that enables
leading U.S. banks such as Citibank or Chase Manhattan to launder
dirty cash for sinister customers in the tens of billions of dollars?March 5, 2001
March 12, 2001
March 19, 2001
March 26, 2001
President Bush's meeting with the Mexican president appeared innocent but it was used to set the stage for a surrender of U.S. sovereignty.
President Bush was conditioning the public mind to accept "open borders" and what would amount to universal amnesty for present and future illegal aliens when he met Feb. 16 with Mexican leader Vicente Fox.
That's the educated opinion of a high State Department official who has been a reliable source on Bilderberg and other subjects for more than a decade.
"It's more what was not said than what was said that is significant," the official said. "They have succeeded in making these issues a respectable part of the public dialogue."
Bush "is introducing his no-border, everybody can come doctrine ‘on little cat's feet' - with apologies to Carl Sandburg," he said.
Significantly, he noted, Bush gave the order to bomb Iraq the day before - at the very moment he would be meeting with Fox. This caused reporters to ask about the bombing in Iraq rather than what had transpired between the two leaders in a brief, post-meeting press conference.
Thus, as planned, the story got less attention than it otherwise would.
The timing was questioned by White House Weekly, a respected journal devoted to covering presidents.
It was strange that Bush...allowed the bombing of Iraq to take place coincidentally," it said. "The press had heard of the attacks, and as many questions concerned Iraq as did the happy new world of Mexican-American relations. what could have been a vigorous press conference was cut off abruptly by a Mexican official after 30 minutes.
"When fox called for ‘open borders' Bush said ‘maybe that's not the best way' and let it go at that, and there was little, if any, public outcry," the official said. "Other presidents would have said ‘absolutely not - that's an absurd ideal.'"
Meanwhile, he pointed out, Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC-TV in an interview that the Bush administration is sympathetic to Fox's desire to create an "open border."
A nation is defined by its borders, the State Department official said, and if borders are lost, national identity is lost.
Similarly, the official said, Bush's soft response to the demand for universal amnesty for illegal aliens is setting the scene for precisely that. White House officials said Bush does not think amnesty is "the best way" but he has not "ruled it out."
IMMIGRATION TALKS
Bush and Fox agreed to conduct "formal, high-level negotiations" over the subject of immigration - legal and illegal - into the United States. In these meetings, involving Powell on the U.S. team, the American people will be further conditioned to accept open borders and universal amnesty, the State Department official said.
"The goal is a safe and orderly migration, a policy that respects individuals on both side of the border," Bush said after the meeting.
"Certainly there is a new approach to things" by the United States, Fox said in Spanish, "a much more positive approach to migration." Fox spoke fluent English when talking to this newspaper in December.
There was discussion of fighting drug traffickers and the prospect of importing much-needed oil from Mexico which also diverted attention from this country's prospective loss of sovereignty.
On a related issue, the two leaders acted as cheerleaders for the campaign to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas as a prelude to establishing an American Union patterned after the European Union.
"We must work with our neighbors to build a Western Hemisphere of freedom and prosperity, a hemisphere bound together by shared ideals and free trade from the Arctic to the Andes to Cape Horn,' bush said the day before his meeting with Fox. "Building this hemisphere of freedom will be a fundamental commitment of my administration."
Bush wants Congress to pass "fast-track" authority for him to negotiate a hemispheric "free-trade" zone. Under such authority, which was consistently denied former President Clinton, Congress could vote the trade deal up or down but make no changes.
"This could really be big; there are very, very high expectations," said Juan Hernandez, a top Fox aide who specializes in U.S.-Mexican affairs.*
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan devised a seedy scheme to bail out - at taxpayers' expense - banksters who played fast and loose with bank funds.
It is not always easy to retrace the step-by-step descent of an August, powerful public official into corrupt compromises and ultimately into criminality. but in the career of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan the events of Nov. 14, 1990, marked a turning point, a SPOTLIGHT investigation has found.
To understand what happened that day, it is necessary to know that each year the Federal deposit Insurance corporation (FDIC) submits every U.S. Bank whose deposits it insures to a thorough, top-to-bottom audit. As a result of these audits, the FDIC classifies banks into five categories.
Categories one, two and three are assigned, in that order, to well-functioning or moderately troubled money centers. Category four is for deeply troubled financial institutions that need federal assistance to survive. category five is a rare classification: it is reserved for spent, wrecked banks that require immediate federal shutdown.
In the early afternoon of Nov. 14, 1990, a staff courier delivered a file marked "TOP SECRET - EYES ONLY" into Greenspan's hands at his Fed office.
It contained the stunning news that after auditing Citibank, then the largest U.S. commercial bank, the FDIC had placed it into category five and urged its immediate closedown.
Greenspan knew that the entire U.S. banking system was in turmoil and close to real trouble, but the report about Citibank's insolvency hit him like a bombshell. The underlying causes of the disaster were not a secret.
Under the chairmanship of Walter Wriston, a headstrong, high-flying financier, Citibank had plunged into "buccaneer banking," transferring many of its operations to the Bahamas, where U.S. regulations and the requirements of fractional reserve banking did not apply.
Through its Nassau branch, Citibank made feckless loans across the continent, many of which inevitably turned sour. It gambled heavily in the Euromarket, sometimes profitably, sometimes disastrously. To be sure, Citibank grew fast, but much of its increased turnover represented losses rather than real gains.
The law now required that upon receipt of the FDIC's audit, Greenspan initiate the federal takeover of this recklessly extended, insolvent commercial bank, no matter how large.
But by 1990, Walter Wriston had retired. Citibank's new boss was John Reed, a close personal friend of Greenspan and of the powerful president of the New York Fed, Gerald Corrigan. The two Federal Reserve chieftains decided to bail out Citibank - and make American taxpayers pony up the uncounted billions of dollars the rescue would cost.
