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Leaked Memo Reveals WTO Plan to "Sell" Itself to American Youth Deanna Swift, Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D. Lt. Colonel, Military Intelligence, USAR-Ret. Response to Aquino 7/19/2001 Alex Constantine Video surveillance grows ever more powerful The Profitability of An Early Death by Robert Lederman The Walls Have Ears / surveillance of the internet GARY CONDIT: A PANICKED PAY PHONE CALL FROM CAVERN COUNTRY (AND OTHER STENCH FROM THE SKUNK WORKS) A CAD, HIS STAFF, HIS WIFE AND THE FIXER GARY CONDIT: THE COLD CASE FILE The Rape of Nanking By Denis Mueller The Federal Writer’s Project By Denis Mueller "We've Got the Cards" 56 Years After Hiroshima Mickey Z. CIA STALLING STATE DEPARTMENT HISTORIES The Tribunal on US Drug War Crimes by Russ Kick/Plus: Links for Info About the Drug War
Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D. Lt. Colonel, Military Intelligence, USAR-Ret.
Robert Sterling US Army Lt. Colonel Michael Aquino is a notorious figure within the conspiracy subculture. Founder of the Temple of Set (after leaving the Church of Satan), Aquino is perhaps best known in con circles for his involvement in a sex abuse scandal at the Presidio. He is also the winner of the Beast of the Month for July 1997. In 1999, I put up the Aquino files on this site at the request of Curio Jones. (It was soon taken down at the request of Curio, after getting heat from abuse victims who disapproved of The Konformist site.) In email, I informed Aquino of this, and offered to put up any response he had. Here is the first detailed written response to the allegations that he has okayed for my release. Much of the background is lost, but if you check out his BOTM profile and the Disinfo.com profile of him, you'll be able to fill in the blanks. If anyone chooses to dispute his version, I encourage you to email me an opposing view, just as I offered him. Thank you, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist Xeper@aol.com Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D. Lt. Colonel, Military Intelligence, USAR-Ret. * * * CORRECTIONS * * * >But just exactly WAS going on at the Presidio remains >puzzling, mainly due to the fact that there never was a trial. Following the publication of the "recovered memories of Satanic ritual abuse" book _Michelle Remembers_ in 1980, the United States and other Anglo-American countries went through a decade of "SRA" scares and witch-hunts. After the 1984 McMartin Preschool became internationally publicized in one such scare, day-care facilities generally became targets of "SRA" witch- hunt instigators. The epidemic extended to U.S. military services as well, including 15 U.S. Army day-care centers and elementary schools by 1987. In late 1986 it was the turn of the Presidio of San Francisco. On 9/28/86 the _San Francisco Examiner_ began a series of 8 front-page stories sensationalizing the witch-hunts. Approximately a month later one set of Presidio parents claimed that their son might have been anally raped by one of the day-care teachers, Gary Hambright, and the scare was off and running, with scores of children being "abuse-diagnosed" by a "play-therapist" despite not a single published confirmation of actual physical harm to any child. Hambright denied any "abusing" whatever, and all of the other teachers and staff supported him. As in other witch-hunts it made no difference: Over the next year Hambright was suspended, indicted, charges dropped, reindicted, charges redropped amidst a massive media frenzy. Parents rushed to file over $84 million in claims, as was also routine in such witch-hunts. [The previous year a similar, highly-publicized witch-hunt at West Point had resulted in $110 million claims.] Hambright was originally indicted 12/86 on the basis of allegations made by the Tobin parents (which kicked off the witchhunt). This indictment was dismissed 3/87 on the grounds of hearsay. After more parent/therapist input to investigators, Hambright was reindicted 9/87 on "two counts of oral copulation and 10 counts of lewd & lascivious conduct" (_SF Chronicle_ 1/4/88). All of these charges were dropped by 2/17/88. On 2/18/88 the _Chronicle_ said: "The final count of oral copulation against the former Southern Baptist minister was dismissed by U.S. District Judge William Schwarzer after the parents of the alleged victim said their child could not withstand the rigors of the trial." [The Tobins originally alleged "anal rape" of their son by Hambright. When a pediatrician refuted any evidence of this on S.F. television, the allegation was promptly switched to "oral copulation".] No news article that I have ever read indicated that there was a shred of *physical* evidence showing that *any* child at the Presidio had been sexually abused in connection with that scam. I say "news article" because I was not privy to investigators' records on the Hambright allegations, and can verify only what I read in the media. Partway through the investigation a stir was created when the media announced that several of the children had been diagnosed with Chlamydia. However (a) the Army later announced the tests were unreliable, (b) no retesting of the children was ever conducted, (c) Chlamydia can be transmitted by direct contact with any mucuous membrane [such as mouth or eyes], (d) no testing of the children's parents for this disease was conducted, and (e) reportedly Hambright did not have this disease. [For that matter, as verified by our own medical records, neither my wife Lilith nor I has ever had it either.] The *only* "evidence" against Hambright thus consisted of parental hearsay allegations and the allegations of "therapist" Debbie Hickey, the Army psychiatrist who conducted the "play therapy" indoctrination sessions for the children once the scam got underway. Later on, after Lilith and I had been attacked by Chaplain Adams- Thompson, I met with Hambright's public defenders in their S.F. office to see what documents they might provide which might help us. During that meeting (which occurred after the second dropping of all charges against Hambright), I bluntly asked the two lawyers if there were *any* actual evidence - not just accusations - that Hambright had committed any abuse crime whatever. They both said, "None at all." [They didn't say "no comment" or "we can't discuss that".] To me the ultimate proof that no Hambright abuse was committed is the *timeline*. According to the _Chronicle_ story quoted above, Hambright was ultimately accused of sexual attacks of up to 60 children during the period May 85-November 86 (when the Tobins made their allegations and started the witchhunt against him). Is it possible that 60 children 3-6 years old (the only age group in Hambright's daycare classes) could have been raped and sodomized for *a year and a half* before the Tobins made their allegations *and not a single parent noticed anything wrong with any child either physically or behaviorally during that year-and-a-half*? I assume that none of the parents ever took any child to the Presidio hospital for any such problem during that time, otherwise symptoms of sexual abuse would have started an investigation *right then*. No one noticed *anything* the slightest bit wrong with *any* child until *after* the Tobins had started the whole accusation/"therapy" show on the road. These are the basic facts I know about the Hambright allegations. On 1/6/90 the _Chronicle_ stated that Hambright had died 11/8/89 of AIDS: "'This seems to be the sad, final chapter in the story,' said Nanci Clarence, one of two federal public defenders who represented Hambright in the child molestation case. 'Gary died with a clear conscience. It's just too bad that he had to spend the final two years of his life battling these baseless charges.'" >So how did Aquino, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran >and former Green Beret, end up as a suspect in a child >molestation case? Left out of the Presidio claims bonanza were Christian chaplain Larry Adams-Thompson and his wife Michele, who had never reported their daughter Kinsey for any physical or psychological symptoms during the entire time she had been under Hambright's supervision at the day-care center (9/1-10/31/86). In their original 1/87 FBI interviews both parents were specific about that "date- window", because Kinsey turned 3 on 9/1/86 and, as confirmed by the Presidio Director of Personnel & Community Affairs, Hambright supervised only children age 3 and older. Despite Kinsey's untouched state [on 3/12/87 Presidio doctors examined her and pronounced her a virgin free from any physical signs of abuse], her parents placed her in an intensive 8-month program of "play-therapy". The same "therapist" who pronounced the scores of other children "abused" soon pronounced Kinsey "abused" as well. Her parents, however, were not content with just accusing Hambright. In 6/87 Michele introduced "SRA" themes and insinuations about me - who had been a topic of curiosity and gossip as a famous Satanist officer throughout my 1981-86 assignment to the Presidio Headquarters - to the "therapist". Then on 8/13/87 Larry and/or Michele saw my wife Lilith and myself at the Presidio post exchange and went running to the witch-hunt investigators alleging that their daughter had accused us of kidnapping and raping her while she was under Hambright's supervision. This quickly resulted in an even more sensationalistic international media storm. The San Francisco Police investigated, verified that Lilith and I had been 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. - where I was on duty every single day Kinsey was at the daycare center 9/1-10/31/86 - and closed the case with no charges accordingly. >According to the San Francisco Chronicle: > >"In a police report filed in August, a 3-year-old girl who >attended the Presidio day care center alleges that she >was molested at Aquino's Russian Hill home by Aquino >and Gary Hambright ... In fact, as a reading of that police report makes clear, the child was never interviewed by the SFPD and made no such allegations at all. The person who made the allegations was her stepfather, Chaplain Larry Adams-Thompson, who invented them with his wife Michele in order to attempt to defraud the U.S. Government of $3 million in falsified claims based upon them. >"Aquino has strongly denied involvement in the girl's >molestation, saying he was 3,000 miles away from San >Francisco, attending classes at the National Defense >University in Washington at the time." (San Francisco >Chronicle, Nov. 3, 1987, p. A7). The "date-window" specified by Larry & Michele Adams- Thompson was 9/1-10/31/86, because this was the only period during which their stepdaughter Kinsey was in Hambright's class at the day-care center, and he was essential to their allegation-story. Kinsey was a "drop off" child at the center, which meant that on every such drop-off her parents had to pay for the supervision, which they did by check. Investigators later obtained all of their checks for that "window", establishing all dates on which she had been at the daycare center. A comparison of these dates with my daily class-attendance records at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C. (where I was assigned during that "window") verified that I was in class, 3000 miles away, on all possible dates for the Larry/Michele allegations. >Certainly it would have been easy for a 3-year-old child >to become confused. But apparently she recalled enough >to name "Mr. Gary" and Aquino as her abusers ... As noted above, the child made no allegations against my wife or myself at all. The allegations were invented by her parents and stated to the San Francisco Police by her stepfather Larry. On 1/14/87, after the Presidio child-care witch-hunt against Hambright had been in process for two months, Larry and Michele Adams-Thompson were interviewed by the FBI. - - From the transcript of the FBI report: a. "Mrs. Adams-Thompson advised that her daughter Kinsey had been attending the school [Presidio Child Development Center (CDC)] since spring 1986. When she turned 3 in September, she was transferred to 'Mr. Gary's' (Gary Hambright) class." b. "When Mrs. Adams-Thompson asked if Mr. Gary had been mean to her or tried to touch her, Kinsey replied negatively." In this interview - only 2-1/2 months after the "window" in