adulterer present Commander of U.S. and Coalition forces in ...

Charleston Voice: Could Theft of $500M Fuel in Afghanistan be ...

Sep 11, 2012 ... Could Theft of $500M Fuel in Afghanistan be another Thread to be Unraveled on Petraeus' Watch? Posted by Charleston Voice ...

Charleston Voice: Mossad Chief Secretly Met With Top U.S. Officials ...

Feb 1, 2012 ... Feinstein then indicated that she had met Mossad chief Pardo earlier in the week in Washington, with Petraeus adding that he too met Pardo ...

US Taxpayers Pay 25% of Israel's Defense Budget & List of US Politicians Who Hold Dual US/Israeli Citizenship

Keep at my fellow Americans we've got foreigners' bills to pay too!

Part I

A Reminder: U.S. Pays One Quarter of Israel's Defense Budget

Wednesday, March 04, 2015

(graphic: AllGov)

With Capitol Hill abuzz over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appearance before Congress this week, there is no time like the present for a refresher on how much the American taxpayers spend on Israel's defense.

If it wasn't for Washington's longtime commitment to bolstering the Israel Defense Forces, Netanyahu and Israeli lawmakers would have a serious shortfall on their hands.

After all, the U.S. funds about 25% of Israel's annual spending on its military, thanks to $3 billion a year in aid.

"Since it was founded in 1948, Israel has become the largest single recipient of U.S foreign assistance — a total of $121 billion, almost all of which has been in the form of military assistance," Brandon Ward wrote at Journalist's Resource, citing a 2014 Congressional Research Service report (U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel [pdf]).

Among the items funded by the United States is Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system. The 2015 budget allows $175.9 million for the system on top of $234 million in 2014 and $704 million in the years before that, according to the report.

The really big-ticket item is a purchase of 19 F-35 fighter planes financed with a $2.75 billion grant. The planes were supposed to have been delivered this year, but problems with the F-35 program have pushed the delivery date to 2016 or 2017.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

U.S. Foreign Aid To Israel: 2014 Congressional Report (Journalist's Resource)

U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel (by Jeremy M. Sharp, Congressional Research Service) (pdf)

Supreme Court Rulings Open Loopholes for Water Polluters (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

When Israelis Kill Gaza Civilians, They do so with Weapons Provided by U.S. (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

U.S. Aid to Israel Equals $4.9 Million a Day for 64 Years (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

via AllGov

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Political Polygamy is Moral and OK for America

Part II

US Politicians Who Hold Dual US/Israeli Citizenship

August 18, 2014

"If Americans were ever polled on it—and they never are—the majority who now object to increasing aid to Israel would also likely object to quasi-governmental and governmental positions being staffed by people who—by citizenship or sheer strength of identity politics—are primarily occupied with advancing Israeli interests rather than those of the United States. It is obvious that the real reason AIPAC and its economic luminaries such as Fischer never substantiate any of the advertised benefits the U.S.-Israel "special relationship" delivers to America in return for all of the costs is simple—there simply aren't any. As greater numbers of Americans become aware that the entire "special relationship" framework is sustained by nothing more than Israel lobby campaign-finance and propaganda networks, the harder the lobby will have to work… In the very short term, Americans can only fight such undue Israel lobby influence by again—like during the drive to attack Syria—staging a mass action to demand their senators reject Stanley Fischer's nomination," Grant Smith, IRMEP

Past and Present:

