Just How Far Are They Prepared To Go ?

Part Three

“Those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future.” George Orwell

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” CIA Director William Casey

“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [inalienable rights], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government.” US Declaration of Independence

As I've previously observed, if you've taken the considerable time and effort necessary to find me, it's almost certainly because you are a member of an increasingly endangered species – the critical thinker. Those who fraudulently claim membership (if one was to be charitable, one might swap out 'fraudulently' for 'erroneously') outnumber us by around ten-to-one; perhaps 1%-2% are actually purebloods.

One of our genetic traits - a curse and a blessing in equal measure – is to derive no satisfaction from pat answers and lazy avoidance-thinking. Instead, we run things to ground and worry at them, even when it would be safer or less mentally tortuous not to. We get all forensic. We have a verbal tic that we are unable to subdue, inasmuch as when we discover that something is 'off', we automatically ask 'what else?' And, when we've gone down a few rabbit-holes in search of the answers we seek, we start to realize that each of us is living our own personal Truman Show.

During the 'pandemic' - a likely Ground Zero for many – there was a veritable feast of 'what elses?' that were closely associate with all things medical; mRNA, mandates, masks, midazolam and medically-assisted murder amongst them. We didn't have to go in search of unicorns – there were herds of them all around us. Now that the contrived urgency has faded, there is opportunity for reflection.

The morally bankrupt – governments, the intelligence community, Big Pharma, the medical community and the mockingbird media – have predictably squandered the opportunity, preferring to deep six the memory of as many of their machinations as possible, while retaining their ability to reimpose whatever strictures they haven't renounced; which means pretty much all of them. The sheople have also spurned the chance, preferring to let bygones be bygones and burying their heads ever deeper in the sand.

We have defaulted to 'what else?', this time undistracted by the immediate, only to find that the correct answer to that question is 'an awful lot more we thought'. In fact, large swathes of our shared history is not what it seems. Seminal events have not occurred organically – they have been either been manufactured out of whole cloth or manipulated, so that they might benefit certain interests.

FDR did not heroically respond to the perfidious Japanese's wholly unwarranted attack on Pearl Harbor, for example. He forced them into a corner by breaching contract and compromising their energy supply, knowing what the inevitable outcome would resemble. He even knew the when and the where, but refrained from warning the base commanders, preferring to let Americans die unnecessary deaths, as it suited his preferred ends.

The destruction of 9/11 was not accomplished by 19 terrorists armed with box-cutters. Whether any of the designated patsies were even on board any of the four planes is an open question, which the authorities have not deigned to adequately address. The three World Trade Center buildings were brought down by explosive charges, not by any damage caused by the aircraft. Additionally, bin Laden explicitly refused to claim the credit. That would be the same bin Laden who almost certainly died in late 2001 - when he was already experiencing late stage renal failure – rather than in a daring raid by Seal Team Six in 2011, given that the caves of Tora Bora and dialysis machines are not a natural fit.

Whilst the Oklahoma City bombing was, at least partly, the work of Timothy McVeigh, he was ably assisted by FBI assets who made no attempt to prevent the destruction. Not only that, federal authorities (or rogue elements within them) were responsible for the vast majority of the death and destruction as the building had also been wired to explode – just to make absolutely sure. And McVeigh was – probably unwittingly – in league with the Feds, who attempted to time their own effort so that it might be masked by his, only to jump the gun by 4.2 seconds.

The 'lone gunman' trope was aired repeatedly and any loose ends were tidied up at leisure. JFK, RFK, MLK were all the victims of conspiracies by America's intelligence community. Of the three alleged killers – Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Early Ray – only Sirhan definitely got off shots, not that any of them hit Kennedy. The US Deep State thought nothing of taking down innocents, as long as they could also eliminate their target, as with Ron Brown in Croatia.

Other troublesome witnesses suffered inordinately from single car accidents, plane crashes, sudden heart attacks and unexpected 'suicide' by gunshot. Police and coroners knew better than to rock the boat – investigations were swiftly concluded and autopsies were largely conspicuous by their absence, even when they were supposedly mandatory. The world's most powerful superpower, a nation with which most in the West feel at least some kinship, is not what we think it is and hasn't been since the end of the most recent World War. That's eighty years and counting.

And that's simply on the domestic front. It takes no account of the foreign coups, assassinations and color revolutions that the CIA and its proxies have engineered, nor the ersatz War on Terror, nor the fabrication that is the War on Drugs. US meddling in the Middle East has frequently consisted of creating and funding terror groups – including ISIS and al Qaeda – and pitting them against America's strategic enemy de jour. The States' foreign policy has always been wholly amoral and its military the enforcement arm of Big Business and the Deep State. There have been no just wars; just realpolitik for decades.

Any country that allows (or partakes in) the assassination of political opponents is not a true democracy – that's simply a pretense, which is indulged in by the Deep State and the invertebrates in the general population. If the UK (or Germany, or Australia or any major Western nation) had a record that included the shooting of four presidents (or presidential candidates) in the past sixty years, we would likely hold it in the same esteem as a banana republic. Indeed, there are a number of South American states that are less unruly and less plagued by the despotic elite.

This part of the series (which is now extended to four essays, of which this is the third) is the last one to focus exclusively on politics. Both of the events that I will cover in detail are regime change events, both successful, the second of which is the original October Surprise. Watergate is our first stop.

We all know the rough outline of the scandal, I imagine, so I won't get too far into the weeds. It goes something like this. The unpopular President Nixon sanctioned a break-in at the Democrat headquarters in the Watergate Office Building – what exactly they were trying to accomplish is unclear – and then attempted to cover up his involvement. He also attempted to prevent access to taped recordings of Oval Office meetings. Someone called Deep Throat regularly leaked information to a reporter who duly wrote it up in his newspaper. Nixon was eventually forced to resign.

The reality was somewhat different in some important regards. It is, for instance, highly likely that Nixon did not sanction any such burglary, nor was he aware of it in advance. And he had just been re-elected in a landslide, winning all but two states with 60.7% of the popular vote – the largest margin of victory before or since.(1) But Nixon was unpopular with a particular group of people, who I shall refer to as the Cabal, and he was the main rival of the man who sought leadership of this group – George H W Bush (or Poppy, as he was widely known).

Nixon believed that “elements in the federal bureaucracy were working to undermine the American system of government and had been doing that for a long time.”(2) He wasn't shy about sharing this opinion. Nor was he a slave to the official version of the JFK assassination. He believed that the CIA had been involved and told its Director to his face in October 1971.(3) He also told the Director (Richard Helms, at that time) that he wanted to see the agency's files on the Bay of Pigs, by way of illuminating the 'Who shot John?' conundrum. He didn't get them and the message was sent; “the CIA foiled a Presidential order to turn over files. The director of the CIA, Helms, was not answerable to the duly-elected US President.”(4)

A president with ideas above his station was anathema to the Cabal, which had enjoyed the freedom of the range since the re-establishment of the wartime OSS in the form of the CIA, in 1947. Admittedly, they had run into a little local difficulty in the early sixties, but an open-top limousine ride through Dealey Plaza had eliminated that problem with extreme prejudice. A probable repeat dose had then been obviated by events in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel on June 6^th, 1968.

Prior to 1947, the power dynamic in the US was reflective of what we still see in most of the West. Wall Street, the Robber Barons (Rockefeller, Carnegie et al) and the emerging progressives held sway from the 1900s to the end of the Second World War. Woodrow Wilson presided over the Federal Reserve Act, the introduction of a privately owned central bank which offered the potential for the vast expansion of the federal government and the consequent gradual immiseration of 99% of the US population and, by 1920, the Feds awarded themselves the right to impose Prohibition.

Imagine that – a federal government, supposedly limited to the exercise of enumerated powers only, believed it appropriate to prevent its citizens from drinking alcohol. FDR's largely unconstitutional New Deal followed, converting a stock market crash/recession into the Great Depression. Wall Street distinguished itself by financing both Lenin and Hitler. The contours of the American elites were clearly delineated.

The creation of the CIA added an enforcement arm, nominally under the control of the executive branch, but the agency was, from the outset, used to advance the interests of the America ruling class rather than of America itself. Overseas adventurism was explicitly in the service of specific economic interests, both organisational and individual. By way of example; the pathological hatred of Castro and the multitudinous efforts to assassinate or depose him were less about ideology (Castro only reached out to Khrushchev after the US commenced an embargo of the island nation) and more about the vast commercial interests seized by the Cuban regime, not least the Mafia casinos in Havana.