which Adams-Thompson parents would later allege so many different and dramatic sexual atrocities occurred - the Adams-Thompsons stated their child's denial of any abuse. They made no mention of any emergency medical care of Kinsey, such as would have been necessary had she been abused as they would later allege. They made no mention of anyone other than Hambright at all, nor of any reason to think that Kinsey had been abducted from the day-care center at any time. They did not accuse Hambright of anything. On 3/12/87 Kinsey was medically examined, including both her vagina and rectum, at Letterman Army Hospital. The findings of this medical examination stated specifically that there was "no physical evidence of abuse". Obviously this was very inconvenient for her parents, who realized that they weren't going to cash in on the witch-hunt claims bonanza unless they could somehow invent and sell an "abuse" story concerning their child. >and to identify Aquino's house at 2430 Leavenworth St. >as the place where the molestation occurred. To the SFPD on 8/14/87 Larry Adams-Thompson stated that on 8/13/87: "Michele and Kinsey responded to the 2400 block of Leavenworth, and Kinsey was told to see if she could recognize any of the houses that she had been to before. While walking past 2430 Leavenworth, Kinsey identified that as the residence of Mr. Gary where she had met 'Mikey' and 'Shamby'." However the 8/13/87 record of this trip by CID Special Agent Bradley Potter reveals that virtually every element of Larry's statement to Pamfiloff concerning it was a lie. Potter acknowledges that "Kinsey did not direct SA Potter, who was driving, where to turn or which route to take. SA Potter drove to the vicinity of the 2400 block of Leavenworth Street, San Francisco". [They took the child to no other blocks either before or after.] The CID report states that the adults drove Kinsey up and down the 2400 block twice, each time eliciting no response from her whatever. Then, obviously determined that the child would do *something* that could be represented as an "identification", they parked the car and walked her down the same street. By now, of course, it was obvious to Kinsey that whatever they wanted her to "recognize" was on that block and that block only [among the thousands in San Francisco]. When the group reached 2430, Michele stopped, picked up Kinsey, pointed her at the building, and told her that "she was safe and no one would hurt her". Kinsey still said nothing whatever. That, per its official CID report, was the famous "identification" - a detail which Larry Adams-Thompson somehow forgot to provide or mention in his later allegations to the SFPD. >Other details were recalled as well, according to the Chronicle: >"The child told investigators that, at the home, she was filmed >while bathing in a room that had black walls and a cross >painted on the ceiling." (San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 30, >1987, p. A1). As noted above, Kinsey was never interviewed by the SFPD. The above allegation was made by her stepfather Larry, and was unsupported by any of the child's own statements in her "therapy" indoctrination, as verified by their official records. Larry Adams-Thompson's actual allegation to the SFPD was "The living room had black walls and a cross painted on the ceiling." As the SFPD verified during its raid, our living room was beige with a beige ceiling and had/has no cross painted on the ceiling. Nor did/does any other room have a cross on the ceiling. The only black room in our home was the bedroom, which was so small that there was no room for any chairs, etc. in it besides the full-size bed. It could not possibly be mistaken for a "living room". >The girl also recalled that the tub in which she bathed was >a "plastic lion bathtub." Larry Adams-Thompson's actual allegation to the SFPD was "the house had a bathtub with lions feet". When the SFPD raided our home, they discovered that its bathtub is flush to the floor, with no feet nor decorations whatever. >By February 1987, the child had visited an Army therapist >several times, and had 'disclosed being molested.' She blamed >the molestations on 'Mikey' and 'Shamby.' - From the therapist session notes, later subpoenaed: In six months of sessions, from January through June 1987, Kinsey never mentions a "Mikey" at all. Rather it is her mother *Michele* who first introduces this name, and the allegation of "Mikey" as a molester, to therapist Hickey and Kinsey in the 6/30/87 session. Michele also introduced the "Army officer" association during this session. [Inconveniently, when shown a selection of officer insignia during the session, Kinsey selected a warrant officer rank emblem, which looks nothing like a Lt. Colonel's silver maple leaf.] "Shambee" (Hickey's spelling) appeared first in the official notes on 1/27/87, introduced by Kinsey as "her friend at school" who was spanked by Mr. Rogers on TV. Kinsey added that Shambee "also had its neck broken", indicating that "Shambee" is either an imaginary "friend" or perhaps a doll. "Shambee" was reintroduced as "Mikey's wife" by *Michele* Adams-Thompson on 6/30/87. Kinsey never alleged any abuse, or participation in abuse by "Shambee", at any time. >"Events in the following months are not detailed in the report. >But in August, the report says, the girl and her father were >shopping in the Presido PX and the girl suddenly became >afraid. "'The victim ran to (her father) and in a frightened >way clutched his leg. (The father) looked up and saw a man >whom he knew to be Michael Aquino,' the report says. When >she was asked whether she knew Aquino,' she said, 'Yes, >that's Mikey.' "A few minutes later, she told her father that >a woman with Aquino was 'Shamby.' Again, the report simply relates what Larry Adams-Thompson alleged to the SFPD. In fact there is *only* the word of the two adult Adams-Thompsons that this incident ever happened at all. All that is known for certain is that Larry and/or Michele saw us at the PX on that day. There is *no* evidence that Kinsey was with them. There is *no* evidence that Kinsey reacted to anyone as they alleged. There is *no* evidence that Kinsey "identified" anyone as they alleged. Inconveniently the two adult Adams-Thompsons gave different, contradictory in numerous details, and in some aspects physically impossible versions of this "PX story" to various investigators. Lilith and I noticed no such commotion at the PX [we still do not know what any of the Adams-Thompsons look like], and not a single PX employee or checkout clerk verified any part of this story whatever to investigators. >"In further interviews, the girl reported that 'Mr. Gary' had >driven her to a home off the Army base. There, she said, two >men dressed as women performed sexual acts on her and >photographed her. Inconveniently for Larry & Michele Adams-Thompson, it was later established that Gary Hambright was an epileptic who could not drive and had no car. Note again the later medical examination of Kinsey, which verified that she was a virgin with no signs whatever of any sexual abuse. >In the wake of the exposures, Aquino filed a $1 million >claim against the city San Francisco, naming Glen >Pamfiloff, an inspector with the SFPD's juvenile division, >and Officer Sandra Gallent, as participants in the raid on >his home. On the advice of my attorneys I dropped this claim and instead filed a complaint with the San Francisco Police Commission concerning both officers. After over a year's investigation, the SFPC upheld the complaint and filed a report with the San Francisco Police Chief accordingly. Not a single item of evidence of any crime whatever was found in our home during the surprise SFPD raid, and all items which were taken were later returned to us by the SFPD. >many other children, along with their parents, gave >statements. As reported in the _San Francisco Chronicle_ 8/2/88, at the time of the allegations: "26 other Presidio children were interviewed, and [said Deputy District Attorney Michael Williams] *none* could pick Michael Aquino out of a police photo lineup." Not a single other Presidio parent besides the Adams- Thompsons alleged anything whatever against my wife or myself. The attack upon us was exclusively the whim of Larry & Michele Adams-Thompson, to give them a creative excuse for their $3 million claims scam. >So how did the man at the center of all this controversy >escape prosecution? Because no crime whatever was committed by my wife or myself, and there was no evidence of any such crime. On the other hand, there was abundant evidence that the chaplain and his wife had fabricated their allegations in order to attempt their $3 million defrauding of the government. This was quietly swept under the official table, as the Army was not prepared to charge a Christian chaplain with crimes against a Satanist. >And how was it that more than 50 children could be molested >on a military base in a major American city without a single >conviction ever being won in the case ... Because, as detailed at the beginning of this email, all published evidence to date indicates that *not a single child was molested in the Presidio witch-hunt*. It was an $84 million claims enterprise. [That's a lot of money and a lot of motivation.] >Almost immediately from the day the story broke, the Army >took the position that Aquino's satanic practices were protected >by his First Amendment freedom of religion ... It was interesting >that the Army would take this position with regard to the top- >secret security clearance of a practicing Satanist, while >continuing to exclude gays from even its lowest rank and file >positions. Apples and oranges. Freedom of religion (*not* just *some* religions) is clearly, absolutely, and explicitly protected under the First Amendment. That Amendment makes no mention of sexuality one way or another. >"Aquino, a psychological warfare officer who has worked >in military intelligence, holds a top-secret security >clearance that allows him to handle information whose >release would 'gravely' damage U.S. security, >according to Defense Department regulations. This applies to anyone with a Top Secret security clearance. Quite obviously in my 26 years as an Army officer, I never compromised any classified information at all. Had I done so, I would certainly have been charged with *that*, no matter *what* my religion. >"He maintains the clearance even though he has performed >Nazi occult rites and has described himself as the 'Anti-Christ,' >in literature published by the Temple of Set." (Chronicle, >Nov. 3, 1987, p. A7). While I have researched Nazi occultism in the National Archives of the United States and scholarly sources available through any major university library, I have never performed or participated in any ceremony practiced in Nazi Germany. As the Temple of Set is an Egyptian religion which does not believe in Christian mythology, any allusion to myself as an "antichrist" would have been nothing more than a humorous lampoon on popular Christian superstitions, as was not at all uncommon in the 1960s-70s before the "Satanic hysteria" of the 1980s occurred. >A bid by Aquino to have court martial charges pressed >against the 3 year old girl's father--for making "false >allegations" against him--was unsuccessful. Actually I twice filed formal court-martial charges against Chaplain Larry Adams-Thompson for making false official statements and attempting to defraud the government of $3 million in false claims based upon them. Both times the charges were dismissed by his commander without the investigation required by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. >Aquino nonetheless vowed to press ahead with his case-- >"all the way to the White House," if necessary. No, I simply appealed the dismissals of the charges to the next higher headquarters (at the 3-star level), which also refused to investigate them. At that point it was obvious to me that the Army was simply not going to consider them, period. May I add, however, that I swore to both sets of charges personally and officially, and I was certainly never charged with false swearing in either instance. If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit: http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist Or, e-mail konformist-subscribe@egroups.com with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!"
