Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

Two Euro Whistleblowers Dead -- Ties to NSA Spying?

by Steven D
Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 06:23:27 PM EST

Sometimes, in my internet research, I come across a story that reads like it came straight out of a Robert Ludlum novel.

That was certainly my reaction when I recently came across this post by Joseph Cannon on August 22nd at Bradblog involving the deaths of two men, telecommunications experts in Italy and Greece, respectively. Both men seemingly committed suicide within months after publicly revealing their discovery of two separate instances of an American led effort to eavesdrop on various governmental officials, businessmen and antiwar activists through the use of hidden spyware in each country's principal telecommunications' networks:

Two whistleblowers — one in Italy, one in Greece — uncovered a secret bugging system installed in cell phones around the world. Both met with untimely ends. The resultant scandals have received little press in the United States, despite the profound implications for American critics of the Bush administration.
Last month, Italian telecommunications security expert Adamo Bove either leapt or was pushed from a freeway overpass; he left no note and had no history of depression. Last year (March, 2005), Greek telecommunications expert Costas Tsalikidis met with a similarly enigmatic end. Both had uncovered American attempts to eavesdrop on government officials, anti-war activists, and private businessmen.

Hardly surprising this story hasn't generated any attention in the American media. The details of each case are ambiguous, and the facts have been obscured both by the deaths of the two men in question, by what appears to be a deliberate effort to destroy evidence of this of illegal wiretapping, and because the relevant authorities in both countries shut down the official investigations after they ruled that the deaths were suicides. Furthermore, this happened in Europe, not America, and our American media is notoriously negligent in its coverage of important stories from overseas (as, for example, this story I posted a while back involving the Bush administration’s maddening refusal to assist the Swiss government in its investigation into a smuggling ring involving nuclear materials and technology). What we do know, based on the European reports cited in Mr. Cannon's post, however, suggests the existence of a massive, coordinated effort by the Bush administration to violate the laws and sovereignty of other nations in its attempts to gather information, regardless of the tenuous connection such eavesdropping may have to the "War on Terror." One that may have led directly to the death of two men who had exposed elements of this ongoing spy program operating in their countries: Adamo Bove in Italy, and Costas Tsalikidis in Greece.

First, a report on the mysterious death of Adamo Bove from Indymedia Italia:

Just after noon on Friday, July 21, Adamo Bove — head of security at Telecom Italia, the country's largest telecommunications firm — told his wife he had some errands to run as he left their Naples apartment. Hours later, police found his car parked atop a freeway overpass. Bove's body lay on the pavement some 100 feet below.
Bove was a master at detecting hidden phone networks. Recently, at the direction of Milan prosecutors, he'd used mobile phone records to trace how a "Special Removal Unit" composed of CIA and SISMI (the Italian CIA) agents abducted Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, and flew him to Cairo where he was tortured. The Omar kidnapping and the alleged involvement of 26 CIA agents, whom prosecutors seek to arrest and extradite, electrified Italian media. U.S. media noted the story, then dropped it. The first Italian press reports after Bove's death said the 42-year-old had committed suicide. Bove, according to unnamed sources, was depressed about his imminent indictment by Milan prosecutors. But prosecutors immediately, and uncharacteristically, set the record straight: Bove was not a target; in fact, he was prosecutors' chief source. Bove, prosecutors said, was helping them investigate his own bosses, who were orchestrating an illegal wiretapping bureau and the destruction of incriminating digital evidence. One Telecom executive had already been forced out when he was caught conducting these illicit operations, as well as selling intercepted information to a business intelligence firm.