"In the sense that it contravened the statutes and regulations on how to deal with a bank driven into insolvency by its own management, Greenspan's and Corrigan's decision to stage a bailout was illegal," says Dr. Aldo Milinkovich, a former Treasury ban examiner.
In the sense that it secretively diverted billions in public funds into refinancing a private bank without the consent or even knowledge of the American taxpayers who were made to pay for the bailout, it was a scam, Dr Milinkovich added. And in the sense that the operation was set up to generate bullions in profits for insider investors, the scheme was corrupt, he concluded.
The two Fed bosses went about the operation as deceptively as possible.
Pretending that he was needed for "consultations," Corrigan flew to Saudi Arabia, where he went into a closed-door huddle with Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the few international investors with deep enough pockets to refloat Citibank.
Corrigan managed to persuade the Arab mogul to sink two billion dollars into a refinancing of the foundering U.S. bank. He did so by promising the prince that with the Fed's secret support he would find this outlay the "most profitable investment" of his life.
As soon as Citibank had the Arab cash, Greenspan turned to a curious maneuver. He began to drastically lower the borrowing cost of banks by chopping the two principal loan rates - known as the "Fed funds" and the discount rate - directly controlled by the Federal Reserve.
In 1991, the Fed funds rate stood at 9 percent; in six months, Greenspan trimmed it to 2.7 percent. When started congressional committees inquired about the reasons for such drastic manipulation of the financial markets, Greenspan stoutly testified that the realignment was necessary to "preempt inflation."
But there was no inflation anywhere in sight, said veteran Wall Street loan broker Wally Merkel. "Greenspan lied," he noted. "The real purpose of his rate slashing was to enable embattled banks like Citicorp to borrow from the Fed very cheaply - and then to re-lend the same money to the U.S. Government by buying Treasury bonds that paid between 5.5 percent and 6 percent interest."
This covert bank bailout became known among financial insiders as the "carry trade," because all a big bank had t do was to pick up its money at the Fed, then carry it over to the Treasury and re-lend it, in effect, to U.S. taxpayers at a secure, fat profit margin.
The "carry trade" eventually broadened into a covert Fed bailout of troubled banks.
Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal's original investment in Citibank generated an $8 billion profit in rising bank-share prices. Greenspan acquired the reputation of a financial wizard. Everyone won something - except for the bilked American taxpayers, who were conned into financing the entire scheme, without ever being told the truth about it.*
This week's editorial on "Double-Yah's Folly" sends an early warning to all SPOTLIGHT readers that young Bush's outrageous, stupid and unconstitutional bombing of Iraq could be a foreshadowing of "mistakes" to come from this scion of high finance and brutal internationalist opportunity.
Double Yah told the press that the recent U.S.-British bombing raid near Baghdad, Iraq, was "routine" and was an act of "self-defense." This rogue leader must be stopped because he endangers the entire Mideast, if not the world.
There was a time when Saddam Hussein was a friend and ally of the United States. Our CIA too hold of his future and cast him in ht roles of being both anti-communist and anti-Iran, at the same time he was an ally of the Soviet Union. His use of chemical warfare against the Kurds in northern Iraq, Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war and Shiite rebels in southern Iraq were over-looked by his then-patron, the United States.
After the CIA's puppet, Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown by a fundamentalist Muslim regime, Saddam was used to take on Iran in a 10-year bloody war. The SPOTLIGHT reported in its Oct. 13, 1980, issue that Iraq attacked Iran only after receiving firm assurances from the CIA and Israel that they would support him financially and militarily.
Of course the chemical gas was provided by the United States. Saddam's loyalty to the CIA - read the U.S. Establishment - was unwavering. Keep in mind that the CIA is part and parcel of the American Establishment.
The SPOTLIGHT editorialized on Oct. 10, 1988: It was the Iraqis, who received U.S. support, despite a general acknowledgment that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a sadistic butcher and no friend of the United States.
And although Saddam Hussein's rule was no less spectacular in the amount of blood that was spilled in his name that the crimes committed by the ayatollah's legions of followers, somehow Hussein remained a nameless, faceless entity to the American media public, while the ayatollah's grim countenance could be seen scowling from the covers of national news magazines and television news shows.
We have been saying all along that the de facto alliance with the Iraqis was morally loathsome.
And despite all of Saddam's "on the record" brutality, he remained the chosen one of the establishments of Britain, France and the United states. Thousands upon thousands of Kurds and Iranians succumbed to the lethal gas Saddam ordered used on them.
George H.W. bush was elected president in 1988, taking office in January of 1989. For some unexplained reason the elder bush wanted to go down in history as a great wartime leader, perhaps with an eye to making a lot of money in the process.
Saddam would be an easy target for the establishment to "take out." There had to be a reason, however to do so. The military operation planned by Bush and his associates was called "Operation Desert Storm." Meanwhile, the lapdog establishment media demonized Saddam in order to prepare the American people to support a war against him. What better way then to set him up.
The American so-called "mainstream" media did not tell the American people about the behind-the-scenes machinations of bush and his plutocrat associates and allies. Saddam had to be proved as an aggressor tyrant against a small nation. Veteran SPOTLIGHT foreign affairs and diplomatic correspondent Andrew St. George, speaking on Sept. 3, 1990, at a meeting of the Liberty Lobby Board of Policy in Washington, first revealed the intrigue to get Saddam to invade oil-rich Kuwait.
It was then-U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, who gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait, which he called Iraq's 19th province. Glaspie told Saddam that President bush had no position concerning Iraq's border dispute with Kuwait.
The Bush administration, supported by high powered propagandists for the Kuwaiti ruling family and the powerful Israeli lobby which had backed the war against Saddam, did all they could to suppress The SPOTLIGHT's exclusive story about the actual involvement of the U.S. in the war against Saddam.
