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US-ANGLO CAPITALISMEU-NATO IMPERIALISM
Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies
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Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans
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No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY
[LINK | Article]

*U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR*

Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
[info from Craig Murray video appearance, follows]  US-Anglo Alliance DELIBERATELY STOKING ANTI-RUSSIAN FEELING & RAMPING UP TENSION BETWEEN EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA.  British military/government feeding media PROPAGANDA.  Media choosing to PUBLISH government PROPAGANDA.  US naval aggression against Russia:  Baltic Sea — US naval aggression against China:  South China Sea.  Continued NATO pressure on Russia:  US missile systems moving into Eastern Europe.     [info from John Pilger interview follows]  War Hawk:  Hillary Clinton — embodiment of seamless aggressive American imperialist post-WWII system.  USA in frenzy of preparation for a conflict.  Greatest US-led build-up of forces since WWII gathered in Eastern Europe and in Baltic states.  US expansion & military preparation HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED IN THE WEST.  Since US paid for & controlled US coup, UKRAINE has become an American preserve and CIA Theme Park, on Russia's borderland, through which Germans invaded in the 1940s, costing 27 million Russian lives.  Imagine equivalent occurring on US borders in Canada or Mexico.  US military preparations against RUSSIA and against CHINA have NOT been reported by MEDIA.  US has sent guided missile ships to diputed zone in South China Sea.  DANGER OF US PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES.  China is on HIGH NUCLEAR ALERT.  US spy plane intercepted by Chinese fighter jets.  Public is primed to accept so-called 'aggressive' moves by China, when these are in fact defensive moves:  US 400 major bases encircling China; Okinawa has 32 American military installations; Japan has 130 American military bases in all.  WARNING PENTAGON MILITARY THINKING DOMINATES WASHINGTON. ⟴  
Showing posts with label CIA's 'Curveball'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA's 'Curveball'. Show all posts

March 26, 2016

Tyler Scott Drumheller - CIA Europe Division Station Chief - Exposed USG Lies re Iraq


Article
SOURCE
as marked


https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tyler-drumheller-cia-officer-who-exposed-us-reliance-on-discredited-iraq-source-curveball-dies-at-63/2015/08/06/b45aeed2-3b99-11e5-b3ac-8a79bc44e5e2_story.html


Tyler Drumheller, CIA officer who exposed U.S. reliance on discredited Iraq source ‘Curveball,’ dies at 63


[Veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller on “60 Minutes” in 2007. (Courtesy of CBS)]
 

By Greg Miller August 6, 2015

Tyler S. Drumheller, a high-level CIA officer who publicly battled agency leaders over one of the most outlandish claims in the U.S. case for war with Iraq, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 63.

The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Linda Drumheller.

Mr. Drumheller held posts in Africa and Europe over a 26-year career during which the CIA’s focus shifted from the Cold War to terrorist threats. He rose to prominent positions at CIA headquarters, serving as chief of the European division at a time when the agency was abducting al-Qaeda suspects on the continent and U.S. allies there faced a wave of terrorist plots.

But he was best known publicly for his role in exposing the extent to which a key part of the administration’s case for war with Iraq had been built on the claims of an Iraqi defector and serial fabricator with the fitting code name “Curveball.”

In contrast to Hollywood’s depiction of spies as impossibly elegant and acrobatic, Mr. Drumheller was a bulky, rumpled figure who often seemed oblivious to the tufts of dog hair on his clothes.

“I always thought of him as an overfed George Smiley,” said Bill Murray, a former CIA colleague, referring to the character in John le Carré spy novels known for his espionage acumen but unassuming appearance.

Mr. Drumheller spent the bulk of his career as an undercover officer seeking to avoid public attention. But after retiring in 2005, he emerged as a vocal critic of the George W. Bush administration’s use of deeply flawed intelligence to build support for its decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Curveball, who had defected to Germany in the late 1990s, was the primary source behind the administration’s assertions that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq had developed biological weapons laboratories — lethal germ factories supposedly built on wheels or rails to evade detection.

