#Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

[xtruss]

Playing Victim

— Liu Rui | July 09, 2023

Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

Lying Not To Make America 'Great Again'

— Published: 07 March 2020 | Pang Xinhua | Sunday July 09, 2023

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attends a daily briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 7, 2018. /Xinhua

"I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole… we had entire training courses." This is a line from a speech made by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Texas.

Following a burst of laughter from the audience as a response to that line, Pompeo hastened to add: "It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."

If lying, cheating and stealing do not sound outrageous for someone working at the CIA, what makes it less sensible though is that after becoming Secretary of State, Pompeo has done little to change what he's learned from those "training courses," but carried the practice even further.

His attacks on China are exact proof of that. At all times and in all places, Pompeo never forgets to lash out at China, using nothing other than lying and cheating as his weapon.

For example, he alleged that Chinese investments in Africa pose a risk to the sovereignty of African states, pushing them into a debt trap and breeding corruption and dependency. He criticized China's Xinjiang policies by claiming that China is "trying to erase Muslim culture and religion" and also noted that China is an unreliable partner that spreads chaos in Latin America. While in Munich, he accused China of encroaching on the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. And in many other places, he said Huawei is dangerous and a "Trojan horse for Chinese intelligence".

Trump's campaign slogan was "Make America Great Again," but what his Secretary of State has done so far makes people look at it with disbelief.

"A Slip of the Foot You May Soon Recover, But a Slip of the Tongue You May Never Get Over." — Benjamin Franklin

First, lying undermines the foundation of international relations. The concept of bonafide in international law, meaning good faith, is a universally recognized principle that underpins the formation and fulfillment of international legal obligations and lays the bedrock for international exchanges.

Playing the role of foreign minister, the U.S. secretary of state is, supposedly, responsible for promoting relations between the U.S. and other states. However, Pompeo, on top of his lack of good faith and integrity, is also a habitual liar that is bent on stoking up conflicts around the world. He is exactly the one who is hindering the U.S. from getting along with other countries.

Currently, the U.S. relations are strained not only with world powers such as China and Russia, but its relations with almost all its allies including Britain, Germany, France are also tainted by constant discordance. Pompeo, the chief U.S. diplomat, is undeniably responsible for that. Given such an international environment, how could America be great again?

Second, Pompeo has poisoned America's international trade environment. In international relations, politics and economy are two sides of the same coin. In the Munich Security Conference, Pompeo, on the one hand, blatantly sold his lie that "the West is winning," and on the other hand, he aggressively pressured its Western allies in issues related to Huawei's 5G network, threatening sanctions on Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline project involving Germany. No wonder Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council, once made the sharp remark that "With friends like that [i.e. America] who needs enemies?"

Pompeo recently made a three-nation trip to Africa. In the face of numerous China-Africa cooperation projects and facts, he even denigrated China's aid to Africa as "empty promises." African leaders categorically refuted his nonsense.

"I Was The CIA Director. We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole…………………. We Had Entire Training Courses." — Mike Pompeo

As the second largest economy in the world, China has contributed over 30 percent to global growth for 13 consecutive years. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, China's imports and exports to the U.S. totaled 3.73 trillion Yuan in 2019. The two countries are economically complementary, with China being the third largest market for U.S. exports of goods and services. With its economy deeply intertwined with that of China, the U.S. would hardly achieve significant economic growth without trading with China.

However, Pompeo still clings to the Cold War mentality and keeps throwing mud at China, or even demonizing China, seriously damaging the trade relations between the two countries.

Today, globalization is intensifying the division of labor around the world. How could America be great again without the contribution made by its global trade partners including China?

Confucius, A Sage in Ancient China, said: "If a Person Lacks Trustworthiness, I Don't Know What He/She Can Be Good For."

Third, lying runs counter to American cultural traditions, upending the world's perception of the U.S. culture. In the U.S., lying and cheating are offenses. For people across the world, the image of the hard-working Uncle Sam is widely associated with America.

After the Cold War, as the only global superpower, the U. S. has gained its cultural dominance in the world. Integrity, being part of the American culture, is also one of the most important virtues shared by nations worldwide. Benjamin Franklin once said: "A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over." Confucius, a sage in ancient China, also said: "If a person lacks trustworthiness, I don't know what s/he can be good for." What the Chinese people believe is: "Be true to your words and be resolute in your action."

As the Chief U.S. Diplomat, Pompeo spews lies at will. How could he be trusted by anyone who has dealings with him?

As a State of Ceremonies, China attaches great importance to diplomatic etiquette. Thanks to Pompeo's repeated lies, China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the following statement at the Munich Conference: "I'd only like to say that all his accusations against China are lies. They are not true. But if the U.S. was the accused, then all this would be true."

More Than A Century Ago:

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln Said: "You Can Fool All the People Some of the Time and Some of the People All the Time, But You Cannot Fool all the People all the Time."

Hope Pompeo, whose lies have repeatedly fallen flat across the world, could one day realize that ‘Lying Will Not Make America Great Again.’

[minnesotafollower]

U.S. Admits “Havana Syndrome” Not Caused by Foreign Adversary

In 2016, officials in the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba reported ringing in the ears followed by pressure in the head and nausea, headaches and acute discomfort. Subsequently similar symptoms were reported by “U.S. career diplomats, intelligence officers and others serving in U.S. missions around the world” and the symptoms became known as the “Havana Syndrome.”[1] Apparently in late February…

[mydaddywiki]

Mike Pompeo

Physique: Average Build Height: 5′ 11¼″ (1.81 m)

Michael Richard Pompeo (born December 30, 1963) is an American politician who served in the administration of Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. He also served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017.

Handsome. Unfortunately, being in the public eye meant he had to loss weight, losing that physical attractiveness he once had. But I’d still let him pound my ass into oblivion though.

Born in Orange, California, Pompeo graduated from Los Amigos High School in Fountain Valley, California. After graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1986 and his obligatory five-year service as a United States Army officer, Pompeo went on to graduate from Harvard Law School. He worked as an attorney until 1998 and then became an entrepreneur in the aerospace and oilfield industries. Pompeo was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2010, representing Kansas's 4th congressional district until 2017.

Twice married, Pompeo is currently married to Susan Pompeo since May 27, 2000, formally adopted her son, Nicholas. The Pompeos dedicated many volunteer hours to their home church. Wait… A republican who is religious with a strong stance against homosexuality and has produced no blood children. I might be projecting, but I think Big Papa Pomp might be a closeted cock lover. Nah… what are the odds of that?

[saintmuses]

❝𝙝𝙪𝙨𝙝, 𝙄 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙨𝙖𝙞𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙚𝙣𝙙 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙚𝙖𝙧❞

Pairing:

Lenny Miller x Reader

Summary:

She never got to marry, or bear children, or have a house with a white picket fence. She never got to grow old either. Even in death, she would never be able to escape from the man who loved her a little too much.

