Inconsistencies and Unanswered Questions: The Risks of Trusting the Snowden Story

By Kevin Ryan
Global Research

Last June, Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian revealed that Edward Snowden was the NSA insider behind “one of the most significant leaks in US political history.” Snowden explained his motivations through Greenwald by saying, “There are more important things than money…. harming people isn’t my goal. Transparency is.”

Such altruistic motivations were welcome news at the time but have come into question recently given that only a tiny fraction of the documents have been released nearly a year after Snowden started working with Greenwald. Perhaps more importantly, billionaire Pierre Omidyar is funding Greenwald’s slow release of those documents. It is worth noting that Omidyar’s Paypal Corporation has links to the NSA.

Checkbook Journalism & Leaking to the Highest Bidders; BFP Roundtable

By Sibel Edmonds
Podcast by Corbett Report

In this blockbuster no-holds-barred conversation, Sibel Edmonds, Guillermo Jimenez and James Corbett discuss Edmonds’ recent series of articles on Glenn Greenwald and his connection to billionaire Pierre Omidyar. We talk about the NSA/PayPal connection and Greenwald’s refusal to discuss this issue, and Edmonds reveals specific examples of publicly documented cases that Greenwald has been covering up for years: LISTEN HERE: http://www.corbettreport.com/mp4/bfpr02.mp4

Sibel’s Checkbook Journalism article:

The NSA Whistleblowing Case: Something is Awfully Rotten in the State of …?Imagine a major government whistleblower who leaks his evidence and obtained documents to the highest bidders in the mainstream media and mega corporations. Does that sound awful, disgraceful and despicable? Okay. Now, imagine a pseudo journalist who obtains over 50,000 documents from a government whistleblower, and then takes some of this information and puts it out for bid, reserves a certain portion for a lucrative book deal, and saves the rest for a mega corporation that has a record of screwing whistleblowers. How does that sound? This is what I mean by the title of this commentary: Checkbook Journalism & Leaking to the Highest Bidders.

Hacker Wars: the Covert Report Interview with Vivien Weisman

By Susan Lindauer
COTO Report

Dec 14, 2013 Show at http://truthfrequencyradio.com/the-covert-report-w-susan-lindauer-31912/

In the vanguard fight for internet freedom, a few names stand out– Jeremy Hammond, Wikileaks and Barrett Brown, now fighting criminal prosecution in a government psy op where black hats are white, and hackivists are demonized.

Today’s guest, Vivien Weisman was the first journalist permitted to interview Jeremy Hammond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan prior to his 10 year sentence for his famous Stratfor hack that captured 5.2 million emails from this shadowy private intelligence contractor and its clients.

Seymour Hersh: Whose sarin?

By Seymour M. Hersh
London Review of Books

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack.

July 4th reprieve for Bradley Manning after prosecution rests

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

As the nation readies itself for its annual celebration of freedom, the modern U.S. government seeking to severely punish hero whistleblower, Bradley Manning, rested its case prosecuting him for 21 charges, including ‘aiding the enemy’ which carries a life sentence. The court martial is being held at Fort Meade in Maryland and is expected to end in August.

Top image: In this June 5, 2013 photo Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., after the third day of his court martial.  In June 2010, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was arrested for giving WikiLeaks more than 700,000 classified battlefield reports, diplomatic cables and video clips while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Watch Counter-Intelligence: A 5-Film Series by Scott Noble

Written and Directed by Scott Noble
Narrated by Mikela Jay
Metanoia Films

From the director of Psywar and Human Resources comes a 5-film series covering the über police state created and developed by America’s secret government. Students of current events get a crash course in the dismantling of what these pathological rulers call quaint: the US Constitution.

Counter-Intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations includes original interviews with:

Bradley Manning Trial: Is Our Future an Orwellian Nightmare Or Information Anarchy?

By Drew Mendelson
Policy Mic

At its core, the ongoing military trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the admitted conveyer of three-quarters of a million classified U.S. government documents to Wikileaks, is about the evolution of big data into a relentless and almost certainly unstoppable social force. Pfc. Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst arrested in May 2010 and charged with 22 offenses involving the passing of information to Wikileaks, is seen by many as a whistleblower whose actions revealed mendacious covert actions of the U.S. government in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Was Newtown Shooter Mind Controlled? CIA Documents Give Evidence

By WantToKnow.info

The tragic Newtown school massacre and many other heartbreaking mass murders in recent years have spread fear and panic among parents and the general public. Yet some are questioning if there isn’t more than meets the eye to these cruel and bizarre events. Is it conceivable that there might be a deeper agenda here? This essay presents undeniable evidence that secret government mind control programs have created assassins and murderers out of unsuspecting citizens.

