Two Boys in Rafah…

George W. Bush

Famous quotes by George W. Bush:

1. ‘The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.’

2. ‘If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.’

3. ‘Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.’

4. ‘No senior citizen should ever have to choose between prescription drugs and medicine.’

5. ‘I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy — but that could change.’

6. ‘One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is ‘to be prepared’.’

7. ‘Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things”

8. ‘I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.’

9. ‘The future will be better tomorrow.’

10. ‘We’re going to have the best educated American people in the world.’

11. ‘One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.’ (during an education photo-op)

12. ‘Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.’

13. ‘We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.’

14. ‘It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.’

15. ‘I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made.’… George W. Bush to Sam Donaldson

Bush’s Shadow Army

by JEREMY SCAHILL

March 15, 2007

Jeremy Scahill reports on the Bush Administration’s growing dependence on private security forces such as Blackwater USA and efforts in Congress to rein them in. This article is adapted from his new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books).

On September 10, 2001, before most Americans had heard of Al Qaeda or imagined the possibility of a “war on terror,” Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium at the Pentagon to deliver one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush. Standing before the former corporate executives he had tapped as his top deputies overseeing the high-stakes business of military contracting–many of them from firms like Enron, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corporation–Rumsfeld issued a declaration of war.

“The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America,” Rumsfeld thundered. “It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.” He told his new staff, “You may think I’m describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world…. [But] the adversary’s closer to home,” he said. “It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy.” Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model, one based on the private sector. Announcing this major overhaul, Rumsfeld told his audience, “I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”

The next morning, the Pentagon would be attacked, literally, as a Boeing 757–American Airlines Flight 77–smashed into its western wall. Rumsfeld would famously assist rescue workers in pulling bodies from the rubble. But it didn’t take long for Rumsfeld to seize the almost unthinkable opportunity presented by 9/11 to put his personal war–laid out just a day before–on the fast track. The new Pentagon policy would emphasize covert actions, sophisticated weapons systems and greater reliance on private contractors. It became known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine. “We must promote a more entrepreneurial approach: one that encourages people to be proactive, not reactive, and to behave less like bureaucrats and more like venture capitalists,” Rumsfeld wrote in the summer of 2002 in an article for Foreign Affairs titled “Transforming the Military.”

Although Rumsfeld was later thrown overboard by the Administration in an attempt to placate critics of the Iraq War, his military revolution was here to stay. Bidding farewell to Rumsfeld in November 2006, Bush credited him with overseeing the “most sweeping transformation of America’s global force posture since the end of World War II.” Indeed, Rumsfeld’s trademark “small footprint” approach ushered in one of the most significant developments in modern warfare–the widespread use of private contractors in every aspect of war, including in combat.

The often overlooked subplot of the wars of the post-9/11 period is their unprecedented scale of outsourcing and privatization. From the moment the US troop buildup began in advance of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon made private contractors an integral part of the operations. Even as the government gave the public appearance of attempting diplomacy, Halliburton was prepping for a massive operation. When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in modern war. By the end of Rumsfeld’s tenure in late 2006, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq–an almost one-to-one ratio with active-duty American soldiers.

To the great satisfaction of the war industry, before Rumsfeld resigned he took the extraordinary step of classifying private contractors as an official part of the US war machine. In the Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial Review, Rumsfeld outlined what he called a “road map for change” at the DoD, which he said had begun to be implemented in 2001. It defined the “Department’s Total Force” as “its active and reserve military components, its civil servants, and its contractors–constitut[ing] its warfighting capability and capacity. Members of the Total Force serve in thousands of locations around the world, performing a vast array of duties to accomplish critical missions.” This formal designation represented a major triumph for war contractors–conferring on them a legitimacy they had never before enjoyed.

Contractors have provided the Bush Administration with political cover, allowing the government to deploy private forces in a war zone free of public scrutiny, with the deaths, injuries and crimes of those forces shrouded in secrecy. The Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress in turn have shielded the contractors from accountability, oversight and legal constraints. Despite the presence of more than 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq, only one has been indicted for crimes or violations. “We have over 200,000 troops in Iraq and half of them aren’t being counted, and the danger is that there’s zero accountability,” says Democrat Dennis Kucinich, one of the leading Congressional critics of war contracting.

While the past years of Republican monopoly on government have marked a golden era for the industry, those days appear to be ending. Just a month into the new Congressional term, leading Democrats were announcing investigations of runaway war contractors. Representative John Murtha, chair of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Defense, after returning from a trip to Iraq in late January, said, “We’re going to have extensive hearings to find out exactly what’s going on with contractors. They don’t have a clear mission and they’re falling all over each other.” Two days later, during confirmation hearings for Gen. George Casey as Army chief of staff, Senator Jim Webb declared, “This is a rent-an-army out there.” Webb asked Casey, “Wouldn’t it be better for this country if those tasks, particularly the quasi-military gunfighting tasks, were being performed by active-duty military soldiers in terms of cost and accountability?” Casey defended the contracting system but said armed contractors “are the ones that we have to watch very carefully.” Senator Joe Biden, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, has also indicated he will hold hearings on contractors. Parallel to the ongoing investigations, there are several bills gaining steam in Congress aimed at contractor oversight.

Occupying the hot seat through these deliberations is the shadowy mercenary company Blackwater USA. Unbeknownst to many Americans and largely off the Congressional radar, Blackwater has secured a position of remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus. This company’s success represents the realization of the life’s work of the conservative officials who formed the core of the Bush Administration’s war team, for whom radical privatization has long been a cherished ideological mission. Blackwater has repeatedly cited Rumsfeld’s statement that contractors are part of the “Total Force” as evidence that it is a legitimate part of the nation’s “warfighting capability and capacity.” Invoking Rumsfeld’s designation, the company has in effect declared its forces above the law–entitled to the immunity from civilian lawsuits enjoyed by the military, but also not bound by the military’s court martial system. While the initial inquiries into Blackwater have focused on the complex labyrinth of secretive subcontracts under which it operates in Iraq, a thorough investigation into the company reveals a frightening picture of a politically connected private army that has become the Bush Administration’s Praetorian Guard.

Blackwater Rising

Blackwater was founded in 1996 by conservative Christian multimillionaire and ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince–the scion of a wealthy Michigan family whose generous political donations helped fuel the rise of the religious right and the Republican revolution of 1994. At its founding, the company largely consisted of Prince’s private fortune and a vast 5,000-acre plot of land located near the Great Dismal Swamp in Moyock, North Carolina. Its vision was “to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing of firearms and related security training.” In the following years, Prince, his family and his political allies poured money into Republican campaign coffers, supporting the party’s takeover of Congress and the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency.

While Blackwater won government contracts during the Clinton era, which was friendly to privatization, it was not until the “war on terror” that the company’s glory moment arrived. Almost overnight, following September 11, the company would become a central player in a global war. “I’ve been operating in the training business now for four years and was starting to get a little cynical on how seriously people took security,” Prince told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly shortly after 9/11. “The phone is ringing off the hook now.”

Among those calls was one from the CIA, which contracted Blackwater to work in Afghanistan in the early stages of US operations there. In the ensuing years the company has become one of the greatest beneficiaries of the “war on terror,” winning nearly $1 billion in noncovert government contracts, many of them no-bid arrangements. In just a decade Prince has expanded the Moyock headquarters to 7,000 acres, making it the world’s largest private military base. Blackwater currently has 2,300 personnel deployed in nine countries, with 20,000 other contractors at the ready. It has a fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships and a private intelligence division, and it is manufacturing surveillance blimps and target systems.