The mob bosses were most keen to renew operations – as were American bankers, oil refiners (Castro's nationalization of the oil industry was a policy that was to be fervently discouraged among other aspirant nations to the south) and plantation owners, who had all taken a hit - and the CIA, whose connections with both the American Mafia and La Cosa Nostra were forged during the Second World War, was prepared to use exiled Cubans to assist in that endeavor.

Hence, the fiasco that was the Bay of Pigs, the aborted invasion of 1961, designed to fail without direct US involvement, which the planners expected to force Kennedy to agree to once matters started going sideways. It would have been a win-win for the Agency – boatloads of Marines were stood-to offshore, just waiting for the word. Navy jets were “gunning their engines on aircraft carriers nearby.”(5) While the invasion would likely still have failed, the leadership of the CIA calculated that the political humiliation and public pressure would guarantee a full-scale invasion. They miscalculated. When the promised popular insurrection did not materialize, Kennedy chose discretion over valor.

Bush senior, the archetypal 'grey man', was active in raising funds for the groups that carried out the operation,(6) which was codenamed Operation Zapata – in what can only be the most colossal coincidence, Bush's oil company was called Zapata Oil. At least, it would be a coincidence were it not for the fact that veteran CIA operatives state that Bush allowed his platforms to be used for training the invasion force and that, furthermore, “Zapata Offshore appears to have served as a paymaster... Bush's company was used as a conduit for these funds under the guise of oil business contracts.”(7)

But Bush's CIA bona-fides go back to 1953 at the latest, (and probably as far back as the CIA's inception, when he was a Yale undergraduate, the university being the most fertile ground for Agency recruitment),(8) when he formed his company in partnership with an ex-Agency operative (if any CIA personnel are ever really ex-) and partook in a CIA commercial project in Europe.(9) It doesn't appear that Zapata was ever run for profit, but instead served as a cover for for Bush's intelligence activities.

The CIA was apoplectic in the wake of the Bay of Pigs. The Director, Allen Dulles, was sacked by JFK. The Cuban exiles believed that the president had betrayed them when, in truth, Dulles had used them as pawns in a bigger game. Kennedy gained a much clearer appreciation of the lie of the land, which made him a more dangerous opponent. The Agency had other issues with him, too. JFK's ambivalence about the expansion of the Vietnam conflict not only threatened the bonanza that the Military Industrial Complex had been promised – it could also kibosh the CIA's attempt to take over the drug trade in South East Asia which, until 1956, had been run by French Intelligence and the Corsican Mafia (the infamous French Connection).(10) That was back when the trafficking was legal.

Much of the Agency's 'black budget' is derived from the proceeds of drug trafficking. Later adventurism opened up the South American route (into Mena, Arkansas for a period in the eighties) and also the Afghanistan via Turkey operation once the US invasion had been completed in 2001 and opium production could be ramped up once more.(11) The potential for the heroin trade in Afghanistan is massive, but only when the Americans are in situ.

In 1979, prior to the Russian invasion, Afghan contribution to global opium production was precisely nil. The CIA was immediately in action, funding the anti-communist mujahideen and, by 1986, the country contributed a sizeable 40% of the world's opium. By 1999, it was 80%. However, the Taliban, upon regaining power in 2000, cut production by 94%. In a wholly unrelated co-incidence, plans for the invasion of Afghanistan hit G W Bush's desk on 9/9, two days prior to 9/11 and, by the time of the American withdrawal in 2021 , Afghanistan was back at the top of the pile, producing a whopping 90% of world opium.(12) It seems that, without the CIA in the mix (and it's them, not the military, that facilitates the poppy harvest), there wouldn't be a global drug trade.

But, in the sixties, a withdrawal from Southern Asia would seriously impede those operations that needed to be spared Congressional oversight. The Laos connection, an alliance between the CIA and the local opium warlords, was particularly profitable, although a by-product of the rampant corruption and wide-scale availability of heroin was that (by 1971), 34% of American troops in-country were users.(13)

But in the early sixties, something needed to be done about Kennedy. Poppy felt compelled to throw himself into politics and, in a whirlwind of activity, had gone from uninvolved to Senate hopeful in the year to summer 1963. Bush senior was in Dallas on the morning of 22^nd November 1963. He'd had an engagement the previous evening. He claimed to be elsewhere at 12.30, the time of the assassination.(14) In fact, at 13.45 he called the FBI with a worthless tip concerning a nobody from elsewhere in Texas, thus establishing the 'fact' that he was in Tyler at the time, not Dallas.(15) Assassination researchers are unconvinced. Many think he, too, was in Dealey Plaza. On the left, a man outside the Texas Book Depository. On the right, an older Bush senior.

Figure 1

It may well be that a seventeen year old Dubya also had a day out.

Figure 2

What is beyond dispute is Poppy's close relationship with the man who chaperoned Lee Harvey Oswald around Dallas upon the latter's arrival, George DeMohrenschildt – also an asset of the Agency. Bush's address and 'phone number were in his address book.(16) The two knew each other for decades and met regularly in the late fifties and early sixties. And, “from 1962 through the spring of 1963, DeMohrenschildt was by far the principal influence on Oswald, an older man who guided every step of his life.”(17)

All of which is indicative of a secret life for George H W Bush and a long-standing relationship with the CIA, an organisation that specialises in coups and assassinations and one which is enmeshed in the killing of President Kennedy. Such a man would not be unfamiliar with requisite techniques nor reticent in the practice of them. And so, back to Watergate and red flags. The first such, as is usually the case, concerns motive:

“By 1973, the original leaders of the Cabal were dying off: Allen Dulles died in 1969, J Edgar Hoover in 1972, and LBJ in 1973. The death of their leaders created a power vacuum at the top of the Cabal, and as the Cabal was fighting off threats from the outside world, an internal battle was taking place for control of the Cabal and ultimately the control of power in America. Three factions fought for power: a network of old boys from the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services, the WWII precursor to the CIA), a group within the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and a group within the CIA led by George H W Bush. The Watergate Coup served several purposes, but perhaps its most lasting impact was to ensconce George H. W. Bush as the new head of the Cabal.”(18)

Nixon was not a member of the Cabal, but his political career had been sponsored by people who were. As such, he was deemed controllable and, in the run-up to the 1972 election, he was still the anointed one, although doubts were starting to form – not least in the mind of Helms, as we have seen. Nixon had tussled with the CIA during his first term, but now he was planning wholesale changes, if re-elected. An independently-minded second term president with nothing to lose was not a palatable option. Plans were hatched and, in the background, cogs cranked into gear.

For starters, the Agency was several steps ahead of the president. They had infiltrated the Secret Service unit that maintained the White House taping system and “enjoyed unrivalled access to the president's private conversations and thoughts” between 1971 and 1973 and knew that he was planning a wholesale culling of the CIA leadership in his second term.(19) Secondly, the CIA had let it be known, as soon as Nixon took office in 1969, that they wouldn't be performing any 'black bag jobs' or political disinformation campaigns for a Republican,(20) which illustrated the reality of the power imbalance.

The White House counsel of the time, John Ehrlichman, therefore assembled a team of 'investigators', with Nixon's blessing – 'The White House Plumbers', the name derived from their alleged ability to plug leaks. In time, most of these operatives moved sideways into Nixon's re-election campaign and Ehrlichman moved on, to be replaced by John Dean.

However, the Plumbers were not what they seemed. All five burglars eventually captured inside the Watergate Building were CIA assets.(21) Their leaders, E Howard Hunt (another who just happened to be in Dallas on 22^nd November, 1963)(22) and G Gordon Liddy were CIA and FBI respectively, although the latter also enjoyed a 'special clearance' from the agency at the time.(23) Hunt had allegedly retired (for the third time) and was reporting directly to Helms.(24) Nixon, through Dean, was unwittingly in the CIA's pocket.

Commentators still aver that, no matter the extent of Nixon's prior knowledge of the Plumbers, he bears culpability simply by virtue of his role in their creation. Whilst this is true, it is also simplistic and misleading. As previously noted, Nixon could not rely on the good offices of the CIA, as other presidents had. If the Agency had refused to go to bat for LBJ, he too would have been obliged to go off the reservation. The Plumbers were there to do the work that Helms refused to do, but they were, instead, a CIA entity that could be manipulated at will. And so, they got themselves captured – deliberately. Or, perhaps, one of their number ensured that it would happen.