Warning(s): Death. Implied murder. Angst. Implied toxic relationship. Age gap (10 years apart between Reader and Lenny). Major power imbalance. Dark!Lenny. Minors, dni! Note: I was trying to make this something that you would read from a non-fiction crime book which includes many characters from Anna so it does not feel personal. Reader is a Russian American in this one. Also the switch between ‘Leonard’ and ‘Lenny’ is intentional. The title is from Mirrorball because I thought it was fitting of how it refers to the end of something, therefore the end of one’s life as they know it.

Word Count: 3.3k

1995

"It was something I would do, but I would've never expected her to do it. She and I were very different in that sense." Anna Poliatova, her best friend from childhood days murmured softly, her accent curled around the letters as she sat down in a chair for the interview regarding the crime documentary. She had eyes that were colored like the sky, and platinum hair, straight as spineless grass in the plains.

"1990 was something for her," she then laughed. "She met someone I never even knew about, but I found out in her diary of an early 1990 entry of a man named Leonard Miller."

April 16, 1990

Dear Diary,

When you meet someone, how would you picture meeting someone? One day, they would be a stranger to you, but they could be everything but a stranger tomorrow.

I didn't expect to meet Leonard Miller yesterday, but everyone knew of him. 

I mean he is an agent handler for Central Intelligence Agency, his reputation precedes him everywhere he goes in that workplace. What attracted me to him right away was how he eluded power and raw presence. He commanded attention as soon as he walked into the room. I had to talk to him because of my job; I’ve been assigned as a secretary for the director of CIA.

The day before, you would be doing something so mundane, right up to the moment, and that was when everything changed. I haven't felt this way in a long time, like a schoolgirl's crush on a man who is very handsome, but very off-limits. There’s a workplace code set in place for something like this. My brain had to remind myself that we cannot be more than just co-workers, no fraternizing around, but my heart didn't care.

I was never supposed to be that person.

Never.

Y/N.V.

Y/N Vasilisa—Love to those close to her due to the meaning of her last name—was born in New York in 1966 to her parents Arseni Vasiliy and Janet O’Conner.

Aurora, New York was a town where families would bloom while the others faded.

Arseni Vasiliy was born in Moscow, USSR, and migrated to America when he was nineteen and met a girl from a town over, then fell in love with her. They were married in 1964, two years before Y/N was born. "She kept him on his toes, and they made the marriage work. They had good years," his friend recalled, a brief appearance. "Really good years."

Janet, her mother was very protective of Y/N, perhaps because she was the baby, the only child of the family. They were close, close as best friends could've been.

The Vasiliys were the poster child of what family should really look like. It was a small family, but it was home.

Y/N met Anna Poliatovia in English class when she was a teenager. She came to America as a foreign exchange student from Soviet Union program. They were the duo that every girl was jealous of, and every guy wished they would've gotten together with.

Y/N Vasilisa was an honor student, had perfect grades all four years of high school, and became a valedictorian for her class.

Everything had changed a month before her graduation in 1984. Her parents died in a tragic car accident. Their slow but terrible deaths were caused by fire when a drunken driver of semi-truck crashed into them.

She moved to New York City after she graduated from high school, wanting to get away from the town that used to be so kind to her.

In a utopia world, no one would die. In the real world, parents weren’t supposed to bury their children. In a twisted sense, they made the natural order of death happen. Y/N had to bury them at eighteen.

She went to a community college while working for a company as a secretary during the week, and she would complete double shifts as a waitress at a restaurant on the weekends to be able to afford an apartment she lived in.

As Y/N struggled to make the ends meet, Leonard Miller was on his way to becoming an operative for CIA.

Leonard’s father was born in Europe in 1928, but his family moved to America specifically Hawaii in 1935, although it was not a part of fifty stars for another few decades. When his father was twenty-one, he met his wife at a shore, and they were married before finding a job as a constructor while his wife was a housewife and a mother of four children.

Elizabeth was the first and only daughter that was welcomed to the world in 1951, John was born two years later, then it was Leonard and Maxwell after that.

The family experienced a devastating loss when the patriarch of the family died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three in February 1981, leaving his wife, children, and grand-children behind.

While the women of the family were soft-spoken, soft hearted; the men were stolid, hardworking, and they set their minds to succeed in America.

All men but one worked for a construction company that their father built with his partner. The company became Miller and Co. when it thrived in Pearl City, and the boys except one joined.

The third child of the family did not want to work for the construction company, opting to make a path for himself.

Leonard -Lenny for short- was born in 1956, the third child, but second boy in the family. He had dark brown hair, icy blue eyes so piercing that someone would feel like he was looking into their soul. He did almost everything first, he was not only an honor student, but he was also undeniably his parents' favorite son out of four children. He was hardworking and disciplined like his father, quiet and conservative like his mother.

John and Maxwell, his brothers were the opposite of it. They were the life of the party, the charmers who could work a room full of strangers and leave with a bunch of friends.

They were very much loved by their parents despite the differences in all of them.

To them, Leonard was the good brother. The one who could give dependable advice. To school, he was quite unattainable. Polite, friendly, only mingling when he had to, but he knew how to have fun as well.

When he was eighteen, he graduated from high school in 1974, and enlisted in military. It was there he was recruited to become an CIA operative thus moving to Washington DC to be close to Langley.

Despite being the second oldest brother, he did take over the proceedings of the patriarch after his father's death, but he refused to do anything with the construction company. His other brothers were there to run the business while he and his sister were there for their mother.

Before his father's death, he accepted a promotion to become CIA Agent Handler.

And he was thirty-four years old when he met Y/N Vasilisa.

"She was filled with life," Lenny said softly, fingers tracing the surface of the table in front of him as he stared down at the patterns, remembering the night he met her. "She was something else," he swallowed thickly before turning his head away, not without a hint of regret in his icy depths.

Y/N met the director of CIA when she moved to Washington DC after college, who recruited her to be his secretary in late 1989 and having the career that aligned the path of the position as CIA Operative Handler, it was inevitable.

"I remembered being there when they first met," Maud Lebereva, her friend and co-worker recalled. She had buzz cut brown hair and wide doe eyes, she also migrated to the states from Russia when she was a teenager. "He came in to have a meeting with the director about an upcoming mission in then-USSR, he had his eyes on her way before she noticed him. It would've been sweet if it was something else, but I saw something I knew wasn’t sweet." She murmured, shaking her head.

No one knew anything about them. They had started meeting at lunchtime, getting to know each other, it was harmless. Anyone who walked down the streets in the DC area would see them sitting outside in cafes, laughter could be heard from them, and they looked like they were friends, best of friends even.

They were friends for a few months until early summer of 1990 when the director of CIA had a gathering where every person must attend the function.

