Posted on 01/30/2007 3:22:10 AM PST by kellynla
On July 6, 2006, Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, announced that it had added a new member to its high-profile, five-member advisory board – former Democrat Rep. Lee Hamilton.
True to form, the major media ignored the Hamilton appointment. They should not have. Hamilton, who had served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had just joined a firm headed by the man who had criminally undermined that very Commission, Stonebridge chairman and founder Samuel "Sandy" Berger.
In the words of a recent House Committee report, Berger had perpetrated "a disturbing breach of trust and protocol that compromised the nation's national security," a breach that had come at the expense of the 9/11 Commission's very mission.
(Column continues below)
The unseemly nature of this new alliance apparently did not trouble Hamilton, Berger or the Washington media. By the spring of 2006, Berger felt sufficiently comfortable in his relationship with that media to execute a brazen, political drive-by on the one man who most seriously threatened the Clinton legacy and his own reputation, namely Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania.
Berger began his spring offensive in March 2006 with a fund-raiser for Weldon's opponent, Joe Sestak. Almost universally despised by his Naval colleagues, the former vice admiral was forced into retirement for what the U.S. Navy charitably called "poor command climate." Before being recruited to run for Congress, Sestak had not lived in Weldon's district for 30 years.
Although hosted by Berger, the fund-raiser was held at the law offices of Harold Ickes, a veteran Clinton fixer, and Janice Enright, the treasurer of Hillary Clinton's 2006 Senate campaign.
Before the campaign was through, Clinton insiders would enlist Stonebridge's director of communications to serve as Sestak's campaign spokesperson, summon former President Clinton to rally the troops, and finally call in the federales. Their motives were transparent even to the local media.
"A Sestak victory," observed suburban Philadelphia's Delco Times early in the campaign, "would muzzle a Republican congressman who blames Clinton for doing irreparable harm to America's national security during the 1990s."
As the No. 2 Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Weldon had not only exposed the Clinton administration's lethal "Able Danger" breakdown, but he had also catalogued the CIA's failures before Sept. 11 in his book "Countdown to Terror." And he wasn't stopping there.
In late July 2006, I accompanied Mike and Joan Wire to visit Weldon in his D.C. office. The Wires, who live in suburban Philadelphia, had arranged the interview.
I happened to be in New Jersey at the time so we drove down together. The interview lasted two and a half hours and ended only because I had to leave.
Mike Wire just happened to be the most critical of the 270 eyewitnesses to an apparent missile strike on TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. As is well enough known, the government had argued that a mechanical failure brought down the plane.
To make the story work, however, the FBI and/or the CIA had to manufacture from whole cloth a second interview with Wire that fit their invented scenario.
This was criminal obstruction, and it is easily verified.
To get some sense of what Wire and others actually witnessed, I have put two relevant sections of the video "Silenced" on YouTube. The skeptical reader would do well to review these clips: Part 1 and Part 2.
As late as 2001, I was as skeptical about TWA Flight 800 as the next guy. It was then that I met James and Elizabeth Sanders. The Sanders and TWA Capt. Terrel Stacey had been arrested in 1997 and charged with conspiracy.
An investigative reporter, Sanders was doing the job the major media had chosen not to do. Elizabeth, a TWA trainer, had introduced her husband to Stacey, then working inside the investigation; nothing more.
Before committing to co-produce "Silenced," I had flown to Ft. Lauderdale, where the Sanders were living, and spent three days reviewing their evidence and assessing their character. As I learned, the government arrested the three of them – and convicted the Sanderses – only because they had been closing in on the truth.
When the Wires and I met with Weldon and his aide Russ Caso, we showed them sections from "Silenced," but we were not revealing anything they did not know or at least suspect. What most intrigued Weldon was the cast of characters involved in the misdirection of the TWA Flight 800 investigation. Many of those characters were working to unseat him.
Sandy Berger: Col. Buzz Patterson, who carried the nuclear football the summer of 1996, identifies then Deputy National Security Adviser Berger as the one person holed up in the family quarters with the president on the night of July 17, 1996. In addition to his other services, Berger donated $1,000 to the Sestak campaign. Sestak was the only congressional candidate to whom Berger gave money.
Tony Lake: As national security adviser, Lake was Berger's immediate boss. Although he stayed out of the family quarters on July 17, he, too, was in the loop that night. At 3 a.m. he received a call from the president asking that he "dust off the contingency plans." Lake donated $500 to Sestak. It was his only federal donation in 2006.