Two of the Plumbers, Hunt and James McCord, were said to have first met in April 1972. This is a lie. They had known each other since 1962 and the CIA's post-Bay of Pigs wailing and clutching of pearls.(25) McCord also maintained direct contact with the upper echelons of the CIA management. He was said to have been Helms' 'zap man', a euphemism of the flimsiest type. Hunt and Bernard Barker, another of the burglars, were so close during their CIA years that the latter was known as “Hunt's Shadow.”(26) Frank Sturgis, perhaps the most storied of the Plumbers (his FBI file ran to 75,000 pages)(27), had also known Hunt since 1961.(28)

Ostensibly, the Plumbers were supposed to plant bugs and root around for any opposition research on Nixon. At least, that's what Liddy thought they were doing at the time, and he held that belief for many years afterwards, before finally coming to his senses.(29) Two bugs were placed and monitored, amateurishly. One was placed in the office of the chairman of the DNC, who had moved to Florida weeks before the break-in and was never at the Watergate Building. The other was placed in the mostly vacant office of an individual called Spencer Oliver Jnr (allegedly, as it is probable that the DNC might have placed it there later and cried wolf).(30)

Oliver's secretary was one Maxie Wells. The last of the burglars, Eugenio Martinez, was in possession of a key when arrested.(31) The key was to Maxie Wells' desk. She claimed that her desk contained nothing of interest, but then she couldn't say different without bringing on a world of pain. In actual fact, Spencer's largely empty office and telephone was used by DNC operatives to book call-girls through Wells.(32) This operation was running in Columbia Plaza, right next to the Watergate Building. It was also a CIA honeytrap, unbeknownst to Dean.

His concern was a separate one. His current girlfriend (and future wife) was room-mates with the Madam, Heidi Rikan. And, on June 10^th – a week before the bungled burglary – Rikan's lawyer was arrested on prostitution charges that implicated White House employees.(33) Dean panicked and managed to get the lawyer committed to an insane asylum, but he was very curious to discover what the DNC knew about him personally and, no doubt, to assure himself of his lover's fidelity. Hence, the extra break-in.

Liddy came to understand how he (and Nixon) had been duped:

"The real ops (operations) officer was Hunt; and his principal, the man who conceived and commanded the Watergate operation, was John Dean. John Mitchell and Richard Nixon had nothing whatsoever to do with it."(34)

When asked whether Nixon would have attempted to protect the burglars had he known the true reason for the break-in, he stated that Nixon “would have flushed the whole thing right at the start. Mitchell would not have gone to jail and Richard Nixon would have retained his presidency."(35) Had Liddy experienced his epiphany prior to his trial, he too might have scuppered the plan, but he didn't. Hunt was then paid off and one of the central planks of the Watergate legend remained in place.

If Dean's motivation was complex, McCord's was not. He intentionally botched the break-in, ensuring the burglars' capture. The man was a professional; Dulles referred to him as “my top man” and the CIA's Counter-intelligence Chief stated that “McCord wasn't just a security man. He was an operator. And a damned good one.”(36) But on a previous break-in (there were four attempts, in total) he had taped the locks on numerous doors to keep them open. When the burglars entered on this occasion, they noticed that at least one of the doors had been stripped – the security guard had found the doors and removed the tape.

McCord was nonetheless insistent; the operation was not to be aborted. He re-taped the door and then taped as many as seven others (horizontally, not vertically), some of which were on floors that weren't even part of the DNC office-space. Inevitably, the security guard found the new tape (McCord knew there was night security) and called the police. Only 37 minutes after their arrival, the five burglars were in custody, arrested by cops who had cancelled personal engagements to work overtime and who were sitting in their patrol car, less than half a mile from the Watergate Building.(37)(38) Hunt appears to have also been in on the act; the burglars had gone in with their hotel room keys on their persons and the rooms hadn't been sterilized. They yielded a treasure-trove of evidence, enabling the police to trace Hunt to the White House and Liddy to Nixon's re-election campaign. Just in case Plod still couldn't piece it together, Hunt had paid the burglars in sequentially numbered hundred dollar bills.(39) What was now required was a relentless focus on the White House and Nixon and away from the CIA.

Initially, the entire affair was a slow-burner. At this remove, it is seldom noted that the burglars were apprehended before Nixon's triumphal re-election, not afterwards. Their connection to Nixon's campaign was known for months, trumpeted in The Washington Post, and yet the public still overwhelmingly voted for Nixon in November. The drip-drip of leaks to Woodward, allegedly by a Mark Felt (the FBI number two, a man gunning for the top spot following Hoover's sudden death), shaped the public's perception of the story.

Woodward himself was unlikely to have simply been a purveyor of others' information. He had no background as a journalist; he had just left the federal government and still possessed a top-secret security clearance, yet was handed the biggest story in the country:

“Just to make it crystal clear what was actually happening, Woodward’s main source for his Watergate series was the deputy director of the FBI, Mark Felt, and Mark Felt ran — and we’re not making this up — the FBI’s COINTELPROprogram, which was designed to secretly discredit political actors, the federal agencies wanted to destroy — people like Richard Nixon. And at the same time, those same agencies were also working to take down Nixon’s elected vice president, Spiro Agnew. In the fall of 1973, Agnew was indicted for tax evasion and forced to resign.”(40)

So, a man with an ax to grind and an ex- (allegedly) intelligence operative posing as a journalist. A sensible person might question the altruism the narrative assigns to both. Between them they gradually constructed the version of events that was to take hold. Nixon was caught in the cross-hairs. There is no evidence to suggest that he even knew about the burglaries in advance but, as so often, the attempted cover-up was more impactful than the crime. But, as Liddy points out, his misplaced loyalty to Hunt et al was the primary instrument of his demise. Yet had he known what had really been afoot, he would have excised the rot in double time. For the Cabal, it was therefore vital to stay on offence and obscure the Agency's involvement, lest Nixon started smelling a rat.

Deep Throat (likely an amalgam of sources, Felt amongst them) did his bit and McCord did likewise. When his first lawyer proposed a defense that blamed the Agency, McCord sacked him.(41) He also advised the Agency to get ahead of the story by leaking to the press, before the CIA link could fully embed in the public consciousness. He further warned the White House that, if Helms was dispensed with, he would go scorched earth, which amply demonstrates the arrogance that characterizes the Agency. Nixon sacked Helms anyway and McCord (along with Dean who, one presumes, was perfectly content to deflect attention from his own role) leaked repeatedly and effectively. Dirty laundry was washed in public and Nixon's reputation besmirched.

But, come the trial of the burglars, the president was still in the saddle and looked to be riding out the storm. The trial itself had reached an impasse – if the defendants all kept silent, the conspiracy would be limited to them alone. The White House would be free and clear. That wasn't in the script, so – in March 1973 - McCord raised the stakes:

“He wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica stating that perjury had been committed in his courtroom and pressure had been brought to bear for the seven burglars to remain quiet. When Sirica read McCord’s letter in court, it created pandemonium. It seemed to affirm all the stories that Woodward and Bernstein had been writing, and Bradlee publishing, in the Post.”(42)

This letter was written post-conviction. None of this was subtle, inasmuch as it was the word of a felon challenging the White House, although it was rendered legitimate by the media. Deep Throat's working hypothesis – that Nixon was involved – gained traction. Dean decided to save his own skin and started co-operating with federal prosecutors, tailoring his account as required and suggesting that Nixon taped conversations in the Oval Office.(43) Alexander Butterfield, the man who had installed the White House taping system – yet another 'ex-'CIA man – then confirmed its existence when questioned by the Senate Watergate Committee.(44)

From that point forward, Nixon's eventual downfall was assured. The pressure came on gradually, then suddenly as is often the way. Nixon resisted releasing the tapes to the Committee, but the DoJ's Special Prosecutor started picking off the low hanging fruit. In January 1974, a Nixon campaign aide pleaded guilty to perjury. In February, it was Nixon's personal counsel's turn in the barrel, as he pleaded guilty to illegal campaign activities.(45) By March, seven of Nixon's advisors and aides were indicted on various charges, mostly concerning obstruction of justice, with the president named as an indicted co-conspirator on the basis of zero evidence.(46) Surica and the prosecutors colluded secretly; at least ten such meetings have been documented.(47) The entire judicial process was corrupt – even the appeals process was wholly rigged, due process be damned. The Cabal was most insistent on getting its pound of flesh.