The bombing of Iraq continues practically every other day. A failed U.S. policy of "sanctions" against Iraq has contributed to the deaths of 4,000 Iraqi children every month since 1991, according to UNICEF. In 1996, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when confronted with these figures on CBS's "60 Minutes," said, "We think the price is worth it."
Today, members of the Rockefeller dominated Council on foreign Relations are at the helm of our foreign policy, including some who were around in the regimeof the elder bush: Colin Powell, now secretary of state, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, now vice-president of the United States after a stint as CEO of the Hilliburton Co., the principal international oil services company; and Condoleeza Rice, foreign to Double-Yah and protege of Madeleine Albright's father, Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat-refugee from the "non-communist" left.
Today, the GOP enthusiastically supports young Double-Yah in his hard line against Iraq. Double-Yah has cast himself as a "compassionate conservative" and "Christian," while continuing a murderous policy that kills innocent civilians, especially women and children. He is hardly compassionate of Christian, let alone conservative in the tradition of a Robert Taft. Let your congressman and senators know what you think about our Iraq policy. If you don't tell them what you think tey will never know that you mean business. As we pointed out last week, lobby them till you win. Call, write, wire, email or visit them in person. But act!
Remember: Your influence counts...Use it!*
Years ago I had a conversation with a brilliant man who once had headed the Strategic Air Command (those are the folks who actually would fight a nuclear war).
I asked him what he thought about the future of the country, and the general said bluntly, "I wouldn't give you two cents for it."
He was prophetic. I wouldn't give you two cents for the future of any country that has turned morality upside down so that legitimate businesses now feel called upon to punish the Boy Scouts for the Scouts' high moral standards. I'm sorry to say that my own newspaper is among them.
The problem with adopting the position, which states that the only sin is disagreeing with the proposition that there is no sin, is that it leaches into every aspect of a nation's existence.
Everything people do or don't do, say or don't say, is a result of their moral code. Whether a worker is conscientious or sloppy is a moral decision on the part of the worker. Whether a soldier obeys his oath is a moral decision. Whether people take care of their families or abuse them is a moral decision.
In America's flight from morality, people have turned to a self-appointed secular priesthood of social workers, psychologists and propagandists for special-interest groups to tell them what is right or wrong. the common theme of the secular priesthood is that individuals aren't responsible for their actions.
You would think that in America there were no people who abuse children, that there was only a "problem of child abuse." No, there are people who make the decision to abuse children and the answer should be that when such people are identified the government kills them or locks them up for life. No one ever should be given a second chance to abuse another child.
But just watch. There is already in preparation a new campaign by some psychologists to convince Americans that "intergenerational sexual relationships" can have a positive effect on the children. there long has been an organization, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, that lobbies for lowering the age of consent. You see, once you abandon morality, everything becomes negotiable and arguable. And, after all, the politically correct people say, one opinion is as good as another, and there is not truth.
When people no longer believe that their traditional moral code provides a valid set of criteria, then they're at the mercy of the public-relations campaigns, the peddlers of junk science and the ideologues.
No nation or empire can survive a corrupt culture, because, as I stated, the corruption leaches into every aspect of society from business to government, from the military to the educational establishment and even the religious institutions. Pretty soon, none of the elements of a nation or empire works. Then it falls.
The best way to keep your sanity during the long process of decline and fall is the reevaluate your own core beliefs and then, when you're satisfied with them, close the subject. You say that these are my beliefs and that they are not debatable or subject to compromise and that I don't give a flying flip who doesn't like it.
Let the others drive themselves nuts trying to figure out what is expedient on a case-by-case basis under constantly changing circumstances.
A lot of Americans have been duped into the idea that discriminating against anything and anybody is dreadful, mortal sin. Actually, sane people do discriminate against evil, the unhealthy, the dangerous, the brutal, the violent, the unjust and the ugly. So, hang tough, folks, and watch out for falling pieces of a once-great society.*
Teach kids how to avoid predators on the Internet
One in five children using the Internet are exposed to unwanted sexual solicitations while on-line, according to a report to Congress.
The report, by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, found that 24 million children fo on-line each month to learn, play and communicate with their peers.
The center announced on Feb. 21 that it is collaborating with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to launch an Internet safety initiative to make kids Web savvy and less vulnerable to predators.
The NetSmartz Workshop (www.netsmartz.org) will be available free and feature three are-appropriate lessons with Hollywood-style animation. One targets children aged 5-7, another 8-12 and a third 13 and up.*
Why did Congress grant a fugitive felon $97 million to orchestrate the overthrow of the Iraqi leadership?
When Congress decided to intervene on its own in Iraq's internal affairs, it entrusted $97 million in American taxpayers' money and the controversial task of ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi, however, is a convicted criminal, fugitive embezzler, and discredited international swindler.
[See The SPOTLIGHT's March 5 issue for details on Chalabi's criminal history.—Ed.]
The 1999 Iraq Liberation Act passed by U.S. lawmakers recognized Chalabi as president of the executive council of the Iraqi National Council (INC), the umbrella organization of squabbling opposition factions Congress apparently expected to arrange Saddam's assassination or violent overthrow.
To accomplish that assignment, Chalabi and his INC received a congressional grant of nearly $100 million and the promise of "military assistance and armaments" from the Pentagon and the CIA.
How could America's legislature entrust such a controversial, covert task to a sleazy fugitive criminal like Chalabi?
By most available signs, they were thoroughly conned by Israeli lobbyists, who depicted Chalabi, 49, an Iraqi-born Shiite who is a graduate of the University of Chicago, as a "well-regarded businessman," an "eminent Middle Eastern banker" and as a "respected leader of the Iraqi opposition."
In reality, documents obtained by The SPOTLIGHT show that in l988 Chalabi took over as chairman of Petra Bank, a major Jordanian financial institution. But by mid-1989 Jordanian authorities found that Chalabi was looting his own bank.
