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Daniel Ellsberg,
Sibel Edmonds, and 9/11: skeptical research notes
Brian Salter, questionsquestions.net
24 September 2004
UPDATED, 3 March 2005
sections:
1. Intro + Douglas Valentine: "Will the real Daniel
Ellsberg please stand up!"
2. Excerpts from Mort Sahl, Fletcher Prouty
3. Comments from Brian Quig
4. Critique of the Edmonds case from a 9/11 truth activist
UPDATE:
5. Excerpt from from "Sheep Dipping CFR Style:
The Kerry and Ellsberg Cases" by Servando Gonzalez
[1]
Daniel Ellsberg, the well-known icon of "Pentagon Papers" fame,
has recently taken a prominent role in the case of embattled FBI
whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. An archive of articles (representing
a non-skeptical view) on the Edmonds case can be found here:
http://www.breakfornews.com/Sibel-Edmonds.htm
The following discusses some of the apparent political implications
in more detail:
Turkey, Drugs, Faustian Alliances & Sibel Edmonds
by John Stanton
http://www.why-war.com/news/2004/06/28/turkeydr.html
Edmond's allegations in regards to 9/11 are not remarkable from
a perspective which includes a wider body of evidence and analysis
pointing to an "inside job"; instead, what she has to say largely
fits within what has come to be known as a"modified limited hangout"
position, as is shown for example in her recent widely circulated
public letter to the 9/11 Commission:
"The latest buzz topic regarding intelligence is the problem
of sharing information/intelligence within intelligence agencies
and between intelligence agencies. To this date the public has
not been told of intentional blocking of intelligence, and has
not been told that certain information, despite its direct links,
impacts and ties to terrorist related activities, is not given
to or shared with Counterterrorism units, their investigations,
and countering terrorism related activities. This was the case
prior to 9/11, and remains in effect after 9/11. If Counterintelligence
receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms
sale, and illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist
activities; and if that information involves certain nations,
certain semi-legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative
or political relations in this country, then, that information
is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible
severe consequences.
After almost three years the American people still do not know
that thousands of lives can be jeopardized under the unspoken
policy of 'protecting certain foreign business relations.'"
Public Letter to 9/11 Commission Chairman from FBI Whistleblower
by Sibel Edmonds, August 1, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0802-06.htm
But her statements have garnered attention because she alleges having
information that could lead to criminal prosecution of high-level
US politicians, as noted by journalist Tom
Flocco:
"if what she knows is revealed, it could lead to charges of treason
being leveled against officials at top levels of the U.S. government."
Would such charges lead to a full exposure of 9/11? Many 9/11 researchers
and activists have accepted the role that famous 'whistleblower'
Daniel Ellsberg has taken in the Edmonds case, which Edmonds openly
supports. Those who find nothing to question in this situation ought
to consider the viewpoint of some historical and political researchers
who do not think that Ellsberg's real background matches his public
persona. One of them is Douglas Valentine, an expert on the Vietnam-era
covert operations that Ellsberg was involved in prior to the famous
"Pentagon Papers" leak. Valentine shows that the "Pentagon Papers"
leak, perceived by the public at large as a straight-up scandal
and defeat for the 'establishment', was actually a cleverly manipulated
power-play which protected some of the worst, most deeply vested
elements of the US elite by diverting blame from the CIA to the
Pentagon, and distracting attention from certain CIA involvements
in illegal drug trafficking which were coming to attention at the
time. These events also contributed to the inside 'palace coup'
against Nixon by these same behind-the-scenes forces which was disguised
to the public as the Watergate scandal. illustrating discrepancies
in the stories given by Ellsberg and official histories, Valentine
raises fair questions as to what agenda Ellsberg's role really was.
This in turn raises questions about his involvement in Sibel Edmonds
case, not only in light of concerns about official efforts to effect
a limited hangout in regards to 9/11, but also in light of the fact
that Edmonds' as-yet unspecified charges apparently revolve around
the involvement of US government officials in the illegal drug trade
— exactly the area where Ellsberg's background is most in
question, according to Valentine and other skeptical observers.
The Clash of the Icons
Will the Real Daniel Ellsberg Please Stand Up!
By Douglas Valentine
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html
(excerpts)
Political activist Daniel Ellsberg became an icon in 1971 after
he leaked The Pentagon Papers. This "act of conscience" helped turn
public opinion against the Vietnam War, and contributed to the demise
of President Richard Nixon, whose felonious minions, the infamous
Plumbers, sent CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, and former FBI agent
(and self-professed rat-eater) G. Gordon Liddy, to burglarize confidential
files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Hunt and Liddy thought
they could trump the anti-War movement by showing that Ellsberg
was a mentally deranged LSD-abuser, but their slap-happy plan backfired,
and instead opened up the Pandora's box of the CIA inspired dirty
tricks the Republican Party relied upon (and still uses today) to
wage political warfare.
...nowhere in this revisionist history [a 2003 made-for-TV movie
about Ellsberg] will be audience be presented with the cast of Corsican
drug smugglers and CIA agents that shaped Ellsberg's sensibilities
and sent him on his path to New Left notoriety. But as the reader
shall see in this article, somewhere between the official Pentagon
Papers story, and the CIA's involvement in international drug trafficking,
is a disturbing clash of facts from which Ellsberg will not emerge
with his icon status intact.
