"The name's Obama -- BARACK Obama."

Of all the outside-the mainstream notions I've posited on this blog, the one that annoys the most people is my suggestion that the CIA recruited young Barack Obama during his days at Occidental College. I would further suggest that the Agency link runs in the family. I believe that, at an earlier time, the Agency (or some other branch of the intelligence community) may have recruited his mother, Ann Dunham.

For earlier posts in this series -- may I call it a series? -- see here, here, here and here.

And now we have this intriguing shard of additional data:



The eye-opener here concerns Obama's first job out of college. He was recruited by Business International Corporation, accused of functioning as a CIA front company.

You don't have to take the word of John Pilger, the man in the video. Here's Wikipedia:

The company has been identified as cover organization for the Central Intelligence Agency, e.g. see Lobster Magazine, issue 14 in 1987. According to a lengthy article in the New York Times in 1977, the co-founder of the company told the newspaper that "Eldridge Haynes [the other founder] had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960".

I see no reason to presume that the CIA/BIC relationship ended in 1960. Lobster is a quirky but reliable publication.

William Blum, a left-wing CIA expert, made the same catch:

In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Fathers", Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as "a consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer".

The odd part of Obama's story is that he doesn't mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation.

In his book, not only doesn't Obama mention his employer's name; he fails to say when he worked there, or why he left the job.

Obama's bios are as important for what they leave out as for what they reveal. I first became suspicious of his now-infamous trip to Pakistan (which he took in the summer between Occidental and Columbia) because he refused to mention this adventure in his books.

Think of it: We are talking about a man who compiled not one but two autobiographical works before the age of 46. We are talking about an ambitious politician intent on establishing his foreign policy cred. Yet he refused to mention a dangerous trip to Pakistan which he made at a time when travel to that country was discouraged by the State Department. That country was then the focus of the CIA's largest covert operation, the supplying of the Afghan mujahadeen. While there, this callow college kid met with one of the most powerful men in Pakistan -- a meeting arranged by an unnamed personage with the American Embassy. (Spook-watchers know what that means.)

If the trip was a pleasure jaunt, why did Obama keep it a secret? And how did he pay for the journey?

This site encapsulates a series of points which I had earlier made at greater length:

Adding to the mix is the fact that Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, had visited at least 13 countries in her lifetime, and had worked for companies that required travel to Pakistan. Her employers appear to have included the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women's World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Note that USAID and the Ford Foundation have (allegedly) been used as covers for CIA agents. . . .

Like mother, like son. Ann worked for at least two organizations notorious for providing CIA cover. Barack went straight from college to an organization known to provide CIA cover. Coincidence?

Let's put it this way: How often do such things happen in your family?

Supposedly, Ann was a leftist. Yet she married Lolo Sotero, a key intermediary between the American oil companies and Indonesian strongman Suharto, installed by the CIA in an extremely bloody coup. (Obama admits the CIA connection in his book.) No genuine lefty would have had anything to do with Suharto or his cronies.

I do not claim to have conclusive evidence. Then again, one must ask: When we try to sort out who's who and what's what in the clandestine world, what constitutes hard evidence? If you are emotionally invested in Obama, then no amount of proof will ever suffice -- except, perhaps, for a signed note by CIA director Panetta, saying "Yes, he worked for us."

Added notes on "The name's Obama -- Barack Obama"

A few posts down, I once again discussed my pet theory that young Barack Obama had been recruited by the CIA, a theory which annoys some and intrigues others. (See, for example, the strange blog here.) One piece of evidence favoring this idea concerns Obama's post-college gig at Business International Corporation, a New York firm never named or accurately described in his book, Dreams From My Father. A number of sources have pegged BIC as a company which has provided cover for CIA operatives.

This New York Times story on Obama's New York period offers further insights. The story refers to a blog called Analyze This, maintained by one Dan Armstrong. Unfortunately, that blog has slipped the surly bonds of the internets. When blogs die, the corpse usually lingers online for a good long time -- but Analyze This, alas, has vanished entirely. A pity, that: I've heard that it contained some interesting comments by other BIC alumni.

As does this NPR story.

Armstrong said Obama's book exaggerates just how respectable Business International was, with its description of suits and ties and meetings with German bond traders. There was no dress code, Armstrong said. And there was nothing corporate about it.

"It was a company full of low-paid, hard-working, fun-loving young people," Armstrong said. "It wasn't part of a high-powered consulting or finance world. It was a little sweatshop."

The relevant section of Obama's book, and a counter-piece by Armstrong, can be found here. Obama portrayed the place as as a high-powered consulting house. Armstrong (who worked down the hall) replied:

First, it wasn’t a consulting house; it was a small company that published newsletters on international business. Like most newsletter publishers, it was a bit of a sweatshop. I’m sure we all wished that we were high-priced consultants to multinational corporations. But we also enjoyed coming in at ten, wearing jeans to work, flirting with our co-workers, partying when we stayed late, and bonding over the low salaries and heavy workload.

Barack worked on one of the company’s reference publications. Each month customers got a new set of pages on business conditions in a particular country, punched to fit into a three-ring binder. Barack’s job was to get copy from the country correspondents and edit it so that it fit into a standard outline. There was probably some research involved as well, since correspondents usually don’t send exactly what you ask for, and you can’t always decipher their copy. But essentially the job was copyediting.

