Category Archives: United States

Now Enjoy “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” as Kindle e-Book

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RockyFlatsFacts.com is pleased to announce that “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats: Urban Myths Debunked” is now available in an e-book (electronic book) version from the Amazon.com Kindle Store. The e-book version includes dozens of new color and b&w photos to enhance your reading experience, especially for those readers who have never visited the inside of a DOE nuclear facility. Once purchased the e-book can be promptly downloaded and enjoyed on your Kindle Reader. [Please note that Amazon’s hand-held Kindle Reader displays e-book images in black & white (4-bit grayscale), so e-book photos will currently display in grayscale on this device. Free PC and Mac reader apps (see below) will however display color images/photos. There are pictures of gloveboxes, plutonium, burning plutonium, damage from the 1969 fire, decontamination workers, and a couple dozen others.

Don’t have a hand-held Kindle Reader? No problem: a totally free Kindle e-book reader application is available for download here for both Windows PC and Mac platforms. Kindle reader app for your Apple iPad is also available here, as are reader apps for iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones and mobile devices. With the free app download you also receive a few free e-books: Aesop’s Fables, Pride & Prejudice, and Treasure Island.

I had help with the pictures and e-book. The person who provided the know-how is my friend and colleague, Keith Motyl, and he can be reached at kpmotyl@comcast.net if you are interested in the process of e-book publishing.

Please let us know how you like the newly illustrated e-book.

Soviet Covert Action

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I mentioned the funding of the international anti-nuclear movement by the Soviet Union in an earlier blog posting and mentioned that I intended to do additional research on the matter. I obtained a copy of a report titled, “Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive)” that was published by the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ninety-sixth Congress. The report describes hearings held February 6 and 19, 1980.  The hearings were in closed sessions, and several of the documents listed in the Appendices were labeled “TOP SECRET.”  The report obviously had been declassified. The content made it clear the Soviets didn’t hesitate to use any action to further their cause and harm America. (As an aside, can you believe that some of my family members were surprised at my selection vacation reading material?)

A Deputy Director of the CIA made a prepared statement in the first session followed by questioning by the Congressmen.  The testimony confirms that the World Peace Council was the largest Soviet front group used in propaganda campaigns.  It had funding of over three billion dollars in that year, and one organization it supported was its American affiliate, the U.S. Peace Council. The CIA was prevented by law from doing any surveillance of that domestic organization.  The FBI was responsible for any intelligence gathering within the United States, and the CIA had to depend on them to pass along any intelligence involving foreign activities to them.  Examples of activities organized or influenced by the World Peace Council were numerous peace protests, demonstrations against NATO, and a campaign against the neutron bomb.

The second session, titled “Soviet Forgeries and Disinformation,” began with a statement by Ladislav Bittman, who was the Deputy Director of the Disinformation Department of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service before he defected to the United States. He testified that the “satellite countries” such as Czechoslovakia operated “huge intelligence apparatus that significantly contributes to spreading Soviet influence around the world.”  His department conducted “115 active measures… (consisting mostly of) forgeries leaked either to the press or foreign governments.”  He described how Soviet intelligence used journalists to spread their propaganda and warned, “The press should be more cautious with anonymous leaks.  Anonymity is a signal that the Big Russian Bear might be involved.” He also mentioned that Congressional investigations of the CIA in the 1970s effectively paralyzed that organization.  He observed that Watergate created such a toxic atmosphere in Washington that the Soviets were able to relax their disinformation efforts.  I found it quite interesting that a Congressman asked Bittman whether he had “…ever come across a man or information relative to a man named Lee Harvey Oswald, who was…in the Soviet Union?” Bittman responded, “No, never, no.  The answer is a clear no.”

Bittman also testified that the capture of the embassy and Americans in Tehran was a boon to the Soviet forgery campaign.  The Iranians gave them access to all manner of official State Department documents, letterhead, and the rubber stamps that were used to mark various classification and other designations. Numerous forgeries are described, to include a classified U.S. Army field manual, a faked speech by President Carter intended to strain relations with the Greek Government, several documents with negative information about Egyptian President Sadat and Indonesian President Sukarno, and a report denying that chemical and bacteriological agents stored in Italy had leaked and killed numerous infants. One forgery ties to current events.  It was a bogus CIA report that outlined how members of Islamic religious organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, could be bribed and set against others. One operation, code named Neptune, included planting several boxes of forged documents in Devil’s Lake and Black Lake where a dive team was to be filmed while investigating reports that the Nazis had disposed of information.  The planted documents listed numerous West German officials, including several in West German Intelligence, with faked Nazi backgrounds.

There is a current event that is a reminder of the danger of forged documents. Retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk is being tried for war crimes in Germany, and the FBI has released a report that the Soviet Union likely fabricated a Nazi photo identification card that is key to his prosecution.  Demjanjuk was tried in Israel before being deported from the U.S. to Munich where he is currently on trial again. No known witnesses have placed Demjanjuk at the Sobibor death camp in Poland where the identification card places him as a guard.  The FBI argues the Soviets used faked documents such as the forged identification card to smear anti-communists.