And the strangely similar tale of the death of Costas Tsalikidis as reported by the BBC's website:

Last month, the government admitted that the mobile phones of the prime minister, the most senior members of the cabinet and top security officials had all been tapped in 2004 - the year Athens hosted the Olympic Games.
The committee in Athens has been questioning executives from two of the world's leading mobile phone companies, Vodafone and Ericsson, about the scandal.
But attention is also increasingly focusing on the alleged suicide of a senior Vodafone manager just after the phone-tapping operation was discovered on the Vodafone network last year.
In a serene but cramped graveyard in the western suburbs of Athens, lies the body of Costas Tsalikidis, a network manager for Vodafone Greece.
He is buried with other members of his family. But his gravestone shows he died aged just 38. He was found hanged in his apartment on the morning of 9 March last year. [...]
...[H]is family believe his death is suspicious and are calling for his body to be exhumed so a second post-mortem can be carried out by one of the world's leading forensic pathologists, Dr Michael Baden of the United States.
"They believe they will find new evidence," says the family lawyer, Themis Sofos.
Dr Sofos adds that other parts of the original investigation were weak.
"No one went to the house of Costas, no one took photos and to see the circumstances of his death... no one took fingerprints." [...]
But there is another theory about Costas Tsalikidis: that he was allegedly the person who actually inserted the software setting up the phone-tapping operation. [...]
The theory is put forward by John Brady Kiesling a former American diplomat who worked at the US embassy in Athens until resigning in 2003 over the US-led invasion of Iraq.
He is convinced American intelligence agents were behind the whole bugging operation and he says it is possible they used Mr. Tsalikidis to install the software.
"I believe he committed suicide to protect his professional honour," says Mr. Kiesling.

Pretty strange coincidence. Cannon at clearly believes the two cases are linked to a broader American electronic spying network throughout Europe with the assistance of at least two major multinational telecommunications firms:

The CEO of Vodaphone in Greece, George Koronias, has — like Giuliano Tavaroli, his Italian counterpart — come under the suspicion of having a hidden relationship with American and British intelligence. At least three Vodafone communications hubs (one expert says the number could be as high as 22) were compromised by the eavesdropping technology. Koronias had reported only two of these bugs, and had failed to alert a watchdog agency of the discovery of further listening devices.
Vodafone is a British company, comparable to Sprint in the United States. Testifying before a Greek parliamentary committee, Koronias insisted that no-one in the U.K. could have had any connection to the ultra-sophisticated spyware.
'Only Ericsson's staff could have set up such a device,' he said. Ericsson furiously countered that Vodafone not only knew about the illegal software but had activated it at the request of British intelligence agents.
More on Ericsson's official response:
Ericsson, the company that produces the software used by Vodafone, issued an announcement clarifying that two types of software were employed for tapping the phone conversations.
The first one employed legally had been developed by Ericsson and had been installed in Vodafone, yet it was not activated. The second software, which was of unknown origins, namely it had not been developed by Ericsson, had been illegally installed in Vodafone’s system to activate the legal software and erase the traces of the phone-tapping.
This is, by any measure, a troubling admission — especially since Ericsson manufactures many mobile phones used in the United States. Vodaphone insists they were never informed of this "feature" in Ericsson phones, although Ericsson executive Bill Zikou has testified that the company disclosed the truth via its sales force and instruction manuals.

Are you, like me, pondering the likelihood that your cell phone may be bugged by the US government? And do you really believe this surveillance program to tap into mobile telecommunications is limited to Europe and to phones manufactured by Ericsson? I sure don't. And I am more than a little suspicious that the two men who just happened to know the most about how this, arguably illegal, electronic spying program operated in their own countries both committed suicide after revelations regarding this scandal first became known to the public.

With all that's been disclosed over the past year regarding the NSA's data mining and warrantless surveillance programs, I've always felt that what we know is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how far Bush has been willing to go to spy on his "enemies" foreign or domestic. These two disturbing cases from Europe, barely reported upon, if at all, by our provincial, lazy, stenographic journalists in America, suggest that Bush has invaded our privacy to an extent that would make George Orwell's Big Brother green with envy.