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina its forces deployed in New Orleans, where it billed the federal government $950 per man, per day–at one point raking in more than $240,000 a day. At its peak the company had about 600 contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi. Since Katrina, it has aggressively pursued domestic contracting, opening a new domestic operations division. Blackwater is marketing its products and services to the Department of Homeland Security, and its representatives have met with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company has applied for operating licenses in all US coastal states. Blackwater is also expanding its physical presence inside US borders, opening facilities in Illinois and California.

Its largest obtainable government contract is with the State Department, for providing security to US diplomats and facilities in Iraq. That contract began in 2003 with the company’s $21 million no-bid deal to protect Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer. Blackwater has guarded the two subsequent US ambassadors, John Negroponte and Zalmay Khalilzad, as well as other diplomats and occupation offices. Its forces have protected more than ninety Congressional delegations in Iraq, including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. According to the latest government contract records, since June 2004 Blackwater has been awarded $750 million in State Department contracts alone. It is currently engaged in an intensive lobbying campaign to be sent into Darfur as a privatized peacekeeping force. Last October President Bush lifted some sanctions on Christian southern Sudan, paving the way for a potential Blackwater training mission there. In January the Washington, DC, representative for southern Sudan’s regional government said he expected Blackwater to begin training the south’s security forces soon.

Since 9/11 Blackwater has hired some well-connected officials close to the Bush Administration as senior executives. Among them are J. Cofer Black, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA and the man who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden after 9/11, and Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon Inspector General, who was responsible for policing contractors like Blackwater during much of the “war on terror”–something he stood accused of not doing effectively. By the end of Schmitz’s tenure, powerful Republican Senator Charles Grassley launched a Congressional probe into whether Schmitz had “quashed or redirected two ongoing criminal investigations” of senior Bush Administration officials. Under bipartisan fire, Schmitz resigned and signed up with Blackwater.

Despite its central role, Blackwater had largely operated in the shadows until March 31, 2004, when four of its private soldiers in Iraq were ambushed and killed in Falluja. A mob then burned the bodies and dragged them through the streets, stringing up two from a bridge over the Euphrates. In many ways it was the moment the Iraq War turned. US forces laid siege to Falluja days later, killing hundreds of people and displacing thousands, inflaming the fierce Iraqi resistance that haunts occupation forces to this day. For most Americans, it was the first they had heard of private soldiers. “People began to figure out this is quite a phenomenon,” says Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, who said he began monitoring the use of private contractors after Falluja. “I’m probably like most Congress members in kind of coming to this awareness and developing an interest in it” after the incident.

What is not so well-known is that in Washington after Falluja, Blackwater executives kicked into high gear, capitalizing on the company’s newfound recognition. The day after the ambush, it hired the Alexander Strategy Group, a K Street lobbying firm run by former senior staffers of then-majority leader Tom DeLay before the firm’s meltdown in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. A week to the day after the ambush, Erik Prince was sitting down with at least four senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including its chair, John Warner. Senator Rick Santorum arranged the meeting, which included Warner and two other key Republican senators–Appropriations Committee chair Ted Stevens of Alaska and George Allen of Virginia. This meeting followed an earlier series of face-to-faces Prince had had with powerful House Republicans who oversaw military contracts. Among them: DeLay; Porter Goss, chair of the House Intelligence Committee (and future CIA director); Duncan Hunter, chair of the House Armed Services Committee; and Representative Bill Young, chair of the House Appropriations Committee. What was discussed at these meetings remains a secret. But Blackwater was clearly positioning itself to make the most of its new fame. Indeed, two months later, Blackwater was handed one of the government’s most valuable international security contracts, worth more than $300 million.

The firm was also eager to stake out a role in crafting the rules that would govern mercenaries under US contract. “Because of the public events of March 31, [Blackwater's] visibility and need to communicate a consistent message has elevated here in Washington,” said Blackwater’s new lobbyist Chris Bertelli. “There are now several federal regulations that apply to their activities, but they are generally broad in nature. One thing that’s lacking is an industry standard. That’s something we definitely want to be engaged in.” By May Blackwater was leading a lobbying effort by the private military industry to try to block Congressional or Pentagon efforts to place their forces under the military court martial system.

But while Blackwater enjoyed its new status as a hero in the “war on terror” within the Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, the families of the four men killed at Falluja say they were being stonewalled by Blackwater as they attempted to understand the circumstances of how their loved ones were killed. After what they allege was months of effort to get straight answers from the company, the families filed a ground-breaking wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater in January 2005, accusing the company of not providing the men with what they say were contractually guaranteed safeguards. Among the allegations: The company sent them on the Falluja mission that day short two men, with less powerful weapons than they should have had and in Pajero jeeps instead of armored vehicles. This case could have far-reaching reverberations and is being monitored closely by the war-contractor industry–former Halliburton subsidiary KBR has even filed an amicus brief supporting Blackwater. If the lawsuit is successful, it could pave the way for a tobacco litigation-type scenario, where war contractors find themselves besieged by legal claims of workers killed or injured in war zones.

As the case has made its way through the court system, Blackwater has enlisted powerhouse Republican lawyers to defend it, among them Fred Fielding, who was recently named by Bush as White House counsel, replacing Harriet Miers; and Kenneth Starr, former Whitewater prosecutor investigating President Clinton, and the company’s current counsel of record. Blackwater has not formally debated the specific allegations in the suit, but what has emerged in its court filings is a series of legal arguments intended to bolster Blackwater’s contention that it is essentially above the law. Blackwater claims that if US courts allow the company to be sued for wrongful death, that could threaten the nation’s war-fighting capacity: “Nothing could be more destructive of the all-volunteer, Total Force concept underlying U.S. military manpower doctrine than to expose the private components to the tort liability systems of fifty states, transported overseas to foreign battlefields,” the company argued in legal papers. In February Blackwater suffered a major defeat when the Supreme Court declined its appeal to hear the Falluja case, paving the way for the state trial–where there would be no cap on damages a jury could award–to proceed.

Congress is beginning to take an interest in this potentially groundbreaking case. On February 7 Representative Henry Waxman chaired hearings of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. While the hearings were billed as looking at US reliance on military contractors, they largely focused on Blackwater and the Falluja incident. For the first time, Blackwater was forced to share a venue with the families of the men killed at Falluja. “Private contractors like Blackwater work outside the scope of the military’s chain of command and can literally do whatever they please without any liability or accountability from the US government,” Katy Helvenston, whose son Scott was one of the Blackwater contractors killed, told the committee. “Therefore, Blackwater can continue accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money from the government without having to answer a single question about its security operators.”

Citing the pending litigation, Blackwater’s general counsel, Andrew Howell, declined to respond to many of the charges levied against his company by the families and asked several times for the committee to go into closed session. “The men who went on the mission on March 31, each had their weapons and they had sufficient ammunition,” Howell told the committee, adding that the men were in “appropriate” vehicles. That was sharply disputed by the men’s families, who allege that in order to save $1.5 million Blackwater did not provide the four with armored vehicles. “Once the men signed on with Blackwater and were flown to the Middle East, Blackwater treated them as fungible commodities,” Helvenston told lawmakers in her emotional testimony, delivered on behalf of all four families.