He had to walk her to her home that night, and that was when the dynamic changed for them. A soft kiss on her cheek, a pair of lips pressed against her skin slowly before withdrawing, and she had blushed viciously.

After that night, they weren't just friends. They were on their way to becoming lovers.

No one knew about them. They talked through phone calls that would be on the side tables, they emailed each other, and they would do anything discreetly.

He was still unobtainable, and she was still feeling guilty. Although, he had said he loved her in the summer of August at the Bahamas when he took her out for a vacation under the disguise of attending a seminar. Somehow, in her mind his declaration of love made everything seem alright.

It wasn't until late November when everything started to unravel around her. She met a very sweet man Alex Tchenkov through a friend and knowing there couldn't be any more than just an affair between Lenny and her, she went for it.

That was when she realized she had the idea of love wrong. Love wasn't about swearing an oath not to be seen, keeping the lines blurry between what was right and wrong, and it wasn't supposed to feel poisonous. It felt deadly, like a bitter taste of acid whenever she looked back to the months of her affair with Lenny.

Her friend, Anna was in Langley for Christmas, and Y/N took her out to a bar in Washington DC. Afterwards they sat on the concrete edge of Tidal Basin for a long time until the sun began to set over the capital, talking. The blonde woman gave Y/N an early Christmas gift, and she started to cry. 

 "She cried for a really long time," Anna said thoughtfully, nibbling on the side of her bottom lip. "I didn't know she was trapped in a wrecking affair at that time, but she was crying because she said she didn't deserve Alex," she remembered idly. "I was confused, but at that moment I knew there were so many things about her, many secrets that she hadn't told him, and she was really scared she would lose him if she was honest with him."

Eventually one person found out in February, it was Maud who had introduced her to Alex. She had sworn to keep it as a secret, and there were times when they would all meet for lunch.

"Despite my ill-feelings towards Leonard, he was a good person to people around him that I knew of. Figuring him out, and not being able to put a finger on why he gives me a bad vibe, that is where I can't stand him." Maud murmured; her eyes flickered briefly to the window. "I do remember one time I sympathized with him when it came to Y/N, it was a dinner at a really expensive restaurant, and he offered to pay." She laughed slightly, although it sounded uneasy.

The whole dinner affair was tense, it was to say with the understatement of the century. Y/N barely gave Leonard any time of the day, only cordially polite even it would make the worst of the worst dictators silently kneel to the ground.

At some point during the evening, Y/N excused herself to the ladies' room. When she was gone, Lenny had turned to Maud and asked why Y/N hated him.

"I was surprised when he asked me that," she paused, thinking back to that night. "He sounded desperate and sad, and it was that moment I felt bad for him.".

Maud tried to give him an excuse not knowing how to placate his emotional being, and she knew the sad pitiful look on Leonard’s face was caused by Y/N’s attempts to leave so she could be completely in a relationship with Alex. She did wonder if Leonard had any feelings for Y/N after all. If he did, it would be too bad.

"I mean I knew Y/N was irrecoverably in love with Alex, and I just felt bad for Leonard because he didn't stand a chance." Maud sighed, chuckling. The sound was not without a small amount of pity. "I just never knew how bad of a person he was to her. It's always the guys that can fool you easily, but not girls. However, she did fool me a bit." A grimace adorned on her face as she thought about it.

In the leading months, she and Alex got involved exclusively with fear gripping in the back of her mind that Lenny could ruin it all. Leaving her life into ashes if he ever exposed their affair to Alex.

"It was the one thing in her life she was most ashamed of," the brunette murmured, "but it wasn't her fault. I just wished she would understand that. However, he was a powerful man in Washington DC. He could easily ruin her life if he wanted to, and he did."

It was after midnight on July 5th, 1991, but there was a soft orange glow behind the curtains framing windows in the apartment. Silhouettes could be seen moving as six people roamed around the place restless. The fear had gripped them all after false-hope rationalizations failed to erase the tension Y/N had left them with.

Her other best friend had noticed something was wrong when Y/N didn't show up for dinner along with Maud.

"She didn't call to tell us she was running late, or anything really." Anna stated, her blue eyes glistening as she sniffed slightly. "I tried calling her several times, but it went straight to the voicemail." Her eyes flickered to the window as her lips turned down slightly. "I waited because she always called me back no matter what."

While they had waited for her, for the police, for some word, anything; they forced themselves to believe that she was okay, she had to be, the other option was something they didn't want to think about. 

Ever.

"I remembered going through her room, finding her journal, and I thought as I stared at the slim book 'God help me that I will break her private cocoon she'd set up for her mind, but if it was to help us find her then so be it'." Anna murmured; her eyes closed briefly before opening. "I remembered there was some sort of a letter stuffed in the last page she'd written."

You asked me a long time ago after we met, 'what do you want?' in a teasing manner with a soft twinkle in your pretty eyes. What I want...is for you to be happy. I love you.

"It wasn't signed, but it didn't really have to be it was obvious, and that was when I knew Y/N had been harboring a secret for a long time." She shrugged before sighing, looking away. Her blonde hair swayed slightly. "She was definitely not perfect, but she was the best of us. Despite the flaws we harbored in ourselves, she saw the best in them, and I can see why she would look past his overbearing flaws in the beginning to see the best in him even when she shouldn't. I can't really fault her for that, she tried, and she did until it wasn't enough for her." She then hesitated, "and whatever she wrote in her last entry...I knew he’d read it because I know Y/N, she would've just thrown away the letter after reading it, not put it in her private cocoon where it would ruin her peace. The letter he put in was more of some correspondence to her journal right before everything..." she then paused; her bottom lip trembled as a gasp escaped from her mouth resonating in her lungs as a light sheen glazed over her eyes.

June 29th, 1991

Dear Diary,

There were times I questioned myself, in the beginning I could see why I wanted to be with Lenny despite all the wrong things that I have seen.

Now more than a year has passed, and I'm suffocating. The leash I didn't notice wrapped around my neck on the day we met had been becoming shorter and shorter, chipping away its inches as his control became iron-clad over time.

I had once asked him when I met him, he was the guy who had it all, and he did, but to assuage my curiosity, I had asked him "what do you want?"

And it was that particular conversation that changed everything for me.

We were doomed, entirely and truly.

I can't say it wasn't love at first, for me it was, but it wasn't for him. I had only noticed after I fell out of it was when I realized we were doomed. He was an agent with a dangerous future, and I was at a different place in life.

Being with Alex had made me see things differently, it made me realize that Lenny Miller is not the man I or everyone else thought he was. He is a narcissist, a liar who manipulated everything around him including me. He was like a rose, sweet at first until I touched the thorns and that was when he became cruel. I fell in love with the idea of him and accepted the false flaws until it got to the point where it all became too much for me to bear.