NSA Ericsson Vodafone Warrantless eavesdropping Adamp Bove Costas Tsalikidis Italy SISMI Greece John Brady Kiesling NSA Spying Scandal War on Terror Civil Liberties Privacy Rights

Two Euro Whistleblowers Dead -- Ties to NSA Spying? | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Two Euro Whistleblowers Dead -- Ties to NSA Sp (4.00 / 5)

Also posted in Orange

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt

by Steven D on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 06:47:44 PM EST

Suicided (4.00 / 3)

I was trying to follow all these strange suicides, but Wayne Madsen pretty much tries to be on top of it. Check his latest comment on this topic

Aug. 21, 2006 -- More neo-con malfeasance surfaces in Europe -- three "suicides" getting another look and ransacking of a Socialist presidential candidate's home point to more Bush administration and neo-con dirty tricks.

or this in an August 18 entry

When this editor states that these two journalists have conducted their investigations at much risk to themselves is not literary license. Caylor, who ties the Florida and Alabama GOPs to drug dealing and murders going back to the days of Barry Seal and cocaine smuggling for George H. W. Bush's Iran-Contra scheme, has recently seen his 78-year old mother bludgeoned to death by unknown assailants. The Alabama Bureau of Investigation's response to Caylor in his time of distress: "99.99 percent of what you have on your web site [ www.insider-magazine.com ] is pure bullshit." In the Dixie Mafia's world, racists tied to the Klan and Aryan Nations supplement their income by running drugs and engaging in contract murders for their political and crime bosses. Their activities have been the focus of Caylor's print and Internet publications.

September 26, 2005 -- Another suicide covered up at the State Department. State Department insiders are reporting another suicide of a State Department employee involved with Middle East policy. Although WMR is still trying to obtain the name of the deceased official, we can report that she worked in the Press and Public Diplomacy Branch of the State Department's Near East and South Asia Bureau. On November 7, 2003, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research chief Iraqi analyst John J. Kokal was reported to have committed suicide by jumping head first to his death from the secured roof of the State Department's headquarters. A few weeks later, a former CIA official, Dr. Gus Weiss, an opponent of the Iraq war, reportedly jumped to his death from the Watergate complex, just a few blocks from the State Department.
Another "suicide" at Foggy Bottom
Both Kokal and the recent State Department suicide were later reported by senior department officials to be despondent over "personal" issues. However, in both cases, the State Department instituted an information blockade on details surrounding the deaths.

October 14, 2005 -- In what has become typical for the main stream media in Washington, the Washington Post yesterday reported on the murder of a high visibility lawyer without delving into his past association with high-level GOP officials. If the Post's story was taken at face value, the bludgeoning to death of lawyer Eric N. Miller at a cheap Fairfax County motel near Alexandria, Virginia was just a case of a Harvard Law School graduate from a prominent civil rights family in Alexandria falling on hard times and winding up hanging around with a couple of crackheads in various low rent motels.
On the evening of September 7, DC police discovered the body of Miller in the trunk of a burning Ford Taurus in a crime-ridden neighborhood in southeast Washington. Miller had been beaten to death with a pipe at the Alexandria Motel on Route 1 in Fairfax County, just across the town line from Alexandria.
A female companion of Miller's, Kristin Kozak, told DC and Fairfax County police that she witnessed Miller arguing with Dana Moro, 46, in a room at the Alexandria Motel. Kozak said Moro struck the 45-year-old Miller with a metal pipe, killing him. The two then used Miller's ATM card to make withdrawals at bank machines around the Washington area to buy gasoline, cleaning agents, and a sleeping bag used to burn Miller's body. Kozak has not yet been charged in the case but Moro is being held on murder charges.
The Washington Post would have us believe that is the end of the story. it is not. Miller was a top lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1999 to May of this year. Miller's time at the SEC spanned high-level corporate fraud cases, including Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Halliburton, and Senator Bill Frist's Hospital Corporation of America.
Yet another mysterious death of someone connected to the Bush administration
But Miller, an African American, also crossed paths with some dangerous right-wing groups. In 1998, before going to work for the SEC, Miller represented Jefferson Davis Camp No. 305 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in a law suit brought against the Confederate Memorial Association (CMA). According to people familiar with the case, the dispute arose from the attempt by extreme right-wing elements, including the Ku Klux Klan, National Alliance, Aryan Nation, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, former-North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, and the Bush family, to take over the Confederate Memorial Hall and Library in downtown Washington from the CMA. These right-wing elements intended to use the hall for various GOP right-wing fund raising events and money laundering activities, including support for GOP political candidates, under the umbrella of various 501c3 tax-exempt organizations.
One of the past commanders of Camp No. 305 is Richard T. Hines, a top GOP lobbyist with close ties to the George W. Bush White House, particularly, Karl Rove.
Ironically, the Alexandria Motel murder scene was around the corner from the scene of another case widely under reported by the Washington media. On September 29, 2003, Bertha Champagne (note: the linked article refers to Champagne's son, it was later discovered that the person on the phone was her son-in-law), a domestic employee of Marvin Bush, the president's brother, was crushed to death in the driveway in front of the Bush compound at the corner of Fort Hunt Rd. and Edgehill Drive. Marvin Bush claimed that Champagne's car went into gear as she attempted to retrieve a package from the vehicle, pinning her up against an outbuilding on the property. In fact, the vehicle was a late model SUV.
In June 2000, Porter Goss's Executive Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, John Millis, was found shot to death from a reported suicide at a seedy motel on Route 50 in Fairfax City, Virginia. In all three cases, Miller, Champagne, and Millis, Virginia's colonial era anachronisms of overlapping jurisdictions of counties like Fairfax and independent cities like Alexandria and Fairfax City lent themselves to incomplete law enforcement investigations of the suspicious deaths.

