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Robert Ellsberg speaks on whistleblowing, truth-telling and the Pentagon Papers Oct 2, 2019 by Heidi Schlumpf JusticePolitics The autumn of 1969 has been on Robert Ellsberg's mind lately, as the 50th anniversary of a life-changing request from his father approaches. A half century ago, as a 13-year-old, Ellsberg agreed to help his dad photocopy documents from a government report he had worked on. Those documents, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, revealed the United States' role in the build-up to the Vietnam War and the lies told to the American public and to Congress about U.S. actions...

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who set off a political firestorm by disputing U.S. intelligence used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion, died Friday, according to his ex-wife. He was 69. Wilson died of organ failure in Santa Fe, said his former wife, Valerie Plame, whose identity as a CIA operative was exposed days after Wilson’s criticism of U.S. intelligence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium. The leak of Plame’s covert identity was a scandal for the administration of President George W. Bush that led to the conviction of vice presidential...

The Washington Post "Fact Checker" column gave former CIA operative and current Democratic New Mexico congressional candidate Valerie Plame three "Pinocchios" for her claim that former George W. Bush administration official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby leaked her identity. Plame blamed Libby for the leak in a campaign ad released Monday, but according to the Post's fact-check, there is no evidence he disclosed her role to columnist Robert Novak. Novak wrote the piece that reported that Plame, identified as a CIA operative, suggested sending her husband, Joe Wilson, to Niger to look into a report that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium...

How about this as a mental exercise: Try to remember back to the year 2009. It was only a decade ago, but it feels like a totally different era -- and in many ways it was. In 2009, most people didn't have smartphones. Late night television was still funny. The Democratic Party was still pretending to put the interests of American citizens above those of the rest of the world. In September of 2009, President Obama gave a speech about health care to a joint session of Congress. You may remember it. One of Obama's most emphatic promises in that...

After doing some research on Jason Leopold’s previous work, I came away with a (well-founded) suspicion that the Wilsons and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) were sourcing a good deal of his work and using him as a mouthpiece. I discovered that this flock of people, the Wilsonistas, suddenly started writing less about the Plame investigation after Libby’s indictment. However, Jason Leopold started writing almost exclusively about the Plame investigation at about the same time, in October. Instead of VIPS writing articles in Truthout and elsewhere about the imminent indictment of Rove, Cheney, Hadley and that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald...

The following is a very interesting article that was published by the Sunday Times yesterday. The truth at last. 'Forgers' of key Iraq war contract named Michael Smith TWO employees of the Niger embassy in Rome were responsible for the forgery of a notorious set of documents used to help justify the Iraq war, an official investigation has allegedly found. According to Nato sources, the investigation has evidence that Niger’s consul and its ambassador’s personal assistant faked a contract to show Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from the impoverished west African country. The documents, which emerged in 2002, were...

In yet another personal attack against President Trump, CNN’s Jake Tapper spread the false claim that Lewis “Scooter” Libby leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. While Tapper’s fan-base on the far left are celebrating Tapper’s spreading of this fake news, those who still hold journalistic integrity in high regard are telling the truth. Back in 2005, Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was wrongfully prosecuted by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, the man looking into who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson (who has since revealed herself to be an anti-Semite). The...

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are so pleased with reports that Leakgate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is about to indict senior White House officials that they want him to lead an impeachment investigation into whether President Bush lied to Congress about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "The CIA leak issue is only the tip of the iceberg,” House Judiciary Democrat Jerrold Nadler complains in a message posted to his web site. In a letter asking the Justice Department to expand the scope of Fitzgerald's investigation, Nadler says: "We now have reason to believe that high crimes may have been committed...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group's annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets. The Ploughshares Fund's mission is to "build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world's nuclear stockpiles," one that dovetails with President Barack Obama's arms control efforts. But its behind-the-scenes role advocating for the Iran agreement got more...

After the media inexplicably dubbed Hillary Rodham Clinton the “winner” of the Benghazi hearings, her apologists dismissed a line of questioning into her unofficial adviser, Sidney Blumenthal. So he was sending her e-mail offering advice on Libya and other matters of state. In the immortal words of Clinton at an earlier Benghazi hearing, “What difference does it make?”