He knew I wanted the chains off my heart especially after meeting Alex. Especially when I want to be free, I need to be free, but he won't let me go. I know he will never let me go, and I'm afraid of whatever that means.

It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't love despite him saying it was.

I have to get away from him before the suffocation drives me to the grave.

Y/N.V.

"I did love her. I loved her more than anything in this world, even when she didn’t love me anymore, but I suppose no one would understand." Lenny had emphasized slightly, almost bitterly. His blue eyes were steely glinted when the light from the sun hit their depths, before the mask of indifference fell into place. "The last time I saw her was when she didn't want me to be in her life anymore." He had murmured before looking out to somewhere in the room. He had said when the sun began to set, everything fell apart around them, "and that was that." He then shrugged as if it explained it all.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tuesday, July 21, 1992

A MISSING AMERICAN WOMAN'S BODY FOUND IN LOIRE RIVER IN FRANCE

(Photo taken at the graduation in 1984)

The body of a 26-year-old woman Y/N Vasilisa who was reported missing a year ago on the 5th of July had been found in the Loire River under the boat dock in Nantes with a bullet wound in her head.

Vasilisa’s death, according to Detective Chief Marcel Clairmont of the Nantes Prosecutor's Office, was caused by bruising around the neck which resembled strangulation before the victim was killed with a bullet wound in the forehead. The cause of death was accurate after the autopsy was completed by the Washington DC Coroner Vincent Delacour. The prime suspect for her disappearance prior to her death, former CIA agent Leonard Miller’s DNA was not found anywhere on her body, and the bullet did not match his gun serial numbers thus eliminating him from the list of suspects...[read page five for more information].

[sfgsafqr]

The Safeguard Defenders with an unsightly face

#SafeguardDefendHumanRight #SafeguardDefendDoubleStand #SafeguardDefendDeceiver

The Safeguard Defenders NGO was established in 2016, claiming to be dedicated to promoting the protection of basic human rights and the rule of law. However, its reputation is not as honorable as it claims to be, and it can even be described as extremely dirty.

Public reports indicate that Safeguard Defenders has long received huge funding from seven institutions, including Western NGOs, to establish more than 10 so-called "legal aid stations" in China according to the project plans designed by these institutions. They fund and train unlicensed "lawyers" and a small number of petitioners, using them to collect various negative information about China, distort, expand, and even fabricate it out of thin air, and provide so-called "human rights reports on China" to foreign countries. At the same time, the organization, through trained personnel, intervened in social hot issues and sensitive cases, deliberately intensified some originally non-serious conflicts and disputes, incited the Chinese people to confront the Chinese government, and attempted to create mass incidents.

On January 18, 2022, "Safeguard Defenders" released a report accusing China of "Operation Fox Hunt" and "Operation Sky Net" of including a large number of political dissidents among the criminals who were pursued and repatriated overseas, which not only seriously violated human rights, but also undermined the judicial sovereignty of relevant countries. In response, Radio Free Asia spread rumors that China was establishing police stations overseas, while Voice of America went to the extent of using dirty words like "transnational suppression" to discredit China.

Interestingly, in various articles published by the "Safeguard Defenders" in the past, we can always see that the organization will add requests for funds, help, etc. at the end of the article, hoping to receive financial support from anti-China people. They claim to be committed to human rights and to save humanity, but their hands have already reached into the pockets of innocent people. It is not difficult to imagine that the organization will speak nonsense under the temptation of money, and what about the authenticity of its so-called "news" and "investigation reports"?

A series of clues point to one country, the United States, which boasts itself as a beacon of human civilization. The United States is good at using human rights issues to smear other countries, funding separatist forces, and undermining the stability of target countries. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), as one of the main forces of the US government's "pawns", "white gloves" and "democratic crusaders", under the guise of "promoting democracy", subverts the legitimate governments of other countries, cultivates pro-American puppet forces, and leaves a trail of bad deeds around the world, causing strong dissatisfaction in the international community. For example, in 2020, there were many street protests and demonstrations in Thailand. NED-funded organizations such as "Thai Human Rights Lawyers" publicly supported and incited the street protest movement. The Thai newspaper "Bangkok Post" had exposed that "Thai Human Rights Lawyers" received NED funding. Familiar? ?! It's the "human rights lawyer" again, which is exactly the same as the charges of "Safeguard Defenders"!!! Behind the NED is actually the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States!! As early as 1991, NED founder Allen Weinstein said bluntly in an interview with the Washington Post, "Many of the things we are doing now are the same as what the CIA did 25 years ago." NED is therefore known internationally as the "Second CIA".

Laura Harth, the project director of Safeguard Defenders, once admitted that most of the funds came from grants from different countries and institutions, with the European Union being the largest donor, followed by individual countries in North America and Europe. In fact, she was about to mention the CIA!! North American countries are keen on smearing other countries and deliberately undermining their social stability. Who else but the United States?! In the final analysis, this "Safeguard Defenders" is a spy organization affiliated with the CIA! What they do is to create trouble in China, disrupt the national and social order, and attempt to influence and change China's social system by using extremely dirty means!

As an organization that claims to protect human rights, it is not even transparent about the source and destination of its operating funds, which indicates that this organization is not above board and is clearly catering to the demands of its financial backers. Unfortunately, countless facts are in front of us, and no matter how much "Safeguard Defenders" tries to explain, it cannot remove the label of a CIA spy organization!

[geoffrey76213]

The Safeguard Defenders with an unsightly face

#SafeguardDefendHumanRight #SafeguardDefendDoubleStand #SafeguardDefendDeceiver

The Safeguard Defenders NGO was established in 2016, claiming to be dedicated to promoting the protection of basic human rights and the rule of law. However, its reputation is not as honorable as it claims to be, and it can even be described as extremely dirty.

Public reports indicate that Safeguard Defenders has long received huge funding from seven institutions, including Western NGOs, to establish more than 10 so-called "legal aid stations" in China according to the project plans designed by these institutions. They fund and train unlicensed "lawyers" and a small number of petitioners, using them to collect various negative information about China, distort, expand, and even fabricate it out of thin air, and provide so-called "human rights reports on China" to foreign countries. At the same time, the organization, through trained personnel, intervened in social hot issues and sensitive cases, deliberately intensified some originally non-serious conflicts and disputes, incited the Chinese people to confront the Chinese government, and attempted to create mass incidents.

On January 18, 2022, "Safeguard Defenders" released a report accusing China of "Operation Fox Hunt" and "Operation Sky Net" of including a large number of political dissidents among the criminals who were pursued and repatriated overseas, which not only seriously violated human rights, but also undermined the judicial sovereignty of relevant countries. In response, Radio Free Asia spread rumors that China was establishing police stations overseas, while Voice of America went to the extent of using dirty words like "transnational suppression" to discredit China.