Ellsberg And the Quiet American
The first thing the reader needs to know is that Ellsberg was not
always a pacifist "dove" intent on ending the Vietnam War. At first
he was an aggressive "hawk." His militant approach to the Cold War
ó he was all for nuking the Soviet Union ó was shaped during a tour
of duty as a Marine lieutenant, and precisely because of his hard-line
attitude, and his ability to articulate it, he was offered a job
as a Defense Department analyst.
Then in 1965 he was assigned as a Pentagon observer to the CIA's
Revolutionary Development (RD) Program in South Vietnam. Here Ellsberg
came under the influence of his mentor, CIA officer cum Air Force
General Edward Lansdale. The mass murderer Graham Greene used as
the model for Alden Pyle in "The Quiet American," Lansdale was the
architect of the CIA's anti-terror strategy for winning the Vietnam
War. When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities,
such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around
their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage
of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into
enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong
cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done
the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda"
activities.
[...]
Thinking the Unthinkable
It was 1970 when the mainstream American press first reported the
CIA's involvement in international drug trafficking, and it was
1970 when the U.S. Senate launched a potentially explosive investigation
into the CIA's Phoenix "assassination" Program, a special unit of
which was providing security for theCIA's unilateral drug smuggling
operation.
The House of Representatives launched deeper probes into CIA drug
smuggling and the CIA's Phoenix Program in early 1971, and, naturally,
the CIA at this critical time took extensive countermeasures in
a concerted effort to conceal these facts. What is relevant to the
discrepancy is the that in June 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the
aptly named Pentagon Papers, shifting blame for the increasingly
unpopular Vietnam War from the CIA to the military, while distracting
public attention from the investigations of the CIA's Phoenix Program
and the CIA's involvement in drug smuggling.
Ellsberg is aware of the rumor that Conein and Scotton asked him
to leak the Pentagon Papers as part of the CIA's disinformation
campaign. But he shrugs off the insidious rumor as yet another instance
of ¼ CIA disinformation designed to cast doubt on his motives for
leaking The Pentagon Papers.
While it is definitely politically incorrect within what passes
nowadays for the New Left to even make the suggestion, is it unthinkable
that Ellsberg might have suffered such a whisper campaign in order
to prevent his CIA friends from being indicted for drug smuggling
and mass murder?
The Politics Of Heroin (And War Crimes) In America
After Ellsberg leaked The Pentagon Papers, the CIA's plot to cover-up
its unilateral drug smuggling operation moved forward with greater
gusto. According to the Justice Department's still classified DeFeo
Report, Conein in the spring of 1971 was called out of retirement
by CIA officer E. Howard Huntand asked to become an advisor to President
Nixon's "drug czar" (and Plumber) Egil Krogh, on matters regarding
"problems of narcotic control in Southeast Asia and the Pentagon
Papers."
Consider that in 1971 the relationship between the French intelligence
service and Corsican drug smugglers in its employ was exposed after
a series of spectacular drug busts made in America with the assistance
of the CIA. Concurrently, Conein was called out of retirement and
immediately, in June 1971, told McCoy about the "truce" with the
French-connected Corsicans, one of who put a gun to Ellsberg head.
Consider also that Egil Krogh's investigators stumbled upon the
CIA's unilateral drug smuggling operation at this time, and that
in July 1971, President Nixon declared the burgeoning war on drugs
to be a matter of national security. Nixon went after the CIA and
quick as a flash, E. Howard Hunt (Conein's comrade from OSS Detachment
202) bungled the bugging of the Watergate Hotel. Washington Post
reporter and former Naval Intelligence officer Bob Woodward, then
assigned to cover Nixon's war on drugs, was approached by the still
anonymous Deep Throat, and based on unsubstantiated rumors, incrementally
engendered the Watergate scandal and effectively neutralized Nixon,
and his war on drugs.
In the summer of 1972 came the publication of McCoy's book, which
implicated the CIA in Corsican drug smuggling operation in Thailand,
Vietnam, Burma and Laos. But no CIA officer was ever indicted for
drug smuggling. In fact, the CIA boasted that it was actually helping,
by infiltrating the Corsican operation, to wage the war on drugs.
Amazing as it may sound, McCoy's exposure in 1972 of the French
Connection drug smuggling operation also helped to divert public
attention from the CIA's unilateral drug smuggling operations.
[end excerpts]
I recommend reading the entire article to get the full picture
of the discrepancies Valentine uncovers in official, standard accounts.
FYI, additional articles by Douglas Valentine on various subjects
are archived here:
http://members2.authorsguild.net/valentine/
Ellsberg has been issuing conspicuous rallying cries for new "whistleblowers"
to come out of the woodwork, such as this recent piece in the Establishment's
New York Times:
"The American people are reluctant to believe that their
president has made errors of judgment that have cost American
lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for
hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the
only way for the public to get such evidence is if a dedicated
public servant decides to release it without permission."
Truths Worth Telling: http://snipurl.com/9ei1
If there winds up being another "Pentagon Papers" type
of episode in the near future, it will surely merit some skepticism
as to whether those getting the attention and blame are really the
ones who most deserve it. And it is probably fair to assume that
the powers-that-be have, over the past few decades, continued to
improve and refine their disinfo skills for making insiders look
like outsiders.