The Iraqi financier was indicted in Jordan on charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of bank depositors' funds and illegal insider speculation. Rather than face the charges, Chalabi fled, ending up in London. But in 1991 a Jordanian court convicted him of 31 specific financial felonies and sentenced him to 30 years in prison, as well as a large fine.
Well-informed Washington sources say that two campaign advisers of President George W. Bush—Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle—were especially active in promoting the idea of letting Chalabi and his INC overthrow Saddam by force or other criminal means.
Wolfowitz has been recently appointed deputy secretary of defense, an influential post he uses to advocate violent covert action against Iraq.
"Of course, if you consider it properly, the entire concept of financing an organization of crooks, cutthroats and terrorists like Chalabi's INC to assassinate a foreign head of state is a criminal enterprise," said a congressional staffer, who asked not to be quoted by name. "Perhaps Perle and Wolfowitz felt that a fugitive felon like Chalabi was best suited for the job. But they certainly deceived Congress about this."
For U.S. legislators, involvement in this sordid enterprise, involving a de facto alliance with a criminal gang, is an indelible stain on their record as the protectors of the principles of law and order among nations.*
You heard it here first. Bush's new pick for deputy secretary of state - a seasoned Washington power broker - is deeply embroiled in international crime.
President Bush has chosen an unsavory character as deputy secretary of state who was forced out by Bush's father in 1989 to avoid embarrassing the White House.
President Bush the Elder had chosen Richard Armitage as secretary of the Army but, to keep the lid on a boiling national security scandal, the president told him to "forget it," The SPOTLIGHT reported exclusively on June 12, 1989.
Armitage followed the Washington drill in such matters, announcing that he would "withdraw" from government service to go into private business. Armitage badly wanted the Pentagon post, associates acknowledged.
Armitage, a Bilderberg participant, had served in high Defense Department positions under President Ronald Reagan and his successor, Bush. A graduate of the Navy Academy, Armitage served three combat tours in Vietnam and is a close friend of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Yet, in 1989, Bush, a member of the Bilderberg brother group, the Trilateral Commission, was compelled to dump Armitage despite his gleaming public record.
It was Armitage's unpublic record, unearthed by The SPOTLIGHT, that forced his firing. It involved international narcotics dealings and money laundering.
Armitage had become deputy to Fred Ikle, under secretary of defense for policy, in the early 1980s.
"We used to call them ‘Fred and his three stooges' - that is, Ikle and his three closest aides in the Pentagon: Richard Perle, Stephen Bryen and Armitage," an Army officer was quoted at the time. Perle was also a Bilderberg regular during those years.
It was the close association with Ikle that proved Armitage's undoing.
"They knew how to take charge of key programs - Special Forces, covert operations, high technology transfers, strategic planning, media contacts - and ran things to suit themselves," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Lt. Col. James "Bo" Gritz, who emerged from the Vietnam War as the most highly decorated Special Forces officer, had revealed that Armitage maintained hidden connections to a number of Asian drug magnates, The SPOTLIGHT reported.
"The charges made by Gritz against Armitage - first reported nationally by this populist newspaper - were subsequently substantiated by other sources in Southeast Asia and in Washington," The SPOTLIGHT reported. "But the Establishment media ignored the mounting evidence against Armitage and maintains silence about his alleged links to notorious drug traffickers."
The linkage was more than casual, according to a congressional investigator who said Armitage had allegedly sabotaged an important offer from top Burmese and Thai opium warlords to close down the drug trade in return for relatively modest financial rewards.
"This move could have cut our underworld heroin and cocaine imports, perhaps as much as half, but Armitage aborted the venture," the investigator said.
New questions about Armitage's covert involvement had popped up a earlier after Elizabeth Kopp, Switzerland's minister of police and justice, was ousted amid accusations that the private law office she shared with her husband was a front for major drug traffickers, The SPOTLIGHT reported.
As Mrs. Kopp was placed under criminal investigation, the trail led to the Pentagon, Swiss investigators told The SPOTLIGHT. Mrs. Kopp reportedly held frequent meeting in Washington with her cousin: Under Secretary Fred Ikle, during the late 1880s.
When Swiss Vice President Achille Cassanova admitted at a press conference that Kopp had been a key figure in the international dug scandal, he also said the same drug banks were used by the CIA and "other secret American authorities" to provide sanitized cash and other covert financing.
He was referring to the Pentagon policy office headed by Ikle and Armitage, The SPOTLIGHT learned from Swiss sources.
The Swiss investigation determined that Ikle and Armitage were in command of major covert action programs in, among others, Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua and Cambodia. Funding for these projects were reportedly processed by Ikle and Armitage while Ikle's cousin was in charge of both police and justice, Swiss sources reported.
Funding was arranged through the private bank house headed by Kopp's husband, Hans.
Despite the mainstream media blackout in the United states, investigators working for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) Picked up the scent. Several senators were reportedly eager to question Armitage when he appeared for confirmation hearing.
Rather than face exposure, President Bush dumped Armitage. Today, the second President Bush is rehabilitation Armitage with high office.*
Will the upcoming congressional cash-wash probe amount to a cover-up of crimes committed by the Federal Reserve - and more specifically, Alan Greenspan.
Is the Federal reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan the "godfather"
of the nationwide criminal organization that enables
leading U.S. banks such as Citibank or Chase Manhattan to launder
dirty cash for sinister customers in the tens of billions of dollars?
After all, drugs are a cash-and-carry business. The cash has to go to a bank to be "washed." The Fed makes the rules and requires regular reports from banks. Of course, Alan Greenspan's Federal reserve is an essential part of the lucrative trade in illicit drugs today.
"How could it be otherwise?" asked a retired bond trader. "Greenspan controls the money."