The issue that put this case on Waxman’s radar was the labyrinth of subcontracts underpinning the Falluja mission. Since November 2004 Waxman has been trying to pin down who the Blackwater men were ultimately working for the day of the ambush. “For over eighteen months, the Defense Department wouldn’t even respond to my inquiry,” says Waxman. “When it finally replied last July, it didn’t even supply the breakdown I requested. In fact, it denied that private security contractors did any work at all under the [Pentagon's contracting program]. We now know that isn’t true.” Waxman’s struggle to follow the money on this one contract involving powerful war contractors like KBR provides a graphic illustration of the secretive nature of the whole war contracting industry.
What is not in dispute regarding the Falluja incident is that Blackwater was working with a Kuwaiti business called Regency under a contract with the world’s largest food services company, Eurest Support Services. ESS is a subcontractor for KBR and another giant war contractor, Fluor, in Iraq under the Pentagon’s LOGCAP contracting program. One contract covering Blackwater’s Falluja mission indicated the mission was ultimately a subcontract with KBR. Last summer KBR denied this. Then ESS wrote Waxman to say the mission was conducted under Fluor’s contract with ESS. Fluor denied that, and the Pentagon told Waxman it didn’t know which company the mission was ultimately linked to. Waxman alleged that Blackwater and the other subcontractors were “adding significant markups” to their subcontracts for the same security services that Waxman believes were then charged to US taxpayers. “It’s remarkable that the world of contractors and subcontractors is so murky that we can’t even get to the bottom of this, let alone calculate how many millions of dollars taxpayers lose in each step of the subcontracting process,” says Waxman.

While it appeared for much of the February 7 hearing that the contract’s provenance would remain obscure, that changed when, at the end of the hearing, the Pentagon revealed that the original contractor was, in fact, KBR. In violation of military policy against LOGCAP contractors’ using private forces for security instead of US troops, KBR had entered into a subcontract with ESS that was protected by Blackwater; those costs were allegedly passed on to US taxpayers to the tune of $19.6 million. Blackwater said it billed ESS $2.3 million for its services, meaning a markup of more than $17 million was ultimately passed on to the government. Three weeks after the hearing, KBR told shareholders it may be forced to repay up to $400 million to the government as a result of an ongoing Army investigation.

It took more than two years for Waxman to get an answer to a simple question: Whom were US taxpayers paying for services? But, as the Falluja lawsuit shows, it is not just money at issue. It is human life.

A Killing on Christmas Eve

While much of the publicity Blackwater has received stems from Falluja, another, more recent incident is attracting new scrutiny. On Christmas Eve inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, an American Blackwater contractor allegedly shot and killed an Iraqi bodyguard protecting a senior Iraqi official. For weeks after the shooting, unconfirmed reports circulated around the Internet that alcohol may have been involved and that the Iraqi was shot ten times in the chest. The story then went that the contractor was spirited out of Iraq before he could be prosecuted. Media inquiries got nowhere–the US Embassy refused to confirm that it was a Blackwater contractor, and the company refused to comment.

Then the incident came up at the February 7 Congressional hearing. As the session was drawing to a close, Representative Kucinich raced back into the room with what he said was a final question. He entered a news report on the incident into the record and asked Blackwater counsel Howell if Blackwater had flown the contractor out of Iraq after the alleged shooting. “That gentleman, on the day the incident occurred, he was off duty,” Howell said, in what was the first official confirmation of the incident from Blackwater. “Blackwater did bring him back to the United States.”
“Is he going to be extradited back to Iraq for murder, and if not, why not?” Kucinich asked.
“Sir, I am not law enforcement. All I can say is that there’s currently an investigation,” Howell replied. “We are fully cooperating and supporting that investigation.”

Kucinich then said, “I just want to point out that there’s a question that could actually make [Blackwater's] corporate officers accessories here in helping to create a flight from justice for someone who’s committed a murder.”

The War on the Hill

Several bills are now making their way through Congress aimed at oversight and transparency of the private forces that have emerged as major players in the wars of the post-9/11 period. In mid-February Senators Byron Dorgan, Patrick Leahy and John Kerry introduced legislation aimed at cracking down on no-bid contracts and cronyism, providing for penalties of up to twenty years in prison and fines of up to $1 million for what they called “war profiteering.” It is part of what Democrats describe as a multi-pronged approach. “I think there’s a critical mass of us now who are working on it,” says Congressman Price, who represents Blackwater’s home state. In January Price introduced legislation that would expand the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 (MEJA) to include all contractors in a war zone, not just those working for or alongside the armed forces. Most of Blackwater’s work in Iraq, for instance, is contracted by the State Department. Price indicated that the alleged Christmas Eve shooting could be a test case of sorts under his legislation. “I will be following this and I’ll be calling for a full investigation,” he said.

But there’s at least one reason to be wary of this approach: Price’s office consulted with the private military lobby as it crafted the legislation, which has the industry’s strong endorsement. Perhaps that’s because MEJA has been for the most part unenforced. “Even in situations when US civilian law could potentially have been applied to contractor crimes, it wasn’t,” observed P.W. Singer, a leading scholar on contractors. American prosecutors are already strapped for resources in their home districts–how could they be expected to conduct complex investigations in Iraq? Who will protect the investigators and prosecutors? How will they interview Iraqi victims? How could they effectively oversee 100,000 individuals spread across a dangerous war zone? “It’s a good question,” concedes Price. “I’m not saying that it would be a simple matter.” He argues his legislation is an attempt to “put the whole contracting enterprise on a new accountable footing.”

This past fall, taking a different tack–much to the dismay of the industry–Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, an Air Force reserve lawyer and former reserve judge, quietly inserted language into the 2007 Defense Authorization, which Bush signed into law, that places contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), commonly known as the court martial system. Graham implemented the change with no public debate and with almost no awareness among the broader Congress, but war contractors immediately questioned its constitutionality. Indeed, this could be a rare moment when mercenaries and civil libertarians are on the same side. Many contractors are not armed combatants; they work in food, laundry and other support services. While the argument could be made that armed contractors like those working for Blackwater should be placed under the UCMJ, Graham’s change could result in a dishwasher from Nepal working for KBR being prosecuted like a US soldier. On top of all this, the military has enough trouble policing its own massive force and could scarcely be expected to monitor an additional 100,000 private personnel. Besides, many contractors in Iraq are there under the auspices of the State Department and other civilian agencies, not the military.

In an attempt to clarify these matters, Senator Barack Obama introduced comprehensive new legislation in February. It requires clear rules of engagement for armed contractors, expands MEJA and provides for the DoD to “arrest and detain” contractors suspected of crimes and then turn them over to civilian authorities for prosecution. It also requires the Justice Department to submit a comprehensive report on current investigations of contractor abuses, the number of complaints received about contractors and criminal cases opened. In a statement to The Nation, Obama said contractors are “operating with unclear lines of authority, out-of-control costs and virtually no oversight by Congress. This black hole of accountability increases the danger to our troops and American civilians serving as contractors.” He said his legislation would “re-establish control over these companies,” while “bringing contractors under the rule of law.”

Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House intelligence committee, has been a leading critic of the war contracting system. Her Iraq and Afghanistan Contractor Sunshine Act, introduced in February, which bolsters Obama’s, boils down to what Schakowsky sees as a long overdue fact-finding mission through the secretive contracting bureaucracy. Among other provisions, it requires the government to determine and make public the number of contractors and subcontractors (at any tier) that are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan; any host country’s, international or US laws that have been broken by contractors; disciplinary actions taken against contractors; and the total number of dead and wounded contractors. Schakowsky says she has tried repeatedly over the past several years to get this information and has been stonewalled or ignored. “We’re talking about billions and billions of dollars–some have estimated forty cents of every dollar [spent on the occupation] goes to these contractors, and we couldn’t get any information on casualties, on deaths,” says Schakowsky. “It has been virtually impossible to shine the light on this aspect of the war and so when we discuss the war, its scope, its costs, its risks, they have not been part of this whatsoever. This whole shadow force that’s been operating in Iraq, we know almost nothing about. I think it keeps at arm’s length from the American people what this war is all about.”
While not by any means a comprehensive total of the number of contractor casualties, 770 contractor deaths and 7,761 injured in Iraq as of December 31, 2006, were confirmed by the Labor Department. But that only counts those contractors whose families applied for benefits under the government’s Defense Base Act insurance. Independent analysts say the number is likely much higher. Blackwater alone has lost at least twenty-seven men in Iraq. And then there’s the financial cost: Almost $4 billion in taxpayer funds have been paid for private security forces in Iraq, according to Waxman. Yet even with all these additional forces, the military is struggling to meet the demands of a White House bent on military adventurism.

A week after Donald Rumsfeld’s rule at the Pentagon ended, US forces had been stretched so thin by the “war on terror” that former Secretary of State Colin Powell declared “the active Army is about broken.” Rather than rethinking its foreign policies, the Administration forged ahead with plans for a troop “surge” in Iraq, and Bush floated a plan to supplement the military with a Civilian Reserve Corps in his January State of the Union address. “Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them,” Bush said. The President, it seemed, was just giving a fancy new title to something the Administration has already done with its “revolution” in military affairs and unprecedented reliance on contractors. Yet while Bush’s proposed surge has sparked a fierce debate in Congress and among the public, the Administration’s increasing reliance on private military contractors has gone largely undebated and underreported.
“The increasing use of contractors, private forces or as some would say ‘mercenaries’ makes wars easier to begin and to fight–it just takes money and not the citizenry,” says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has sued contractors for alleged abuses in Iraq. “To the extent a population is called upon to go to war, there is resistance, a necessary resistance to prevent wars of self-aggrandizement, foolish wars and in the case of the United States, hegemonic imperialist wars. Private forces are almost a necessity for a United States bent on retaining its declining empire.”

With talk of a Civilian Reserve Corps and Blackwater promoting the idea of a privatized “contractor brigade” to work with the military, war critics in Congress are homing in on what they see as a sustained, undeclared escalation through the use of private forces. “‘Surge’ implies a bump that has a beginning and an end,” says Schakowsky. “Having a third or a quarter of [the forces] present on the ground not even part of the debate is a very dangerous thing in our democracy, because war is the most critical thing that we do.”

Indeed, contractor deaths are not counted in the total US death count, and their crimes and violations go undocumented and unpunished, further masking the true costs of the war. “When you’re bringing in contractors whom the law doesn’t apply to, the Geneva Conventions, common notions of morality, everything’s thrown out the window,” says Kucinich. “And what it means is that these private contractors are really an arm of the Administration and its policies.”

Kucinich says he plans to investigate the potential involvement of private forces in so-called “black bag,” “false flag” or covert operations in Iraq. “What’s the difference between covert activities and so-called overt activities which you have no information about? There’s no difference,” he says. Kucinich also says the problems with contractors are not simply limited to oversight and transparency. “It’s the privatization of war,” he says. The Administration is “linking private war contractor profits with warmaking. So we’re giving incentives for the contractors to lobby the Administration and the Congress to create more opportunities for profits, and those opportunities are more war. And that’s why the role of private contractors should be sharply limited by Congress.”

Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!.

SOURCE: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill_vid

Microbiologists With Links to Gov. Race-Based Weapons Turning Up Dead

Microbiologists With Links to Gov. Race-Based Weapons Turning Up Dead: they would have helped us combat major plagues.

They are killing the microbiologists who would help us combat a plague. 

Microbiologist Dr. David Kelly, 59, was found dead after seemingly slashing his wrist in 
a wood near his home at Southmoor, Oxfordshire, days after being named as the Iraq 
dossier mole. An investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death continues. 
Dr. Kelly was Britain’s leading expert on Baghdad’s weapons programs. 

Dr. Steven Mostow, 63, was one of the country’s leading infectious disease and 
bioterrorism experts and was associate dean at the University of Colorado Health 
Sciences Center. He died in a plane crash near Centennial Airport. 

Dr. Ian Langford, 40, found dead at his blood-spattered and ransacked home. Langford was 
a Senior Fellow at the Univ. of East Anglia’s Centre for Social and Economic Research on 
the Global Environment in the UK. He was discovered by police and ambulance men. The 
body was naked from the waist down and partly wedged under a chair. Cause of death: not 
determined by post-mortem examination. 

Dr. David Banks, 55, died in an aircraft crash in Queensland, AU. Much of Dr. Banks’ 
work involved trying to keep diseases affecting cattle, pigs and fruit orchards out of 
Australia. His current work looked at foot and mouth disease and its potential to spread 
through the archipelago and Australia in addition to swine fever, Nipah virus and 
Japanese encephalitis. 

Virus expert, Dr Robert E. Shope, and principal author of a highly publicized 1992 
report by the National Academy of Sciences warning of the possible emergence of new and 
unsettling infectious illnesses died at age 74 of lung transplant complicatons. Dr. 
Shope also built the World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses, a 
collection of some 5,000 samples. 
Harvard biochemistry professor Don C. Wiley has been declared missing after his 
abandoned rental car was discovered on a highway outside of Memphis, Tenn. The car, 
discovered on I-40-which runs between Memphis and Arkansas-had the keys in the ignition, 
the hazard lights off and a full tank of gas. 

Award-winning micro-biologist David Wynn-Williams, 55, killed by a vehicle while out 
jogging in England. In 2000 he was appointed leader of the Antarctic Astrobiology 
Project, which explores the effects of environmental stress at the limits of life on 
Earth. Wynn-Williams had assessed the capability of microbes to adapt to environmental 
extremes, including the bombardment of ultraviolet rays and global warming. 

Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, a Norwich Free Academy graduate, 56, died May 14, 2004 after 
being beaten to death during an alleged robbery. Mallove appeared on Coast To Coast AM 
as recently as Feb. 2004 speaking about alternative energy. Mallove was well respected 
for his knowledge of cold fusion.

Jeong H. Im, retired protein chemist, age 72, was found in the burning trunk of his car 
with mutlitple stab wounds to the chest. 
West Nile researcher, Dr. Michael Perich, 46, died in a one-vehicle car accident. From 
1986 to 1992, Perich worked at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., as the vector suppression 
program manager and research medical entomologist. Colleagues described him as “one of 
the few entomologists with the experience to go out and save lives today.”

Government Insider Says Bush Authorized 911 Attacks

From Thomas Buyea
9-17-4

Keep in mind when reading this, that the man being interviewed is no two-bit internet conspiracy buff.

Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people.

The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones’ radio show.