Richard Clarke: The anti-terror honcho takes credit for discovering the exploding fuel tank theory that provided a mechanical explanation, however contrived, for TWA Flight 800's demise. He is likely also responsible for bringing the FBI and CIA together to create the "zoom-climb" animation seen in the YouTube clip, which was used to discredit the eyewitnesses. Clarke donated $2,100 to Sestak. It was the only federal donation he made in 2006.
John Deutch: Deutch was serving as CIA director the night TWA Flight 800 went down. Several months later, in a scandal that foreshadowed Berger's own, Deutch was discovered to have loaded classified documents onto to his personal computer and taken them home. His motives were never made clear. He eventually signed a plea agreement and agreed to pay a $5,000 fine only to be pardoned the next day by President Clinton. Deutch donated $500 to Sestak, one of of only two congressional candidates he supported in 2006.
Mary O. McCarthy: In 1996, McCarthy, a CIA analyst, served as an intelligence officer on the National Security Council. In 1998, Berger appointed her as special assistant to the president. In 2006, the CIA fired her for allegedly leaking secret information about overseas prisons to the Washington Post. The only federal candidate to whom she donated in 2006 was Joe Sestak. To give some sense of the politicized nature of the CIA, McCarthy donated $2,000 to John Kerry in 2004.
Jamie Gorelick: Gorelick does not have the excuse of knowing Sestak from his work on the National Security Council. Gorelick served as deputy attorney general in the Justice Department. Still she donated $3,000 to the Sestak campaign, the most she gave to any candidate in 2006.
Gorelick, of course, was one of five Democrats appointed to the 9/11 Commission – and for no more obvious reason than her stake in keeping talk of TWA Flight 800 out of the commission room.
On Aug. 22, 1996, the politically reliable Gorelick met with the FBI brass and directed their efforts away from any serious terror or missile leads. From this point on, the FBI was tasked with finding an alternative explanation for the explosive residue found throughout the plane and duly reported to the New York Times for the previous month.
This FBI search culminated in an exculpatory tale of a sloppy dog-training exercise aboard the Flight 800 plane five weeks before the crash. Though easily disproved, the story satisfied a painfully incurious media.
Unfortunately for America, by suppressing talk of TWA Flight 800, the Clinton administration had to suppress talk of a very real terror plot against the United States that culminated in the events of Sept. 11.
In the way of background, in January 1995, the Philippine police shared with the FBI detailed plans for an aerial terrorist assault on the United States. Those plans called for the use of hijacked airliners and/or explosives-filled private aircraft as flying bombs to attack the United States.
The architect of those plans was Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing and a cohort of 9-11 chief strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his alleged uncle.
Richard Clarke obviously took Yousef's planes-as-bombs plots seriously. In planning security for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, Clarke warned of the possibility of terrorists hijacking a 747 and flying it into a packed Olympic stadium.
The U.S. Navy apparently took Yousef's plans seriously as well. On July 17, 1996, National Liberation Day in Saddam's Iraq and two days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics, a small fleet of ships and subs, some perhaps NATO, cruised off the coast of Long Island, locked and loaded.
One of two things happened next: Either Navy missiles intercepted a terrorist plane and inadvertently took out TWA Flight 800 in the process; or, more likely, while practicing to intercept a terrorist plane in the kind of crowded air corridor where such an attack would likely occur, Navy missiles accidentally destroyed the 747.
In either case, the U.S. Navy did not have the will or the wherewithal to conceal this on its own. That decision would have been made in the family quarters of the White House in the early morning hours of July 18.
Those few subordinates in the know would have been told that the decision was made for reasons of national security. A more urgent reason, of course, was to secure Clinton's re-election a few months hence.
The evidence for Navy involvement has been greatly enhanced by the research of Capt. Ray Lahr on the west coast and the legal work in the federal courts by his counsel, John Clarke. Highly useful, too, has been a new and stunningly sophisticated crash analysis drafted by an apparent insider (or insiders), whose identity remains stubbornly unknown.
As a result of Lahr's work in particular, the NTSB and FBI have quietly abandoned the CIA zoom-climb scenario shown in the YouTube clip and rely now only on a quiescent media to ignore the un-rebutted testimony of some 270 eyewitnesses to a missile strike.
In the summer of 1996, President Clinton had a keen interest in the planes-as-bombs plot as well. Soon after the destruction of TWA Flight 800, Col. Buzz Patterson was returning a daily intelligence update from the Oval Office to the National Security Council when he "keyed on a reference to a plot to use commercial airliners as weapons."