But recognizing this bombshell fact publicly is another matter.
Greenspan's allies, accomplices and worshipful acolytes - among them congressional leaders and press lords such as CNN Boss Ted Turner and global news mogul Rupert Murdoch, who owe their kingdoms to dubious financial maneuvers condoned by the Fed - have built a shrine and a firewall around Greenspan to shield him from any suspicion of criminal links.
Last month, the Senate announced that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of its Governmental Affairs Committee will hold three days of hard-nosed investigations into the illegal money-laundering practices of major U.S. banks.
But an advance list of the witnesses the investigation intends to examine suggests that it will ignore, once again, the role played by te Fed and its boss, Greenspan, in flooding U.S. banks with dirty money.
Top executives of Citibank, chase Manhattan and Bank of America, as well as spokesmen for the Treasury and the Justice department have been subpoenaed to answer the lawmaker's questions.
But there is no mention of Greenspan or the Federal Reserve.*
In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the U.S. government insists that mechanical failure was the cause of the 1996 crash of a 747 jetliner.
A catastrophic event occurred on July 17, 1996, at 8:31 p.m. when Trans world airlines Flight 800 was struck by at least one, and possibly two, missiles at an altitude of 13,700 feet.
There were innumerable eyewitness testimonies plus films, radar and satellite evidence, and reports carried in such prestigious papers as the July 29, 1996 Aviation Week and Space Technology confirming this. The official government verdict, however, was that a mechanical/electrical failure triggered the gigantic explosion, which tore the 747 into three parts almost immediately.
A July 19, 1996, Associated Press story asked a highly pertinent question: was it an accident or a terrorist act?
Initial signs pointed toward an "outside force," either a particle beam weapon using the electro-magnetic effect, or an air-to-air missile launched from a helicopter or ground-to-air from a surface craft.
‘Early reports from reliable Air National Guard pilots in the air at the time indicate that the aircraft was "cut in two."
Retired Air Force General Benton Partin's studied opinion is that a continuous rod warhead was the implement of destruction, and that ti was done deliberately and maliciously for its terrorist impact on the public.
Partin is probably the nation's leading expert on explosive devices. The official government report scrubbed the incident with the usual "mechanical failure" brush.
An exceptionally well-documented video tape by Cdr. Bill Donaldson, and Maj. Fred Meyer, the helicopter pilot immediately on the scene, reveals that TWA 800 was probably taken out by two missile shots.
Consider the report from Richard Russell, a retired United airlines 747 pilot and a 30-year aircraft accident investigator.
Russell's report stated:
TWA flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. Navy Aegis missile fired from a guided missile ship which was in area W-105 about 30 miles from where TWA 800 blew up...{W-105) is a rather large area, budget constraints have dictated that missile firings be done closer to land so that the flight time for the P-3 monitor and tracking aircraft can be reduced.
A recording of the flight path of the Navy's P-3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft shows that it had passed about 6,000 feet above TWA 800 just seconds prior to the explosion.
On Aug. 20, 1996, Newsday reported that the Navy had revealed that the P-3 was communicating with a submarine off the coast of Cape May.
Pierre Salinger, veteran journalist and press secretary for President John F. Kennedy, spoke to a group of airline executives gathered at Cannes, France, in mid-November 1996. Salinger revealed that he had information from the U.S. Secret Service by way of his "French intelligence sources that the U.S. Navy accidently shot down the plane."
Both Salinger and Russell were attacked by the mainstream media, claiming that they got their information from the Internet. Russell later met with Salinger and stated that there is no doubt that Salinger's information came from official U.S. sources.*
For detailed information about the tragic downing of TWA Flight 800 and the resulting government cover-up, order investigative Journalist Jim Sander's book, Altered Evidence (softcover, 372 pages, $16, item #377), from Liberty Library, 300 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. Or call toll free 1-800-522-6292 to order by Visa or MasterCard.
After 30 years, an insider finally acknowledges the United States has all the oil and gas it needs.
The
United States has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia but this
happy though shocking information has been covered up for years.
The wells have been drilled, it's merely a matter of turning on the faucets to supply America's needs for 200 years.
These astounding revelations have been con firmed by a 30-year veteran oil executive with leukemia who has decided to speak out.
In 1980, Lindsey Williams wrote a book, The Energy Non-Crisis, based upon his eye witness accounts during the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. As a chaplain assigned to executive status and the advisory board of Atlantic Richfield & Co. (ARCO), he was privy to detailed information.
"All of our energy problems could have been solved in the '70s with the huge discovery of oil under Gull Island, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska," Williams said. "There is more pure grade oil there than in all of Sau di Arabia. Gull Island contains as much oil and natural gas as Americans could use in 200 years."
Oddly though, immediately after this massive discovery, the federal government ordered the rigs to be capped and oil production shut down.
Developing Alaskan oil would make the United States completely independent of oil imports, Williams said in his book.
Why is the government covering up such good news? Why does it want to be dependent on imported oil? Do international financiers who are heavily invested in the oil industry want to keep the supply limited and prices up?
Will the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), investigate what could be a criminal cover-up? Will the appropriate House committees in quire? Or the Justice Department? Since the cover-up has extended through four presidential administrations, only public outrage can force action.
"Everything you hear on the evening news and out of Washington is garbage," said Jim Lawler, an oil production manager with ARCO. "Eight wells have already been drilled in the areas environmentalists are claiming we must not go in. We have already been in and out. There was no damage done. All we need to do is start production."
The mainstream media is mind-molding public opinion by repeatedly showing running caribou, touting environmentalists' claims that the caribou and other endangered species and habitats would be destroyed.
"The Alaska Fish and Game Department just did a study on the porcupine caribou in Prudhoe Bay. The size of the herds has increased since 1969 by 35 percent. The pipeline area is a protected designation and the caribou have figured this out. They have migrated into this area for protection," Lawler said.