Response to Aquino 7/19/2001 Alex Constantine < Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D. Lt. Colonel, Military Intelligence, USAR-Ret.> He is "retired" only in a PR sense. Aquino was processed out of the Army due to the abuse allegations, according to official documents posted on the Web by Curio. He was a psyops officer, trained in the use of propaganda to mold public opinion, and here come the shaggy dogs ... < Following the publication of the "recovered memories of Satanic ritual abuse" book _Michelle Remembers_ in 1980, the United States and other Anglo-American countries went through a decade of "SRA" scares and witch-hunts.> I don't recall one university study, a thesis, a news article or even a subway scrawl linking this book to exposures of RA in the '80s. This is an allegation, and by Aquino's own rigorous standard of evidence (as applied to the children's testimony) has no relevance. Elsewhere, Aquino has dismissed ALL allegations as "hysteria" kindled by the publication of Pazder's book, as if this is a material statement of his own innocence. Robert D. Hicks, a criminal justice analyst at the Law Enforcement Section Department of Criminal Justice Services during the first Bush regime, is the source of the "hysteria" argument. Hicks seems to deny even that animal mutilations take place. The Michelle Remembers bromide was bruited on the West Coast by Paul and Shirley Eberle. Perhaps Hicks was unaware of it, but the Eberles ran a disgusting pornographic publication for pedophiles in Los Angeles, FINGER magazine, under the noses of his criminal justice system, so perhaps we are not so "hysterical," after all. Ralph Underwager, a known pedophile sympathizer and RA revisionist, and the FMSF have also made much of this comment from Hicks, who could teach Gerald Posner a thing or two about distorting evidence to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion. < After the 1984 McMartin Preschool became internationally publicized in one such scare, day-care facilities generally became targets of "SRA" witch-hunt instigators.> "Witch-hunt." The jurors stated unanimously after the fact that they believed children were molested at McMartin (and so did the jurors at Presidio, for that matter). But identifying the perpetrators beyond reasonable doubt was, they found, not possible because they were working with young, frightened children who could not even tell time, a necessity in a criminal case this serious. McMartin was not a "witch- hunt." The chidren still insist that ritual abuse occurred. Cover stories, propaganda, revisionist tactics and flimsy excuses do not count as evidence to the contrary. < The epidemic extended to U.S. military services as well, including 15 U.S. Army day-care centers and elementary schools by 1987. In late 1986 it was the turn of the Presidio of San Francisco. On 9/28/86 the _San Francisco Examiner_ began a series of 8 front- page stories sensationalizing the witch-hunts.> The stories were as factual as one might expect from the Examiner. It is Aquino's life that is "sensational," and that came through the reporting.. < Approximately a month later one set of Presidio parents claimed that their son might have been anally raped by one of the day-care teachers, Gary Hambright, and the scare was off and running, with scores of children being "abuse-diagnosed" by a "play-therapist" despite not a single published confirmation of actual physical harm to any child. Hambright denied any "abusing" whatever, and all of the other teachers and staff supported him.> The medical evidence supported the children's allegations - unless chlamydia, a sexually-transmitted disease, contracted by five or six of the children, is not to be considered evidence or to cause physical harm. < As in other witch-hunts it made no difference:> As in other RA cases, that is. < Over the next year Hambright was suspended, indicted, charges dropped, reindicted, charges redropped amidst a massive media frenzy. Parents rushed to file over $84 million in claims, as was also routine in such witch-hunts. [The previous year a similar, highly- publicized witch-hunt at West Point had resulted in $110 million claims.]> Correct. At Presidio, the Army settled quietly with some of the parents. The Pentagon announced it would tear down the preschool and organize "strike teams" to investigate future cases of organized abuse - why go to the trouble if there was no problem? Why settle with the "greedy" parents if nothing occurred at the base? < No news article that I have ever read indicated that there was a shred of *physical* evidence showing that *any* child at the Presidio had been sexually abused in connection with that scam...> Chlamydia has been reported. The San Jose Mercury-News published details of the of the medical exams in 1988. Professional physicians threw their weight behind the children. < The *only* "evidence" against Hambright thus consisted of parental hearsay allegations and the allegations of "therapist" Debbie Hickey, the Army psychiatrist who conducted the "play therapy" indoctrination sessions for the children once the scam got underway.> And the toys that police found scattered about the Aquino apartment, some bearing names that the children recognized? One might call that evidence, unless the Aquinos whiles away evenings with stuffed animals when not worshipping the God of Confusion. Yet Aquino denies there is evidence. < Later on, after Lilith and I had been attacked by Chaplain Adams- Thompson, I met with Hambright's public defenders in their S.F. office to see what documents they might provide which might help us.> An "attack" took place? Did the chaplain didn't injure the Anti- Christ.. < During that meeting (which occurred after the second dropping of all charges against Hambright), I bluntly asked the two lawyers if there were *any* actual evidence - not just accusations - that Hambright had committed any abuse crime whatever. They both said, "None at all." [They didn't say "no comment" or "we can't discuss that".]> Please post the tape of that conference, Dr. Aquino. Otherwise, this is an allegation and does not count as evidence, just as the children's testimony is completely discounted by yourself. Academics say that children are more honest when providing testimony than adults. And they are not to be ignored because a Satanic cultist - one who has written in praise of nazism and advocated affecting brainwaves en masse with mind control satellites - contends they are tiny liars. I'm snipping the remainder of Aquino's statements because I've heard them before so often I could recite them myself. He claims he is not a Satanist, for example. But a visit to his Web site should convince anyone that he is indeed a Satanist. The ToS answering machine has reported that it is a "Satanic religion." If he cannot concede this elementary fact, there is no point in debating. He will not give ground because to do so would be to admit that he has been lying all along. Alex Constantine ***** Response to Rightmyer Post 7/23/2001 Xeper Dear Mr. Sterling, Appended below is my response to a Usenet post by Dan "Alex Constantine" Rightmyer in which he quotes from a previous statement of mine in your newsletter. This is just a courtesy copy for you accordingly. Sincerely, Michael Aquino * * * * * USENET POST FOLLOWS * * * * * Dan "Alex Constantine" Rightmyer <alexx12@mediaone.net> wrote: <<He is "retired" only in a PR sense. Aquino was processed out of the Army due to the well-known Presidio abuse allegations, found to be substantial, according to documents posted on the Web by Curio.>> The Army investigation of Chaplain Adams-Thompson's falsified allegations against Mrs. Aquino and myself, in order to defraud the U.S. government of $3 million in claims based upon them, was closed in May 1989 with no charges whatever. If Chaplain A-T's allegations had really been considered substantial, then most assuredly I would have been court-martialed. As it was, the Army was under no illusion whatever that they were false, from the moment he made them on 8/14/87, which is why it didn't bother to open its own investigation until 11/23/88 - and then only as a stunt to intimidate me into resigning in order to appease Helms' demand that I be purged because of my religion. Throughout the investigation I had been on fulltime active duty at the U.S. Army Reserve Personnel Center (ARPERCEN), St. Louis. I continued on fulltime active duty through September 1990 (another 1- 1/4 years) - with my above-Top Secret security clearance, I might add. At the end of September 1990 my fulltime Active Reserve contract expired, and I automatically reverted to the parttime Active Reserve. I was assigned as an Intelligence Officer to Headquarters, U.S. Space Command, Colorado, for the next several years until I decided to request transfer to the Retired Reserve in 1994. My request was approved, and I remain today a Lt. Colonel, USAR-Ret, as is a matter of public record. All of my Officer Efficiency Reports from the time of the Chaplain's attack through to my 1994 retirement give me the highest possible evaluations in all categories, including morals, and upon retirement I received many commendations from from the President, the Chief of the Army Reserve, and the Commander of ARPERCEN. That's also documented record. <<The SFPD only let Aquino off because the principals "refused to cooperate." That is what you call the fix.>> The SFPD investigated Chaplain A-T's allegations, verified that Mrs. Aquino and I had been in Washington, D.C. - 3,000 miles away - on *all possible* dates alleged by A-T, and closed its investigation with no charges. That is what you call an ironclad alibi. <<Aquino maintains that a letter from Jesse Helms prompted the subsquent Army probe, but Aquino has never produced it, never placed it into evidence during the hearings, because its existence is doubtful, as are many of the vapid claims he makes.>> Wrong again. The two [not one] Helms letters were reprinted in their entirety in my attorney's brief in the 1990 lawsuit I filed against the Army CID for its illegal abuse of its investigative authority. << <<Following the publication of the "recovered memories of Satanic ritual abuse" book _Michelle Remembers_ in 1980, the United States and other Anglo-American countries went through a decade of "SRA" scares and witch-hunts.>> I don't recall one university study, a thesis, a news article or even a subway scrawl linking this book to exposures of RA in the '80s.>> _MR_ was not "linked to *exposures* of RA", but rather was the inspiration for a decade-long epidemic of similarly-*faked* "RA" allegations, as has been documented in numerous studies. Rightmyer may care to refresh his selective memory at: http://users.cybercity.dk/~ccc44406/smwane/English.htm <<McMartin>> See above-cited website. I can't believe Rightmyer is still chewing on this long-since-exploded "SRA" scam. << << On 9/28/86 the _San Francisco Examiner_ began a series of 8 front-page stories sensationalizing the witch-hunts.>> The stories were as factual as one might expect from the Examiner. It is Aquino's life that is "sensational," and that came through the reporting..>> I was not mentioned at all in any of the _Examiner_'s eight stories cited above, for the simple reason that it hadn't occurred to Chaplain A-T to try to fake an allegation against me yet. [That took him and his wife another 10 months.] << << Approximately a month later one set of Presidio parents claimed that their son might have been anally raped by one of the day-care teachers, Gary Hambright, and the scare was off and running, with scores of children being "abuse-diagnosed" by a "play-therapist" despite not a single published confirmation of actual physical harm to any child. Hambright denied any "abusing" whatever, and all of the other teachers and staff supported him.