The astonishing excerpts below, taken verbatim from declassified CIA documents, reveal detailed mind control experiments in highly secret, government-sponsored experiments. Through hypnosis, drugs, and electric shock, CIA clinicians fractured personalities and induced multiple personality disorder (MPD) – also called dissociative identity disorder (DID). These top secret experiments were successful in creating Manchurian Candidates or super spies programmed to carry out assassination, terrorist acts, sexual favors, and more without conscious knowledge of what they were doing. The army of Manchurian Candidates created may have played a key, hidden role in world politics.

Gary Webb: An American Hero

By Volaar

Eight years ago, December 10, 2004, respected and award-winning investigative journalist Gary Webb was murdered by a conspiracy of an apathetic citizenry, corporate malfeasance and government corruption.  The Sacramento County coroner, Robert Lyons, publically, if hastily, characterized the gunshot wounds in Gary Webb’s head three times before finally ruling the double-gunshot wound to Webb’s face a “suicide,” noting the use of a .38 caliber revolver, the presence of a suicide note and Webb’s close friend and ex-wife, Sue Bell, claiming that Gary, “had been depressed about being unable to obtain employment from another major newspaper for some time.” The San Jose Mercury News, on orders from “on high,” had terminated Gary Webb’s career progression after they claimed they had discovered errors in trivial matters of fact in his career-capping exposé, “A Dark Alliance” (ADA).

Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story

In this startling new memoir, Sibel Edmonds-the most classified woman in U.S. history-takes us on a surreal journey that begins with the secretive FBI and down the dark halls of a feckless Congress to a stonewalling judiciary and finally, to the national security whistleblowers movement she spearheaded.

Having lived under Middle East dictatorships, Edmonds knows firsthand what can happen when government is allowed to operate in secret. Hers is a sobering perspective that combines painful experience with a rallying cry for the public’s right to know and to hold the lawbreakers accountable.

Julian Assange to run for Australian Senate

Julian Assange (AFP/Miguel Medina)

By RT

Famous whistleblower and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has decided to run for a seat in the Australian Senate – despite being under home arrest in Great Britain.

­The decision was announced by the Wikileaks group via twitter.

While awaiting possible extradition to Sweden over alleged sex crime charges, Julian Assange, a native of Queensland in northeastern Australia, is still eligible to run for office.  He plans to make a bid for the country’s Upper House.

RT: Indefinite Detention, Bradley Manning and US Constitution

By RTAmerica

On Dec. 15, the US Congress voted to pass the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. The 86 to 13 vote will allow the indefinite detention and torture of American citizens at home and abroad without a trial. The NDAA gives more power to the military and government and President Obama at one point said would veto the bill but he has changed his mind. Jason Leopold, deputy managing editor for TruthOut.Org, joins us to discuss this Act.

A Dangerous Woman: Indefinite Detention at Carswell

By Susan Lindauer

Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. A bill moving through Congress, authorizing the military to imprison American citizens indefinitely, without a trial or hearing, ranks right at the top of that list.

I know—I lived through it on the Patriot Act. When Congress decided to squelch the truth about the CIA’s advance warnings about 9/11 and the existence of a comprehensive peace option with Iraq, as the CIA’s chief Asset covering Iraq, I became an overnight threat. To protect their cover-up scheme, I got locked in federal prison inside Carswell Air Force Base, while the Justice Department battled to detain me “indefinitely” up to 10 years, without a hearing or guilty plea. Worst yet, they demanded the right to forcibly drug me with Haldol, Ativan and Prozac, in a violent effort to chemically lobotomize the truth about 9/11 and Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.

Critically, because my legal case was controlled by civilian Courts, my Defense had a forum to fight back. The Judge was an independent arbiter. And that made all the difference. If this law on military detentions had been active, my situation would have been hopeless. The Patriot Act was bad enough. Mercifully, Chief Justice Michael B. Mukasey is a preeminent legal scholar who recognized the greater impact of my case. Even so, he faced a terrible choice —declaring me “incompetent to stand trial,” so my case could be killed—or creating dangerous legal precedents tied to secret charges, secret evidence, secret grand jury testimony and indefinite detention—from the Patriot Act’s arsenal of weapons against truth tellers—that would impact all defendants in the U.S. Courts.

It was a hideous choice—The judicial farce was more ugly because it stamped me a “religious maniac” for believing in God—a ludicrous argument. It lined up beautifully, however, with Congress’ desire to bastardize the “incompetence” of Assets engaged in Pre-War Intelligence. Anything to escape responsibility for their own poor decision making.

Saluting Rapists

Holiday season cycles around again, and my book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, could be the right gift for someone who looks at life deeply and reflectively, or who seeks the miraculous in the commonplace. More info below.