1. Attorney General – Michael Mukasey
2. Head of Homeland Security – Michael Chertoff
3. Chairman Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – Richard Perle
4. Deputy Defense Secretary (Former) – Paul Wolfowitz
5. Under Secretary of Defense – Douglas Feith
6. National Security Council Advisor – Elliott Abrams
7. Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff (Former) – "Scooter" Libby
8. White House Deputy Chief of Staff – Joshua Bolten
9. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – Marc Grossman
10. Director of Policy Planning at the State Department – Richard Haass
11. U.S. Trade Representative (Cabinet-level Position) – Robert Zoellick
12. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – James Schlesinger
13. UN Representative (Former) – John Bolton
14. Under Secretary for Arms Control – David Wurmser
15. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – Eliot Cohen
16. Senior Advisor to the President – Steve Goldsmith
17. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Christopher Gersten
18. Assistant Secretary of State – Lincoln Bloomfield
19. Deputy Assistant to the President – Jay Lefkowitz
20. White House Political Director – Ken Melman
21. National Security Study Group – Edward Luttwak
22. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – Kenneth Adelman
23. Defense Intelligence Agency Analyst (Former) – Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
24. National Security Council Advisor – Robert Satloff
25. President Export-Import Bank U.S. – Mel Sembler
26. Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families – Christopher Gersten
27. Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs – Mark Weinberger
28. White House Speechwriter – David Frum
29. White House Spokesman (Former) – Ari Fleischer
30. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – Henry Kissinger
31. Deputy Secretary of Commerce – Samuel Bodman
32. Under Secretary of State for Management – Bonnie Cohen
33. Director of Foreign Service Institute – Ruth Davis
34. Federal Reserve Chair – Janet Yellen
35. Federal Reserve Vice-Chair – Stanley Fischer

Current (and past) Members of Senate:

  Representative Gary Ackerman (New York)

  Representative John H. Adler (New Jersey)

  Representative Shelley Berkley (Nevada)

  Representative Howard Berman (California)

  Representative Steve Cohen (Tennessee)

  Representative Susan Davis (California)

  Representative Eliot Engel (New York)

  Representative Bob Filner (California)

  Representative Barney Frank (Former) (Massachusetts)

  Representative Gabrielle Giffords (Arizona)

  Representative Jane Harman (California)

  Representative Paul Hodes (New Hampshire)

  Representative Steve Israel (New York)

  Representative Steve Kagen (Wisconsin)

  Representative Ronald Klein (Florida)

  Representative Sander Levin (Michigan)

  Representative Nita Lowey (New York)

  Representative Jerry Nadler (New York)

  Representative Jared Polis (Colorado)

  Representative Steve Rothman (New Jersey)

  Representative Jan Schakowsky (Illinois)

  Representative Adam Schiff (California)

  Representative Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania)

  Representative Allyson Schwartz (Pennsylvania)

  Representative Brad Sherman (California)

  Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Florida)

  Representative Henry Waxman (California)

  Representative Anthony Weiner (New York)

  Representative John Yarmuth (Kentucky)

House of Representatives:

  Representative Gary Ackerman (New York)

  Representative John H. Adler (New Jersey)

  Representative Shelley Berkley (Nevada)

  Representative Howard Berman (California)

  Representative Steve Cohen (Tennessee)

  Representative Susan Davis (California)

  Representative Eliot Engel (New York)

  Representative Bob Filner (California)

  Representative Barney Frank (Massachusetts)

  Representative Gabrielle Giffords (Arizona)

  Representative Alan Grayson (Florida)

  Representative Jane Harman (California)

  Representative Paul Hodes (New Hampshire)

  Representative Steve Israel (New York)

  Representative Steve Kagen (Wisconsin)

  Representative Ronald Klein (Florida)

  Representative Sander Levin (Michigan)

  Representative Nita Lowey (New York)

  Representative Jerry Nadler (New York)

  Representative Jared Polis (Colorado)

  Representative Steve Rothman (New Jersey)

  Representative Jan Schakowsky (Illinois)

  Representative Adam Schiff (California)

  Representative Allyson Schwartz (Pennsylvania)

  Representative Brad Sherman (California)

  Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Florida)

  Representative Henry Waxman (California)

  Representative Anthony Weiner (New York)

  Representative John Yarmuth (Kentucky)

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There are no better people to run America than European American people. European peoples should be able to organize and advance their own interests just like every other group.

via american3rdposition