>> The medical evidence supported the children's allegations - unless chlamydia, a sexually-transmitted disease, contracted by five or six of the children, is not to be considered evidence or to cause physical harm.>> As I noted, there was not a single published confirmation of actual physical harm to any child, and the initial "chlamydia" report was promptly discredited by the Army physicians as unreliable. No mention of any subsequent *verified* chlamydia was ever made, to my knowledge, nor were the children's parents (from whom this disease can also be communicated) announced as being cleared. On the other hand, the medical records of Mrs. Aquino and myself verified that neither of us had ever had it. [Presumably the daycare teacher who was the original target of the Presidio scam - Gary Hambright - never had it either; otherwise the press would certainly have announced that.] << <<Parents rushed to file over $84 million in claims, as was also routine in such witch-hunts. [The previous year a similar, highly- publicized witch-hunt at West Point had resulted in $110 million claims.]>> Correct. At Presidio, the Army settled quietly with some of the parents. The Pentagon announced it would tear down the preschool and organize "strike teams" to investigate future cases of organized abuse. Why go to the trouble if there was no problem? Why settle with the "greedy" parents if nothing occurred at the base?>> Because the Army, like the rest of the country at the time, was totally unprepared for the "daycare abuse allegations" epidemic, and simply tried to appease parental accusers because it didn't know what else to do that would not make it look "unsupportive of Army families and children". It did not have the guts, or the resources from independent research as yet, to expose such scams for what they were. <<And the toys that police found scattered about the Aquino apartment, some bearing names that the children recognized? One might call that evidence, unless the Aquinos whiles away evenings with stuffed animals>> On a single shelf in one of our rooms were about a half-dozen stuffed- animal toys that my wife had collected over the years, as do many ladies. And for Rightmyer's information, not a single of these souvenirs had been "pre-identified" by any child. Not a single one was taken by the SFPD in their search warrant either. So no, Mr. Rightmyer, my wife's collection is evidence of nothing except your own wishful fantasies. << <<During that meeting (which occurred after the second dropping of all charges against Hambright), I bluntly asked the two lawyers if there were *any* actual evidence - not just accusations - that Hambright had committed any abuse crime whatever. They both said, "None at all." [They didn't say "no comment" or "we can't discuss that".]>> Please post the tape of that conference, Dr. Aquino. Otherwise, this is an allegation and does not count as evidence, just as the children's testimony is completely discounted by yourself.>> I did not tape my interview with Hambright's attorneys. I simply went there to (a) see what documents they might have that were relevant to Chaplain A-T's and his wife's behavior, and (b) ask them point-blank whether there was anything to the earlier allegations against Hambright. My wife and I knew *we* were victims of a deliberate scam, but we knew nothing about Hambright except what we'd read in the papers. What I recounted above was simply that, without discussing any details of their client's case, both attorneys (Federal Public Defenders) stated to me flat-out that the witch-hunt against Hambright was completely baseless. As for fruits of that interview: Among the papers those two FPDs found and gave me was the January 1987 FBI interview of the Adams- Thompsons. In this interview - only 2-1/2 months after the time- period in which Adams-Thompson would later allege so many different and dramatic sexual atrocities occurred - the Adams-Thompsons stated Kinsey's denial of any abuse. They made no mention of any emergency medical care of Kinsey, such as would have been necessary had she been abused as they would later allege. They made no mention of anyone other than Hambright at all, nor of any reason to think that Kinsey had been abducted from the day-care center at any time. They did not accuse Hambright of anything. That's called a "smoking gun" exposing the adult Adams-Thompsons, Mr. Rightmyer - or are you too blinded by your "SRA!" agenda to see that in front of your nose? <<a Satanic cultist one who has written in praise of nazism>> Kindly quote any writing of mine in which I have praised Nazism. <<and advocated affecting brainwaves en masse with mind control satellites>> Kindly quote any writing of mine in which I have advocated affecting brainwaves en masse with mind control satellites. [I once wrote that the pleasing effect of rock-and-roll music might have something to do with its causing the human brain to resonate at the alpha-wave frequency. I assume you don't think I'm going to take over the planet with rock concerts!] <<He claims he is not a Satanist, for example. But a visit to his Web site should convince anyone that he is indeed a Satanist.>> One more time, slowly, for the mentally-challenged: I am a Priest of Set. Set is an ancient Egyptian god about 5,000+ years older than any Judaeo-Christian mythology. "Satan" is a figure of J-C M. I do not believe in J-C M. I do not believe in "Satan". Got that? Was I going too fast for you? I *do* think that J-C M manufactured its "devils" from many older, competing Mediterranean religions, including that of Egypt. Its "Satan" was accordingly given features from the Greek Pan, the Mesopotamian Baal, the Phoenician Astarte, the Egyptian Set [and probably Amon, Ba-neb-Tett, et al.], etc. and *then*, not unsurprisingly, pronounced THE PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL. This happens a lot between different religions, incidentally. The Set of whom I am a Priest is not in the least Evil, does not advocate Evil, and does not appreciate Evil. He doesn't care about J- C M one way or the other. If you read the Temple of Set's General Information Letter on its website: some evening when your brain is not clouded by CIA mind-rays, or rock- and-roll recordings beamed to you by the insidious Dr. Michael Aquino, you can see that - very clearly - for yourself. <<The ToS answering machine has reported that it is a "Satanic religion." If he cannot concede this elementary fact, there is no point in debating.>> Call it (415) 771-9155 and listen for yourself. The only mention of "Satan" is - as above - to identify and eliminate the confusion of the Setian religion with anything anti-Judaeo/Christian (Satanism). <<He will not give ground because to do so would be to admit that he has been lying all along.>> I've told the truth, provided abundant evidence of it, and sworn to it under oath many times. I do get a little tired of re-re-repeating it for the hearing- challenged, however. Now consider this, Rightmyer: Are you proud of yourself for trying to defend, promote, and revive a scam - "SRA" - that destroyed hundreds of innocent lives, wrecked families, traumatized children by indoctrinating scam-artists' disgusting sexual fantasies into them, ruined many legitimate & decent daycare professionals, and extorted millions of dollars in fraudulent claims and lawsuits? All so these twisted cranks could get tabloid media glamor and make some fast free money? For someone who prides himself on being an exposer of conspiracies, you sure got played for a sucker by this *real* one. Unless, of course, you also thought it was just really, really lots of fun. Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D. Lt. Colonel, USAR-Ret If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit: http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist
Leaked Memo Reveals WTO Plan to "Sell" Itself to American Youth Deanna Swift,
AlterNet July 17, 2001 http://www.alternet.org Geneva -- Ever since the disastrous "Battle of Seattle" in 1999, the World Trade Organization has been trying to remake its image, trading in the persona of global tyrant for that of a "hip," "with it" agent of change. The group's efforts took a bizarre turn today with the unauthorized release of a memo outlining a sophisticated WTO public relations campaign intended to win the support of American youth. The memo, leaked to the Swiss newspaper, Le Matin, was prepared by the American marketing firm Y Not, Inc., which specializes in advertising campaigns aimed at 12 to 19-year-olds. Entitled "Positive Anarchy," the document lays out a detailed plan for selling the WTO brand to American youth through merchandising, product placement and so-called guerilla marketing. News of the plan has some of the WTO's more straight-laced supporters shaking their heads. "I don't think that this so-called spin is the answer to our problems," said Hans Dieter Sprecht, director of International Trade for the Deutsche Bundesbank. "The WTO should be focusing more on security issues, including security at its own meetings." Critics of the WTO immediately condemned the organization. "We think it's despicable that the World Trade Organization would aim its propaganda campaign at children," said Fiona Lippman-Suarez, a spokesperson for the London-based activist group Global Justice Watch. "Then again, what can you expect from an organization that thinks it's fine for 4-year-olds to make footballs and carpets?" The embarrassing revelation comes at a particularly awkward time for the WTO, which is preparing to launch its fourth ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar in November. Just last month, the organization released a pamphlet entitled "10 Common Misunderstandings About the WTO," responding to criticism by anti-globalization protesters. The WTO denied any knowledge of the public relations memo, "Positive Anarchy," the full text of which appears below. *** Campaign Plan for "Positive Anarchy" Privileged and Confidential Subject to Attorney-Client Privilege Attorney Work Product MEMORANDUM July 2, 2001 To: WTO Youth Action Working Group From: Y NOT, Inc. Re: Strategic Youth Campaign -------------------------------------- First the problem: the World Trade Organization faces significant obstacles in its efforts to bring its message to the 12 to 19-year-old demographic. Non-interest, lack of information and misinformation all remain significant problems. Furthermore, polling data continues to skew substantially towards the competitor "brand," called here "Anti." Now the solution: using detailed polling information provided by Teen Data, Inc., we think we can begin to create a meaningful WTO "brand" experience for the teen demographic. The key to our efforts will be to reach the so-called "unaffiliateds," that part of the demographic that has no information about the WTO "brand" and as a result, has yet to form any kind of negative opinions. By targeting this sub-demographic through grassroots messaging, guerilla marketing and subversive affirmation, we believe we can realize significant market share for the WTO "brand." 