[2]
The following excerpts might also be of use in investigating the
real story behind the Pentagon Papers:
http://www.maebrussell.com/Articles%20and%20Notes/Pentagon%20Papers.html
An excerpt from the book Heartland by Mort Sahl
Harcourt, Brace, Jovonich, 1976 - hard cover, 1st edition
from pages 106 - 108
ÝÝÝIt seemed very curious to me. It seemed to me that they were
doing what most people were doing. It never is free speech. Abbie
Hoffman doesn't open schools to speak in: he writes four-letter
words on the wall, he lights up joints of marijuana, and his speaking
engagements cancel the entire program for the semester. It was almost
as if that were his job.
ÝÝÝLet's look at some others. Angela Davis. Angela Davis is a brilliant
Ph.D., a very attractive woman, and she chooses to express her anger
with the system by joining the Communist Party, which is made up
of 850 eighty-six-year-old Jewish people in the Lower East Side
of New York and about a thousand FBI agents. Why would she choose
such an outmoded form? There's always a trial, a lot of noise, and
always there's an acquittal, you'll notice. None of them is ever
punished. Then she goes on a speaking tour where the action is--Bulgaria.
ÝÝÝStokely Carmichael couldn't wait to tear the system down; then
he was suddenly silent. The man who arrested Dr. Spock and the Reverend
William Sloan Coffin, Ramsey Clark, went to Hanoi and suddenly became
an outspoken dissident. Daniel Ellsberg, who worked at the Rand
Corporation, a CIA-funded group, was in and out of the Marine Corps
for thirteen years and suddenly arrived and said he's been redeemed
and accused the Army of ruling the country. The Army. Not the CIA.
The Army. Who does the CIA speak for? The American financial establishment.
And where did Ellsberg speak? He spoke in the New York Times, which
is more of a financial tribunal than the Wall Street Journal, if
the truth were known, or if the papers were read from cover to cover.
Ellsberg was immediately accepted by the liberals, who don't ever
ask for credentials. The left is lovely: You say to them, "I'm turning
you in," and they say, "Will you ride to the station with me?"
ÝÝÝ Ellsberg was immediately accepted because the liberals were
starved for heroes, obviously. He went on to discredit the Army,
and the concert goes on in the Times, an orchestrated scenario.
Officers' enlistments are down; the soldiers smoke dope; officers
are being fragged by their subordinates. A discreditation of the
Army. At the same time, coincidentally, General Abrams caught the
Green Berets working for the CIA, killing a double agent and dropping
his body in a mail sack in a river in Vietnam, and he said, I don't
want any SS in my Army; at which time the CIA said, we're going
to drop a real octopus on you, which was My Lai.
ÝÝÝWhen the Warren Report was printed in the New York Times, it
was printed in one day and buried. The "Pentagon Papers" were printed
piecemeal, day by day, as the group that printed it waited to be
stopped by the government. Wasn't it the lawyer for the New York
Times who said in the Supreme Court hearing, "Why don't you define
espionage for us so we don't violate the tenets and make it more
restrictive?" And Justice Douglas replied by saying, "I find this
a very odd argument for a defense counsel." Defense counsel being
Alexander Bikel, who wrote in Commentary, an influential Jewish
monthly, that anybody who didn't accept the Warren Commission must
have corrupt reasons.
An excerpt from the book JFK The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate
John F. Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty
Birch Lane Press, 1992 - hard cover, 1st edition
from pages 272 - 283
ÝAs mentioned earlier, Diem had made it quite clear what his goals
with the Strategic Hamlet program were. His position did not jibe
with those who wanted to escalate the war in Indochina and who were
not at all interested in the introduction of an ancient form of
self-government into the battle-scarred countryside.
ÝÝÝ On top of this came Kennedy's desire to get the United States
out of Indochina by the end of 1965, as evidenced by his orchestration
of a series of events such as the Krulak-Mendenhall visit to Vietnam
in September 1963. By late summer, and certainly by the time of
the McNamara-Taylor trip, closely held plans had progressed for
the removal of the Diems from Saigon. President Kennedy had reached
the decision that the United States should do all it could to train,
equip, and finance the government of South Vietnam to fight its
own war, but that this would be done for someone other than Ngo
Dinh Diem.
ÝÝÝOn the same day that the President received this McNamara-Taylor
report, Gen. Tran Van Don had his first "accidental" (it had been
carefully planned) meeting with the CIA's Lt. Col. Lucien Conein
at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon. This was a meeting of great significance,
and one that to this day has never been properly explained. General
Don was the commander of the South Vietnamese army. He had been
born and educated in France and had served in the French army during
World War II. He and Conein were well acquainted.
ÝÝÝNearly twenty years later, in 1963, the CIA designated Conein,
one of its most valuable agents in the Far East, to meet with his
old friend of eighteen years, Cen. Tran Van Don, to arrange for
the ouster of President Diem. Only ten years earlier, Gen. Edward
G. Lansdale and Conein had worked hard to get Ngo Dinh Diem started
as the newly assigned president of South Vietnam.
ÝÝÝConein's task was to stay close enough to key Vietnamese to assure
them that the United States would not interfere with their plan
to move in as soon as President Diem had left Saigon, and to keep
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and Conein's own CIA associates informed.
ÝÝÝ The plan prepared by the United States had been carefully drawn
to leave Diem no alternative except to leave on this scheduled trip.
There was much discussion and argument among members of the Kennedy
administration, who knew of the Presidentís intention to oust Diem
once he had left the country. With Madame Nhu and Archbishop Thuc
already in Europe, Diem and his brother were to follow to attend
a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
ÝÝÝThe evacuation plan, carefully orchestrated under Kennedy's direction,
broke down, and Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were murdered. There
have been many accounts of this coup d'etat. They do not tell the
role that Kennedy played in the story, and many were created to
cover the real plan and to protect those Vietnamese who had worked
closely with the administration.