and what about one of Dick Cheney's friends who suspiciously died while sailing? There are a bunch of other cases...wasn't there a journalist critical of BushCo who was bludgeoned to death in a peaceful Washington area?

Don't Panic

by fourtytwo on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 07:05:23 PM EST

The Total Surveillance Society (4.00 / 5)

Thanks for this, Steven. Yet another puzzle piece, but we don't know how it fits yet.

But this system itself cannot be the reason for the deaths. Anyone - in business, in government, in activism, who thinks their phones aren't routinely bugged by multiple governments is just naive. Once the technology became available, it was only a matter of time before it was widely used.

The story of complete coverage of the planet's communications was revealed YEARS ago, and the system itself is even older than that. Here's a snippet from a 1988 article on this topic:

The vast international global eavesdropping network has existed since shortly after the second world war, when the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed a secret agreement on signals intelligence, or "sigint". It was anticipated, correctly, that electronic monitoring of communications signals would continue to be the largest and most important form of post-war secret intelligence, as it had been through the war.

Although it is impossible for analysts to listen to all but a small fraction of the billions of telephone calls, and other signals which might contain "significant" information, a network of monitoring stations in Britain and elsewhere is able to tap all international and some domestic communications circuits, and sift out messages which sound interesting. Computers automatically analyse every telex message or data signal, and can also identify calls to, say, a target telephone number in London, no matter from which country they originate.

A secret listening agreement, called UKUSA (UK-USA), assigns parts of the globe to each participating agency. GCHQ at Cheltenham is the co-ordinating centre for Europe, Africa and the Soviet Union (west of the Ural Mountains).

Codenamed Echelon, this system is capable of monitoring literally all communications - be they analog or digital, whether transmitted by wire or satellite. Here's some more info re this:

With 15,000 staff and a budget of over £500 million a year (even without the planned new Zircon spy satellite), GCHQ is by far the largest part of British intelligence. Successive UK governments have placed high value on its eavesdropping capabilities, whether against Russian military signals or the easier commercial and private civilian targets.

Both the new and existing surveillance systems are highly computerised. They rely on near total interception of international commercial and satellite communications in order to locate the telephone or other messages of target individuals. Last month, a US newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, revealed that the system had been used to target the telephone calls of a US Senator, Strom Thurmond. The fact that Thurmond, a southern Republican and usually a staunch supporter of the Reagan administration, is said to have been a target has raised fears that the NSA has restored domestic, electronic, surveillance programmes. These were originally exposed and criticised during the Watergate investigations, and their closure ordered by President Carter.

After talking to the NSA, Thurmond later told the Plain Dealer that he did not believe the allegation. But Thurmond, a right-wing Republican, may have been unwilling to rock the boat. Staff members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said that staff were "digging into it" despite the "stratospheric security classification" of all the systems involved.