The Alaskan pipeline was built in 1977 and runs from Prudhoe Bay to the southern shores of Alaska in Valdez.
Lawler maintains that several things can be done to reduce American energy bills.
The Alaskan pipeline can be permitted to run at full capacity. In addition, the Department of Energy can allow a new pipeline to be built across Canada and connected to the existing system in the United States.
Alaska can also ship oil to the West Coast immediately. Alaskan oil is of such high grade and low sulfur content that it can be utilized at any refinery, without damage to the environment.
"Currently, an estimated 4,000 barrels a day are liquefied at Prudhoe Bay, but government regulation controls that limit," added Lawler.
Liquefying is the process by which oil sludge brought from the ground is processed to be transported.
Lawler said the existing Alaskan pipe line was built to hold another four-foot diameter pipe above it, which could be used for natural gas. However, he said it "is not necessary because the Alaskan pipe line has never been permitted to run at full capacity."
This same situation can be multiplied in Wyoming, Texas and other oil-productive areas across the country. The government has imposed strict orders not to produce.
And in a real emergency, Lawler contends hydrogen plants can sprout up in less than six months with just a nuclear reactor placed at sea.
"One nuclear reactor can power all of Los Angeles," Lawler said.
Natural gas is readily available; Prudhoe Bay has 48 747-jet engines pumping one billion cubic feet of natural gas back into the ground 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They have nowhere else to put the natural gas.*
SPOTLIGHT readers can get Lindsey Williams's book, The Energy Non-Crisis, for $7 plus S&H by calling toll free 1-800-321-2900.
The public mouthpiece for the world shadow government is telling the president that action is needed to achieve the political integration of the Western Hemisphere.
The Council of Foreign Relations has sent a report to President
Bush and top administration officials urging closer ties to Brazil
in
order to facilitate integration of the Western Hemisphere.
The CFR functions as the propaganda ministry of Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission secretive brother groups of international power-mongers with an interlocking leadership and a common agenda of establishing a world government.
The report contained hints of concern that delays and a hunger
for national "sovereignty" might ultimately prevent
the political integration of the Western Hemisphere.
It cited Brazil's role as "leader of Mercosul - the
Common Market of the South, which incorporates Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay and Paraguay and has special relations with Chile and
Bolivia" - as a key reason to act.
"Mercosul is a critical building block in any future hemisphere-wide free trade agreement," said the report the CFR called "A Letter to the President and a Memorandum on U.S. Policy Toward Brazil."
It praised Brazil for long having a "prominent part in numerous United Ntionas agencies," noting that "Brazil will continue to work with the World Trade Organization and within the UN system."
SUMMIT MEETING
The report reminded bush and his top aides the Summit of the Americas will take place in "Quebec city, Canada, on April 20-22 and that negotiations on a Free Trade Area of the Americas begin in November 2002. "Under current agreements," an FTAA deal is to be completed by 2005 the report noted.
"A rapid return of ‘fast track' negotiation authority for the president would greatly strengthen the U.S. position both at the Summit of the Americas and in the FTAA round," the report said. Under "fast track," Bush could sign off on the FTAA and Congress would vote it up or down but could in no way modify the deal. Bush has asked for this authority.
Washington must sweet-talk Brazil because of a "perception" both "in public opinion and the military that the United States seeks to diminish Brazilian sovereignty over its Amazonian territory, either through the internationalization of this region, using as a cover the protection of the tropical rain forest, or by active military involvement under the guise of fighting the war against drugs," the CFR said.
But the CFR warned Brazil that there is a "downside" to resisting U.S. pressure to surrender sovereignty to the FTAA, which, building upon NAFTA, the world shadow government sees evolving into an American Union patterned after the European Union.
"If a deal with Brazil and Mercosul fails, the United States will most likely move toward more bilateral free trade pacts, such as the one under negotiation with Chile; and as the region moves toward greater dollarization, Brazil risks finding itself isolated," the CFR said. The American dollar is to become the common currency of the emerging American Union as the euro has become the common coin of Europe.
"The United States remains committed in principle to a hemisphere-wide free trade agenda," the CFR said. "But the window of opportunity here will not be open for long."*
An Alan Greenspan-endorsed financial behemoth now stands accused of predatory lending and fleecing of tens of thousands of its customers.
Were it not for the nation's top banker, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, giving a glowing endorsement to plans to create on the largest financial institutions in the world, the mega-merger that created Citigroup may never have happened. Now, that financial giant is facing a federal lawsuit, alleging deceptive lending Tactics, dishonest double dealing and fleecing its customers.
This month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a grim lawsuit in federal district court in Atlanta, Ga, formally charging Citigroup with violations of honest banking practices. The charges included "deceptive lending," lying to clients and fraudulently tricking them into deals that profited the bank bu tipped off the customers.
The FTC's carefully drawn and detailed indictment thus justifies questions first raised by The SPOTLIGHT about the fleecing received by unwitting customers from some of the biggest U.S. banks.
Even more revealing is the trail of Greenspan's personal involvement in the affair.
The financial giant known as Citigroup, now being charged by the FTC, is the result of the merger of three distinct financial institutions. The original Citicorp, a leading, commercial money-center, the Travelers' Group, a multifaceted insurance conglomerate, and multifaceted insurance conglomerate, and Associates First Capital, one of the nation's first consumer lenders, whose salesmen concentrated on poor-working people who would sign almost any deal just to get some credit, formed ne great financial giant.
At the time the mega-merger was proposed, it was illegal under prevailing banking regulations. For the union of the three giant financial firms to take place, it was necessary for Congress to change the law.
OPPOSITION
Most of the financial services industry and public-spirited lawmakers opposed this. There were sound reasons why Congress had built a legal firewall between various profit-hungry lenders and insurers. The merger seemed doomed - until Greenspan intervened.