Forwarded with Compliments of Free Voice of America (FVOA): Accurate News and Interesting Commentary for Amerika’s Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free.

Note: All honor to Stanley Hilton for risking his life so that we may know the truth of 9/11.

The Bush Junta Unmasked

“This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder.” –Stanley Hilton

Alex Jones interview of Stanley Hilton, attorney for 911 taxpayers’ lawsuit

Alex Jones Radio Show September 10, 2004 Transcription by ‘RatCat’

AJ: He is back with us. He is former Bob Dole’s chief of staff, very successful counselor, lawyer. He represents hundreds of the victims families of 9/11. He is suing Bush for involvement in 9/11. Now a major Zogby poll out – half of New Yorkers think the government was involved in 9/11. And joining us for the next 35 minutes, into the next hour, is Stanley Hilton. Stanley, it’s great to have you on with us.

SH: Glad to be on.

AJ: We’ll have to recap this when we start the next hour, but just in a nutshell, you have a lawsuit going, you’ve deposed a lot of military officers. You know the truth of 9/11. Just in a nutshell, what is your case alleging?

SH: Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject – how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.

AJ: That’s right. They were all Straussian followers of a Nazi-like professor. And now they are setting it up here in America. Stanley, I know you deposed a lot of people and you’ve got your $7 million dollar lawsuit with hundreds of the victim’s families involved.

SH: 7 billion, 7 billion

AJ: Yeah, 7 billion. Can you go over some of the new and incriminating evidence you’ve got of them ordering the attack?

SH: Yes, let me just say that this is a taxpayers’ class action lawsuit as well as a suit on behalf of the families and the basic three arguments are they violated the Constitution by ordering this event. And secondly that they [garbled] fraudulent Federal Claims Act, Title 31 of the U.S. Code in which Bush presented false and fraudulent evidence to Congress to get the Iraq war authorization. And, of course, he related it to 9/11 and claimed that Saddam was involved with that, and all these lies.

AJ: Tell you what, stay there. Stanley, we’ve got to break. Let’s come back and get into the evidence. BREAK

AJ: All right my friends, second hour, September 10th, 2004, the anniversary of the globalist attack coming up tomorrow. It’s an amazing individual we have on the line. Bob Dole’s former chief of staff, political scientist, a lawyer, he went to school with Rumsfeld and others, he wrote his thesis about how to turn America into a dictatorship using a fake Pearl Harbor attack. He’s suing the U.S. government for carrying out 9/11. He has hundreds of the victims’ families signing onto it – it’s a $7 billion lawsuit. And he is Stanley Hilton. I know that a lot of stations just joined us in Los Angeles and Rhode Island and Missouri and Florida and all over. Please sir, recap what you were just stating and then let’s get into the new evidence. And then we’ll get into why you are being harassed by the FBI, as other FBI people are being harassed who have been blowing the whistle on this. So, this is really getting serious. Stanley, tell us all about it.

SH: Yeah, we are suing Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Mueller, etc. for complicity in personally not only allowing 9/11 to happen but in ordering it. The hijackers we retained and we had a witness who is married to one of them. The hijackers were U.S. undercover agents. They were double agents, paid by the FBI and the CIA to spy on Arab groups in this country. They were controlled. Their landlord was an FBI informant in San Diego and other places. And this was a direct, covert operation ordered, personally ordered by George W. Bush. Personally ordered. We have incriminating evidence, documents as well as witnesses, to this effect. It’s not just incompetence – in spite of the fact that he is incompetent. The fact is he personally ordered this, knew about it. He, at one point, there were rehearsals of this. The reason why he appeared to be uninterested and nonchalant on September 11th – when those videos showed that Andrew Card whispered in his ear the [garbled] words about this he listened to kids reading the pet goat story, is that he thought this was another rehearsal. These people had dress-rehearsed this many times. He had seen simulated videos of this. In fact, he even made a Freudian slip a few months later at a California press conference when he said he had, quote, “seen on television the first plane attack the first tower.” And that could not be possible because there was no video. What it was was the simulated video that he had gone over. So this was a personally government-ordered thing. We are suing them under the Constitution for violating Americans’ rights, as well as under the federal Fraudulent Claims Act, for presenting a fraudulent claim to Congress to justify the bogus Iraq boondoggle war, for political gains. And also, under the RICO statute, under the Racketeering Corrupt Organization Act, for being a corrupt entity. And I’ve been harassed personally by the chief judge of the federal court who is instructing me personally to drop this suit, threatened to kick me off the court, after 30 years on the court. I’ve been harassed by the FBI. My staff has been harassed and threatened. My office has been broken into and this is the kind of government we are dealing with.

AJ: Absolutely and now it has come out – five separate drills of flying hijacked jets into buildings that morning – which you told us about before it even broke in the Associated Press. They were trying to get out ahead of you. You talked about how you interviewed military people who were told it was a drill that morning. Then to get out ahead of that, the news finally reported on it. Now, we’ve learned that all these operations – I want to get into that, I want to talk about the new incriminating evidence of ordering it and how they had drilled on this, how Cheney was in the bunker controlling this. That has even come out in the mainstream news but they won’t release the details of that, Stanley. But what type of FBI harassment are you going through? SH: First of all, my office was burglarized in San Francisco several months ago. Files were gone through and some files were seized – particularly the ones dealing with the lady that was married to one of the hijackers. Fortunately, I had spare copies in a hidden place so nothing disappeared permanently. But more significantly, FBI agents have been harassing one of my staff members and threatening them with vague but frightening threats of indicting them. And it’s just total harassment. They have planted a spy, an undercover agent, in my organization, as we just recently discovered. In other words, these are Nazi Germany tactics. This is the kind of government you have in this country. This is what Bush is all about.

AJ: Stay there, Stanley, Bob Dole’s former chief of staff. We’ll come back after this quick break. Please stay with us. BREAK

AJ: All right, eight minutes, 25 seconds into the second hour. Stanley Hilton, political scientist, lawyer, Bob Dole’s former chief of staff, is suing the government for 7 billion dollars for carrying out 9/11 and for racketeering. And he joins us now. During the break, I first really did the big interview with Stanley Hilton after I saw him attacked on Fox News. And that interview got massive attention. And then he kind of went underground for a while because a judge, we’re going to talk about that, ordered him to not do any more interviews. And now he’s back doing interviews. He’s had his office broken into, FBI threats and harassment. Bottom line, he has deposed military individuals, wives of hijackers, you name it, it was a government operation. It has even come out in mainstream news, a piece here, a piece there. They had drills on 9/11, that’s why NORAD stood down. Cheney was in control of the whole thing. Stanley Hilton has now gotten documents about how Bush ordered the whole operation. And I’ll tell you right now, his life is in danger, folks. And he’s got so much courage. He went to school with these neocons at the University of Chicago. He wrote his thesis on how the government could use terrorist attacks to set up martial law. He is the man for the time and folks wondered why he disappeared for a while and just did his lawsuit and wasn’t doing interviews, it was because he was ordered to. Stanley, can you get into that for us?