1. Subversive Affirmation: the On-Air Strategy Our polling data from Teen Data, Inc. indicates that 72% of the 12 to 19 year-old demographic receives news-type information from late night television and comedy shows. Obtaining positive "brand" coverage through these media is our best bet for reaching the audience. * Note: polling data shows that while there is significant awareness of "Anti" (63% of teen boys, 74% of teen girls), the demographic is already experiencing pronounced fatigue with the "Anti" "brand." 49% of the mixed demographic said they were "ready for something new." We recommend the following media strategies: - Team up with professional comedy writers to produce comic material relating to the "Anti" competitor "brand." Discussions are underway with the Daily Show, Conan O'Brien and Saturday Night Live. - Create a visible presence around the WTO "brand." Focus groups responded positively to Mike Moore as spokesman, with 39% indicating an "above average willingness to listen" when Moore was on camera. Discussions about placing Moore on late night shows are ongoing -- no concrete results yet -- although Charlie Rose has reportedly expressed some interest. - Take advantage of daytime openings. 37% of the demographic indicated that they regularly record daytime shows for later viewing. Of this sub-demo, 72% watch the Jerry Springer show. We are currently negotiating with Springer's producers over a proposed "brand" showdown in which a young female representing the WTO "brand" would face-off against a young male representing "Anti." - Recruit model/spokespersons. Polling indicates that "Anti" has benefited significantly from association with high profile musicians/actors. (Note: 43% of teen girls identified U2 singer Bono as related to "Anti" "brand.") Through a third party, Y NOT, Inc. initially approached actresses Sarah Michelle Gellar and Tara Reid about serving as spokespersons for the WTO "brand," but made little headway. We have since been approached by a representative of Kevin Costner, but aren't convinced that he is "brand" appropriate. 2. Guerilla Marketing Of teens reporting fatigue with the "Anti" "brand," 46% focused on "Anti" merchandise including puppets, bandannas and gas-masks. The relatively static nature of "Anti" "brand" merchandise creates the opportunity for the WTO "brand" to effectively compete for market share by introducing its own product line. - Work with Teen Data's Trend-Setter division to identify coming trends in teen fashion and mark said merchandise with WTO "brand." Note: all garments must be made in USA or include "sweatshop free" label. We don't want to set ourselves up for that one! - Explore product placement possibilities. The expanded Reality TV niche presents exciting opportunities for product placement, including WTO "brand" merchandise. Note: discussions with Mark Burnett about placing WTO product in Survivor 3: Africa have been extremely positive, although still at the exploratory stage. - Utilize one-to-one teen marketing. 83% of the demographic reported that they are "most likely to take information seriously if it comes from other teens, which means that the most effective marketers of the WTO "brand" are teens themselves. We are currently working on customizing the guerrilla marketing strategies of Big Fat, Inc. (bigfatpromo.com) for the WTO "brand." This highly effective method utilizes trend-setting teen marketers who sell product to their own demographic while keeping their own affiliations hidden. 3. Image Cultivation Even teens who failed to identify the meaning of "WTO" (note: 81%) still associated the "brand" with negative imagery. When asked if they would be likely to purchase "WTO" product, 32% responded "extremely unlikely," while 27% responded "unlikely." Asked what would make the WTO "brand" more appealing, 39% of this group suggested either rearranging the brand logo or selecting a replacement logo. Based on this data, we recommend the following: - Adopt embedded marketing strategy. Teen marketing research shows that teens may respond positively to marketing symbols used in association with formerly unpopular brands. Utilizing this strategy, the WTO "brand" would be replaced by a symbol or logo that teens consider more appealing. Note: in focus groups, 59% of teens reported that they would consider purchasing WTO product if associated with friendly talking frog. - Consider reconfiguring product logo. Teens who responded negatively to both WTO "brand" and "World Trade Organization" responded less negatively when letters were said to stand for something else (World Time Out or We Think Off-Beat were both presented to focus groups.). Possibilities are obviously limited within the current logo-scope. Consider using other letters? - Pursue "truth in marketing" strategy. 76% of teens surveyed said that they have "high respect" or "some respect" for "brands" that "do what they say they are going to do." Utilizing "truth" strategy also presents significant opportunity to erase some market share currently dominated by "Anti" "brand." 62% of teen focus group participants reported that they would "be interested in trying" a "brand" that 1) eliminated Third World debt or 2) provided free drugs to people suffering from AIDS or 3) got rid of sweatshops. Just a thought. From : Planttrees@aol.com Reply-To : bay_area_activist@yahoogroups.com To : bay_area_activist@yahoogroups.com Subject : !b_a_Act: Leaked Memo Reveals WTO Plan to "Sell" Itself to American Youth Date : Fri, 20 Jul 2001 03:56:41 EDT Students United for a Responsible Global Environment -
By May Wong AP Technology Writer Published July 22 2001 OAKLAND, Calif. -- The purse-snatching suspects tried to convince police they weren't anywhere near the victim. Unfortunately for the suspects -- now facing robbery charges -- crisp, digital images from the Oakland train station's new surveillance cameras caught them in a lie. Similar cameras are being installed in another two of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit's busiest stations. The surveillance system represents the latest in video technology, the kind also cropping up in schools, street corners, even restaurants. "The images are much better," BART police Sgt. Frank Lucarelli said. "You can blow them up and they don't degrade as much." It's a far cry from BART's old patchwork of cameras, which produced the blurry, hard-to-follow shots often seen on television crime shows. The latest setup features live streaming video with sharp, color images at up to 500 lines of resolution, compared with the old system's 160 lines in black and white. Only partially installed, the new system has already yielded footage that helped police solve 10 crimes. Once fully in place, the equipment will allow police or dispatchers to remotely monitor and control the cameras, zooming in on trouble spots from headquarters miles away. Digital surveillance systems are growing more powerful, less expensive -- and increasingly common. To privacy advocates, they are ominous and invasive. "Whether it's the Big Brother of government or the little brother of industry, both pose a threat to our privacy," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Revenues related to video surveillance more than tripled from $282 million in 1990 to more than $1 billion in 2000, and the Security Industry Association forecasts that they could grow to $1.63 billion by 2005. The latest technology lets operators pan, tilt, or zoom their cameras via the Internet or a company's computer network. A single monitor can simultaneously display images from up to 16 cameras, reducing the expense of multiple screens. Finding a particular image used to mean hours of scrolling through analog tapes. Doing it digitally takes less than a minute. "These cameras are so good today, and the software to control and record them is available at a reasonable cost," said Dale Scheideman, planning director of the Clark County School District in Nevada. Using a laptop, he said, "I can sit in the parking lot of a school and can view the inside of the school." The Las Vegas-area district is spending $16 million to install the cameras in 250 schools. With a camera that can zoom in on license plates from 100 yards away, Scheideman said, school officials recently caught a young man trying to break into a car. "Business is booming," said Patrick Blair, a vice president with Vital Link Business Systems. The San Francisco-based company provides monitoring services to restaurants, allowing owners to watch their kitchens and dining areas over password-protected Internet connections. Vital Link opened two years ago and claims 2,500 customers nationwide. The equipment costs several hundred dollars to install and $250 per month for a standard four-camera package. Century Fast Foods is outfitting its 41 Taco Bell franchises in Southern California with monitoring systems to keep an eye on customer service and employee theft -- a common problem in the transient fast-food work force. "I could go on vacation and still watch my restaurants," said Jim Clark, the company's vice president of operations. Another start-up, Vantum Corp. of Boulder, Colo., has a remote video monitoring system that can begin recording automatically in response to motion, a light turning on, or distinct sounds such as breaking glass. The systems, which cost from $1,295 to $1,995 apiece, can trip an alarm or send alerts by page, e-mail or telephone. Within a year, operators of Vantum's cameras should be able to program them to follow the movements of a given object or person. "This stuff isn't science fiction anymore," said Howdy Pierce, the company's chief executive. Government-backed surveillance systems are perhaps the most controversial, leading to fears of an Orwellian society. Al Greening, a San Francisco resident and BART rider, understands the desire of law-enforcement officials to keep subways and streets safe. "But I'm a little apprehensive of the Big Brother aspect, too," he said. "It hasn't gone too far yet, but I could see where it could." The number of U.S. cities with locally approved street surveillance is unknown. But such surveillance has become more common since a 1997 California Research Bureau report counted at least 13 cities from Tacoma, Wash., to Dover, N.J. In June, for instance, California's Simi Valley approved a grant to install cameras to catch graffiti vandals. Palm Springs voted to seek similar funds. In addition, more than 60 U.S. cities are using traffic cameras to photograph motorists who drive through red lights. Richard Retting, senior transportation engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said only a handful of such cities existed in 1997. "With the exception of very rural states, all are drafting or pushing for state laws" allowing red-light cameras, Retting said. Some 400 motorists are challenging the constitutionality of red-light cameras in San Diego. America still lags behind Britain, where more than 300 jurisdictions use public video surveillance. Last fall, London police began prowling the entertainment -- and crime -- hot spots of Soho and the West End in a van armed with nine cameras. For now, the video eyes spreading across the United States remain a hodgepodge of individual systems. The ACLU worries about a future in which such systems are so linked that someone's identity and whereabouts could be tracked with a few computer commands. Various efforts are underway to develop the necessary tools. Colorado's Department of Motor Vehicles this month said it planned to buy cameras and map the faces of drivers to curb identity theft and fraud, contributing to a growing number of government databases of facial images. And a few weeks ago, Tampa, Fla., became the first U.S. city to install surveillance cameras that scan faces and match images with a database containing 30,000 mug shots of people wanted by police. Some European cities already use face-recognition technology. Tampa used a similar system in January, picking out faces of 19 petty criminals from among the 100,000 fans at the Super Bowl. For the Privacy Foundation's Richard Smith, the Tampa project looks like an ominous prototype: "Ten years from now, do we really want to live in a country where face matching is done routinely in public places?" Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com 7/18/2001 robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