"The proposed three-way merger will prove highly beneficial for the public," argued Greenspan. "It will create a worldwide, full-service financial supermarket, where customers can take care of all their financial needs in a single, state-of-the art money center. People who need loans, small or large, will enjoy faster and more efficient service than ever before.
Congress, as usual, sheepishly made sure that whatever Greenspan wants, Greenspan gets. But as usual, the Fed chairman's proposals proved misleading.
Unless the FTC's recent legal charges of double-dealing and predatory lending by Citigroup are proven false - and the record suggests that is highly unlikely - what the customers of the newly-merged "financial supermarket" are actually getting are fraudulent and deceptive rip-offs, rather than the "faster and more efficient service" promised by Greenspan.*
Liberty
Lobby would be unable to find a greater congressman than Rep.
Bob Barr (R-Ga.) without getting a hammer and saw and custom-building
a lawmaker. Barr has a 100 percent rating with Liberty Ledger,
the Institution's congressional scorecard.
But Barr is making a mistake in sponsoring legislation that would again authorize the federal government to kill foreign heads of state.
Barr's bill, H.R.19, would cancel three presidential executive orders that preclude the CIA, FBI or any agency of the federal government from killing anybody in a foreign country the United states perceives as a threat. They would be authorized under Barr's bill to "remove" such people.
Barr's bill does make one valid point: now the United States kills many people in a mostly futile effort to kill a particular person - as in the 21 who died when Muammar Qaddafi's compound was bombed by President Reagan.
"Present strategy allows the military forces to bomb large targets hoping to eliminate a terrorist leader, but prevents our country from designing a limited action which would specifically accomplish that purpose," Barr said.
Barr's point on massive military strikes is well-taken Liberty Lobby, publisher of The SPOTLIGHT, has opposed spilling the life's blood of our young men, the heart's blood of our women and draining the treasury in futile foreign interventions for decades. Liberty Lobby warned against involvement in Indochina that cost 60,000 American lives in Vietnam, invoking the deathbed advice Gen. Douglas MacArthur gave President John Kennedy.
But we respectfully entreat Rep. Barr: please drop your bill that would allow political assassinations. It is morally wrong. America should not be a party to further lowering international standards of behavior.*
An international panel claims it can overrule the Supreme Court—and the United States, under NAFTA, is obligated to comply.
It may soon be demonstrated, for all to see, that a NAFTA panel is superior to U.S. federal courts.
The outcome of The Loewen Group Inc. v. U.S.A. is less important than the fact that it will be decided by the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes—a NAFTA panel.
NAFTA, the panel ruled, has jurisdiction over complaints from foreign countries about court decisions in the United States. It also claims jurisdiction over complaints about state and federal administrative agency actions.
While the landmark case involves a state court ruling, the panel claims power to overturn U.S. Supreme Court decisions as well.
The panel scheduled a hearing Oct. 15 on whether the United States is liable for "damages" caused by a Mississippi jury's verdict against a Canadian company. The Canadians claimed that a hefty appeal bond was an "expropriation."
The panel's decision will be final and un appealable except on very limited grounds. Under NAFTA, U.S. courts are compelled to enforce the panel's decisions.
UNBELIEVABLE
It "is a very shocking and broad-based decision," Mary Bottari of Public Citizen, a Ralph Nader group based in Washington, told The National Law Journal. "We now have a level of review for the U.S. court system that is above that of the U.S. Supreme Court . . . and it is three international arbitrators who operate in secret and whose decisions cannot be appealed."
NAFTA allows foreign investors to escape liability for all sorts of negligent acts, such as deadly manufacturing defects in automobiles or medical supplies, by transferring a jury's damage awards from the corporation to the U.S. taxpayers, she said.
A three-member panel of the International Center, interpreting Article 1105 of NAFTA, made the ruling on Jan. 5. The panelists are Sir Anthony Mason, L. Yves Fortier and Abner Mikva, a former U.S. circuit judge.
The case involves a Canadian corporation's claim that it was victimized by racial and national prejudice on the part of a Mississippi judge, jury and plaintiff's counsel—all of whom are black.
The Loewen Group argued that Missis sippi law made it impossible to appeal a $500 million verdict on grounds of discrimination. The requirement for posting 125 percent of a damage award as bond amounts to "illegal expropriation" of a foreign investor's property, the company argued.
Loewen argued that it is entitled to protection even though a domestic corporation would have faced the same bond requirement. It is seeking $725 million in damages from the American taxpayers.
This establishment of an international court superior to the Supreme Court of the United States or the highest courts in Canada and Mexico is the first of a series of dramatic steps that are designed to establish an American Union similar to the European Union—long on the common agenda of Bilderberg and its brother group, the Trilateral Commission.
As NAFTA expands as the Free Trade Area of the Americas to include the entire Western Hemisphere, its 90-man commission is to expand accordingly, evolving into the American Union Parliament. "Dollarization" is to produce a common currency like the European Union's euro.*
Liberty Lobby is proposing new legislation banning public servants from attending secret meeting at taxpayers' expense - the "Bilderberg Bill."
Under instructions of its Board of Policy, Liberty Lobby is pressing Congress to ban the use of taxpayer funds for employees to travel to secret meeting to conduct public business.
The ban would cover all members of Congress, the executive and judicial branches. At present, leaders in Congress, high officials of government and the White House attend secret meetings of Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission at taxpayer expense. At these meetings, they help develop policy that affects every American, yet remain unaccountable to anyone in authority.
Under the "Secret Meetings Act" as proposed by Liberty Lobby, Bilderberg would have to allow the press and broadcast outlets to observe Bilderberg meetings and interview participants or U.S. officials would have to pay their own costs. These costs are significant: attendees do not fly coach and the secret sessions are always held at expensive, luxury resorts.