The claim was included in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech as well as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations designed to marshal international support for intervention in Iraq.

Mr. Drumheller later came forward to say that he had learned early on that German authorities had grave doubts about Curveball’s credibility. In his book “On the Brink” (2006), written with Elaine Monaghan, he recounted the Curveball debacle in detail, noting that his German counterpart had cautioned that Curveball “could be a fabricator. He’s a very erratic character.”

Mr. Drumheller said he relayed that warning to top CIA officials, and even attempted to strike the language on mobile labs from an early draft of Powell’s speech, only to be stunned to learn that the text was subsequently restored.

In “On the Brink,” Mr. Drum-heller described feeling his “heart sinking” as he watched Powell’s speech.

“We had failed,” he wrote. “It was bad enough that we had not prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and we were being blamed for that. Now the nation was about to embark on a war based on intelligence I knew was false, and we would surely be blamed for that, too.”

A scathing 2005 report on the intelligence failures in Iraq did not mention Mr. Drumheller by name but concluded that officials in the agency’s European division had “expressed serious concerns about Curveball’s reliability to senior officials at the CIA,” and that the warnings were inexplicably dismissed.

The allegation touched off a bitter feud. When then-CIA Director George J. Tenet denied that he had ever been warned about Curveball, Mr. Drumheller fought back in public, saying that “everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening.”

Mr. Drumheller was widely quoted in news accounts and appeared on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”

No mobile germ warfare labs were found, and the defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, has since admitted that the story was a fiction he fed to German intelligence while seeking asylum.

The blow-up over Curveball coincided with Mr. Drumheller’s retirement from the CIA. “I think he was really proud of standing up against the war,” Linda Drumheller said in an interview. “That was his personal greatest achievement.”

The son of an Air Force chaplain, Tyler Scott Drumheller was born in Biloxi, Miss., on April 12, 1952. He spent part of his childhood in Germany before attending the University of Virginia. He graduated in 1974 with a history degree and did postgraduate work in Chinese at Georgetown University before being hired by the CIA in 1979.

He met Linda Blocher while she was working at the spy agency as a secretary in the Africa division, and proposed to her in a stairwell at CIA headquarters after learning that he would soon be sent to Zambia. It was the first in a series of stops for the couple that would also include South Africa, Portugal, Germany and Austria. Two and sometimes three pet dogs accompanied every move.

...

Mr. Drumheller’s affable manner made it easy for him to form lasting connections with people throughout his career, Linda Drumheller said. He also had a prodigious memory, she said, that enabled him to keep track of cryptonyms, children’s birthdays and Detroit Tigers statistics.

Mr. Drumheller “understood human nature,” Murray said. “Beneath that pleasant and fun kind of personality, he understood exactly what people were and what he was dealing with. Good or bad.”

Mr. Drumheller had retained a young CIA recruit’s enthusiasm for much of his career. But he seemed to grow tired of the internal conflicts after the Sept. 11 attacks. In his memoir, he wrote that in retirement he asked to have his Distinguished Career Intelligence medal delivered by mail rather than returning to headquarters for a ceremony.

When the envelope arrived, he wrote, “I opened it up and fell into a bit of a reverie, reflecting on my career and the years past, the successes and the friends gained, the colleagues lost and the mistakes made.”