"I can state for a fact that this information was circulated within the U.S. intelligence community," Patterson writes, "and that in late 1996 the president was aware of it." The president's handwritten comments on the documents verified the same.
Most likely to keep the subject of TWA Flight 800 off the table, all talk of planes as bombs ended in the summer of 1996. Incoming National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was not even warned about the possibility. Richard Clarke verified as much when he testified before the 9/11 Commission.
"Knowledge about al-Qaida having thought of using aircraft as weapons," admitted Clarke, was "5-years, 6-years old." He asked that intelligence analysts "be forgiven for not thinking about it given the fact that they hadn't seen a lot in the five or six years intervening about it."
As to President Clinton's legacy-killing notes on the Yousef plot documents, they obviously did not find their way to the 9/11 Commission. Not surprisingly, according to the National Archives staff, "Berger was especially interested in White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke's personal office files." Berger reviewed these and "original NSC numbered documents" on his first visit to the Archives.
The House report noted, "Had Berger seen 'a smoking gun' or other documents he did not want brought to an investigatory panel's attention, he could have removed it on this visit."
When the Wires and I left Weldon in July 2006, he was on his way to review the Berger evidence. Weldon was the one man in Washington willing and able to put all the pieces together of what loomed as the most serious scandal in American political history. But this was not to be. The Clintons and their cronies had other plans.
During the now legendary Chris Wallace interview with President Clinton in late September 2006 on Fox News, the nation saw just how potent were the guns aimed at Weldon.
"A three-star admiral," Clinton announced out of nowhere, "who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania." He did not even mention Sestak by name. He may not have known it. Other than President Bush, Clinton mentioned no other Republican than Weldon.
It is not easy to take out a popular 10-term congressman. Weldon's enemies, however, had a nasty little ace up their sleeves. A week after President Clinton visited Weldon's district to fire up the troops, the McClatchy Newspapers broke a story attributed to two anonymous sources, namely that Weldon had "traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter."
Alleging a need to act quickly because of the leak, the FBI raided the homes of Weldon's daughter and a friend on Monday, Oct. 16. By noon of that same day, a group of nearly 20 Democrat protesters were milling outside Weldon's district office in Upper Darby, carrying matching signs that read "Caught Red-Handed." The story received a great deal of unreflective attention from a media desperate for a Democrat win, and Weldon went down to defeat.
The move against Weldon was naturally attributed to the Bush Justice Department. As the Berger case proved, however, there are powerful forces operating in the Justice Department and FBI that seem to have no greater goal than protecting the Clinton legacy and advancing the Democrat agenda. The idea that Karl Rove somehow orchestrated the Weldon hit makes sense only in the nether reaches of the liberal blogosphere.
Sometimes, as in the case of Watergate, conspiracy is not a theory. It's a crime. Still, the major media will use the "conspiracy theory" mantra as an excuse to ignore this story.
To this point, the "respectable" conservative media have been intimidated into following their lead. It is past time for those media to show some sand.
It shouldn't have come as a shock, still it did, when I heard today on Gibson's show that President Bush appointed Berger's buddy Hillman to a top position. And it was the Bush administration that show to it that Berger got a slap on the wrist. This smells.
RE#161 Glad Im not the only one who saw this!!!!
You can largely thank President Bush for all this. He insists on playing nice with people who want to do him, but especially conservatism, in.
You said -- "There is so much here. To see the Clintons and Berger walk away from this mess is galling. And now the news story is the trial of Scooter Libby?"
As I was reading the above article and then saw your comments -- it is amazing. It's amazing that *so much deception* goes on with the Democrat Party and that they get away with it. And when Republicans try to "speak truth" -- it gets buried, shot down, shouted down, ignored and villified.
So, in considering that, I'm reminded of what the Bible says about the times that we are in. It says that these times are times of great deception. And it surely seems to be getting worse and worse as time goes on.
There is a radio program that I listen to (on the Internet, based in Minnesota). It's Jan Markel ( http://www.olivetreeviews.org/ ) and she interviews a lot of people. She says that her program is to "disarm the weapons of mass deception".
And that's what the Democrats are wielding -- "weapons of mass deception" -- of which that is a *main characteristic" of these "Biblical times" that we are entering.
Furthermore, the Bible also says that things will be turned upside-down in terms of what is true and righteous. Things which are evil will be made out to be "righteous" and things which are righteous will be made out to be "evil". And, again, that's the way things are turning out today.