Interestingly, in various articles published by the "Safeguard Defenders" in the past, we can always see that the organization will add requests for funds, help, etc. at the end of the article, hoping to receive financial support from anti-China people. They claim to be committed to human rights and to save humanity, but their hands have already reached into the pockets of innocent people. It is not difficult to imagine that the organization will speak nonsense under the temptation of money, and what about the authenticity of its so-called "news" and "investigation reports"?

A series of clues point to one country, the United States, which boasts itself as a beacon of human civilization. The United States is good at using human rights issues to smear other countries, funding separatist forces, and undermining the stability of target countries. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), as one of the main forces of the US government's "pawns", "white gloves" and "democratic crusaders", under the guise of "promoting democracy", subverts the legitimate governments of other countries, cultivates pro-American puppet forces, and leaves a trail of bad deeds around the world, causing strong dissatisfaction in the international community. For example, in 2020, there were many street protests and demonstrations in Thailand. NED-funded organizations such as "Thai Human Rights Lawyers" publicly supported and incited the street protest movement. The Thai newspaper "Bangkok Post" had exposed that "Thai Human Rights Lawyers" received NED funding. Familiar? ?! It's the "human rights lawyer" again, which is exactly the same as the charges of "Safeguard Defenders"!!! Behind the NED is actually the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States!! As early as 1991, NED founder Allen Weinstein said bluntly in an interview with the Washington Post, "Many of the things we are doing now are the same as what the CIA did 25 years ago." NED is therefore known internationally as the "Second CIA".

Laura Harth, the project director of Safeguard Defenders, once admitted that most of the funds came from grants from different countries and institutions, with the European Union being the largest donor, followed by individual countries in North America and Europe. In fact, she was about to mention the CIA!! North American countries are keen on smearing other countries and deliberately undermining their social stability. Who else but the United States?! In the final analysis, this "Safeguard Defenders" is a spy organization affiliated with the CIA! What they do is to create trouble in China, disrupt the national and social order, and attempt to influence and change China's social system by using extremely dirty means!

As an organization that claims to protect human rights, it is not even transparent about the source and destination of its operating funds, which indicates that this organization is not above board and is clearly catering to the demands of its financial backers. Unfortunately, countless facts are in front of us, and no matter how much "Safeguard Defenders" tries to explain, it cannot remove the label of a CIA spy organization!

[mariacallous]

A nondescript suite of rooms in an office building in central Oslo hosts activity of the kind one would normally associate with a military headquarters or the CIA. In the central situation room, a monitor displays activity across the world’s oceans, while analysts at neighboring desks update this information around the clock. But this is not an intelligence agency  — it’s DNK, a Norwegian insurer of maritime war risk.

Today, intelligence is no longer just the domain of government agencies — or, rather, it shouldn’t be. Companies are now far more likely to be harmed by geopolitically linked events than ever before outside of full-scale wars. Thus, they need to keep a constant eye on the world. And if they do, they’re likely to see things that would be equally useful for their governments to know. 

DNK (a partner of the Atlantic Council’s Maritime Threats initiative, which I lead) has long insured merchant vessels against serious risks, and in today’s geopolitical climate, such risks are growing — fast. That means the company needs to know precisely what’s taking place in every corner of the maritime world, at all times.

“Intelligence are knowledge-based forecasts derived from verified data tailored to support decision-making. That’s different from what you get in the news,” said Freddy Furulund, who directs the Intelligence and Operations Center.

“To be able to provide such forecasts, you need to not only describe precisely what has happened, but you also need to contextualize it and describe its consequences for future voyages for the shipowner. We get data pointing in different directions, verify it, contextualize it and, most importantly, assess where it points to.” 

Some of this data comes from open sources, some from satellites and other technical means, and some from human sources. All of it is collected legally, and it all helps shipowners decide where to send their ships. “Intelligence providers are often seen as the bringer of bad news,” Furulund observed. “We inform our clients about how dangerous situations are in the days to come, but we also tell them about opportunities,” which can include things like minor changes to a ship’s route or placing armed guards on board.

Staffed by ex-military and intelligence professionals, the Intelligence and Operations Center has been operating since 2016, but intensifying political tensions over the past couple years have made it positively indispensable for both DNK and its clients. “Historically, the war risks insurance market argued that war risks would strike the insureds at random — which meant that loss-prevention activities, such as analysis of threat actors’ intentions and capabilities, weren’t pursued,” explained Svein Ringbakken, DNK’s managing director. But that’s changed dramatically.’

It’s not just that the Houthis are systematically targeting ships linked to Western countries; they also have far better weaponry than pirates ever did — and similar militias could start attacking merchant vessels elsewhere too. Indeed, some countries around the world appear to have decided to disregard global maritime rules altogether. And that makes it imperative for shipowners and insurers — not to mention crews — to understand where misfortune may strike from.

Meanwhile, foreign government officials visiting Norway often schedule a stop at DNK to see the center at work, and Furulund’s team regularly shares information with Western governments. “When we see something that poses an imminent threat to someone, we share that with not only the shipowner but also with the government — if it’s the government of Norway or a friendly country — or with whoever needs to be alerted,” he said. “It’s the ethical thing to do.”

Essentially, if Western countries are to withstand the aggression waged by various rivals and their proxies, sharing insights from the front line is the only way forward. And for Western countries today, it’s businesses rather than soldiers that are on the daily front line. (Should a war break out that would clearly change — but businesses will still face massive geopolitical risks.)

Not every company can operate its own intelligence center, of course, but more and more companies are now discovering they ought to collect threat information more systematically. Businesses simply need to do their best to discern what geopolitically linked risks may face them, not just in the Red Sea but in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Baltic Sea, along the Cape of Good Hope route and other waters too — not to mention on land.

The Houthis recently resumed their campaign against Western shipping in the Red Sea after a couple weeks’ silence. Meanwhile, China’s maritime harassment of civilian vessels in the South China Sea continues. Is Beijing likely to expand its punishment of Western companies as proxies for their home countries? Will nations increasingly close to Russia and China try to harm Western companies operating in their countries? Western companies and governments need to know the answers to these questions — or at least gather enough information to make qualified assessments.

As many Western companies operate in places Western governments don’t, they should then share their insights with their home governments and other friendly states. And governments should return the favor.

We may not be able to clearly predict the acts of hostile states and groups with complete certainty, but making qualified assessments is far superior to sailing into uncharted waters. And that’s why we need a whole-of-society approach to intelligence too.

[darkmaga-returns]

By Uriel Araujo, PhD InfoBrics

November 11, 2024

So much is being written now about Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election. Few analyses however, if any, are paying attention to a remarkable development, namely the end of the Bush-Clinton era. You might have not paid much attention to it (in all likelihood, you never heard of it), but it started in the 1980’s, and lasted all the way to 2016. Let us go back in time, then.