Greg Miller covers intelligence agencies and terrorism for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tyler-drumheller-cia-officer-who-exposed-us-reliance-on-discredited-iraq-source-curveball-dies-at-63/2015/08/06/b45aeed2-3b99-11e5-b3ac-8a79bc44e5e2_story.html

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SUMMARY
source
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/01/01/286004/-Book-Review-Tyler-Drumheller-rsquo-s-ldquo-On-the-Brink-rdquo

Illegal War on Iraq
Following appointed to investigate "what went wrong with
the intelligence gathering/application pre-invasion" of Iraq:

  • Senate Intel Committee
  • Robb-Silbermann Commission

yet the White House was given a 'clean bill of health'
-- re distortion of intel & misleading the nation re 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq
-- despite Drumheller account indicating that White House:
    -- politicised Iraq intelligence
    -- cherry-picked Iraq intelligence


-- and none of this was recorded in the commissioned reports
-- nor was it mentioned:
-- White House ignored a CIA key informant in Iraqi govt
-- who informed the US that there were no active weapons programs
-- even though Drumheller was interviewed by:
    -- Robb-Silbermann Commission - three (3) times
    -- Senate Select Committee on Intelligence - two (2) times

-- the what-went-wrong re Iraq invasion reports were dishonest
-- Drumheller's account was not included in these reports
-- Josh Marshall:  speaks volumes re agenda of writers of such reports
-- both Drumheller & his colleagues (presumably CIA?) in shock so little mention in reports

-- Investigators re lead-up to Iraq:
-- principal goal wasn't not covering up for the White House (Marshall concludes)

Article goes on to discuss Drumheller book.

Pre 9/11

-- US intel / securty agencies appear to have a vast amount of overlap of agency and of task
-- jealous guarding of info
-- either hoarded or forced each other
-- stove-piping info - without verification

stovepipe
-- pathway for transmitting info higher in org. hierarchy while bypassing
-- mid levels that remain uninformed re this info
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/stovepipe

LOL ... arguments CIA vs. Dept. Defence


-- re

1.  verification of validity of source responsibilities
2.  who to analyse material & place into context

"One group says: Hey, all we do is report info. We don’t guarantee the source or if it’s valid.

Another group says: No, all we do is pass it along; it’s up to someone else to draw conclusions from it." [source]

Post 9/11 & pre-Iraq Invasion:

-- Bush admin cherry picks info
-- takes from one source; ignores another
-- re-using same info as if info provided by two separate sources
-- no analysis in interim
-- pre Iraq invasion even more layers bureaucracy, assistance + experts added
-- but no clear hierarchy re channels of reporting or procedures for verification of sources

Drumheller
-- pro streamlined methods re info flow & decision making
-- per tested methods of Cold War

Drumheller discusses role USA shares with Western allies
-- re growth of corrupt, oppressive govts. in Middle East
-- as legacy of colonisation & of Cold War
-- refers to USA having made a 'deal with the devil' to get support
-- US & allied support of dictators & corrupt rulers
-- to supposedly deal with "global threat posed by Soviet Union"
-- ie pragmatic choice of USA, followed by FALLOUT
-- fallout results from poor & disenfranchised being drawn to al-Qaeda
-- & other radical orgs that offer "simple explanations"
-- & ready villain:  USA & allies






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COMMENT


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Drumheller sounds really brainwashed about the nature of communism & Russians.

/ I think he has an enormous blind spot as far as US and US allies are concerned ... How can that be, after 26 years of service?  Doesn't he know he's dealing with a bunch of sociopaths and that the villain title is well-deserved?

/ and I think he under-estimates the dangers inherent in culture & ideology of the Middle East

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Found myself wondering if the 'war on terror' is even real, and if the entire thing isn't a series of false flag ops or something, to keep the CIA in funds post Cold War -- ie. to justify the existence of a massive agency etc.
Look at the extremes they go to in Latin America, with the history of all the investment in undermining elected governments, funding opposition, non-stop interference, lies, deceiving the American public, manipulating the American media, crafting pretexts for aggression -- any excuses -- to back intervention and brutal take-over.
Bet those pretexts would also include false flag ops.  So how would we ever know when it's a false flag op and when its genuine terrorist attacks?
Sounds like the CIA isn't the big happy family I thought it might have been.  But that could be in the past.  Not sure.

Wonder if any foreign agencies exploited that vulnerability?