In the meantime, succession planning was kicking into high gear. Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was not to the Cabal's taste. He was opinionated and set against what, even then, were termed the 'liberal elites'. He wasn't overly enamoured of the press, either, but his criticism placed him firmly over the target:

"I am asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that forty million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men ... and filtered through a handful of commentators who admit their own set of biases.”(48)

The CIA knew exactly what he meant as, from 1950 onwards, it had spent the equivalent of a billion dollars a year on Operation Mockingbird, purchasing the services of over 400 journalists in the corporate media.(49) An attack on the press was, therefore, also an attack on the Agency. As an aside, nothing has changed, even though the CIA claimed that it effectively abandoned the operation in 1976. The control network even extends to European journalists:

“When you fly to the US again and again and never have to pay for anything there, and you’re invited to interview American politicians, you’re moving closer and closer to the circles of power. And you want to remain within this circle of the elite, so you write to please them. Everyone wants to be a celebrity journalist who gets exclusive access to famous politicians. But one wrong sentence and your career as a celebrity journalist is over. Everyone knows it. And everyone’s in on it.”(50)

From the perspective of the Cabal, it made little sense to rid themselves of one turbulent priest, only to replace him with another. Fortunately (or by design), a corruption investigation in Agnew's native Maryland was in the process of metastasizing, with a time-honored immunity from prosecution agreement with small fry snagging the Vice President by alleging kick-back payments, which had continued during his time at the White House.(51)

Agnew said that the payments were campaign contributions and, in any event, a sitting Vice President could not be indicted. He asked the Democrat House Speaker to launch an investigation (not, one might think, the actions of a guilty man), but was rebuffed. The press sensed yet more blood in the water and, for several months, Nixon and Agnew were continually vilified and undermined by leak after leak.

Agnew could read the room and, despite continuing to assert his innocence, negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors. On October 10^th, 1973, he pleaded no contest to a single charge of tax evasion and was fined $10,000. Just prior to entering court, he submitted his letter of resignation. Strike one to the Cabal. Nixon, under enormous pressure himself, was strong-armed into nominating Gerald Ford as his new Vice President. Under the 25^th Amendment, both houses of Congress had to confirm the appointment and that meant doing business with the Democrats, who dominated both the House and Congress. The Speaker of the House maintained that they gave “Nixon no choice but Ford”,(52) a man sufficiently 'in' with the Deep State as to be a member of the Warren Commission whitewash. Strike two.

In the meantime, the hotshot reporters at The Washington Post were continuing to follow the script, despite knowing that it was fiction. The narrative, which was touted as proven, was that the burglary was part of Nixon's dirty tricks campaign, even though Deep Throat had told Woodward that the CIA was prepared to kill to obscure its involvement.(53) The mendacity has taken root:

“To this day, the Washington Post still claims, dishonestly, that the Watergate burglary, ridiculously silly though it seemed, was a campaign operation by a President who was irrationally afraid to lose and could not play fair. However, the burglary, the Post had known, but will not admit, was not a campaign operation at all. While the paper repeatedly told the public that the CIA was falsely spotlighted by Nixon as somehow being involved, the Post knew, more so than the speculating President, that the CIA was indeed behind the burglary.”(54)

The Overton Window belonged to the Cabal and they could position it how they wished. Now it was simply a matter of time and the blows started to come in quick succession. In April, the special prosecutor issued a subpoena for 64 White House tapes, but Nixon appealed. In May, impeachment hearings commenced. In June, Woodward and Bernstein published their fictional account of Watergate, All the President's Men.

Come July, the Supreme Court rejected Nixon's appeal and ordered him to hand over the tapes and, just days later, the House Judiciary Committee passed Articles of Impeachment, setting up a trial in the Senate. Given the composition of the Upper House, it came as no surprise when the key Republican senators told Nixon that there were enough votes to convict him (even before evidence was heard). On 9^th August, 1974, the president bowed to the inevitable and resigned.(55) Strike three. The coup was complete.

The Cabal had gotten their way. They'd managed to oust a president and his running mate and install one of their own, despite the fact that there is no evidence to show that Nixon had any foreknowledge of the burglaries. His sin was after the fact and, had he known what game was really being played, he would have washed his hands of it immediately. Agnew may have been guilty of corruption, albeit he was never convicted of same, but I suspect he was no more dirty than many others who weren't proactively investigated. Both Nixon and Agnew had been targeted and the truth of Watergate obscured by both the CIA and their mockingbird media. Motive, evidential anomalies and lies and obfuscation in the aftermath – three classic red flags.

The Cabal was, nonetheless, under the cosh. The CIA was being raked over the coals by successive Congressional Committees; first the Church Committee, then the Senate Committee on Intelligence. The mid-terms were a disaster and the Democrat side of the ticket, historically less under the Cabal's control (with the exception of LBJ) was getting away from them. The turmoil that Bush & co had engineered was a short-term solution but, with the next presidential election only two years away, difficulties remained.

Bush himself scored a year's work as the Director of the CIA, an appointment greeted with suspicion, given that the role was not usually awarded to a partisan politician. In addition, Bush's covert CIA connections were an open secret for some and yet he was now the man who decided what would or wouldn't be divulged to the Senate Committee. Predictably, there was considerably more of the latter than the former. Bush had plenty to hide and spent his year cleaning house:

“Despite his decades long involvement as a deep CIA insider, Bush was falsely brought in as an outsider who could reform the CIA. Bush’s real job was to staunch the flow of secrets out of the CIA and prevent the exposure of the truly explosive evil truths of the now multiple coups d'état executed by the CIA.”(56)

When Ford narrowly lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, it set the capstone on what was shaping up to be a difficult four years. But the Cabal made sure that it was only going to be a single term and were aided in that endeavor by Carter himself, the consummate DC outsider and moral crusader, who had the temerity to insist that it was the Office of the President that controlled the Executive Branch, not the Cabal. The president was even unable to remain on good terms with his own party, let alone with Republicans.

There were, nonetheless, some successes – initially, at least. The economy recovered from the 1973-75 recession and, in 1978, Carter brokered the Camp David Accords, with Egypt becoming the first Arab country to recognize Israel. He also signed SALT II, a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union in June of 1979. The temporary boost in his approval rating was, however, swiftly undone by the eruption of two overlapping crises, both eminently preventable – the 1979 energy crisis and the Iranian hostage crisis, both triggered by the ousting of the Shah.

It is claimed that US intelligence was caught off-guard by the success of the coup. That's what they told Carter, anyway, despite the slow-motion debacle that unfolded over a full year. We should, perhaps, look askance at the incompetence defense, as it has been repeatedly deployed in order to cover for collusion. From a distance, the mechanics of the Shah's overthrow are reminiscent of the many other astroturfed color revolutions that the CIA specializes in, not least the first successful effort in Iran, in 1953.

In the latter stages of the coup, in November 1978, the Shah persuaded the Iraqi government to expel Ayatollah Khomeini to France. The Western media, with the BBC at the forefront, lionised him, allowing him to portray himself as an “”Eastern mystic” who did not seek power, but instead sought to free his people from oppression. Many Western media outlets, usually critical of such claims, became one of Khomeini's most powerful tools.”(57) The universal kid glove treatment doesn't happen by accident and, as noted previously, the mainstream media is far from independent.

Khomeini played the long game. He signed agreements with the secular Iranian opposition and allowed Westernised politicians to speak on his behalf. He gave no indication that he was planning to create a theocracy, even though he had always been an open proponent of sharia law and had taught of the importance of religion in addressing social and political issues. The leftist opposition were, nevertheless, giddy with excitement, despite the fact that Khomeini was the “very antithesis to all of the positions they supported.”(58)

By November 1978, the US Ambassador to Iran was warning of impending disaster and advocating an intervention. Senior figures in the administration maintained that Khomeini was moderate and progressive, when they knew that he was nothing of the sort. Having sat on their hands for a year, they now allowed themselves to be presented with a near fait acompli and increased contact with the Ayatollah, effectively abandoning the Shah to his impending fate.

The Shah then appointed a new government, headed by an opposition leader and promised to leave the country, which he did on the day the new prime minister was sworn in. Khomeini returned from exile and it was apparent that the gloves were now off. On the day of his arrival, he stated:

“I shall kick their teeth in. I appoint the government. I appoint the government in support of this nation.”(59)

Ten days later, he ousted the government. Carter had been blindsided by his own intelligence community – who repeatedly told him that “Iran is not in a revolutionary or 'pre-revolutionary' situation” -(60) and made to appear weak and incompetent. But there was worse to follow.

(As an aside; for those unconvinced by this analysis, who feel that perhaps there was a genuine intelligence failure or that the bloody nose inflicted in Vietnam had shorn the Cabal of confidence (and turned the public decisively away from foreign military interventions), I would make the following points. Iran was, effectively, a client state and had been since 1953. Intelligence on unfolding events was copious, even if the US Ambassador himself was a liability. Further assets could have usefully been deployed if there were some uncertainties and other intelligence services, in particular the Israelis', were well informed and prepared to share knowledge. Instead, the CIA let matters drift, only to be 'surprised' at how much things had gotten away from them.