ÝÝÝI was on duty in the Joint Chiefs of Staff section of the Pentagon
on the day of the coup d'etat. My immediate boss, General Krulak,
knew the full details of the plan to remove Diem from the scene
by flying him and his brother out of Saigon. Krulak remained in
contact with the White House as developments in Saigon were relayed.
I can recall clearly the absolute shock in our offices when it was
learned that Diem had not left on the proffered aircraft for Europe.
ÝÝÝOne of the most important narratives of this event was written
by Edward G. Lansdale in his autobiography In the Midst of Wars.
Few Americans, if any, knew Ngo Dinh Diem and the situation in Vietnam
from 1954-68 better than Ed Lansdale. He wrote:
ÝÝÝAs the prisons filled up with political opponents, as the older
nationalist parties went underground, with the body politics fractured,
Communist political cadre became active throughout South Vietnam,
recruiting followers for action against a government held together
mainly by the Can Lao elite rather than by popular support. The
reaped whirlwind finally arrived in November 1963, when the nationalist
opposition erupted violently, imprisoning many of the Can Loa and
killing Diem, Nhu, and others. It was heartbreaking to be an onlooker
to this tragic bit of history.
ÝÝÝIt was some time before the news became known that Diem had fled
to Cholon and been captured and killed there. This news was flashed
around the world; this was the story that everyone heard. The public
never heard of the planned flight to Europe that the Kennedy administration
had arranged for him.
ÝÝÝThus it was that the file of routine cable traffic between Washington
and Saigon eventually became known with the release and publication
of the Pentagon Papers. This is how it happened that Howard Hunt
was able to locate certain top-level messages to and from the White
House and Ambassador Lodge in Saigon that contained information
referring to "highest authority"--the cable traffic code for President
Kennedy.
ÝÝÝ None of these messages contained any reference to a plot to
kill President Diem and his brother or came even close to it. Concealed
within these messages were carefully worded phrases that gave Ambassador
Lodge the information he needed in order to direct all participants
into action and to begin the careful removal of the two brothers
to Europe by commercial aircraft.
ÝÝÝAccording to information that came out during the Watergate hearings,
those files that had been forged to smear President Kennedy were
put in Hunt's White House safe, where they remained until discovered
by investigators later.
ÝÝÝThere is much about this episode that has become important upon
review. There are those who have been so violently opposed to Jack
Kennedy and all that he stood for that they have stooped to all
kinds of sordid activities to smear him while he was alive, to attack
his brother Bobby while he was still alive, and to hound Sen. Edward
Kennedy to this day. Nixon's gratuitous reference to Kennedy's "complicity
in the murder of Diem" after a decade of silence on that subject
speaks for itself. The efforts of Howard Hunt and Chuck Colson (both
employees of the White House at the time) to dig up old files in
order to besmirch the memory of President Kennedy provide another
example.
ÝÝÝ In an ominous way, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate episodes
were cut from the same fabric, and most important, their exposure
was a direct outgrowth of the nationwide dissatisfaction with the
Vietnam War. Because the development of the war in Indochina had
been spread out so long, since 1945, and because most of the events
that brought about this terrible form of modern genocide in the
name of "anti- communism" or "containment" were buried in deep secrecy
or not even available in written records, Robert S. McNamara, then
secretary of defense, directed, on June 17, 1967 that a task force
be formed to collate and study the history of U. S. involvement
in Vietnam from World War II to the present.
ÝÝÝThis project, which produced thousands of documents of all kinds
from many sources, was the primary source of that group of more
than four thousand documents that were surreptitiously released
to various news media and called the Pentagon Papers. Almost four
years later, on June 13, 1971, the New York Times, the Washington
Post, and the Boston Globe, among others, started the serialization
of the Pentagon Papers. Few people have been more articulate on
the subject than the then senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel:
ÝÝÝThe Pentagon Papers reveal the inner workings of a government
bureaucracy set up to defend this country, but now out of control,
managing an international empire by garrisoning American troops
around the world. It created an artificial client state in South
Vietnam, lamented its unpopularity among its own people, eventually
encouraged the overthrow of that government, and then supported
a series of military dictators who served their own ends, and at
times our government's ends, but never the cause of their own people.
ÝÝÝIn his brilliant introduction the senator included an extract
from the works of the English novelist and historian, H. G. Wells,
who once wrote:
ÝÝÝThe true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or
emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open
and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that
standard, it ceases to be anything more than "the gang in possession"
and its days are numbered.
ÝÝÝThe publication of the Pentagon Papers became an event unique
in American history. One day after their publication had begun in
the New York Times, I received a call from the British Broadcasting
Corporation requesting that I travel to London to participate in
a series of programs, live on prime-time TV, with Daniel Ellsberg.
I did travel to London and did take part in a daily series on the
subject, but Ellsberg did not participate in the broadcasts, because
his lawyer advised him not to leave the country at that time.
ÝÝÝ In this book, I have used various editions of the Pentagon Papers
as reference material. They are useful and they are quite accurate
as far as individual documents go, but they are dangerous in the
hands of those who do not have the experience or the other sources
required to validate and balance their content. This is because
their true source was only marginally the Pentagon and because the
clever selection of those documents by the compilers removed many
important papers. This neglect of key documents served to reduce
the value of those that remained to tell the story of the Vietnam
War. From the beginning, the Pentagon Papers were a compilation
of documents designed to paint President John F. Kennedy as the
villain of the story, and to shield the role of the CIA.