SH: I did an interview with you, Alex, back in March of 2003, about a year and a half ago, and literally two weeks after that, I was contacted by the emissary of the chief judge of the federal court where I have the lawsuit. And I was warned not to publicize it but to keep it quiet and threatened with discipline. And it remained quiet until a couple of months ago and then I got on the air on some programs and some publicity and July 1st, I was threatened directly by the chief judge here, threatened with court discipline. This particular judge has been circulating communiqués to the other federal judges seeking anything negative she can get against me to try and discipline me after I’ve been on the court here for 30 years with no disciplinary problems at all. This is suddenly happening. And her assistants who are on the committee of the court met with me on July 1st in Palo Alto, California, and threatened me directly. They handed me a copy of the lawsuit and said that the judge wants me to dismiss this. What’s this? She doesn’t like the content of it. This is politically incorrect. This is outside the norm. I said I represented more than 400 plaintiffs, how am I going to dismiss this case? And they threatened me directly and they said, “the next time you’ll be disciplined.” And also they’ve threatened me not to go public, etc. And this is just outrageous.

AJ: It’s all color of law. No direct orders, just all in your face.

SH: They sent a letter out, and of course they deny it’s because of the political content of the suit but they told me directly on the phone that it is because of this suit and this judge is very, very angry, apparently has been in contact with Ashcroft’s Justice Department. I got a call from Ashcroft’s Justice Department a few months ago about this, demanding that I drop the suit, threatening sanctions and all kinds of things. I refused to drop it. AJ: Now let’s go back over, you had them break into your office, harassment. Let’s go over that in detail.

SH: My office was broken into about 6 months ago. The file cabinets – it was obvious they had been rifled through. Files were stolen. Files dealing with this particular case and particularly with the documents I had regarding the fact that the – some of these hijackers, at least some of them were on the payroll of the U.S. government as undercover FBI, CIA, double agents. They are spying on Arab groups in the U.S. And, in effect, all this led up to the effect that al Qaeda is a creation of the George Bush administration, basically. That the entity that he called al Qaeda is directly linked to George Bush. And all this stuff was stolen. Fortunately, I had copies. But this was just part of the harassment. The FBI has also been harassing some of my assistants and has planted a spy in our midst. And it is just outrageous that these Nazi tactics are being used – and the obstruction of justice, these people are criminals. And that’s what’s happening under the tremendous pressure here to just drop it. Or to shut up now and just go away.

AJ: Now, let’s talk about what they want you to drop. Let’s talk about, without giving names, the people you deposed, what really happened, the picture you’ve got. You said earlier that Bush ordered this, they were simulating this which they now admit there were simulations on that morning. Let’s go over what they don’t want you to talk about, Stanley.

SH: We have evidence both documentary as well as witness sworn statements from undercover former FBI agents, FBI informants, etc., that other officials in the Pentagon and the military and the Air Force that deal with the fact that there were many drills, many rehearsals for 9/11 before it happened. Bush had seen this simulated on TV many times. He blurted this out at a press conference in California a few months after 9/11 where he said he had, quote, seen the first plane hit the first building on the video. And that’s not possible because there was no official video of that. There was one of the second plane not the first one. He had seen the first one. We do have some incriminating documents that Bush personally ordered 9/11 events. It was well planned. A FEMA official has admitted on tape that he was there the night before – September 10th, that is

AJ: And now Mayor Giuliani, a few months ago in the 911 Commission, admitted that – Tripod II. They had their whole command post already moved out of Building 7. Now, this is very, very important. This is a key area of this whole event. You said months before it came out on the CIA’s own website and the Associated Press, you said I deposed people. They said there were drills that morning and exactly what happened, happening – that was the smoke-screen for the stand-down. And then to get out ahead of it, the CIA comes out and said yeah we were running a drill that morning. Now, we’ve learned that five, possibly six, were confirmed. Five of these – one drill with the exact same thing happening that actually happened, at the exact same time in the morning. That’s why NORAD stood down with 24 different blips on the screen. You’ve said this. You brought this up first. Now, I know you can’t get too much into detail but can you tell us how you learned of this?

SH: I have interviewed individuals in NORAD and the Air Force. I personally toured NORAD many years ago around the time that I worked for Dole. I’m very familiar with the operations at Cheyenne Mountain at Colorado Springs, where NORAD is. Individuals that work in NORAD as well as the Air Force have stated this, off the record, but the point is, yes, this was not just five drills but at least 35 drills over at least two months before September 11th. Everything was planned, the exact location

AJ: But five drills that day.

SH: That day, that day, and Bush thought it was a drill. That’s the only explanation for why he appeared nonchalant

AJ: We also had NORAD officers and civilian air traffic controllers going, “Is this part of the exercise? Is this a drill?”

SH: Yes.

AJ: On the tapes and in TV interviews, they thought it was, quote, a drill.

SH: That’s right. That’s exactly what I said long before it became public. I’ve known about this since earlier in March of ‘03, as I stated before. This was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder. And now, obstruction of justice by attempting to use a federal judge and FBI agents to inhibit a legitimate civil lawsuit in this country, in federal court. Even a chief judge in this court tried to harass and threaten me personally for representing legitimate plaintiffs. And they got Clinton for allegedly lying under oath about Paula Jones and now – look what’s happening now. And Ken Starr used to be across from me in Duke Law School in the early `70s and it´s interesting that he got away with trying to get Clinton impeached, so we have a far worse criminal sitting in the oval office today – somebody guilty of mass murder as well as obstruction of justice.

AJ: Well, I mean look, they say they never heard of a plan to fly planes into buildings – said it all over television – Rice, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft. And then we find out they were running all these drills that morning. Even if they weren’t involved, that proves they were liars about ever hearing of such a plan.

SH: Well, I’m trying to take their depositions – I’ve been trying to take their depositions for months. They’ve been trying to object to it. They will have to admit they were either lying then or now. It’s clearly perjury either way. They are liars and perjurers; that’s what they are. These are the people that we have running this government and, of course, they knew about it. How are they going to claim now that they didn’t know about these drills? Their idea is that nobody knew anything. It’s the old know-nothing mentality. And how anybody considers this believable is beyond me.

AJ: All right, now people ask how could a huge organization, how could the AWACs, how could the military let this happen; whereas before, if your Cessna got off course for five minutes, they would launch F-16s on you. It’s real simple. It’s what Stanley Hilton said here a year and a half ago. It’s what came out in the news after that. The military, good people, were told this was all a drill. And it was not a drill. And ABC News admits that Cheney was in control of [?] out of the White House [?] and that he ordered the military to quote “do something.” Our inside sources from Hilton and others say it was a stand down and they admit they will not release that under national security. Stanley?

SH: Well they are going to admit it, they’re going to release it in the court case because if you demand it under subpoena powers and they must release it. And part of our lawsuit is brought in the name of the U.S. because under the federal fraudulent [Claims Act], we accuse the Bush Administration of presenting a fraudulent claim to Congress. And under the statutes of Title 31 of the U.S. code, they must release this information. That’s why they are trying to threaten me, harass me, invade my office, steal my files, commit blatant obstruction of justice and other crimes to try and prevent a legitimate civil suit from exposing these criminals and their acts of treason and mass murder.

AJ: I think you need to publicly tell folks that you are not planning suicide. Would you like to tell folks that?

SH: (laughs) I’m not planning suicide. I’ve got family and I’m not planning that but I don’t like the threats I’m under – but I can tell you this, it’s taking a toll emotionally on me and my staff. And particularly, when you get a threat from the chief judge of your own court.