Furthermore, the 'failure' in Vietnam is a perspective that can only be sustained if one cleaves to the belief that victory was the desired outcome. That's the way the public would see it, I'm sure, as well as other incautious observers, but if the objective was simply to string the war out for as long as possible, thus enriching the military industrial complex whilst simultaneously plundering treasure from the neighboring countries, then a swift victory – which was eminently possible at the outset – is not the outcome sought.

It bears repeating – America's interests (as an entity) are often divergent from the interests of the Cabal. The American people's interests are different again. Soldiers are dispensable, as Kissinger made clear; he told Woodward and Bernstein that “military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy”.(61) The American military were not allowed to win the war. National Security Memorandum 68 – the template for the Cold War – spelled that out. The 'No Win' policy dragged conflicts out and allowed the Cabal to maximize profits.

And its denizens don't always need to heed public opinion (but if they do, they have demonstrated that they can turn it around overnight – see Pearl Harbor and 9/11). They were at war in Laos and Cambodia long after the retreat from Saigon, a secret and unacknowledged conflict, and their growers were still supplying product into the nineties. The most prolific regional supplier – Khun Sa, from the Golden Triangle – was producing 300,000 tons of opium a year by 1992.(62) On camera, he confirmed that his client was the US government. The public had (has) no idea.

The Iranians themselves had little doubt about Western involvement in the coup. The Shah was on the record saying “If you lift up Khomeini's beard, you will find MADE IN ENGLAND written under his chin.”(63) He pointed the finger at the UK, the US and Big Oil, claiming that they wanted rid of him because of his increasing independence and manipulation of oil prices, in service to his country's needs. Many within Iran hold similar views.)

However, the economic effect of the coup was the motherlode. Even though the Revolution only caused world supply to decrease by 4%, the price of crude oil more than doubled over the ensuing twelve months.(64) The onset of the Iran-Iraq War, in 1980, (caused by the inevitable pan-Islamic rhetoric of Khomeini, who called on the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam)(65) then triggered economic recessions worldwide. The result was double-digit inflation in the US and the unraveling of the good-news economy. Carter's popularity started to slide, but the kicker was to come in December 1979 with the Iran hostage crisis.

It is difficult, at times, to differentiate between incidents that arise organically and those which are prompted, constructed or otherwise allowed to happen, especially when the resultant outcomes are exactly what the doctor ordered. When behind-the-scenes shenanigans were provably deployed at another stage in the process, as was the case in this instance, doubts are further enhanced. Instead of 'never letting a crisis go to waste' – itself a cover for false flag events - one is tempted to conclude that the entire farrago, from beginning to end, is all of a piece. Finding any information that might confirm that suspicion is, of course, a Sisyphean task, whereas finding information confirming the accepted narrative is the work of a moment and runs to about ten pages of search results.

Nonetheless, there are clues, not least in a tome entitled “A Century Of War: Anglo-American Politics And The New World Order”, by a German historian who seems less burdened by the Anglo version of events. In his telling, British Petroleum loom large. BP has been a major beneficiary of the CIA-induced coup of 1953, by snaring a 25 year extraction agreement. The company was playing hardball in the renegotiation in 1978, demanding exclusive rights to Iran's future oil output but refusing to guarantee that it would purchase said oil.(66) This did not sit well with the Shah and talks collapsed. Iran appeared to be on the verge of crafting an independent policy.

But London was turning the screw, buying only around three million barrels a day against an agreed minimum of five million. This was putting huge pressure on Iran's finances,

“...which provided the context in which religious discontent against the Shah could be fanned by trained agitators deployed by British and U.S. Intelligence. In addition, strikes among oil workers at this critical juncture crippled Iranian oil production. As Iran's domestic economic troubles grew, American 'security' advisers to the Shah's Savak secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah. At the same time, the Carter administration cynically began protesting abuses of 'human rights' under the Shah.”(67)

It was at this time that the BBC was giving Khomeini his propaganda platform on their Persian-language broadcasts and refusing the Shah the right of reply. Their correspondents fanned out into the Iranian rural, fanning the flames. BP organised a flight of capital from Tehran, through its strong ties with financial institutions. By November 1978, Carter was persuaded to employ George Ball (a member of both the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, two Deep State engine rooms) to head a White House Iran task force under Brzenzinski. He immediately recommended dropping the Shah and supporting Khomeini – officially, this time.(68)

When the Shah abdicated, Iran's oil exports were abruptly curtailed. At the same time, the Saudis cut their oil production by an additional three million barrels a day. BP pretended to have a fit of the vapors and declared force majeure, cancelling all contracts, and the crisis was up and galloping. As was later confirmed, there was never really a shortage of oil. Instead of cutting production, the Saudis could have met the shortfall temporarily. But the Sheiks (since the petrodollar arrangement flowered under Nixon) and now the Ayatollah, were both dancing to the American tune, or, more accurately, to the US Deep State's tune:

“Indications are that the actual planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup in London and within the senior ranks of the U.S. liberal establishment decided to keep President Carter largely ignorant of the policy and its ultimate objectives. The ensuing energy crisis in the United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter's defeat a year later.”(69)

This scenario has a far more authentic feel to it, given the way that the Cabal has operated before and since. And, in any event, the fact remains that the US had plenty of warning as to potential vulnerabilities with the embassy in Tehran. It had been briefly occupied in February 1979, after Khomeini's triumphal return from exile, and its staff had been held hostage, before being expelled by Iranian police. The Carter administration had responded by reducing the embassy's staff to a mere sixty, compared to a high of nearly 1,000,(70) but other than replacing the front windows with bullet-proof glass, security does not appear to have been increased. The second tranche of student occupiers, in November 1978, simply climbed over the wall and the Marines inside the compound simply brandished their weapons, rather than using them.

Figure 3

The official story is that Khomeini didn't know of the attack in advance and, further, that the students only intended a temporary occupation and would have left when government forces turned up to evict them. This version of events is somewhat undermined by the fact that buses full of demonstrators arrived the moment the occupiers broke through the gates. In any event, the Ayatollah praised the occupiers in a radio statement on the first evening and the die was cast.

The occupiers – members of the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line – demanded that the US repatriate the terminally ill Shah for “trial and execution”,(71) apparently unironically. Carter refused, but delivered no ultimatum to Khomeini.(72) This initially played well at home and abroad and his approval ratings had doubled within a month. But the Ayatollah was milking the crisis for all it was worth, under the slogan “America can't do a thing”,(73) and by April 1980, Carter's numbers were in the tank:

“But in the following months, restraint had begun to feel like weakness and indecision. Three times in the past five months, carefully negotiated secret settlements had been ditched by the inscrutable Iranian mullahs, and the administration had been made to look more foolish each time. Approval ratings had nose-dived, and even stalwart friends of the administration were demanding action. Jimmy Carter’s formidable patience was badly strained.”(74)

Figure 4

How much of the damage was the result of Carter's stubbornness and how much to the advice he received is not known. He was, perhaps, not best served by disagreements between senior advisers, with Cyrus Vance (the Secretary of State) doveish and Brzezinski (the National Security Advisor and notable Deep State politician), very much a hawk.(75) The latter triumphed when Vance absented himself for a long weekend in Florida and Carter was persuaded to approve Operation Eagle Claw, a rescue mission. (Brzezinski was a constant meddler; it was he who, three months later, advised Carter to render covert aid to the Afghani mujahaddin, which led to the Soviet invasion in December.)(76)

The operation was “ambitious and complex”,(77) otherwise known as a cluster just waiting to happen. Everything had to go right if it were to succeed and yet an absolute law of military operations is the inevitability of the unexpected. The plan had far too many moving parts, was logistically fragile and poorly conceived. The initial phase involved landing C-130 transport aircraft in the desert, right next to a road. For a mission that was intended to take place over two nights, the element of surprise was vital. This was compromised within five minutes of the first aircraft landing when three local vehicles rocked up, one a bus with forty Iranian passengers. It disappeared entirely when the other two vehicles made off, pursued by some Rangers who took out one of them with an anti-tank weapon, only to discover that it had been loaded with fuel. The resultant inferno “burned like a miniature sun.”(78)

Due to an insufficiency of helicopters that were needed to accomplish stage two of the plan (three had dropped out with damage), the mission was aborted. At this point, despite the ineptitude of both the planning and the execution, Carter's dish of humble pie would have been starter-size. But when a chopper and a Hercules collided before they could abandon the scene, killing eight servicemen in another conflagration (the bodies had to be left behind), the president found himself with a main course and then some.(79) He'd been humiliated by the original occupation, again during the various stillborn negotiations and now this. It seemed that the Ayatollah had it right – America couldn't do a thing.