ÝÝÝ This vast stack of papers has been labeled the Pentagon Papers,
but that is a misnomer. It is quite true that most of them were
found in certain highly classified files in the Pentagon, but they
were functionally limited files. For example, despite their volume--nearly
four thousand documents--there are remarkably few that actually
bear the signature of military officers. In fact, many of those
that carry the signature of a military officer, or that refer to
military officers, make reference to such men as Edward G. Lansdale,
who actually worked for the CIA while serving in a cover assignment
with the military. When such papers are removed from the "military"
or "Pentagon" categorization, what remains is a nonmilitary and
non-Pentagon collection. For the serious and honest historian, this
becomes an important distinction. To be truly "Pentagon" Papers,
the majority of them, at least, ought to have been written there.
ÝÝÝ In a letter to the then secretary of defense, Clark Clifford,
dated January 15, 1969, Leslie H. Gelb, director of the Study Task
Force that assembled the Pentagon Papers, said: "In the beginning,
Mr. McNamara gave the task force full access to OSD [Office of the
Secretary of Defense] files, and the task force received access
to CIA materials, and some use of State Department cables and memoranda.
We had no access to the White House files.
ÝÝÝDespite this disclaimer, there are many White House files in
the Pentagon Papers--and it was this group of documents, in fact,
that was the source of the anti-Kennedy forgeries.
ÝÝÝ The files from which most of these papers were obtained were
in that section of the Office of the Secretary of Defense called
International Security Affairs. Although this office was in the
Pentagon, it was lightly staffed with military officers, and most
of its activities concerned other government departments and agencies,
such as the CIA, the Department of State, and the White House. That
is why its files consisted of papers that originated outside the
Pentagon, giving the Pentagon Papers production an entirely nonmilitary
slant.
ÝÝÝAnother reason for caution regarding the utilization of the Pentagon
Papers as history is that, as Gelb said, "These outstanding people
[those who worked on the task force] came from everywhere--the military
services, State, OSD, and the 'think tanks.' Some came for a month,
for three months, for six months . . . in all, we had thirty-six
professionals working on these studies, with an average of four
months per man."
ÝÝÝThat says it all! They had become experts in four months!
ÝÝÝJohn Foster Dulles, formerly secretary of state, once declared
that one of the most complicated periods in this nation's history
began in Indochina on September 2, 1945. There is no way that this
group, averaging "four months per man" in its studies in 1967, and
1968, was going to be qualified to present a true and accurate account
of that war by the compilation of a scattering of papers that contained
bits and pieces of the story.
ÝÝÝ This reveals one of my greatest misgivings concerning the accuracy
of the study. There are altogether too many important papers that
did not get included in this study, too many that were absolutely
crucial to an understanding of the origins of, and reasons for,
this war.
ÝÝÝ This has been a complaint of historians who have attempted to
teach the facts of this war. They have found that the history book
accounts of it have been written by writers who were not there,
who had little or nothing to do with it--or, conversely, that they
have been written by those who were there, but who were there for
a one-year tour of duty, usually in the post-1965 period. Few of
these writers have had the comprehensive experience that is a prerequisite
to understanding that type of contemporary history.
ÝÝÝ Regarding the Pentagon Papers themselves, Senator Gravel wrote:
The Papers do not support our good intentions. The Papers prove
that, from the beginning, the war has been an American war, serving
to perpetuate American military power in Asia. Peace has never been
on the American agenda for Southeast Asia. Neither we nor the South
Vietnamese have been masters of our Southeast Asian policy; we have
been its victims, as the leaders of America sought to preserve their
reputation for toughness and determination.
He added:
The elaborate secrecy precautions, the carefully contrived subterfuges,
the precisely orchestrated press leaks, were intended not to deceive
"the other side," but to keep the American public in the dark....For
too long they have been forced to subsist on a diet of half-truths
or deliberate deceit by executives who consider the people of the
Congress as adversaries.(1)
ÝÝÝIt is important to understand the Pentagon Papers' subtle anti-Kennedy
slant. Nothing reveals this bias more than the following extract
taken from the section "The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, May-November
1963.
ÝÝÝ At the end of a crucial summary of the most momentous ninety-day
period in modern American history, from August 22 to November 22,
1963, this is what the authors of the Pentagon Papers had to say:
After having delayed an appropriate period, the U.S. recognized
the new government on November 8. As the euphoria wore off, however,
the real gravity of the economic situation and the lack of expertise
in the new government became apparent to both Vietnamese and American
officials. The deterioration of the military situation and the Strategic
Hamlet program also came more and more clearly into perspective.
ÝÝÝThese topics dominated the discussions at the Honolulu conference
on November 20 when [Henry Cabot] Lodge and the country team [from
Vietnam] met with [Dean] Rusk, [Robert] McNamara, [Maxwell] Taylor,
[George] Ball, and [McGeorge] Bundy. But the meeting ended inconclusively.
After Lodge had conferred with the President a few days later in
Washington, the White House tried to pull together some conclusions
and offer some guidance for our continuing and now deeper involvement
in Vietnam. The instructions contained in NSAM 273, however, did
not reflect the truly dire situation as it was to come to light
in succeeding weeks. The reappraisals forced by the new information
would swiftly make it irrelevant as it was overtaken by events.