The Congressional officials were first told of the Thurmond interception by a former employee of the Lockheed Space and Missiles Corporation, Margaret Newsham, who now lives in Sunnyvale, California. Newsham had originally given separate testimony and filed a lawsuit concerning corruption and mis-spending on other US government "black" projects. She has worked in the US and Britain for two corporations which manufacture signal intelligence computers, satellites and interception equipment for NSA, Ford Aerospace and Lockheed. Citing a special Executive Order signed by President Reagan. she told me last month that she could not and would not discuss classified information with journalists. But according to Washington sources (and the report in the Plain Dealer, she informed a US Congressman that the Thurmond interception took place at Menwith Hill, and that she personally heard the call and was able to pass on details.

Since then, investigators have subpoenaed other witnesses and asked them to provide the complete plans and manuals of the ECHELON system and related projects. The plans and blueprints are said to show that targeting of US political figures would not occur by accident. but was designed into the system from the start.

Now, lest anyone think this is a recent development, back in the seventies, a tap on Capitol Hill that ended in an empty room at the Bureau of Prisons in DC tapped all capitol hill conversations. It appears this link may have been monitored by agents of the CIA, in their efforts to control Congress. Allen Dulles and Jim Angleton would routinely joke about their "take" from the town the night before. This should come as no surprise, as the CIA originally blackmailed its way into existence. Through the use of an Army bigwig, OSS members got personal data from secretaries, files, and then went to Congress and said here, here's what ANYONE could find on you. Aren't you lucky it was us that found this stuff first? Hoover didn't want the CIA or any competing agency, so the pre-agency operatives ran an operation on him as well that resulted in a photo of Hoover and his longtime lover Tolson in a very compromising position. That ended Hoover's objections to the formation of what became the CIA, and Angleton in particular used that photo to coerce Hoover's cooperatoin in the Kennedy assassination.

We have, for some time, been living in a TOTAL SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY. If you stick your head up and make a name for yourself, you can and will become a target. If you have made any mistakes in your life they will be found. It's just horrific, and there's no way to stop it because information is power, and no one gives up power voluntarily, and I can't imagine any circumstances under which those who have this capability would voluntarily or even involuntarily agree not to use it.

So it must not be the system itself, but information gleaned from it, that warranted the suiciding, if that's what happened, of the two people mentioned above. What exactly did they know?

I'm still wondering over the death of some 11 microbiologists, all killed in bizarre ways (one stuffed naked into a locker) in "message" killings designed to silence others. After 9/11, in the wake of all the Anthrax attack scares (and booming CIPRO profits for Bayer), I couldn't help but wonder if they'd been killed because they would have been able to identify a soon to be used strain of some biological agent. Fortunately, no biological agent was released. Maybe they were planning to release it and were murdered to stop the release. I don't know. And I'd like to know. I'd like to find a journal on the planet interested in pursuing THESE stories.

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

by Real History Lisa (lpeaseRemoveThis@gte.net) on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 07:40:03 PM EST

Great post (4.00 / 2)

and informative as usual. When are YOU going to become a talking head on CNN or CNBC or something similar! :)

by northcountry on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 11:20:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Great post (none / 0)

When? When I find a way to that alternate universe where Gore is President (although really, that is the REAL universe and we've veered into this horrible alternate one.)

Thanks for the nice compliment though. Always appreciated!

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

by Real History Lisa (lpeaseRemoveThis@gte.net) on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 12:54:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

You're welcome (none / 1)

I enjoy your stuff. It's well thought out and researched, laid out factually , and avoids veering off into paranoia land.

I wish more people who researched the edges and the darkness took your approach.

by northcountry on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 11:20:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: You're welcome (none / 0)

Sigh, I wish they did too. Thanks. I'm having a conversation behind the scenes with a well-respected journalist who seems incapable of seeing another side in the arguments re 9/11 between the "plane hit the Pentagon" theory and the official story. I don't believe EITHER. I believe a plane DID hit the Pentagon. I think it was Flight 77. But I think the Pentagon is hiding something, because the facts don't all line up. The journalist sees this as all or nothing - either you're with the nuts, or with the government, no middle ground. He's also persuaded by scientists he saw on PBS that describe the pancaking of the building. I don't know what happened, and don't subscribe to the explosions theory or the pancake theory because I haven't had satisfactory answers yet on the question of the melted steel. Experts say both - that steel can melt at much lower temperatures, and also, that it doesn't melt at such lower temperatures. So I'm waiting to get more information. I think it's legitimate to question the official story. I think it's not legitimate to jump from questions to "Bush did it," as many people I know did right after the fact.