By Robert C. Koehler

Remember that awkward silence that fell across the nation back in ’94 when Bill Clinton’s surgeon general used the M-word?

Jocelyn Elders, speaking at an AIDS conference at the U.N. about reducing the risk of sexually transmitted disease, said that masturbation “is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.”

Clinton, rather than defend frank, honest talk about sexuality at the national level and condemn its opposite, caved under the weight of the gasps and titters and fired Elders, explaining that the outspoken surgeon general’s comments reflected “differences with Administration policy and my own convictions.” Differences on masturbation? A couple years later, the Monica scandal erupted and things were a little clearer — oh yeah, this is how we talk about sex in America.

Article 32 Hearing of Bradley Manning to Begin Dec. 16

By David E. Coombs
Armycourtmartialdefense.info

The Article 32 hearing for PFC Bradley Manning will begin on December 16, 2011 at Fort Meade, Maryland. The hearing is expected to last approximately five days. With the exception of those limited times where classified information is being discussed, the hearing will be open to the public.

The primary purpose of the Article 32 hearing is to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the government’s case as well as to provide the defense with an opportunity to obtain pretrial discovery. The defense is entitled to call witnesses during the hearing and to also cross examine the government’s witnesses. Each witness who testifies is placed under oath; their testimony can therefore be used during the trial for impeachment purposes or as prior testimony should the witness become unavailable.

The 9/11 Commission claims ‘we found no evidence’

By UL Truth

When Underwriters Laboratories fired me for challenging the World Trade Center (WTC) report that it helped create with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it said “there is no evidence” that any firm performed the required fire resistance testing of the materials used to build the Twin Towers. Of course, that was a lie.

With this experience in mind, I checked to see how many times the 9/11 Commission Report used the phrase “no evidence,” and noted in particular the times the Commission claimed to have “found no evidence” or that “no evidence was uncovered.”  I discovered that the phrase “no evidence” appears an amazing 63 times.  An example is the dubious statement — “There is no evidence to indicate that the FAA recognized Flight 77 as a hijacking until it crashed into the Pentagon (p 455).”

Governmental Secrecy: Shield for Tyranny, Incompetence, and Corruption

Guest Blogged by Stephen H. Unger

An essential pillar of democracy is openness. There is no way that people can meaningfully participate in government, even if only by voting for representatives, if they do not have access to accurate information related to government operations. This was well understood by the founders of the US and embedded in the Bill of Rights. Conversely, a salient characteristic of undemocratic systems of all types, such as Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany is a high degree of governmental secrecy.

The standard excuse for the suppression of governmental information is national security. In practice, it is improperly used in most situations, i.e., there is no legitimate reason for keeping secret the great majority of information classified secret by the government. Secrecy is used to conceal abuse of power, illegality, corruption, incompetence, and waste. A common instance of misuse of secrecy is when government officials make statements to reporters on controversial matters under the condition that they not be identified in the published stories. Below, I discuss how secrecy is being misused in the US. But first, consider when secrecy does make sense.

CIA told NY Times about 9/11 Warnings, Command Negligene: NY Times Lied

By Susan Lindauer, 9/11 Whistleblower
Former U.S. Asset covering Iraq and Libya

9/11 denialists like to swear smugly that the official 9/11 story must be true, because the government could never keep such an important secret without getting caught.

Somebody would spill the beans, right? In fact, a number of us tried. Media watchers should savvy up, as the air waves get blitzed this weekend with 9/11 emorials. If the corporate media had done its job as a watch dog, the world would have got an earful reliable intelligence sources debunking the official 9/11 story.

Unhappily, the corporate media has been a co-conspirator in the 9/11 Cover Up from day one. They have actively abetted the government with its dirty work. Say a truth teller got arrested on the Patriot Act—like me— and locked in prison on a military base, while the public debate raged over 9/11 and Iraq without access to knowledgeable sources. The government could rely on corporate media to squash the story, while the Justice Department fought my demands for a trial, playing every dirty trick in the book to stop a New York jury from hearing testimony about 9/11 and Iraq.

Barred From 9/11?

The Crime of the Patriot Act, 9/11 and a Whistleblower’s Truth

By Rady Ananda

Susan Lindauer’s piece of the 9/11 puzzle adds more evidence to support the charge of criminal negligence at the command level and exposes the utter depravity of the Patriot Act.  Even more, as the primary Intelligence Asset for Iraq, she proves that top officials of the Bush regime were fully aware that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion, and had, in fact, negotiated a peace treaty in order to end UN sanctions.

To tell this truth cost her her job, her freedom and almost her sanity.