RWC Unfiltered 9-11-11

By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds.

EU officials say much of Gadhafi’s missile stockpile is now in Al Qaida’s hands and could be used to down Western flights over Africa. Al Qaida financed the acquisitions through arms and drug trafficking as well as abductions throughout North Africa, including Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. That begs the question of “who got paid.”

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the Washington Post published excerpts of Top Secret America, a book based on a series of articles in the Post by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. The book refers to “the new national security state,” meaning the U.S. military, the CIA, the FBI, and other public entities and even private contractors engaged in defense or intelligence work. “More than a dozen Washington Post journalists spent two years developing Top Secret America.”

Publicity for the book’s release was handled by Fenton Communications and its president, David Fenton, later to become a paid agent of George Soros when he campaigned in 2004 to defeat George Bush for re-election. (Fenton also represented the Salvadoran guerrillas, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, CIA defector Philip Agee, the Marxist government of Grenada and communist Angola.)

The expected fallout is already starting. A Filipino newspaper is now reporting, “A secret U.S. military organization rivaling the CIA has mounted intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in countries including the Philippines with which the United States is not at war, The Washington Post reported.” The “secret” organization is the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which is engaged in fighting terrorists.

As part of this onslaught, the public television Frontline series was aired a special Sept. 6 program on “the secret side” of America’s war on terror. It says, “From the creation of black site prisons abroad and super-secret facilities here in America, to targeted killings and covert wars waged by special forces, and the creation of a multibillion-dollar terrorism-industrial complex, Frontline and Dana Priest ask how a decade of fighting terrorism has reshaped the country and whether it has made us any safer.”

One waits in vain for the Post to investigate and expose the strategic plans of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups that want to destroy us.

The answer to the expansion of the “national security and intelligence system,” which is presented as a major problem in the work of Priest and Arkin, can be found in the activism of Priest’s husband, the silent partner in the series, a left-winger by the name of William Goodfellow.

This is an open “secret” that the Post conceals from its readers. It leads to the exposure of the far-left networks behind much of the “real news” we see, read, and hear in the mainstream media.

Goodfellow runs the Soros-funded Center for International Policy (CIP), which “is in the vanguard of the movement to develop an alternative foreign and defense policy based on international cooperation, demilitarization and respect for human rights,” its newsletter proclaims.

Its other goals include:

• Finding “new ways to encourage cooperation” with Cuba [the Castro dictatorship].

• “Reining in the CIA;”

• “Ending the war in Afghanistan,” and

• “Building public support for peace.”

The Goodfellow connection is never mentioned in the Priest bio on the paper’s Web site. William M. Arkin, a columnist and reporter with The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com since 1998, is the co-author of the book and the series and “has worked on the subject of government secrecy and national security affairs for more than 30 years,” his bio says.

In fact, he has made it his mission to expose the means by which the United States defends itself, in order to disarm the nation in the face of threats from the old Soviet Union and international communism and now from global Islam.

In the 1980s he worked for the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which provided cover and protection for such figures as Chilean Marxist Orlando Letelier, a paid agent of Cuba, and CIA defector Philip Agee, another paid agent of Cuba. The IPS also conducted international conferences with Soviet KGB-affiliated research organizations such as the Institute of the USA and Canada and the USSR-USA Friendship Society.

The IPS is the same organization that then-Rep. Leon Panetta, now Secretary of Defense, was associated with. Panetta and his wife were sponsors of an IPS anniversary celebration in 1983. During the 1980s, Panetta joined with IPS in opposing every major weapons system proposed by the Reagan Administration.

The IPS affiliation is not noted in an old Post bio of Arkin but it is mentioned that he “co-authored Nuclear Battlefields in 1985, revealing the locations of all U.S. and foreign nuclear bases worldwide” and that the book was “condemned by the Reagan Administration” for obviously threatening the security and safety of those weapons.

Since Arkin and Panetta, now Secretary of Defense and before that, CIA director, were associated with IPS during the same time period, questions would naturally be raised about whether they have exchanged information as the series and book project were underway. This is not an unfair line of inquiry, since the Post bio claims that Arkin in the past has spoken to “a number of government audiences, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the CIA, various offices on the Air Staff and various senior service schools and war colleges, the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, naval intelligence, the Central Air Forces (CENTAF) staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency…” and others.