ÝÝÝRecall what had been going on during that month of November 1963.
President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother had been murdered, and the
administration of South Vietnam had been placed in the hands of
Gen. Duong Van "Big" Minh. Then, in one of the strangest scenarios
of recent history, most of the members of the Kennedy cabinet had
flown to Honolulu, together, for that November 20 series of conferences.
The full cabinet meeting--even the secretary of agriculture was
there--in Hawaii was to be followed by a flight to Tokyo on November
22. Again, almost all of the Kennedy cabinet members were on that
flight to Tokyo. They were on that aircraft bound for Tokyo when
they learned that President Kennedy had been shot dead in Dallas.
Upon receipt of that stunning news, they ordered the plane to return
directly to Hawaii and, almost immediately, on to Washington.
ÝÝÝ But consider here the strange and impersonal words used by this
"official history." The Pentagon Papers, in its long section on
the events of that tragic period, ends its own narrative report
of those events by saying: "Put probably more important, the deterioration
of the military situation of the Vietnamese position...."
ÝÝÝ What could have been the basis for that conclusion? What caused
the Papers' authors to say that in 1968? Let's look at the record
from the pages of their own work:
1) On September 11, 1963, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge had cabled
to Secretary Rusk saying:
"I do not doubt the military judgment that the war in the countryside
is going well now.
2) On September 16, 1963, President Kennedy had written a personal
letter to President Ngo Dinh Diem in which he said:
"...the contest against the Communists in the last year and one
half has gradually but steadily turned in our favor.
3) On September 29, 1963, Secretary McNamara and General Taylor
met for three hours with President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon. As reported,
President Diem said:
"The war was going well, thanks in large measure to the strategic
hamlets program..." Diem concluded his optimistic presentation by
noting that "although the war was going well, much remained to be
done in the Delta area" [where most of the Tonkinese had been sent].
4) Then we have the McNamara/Taylor "Trip Report" of October 2,
1963, that became the body of NSAM #263 on October 11, 1963, that
concludes:
#1."The military campaign has made great progress and continues
to progress.
#2. "A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential
functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried
out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw
the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.
#3. "...the Defense Department should announce in the very near
future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military
personnel by the end of 1963.
#6. "...We believe the U.S. part of the task can be completed by
the end of 1965.
ÝÝÝNews of this "White House Report" was splashed across the front
page of the U.S. armed forces Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper
of October 4, 1963, in banner headlines: U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF
VIET BY '65.
ÝÝÝ These are quotes taken from official documents of that time,
all taking an optimistic view of the war by the leaders closest
to it and including statements by President Kennedy and President
Diem. The official Kennedy White House policy document, National
Security Action Memorandum #263, was dated October 11, 1963, and
there is no evidence that the situation, as perceived by Kennedy
and his closest advisers, had changed over the next month. General
Krulak was as close to the President and his policy as he had ever
been, and I worked directly with General Krulak on the Joint Staff.
We never heard of any changes in plans from the White House.
ÝÝÝJust four days after Kennedy's death and less than sixty days
after Kennedy published NSAM #263, which visualized the Vietnamization
of the war and the return of all American personnel by the end of
1965, Lyndon Johnson and most of the JFK cabinet viewed the situation
in an entirely different light. In Johnson's NSAM #273 they saw
the military situation deteriorating ("the deterioration of...the
Strategic Hamlet program") and all of a sudden saw the program as
a failure. ("These topics dominated the discussions at the Honolulu
Conference on November 20....")
ÝÝÝ This is a remarkable statement. On that date, John Kennedy was
still alive and President of the United States. Yet this report
says that his cabinet had been assembled in Honolulu to discuss
"these topics"--the very same topics of NSAM #273, dated November
26, and a vital step on the way to a total reversal of Kennedy's
own policy, as stated in the Taylor-McNamara report and in NSAM
#263, dated October 2, 1963. The total reversal was completed with
the publication of NSAM #288, March 26, 1964.
ÝÝÝThis situation cannot be treated lightly. How did it happen that
the Kennedy cabinet had traveled to Hawaii at precisely the same
time Kennedy was touring in Texas? How did it happen that the subject
of discussion in Hawaii, before JFK was killed, was a strange agenda
that would not come up in the White House until after he had been
murdered? Who could have known, beforehand, that this new--non-Kennedy--agenda
would be needed in the White House because Kennedy would no longer
be President?
ÝÝÝIs there any possibility that the "powers that be" who planned
and executed the Kennedy assassination had also been able to get
the Kennedy cabinet out of the country and to have them conferring
in Hawaii on an agenda that would be put before President Lyndon
Johnson just four days after Kennedy's death?
ÝÝÝPresident Kennedy would not have sent his cabinet to Hawaii to
discuss that agenda. He had issued his own agenda for Vietnam on
October 11, 1963, and he had no reason to change it. More than that,
he had no reason at all to send them all to Hawaii for such a conference.
It is never good practice for a President to have key members of
his cabinet out of town while he is on an extended trip. Why was
the cabinet in Hawaii? Who ordered the cabinet members there? If
JFK had no reason to send them to Hawaii, who did, and why?
ÝÝÝ Keep in mind, through this series of vitally important questions,
that we are piling circumstance upon circumstance. It is the body
of circumstantial evidence that proves the existence of conspiracy.