The Profitability of An Early Death by Robert Lederman
Perhaps you've seen their heart-warming public service ads on TV about renovating a drug rehab center and how much they care about kids despite being a cigarette manufacturer. Here's something they left out of those 60 second announcements. The tobacco giant Phillip Morris just suffered an embarrassing public relations gaffe by inadvertently revealing a fact economists, actuaries and eugenicists know but rarely speak publicly about. Governments save huge amounts of money when citizens die prematurely. Phillip Morris, one of the world's wealthiest corporations, recently commissioned a study intended to highlight this fact as a selling point to the Czech government, which is considering legislation to regulate cigarette smoking. Phillip Morris controls almost 90% of the rapidly-growing Czech tobacco market. The study described premature deaths from cancer and emphysema as, "indirect positive effects" of smoking, leading to "savings in public health care costs and state pensions due to early mortality of smokers." Responsible for millions of deaths in the U.S. due to smoking and the decades spent hiding the truth about its dangers from the public, Phillip Morris is by no means unique in its coldly-calculating bottom line approach to business. Automobile, pesticide, chemical, food, biotech, pharmaceutical and health care corporations all factor in similar statistical selling points as they lobby the Congress to prevent legislation from being passed that would protect human life. Ever wonder why U.S. technology can get us to the moon but can't manufacture cars that don't blow up when hit or that kill an average of 50,000 Americans each year? Why do 500,000 Americans die each year from nothing more than taking prescription drugs? Did it strike you as peculiar when our "compassionate" President GW Bush wanted to prevent new restrictions on how much arsenic - a deadly poison - would be allowed in our drinking water? Are you curious as to why in this modern age of refrigeration there's a steady increase in deaths from food poisoning or why our food supply is more disease-ridden than at any time in the past fifty years? Is the government's rush to release thousands of untested genetically-altered plants, animals and organisms into the environment scientific over-confidence, or might it be an indication of a more sinister purpose than helping feed the multitudes? As you watch the news each night, do you ever wonder why so many people are getting cancer, are infertile, have disabling learning disabilities or psychological problems and thus need a lifetimes worth of expensive prescription drugs in order to function - drugs which will directly shorten their lives? Is it possible our government wants people to die prematurely? Just think of it in these simple terms. If millions of today's senior citizens were to die a mere one year sooner, the U.S. government would save hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs, social security and other social services. If they died five years sooner the savings might amount to trillions of dollars. Viewed in that context, causing even a minor increase in premature death in the American population would be the single most cost-effective economical measure the government could ever take. New York City often represents the cutting edge of U.S. governmental efforts concerning human health. Whether it's throwing children off welfare, issuing the police hollow-point bullets, closing public hospitals or spraying the entire population with toxic pesticides, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani can be counted on to be at the forefront of any government efforts to downsize the population. Take his enthusiasm during the past three years for spraying poisons invented by the Nazis on eight million New Yorkers. Was it an oversight or an error that the Mayor consistently lied to the public about the well-known negative health effects of being repeatedly exposed to the organophosphate and pryrethyroid nerve gasses Malathion and Anvil? Was it an accident that products whose labels specifically state they are not to be sprayed on people under any circumstances were directly applied to children in parks, to shoppers and to millions of workers going to and from their jobs? [2] My eight years of research on Mayor Giuliani shows him to be ideologically linked in numerous ways to the science of eugenics or population control - as is his pal GW Bush. Both men claim to get their ideological inspiration directly from the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank founded by Reagan's CIA chief William Casey after he brought thousands of former Nazi experts in eugenics to the U.S. If understanding Giuliani's Nazi-connection requires one to research the maze-like corporate, think tank and CIA connections behind his administration, GW Bush's are a simple matter of documented American history. Until their assets were seized by the U.S. Congress in 1942, President Bush`s family operated banks and shipping companies that were fronts for the Third Reich. Their Nazi-connection is the source of the Bush family fortune and continues to this day. [3] Bush and Giuliani's policies euphemistically code- named, "compassionate conservatism" and "quality of life", share a common but never publicly stated objective - the efficient shortening of our lives. The poor, children, minorities, the elderly and the environment must all be sacrificed in order to increase the profitability of corporations - the same corporations which put these elected officials in office or which in Bush`s case, he, his family and his administration members are major stock-holders in. The increase in disease creates fantastic economic opportunities for drug manufacturers and health providers while at the same time lessening the long-term total in social benefits that the government must pay out. Disease is rapidly becoming the driving force behind the entire U.S. economy. It may prove even better than war as a profit-driving engine. What more cost-effective way to cut government spending than to massively apply chemicals to the population which reduce fertility, worsen chronic illnesses such as asthma (which is at epidemic proportions among minorities in N.Y.C.) and lead to terminal diseases such as cancer? The reason many people balk at accepting this view of Giuliani or Bush as eugenicists is that they don't see people immediately dying in large numbers as a result of their policies. What isn't understood is that we are dealing with death rates as analyzed by an actuary. Like geology, the effects can only be observed over a long period of time. Learning from the mistakes of the past century, immediate death - as in rounding up millions of people and shipping them to gas chambers - is an unworkable solution from this viewpoint. Reducing life expectancy by as little as a single year or reducing fertility so that one less child is born to each family or so that an additional 15-30% of people become infertile is all that's needed in order to save vast amounts of government money while creating a huge economic boon for pharmaceutical, chemical and medical companies. These savings on social programs can then be passed along in the form of tax write-offs and corporate welfare - exactly as Giuliani and Bush have done to the delight of their wealthiest patrons. Another factor which makes it hard to comprehend what's really going on is that today's eugenics agenda is not necessarily about targeting Jews, Blacks or some other minority. In this madness, no one is to be spared. Giuliani's enthusiastic use of Malathion may have even given himself prostate cancer, which is a known effect of repeated Malathion exposure. Before you say this proves he could not have known it was harmful, ask yourself if Phillip Morris executives didn't allow their family members, children and friends to smoke, knowing as they did that tobacco was a definite cause of cancer? Ask yourself if Ford executives allowed their friends to drive cars they knew were defective and might shred their tires at high speeds or overturn? Ask yourself if the drug manufacturers that have every study at their disposal and know the long-term effects of taking their products don't allow their own friends, family and relatives to take these dangerous medications or if chemical company executives aren't aware that they and their children are being slowly killed by air pollution and chemical contamination of the environment? Perhaps this is what is meant by the saying, money is the root of all evil. We all owe a debt of gratitude to whoever at Phillip Morris commissioned the benefits of an early death study. Perhaps as a result more Americans will realize that our corporations and the government they own and operate may not be the public servants and public benefactors their glossy commercials and service announcements would lead us to believe they are. Public enemy #1 might actually be a far more apt description for them. ------------------------------------- [1] CBS Evening News 7/17/2001 Philip Morris: Dead Smokers Cheaper Tobacco Co. Outlines Savings To Czech Gov't From Smokers' Deaths Company Is Lobbying Against Stricter Anti-Smoking Regulations July 17, 2001 AP (CBS) "Sick smokers may burden a country's health care system, but dead smokers save governments money. That's the conclusion of a study on the financial cost of smoking that was commissioned by tobacco giant Philip Morris. The company is lobbying the Czech government against stricter health regulations on cigarettes with a study of "indirect positive effects" of smoking, detailing "savings in public health care costs and state pensions due to early mortality of smokers...The study by research company Arthur D. Little International concluded that the financial benefits to the Czech government from duties and taxes paid by consumers, importers and tobacco businesses outweighed the costs of health care, lost working days and fires caused by cigarettes. " [2] For the latest article on Giuliani's West Nile Virus fiasco see: http://www.villagevoice.com/ http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0129/baard.shtml Village Voice 7/18-24/2001 Mutant Malathion: How New York's mosquito spray campaign spawned a deadly neurotoxin [3] For numerous documented articles about the Bush/Giuliani-Nazi connection, the CIA's Manhattan Institute, eugenics and West Nile Virus information see: http://baltech.org/lederman/ Street artist information http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net (718) 743-3722 Feel free to forward widely. If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit: http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist Or, e-mail konformist-subscribe@egroups.com with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!"
Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com http://www.konformist.com/2001/condit.htm http://www.etherzone.com/fahe072701.shtml GARY CONDIT: A PANICKED PAY PHONE CALL FROM CAVERN COUNTRY (AND OTHER STENCH FROM THE SKUNK WORKS) By: Todd Brendan Fahey "I'm going to have to disappear for a while, don't call me... I think I may be in some trouble." Gary Condit, showing uncanny predictive abilities and incredible understatement on May 5 or 6, according to flight attendant (and Condit's former mistress) Anne Marie Smith. It is an odd juxtaposition: just as the FBI is transferring the Chandra Levy investigation to its "Cold Case Unit" (the one that did such a good job solving the death of Vince Foster), with the explanation that, or so CBS's Jon Stewart is reporting, "local police have put an inappropriate emphasis on the role of Congressman Gary Condit, D-Calif., in the case," humble armchair sleuths have learned that Congressman Gary Condit made a panicked-telephone call (the "I think I might be in some trouble" call) to stewardess-cum-galpal Anne Marie Smith, from a pay phone in front of a McDonald's fast-food joint way out in Luray, Virginia., at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains--some 80 miles from his Washington D.C. digs. Posters at FreeRepublic.com, hearing this odd tidbit as reported on FoxNews, July 17th (with Rita Cosby continuing to perform a genuine public service in keeping the world to-date on this story), uncovered some strange facts about Luray, Virginia: --that it is some 80 miles away from his Washington D.C. digs --that it is renowned for its caverns (according to restaurant and motel-desk area travel brochures) (a Google search for Luray, Virginia, will produce all sorts of references to the "famous Luray Caverns") --that it is reputed to be a haven for motorcycle gangs, of the 1%er variety... And because the media and investigators, incredibly, have not followed through with the basic question, that being: "Congressman, What was the purpose of your visit to a remote part of Virginia, a long way away from your Congressional office, and how did you get there, and why did you feel compelled to call Anne Marie Smith from a pay phone in front of a McDonald's restaurant, to say that you `think I might be in some trouble'; and, specifically, what was the nature of that `trouble' that you felt you might be in?"; ...because no one else is asking these questions, I thought I would take the time to do so, now. Additionally, the good Congressman from Modesto, California, has yet to make a public statement, other than his initial half-truth, that he and intern Chandra Levy were "good friends"; but he made a potentially huge misstep whilst attempting to recall his own schedule during the last day of Ms. Levy's last known day on this Earth; to wit: --Condit was NOT with "off-air" ABC reporter Rebecca Lynch from between 6:30-7:30pm, May 1, as was previously reported to Washington D.C. police by Condit's chief of staff Mike Lynch, who, on June 29, released a timeline of the Congressman's activities during the days in question. The restaurant meeting, which ostensibly served as a discussion between Condit and reporter Cooper on various House Agriculture committee goings-on, took play on May 2--two days AFTER Levy was last seen, and a day after the last known activity coming from her cell-phone or computer via the Internet). Here we have one full hour unaccounted for by Gary Condit on the day that Levy might have left this Earth and a bald-faced "error" in Condit's timeline, as offered by his chief of staff to D.C. police. Furthermore, according to Su-Lin Nichols, a spokesperson for ABC News, Ms. Cooper has "not been contacted by any law enforcement authorities." (Source material condensed from "Washington's Incurious Police") --We do know that Mr. Condit met with Vice President Dick Cheney at 12:30pm, May 1, in a meeting that has been put at roughly 45 minutes in duration by White House sources; but the timeline released by chief of staff Mike Lynch reveals that there is no evidence of the whereabouts of his boss from between 1:15 and 3:30pm, when he was seen attending a constituents' meeting. Recall: Ms. Levy's last known activity (or the last activity reported by her computer log) was 1:30pm. There is also a question as to the roughly 60 minutes that Mr. Condit is supposed to have spent at a doctor's office later that same day (May 1), from between 5:00 and 6:00pm. Were I Washington D.C. police and/or FBI, I would want to know the doctor's name, address, the purpose of the Congressman's visit, and would, of course, want to verify with said physician and attendant nurses/receptionist that Condit was, indeed, present at the doctor's office during this period. In sum: Gary Condit, clearly the strongest non-suspect in this case, and who had maintained a sexual relationship with Chandra Levy, has fully three and one-half hours of unexplained absences in his schedule, on the day that Chandra Levy--who was, as the media has just revealed, surfing Condit's House Agriculture Committee Web site and also various media sites, including Washington City Paper, Washington Post and the Drudge Report --is last reported to have been alive. It is curious that still available online in the Washington City Paper, is an in-depth 1999 story of another dead intern, one Joyce Chiang. At 26, young and sexy (FBI profilers, are you paying attention?), Ms. Chiang, who interned for Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), in an office then - directly adjacent to the office of Congressman Gary Condit, was last seen at a Starbucks coffee shop in Dupont Circle, January 9, 1999; on April 1, a paddling canoeist found Chiang's corpse washed up against some boulders at the edge of the Potomac, south of Belle Haven Marina in Fairfax County. There is not much more to be said about the similarities between the two interns, other than that Chiang had also left behind in her apartment her pager (Levy, her cell phone); and, that the last call Chiang received on that pager was from a pay phone at Dulles Airport. To-date, D.C. police have never identified Chiang's last phone call. Gary Condit is fairly infamous among his own staff, and the staffs of past official positions he has held, for "checking out" at odd intervals, "going incognito," as one of his staff called his behavior recently. Stewardess Anne Marie Smith says that he wore disguises-- different hats and sunglasses--during their public outings. And, most coincidentally, Chandra Levy's aunt, Linda Zamsky, revealed to investigators that her niece would frequently contact her Congressional beau by means of a beeper, or pager, to a secret number, which would alert him to the inquiry of one among his stable of babes. There are other troubling pustules in this case: Condit's known dalliances with the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, and even, according to a New York Post article recently, his attendance at a birthday party held for a biker convicted of the killing of a police officer. We also have former Congressman John LeBoutillier's deeply-disturbing anecdotal report that Mr. Condit might like to take a walk on the wild side, as it were; and what with the attorney for Anne Lee Smith divulging recently that Condit enjoyed sexual excitement of the sort that was "not normal for a heterosexual man," and with growing interest in the contents of the "forbidden closet" in the Congressman's apartment and "DNA evidence" having reportedly been found all over Condit's carpets, I, for one, won't be surprised when Mr. LeBoutillier's report is verified as being true, but only as the tip of the iceberg. That this Congressman also has a brother who is a known speed-freak, a convicted felon, a fugitive who has not been seen since 1996, is also worrisome, as is the fact that the Congressman also has another brother who, while a Sergeant in the employ of the Modesto Police Department, bought between nine and 11 weapons illegally, from a gray- market police surplus clearinghouse, and who, when requested to return those weapons, could only produce four (4) of them to his superiors. That the fugitive-con, speed-freak sibling--as is being reported today (7/20) by Geraldo Rivera, and which will be the subject of tomorrow's Star tabloid, was found in Tampa, Florida, after disappearing for a week at the end of April from his job at a construction site and reappearing the first week of May, with the use of a cane, should be of concern to FBI/D.C. police, as well. America, we have as a member of the House of Representatives a man who sits on the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee-- ostensibly, a man who provides Congressional oversight to WE THE PEOPLE over those who guard our nation's most sensitive National Security secrets--and who is legendary among his staff for disappearing without a trace, who wore disguises with at least one mistress; who has at least two mistresses (some sources say there could be 10 women cooperating with investigators); who appears to be fairly profligate in his spending habits (the $2,500 gold bracelets to Levy and who knows who else should raise some red flags, on a Congressman's official $140k salary); who has refused to speak of this matter to his own constituents and who has repeatedly stonewalled law enforcement investigators and perhaps even (by the errors in his May 1st timeline) lied outright of his whereabouts; who employs the very best of attorneys and pricey spin-doctors, who are being paid for, how?, we-don't-know and who fits every inch the profile of a spy, a la Robert Hanssen, regardless of the outcome of the Levy case. And now the case is being turned over to the very same FBI office that failed to produce a credible explanation as to the death of Clinton legal advisor Vince Foster--an FBI which has just been exposed as having "lost" up to 140 laptop computers, three of which contained classified data, as well as hundreds of firearms, sans explanation. Ladies: The scum hath risen to the top. The Peter Principle is fully in force. We have a fox guarding the hen house. And yet we take it like chumps and suckers. It is well past time to demand accountability of Washington, and to rise up by any means necessary-- be it by passive resistance, tax revolt or force of arms--if We The People are blown off in our request for a return to basic Constitutional principles and reasonable representation. I feel sick just writing these words. But it's all too clear: We've been had. Fahey, a strategic writer stationed in South Korea, has served as aide to Central Intelligence Agency agent Theodore L. "Ted" Humes, Division of Slavic Languages, and to the late-Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief Lt. General Daniel O. Graham; to former Arizona Governor Evan Mecham (R-AZ), former Congressman John Conlan (R-AZ) and others. He is author of Wisdom's Maw: The Acid Novel, Far Gone Books, 1996) and "Al Hubbard: The Original Captain Trips" (High Times magazine, 1991), exposes of the CIA's MK-Ultra program and its influence on the Sixties' psychedelic counterculture. He is the architect of DumpMcCain.com Todd Brendan Fahey is a regular columnist for Ether Zone. Todd Brendan Fahey can be reached at toddfahey@yahoo.com Published in the July 27, 2001 issue of Ether Zone. Copyright © 2001 Ether Zone Online. ( http://www.etherzone.com ). Reposting permitted with this message intact.