Arkin co-authored Nuclear Battlefields when he was on the staff of the IPS. A press release said he was a “Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies” and had directed its “Nuclear Weapons Research Project” since 1981. The book was designed to alarm the public about a “nuclear infrastructure” that was said to be “out of control and beyond accountability,” a press release said, adding, “It is vital that citizens, legislators, and elected officials begin to comprehend this hidden world and try to bring it under control.”

This is the template that we see at work in the Post series. The Post publishes an analysis of the alleged terrible danger posed by “top secret America” and then the left-wing groups come forward to argue for “social justice and peace,” in the words of the CIP. Clearly, they are hoping to use rising concern over the debt and deficit to make massive cuts in what the paper describes as “the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

The system, the Post says, is “so big, so complex and so hard to manage, [that] no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe.” Unfortunately, the Post does not really seem concerned about the latter. After all, Post reporter Marilyn Thompson covered and wrote a book, The Killer Strain, on the anthrax case and unfairly pointed the finger at Dr. Steven Hatfill, who was labeled a “person of interest” but never charged and was later officially exonerated, to the point where he collected $6 million in damages from the Department of Justice and the FBI for using the media to finger him.

The anthrax case, which was prematurely closed by the FBI when another persecuted suspect killed himself rather than fight for his reputation, was the work of Al Qaida operatives on U.S. soil, according to the most authoritative book on the subject, Anthrax and Al Qaeda: The Infiltration of U.S. Biodefense. This evidence suggests that the real problem facing the “National Security State” is infiltration and penetration by enemies of the U.S. and not enough safeguards against the internal subversive threat.

Thompson had been the Post Assistant Managing Editor for Investigations, which hardly inspires confidence in the paper’s ability to get the facts straight in this or any other national security-related matter.

As with the anthrax coverage, every story or series in the Post is dependent on government sources and the “Top Secret America” articles are no different. But why would officials in the Obama Administration want to expose what are described in the new book and series as people and groups engaged in “top-secret” work? The Post says it examined nearly 1,000 threat documents marked “For Official Use Only.” If the Post is not investigated by Attorney General Eric Holder for illegally obtaining access to information not appropriate for public release, then we would have reason to think that the “leaks” were authorized from the very top of our government.

On one level, the database assembled by Arkin and the Post is certain to make it easier for our enemies to know how the federal government is trying to understand and measure the threat. On another level, the intention seems to be to scare the American people - not about the radical Islamists who are trying to defeat our defenses but about those in the national security field who are trying to protect us.

Interestingly, the Post article in Sunday’s paper reveals that former CIA director and now Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a son who had deployed with JSOC. Indeed, James Panetta, a Navy Reserve lieutenant, served in Afghanistan and was awarded a Bronze Star “for exceptional service as an intelligence analyst who tracked high-value Al Qaida targets,” another report says.

“It’s a true honor to receive this award, but it’s also very humbling, because the people I served and worked with in Afghanistan are the real heroes, who made the real sacrifices,” James Panetta said in remarks following the pinning. “The fact that I’m receiving this just means that I did my job, and did it well. It was an honor just to be there as part of the team, going after those who started all this. I was simply fortunate to have been in the position.”

One can only wonder whether James Panetta’s father will disavow his far-left connections of the 1980s and take the side of the U.S. military as it comes under assault by those he once embraced. The official Pentagon reaction to Top Secret America will tell us a lot.

Research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

  ”Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a “switch”, which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes”. The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin. The “switch”, which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris - effectively “diluting” brown eyes to blue. The switch’s effect on OCA2 is very specific therefore. If the OCA2 gene had been completely destroyed or turned off, human beings would be without melanin in their hair, eyes or skin colour - a condition known as albinism.

 As the White House shows increasing disinterest in space China continues to build strategic space weapons designed to attack or limit U.S. military communications and navigation, according to the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress made public last week. Space superiority could be decisive in any conflict.

“China’s space activities and capabilities, including ASAT programs, have significant implications for anti-access/area denial efforts in Taiwan Strait contingencies and beyond,” the report said.

China is deploying new imagery, reconnaissance, and Earth resource systems with military uses as well as satellites that can be used for weapons targeting.

The January 2007 successful test of a direct-ascent missile against a Chinese weather satellite showed China’s “ability to attack satellites in low-Earth orbit,” the report said. “China continues to develop and refine this system, which is one component of a multi-dimensional program to limit or prevent the use of space-based assets by potential adversaries during times of crisis or conflict.”