ÝÝÝAs soon as the Honolulu conference broke up, these same cabinet
members departed from Hawaii on an unprecedented trip to Japan.
No one has explained why the Kennedy cabinet was ordered to Japan
at that time.
ÝÝÝ This trip to Japan was not some casual event. Someone had arranged
it with care. A reading of newspapers from late November 1963 reveals
that extracts of speeches supposedly given by some of these cabinet
officers in Japan were made available and then printed, for example,
even in the Washington, D.C., Star.
ÝÝÝWe all know now that these cabinet officers did not reach Japan
and that their VIP aircraft returned to Hawaii. Why would newspapers
in the United States print extracts of their speeches as though
they actually had gone to Japan and delivered those speeches? Who
had set this trip up so meticulously that even such details as the
press releases appeared to validate the presence of the cabinet
members in Japan when in fact they never went there?
ÝÝÝContinuing this account of the period, the chronology prepared
by the authors of the Pentagon Papers lists the following:
22 November 1963: Lodge confers with the President. Having flown
to Washington the day after the conference, Lodge meets with the
President and presumably continues the kind of report given in Honolulu.
ÝÝÝ23 November 1963 NSAM #273: Drawing together the results of the
Honolulu Conference, and Lodge's meeting with the President, NSAM
#273 reaffirms the U.S. commitment to defeat the VC in South Vietnam....
ÝÝÝThese are astounding statements, considering that they were written
sometime in 1968, when everyone knew that the most important fact
of those two days was the assassination of President Kennedy on
November 22, 1963. This massive compilation of official documents
produced by Secretary McNamara's "task force...to study the history
of United States involvement in Vietnam from World War II to the
present" (1969) totally ignored the assassination.
ÝÝÝ The Pentagon Papers say simply, "Lodge confers with the President,"
as though it were just another day in the life of a President. Which
President? Didn't that matter? What a way to dismiss Kennedy and
his tragic death! This entire section of the Pentagon Papers, which
were commissioned to be a complete account of the history of the
Vietnam war period, cannot find a word to say about that assassination.
This official history simply skips all mention of the death of the
President of the United States and tells the story of the death
of Diem as though it had occurred in a vacuum.
ÝÝÝWhy do you suppose Leslie Gelb, director of the Pentagon Papers
Study Task Force, chose to close his "Letter of Transmittal of the
Study" with this quote from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: "This is
a world of chance, free will, and necessity--all interweavingly
working together as one; chance by turn rules either and has the
last featuring blow at events.
ÝÝÝ Then, as if to introduce some reality into the study, he closes
with this remarkable thought: "Our studies have tried to reflect
this thought; inevitably in the organizing and writing process,
they appear to assign more and less to men and free will than was
the case. This sounds more and more like the "God throws the dice"
syndrome. What could Les Gelb have been thinking about when he saw
"chance" taking "the last featuring blow at events?" Did the Vietnam
War happen by "chance"? Was President John E Kennedy killed by "chance"?
That takes a strange view of history. When Oliver Stone's movie
asked, "Why was Kennedy killed?" I doubt that anyone in the audience
would have answered, "By chance."
ÝÝÝ This "Letter of Transmittal" of January 15, 1969, was addressed
to Clark M. Clifford, secretary of defense and a man we have quoted
frequently during this work.
ÝÝÝThese questions and the subjects they unfold are the things of
which assassinations and coups d'etat are made. The plotters worked
out their plans in detail as they moved to take over the government
that Kennedy had taken from them. As a result, every other public
official became a pawn on that master chess board. Assassinations
and coups d'etat permeate and threaten all levels of society.
[3]
The following comments on Ellsberg and related Watergate-era events
were made by the late political activist, Brian Quig on the cia-drugs
listserv. Quig was a close colleague of Fletcher Prouty.
The CIA manages the news.
Fletcher Prouty explained to me how the CIA
scrubbed itself out of the PENTAGON PAPERS and
then had Daniel Ellsberg leak them to the NEW
YORK TIMES which is always ready to cooperate at
times like this. The intention was to make the
VIETNAM WAR look like the military started it and
not the CIA. Ellsberg was not a hero. He was a
CIA low life put together as a typical JUDAS GOAT
LEADER by the media.
[...]
I examined the claims of Sherman Skolnick about
the crash of UNITED 551 which killed Mrs. E.
Howard Hunt, a congressman and CBS correspondent
Michelle Clark and 9 others connected to WATERGATE
for Congressman James Stanton, the second chairman
of what later became the PIKE COMMITTEE. I did
not find one statement that could not be
substantiated.
Alexander Butterfield, the highest CIA in the
WHITE HOUSE who revealed the existence of the
WHITE HOUSE TAPES left the WHITE HOUSE after the
crash to head the FAA which oversees the NATIONAL
TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD responsible for
overseeing the UNITED 553 investigation. Eagle
Krough, the DRUG CZAR, left the WHITE HOUSE to
become a Vice President of UNITED AIRLINES and
attend ever session of the NTSB hearings.
Gordon Liddy's team were paid by the DEA. The
first person to jump off UNITED 553 was a DEA
agent in a jump suit.
Bob Woodward and Bernstein were JUDAS GOAT LEADERS
set up like Ellsberg to feed the CIA's deceit to
the gullible public. Our major media is
enormously successful making low life lying scum
look heroic. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North are
other good examples. Lies covering up mass
murder are the worst kind.