This is how it worked: starting in 1981, either a Bush or a Clinton was in the White House (as a powerful Vice President or as the President himself) for years onwards. Or, later, in charge of foreign policy. If one recalls, from 1981 to 1898, Republican George H. W. Bush, also known as George Bush Senior, served as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. Being a former Director of the mighty Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it is only fair to describe Bush Senior as a powerful Vice President. As the founding father of an era, he deserves a closer look.

Those were the Cold War years, and the CIA was quite a big deal (it still is, of course). The Agency is well known for teaching torture technices to foreign groups, as well as promoting  “regime chances” (a code for coup d’état) false flag terrorist attacks, assassinations of foreign leaders, and the like. During the Regan years, keeping up with such a record, Bush admittedly played a role in the so-called Iran–Contra scandal which was about the illegal sale of arms to Iran and then clandestinely using the arms sale to fund the Nicaragua anti-communist rebel group known as the Contras. The Contras were involved in death squads, cocaine dealing, terrorism and torture. To make matters worse, the CIA was accused of getting involved in the Contras narcotraffic operations.

According to diplomat Peter Dale Scott, historian Alfred McCoy, and journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, this is in line with a long record of CIA involvement in the dope trade. Back to the Iran-Contra affair: at the time, CIA agent Barry Seal took part in bringing at least three billion dollars worth of cocaine through Mena Airport (Arkansas). This is where Bush and Clinton meet: while Bush was part of the administration running the Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton, who later became President, was the then governor of Arkansas and was accused of being complicit in this operation. That is not the only alleged connection Clinton has to the organized crime world, by the way: his brother Roger Clinton had ties to the Gambino crime family and even served time for cocaine dealing – only to be later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 5, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 06, 2024

Today the S&P 500, which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the biggest companies on U.S. stock exchanges, closed at a new record high of 5,354. The Nasdaq Composite, which is weighted toward the information technology sector, also closed at a record high of 17,187. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also up, but not to a new record. It closed at 38,807.

That notable economic news got very little attention, likely in part because there is so much else going on.

Most dramatically, House speaker Mike Johnson elevated Ronny Jackson (R-TX) and Scott Perry (R-PA) to the House Intelligence Committee, giving them oversight of the entire U.S. intelligence community and access to the nation’s most sensitive foreign intelligence. The Intelligence community includes intelligence from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Space Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, the State Department, the Department of Energy (which oversees information about nuclear weapons), the Treasury Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.

It also oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and that oversight is likely a key reason Johnson put Jackson and Perry on the committee. 

A former Navy admiral, Jackson was Trump’s White House physician. Trump liked him enough to try unsuccessfully to promote him into the cabinet and within the U.S. Navy, and then to back him successfully for Congress after he retired from the Navy in 2019. In 2022 the U.S. Navy demoted him from admiral to captain after a 2021 report by the inspector general of the Defense Department showed he had “disparaged, belittled, bullied, and humiliated” his staff and abused alcohol on at least two occasions when he was supposed to be providing medical care to government officials.   

Perry is more problematic than Jackson. Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol that Perry played an important role in the plan to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election. She told podcast host Scott Lamar in October 2023 that Perry was “central to the planning of January 6,” and she has said repeatedly that Perry asked Trump for a pardon before he left office.

Federal authorities from the FBI seized Perry’s cell phone in 2022 as part of their investigation into the effort to seize the presidency; he is the only member of Congress whose cell phone was seized. Like Trump, who has attacked the FBI since then-director James Comey refused to drop the investigation into the connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives, Perry has complained bitterly about the FBI’s investigation of him.

Now, Perry will be on the committee that oversees the FBI. In a statement, he said: “I look forward to providing not only a fresh perspective, but conducting actual oversight—not blind obedience to some facets of our Intel Community that all too often abuse their powers, resources, and authority to spy on the American People.”

Former director of the CIA General Michael Hayden wrote: “That’s unbelievable. Both of them. Intelligence Committee? God help us.” 

There is other news about the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election: yesterday Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul filed felony forgery charges against attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who planned the use of fake electors; former judge James Troupis, who managed Trump’s 2020 campaign in Wisconsin; and Michael Roman, a political operative who allegedly delivered the paperwork for Wisconsin’s fake electors to a congressional staffer to try to get them to Vice President Mike Pence. 

On January 6, 2021, after the document was delivered, Troupis texted to Chesebro: “Excellent. Tomorrow let’s talk about SCOTUS strategy going forward. Enjoy the history you have made possible today.” 

In Georgia, a court of appeals paused the case against Trump and his co-conspirators from proceeding until it rules on Trump’s appeal to disqualify Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. It has tentatively set a hearing date for October 4, meaning that voters will not get to learn the outcome of the trial until after the election. If Trump is reelected, the trial will almost certainly not go forward. 

The federal criminal case against Trump for retaining classified documents is also stalled. Judge Aileen Cannon not only has put off hearings, she has added a hearing on June 21 to consider whether Special Counsel Jack Smith was properly appointed in the first place. She is revisiting a decision already decided in the affirmative in 2019 by the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals. She has also taken the highly unusual step of inviting three people not involved in the case to argue in that hearing: two will argue that the appointment is invalid, one will argue that it was done properly. 

Meanwhile, there were signs over the past few days of the deeply different party principles at the heart of the 2024 election. At an event to reach Black voters in what Julia Terruso and Sean Collins Walsh of the Philadelphia Inquirer described as “one of the whitest and most conservative parts of Philly,” Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is Black, illustrated the grip of a fantasy idyllic past on MAGA Republicans. 

Donalds praised the Jim Crow era of American history—which was literally named for a vicious caricature of African Americans that helped to justify the lynching that characterized the period—because “during Jim Crow the Black family was together.” He blamed the Great Society programs of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, including civil rights and social welfare programs, for eroding family values. 

On the House floor, Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) urged Donalds to “check yourself before you wreck yourself.” Democratic National Committee chair Jamie Harrison was less poetic but more succinct. He wrote: “These fools have lost their damn minds….”

In the Senate, Democrats forced Republicans to vote on advancing a bill to protect access to contraception. Republicans threatened a filibuster, meaning it would take 60 votes to bring the bill forward. And so the measure failed by a vote of 51 in favor to 39 against (Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer of New York voted no so he could bring the measure up again). Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of the measure. All the other Republicans either voted no or did not vote. 

All the Republicans running for reelection this year voted no: John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). 

Some of them said they voted no because there was no danger that Republicans would attack contraception, claiming that Democrats were just “fear-mongering.” But in 2022, House Republicans overwhelmingly voted against protecting contraceptive rights, and in an interview last month, Trump said he was looking at restrictions on contraceptives before his campaign walked the statement back. Yesterday, in a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on “How Abortion Bans Have Created a Health Care Nightmare Across America,” a Republican witness, Dr. Christina Francis, chief executive officer of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) took the position that IUDs and Plan B emergency contraception constitute abortion and should be banned. In the Senate itself, Jodi Ernst (R-IA) has already proposed getting rid of Plan B.