So, when people marvel at how these things can be -- well..., it's one of the "signs of the times" -- which is leading up to that final battle (of Armageddon), the coming of the Antichrist (who deceives the entire world) and then the coming of Jesus Christ -- who then destroys this current world system of evil and deception and sets up His Kingdom.
Things will not get better, in the meantime, so don't think that it is. It will only get worse. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try -- it only means it won't help and it won't work, no matter what you do.
In fact, the Bible makes it clear that these times *will be allowed* to become *extremely evil* -- and righteousness will be put down. That is what is to happen.
And..., it's happening...
Get ready for the soon coming of Jesus Christ (but not before things get worse, unfortunately).
Regards,
Star Traveler
Yes, apparently the deal on sending Hillman into the federal judiciary was a "bi-partisan" lovefest in which NJ's scumbag senators promised quick confirmation and less trouble with other Bush nominees if Bush nominated Hillman.
Why this administration did not do something to clean up the cesspools at Justice, CIA, and State, I don't know. Yes, I know there are largely civil service positions in these departments and people cannot be sacked without meeting a ridiculously high standard of proof of wrongdoing (plus years of trying to get rid of even the worst bureaucrats), but surely better political appointees could have taken more control in key areas of these bureaucracies, and the bozos who let grotesque affairs like Sandy Burglar, Joe "Benedict" Wilson, etc. unfold could at least be shunted aside to less harmful areas of the bureaucracy.
We are governed to far too great an extent by left-liberal one-world UN-loving bozos sporting worthless degrees and trying to change America against the will of its people.
Gee, sKerry just quit, duya think, just maybe, the hildbeast had his file showing a dishonorable, that was recended by Jimmy?
Jesus seemed to go out of his way warning us to "Let no one deceive you". Who could have ever thought that discerning truth could be so difficult?
read tomorrow
save
Then your recollection is faulty, or you are being untruthful. But hey, I will offer some of the evidence again, just cause I'm a nice guy and not rude like some folks... or too lazy to look things up myself.
I have posted hundreds of links over the years dismantling the ever-shifting conspiracy theories of people like Jack Cashill (who has made money off the bereaved family members -- that's despicable, isn't it?) and Sanders (who, before he became a convicted felon by his own admission, never had any higher qualification in aviation than: flight attendant. Not a pilot, not an engineer, not an accident investigator. Nope. Male stewardess. He isn't even that now -- what airline would hire a criminal? Instead he's a full-time TWA 800 loon.
Incidentally, all of those negative qualifications (the things he's "not") apply to Cashill, too. (I do not think he is a felon, por a stewardess; however, he isn't a pilot, engineer or accident investigator).
Who are you, what are your qualifications and who are your sources?
Well, I'm not James Sanders: I am not a felon, and I've never sashayed down the aisles of an airliner offering people handi-wipes. I am a pilot. I am an engineer. I have never been an employee of any civilian federal agency (although I was once a schoolteacher working for my own city for a short time) and I have had a long military career on the active and reserve side.
I am a combat veteran of the GWOT and have served in other trouble spots around the world. I've owned an FAA Part 145 repair station, so I've had hands on a lot of airplane parts, even though, unlike Sanders, not the coffee maker. I have written extensively on aviation (many in the field know my byline).
I have been asked to participate in the accident investigation team of an aviation association (I had to decline the duty, based on workload, at the time, but remain interested in the subject). I have an extremely large library of aviation safety and accident investigation material, which I have read and understand in depth, and I have access to the library at a well-regarded aviation-oriented institution where I am a graduate student.
I know many of the luminaries in the aviation world, and in meatworld, they know me. I was there when the X-Prize was won. With a VIP all-access pass that I still have.
I will not post my name on this forum at this time, although a number of the forum regulars know exactly who I am. I am a member of many aviation, technology and engineering associations, which all have venues where professionals can discuss these things professionally.
But it doesn't matter so much "who I am." Because the truth of "what I say" can be determined, whoever I am. The sources I have used for my own education include many available to the public and some that are not, including professional contacts with investigators. I have not had any contact with the FBI side of the investigation and don't even know anyone in the FBI.