BOP VOTE
The Board of Policy voted overwhelmingly - by m9ore than 99 percent - for Liberty Lobby to lobby for this legislation. The margin was no surprise; Liberty Lobby usually presents a united front in seeking to improve the United States.
"This would in no way inhibit federal officials from attending meetings that, of necessity, must sometimes be secret when private citizens are uninvolved," says a letter from Liberty Lobby to be hand-delivered to certain law makers. "Nor would it prevent the same officials from attending secret meetings involving private citizens - at their own, not taxpayer - expense."
Similar legislation is pending in Denmark. Former First Lady Hillary Clinton ran afoul of the law when her health care task force held secret meetings involving private citizens in 1993, for which she was chastised by a federal court, which levied a heavy financial penalty.
"Our newspaper, The SPOTLIGHT, has penetrated these meetings many times over the past 20 years," the letter reads. "We have a mountain of evidence of Bilderberg's evil doings - raising American taxes, spilling American blood in manipulated wars and prompting the downfall of Lady Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of Britain among other notable events.
"Our staff is prepared to provide devastating testimony when this legislation reaches the hearings stage," the letter continues. "We will be happy to provide more information at your pleasure. The last time we proposed specific legislation was in May 1977. We called it the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights."*
What are these strange condensation trails that are filling our skies? Citizens are getting concerned.
Reports of aircraft leaving strange condensation trails or "contrails" in the sky are unlikely to cause great alarm until they are seen over one's own home.
On March 9, I photographed several
planes producing what appeared to be such "chemtrails,"
i.e. non-water vapor trails, over Gaffney, in upstate South Carolina.
Several planes, sometimes flying in tandem, left suspicious contrails across the clear blue sky, which did not disappear like the usual short-lived contrails being left by other planes in the same area. These thicker trails appeared to come from the tail of the planes and gradually spread out to become cirrus-like clouds.
However, these clouds displayed some unusual characteristics quite unlike naturally occurring clouds. when the afternoon sun shone through this artificial haze, a halo with an oddly colored rainbow could be seen around the sun but the colors of this so-called "chembow" looked more like an oil rainbow seen on water that a true rainbow.
Moreover, planes flying back through these clouds left an unusual dark smudgy track as they passed through the cloud.
Questions about these peculiar contrails posed by The SPOTLIGHT to government environmental officials eventually produced some reasonable explanations for these phenomena.
Ron Garret of the South Carolina department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) explained that Air National guard and other military aircraft are active on Saturdays and fly between 25,000 and 30,000 feet, while commercial aircraft fly at higher altitudes, between 35,000 and 40,000 feet.
Therefore, the difference between the contrails, according to Garrett, could be the result of high-performance military aircraft flying at lower altitudes with greater humidity producing heavier trails that persist and grow while commercial planes flying 10,000 feet higher in less humid zones produce the short-lived trails.
All "chemtrail" questions to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are directed to Jana Goldman who told The SPOTLIGHT that she "can't comment" on chemtrails.
Goldman did respond by sending the "Aircraft Contrail Factsheet," a six-page brochure produced jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, NOAA, and the Federal Aviation Administration in September 2000 to deal with "public inquires regarding aircraft contrails."
The fact sheet says that persistent contrails "do affect the cloudiness of the atmosphere" and "might affect atmospheric temperature and climate." However, it says, "there are no regulations addressing contrails and their atmospheric effects."
South Carolina's DHEC said there are "no state regulations on emissions from mobile sources."
Independent chemtrail researcher Clifford Carnicom and others have reported that barium salts have been detected in chemtrails using spectroscopy. However, Garret said evidence of barium sulfate in "chemtrails" could be the result of normal cloud-seeding activity to produce rain.
Many readers have expressed suspicion of particular chemtrails that may have contained pathogens and desiccated red-blood cells and caused upper respiratory diseases, "flu-like" symptoms, even bacterial meningitis, and inflammation of the membrane around the brain and spinal cord. One person in Texas wrote of seeing yellowish-orange trails in the sky that caused him to hall ill with "the worst flu" he had ever experienced.
Marion Herz of the EPA's Office of Clean Air said, "There is no government program that creates this spraying." There is little hope of clearer skies in the future. The EPA says "persistent contrail cover is expected to increase between now and the year 2050."*
Legislation that would stop all United States contributions
- either voluntary or assessed - to the United Nations if it imposes
a global taz has been introduced by Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.).
UN plans to impose a global tax on all Earth's inhabitants first emerged several years ago at a Bilderberg meeting. After exposure in The Spotlight, Alan Keyes, then U.S. ambassador to the UN, publicly denounced the plan. Keyes continues to fight the UN tax today.
Bilderberg first proposed a 10-cent tax on each barrel of oil at the well-head, meaning everybody who bought gas would be paying a global tax. Then, it suggested a surcharge on tickets for international travel. Most recently, the UN has called for a tax on international financial exchanges.
Sweeney's Prohibition on United Nations Taxation Act (H.R.198) is strongly worded:
"To prohibit United states voluntary or assessed contributions to the United Nations if the United Nations imposes any tax or fee on United States persons or continues to develop or promote proposals for such fees."
Stop-payments would also apply to any undertaking by the UN prior to the time this proposed law becomes effective.
"United Nations officials have made numerous and repeated proposals to provide financing...outside the scrutiny of member states, including borrowing from international financial institutions, assuming control of bonds issed by member states and imposing taxes on an extensive range of transactions, goods and services," the legislation says.
American taxpayers have poured approximately $30 trillion into the UN since 1945.
"The power to wax is an attribute of sovereignty," the bill says. "The United Nations does not have the attributes of sovereignty and is not a sovereign power and ...has no legal authority to impose taxes on United States citizens."
Contact your congressman and ask him to support Sweeney's bill bo block the UN from taxing Americans.*