But I think it's equally nutty to throw out the in-between areas which trouble me so. What was Al Qaeda's relation with the CIA? With the Bush family via bin Laden? If Al Qaeda did this, were they really acting from the outside or with inside help?

Those are the questions that keep my interest in that event going. Sorry - this is off track - i'm just upset because of my offline conversation....

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

by Real History Lisa (lpeaseRemoveThis@gte.net) on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 02:51:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Suicided continued (4.00 / 2)

Actually this mob style killing seems to be official policy

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.

what about this

George Bush has appointed a diplomat infamous for supporting right-wing death squads in Central America during the 1980s to succeed Paul Bremer as the top US official in Iraq.

and this

One year ago, the U.S. overthrew the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and spirited him and his family out of the country to make way for Bush's appointed "democratic" leader, Gerard Latortue.
Elevated along with Latortue were returning death squad members and former police known for brutalizing and horribly repressing the people in the days of the Duvalier dictatorship.

and the Webb case

"He was a hard-core, no-fear investigative reporter," Dresslar said. "He wasn't afraid to stand up to whatever authority." There you have it Gary Webb a fearless reporter, for the PEOPLE, who against all odds would stand up to authority, to the ELITES in order to serve a greater master the TRUTH! We demand an independent autopsy and homicidal investigation into the "DISTINCT POSSIBILITY" that Gary Webb was MURDERED.

and forget about places like Colombia or Iraq

Don't Panic

by fourtytwo on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 07:40:43 PM EST

Re: Suicided continued (none / 1)

re Gary Webb - I went to his memorial service and spoke to his family. I'm convinced after talking to them that he really did commit suicide. He had been depressed and had talked about it before. The family tried to help but what could they do? They couldn't give him back his status, his career. And his marriage was in the pit too. And then his favorite motorcycle was stolen just as he was preparing to move back in with his mother. A grown man, a proud man, having to live with his mother instead of his own family - things were pretty horrible. I do believe he took his own life. (And this after being highly skeptical, originally.)

But the REASON he committed suicide is because he could never write the kind of mainstream stories he wanted after being effectively killed in his media life. That was the assassination that got him. The body was just the last step. But they killed his career, and that was more responsible for his death than the gun in his hand.

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

by Real History Lisa (lpeaseRemoveThis@gte.net) on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 12:59:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Wellstone&Carnahan&Tower&Boggs&Lel (none / 0)

Thanks Lisa

Is somebody out there courageous enough to look into all these deaths ? It took me just a few minutes to compile this and the above.

Wellstone now joins the ranks of other American politicians who died in small plane crashes. Another recent victim was Missouri's former Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan, who lost his life in 2000, three weeks before Election Day, during his Senatorial race against John Ashcroft. Carnahan went on to become the first dead man to win a Senatorial race, humiliating and defeating the unpopular Ashcroft posthumously. Ashcroft, despite his unpopularity, went on to be appointed Attorney General by George W. Bush. Investigators determined that Carnahan's plane went down due to "poor visibility."

Don't Panic

by fourtytwo on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 01:23:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Wellstone and Carnahan (none / 0)

As soon as I heard Wellstone had died in a plane crash, I felt instantly he had been killed, just as I had felt Carnahan had been killed. I've never looked into either and have no evidence to support that - just a gut feeling. I know some HAVE looked into the Wellstone death and find it highly suspicious. I don't know if anyone ever looked into Carnahan's death - but I knew his seat meant the balance of the power in the Senate, so his death had meaning way beyond an ordinary plane crash. For that reason alone, it was worthy of study, but that never happened, so far as I know.

I always felt the Boggs downing was suspicious too. And don't get me started on JFK Jr.

It isn't always a matter of courage looking into these cases. Sadly, it's a function of time and access too, and without a Congressional staff behind you, it's really tough to get to the bottom of such cases.