AJ: Why have you decided to go public again after a year of being under the radar? SH: Because the more and more evidence that I’ve been adducing over a year and a half has made it so obvious to me that this was now without any doubt a government operation and that it amounts to the biggest act of treason and mass murder in American history. I mean George Bush makes Benedict Arnold look like a patriot. He makes Benedict Arnold look like George Washington. I mean that’s what we have – a criminal and a traitor sitting in the White House pretending he’s a patriot, wrapping himself in the flag. And it’s pretty disgusting because the other side of the so-called opposition, the Kerry camp is just saying nothing because they’re afraid to speak.

AJ: Stay right there. We’ll be right back.

BREAK

AJ: Stanley Hilton will be with us for another 15 or 16 minutes. Then he’s got to go into court. Bob Dole’s former chief of staff, political scientist, lawyer, represents 400 plus plaintiffs – most of them victims of 9/11. When I was in New York last week, everybody I was talking to, I mean 90 plus percent of them at ground zero – “I had family, I worked in the buildings, my son’s a Navy Seal – he called the night before and said don’t go to work.” You know, all of this, and then now they never had any idea – and it turns out they had all these drills – and one drill of hijacked jets flying into the World Trade Center and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning. That morning – come on people! And Stanley Hilton brought all this out on this show before it was in the mainstream news. And I was talking to him during the break. I mean, the harassment, the moles, the threatening of his staff, the judge threatening him. Stanley, let’s get specifically into the documents that you have now got that they have now been robbing you for, that you luckily, thank God had copies. Specifically, Bush ordering this. Can you get into that for us – ordering 9/11? SH: National Security Council classified documents which [garbled] and it’s was part of a series of documents that were involved with the drill documents. This was all planned – they had it on videotape. These planes were controlled by remote control, as I stated previously a year and a half ago, there’s a system called Cyclops. There is a computer chip in the nose of the plane and it enables the ground control, the military ground control, to disable the pilot’s control of the plane and to control it and to fly it directly into those towers. That’s what happened. It’s also a technology used on what’s called the Global Hawk, which is an aircraft drone – a remote- controlled aircraft. And they were doing it. We are talking about National Security Council classified documents that clearly indicated that [garbled] had a green light to order this to go and this is no drill. These drills that were running were clearly a dress rehearsal and this was a government operation. You wonder why these people are trying to threaten people and trying to intimidate people who have written this suit, I guess if you murdered 3000 of your own citizens, in conjunction with the corrupt Royal family of Saudi Arabia as Bush did. And if you then waste billions more on a worthless garbage war in Iraq, I guess you’ve got something to worry about and you want to threaten people to prevent it from coming out.

AJ: I mean let’s look at this. Not only are there dress rehearsals, they are smoke screens so the good military stands down and doesn’t know what’s happening. But it’s now coming out, even in mainstream news, that yes these drills were going on. Yes, and some of these drills, quote, passenger-type jets were under remote control – this is decades old technology. In 1958, NORAD was [ ] old jets and using them for target practice. Decades ago they flew jumbo jets from LA to Sidney Australia. So since that’s going on, everybody knows that. And it’s the same MO. Just like the first World Trade Center [bombing] where they get two retarded men who followed this blind sheik who had a tiny mosque above a pizza parlor. And they set them up as the patsies. Then the FBI cooks the bomb, trains the drivers. This informant goes, “You’re not going to bomb the building? They go “Yeah, we’re letting it go forward.” He tapes them to protect themselves. The two retarded gentlemen, thank God, didn’t park it up against the column, as the FBI instructed them to do, so it didn’t bring down the tower – because you have to be right up against the column. That doesn’t happen. Yet, it’s the same thing with 9/11. You’ve got these CIA agents, these Arabs, who were trained at U.S. military bases, Pensacola Naval Air Station – mainstream media, out creating their legends for this background. They’re on board the aircraft. My military sources say nerve gas kills everybody on board the plane – nerve gas packets. Then they fly the planes into buildings. From your inside sources, is that accurate?

SH: It’s one of the things that we are looking into – that nerve gas or something else disabled people. It’s possible. I can’t say for sure to be honest with you

AJ: All you know is they were government agents and they were on board and the planes were remote controlled.

SH: Yeah, it was basically a smokescreen. I mean, the events of the hijackings, how someone snuck in those cutters, it was a plant. It was like a classic decoy. I’ve got some military background. And it’s called decoy. It’s a decoy operation. You make the people focus on the decoy to avoid looking at the real criminals. So they are focusing on these so-called nineteen hijackers and saying, “Oh, it must have been these Arabs. When, in fact, the guilty person is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – sitting in the oval office. That’s the guilty person. That’s the one who authorized it. There is only one man who could have authorized this operation and that’s Bush. And anyone at NORAD will tell you as I have been told personally at NORAD in the war control room, there is only one man who has the power to do this kind of thing and that’s Bush. Even though many believe he’s a puppet. And I think in many ways he is. The fact of the matter is where was [ ] Cheney, Rumsfeld and these other traitors. The fact is Bush personally ordered and he’s guilty and liable and he’s going to be re-elected apparently because the media’s asleep and [garbled] for Bush. AJ: Well, the media is owned by the same military industrial complex that carried out the attacks.

SH: Yeah, the media is only interested in maintaining the official government fantasy that this was a little lone Arab. These Arabs couldn’t even steer that plane down a runway.

AJ: Stay there Stanley, final segment coming up. BREAK

AJ: Mr. Hilton, when you talk to these FBI agents, when you talk to these military men and women, what’s their attitude? They’ve got to be pretty freaked out to have the big picture and know what actually happened on 9/11.

SH: Yes, you know it’s like clouds just before a thunderstorm in the sense that they are sort of pregnant with rage. They are just enraged at the criminal politicians who have perverted and misused the government to murder its own citizens and pursue these dubious political ends. And many of them, in increasing numbers, are willing to talk and will talk under subpoena – but only under subpoena because the official party line of the government is shut up and don’t talk to the trial lawyer. But more and more, they are very outraged that part of the government has done this to its own people, to its own people. I mean you have to go back to Stalin to see something – not even Hitler did this to his own people. You have to look at Stalin who murdered the Kulaks, the Russians for his own dubious gains. Also we’ve got – we have a Stalinist mentality in this country. And, if these people pose as patriots and wrap themselves in the flag, it’s disgusting. I wanted also to point out that the Japanese television network, Asahi, is going to be airing a special on primetime tomorrow, on September 11th. They interviewed me for eight hours a couple of weeks ago. I’ll be on that. I wish – of course, the America media don’t care so they are not going to care. But in Japan, people are very serious in interviewing me and others. And we have a website now, called deprogram.info, if more people are interested: www.deprogram.info. But the other thing, I just wanted to say that if anything happens to me – and I don’t know why – because I’m being threatened here now. And it seems you can’t bring a case in this country anymore against criminals in power without being threatened. And this is how they operate. The stakes are pretty high when you’ve got a world historical level of treason and fraud by this government against it’s own people. I guess this is what you have to expect.

AJ: Stanley, the globalists, the new world order crowd, definitely intend to carry out more terror attacks. I know they would have carried out more attacks if we wouldn’t have done what we’ve been up to, if you wouldn’t have been out there boldly speaking out and many others. And then their electronic Berlin wall has a bunch of cracks in it now. Thanks to good people like yourself and many others who are speaking out and telling the truth. But do you think that they may carry out what they’ve been hyping – a suitcase nuke attack, a biological release to try to smokescreen all of this? I know it’s a catch 22, you’ve got to expose the murderers. We’ve got to get the word out on this but some government people that I’ve talk to say, “Yeah, but if you do that, they are going to go even more hard core and must totally try to take over.” But I say regardless, they are already doing that. So what do you say to that?