The Appendices include copies of several forged documents designed to incite anger about desegregation in America.  Appendix III is the agenda for the U.S. Peace Council Founding Conference held November 9-11, 1979 in Philadelphia.  Welcoming remarks were given by Representative John Conyers.  Presenters included several U.S. State legislators, U.N. representatives from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Nicaragua, and a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to name just a few.

Attendees at the first hearing were Representatives Aspin (presiding), Boland (chairman of the full committee), Ashbrook, Young, Whitehurst, and McClory.  The main presenter was John McMahon, Deputy Director for Operations, Central Intelligence Agency.  He was accompanied by five other CIA officials.  The second hearing had the same Representatives in attendance with the exception of McClory, who was absent.

Did Lincoln Really Free the Slaves?

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I researched the question after learning why the tax deadline this year is April 18. CNNexplained that the “…bonus days come thanks to Emancipation Day, a little-known Washington, D.C. holiday that celebrates the freeing of the slaves in the district. The text of the Emancipation Proclamation (which is so famous in our history that it is capitalized) shows clearly that the Lincoln did not intend to free slaves except in parts of the country that were in rebellion. The proclamation very clearly did not free any slaves in Union states or areas in rebellious states that had been supportive of the Union. I recommend reading the lengthy proclamation at the link. The proclamation did not apply to 13 parishes of Louisiana, forty-eight counties of West Virginia, and seven counties of Virginia. It is stated those “…excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.”

Lincoln had previously taken the position that he would free none of the slaves, all of the slaves or some of the slaves depending on which approach would help preserve the Union. The text of the proclamation makes it clear he settled on it idea of freeing some of the slaves. However, I was surprised to read one article at findarticles.com that takes the position he was completely indifferent to the issue of slavery. Lincoln was relaxing and in a good mood after winning reelection, and one visitor mentioned “the vexatious slavery matter.” Lincoln responded with “…the story of the Kentucky Justice of the Peace whose first case was a criminal prosecution for abuse of slaves. Unable to find any precedent, he exclaimed angrily, ‘I will be damned if I don’t feel sorry for being elected when the n…..s is the first thing I will attend to’.” (The author of the article refused to use elision in reporting his use of the offensive word, “Since Lincoln supporters are in a state of constant denial.”)

The author continues with his analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation that, “No other American story is so enduring. No other American story is so comforting. No other American story is so false.” The denial continues, “The testimony of sixteen thousand books and monographs to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not a real emancipation proclamation at all, and did not liberate African-American slaves.” John F. Hume, the Missouri anti-slavery leader, was said to have told Lincoln the proclamation “…did not…whatever it may have otherwise accomplished at the time it was issued, liberate a single slave.” Henry Clay Whitney “…said the Proclamation was a mirage and that Lincoln knew it was a mirage.” Secretary of State Henry Steward said the Proclamation was an illusion in which “we show our sympathy with the slaves by emancipating the slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

What the proclamation did accomplish was change how history views the Civil War. It was said after the proclamation and continues to be said today that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves

For skeptics or those who are astonished by the information, I suggest an Internet search using the title of this posting. There are several references that provide the same information, although most are written with more understanding about the difficulty of what Lincoln needed to do as President and Commander-In-Chief. I did find it interesting that there are several mentions that Lincoln was convinced whites and blacks could never live together as equals, and his solution was resettling freed blacks in Africa and Latin America in a process he called “colonization.”

Drone Pilots

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I became interested in this story after writing a previous blog about Pakistan and that country’s nuclear weapons. A 60 Minutes show in 2009 reported the United States was using drones, which the Air Force calls “unmanned aerial vehicles,” to attack insurgents and military targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  George W. Bush stirred national and international debate and criticism when he authorized drone strikes in Pakistan.  A Times Online report dated January 29, 2009 reported that multiple “suspected drones” killed at least 15 people in Pakistan.  They were “…the first strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W. Bush has not changed.”

Pakistan watched U.S. drones operate successfully for years and finally asked for the some of their own.  The U.S. denied the request, and  Pakistan began developing the technology. They are now reported to be working closely with Italian, Chinese, and Turkish firms, all of which use Israeli technology “borrowed” from American technology, on upgrades.There is a YouTube video titled “Pakistan Starts Manufacturing Drones,” but unfortunately I neither read nor understand Pakistani.

The drones are controlled from Creech Air Force Base 45 miles north of Las Vegas.  The drones are constantly on the hunt, and they are controlled by a pilot and crew member supported by a team of intelligence analysts.  There is a video that has been going around that shows a drone pilot and crew member controlling a drone, being given a target, acquiring the target (a white pickup truck), and blowing it up.

Watching it made me remember an Army officer giving a lecture to my Infantry Officer Candidate class.  He made what seemed to be an off-hand comment that made me think then and that I recall more than forty years later.  “The more impersonal war becomes, the more dangerous it becomes.”