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

by Real History Lisa (lpeaseRemoveThis@gte.net) on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 04:32:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Wellstone and Carnahan (none / 0)

Thanks again Lisa, trying to be smart here without risking my life.

One could just count the number of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate or House who died in accidents/suicides and draw conclusions based on statistics.

Don't Panic

by fourtytwo on Mon Aug 28th, 2006 at 02:36:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

As I noted at Daily Kos ... (4.00 / 4)

Are you, like me, now pondering the likelihood that your cell phone may be bugged by the US government?

I figured this was the case as early as 1964. After discovering I had been a target - along with many, many others - of CoinTelPro, I knew it was the case.

Work in the civil rights movement, antiwar movement, American Indian Movement, anti-U.S. policy in Central America movement put me on a list, or two. Exposing Shell, Union Carbide, Peabody Coal and other companies for activities that sterilized, maimed and killed workers put me on another list, I'm sure.

I've always assumed every minute of every phone call made from our house to my wife's children in Libya starting in 1998 was monitored. Now that they live here, I am sure their calls to Tripoli are monitored. I still assume every phone call to Manchester, England, where my stepson's wife family lives, is monitored. Given the number of times we five have been "randomly" pulled out of airport security lines for special attention, I assume we're all on a list.

So, no, I am not pondering whether my cell phone is bugged. I'm sure of it.

Kudos on your digging, Steven. Good job, as always.

"We're trying to give the illusion of due diligence." --Bennett Holiday to Jimmy Pope in Syriana

by Meteor Blades (tleelange@hotmail.com) on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 10:03:52 PM EST

Re: Two Euro Whistleblowers Dead (4.00 / 2)

These deaths bring to mind the murder of Roberto Calvi and the activities of the notorious P2 organization; an organization which may now have a new name and new face but which could include such notable lunatics as Michael Ledeen and crooks like Ghorbanifar; people very likely connected in someway with the forged Niger documents among many other things.

Denial is our most dangerous adversary.

by sbj on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 10:06:22 PM EST

Re: Two Euro Whistleblowers Dead (none / 1)

Motive. Opportunity. Means. Multiple identical deaths.

by Arminius on Sat Aug 26th, 2006 at 09:14:06 PM EST

Our useles media wont report anything (none / 1)

critical of our wonderful administration. Our useless media wont report anything that might disturb their wacky notion of the ever increasing greatness of our now totally flawed rogue state.

by observer393 on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 12:00:15 AM EST

Re: Our useles media wont report anything (none / 0)

You know what I wish? I wish we had a sleeper agent.

Not an agent of terrorism or someone to perpetrate or even advocate violence. Just someone who went to the right schools, got a degree in journalism, spent years writing pro-corporate, slanted articles and practiced his/her hairspray techniques for years and years.

And then after a lifetime of toeing the line, one day they get up during a White House press briefing and just ASK an honest question. Just one.

That's what I wish.

Pax

Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian

by soj on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 03:14:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

It would be nice, but... (none / 0)

just imagine the damage to the person caused by all those years of being one of them

by observer393 on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 05:14:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Curiouser and curiouser (none / 0)

It's interesting too that a woman with the courage to file a lawsuit againt george would shoot herself in the head.

Not that I would ever do anything to cross him, but I have posted a disclaimer of my own potential suicide on my computer and with my 'last will and testament.' for my family to continue the struggle.

by Alice on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 08:15:02 AM EST

I read these two different (none / 0)

articles and I fear more for our country than I used to. The thugs sitting on the throne in the WH are like mafia. They have several of the mafian characteristics - secrecy, quick to take offense, threaten and threaten and threaten when charm doesn't work and a callousness that is just absolutely stunning. But we haven't really caught them with blodd on their hands - they always make somebody else do the killing. But these two deaths seem to me to come directly from their hands. Why I should feel that way, I don't know. Maybe it is because they have taken over the CIA and made it their own. Somehow or other, I feel they are closer to making actual kills than ever before.

Grandma Jo

by glitterscale (glitteryscale@yahoo.com) on Sun Aug 27th, 2006 at 10:50:01 AM EST

Two Euro Whistleblowers Dead -- Ties to NSA Spying? | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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