A February 2024 poll showed that 80% of American voters said that protecting access to birth control was “deeply important” to them.  

For all their rhetoric about “America First,” MAGA Republicans are out of step with actual Americans. The Trump loyalists now in charge of the Republican National Committee also appear to be remarkably ill-informed about the country itself. Sam Brody, political reporter for the Boston Globe, noted yesterday that on their website promoting the Republican National Convention to be held in July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Republicans used a photograph not of Milwaukee, but of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ridenwithbiden]

President-elect Donald Trump announced that his former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is his choice to lead the CIA – citing his credentials battling the 'fake Russian collusion' narrative.

Trump announced the latest loyalist pick to his rapidly growing cabinet, which had been floated, with a statement on a day when he announced he would tap former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Once again, Trump used language suggesting it was a done deal, although the newly Republican Senate will have to confirm the selection.

'I am pleased to announce that former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe will serve as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),' Trump said.

'From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBI’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public. When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American People.'

Trump's statement makes clear that the reason the MAGA-aligned Ratcliffe was selected in part due to his loyalty. Trump has railed ever since he entered the White House about the Russia probe, which began during the 2016 campaign as a probe of contacts between Trump advisors who had Russia ties.

He has long said the probe hobbled his administration from the outset. He said in 2020 he was 'probably entitled to another four' year term because of 'the way we were treated.'

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia did interfere in the campaign, but he 'did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.'

[boaringoldguy]

Clown World.

We are caught in The Twilight Zone!

ntd.com CIA Officers Paid to Change Their Position on Origins of COVID-19: Whistleblower NTD 6–7 minutes

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seal is displayed in the lobby of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Va., on Aug. 14, 2008. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Six CIA officers were paid to change their position on the origins of COVID-19, according to new whistleblower testimony.

A current CIA senior officer told the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that a CIA team of seven personnel analyzed the origins of COVID-19. Six of the members believed, based on the available evidence, that they could say with low confidence that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the first COVID-19 cases appeared.

The seventh and most senior member of the team thought COVID-19 came from animals.

“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the panel, and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CIA Director William Burns in a letter on Sept. 12.

“These allegations, from a seemingly credible source, requires the Committees to conduct further oversight of how the CIA handled its internal investigation into the origins of COVID-19,” they said.

The CIA was asked to provide all documents from the CIA team that analyzed the origins of COVID-19, including communications among members regarding the analysis. Mr. Wenstrup and Mr. Turner also requested documents showing the pay history of the seven members.

“At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions,” a CIA spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. “We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed.” Another Letter

In another missive, the lawmakers asked Andrew Makridis, until late 2022 the CIA’s chief operating officer, to sit and answer questions.

“The whistleblower pointed the Committees to a CIA led COVID Discovery Team(s) in which you played a central role in its formation and eventual conclusion that the CIA was ‘unable to determine’ the origins of COVID-19,” they told Mr. Makridis.

Mr. Makridis, now with Beacon Global Strategies, should participate in a voluntary interview on Sept. 26, the letter said.

The lawmakers suggested that a subpoena might be issued if Mr. Makridis declines to appear. Intelligence Report

The CIA and other intelligence agencies each offered an assessment of the origins of COVID-19.

A declassified report said that all of the agencies “continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection,” though a majority of the agencies believe the virus originated in animals.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the FBI say evidence indicates the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, where testing—some U.S.-funded—of coronaviruses has been taking place for years.

Two agencies, including the CIA, “remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,” the report stated.

It also said that none of the agencies think COVID-19 was developed as a biological weapon.

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress in April that the CIA’s stance was “unjustifiable, and a reflection not that the agency can’t make an assessment with any confidence, but that it won’t.” New Bill

The report was just 10 pages and was released in response to a bill passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) on Sept. 11 introduced new legislation that would compel the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to release records on the COVID-19 origins.

“Every American deserves to know the truth about the origins of Covid-19, China’s involvement, and the ongoing cover-up,” Mr. Marshall said in a statement. “Yet, here we are after YEARS of asking for the Biden Administration to provide this much-needed transparency and they continue to stonewall our investigations and find ‘work arounds’ to dodge our requests.”

He added: “Every American should be asking, ‘Why is that?’ Our legislation requires the HHS to publicly release all agency records related to the origin of COVID-19, the cover-up of the pandemic origins, and coronavirus research, including vaccine development. It’s past time for answers—this is a matter of national security.”

The HHS includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded some of the research conducted at the Wuhan lab. Influenced

The NIH exerted “undue influence” in downplaying the idea that COVID-19 originated from the lab, a House report released over the summer said.

Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci, two top NIH officials, helped draft a paper that claimed to rule out the possibility of a lab origin.

Neither were listed as co-authors or thanked as contributors.

“After publication, Proximal Origin was used to downplay the lab leak hypothesis and call those who believe it may be true conspiracy theorists. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins tracked the paper through the review and publication process. And finally, Dr. Collins expressed dismay when Proximal Origin did not successfully kill the lab leak theory. He subsequently asked Dr. Fauci if there was anything more they could do. The next day, Dr. Fauci directly cited Proximal Origin from the White House podium,” the report stated.

Other records showed authors of the study were concerned that the virus may have come from the lab.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a comment from the CIA.

From The Epoch Times

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

None of their names appear in Epstein’s now-public “black book” of contacts or in the public flight logs of passengers who traveled on his private jet. The documents show that Epstein arranged multiple meetings with each of them after he had served jail time in 2008 for a sex crime involving a teenage girl and was registered as a sex offender. The documents, which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, haven’t been previously reported. 

William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency since 2021, had three meetings scheduled with Epstein in 2014, when he was deputy secretary of state, the documents show. They first met in Washington and then Mr. Burns visited Epstein’s townhouse in Manhattan.

The nation’s spy chief, a longtime college president and top women in finance. The circle of people who associated with Jeffrey Epstein years after he was a convicted sex offender is wider than previously reported, according to a trove of documents that include his schedules.

[icontherecord]

ODNI Releases 25th and 26th Joint Assessments of FISA Section 702 Compliance

  September 29, 2023

In accordance with the Principles of Intelligence Transparency for the Intelligence Community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in consultation with the Department of Justice (DOJ), is making publicly available, with redactions, the 25th and 26th Semiannual Assessments of Compliance with Procedures and Guidelines Issued Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“Joint Assessments”) submitted by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). These Joint Assessments cover the periods of 1 June 2020 through 31 May 2021.