In addition to missiles that can hit space satellites, China also has kinetic and directed energy weapons for use against satellites, including lasers, high-powered microwave, and particle beam weapons for ASAT missions.

“Foreign and indigenous systems give China the capability to jam common satellite communications bands and GPS receivers,” the report says. “China’s nuclear arsenal has long provided Beijing with an inherent ASAT capability, although a nuclear explosion in space would also damage China’s own space assets, along with those of whomever it was trying to target.”

As part of the continuing ASAT program, China is using its manned and lunar space programs for improving tracking and identification of satellites, something the report said is “a prerequisite for effective, precise counterspace operations.”

China’s government refuses to discuss any details of its ASAT weapons. The 2007 test caused a large debris field in space with more than 10,000 pieces of junk that continue to threaten space craft.

The symbol on the “pound” key (#) is called an octothorpe.

Experts - one a communications systems engineer involved in classified programs who works on EMP vulnerabilities and the other a U.S. Defense Department analyst knowledgeable of their impact - said that the nation’s sensitive telecommunications and the electronic systems embedded in its financial and banking institutions can be “fried” by a “turn of the switch.”

The result could be a chaos that could allow terrorists to attack virtually at will.

They both pointed out that relatively cheap over-the-counter technology embedded not only in sensitive U.S. military equipment but also civilian electronic systems has not been protected from such attacks, a development that could create complete panic throughout the U.S. if they were subject either to an EMP or RF attack.

The two experts who spoke to G2Bulletin asked that their names not be divulged due to the sensitivity of their positions.

An electromagnetic pulse from a high energy explosion, such as from a nuclear device, produces radiation that rapidly changes electric and magnetic fields and produces a destructive current and voltage surge.

Experts have warned the after-effects of an EMP attack could kill tens of millions of people. They say an attack from a radio frequency weapon can knock out electronics everywhere from sophisticated financial systems to the electronics in automobiles, elevators or even medical devices. However, it is assessed that RF weapons do not kill people directly, although the after-effects of such an attack also could produce devastating results.

That would be because without the electronics deeply embedded in systems to provide food, goods, products, fuel and finances, the parts of the nation hit effectively could be returned to an agricultural age, with citizens depending on local production for food and fuel for heat and transportation.

Previous concern centered on an attack from the former Soviet Union or China. That concern persists with the Chinese who claim to be developing an EMP bomb for their DF-21 “carrier killer” missile.

Concern also includes Iran and North Korea, both of which are producing missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead that could explode high in the atmosphere, destroying sensitive electronic systems across a wide area of the nation.

The experts agreed that not only is action long past due but they don’t see a concerted effort by Congress or policy makers to guard such sensitive infrastructure systems nationally from either an EMP or RF attack.

These experts pointed out that the blast doesn’t have to be a nuclear explosion. It also can happen from a solar storm that could knock out electrical grid systems. Yet, electric utilities have not taken steps to protect against such a natural phenomenon and, as another source pointed out, “there is no sign that it will be done.”

Their warning comes despite prior conclusions by at least two congressional commissions - the EMP Commission and the Strategic Posture Commission - on the impact of an EMP attack on critical civilian infrastructure to include electric power, telecommunications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water. In addition, the House Joint Economic Committee has held hearings on the threat from an EMP and RF attack, but as the Defense Department source said, nothing came of the warnings.

With RF weapons, the Defense Department official said that terrorists already have knowledge of such technology and can readily apply it cheaply and unnoticed. He added that the technology is available from Radio Shack to make an RF weapon that could be mounted in a pickup truck.

One scenario he gave was that an RF weapon could be used to “fry” the electronics on vehicles that cross the four major bridges and travel the main thoroughfares to bring federal workers each day into Washington, D.C., from neighboring Virginia and Maryland.

Except for an odd coincidence, outward appearances would suggest vehicles were stalled on the bridges and thoroughfares due to mechanical problems, creating almost instant chaotic traffic jams. However, with bridges blocked and congestion on the boulevards inside the District of Columbia, emergency vehicles similarly would be blocked from responding to an actual terrorist attack within the city.

An $800 RF weapon the size of a brief case could be devastating in an urban center and you can get what you need at a Radio Shack.