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan accused key Clinton allies of helping craft a second anti-Trump dossier and accused them of “rigging the game,” Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.” Jordan was asked about a possible second dossier and said Clinton operatives Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer had paid Christopher Steele to do opposition research, but then told Steele which specific details to include. “The names we keep hearing are Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer — people who have been around the Clintons as being a part of this. But I also think it’s kind of interesting because what it looks like is,...

CBS featuring a retired CIA agent saying Bush lied about Iraq...and as a feature had Joe Wilson as a testament to his allegations.

Several new developments happening today center around the FBI’s use of the Christopher Steele Dossier in gaining FISA warrants to wiretap and monitor the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump; ie. “The Trump Project”. Doug Ross continues to update the ongoing conspiracy Timeline – SEE HERE. And that timeline just gained a big addition from a recently discovered visitor to the White House. Before going to the White House visitor angle, it’s important to express appreciation for Tablet Mag who did a deep dive into the Fusion-GPS connection to the creation of the Steele Dossier, and more specifically how Fusion-GPS head...

Over dinner with convicted felon Peter F. Paul and Stan Lee in 2000, Hillary revealed her motive for the illegal email server she used from 2009 to 2013: to hide from investigators.

ANNAPOLIS — A Maryland judge ordered the state bar to open an investigation Monday into the three lawyers who helped former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to delete her private emails. Circuit Judge Paul F. Harris Jr. said the complaints lodged against David E. Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were “egregious” and said the state bar couldn’t brush them aside by calling them “frivolous.” “There are allegations of destroying evidence,” Judge Harris said at a hearing Monday morning, where he said the state’s rules require the bar to conduct investigations no matter who raises the complaint, and can’t brush...

Something zesty to cleanse the palate. Remember her? Outed as a CIA analyst by Richard Armitage in Plamegate, she was a cause celebre of the anti-war, anti-Bush left in the middle of the last decade, right around the time that Cindy Sheehan was. Sheehan turned out to be a bit … eccentric politically, but oh well.Not good ol’ Valerie Plame.The politically correct term is “globalists” but we live in a politically incorrect age. Anyway, much outrage and dark humor ensued on Twitter after she tweeted that, leading to Plame’s first ill-advised attempt at spin. Chill out, she responded. The...

The article written by Phillip Giraldi alleges “Jewish groups and deep pocket individual donors not only control the politicians, they own and run the media and entertainment industries”, and takes aim at several high-profile public figures, including Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and political adviser. Giraldi later urges “the media” to label any on-air guests “at the bottom of the television screen whenever they pop up, e.g. Bill Kristol is ‘Jewish and an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel.'” After her initial tweet went viral, Plame later told her followers “calm down” and asked them to “put aside...

Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson on Thursday tweeted an article that argued American Jews are pushing for war in the Middle East, specifically with Iran. The article, titled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” is featured in The Unz Review, an online magazine that bills itself as an “alternative” to the “mainstream media.” After several minutes of questions from Twitter users who were shocked by her tweet, Wilson doubled down, arguing critics should read the article and “put aside” any biases. “1) First of all, calm down. Re-tweets don't imply endorsement. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks...

Days after a deadly suicide attack at a French-run uranium mine in Niger, a FRANCE 24 team that was given access to the high security site found evidence that the assailants had meticulously studied their target and likely received inside help. The explosives-packed car that rammed a grinding unit at a uranium mine in Arlit, a remote town in northern Niger, last week is in tatters. The shell of the car’s transmission system stands upright in the rubble, while the twisted frame was flung about ten meters away. Days after suicide bombers attacked a uranium mine in this West African...

Valerie Plame Wilson is fundraising to buy a controlling share of Twitter so that she can ban President Trump from the social media platform. "From emboldening white supremacists to promoting violence against journalists, his tweets damage the country and put people in harm's way," Wilson wrote on her GoFundMe page. "But threatening actual nuclear war with North Korea takes it to a dangerous new level." Wilson, who was revealed to be a covert CIA operations officer in a 2003 leak, slammed Twitter executives for ignoring calls to enforce the company's own community standards and delete Trump's account. But Wilson's...