However, for the convenience of FReepers, and so that everybody can follow along, I have posted many, many links to support my statements. My links are not to Michael Rivero's hate site, some Loose Change nutball, or internet kooks. I'll give a précis of my case, with links, here. Everything linked in this post is: a public, governmental site; a research publication that is subject to qualified peer review; a disinterested non-profit like the Flight Safety Foundation, or, in some cases, the FAQ of the newsgroup alt.disasters.aviation and archived stories from professional air-safety pubs.
I don't recall noticing any links in Cashill's ever-changing World Nut Daily drivel (He's always trying to massage current events into the latest version of his conspiracy so he can go back and put the touch on the widows and orphans again, hence Sandy Berger as the new bad guy); and while Sanders's book contains such stuff as a chemical analysis of the "red residue" on the material he stole from the site, he doesn't provide a credible explanation of the analysis. (that's available here). [ADA FAQ]
I will say that from my long interest in rockets and space that these chemicals that Sanders "found" are not what goes into rocket engines. And I can say from 25+ years blowing things up that this isn't an explosive compound or explosion product.
The most common myths associated with TWA 800 are:
I'm tired of liars, frauds, and government-haters just repeating the same lies over and over and over again and thinking it makes them true. It doesn't.
For anybody interested in the truth of this accident, do what I did.
You can speed things up, if you suspect a missile, but jumping to this .pdf. It basically says that there is no path by which a missile could have gotten to where the explosion happened from outside the airplane, without going through structure that doesn't have a hole in it. (See also the stuff in the report -- I can't remember which appendix, sorry -- about micrometeorites, which reaches the same conclusion and of course would apply to a missile also. "They say John was shot through a closed window but there is no bullet hole in the window").
Finally, consider occam's razor and what it means for this conspiracy theory (well, we'll assume for a minute it was one theory, rather than an ever-mutating nebula of bull puckey) to be true. Hundreds of investigators from a small Babel of different places are all tied into some strange code of omerta whereby they're protecting... what? Clinton? Berger? The Navy? Hez-flippin-bollah? For Christ's sake, the CIA can't keep its secrets out of the New York Times. We're gonna have all the NTSB guys and gals, the FBI g-people, the investigatory parties from Boeing, P&W, the pilots' union ALPA, not to mention the whole dang Navy, all part of some shady conspiracy to conceal... something. And oh yeah, I must be in on it too.
That's it... I'm breaking my vow of silence now. It was the -- gaaaack! Sandy Berger, what are you doing here--? Gaaaack!
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Good read. Bookmark for reference on Curt Weldon's push from the left.
And such an attack would make investors jittery and damage the economy, as we saw happen on 9/11.
And when it comes to getting reelected a bad economy is big trouble, so there's incentive to pull an Enron or Global Crossing and cover up the fact from investors that there's something worth being nervous about.
1994 spring : (CLINTON ADMINISTRATION DOES NOT OBJECT TO CROATIA'S REQUEST TO ALLOW THIRD-COUNTRY [IRANIAN] WEAPONS TO PASS THROUGH TO BOSNIAN MUSLIMS - See LEE HAMILTON'S 1996 EXCUSE FOR LETTING POTENTIAL TERRORISTS RECEIVE IRANIAN ARMS) In the spring of 1994, the Administration had a difficult decision to make when approached by Croatia on the question of allowing third-country weapons to pass through Croatia to the Bosnian Muslims. If we had objected to potential arms shipments from Iran, the Muslim-Croat Federation might have been destroyed in its infancy and a bad situation for the Bosnians might have worsened. The approach we took--of neither objecting to nor supporting the arms transfers--sought to balance our concern about the spread of Iranian influence against the adverse military situation facing the Federal. In the process, we did our best to serve the cause of peace in Bosnia. The arms deliveries helped sustain the Muslim-Croat Federation and reduced the military imbalance without the certain risks and pitfalls of the alternative courses of action.
"The close collaborator with Richard Clarke – going back to Bush I at NSC was Rand Beers – who quit last summer in disgust, and walked down the street and volunteered his services to Kerry, where he has been ever since. Beers eventually drew Joe Wilson into the Kerry camp."-- poster at dailyKos
good line
WOW!
*********
An official international terrorist organization, represented by Iran, Libya and Syria, was said to have been formed. It is to be called the "Movement for Islamic Change." Other members are said to be from the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.---- 'ORGANIZED TERRORISM; "Movement for Islamic Change"; ' By Steve Macko, ENN Editor; Excerpted from EmergencyNet NEWS Service Daily Report, Saturday, August 3, 1996, Vol. 2 - 216
(( ping ))
(Sorry if you already read this. This article is staggering.)
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