It's difficult to resist the suspicion that the operation had been designed to fail and wasn't to be allowed to succeed at any cost. The odds of remaining undetected for two nights and a day, while flitting about in C-130s and large military helicopters were vanishingly small. It if hadn't turned into Fred Karno's Circus immediately, it would almost certainly have done so at some point and Carter would still have reaped the whirlwind. But there was one more dirty little secret that really sealed the deal and Bush himself had a starring role in its execution.

After his removal from the directorship of the CIA – on Carter's first day in office – Bush had further burnished his Deep State credentials by active participation in the Council of Foreign Relations' activity and had also joined the Trilateral Commission. He had developed lofty ambitions – he was going to take a shot at the presidency. It didn't go as intended. After making early inroads, he had a meltdown on the debate stage, refusing to debate any candidate other than Reagan, as he had decided that this was the occasion when he would emerge as the main alternative to the frontrunner.(80) His petulance cost him and, despite Reagan's inevitable coronation, he refused to concede until it was mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination.

The Wikipedia version of what happened next is that Reagan picked Bush as his running mate because negotiations with Ford broke down and the nominee calculated that Bush's popularity with moderate Republicans would be a net benefit. The wikispooks version is that the likes of David Rockefeller and the Republican establishment told Reagan that Bush was part of the deal if he wanted their support.(81) There are only subtle differences between the two, but the latter explanation passes the smell test.

During campaign season, the fate of the 52 American hostages loomed over the scene. If Carter could somehow negotiate their release before election day, the boost that he would receive might well derail the Reagan/Bush campaign. Not content to let events take their natural course, the Bush-led Cabal toiled away in the shadows, undermining Carter's efforts. They didn't want an October Surprise and they were prepared to go to treasonous lengths to ensure that it would be Reagan who benefited from the hostages eventual release, not Carter. In short, the hostages were not to be released until they could serve as political fodder for Reagan/Bush. However, the Iranians needed some convincing.

How much Reagan knew of what happened next is unclear, although it's difficult to believe that he was wholly in the dark. But he wasn't a DC insider – he was the ex-Governor of California. All the key players in the negation of Carter's negotiations were Bush loyalists and most of them were disgruntled ex-CIA, recently axed by Carter's Director, Stansfield Turner, who had been tasked with mucking out the Augean stables. They were, therefore, fully committed to ousting Carter, to exact revenge but also in the hope of resuming their careers at the Agency. A 24/7 Operations Center monitoring Iran developments was established at the Reagan/Bush campaign headquarters.(82)

It is known that Theodore Shackley, an ex-covert ops chief at the CIA, offered his assistance to Bush in early 1980, while Poppy was still in the presidential race.(83) Thusfar, there is no evidence that either man was in contact with the mullahs prior to the conclusion of the Republican National Congress, on July 17^th 1980, which set the seal on the Reagan/Bush ticket. However, there is evidence that the ex-CIA types were influencing Israeli policy towards Iran and, in March 1980, they made their first direct military shipment to the mullahs.(84) Carter was not impressed, but by April he had come to the conclusion that Israel had chosen sides and Reagan was their man.(85)

The day after the RNC ended, William Casey (Reagan's campaign director) made a trip to Madrid, for a meeting with the Iranians at the Ritz Hotel.(84) He wasn't the only emissary. Another Reagan campaign worker, John B Connolly Jr flew out to the Middle East on a whirlwind tour on exactly the same day, visiting Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. He was accompanied by a Ben Barnes who, according to the New York Times, recalled the trip vividly:

“Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.”(86)

Casey is alleged to have returned to Madrid in August for another meeting, according to Russian intelligence.(87) Other parties, arms dealers, Iranian officials and foreign intelligence agents also alleged that Casey was fronting a deal for the hostages behind Carter's back.(88) The Iranian Prime Minister at the time claimed that Khomeini's Islamic radicals were negotiating with the Reagan campaign, thus sabotaging his own attempts to solve the crisis with the Carter administration.(89)

And Carter's chief negotiator, an Iranian banker named Cyrus Hashemi, was two-timing him with Republicans, including John Shaheen, one of the best friends of William Casey,(90) (all three of whom died of cancer between 1985 and 1987). He was blessed with a deposit of $3 million to his offshore bank on September 23^rd 1980, from none other than Harold Tillman, a 30-year friend of Bush himself. Wheels within wheels.(91) Jamshid Hashemi's (the older brother) sworn testimony also confirms Casey's Madrid meeting in late July with mullah Mehdi Karrubi, which Cyrus had set up.(92) The younger Hashemi was all-in on his betrayal of Carter, as an FBI wiretap would reveal:

“In mid-October 1980, even as Hashemi supposedly was helping President Carter's last-ditch effort to resolve the hostage crisis, the Iranian banker began work with other Republicans lining up arms shipments to Iran, including parts for helicopter gunships and night-vision goggles for pilots.”(93)

It wasn't all plain sailing. Carter received reports that the Republicans were back-channelling and that he was effectively engaged in a bidding war.(94) Come October 1980, when any Surprise would be potentially devastating due to its close proximity to the election, Bush and Casey travelled to Paris to finalise the deal and ensure that they weren't going to be double-crossed at the last moment.(95) Bush always denied that this meeting had ever taken place, but at least three witnesses place him in Paris on October 19^th and Bush was never willing (or able) to explain where he actually was that day.(96) The scheme was no longer quite so secret as

“...in late October 1980, everyone was openly discussing the agreement with the Americans on the Reagan team. Carter was no longer in control of U.S. foreign policy and had yielded the real power to those who … had negotiated with the mullahs on the hostage affair.”(97)

In truth, Khomeini's position was no longer as impregnable as it had been. He had held all the cards in early 1980, but by September Saddam's army had invaded Iran, encouraged to do by the Saudis, but greenlit by Carter, presumably in order to bring the pains on soonest.(98) The Ayatollah's need of war materiel was clearly going to be substantial and the US was best placed to provide it. The dynamic had changed – now both sides had something the other needed, rather than simply wanted. The question was primarily about timing. Would Khomeini be willing to wait until January 1981, or would he crumble despite assurances?

The Paris meeting in October had finalized a previous draft agreement, with the timing changed to the date of Reagan's expected inauguration in January 1981. It entailed the “release of the 52 hostages in exchange for $52 million, guarantees of arms sales for Iran, and unfreezing of Iranian monies in U.S. banks.”(99) But, given that Iran was already at war and that January 20^th was three months away, is it conceivable that the Ayatollah would accept that he would be hung out to dry until the new year? Carter was resolute – no hostages, no weapons. It is possible – likely – that Bush was more accommodating.

American weapons weren't all languishing on US soil. Israel had already shipped US military hardware to Iran in March 1980 and there is also evidence to show that the Israelis had authorized shipments of small arms and spare parts (via South Africa) as early as September 1979 .(100) The Israelis promised that they would stop, when Carter upbraided them. There is evidence demonstrating that they did not and that “these early shipments had the discreet blessing of top Reagan-Bush officials.”(101)

Officials who weren't actually in power, who were directing a slice of US foreign policy and undermining the sitting US president. There are allegations that US weapons stockpiles in Europe were relieved of vast quantities of materiel that was subsequently shipped to Iran, but concrete evidence of such is at a premium. However, given the fact of the documented Israeli shipments and evidence of a parallel command structure, it doesn't seem fanciful.

A neck-and-neck race at the beginning of October turned into a landslide on November 4^th. Bush was a now a heartbeat away from the top job. The narrative was that Tough-guy Reagan intimidated the Iranians into releasing the hostages just minutes after his inauguration, while he still giving his address. However, the president was now hopelessly compromised. He had been part of a criminal conspiracy that he was now obligated to extend. Iran, subject of Carter's arms embargo (which Reagan supported in public), was supplied with arms from the very beginning of Reagan's presidency.(102)

The operation – and the secret foreign policy that the administration routinely engaged in – morphed and extended, with funds from the covert arms sales through third-party Israel being used to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, in an effort to avoid another Congressional injunction. Then the CIA got greedy and trafficked cocaine from Nicaragua into Mena, probably because the profits generated by the sale of arms to Iran were insufficient if their Nicaraguan operation was to achieve success. And not just from Nicaragua – the paste the Contras processed came from the Mexican cartels.(103) The whole thing stunk to high heaven.