The Rape of Nanking By Denis Mueller Forgotten History - Friday, July 13, 2001 "Little known facts and overlooked history" ============================================================ Want to become a Forgotten History subscriber for FREE? Visit: http://www.shagmail.com/sub/history.html ============================================================ The Rape of Nanking By Denis Mueller It was an event so appalling that even the Nazi’s were shock- ed. From 1937 to 1938, over 300,000 Chinese were murdered and, depending on the estimates, 50,000 to 80,000 women were raped and mutilated. Women of all ages were violated and held cap- tive while being raped. The officers and the Emperor of Japan knew what was happening but did nothing to stop the atrocities and many of the officers laughed at the barbarity. What is especially appalling is that the Japanese to this day deny that this ever occurred. For those of you that have any questions about the truth, just go to the Internet and look at the pictures. They will make you cry. The Japanese beheaded victims and threw the bodies into mass graves. Senior officers derived great pleasure in the horrors. They even went so far as to rip out the fetus of pregnant women and parade around with them on bayonets. The war against the Chinese began in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria. The armies of the emperor marched into China, and by 1937, surrounded the city of Nanking. The killing was widespread and anyone caught was killed on the spot. It got so bad that the Japanese armies started to use prisoners for bayonet practice. In one building zone, 400 men were seized and were marched off to be executed. The cowardly officers of the Nationalist army, who would easily lose to the Chinese Communists after the war, fled the city. They left the civilian population and the remaining soldiers to the mercy of the Japanese who showed no mercy. The streets were littered with bodies. The only hospital opened was the American University Hospital whose facilities were inadequate to serve such a massacre. The Japanese looted and plundered the city while forcing the Chinese to carry their loot before murdering them. This kind of behavior continued for weeks. The Japanese high command knew exactly what was happening but allowed the carnage to continue. After beheading countless people, they lined their heads up in a nice neat row. The cruelty of the Japanese during World War II continued throughout the war. Americans who survived the horrors of Japanese imprisonment can testify to that. Even after their surrender, the Japanese continued to behead Americans. But for some reason the public largely forgets these atrocities. Why is that? One explanation is that China fell to the Communists in 1949. Americans wondered who lost China, but we now know that the corrupt government that now rules Taiwan lost China. The Japanese on the other hand became part of the West. We needed them so any mention of their heinous crimes have been buried. The government of Japan steadfastly denies any such thing ever happened despite the evidence and any mention of this barbarity in not mentioned in their textbooks. This is truly disgusting. There will be no justice in the world until the victims of Japanese cruelty are compensated for their suffer- ing. Sources: New York Times, December 17, 1937 The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang
The Federal Writer’s Project By Denis Mueller Forgotten History - Tuesday, July 24, 2001 "Little known facts and overlooked history" ============================================================ Want to become a Forgotten History subscriber for FREE? Visit: http://www.shagmail.com/sub/history.html ============================================================ The Federal Writer’s Project By Denis Mueller During the Great Depression, over 25% of Americans could not find work. To try to alleviate the situation the federal government stepped in and created the Works Progress Admini- stration (WPA). It was an ambitious project that put 8,500,000 people to work. These workers built roads, bridges, buildings, parks and, in many ways, they built the infra- structure for the United States. The WPA also included what was called the Federal Arts Pro- ject. This aspiring provision included unemployed artists writers, musicians, actors, directors, painters, and photo- graphers. The New Deal initiative made a lasting impact on American culture. They painted murals and performed plays which toured areas that had never seen theatre before. This was quite a feat, however, none of these were more important than the Writer’s Project, which at its peak, employed approximately 6,500 men and women across the country. The pay was not good, only twenty dollars a week, but it beat starving. And in turn, what these artists gave back to America was far more than they received. It especially helped young and emerging writers such as Nel- son Algren, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, Stetson Kenn- edy and Studs Terkel. This truly impressive list of writers helped to produce a series of state guidebooks and recorded the stories of more than 10,000 ordinary people from a variety of regions, occupations and ethnic groups. The stories of regular people trying to live a decent life became the focal point of the work for many of these writers. These accounts produced a mosaic of events that would be valuable for later historians and provided the framework for the work of the writers themselves. Their narratives included stories about Billy the Kid, the Chicago Fire, people who went out West in the pioneer days, those who immigrated to the United States and the stories of former slaves who gave an account of what slavery was like. The idea was to create a climate that would help foster the tolerance that is necessary for a democracy to survive. Benjamin Botkin, the editor of the project, hoped that the writers would draw upon this material so they could create work of their own. He was not a fan of "ivory tower writing" and urged the writers to move into the streets, the stockyards and everyday life for their inspiration. It worked and such great literary pieces, such as Nelson Algren’s "A Walk on the Wild" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," were inspired from this experience. Other writers learned to listen to the speech patterns and language of everyday people and took this knowledge into the theatres and literature. In the end, the New Deal arts projects came under attack by redbaiters and redneck racists. People like Martin Dies, who was a supporter of Nazi Germany, and racist John Rankin, at- tacked the program. These fascists saw tolerance as an idea that threatened their power, which was propelled by ignorance. In the post-war years the ivory tower of academia, which was threatened by the stories of these writers, condemned the writings of stories about ordinary people. You see the aca- demics can never handle the truth unvarnished. The Federal Arts program of the New Deal remains a high point in American history. The treatment of artists in our country remains a national disgrace. The city of Berlin, not the country of Germany but the city of Berlin, spends more on the arts than the entire arts budget of the United States. Is it any wonder why our culture has turned into an abyss of vio- lence, depravity and hate? Art is meant to challenge, to shake things up and can be a tremendous tool for understanding and tolerance. Let us remember the Federal Arts Project and the good it did. Sources: Ann Banks, First Person America. Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. William Leuchtenburg: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.
"We've Got the Cards" 56 Years After Hiroshima Mickey Z.
Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com "We've Got the Cards" 56 Years After Hiroshima Mickey Z. mzx2@earthlink.net "It is an atomic bomb. . . . It is the greatest thing in history." President Harry S. Truman August 6, 1945 About two months ago, I wrote an article about the film, Pearl Harbor, in which I attempted to present some context about December 7, 1941. I received hundreds of e-mails - mostly supportive, I must add. There was, however, one point made repeatedly by those less then thrilled with what I had to say about U.S. actions in WWII: America had no choice but to drop atomic bombs on Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Had they not done so, my detractors declared, the Japanese never would have surrendered and millions of American soldiers would have perished in the ensuing invasion of the Japanese islands. We are approaching August 6, 2001, the 56th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and it¹s apparent that this issue is long from settled. Thus, I'd like to begin yet another discussion on the question: Why was the bomb used? Before confronting the unleashing of the bomb, there is lesser-known myth that must be dealt with: the life-and-death race with German scientists. "Working at Los Alamos, New Mexico," writes historian Kenneth C. Davis, "atomic scientists, many of them refugees from Hitler's Europe, thought they were racing against Germans developing a Nazi bomb." Surely, if it were possible for the epitome of evil to produce such a weapon, it would be the responsibility of the good guys to beat der Führer to the plutonium punch. While such a desperate race makes for excellent melodrama, the German bomb effort, it appears, fell far short of success. Thanks to the declassification of key documents, we now have access to "unassailable proof that the race with the Nazis was a fiction," says Stewart Udall, who cites the work of McGeorge Bundy and Thomas Powers before adding that, "According to the official history of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), those agents maintained contacts with scientists in neutral countries . . ." These contacts, by mid-1943, provided enough evidence to convince the SIS that the German bomb program simply did not exist. Despite such findings, U.S. General Leslie Groves, military commander of the Manhattan Project, got permission in the fall of 1943 to begin a secret espionage mission known as Alsos (Greek for 'grove,' get it?). The mission saw Groves' men following the Allies¹ armies throughout Europe with the goal of capturing German scientists involved in the manufacture of atomic weapons. While the data uncovered by Alsos only served to reinforce the prior reports that the Third Reich was not pursuing a nuclear program, Groves was able to maintain enough of a cover-up to keep his pet project alive. In the no-holds-barred religion of anti-communism, the 'Good War' enemy was never fascism. Truman's daughter, Margaret, remarked about her dad's early presidential efforts after the death of FDR in April 1945, "My father's overriding concern in these first weeks was our policy towards Russia." The most commonly evoked justification for the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was to save lives, but was it true? Would such an invasion even have been necessary? Finally, were the actions of the United States motivated by an escalating Cold War with the Soviet Union? Here are the facts that don't mesh with the long-accepted story line: Although hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bombings are often explained away as a "life-saving" measure - American lives. Exactly how many lives |