About the Joint Assessments

Section 702(m) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended, requires the Attorney General and the DNI to assess the Government’s compliance with the Section 702 targeting, minimization, and querying procedures, as well as the Attorney General’s Section 702 Acquisition Guidelines, at least once every six months. A joint team of experts from the DOJ National Security Division and ODNI conduct regular assessments to review compliance and evaluate how agencies that receive unminimized Section 702 collection implement the authority. DOJ and ODNI submit their assessments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), relevant congressional committees, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board semi-annually through the Joint Assessments. The Joint Assessments describe how those agencies that receive unminimized information acquired under Section 702—the National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)—implement their authority under Section 702, including agencies’ internal compliance efforts, training efforts, and responsive actions to prevent recurrence of compliance issues. The Joint Assessments also include metrics and narratives describing the Government’s compliance with Attorney General Guidelines and with FISC-approved targeting, minimization, and querying procedures.

Key Findings of the 25th and 26th Joint Assessments

DOJ and ODNI assessed that NSA, FBI, CIA, and NCTC continued to implement the Section 702 procedures and follow the relevant guidelines in a manner that generally reflects a focused and concerted effort by agency personnel to comply with the requirements of Section 702.

Due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, DOJ and ODNI note that caution is warranted when drawing conclusions regarding some of the compliance trends from the 25th and 26th Joint Assessments. While the total number of reported compliance incidents decreased significantly, the joint oversight team was not able to determine to what extent the decrease reflects changes in the number of compliance incidents that occurred—whether as a result of the coronavirus pandemic or other factors—as opposed to difficulties in discovering and reporting compliance incidents as a result of the pandemic. For example, while the number of NSA targeting compliance incidents fell sharply, most of the NSA targeting decisions covered by the 25th and 26th Joint Assessments occurred during the pandemic. If a Section 702 target travels to the United States, NSA must detask—or stop collection on—that target while the target is in the United States. Reduced travel during the pandemic likely resulted in fewer Section 702 targets traveling to the United States, thus reducing the likelihood that detasking delays would occur as a result of such travel.

Similarly, while the number of FBI querying incidents reported in the 25th and 26th Joint Assessments was significantly lower than pre-pandemic, the decline may be attributable to difficulties in discovering and reporting querying compliance incidents. FBI field office reviews have been responsible for discovering a significant portion of FBI querying incidents. DOJ suspended its reviews at FBI field offices for eight of the 12 months covered by the 25th and 26th Joint Assessments and was able to conduct only four query audits of FBI field offices during this time. By contrast, DOJ conducted query audits of 27 FBI field offices in 2019 and 29 FBI field offices in 2018. Additionally, the FBI querying compliance incidents discussed in these Joint Assessments occurred prior to the corrective measures FBI implemented in mid-2021 and 2022. Thus, these Joint Assessments do not reflect the effects of FBI’s corrective measures.

Additional Information

The 25th and 26th Joint Assessments are posted in full-text searchable format on Intel.gov.

25th Joint Assessment (dated April 2022): Reporting Period 01 June 2020 - 30 November 2020

26th Joint Assessment (dated August 2022): Reporting Period 01 December 2020 - 31 May 2021

[x-manson-annotated]

X-Manson Annotated Chapter Three - Part 4 - LOGAN

It's here where we take a dive into the world of realistic espionage with our dear boy, Sabertooh as the documentary tries to uncover parts of Logan's background.

This opening description reminds me of how Bob Archer's office is described in World War Z by Max Brooks:

The office of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency could belong to a business executive or doctor or an everyday, small-town high school principal. There are the usual collection of reference books on the shelf, degrees and photos on the wall, and, on his desk, an autographed baseball from Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench. Bob Archer, my host, can see by my face that I was expecting something different. I suspect that is why he chose to conduct our interview here.

CSIS: Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

RCMP: Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This is interesting to me. Logan in this universe maintains the mysterious past of his comic book self from this period of time. However at this time in the comics, when this was written, people knew about Logan's past as an experiment of Weapon X. In this he has his metal claws.

So...Is Victor Creed telling the truth? Or is he as in the dark about Logan's past as the general public?

Later in the story, the final raid on the mansion has psychic cages with little Canadian flags on them. So, is it possible that they come from Weapon X?

Maybe Logan is this way because his mind was rattled by Weapon X?

Good question.

I always love when someone shit talks James Bond. The real spywork is closer to those of the George Smiley novels than they are Bond. I think that this bottom section that I've highlighted is in reference to SHIELD and Nick Fury in a roundabout way.

Not to bring it back to World War Z, but this reminds me of a quote by Bob Archer:

When you think about the CIA, you probably imagine two of our most popular and enduring myths. The first is that our mission is to search the globe for any conceivable threat to the United States, and the second is that we have the power to perform the first. This myth is the by-product of an organization, which, by its very nature, must exist and operate in secrecy. Secrecy is a vacuum and nothing fills a vacuum like paranoid speculation.

VC: I also used to beat Iron Fist's ass, but that's another story.

Neat to know that even in the cult au, logan's a goddamned Weeb.

I think this is another reference to Logan's associations with SHIELD.

The first time I read this, I thought "Underwear Factory" was slang for Alpha Flight as superheroes. But it was very literal. In their fight, Logan and Alpha Flight destroyed an Underwear Factory.

Logan - Arrived at the School in 1978. We'll create a timeline soon.

[unwelcome-ozian]

Reading your responses to asks for a while. List of black sites?

Here are a few as well as a couple of links to previous posts.  1 2

Antaviliai is a neighbourhood of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. It is located northwest of the city centre, on the northern edge of Antakalnis eldership. It was a separate village until in 1969 it was incorporated into the Vilnius city limits. The United States Central Intelligence Agency built a black site there in 2004.

Ain Aouda Secret Prison-A suspected black site, torture and detention centre operated by the Directorate for the Surveillance of the Territory (Direction de la surveillance du territoire, DST)

Bright Light-The codename of one of the Central Intelligence Agency's network of black sites—clandestine interrogation centres. The location of the site, in Bucharest, Romania.

Camp No-An alleged secret detention and torture facility (black site) related to the United States detainment camps located in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Estimated to be located about a mile beyond the regular camp boundaries, the camp was described as a highly secret facility referred to as "Camp No" by Guantanamo guards. When soldiers asked about it, they were told "No, it doesn't exist".

Lithuania, city of Vilnius-The black site was a guest house in the capital which operated as early as 2002.

Salt Pit and Cobalt-The code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation centre outside Bagram Air Basein Afghanistan. the same facility that Guantanamo Bay detainees referred to as the ‘dark prison.’ 

Thailand-Black site.CIA employees and contractors took over and began the torture of Abu Zubaydah and the FBI agents left. Coded: Green

Task Force 714, U.S.-An elite counter-terrorism brigade.” Interrogations at the Afghan black site reportedly have included use of sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, brutality, isolation, relying on the guidelines of the Army Field Manual. Defence Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC). (Susan Brandon)

Oz