There are two postscripts to this tale of woe, both of which may have attempts by Bush to rid himself of Reagan and assume the presidency himself. Barely two months into his term, Reagan was shot and almost killed outside the Washington Hilton in DC. Once again, a 'lone nut' – in this case John Hinckley – was responsible. Coincidentally, Poppy Bush, the long-time acquaintance/friend of George DeMohrenschildt (Lee Harvey Oswald's mentor), was also friendly with the Hinckley family.(104) They had known each other for decades. They had lived close to each other, they socialized and the Hinckley's donated to several of Poppy's political campaigns.

“Even more strangely, Neil Bush, son of the vice president, was scheduled to have dinner with Hinckley’s brother, Scott, the day after the shooting.”(105)

So Bush was personally acquainted with Oswald's mentor and Hinckley's entire family including, no doubt, the shooter himself. You'd get long odds if you'd made that bet. The feeling that something about the assassination attempt is off, as with Trump' recent near miss, is exacerbated by the actions of the Secret Service. On the way into the hotel, the presidential limousine had pulled up directly outside the entrance, as per protocol, and Reagan had been at minimal risk. On the way out, things were different. The presidential limousine wasn't where it should have been and Reagan had to walk at least fifty feet in plain view of an unvetted crowd, in which - by pure coincidence – Hinckley lurked.

Figure 5

Again, as with the Trump attempt, it seems probable that his inner detail weren't in the know (if, indeed, it was an inside job) as the agent in the blue suit spread himself and took a bullet and others took down the shooter and hustled Reagan into the car. But, as so often, coincidences don't sit well, and the Bush family's reticence as to all things Hinckley merely adds to the mystery.

The second curiosity is in the unmasking of the Iran-Contra affair and, in particular, the timing of it. It has long been apparent that media coverage of political scandals has been spotty at best. Some are buried and others boosted out of all proportion. By way of example; Bush Snr's connection to two alleged presidential shooters was of no interest to the American mainstream outlets. In fact, the 'grey man', now elevated to the Vice Presidency, was still permitted to operate without negative press. The gun-running and drug smuggling operation in the Middle East and Central/South America was also granted protected status, despite the third Israeli weapons flight to Iran being shot down over the Soviet Union in July 1981.(106)

When another CIA flight, this time delivering weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras, was also shot down in October 1986, and the one contractor who survived the crash (Eugene Hasenfus) explicitly stated, on Nicaraguan TV, that it was an Agency flight, denials by the Secretary of State and the President were deemed sufficient evidence to kill the story. The CIA had the stones to issue the following statement:

“The guy doesn’t work for us, and CIA is not involved. . . . There are congressional restrictions on assistance to the contras, and we do not break those restrictions.”(107)

Bush skated even though, in his written confession, Hasenfus had stated that the flight's dead pilot was a personal friend of VP Bush “through the CIA”.(108) Documents found on the dead men linked them to Lt Colonel Oliver North, OIC the Contra operation. Logbooks found in the cockpit listed numerous flights staffed by Southern Air Transport, a known CIA front company.(109) Yet still, while unavoidably a scandal, it was walled off and contained. The press may have been suspicious, but they failed to dig deeper. Congress was definitely skeptical, but the expression of that skepticism was the usual, toothless investigation which would almost certainly subpoena the wrong officials.(110)

However, just a month later, with the Reagan-Bush axis once again in secret arms-for-hostages negotiations with the mullahs (this time in an attempt to free individuals seized by two Iranian proxies in Lebanon, the Islamic Jihad Organisation and Hezbollah), a single article in a Lebanese magazine was enough to bring down the entire Iran-Contra scheme, plus numerous administration apparatchiks.(111) The Iranian political scene was riven with factions and one of them had sought to undermine any agreement with the Great Satan, no matter what the circumstances. At least, that was the story.

From the beginning, there were suspicions that the leak had been orchestrated by elements within the Reagan administration. Years later, Seymour Hersh wrote an exposé which revealed that Bush had run his own team out of his office, one which bypassed the National Security establishment and Congress and primarily used elements of the military, although the CIA was also utilized. However, Bush's military types were keen to distance themselves from the Agency:

“The agency is not accountable to anybody – not the president, not Congress, not the American people. They will do whatever they want to support their mission, which is defined by them.”(112)

This ignored the fact that Bush and his two deputies were all CIA lifers,(113) and that this team – which eventually morphed into a hit-team – was complementing Bush's other covert activities with the Agency, at Mena and elsewhere. Most of the names on the hit-lists were from South or Central America and would likely have been rivals in the drug trade that fueled the black budget. Bush was the most senior conspirator in Iran-Contra. It was he who established policy, albeit covertly.

And it was a former member of this team that leaked the arms-for-hostages story to the Lebanese magazine, a year after the team itself had been disbanded. Hersh says that this was in reaction to the CIA's increasingly visible Contra operation, which threatened the entire house of cards.(114) This is highly unlikely, given the fact that Bush was running both (and could have reined the CIA in, had he so wished). Plus, Bush's team was no longer at risk and both Casey, the CIA Director, and the Admiral who had overseen the VP's private army, (conveniently) died before they could be hauled over the coals by Congress.

Bush's motivation was much more likely to be entirely self-serving – to bring down Reagan and assume the crown. His subordinates leaked the story, after all. The timing is also suggestive. November 1986 was two years into Reagan's second term and, under the 22^nd Amendment, Bush would have been allowed to step up for the remainder of the term and still seek two more terms himself.(115) Hersh depicts him as panicking when the scandal broke and being afraid for his political survival, as too many outsiders knew too much. This, too, seems unlikely. He had unleashed the crisis, unprompted. He wasn't reacting to adversity. He was channeling it.

The Tower Commission (the Congressional investigation) focused on Reagan and what he did and didn't know. The other Congressional Committees also studiously avoided drawing any connections between the events of 1985/86 and the October Surprise of 1980. Bush was never really in the cross-hairs and managed to run out the clock with regards to production of subpoenaed documents. Reagan was excoriated, by all parties. Congress stated that the buck stopped with him and that his administration was characterized by “secrecy, deception and disdain for the law.”(116)

Nonetheless, the 'Teflon President' survived the onslaught.(117) Bush, too. He was clean enough to run for president – successfully – in 1988. Others were thrown to the wolves including Reagan's Secretary of Defense and his National Security Advisor, both sacrificial lambs. Bush eventually pardoned them and a number of others in December 1992,(118) when he passed the baton on to a more junior Cabal member, Bill Clinton, who was up to his neck in the arms trafficking and drug running out of Mena, Arkansas – a side to the Iran-Contra scandal that the Special Prosecutor completely ignored.(119)(120)

Nearly forty years later, certain outcomes can be verified - there exists documentation that places both Bush and Clinton at the heart of the cocaine smuggling, for instance, including a tape recording,(121) and also contemporaneous notes made by a CIA-contracted pilot in April 1995. The screed reads, in part:

“Met Barry Seal in C-123...Asked Seal what was up with the cocaine being made in contra camps – said it was a CIA OPN. This shipment was going to California to make a drug called crack. Seal said that the CIA plans to get all the niggers in the US hooked on it and then throw 'em in prison. Said...the $'s for the crack goes to buy weapons for the contras. Asked him who is involved – he said it goes all the way to the White House.”(122)

Figure 6

But much also depends on our willingness to entertain the possibility that coincidences in politics actually exist. Or, perhaps, at what point in a stream of coincidences do we reach saturation level? In the period 1963-1981, a president and a likely president-to-be were murdered, two further coups removed sitting presidents and another president survived yet another 'lone nut' assassination attempt. That same president was then almost ousted by a scandal that his own VP's staff had caused to be made public in 1986.

But once Bush succeeded Reagan, the roiling waters quietened. Between 1988 and 2016 (with the exception of Clinton's 'bimbo eruption'), the Deep State was content with its presidential hires. The three stooges presumably delivered enough of what was required. Nobody tried to shoot them, either. They were all playing for the same team and they don't care to hide it.

Figure 7

Interestingly, throughout the coup era, there is no evidence that anyone took a run at Poppy Bush. No long guns aimed in his direction, no special investigators, no congressional investigations, no whispering campaigns. All Iran-Contra investigations trained their fire on others, when there was considerable evidence showing Bush to be the center of gravity. Numerous loose ends were tied off; both Seal and his partner-in-crime died premature deaths in 1986 and 1985 respectively, victims of a plane crash (yet another) and an assassination, the latter made possible by bail conditions that made Seal a sitting duck. If anyone was deserving of the sobriquet 'Teflon', it was Bush the Elder.