Brian Quig
[4]
A critique of the Edmonds case and the uncritical promotion it has
received from some 9/11 activists, from the site '911 Truth Movement
Musings':
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze25x9n/id4.html
[5]
Excerpt from "Sheep Dipping CFR Style: The Kerry and Ellsberg
Cases" by Servando Gonzalez [http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagsg023.php]
[note: I have two disagreements with the overall analysis that
are worth noting here. First, the author overgeneralizes about the
infiltration and co-optation of the left, failing to note that the
activities of the CFR in these 1960s events was not just a continuation
of a previous pattern but were part of an intensive and particular
transformation process. Second, I disagree with his argument that
the CIA and Pentagon both serve equivalently as whipping-boys to
distract from other agencies — currently, at least, it seems
to be the CIA that is taking a whipping, while the Pentagon benefits
and is gaining power with the recent intel re-organizations. This
is the reveral of the "Pentagon Papers" scenario!]
The Daniel Ellsberg Case
Daniel Ellsberg, a man of integrity, courage, and passion, became
known to the American public when he allegedly followed his conscience
and gave the New York Times a secret report -- eventually referred
to as "The Pentagon Papers" -- proving the Pentagon's evil doings.
The Times published the report, and it created such outrage in
the American public that the government was eventually forced
to pull American troops from Vietnam. Ellsberg became a true American
hero.
There is an important detail about this rosy story, however,
which may give us a clue of its true meaning: its timing. It seems
that Ellsberg discovered that the war was evil in 1968, the same
year the CFR conspirators decided it was time to pull out of Vietnam.
Coincidence? Probably not.
One of the main players behind the scenes in the Pentagon Papers
incident was Anthony Joseph (Tony) Russo. Tony was an analyst
and field operator for the Rand Corporation, a think tank with
close ties to the CFR. Russo had worked from 1965-68 on the Viet
Cong Motivation and Morale project, a top-secret psy-war study
for the Pentagon.
According to Tony Russo's own story, he was the one who, in
1968, "briefed Dan Ellsberg almost daily for the entire year on
the Rand Intelligence project explaining the legitimacy of the
so-called enemy (the "Viet Cong" and the "North" Vietnamese; i.e.,
the Vietnamese independence movement) and the unlawfulness of
U.S. presence." It was in the context of these briefings when
Russo "repeatedly and urgently exhorted Ellsberg to release the
Pentagon Papers."
Another "leftist" who played a role in the release of the Pentagon
papers was Morton Halperin, a veteran in campaigns against the
CIA and an apologist of communist tyrannies. Halperin was a close
associate of Philip Agee -- a CIA "defector' and a close friend
of CFR's man-in-Havana Fidel Castro -- who was a crusader for
unilateral U.S. disarmament.
Halperin had strong support from powerful, influential people.
He was a friend of Leslie Gelb, a New York Times' "left-wing"
journalist who had evolved into President of the CFR. It was Halperin
and Gelb who, while serving together in the Defense Department,
gave Ellsberg unauthorized access to the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg
passed the papers to some friends at the Institute for Policy
Studies, a "leftist" organization heavily funded by the Rockefeller,
Ford, Carnegie and other CFR-controlled "phylanthropic" foundations.
It was the IPS folks who passed the Papers to the New York Times.
The CIA and the NYT are probably the two most important fronts
of the CFR in the implementation of their psy-war against the
American people.
Because of his act of uncivil obedience to his CFR masters,
Ellsberg became overnight the hero of civil disobedience of "progressive
liberals" and "leftists" like Richard Falk, Noam Chomsky, John
Dean, Jeffrey Masson, Randy Kehler, Barbara Dane, Max Frankel,
Howard Zinn, Gar Alperovitz, Michael Lerner, Paul Krassner, Peter
Dale Scott, David McReynolds, Senator Mike Gravel, Tom Schelling,
Donna Haraway, and many others.
It has been mentioned in several books how Kissinger was so
upset by the action of his former Harvard student and protegÈ,
that he pushed Nixon to take actions against Ellsberg. But there
are indications that Kissinger was just acting. Had he truly hated
Ellsberg so much he would have prevented him from joining the
CFR. But now Ellsberg, the man who apparently destroyed the CFR
conspirators' plans, is currently a proud member of the CFR.
A few months ago Ellsberg's new book, Secrets, was published.
It seems, however, that he failed to address the main secret of
the Vietnam war: the CFR, the organization who played the key
role in planning and conducting the not-for-winning Vietnam war,
is barely mentioned in the book.
Damage control has always been a priory at the CFR. Having full
control of the past guarantees that, not even by mistake, any
true secret would be revealed. This explains why most "serious"
academic studies about key events like Pearl Harbor and the Cuban
missile crisis -- just to mention a few -- have been made by CFR
members. No wonder they are just crap. This also explains why
CFR members controlled the Kennedy assassination investigation,
and why Bush's first candidate to preside over the government's
investigation of the 9-11 events was none other than Henry Kissinger.
But, suprisingly, even in this country where erything seems
to go, Kissinger was too much. Then, after this faux pas, other
prestigious citizens were appointed to lead the commission. As
expected, most of them were CFR members.
By the way, expect a lot of books by CFR-controlled authors
"explaining" the September 11 thing. One of them, already printed,
is David Ray Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor, with a foreword by
Richard Falk. The book is a classical example of a limited hangout
operation.
"[Ellsberg's] story reminds us that to fulfill the responsibilities
of citizenship is to always ask questions and demand the truth."
-- Senator John Kerry
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