SH: Well, yeah, I think they have an agenda. They have contingency plans. I think they are laying low now because there are an increasing number of people, like myself, who are openly challenging them and accusing them of criminal conduct. I think they would have done it again if we had not spoken up. I think they’re planning, what they would like to do is silence any dissenters. That’s why we are trying to get the Patriot Act declared unconstitutional in this lawsuit also.

AJ: Let’s talk about polls. In the beginning a patriot is a scarce man, hated and feared, but in time when his cause succeeds, the timid join him, because then it costs nothing to be a patriot. You are one of those guys who hit the barbwire for us, or figuratively jumped on the hand grenade for America. But when you’ve got a Zogby poll, who is highly respected, half of New Yorkers believe that the government was involved. When you have a Canadian poll, 63% on average believe that the U.S. government was involved. And some groups, as high as 76% in polls believe the government was involved. European polls, two- thirds show the same thing. We have German defense ministers and technology ministers and another member of their government now, three of them going public, known conservatives, and progressives. You have an environment minister, Michael Meacher, saying that if they didn’t do it, they sure as hell knew what was going on. Look, if anybody who is a thinking person looks at the evidence, their official story is impossible. Then you investigate and they are involved in it. Comments to this massive awakening and what’s happening.

SH: Well, I think that’s why they want the Patriot Act to suppress political dissent. They have to, they’re anticipating, they are not dumb individuals. I know these people personally, Wolfowitz. These are criminal individuals but they are smart and so they anticipated political dissent. And that’s why, like the Nazis, their forebears, and their blood brothers, the Nazis and the Stalinists, they’re all for political repression. Every corrupt and criminal government has done this – they suppress their own people: Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Mao Tse-Tung, that’s why we have the Patriot Act. So it’s hand in hand. They had it planned to go right up to September 11th, this was all part of the plan. You have to do it. It was part of my senior thesis. You must follow through the terrorists attacks with a political suppression mechanism in the law. And that’s why they want Patriot I and Patriot II and their plans are to continue launching more terrorist attacks to justify even more repression. The goal is to make this a one party dictatorship in this country, to pursue their dubious ends with their blood brothers like the Saudi Royal family. And also, historical blood brothers, such as the Nazi Germany and the Communist Russian. That’s the goal

AJ: You’ve got to go in just a minute or two. But I wanted to also tell you about New York. Sound cannons that are used in Iraq, they’re against us. Men in black ski masks. 41,000 police, accredited media being arrested randomly. Children being arrested, people in wheelchairs, 2000 plus people put in a camp with barbwire fences inside with no bathrooms. You had to have permission to go to the porta-potties. Police screaming at you. It had nothing to do with terrorism. They are openly setting the precedent for martial law.

SH: Well, that’s right, the word terrorist is now being overly broad and overly defined [garbled] and also, you know, it’s like the word communist was used for anything during the McCarthy witch hunt. And anybody can be called a terrorist by Bush’s definition. But the irony is that the number one terrorist in the world is living at the White House at the oval office today. That’s the real irony. For sheer hypocrisy, I think he deserves the world prize and ought to be in the Ripley book, Believe It or Not, and the Guinness book of world records for sheer brazen chicanery and fraud.

AJ: Let me ask you a question on this because this is the experience that I had. Watching television, watching the killers, watching those that are guilty, stand up there as our saviors is incredibly painful. It’s like watching Ted Bundy being the judge at his own trial. I mean it is just painful to know who these people are. To see them putting America in a shredder. Now we are going to have forced psychological testing of every American, forced drugging, you know Pan-American unions, I mean it’s just all happening, it’s in our face, Stanley.

SH: Yeah, it’s very disturbing and as one who has studied the theory and concept of dictatorships, I personally interviewed Albert Speer, who was Hitler’s armaments minister. I interviewed him in 1981 in Munich. And I’ve studied the psychology and history of totalitarianism and there is no question that it’s very frightening. And it has, today, with high technology, albeit for the first time in history, the chance of having a world empire dominated by corrupt, technologically oriented government – an elite government. And they’ve got now what people like Napoleon and Hitler didn’t have, which is the technological means to dominate not only their own country but others – the world.

AJ: The answer is to expose them as the terrorists, to show how PNAC [Project for the New American Century] said we need helpful Pearl Harbor events, to show how Northwoods called for the exact 9/11-style attacks, to show their own plans. And to force people to face this horror. What are they going to do in a year or two when 80% of us, not half of us, know the truth?

SH: Well, that’s why they want repression and, then again, the ancient old diversion, launch another terrorist attack to get people to pitch it away. I mean who knows what they’ll do next. I mean their capacity for ingenious creation of these events is sort of unraveled. I mean there is no limit. My guess is they are going to try another stunt – maybe a stunt just before the election to justify getting Bush reelected. Although it seems like he is running against a straw man or a ghost right now, anyway. But, my guess is they’ll try some other tactic to get people’s attention away from 9/11 if it gets to be too much attention. What you really want is for the public to just lose interest because the public – and it’s like remember the Alamo, you know, people don’t forget things like that. To me it’s like the Alamo, remember 9/11, that ought to be the slogan for this outrageous act of treason. That’s what it is. It’s not

AJ: We are at a crossroads, I don’t think they anticipated this much resistance, Stanley.

SH: Yeah, I hope they are truly wrong and as incompetent as they are corrupt and guilty. That means their incompetence is exceeded only by their corruption and their guilt. And eventually, if enough people are going to get outraged enough, these people in the bureaucracy and in the civil service and our military, and eventually we can get people under subpoena these individuals will be exposed.

AJ: Stanley, their whole operation hinges on us being naïve and not recognizing evil. This is what they got with Hitler and others. People couldn’t recognize evil so they continued to repeat succumbing to it. We are recognizing it this time. We are putting our lives, our treasure, our future on the line for freedom because we cannot let these blood-thirsty control freak terrorists capture us and use us and turn us into the empire and have a draft and use us as their slaves to invade the planet. And that’s their PNAC plan. Stanley Hilton, I know you’ve got to get to court. God bless you. I want to thank you for being here with us today. Can we get you back on next week?

SH: Sure, just give me a call.

AJ: God bless you my friend. Any closing comments?

SH: My closing comments would be, I think people ought to just think about the consequence of having someone like Bush in the White House and the danger for the future that these sorts of individuals pose. This is not just a historical event of the past. This is part of the plan and the camera is still rolling. They have an agenda. These individuals are extremely dangerous. They are armed and dangerous. They pose a clear and dangerous threat to every freedom-loving person not only American but in the whole world.

AJ: You are absolutely right Stanley Hilton. They have captured the government. They have not captured the peoples’ minds and they are counting on us not facing up to it.

SH: And they are counting on the repressive Patriot Act and threats and chief judges and FBI agents threatening people who are exposing them. That’s what they are counting on.

AJ: But you’re not backing down are you, my friend.

SH: No, I’m not

AJ: Well, we all stand with you, my brother, and God bless you.

SH: All right. Thank you.

To hear Alex’s interview with Stanley Hilton -
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/audio/091204hilton.htm