I believe that getting a real handle on the past helps us to understand the present and, perhaps, predict at least some of what's coming. The Cabal (or the Deep State) didn't go away when the chaos subsided. It was quiescent because it was getting what it wanted. Political upheaval would only have disrupted operations. But in 2016, it came a cropper due to its complacency. The vast disconnect between elite echo chambers and real people finally bit them where it hurts and they underestimated how many ballots they would need to insert to ensure victory.

And so, the old play-book was dusted off in an attempt to take out Trump. Russiagate, two impeachments, a stolen election, rampant lawfare and an assassination attempt have so far failed to get the job done. But they'll keep trying. And they'll keep lying about what they've done. The narrative of the past sixty years must be maintained because the illusion of a functioning republic is necessary if they are to continue to subvert it. These people are completely ruthless and the reality of a challenge that won't simply fade away like all the others is only going to cause them to double down.

The reason that the challenge won't dissipate is more to do with a burgeoning awakening amongst a significant proportion of the electorate than it is about the candidate himself. 'What else?' is a question that is gaining currency. This essay is a partial answer. But I'll leave the final word to Poppy:

“If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would chased doen the street and lynched.”(123)

Citations

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidential_election

(2) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/tucker-cia-took-nixon-wanted-know-killed-kennedy-woodward-intel-plant/

(3) https://www.kennedysandking.com/articles/biden-trump-the-cia-reflections-in-a-dark-mirror-nixon-vs-helms-1971

(4) Ditto

(5) https://wikispooks.com/w/images/f/fb/CrimeSoImmense.pdf

(6) https://whowhatwhy.org/culture/journalism-media/part-2-viva-zapata-3/

(7) Ditto

(8) https://covertactionmagazine.com/2018/12/05/george-bush-and-the-cia-in-the-company-of-friends/

(9) https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Zapata_Petroleum

(10) https://wikispooks.com/wiki/CIA/Drug_trafficking#Vietnam_War

(11) Ditto

(12) https://www.mintpressnews.com/cia-afghanistan-drug-trade-opium/277780/

(13) http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/deep_black_1_2.htm

(14) https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-4-barbaras-hair-raising-day/

(15) https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-3-where-was-poppy-november-22-1963/

(16) https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-5-the-mysterious-mr-de-mohrenschildt/

(17) Ditto

(18)https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Fifty_Years_of_the_Deep_State#The_Cabal_behind_the_Coup_of_.2763.E2.80.99s_Ongoing_Battle_to_Control_the_Presidency

(19)https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/06/20/watergate_at_50_revelations_from_newly_declassified_evidence_147766.html

(20)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/the_watergate_coverup_never_ends.html

(21) https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Watergate/Burglars

(22) https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/watergate-downing-nixon-part-3/

(23) https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/watergate-40-years-later-questions-endure-about-cias-role-in-the-break-in

(24) https://www.kennedysandking.com/articles/biden-trump-the-cia-reflections-in-a-dark-mirror-nixon-vs-helms-1971

(25)

Time to Reevaluate Watergate

(26) http://crimemagazine.com/frank-sturgis-%E2%80%9Ci-was-cia-assassin%E2%80%9D

(27) https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/frank-sturgis-fbi-24571/#file-97782

(28) http://crimemagazine.com/frank-sturgis-%E2%80%9Ci-was-cia-assassin%E2%80%9D

(29) https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19910710&slug=1293716

(30) https://whowhatwhy.org/hidden-power/watergates-known-unknowns/

(31) Ditto

(32)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/the_watergate_coverup_never_ends.html

(33) Ditto

(34)https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19910710&slug=1293716

(35) Ditto

(36) https://whowhatwhy.org/hidden-power/watergates-known-unknowns/

(37) https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/watergate-40-years-later-questions-endure-about-cias-role-in-the-break-in

(38) https://www.kennedysandking.com/obituaries/the-mysterious-life-and-death-of-james-w-mccord

(39) https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbarkerB.htm

(40) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/tucker-cia-took-nixon-wanted-know-killed-kennedy-woodward-intel-plant/

(41) https://www.kennedysandking.com/obituaries/the-mysterious-life-and-death-of-james-w-mccord

(42) Ditto

(43) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dean#Cooperation_with_prosecutors

(44)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Butterfield#Revelation_of_the_taping_system

(45) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Watergate_scandal

(46) Ditto

(47)

(48)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiro_Agnew#Criminal_investigation_and_resignation

(49) https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

(50) http://orientalreview.org/2014/11/07/german-politicians-are-us-puppets/

(51)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiro_Agnew#Criminal_investigation_and_resignation

(52) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/tucker-cia-took-nixon-wanted-know-killed-kennedy-woodward-intel-plant/

(53) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/06/watergate-style-journalism-biggest-threat-our-democracy/

(54) Ditto

(55) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Watergate_scandal

(56) https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Fifty_Years_of_the_Deep_State

(57) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution

(58) Ditto

(59) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/08/a-darker-horizon-the-assassination-of-shapour-bakhtiar.html

(60) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_about_the_Iranian_Revolution

(61) http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/deep_black_1_2.htm

(62) Ditto

(63) https://books.google.it/books?id=WFbDcsSLpDwC&dq=If+you+lift+Khomeini%27s+beard&pg=PA80&redir_esc=y

(64) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis

(65) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#Background

(66) William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, � 1992, 2004. Pluto Press Ltd. Pages 171-174.

(67-70) Ditto

(71) Bowden, Mark (2006). Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-87113-925-1, pg 19.

(72) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#Background

(73) Moin, Baqer (2000). Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 978-1-85043-128-2, pg 226.

(74) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/05/the-desert-one-debacle/304803/

(75) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#Background

(76)https://web.archive.org/web/20230126200330/https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview

(77)https://web.archive.org/web/20031110141342/http://www.mindef.gov.sg/safti/pointer/back/journals/2002/Vol28_2/5.htm

(78) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/05/the-desert-one-debacle/304803/

(79) Ditto

(80)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush#Nixon_and_Ford_administrations_(1971%E2%80%931977)

(81)https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Fifty_Years_of_the_Deep_State#The_Carter_Administration_and_the_Republican_Counter_Surprise

(82) https://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile7.html

(83) Ditto

(84) https://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/062410.html

(85) Ditto

(86) https://consortiumnews.com/2011/07/14/october-surprise-evidence-surfaces/

(87) https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/22/nyt-catches-up-to-parry-but-still-falls-short-on-october-surprise/

(88) https://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile1.html

(89) Ditto

(90) https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/11/the-october-surprise-was-real/

(91) https://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile3.html

(92-94) Ditto

(95) https://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile1.html

(96) https://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile1.html

(97) https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/22/nyt-catches-up-to-parry-but-still-falls-short-on-october-surprise/

(98) Ditto

(99) https://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/062410.html

(100) https://consortiumnews.com/2006/102706.html

(101) https://consortiumnews.com/2006/092006.html

(102) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair#First_few_arms_sales

(103)https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/TATUM/tatum.html

(104) https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/bush-angle-reagan-shooting-still-unresolved-hinckley-walks/

(105) Ditto

(106) https://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/062409.html

(107) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-10-07-mn-5118-story.html

(108) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-11-16-mn-7904-story.html

(109) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Air_Services_HPF821

(110) https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1986/10/12/366186.html

(111) https://www.wrmea.org/1994-september-october/why-secret-1986-us-iran-arms-for-hostages-negotiations-failed.html

(112) https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n02/seymour-m.-hersh/the-vice-president-s-men

(113) Ditto

(114) Ditto

(115) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

(116) https://www.theguardian.com/print/0,3858,5211614-103677,00.html

(117) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2004/06/07/15-years-later-the-remaking-of-a-president/bc74af08-c5cf-469c-bc51-84e2c2fb885c/

(118) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_George_H._W._Bush

(119)https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/mena.php#ixzz40Fpk7O5K

(12)https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/TATUM/tatum.html

(121) Ditto

(122)https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/TATUM/Graph19b.GIF

(123)https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/mena.php#ixzz40Fpk7O5K

Figure 1 https://robscholtemuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/H.W.-Bush-at-Dealey-Plaza-foto-Before-Its-News.jpg

Figure 2 https://robscholtemuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GHW-Bush-in-Dealey-Plaza-foto-4bp.blogspot.jpg

Figure 3 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iran_hostage_crisis_-_Iraninan_students_comes_up_U.S._embassy_in_Tehran.jpg

Figure 4 https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/Presidential-Approval-Ratings-Gallup-Historical-Statistics-Trends.aspx

Figure 5 By Michael Evans - Texas Humanities, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66710979

Figure 6 https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/TATUM/Graph19b.GIF

Figure 7 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/bill-clinton-barack-obama-george-w-bush-biden-inauguration/index.html