I must confess: That does sound like a humdrum gig. Still, I wonder what life was like for the "country correspondents." I can easily see a CIA agent using that job title as cover.

Here's how Armstrong describes Obama's somewhat misleading account of his days at BIC:

All of Barack’s embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ’s temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks. Luckily, an angel calls, awakens his conscience, and helps him choose instead to fight for the people.

Obama left the job without having any other source of income lined up, and his reason for leaving -- guilt over not being true to himself -- strikes me as unconvincing.

If my pet theory has merit, then we may posit that Obama, having done a service for the Agency in Pakistan, was granted a temporary gig at a firm with which the Agency had good relations. In other words, someone was looking out for him.

And just who was the someone? Possibly Zbigniew Brzezinski: Obama was one of only seven students to study sovietology under Brzezinski at Columbia, or so it says here.

The previous post also noted that Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, traveled the world while working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women's World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. USAID is notorious for working with the CIA, as is the Ford Foundation. (For further background, see "The Ford Foundation and the CIA.") But what of the other two groups?

The Asian Development Bank, headquartered in the Philippines, is a financial institution ostensibly devoted to raising Asia's poor out of poverty. A laudable goal. Frankly, though, after reading this Wikipedia entry (which reads like ad copy), I'm still not sure how this organization does what it says it does.

Even the most laudable and respectable organization may still provide cover for CIA-linked individuals, and the Asian Development Bank may have done just that. So, at least, claims the venerable German "spook-watching" publication Geheim!. They published an Agee-like list of CIA personnel serving under various guises throughout the world, a list compiled, it seems, from previous issues of the magazine.

One alleged Agency-linked personage is "Cinnamon N. Dornsife" of the "Asian Development Bank - Manila." Her name is actually N. Cinnamon Dornsife, and she was the "U.S. Ambassdor" to the bank, or so it says here. (I didn't know that countries sent ambassadors to banks. One learns something new every day.) Her resume is here. She was graduated from SAIS, a CIA-linked institution, and then went on to work for six years in Indonesia.

I wonder if she knew Ann?

Women's World Banking provides microcredit financing to woman-owned businesses internationally -- a very commendable goal, to be sure. I've found nothing linking this group to spookery.

So what does it all mean? Perhaps nothing -- after all, many people have worked for BIC, USAID, the Ford Foundation and Asian Development Bank without having any connection to the intelligence community. There's a difference between providing cover for CIA personnel and functioning as a CIA front.

Still, both Barry and his mom have interesting employment histories. Once again, I have to ask: How often does this sort of thing happen in your family?

An added note to the added note: A rather full account of Ann's foreign adventures can be found in a Google machine translation of a piece originally published in an Indonesian blog. The title of the post googles into English as "During the Rose of Heaven All her life Doing Good So Much Amazing That Called Stanley Ann Dunham." I get the impression that the author may have a bias. At any rate, it turns out that her work for the Asian Development bank took her to Pakistan in 1986-87.

The parts left out of the Abramoff movie -- or: Of Jack and Barack (Part 1)

Yes, I've seen an advance screening of Casino Jack, even though it hasn't opened yet -- and no, I did not download an illegal copy. The film stars Kevin Spacey as Abramoff, and he's terrific. So are Jon Lovitz, who plays Adam Kidan, and the late Maury Chaykin, who plays a character obviously modeled on Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello. It's a fascinating movie, and I'm confident that at least one of the aforementioned actors will get a major award.

I've also seen the other Casino Jack -- the documentary whose full title is Casino Jack and the United States of Money. Get that Jack if you want facts. It's more informative and almost as entertaining.

The missing stuff. Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff made many strange deals with many strange people (including, amusingly enough, a fellow named Joseph Cannon). The story is really too big for a single film. At certain points, Casino Jack -- the non-documentary version -- comes very close to having the actors turn to the audience and confide: "We can't tell you everything we know." This movie is a palimpsest; the most unsettling truths hide beneath the visible story. When you see it, count the number of times the script winks at you.

The movie rather too rapidly glides past Abramoff's dark doings in the Marianas. Abramoff and his clients used luxurious vacations and "Potemkin village" factory tours to secure congressional approval for a vile system of indentured servitude, sex slavery and enforced abortions, all on American soil. The movie offers brief and vague references to these obscenities but never dramatizes them. In this regard, the documentary makes a far greater impact -- especially when the filmmakers visit Tom DeLay, who still defends what went on.

The Spacey version treats the Indian casino scams in an entertaining but somewhat veiled fashion. In essence, Abramoff and his partner -- Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition -- ran a protection racket. If a tribe forked over millions to Abramoff and the GOP, Reed promised not to have his Christian soldiers shut down the operation. If a tribe didn't pay off, Reed would send the moralists into an anti-gambling frenzy. In other words: "Hey, nice little casino you got here. Wouldn't want to see anything happen to it..."

Casino Jack informs us about this scam but -- once again -- refuses to dramatize or to visualize. Imagine a Ben-Hur remake that doesn't show the chariot race, but has a character give us the gist of what happened.

The film grants Abramoff a moment of genuine concern for the oppression that indigenous Americans have suffered. Maybe he had such moments in real life; I don't know. I do know that the email trail demonstrates that Abramoff routinely used racist and insulting terms to describe Indians.

Most followers of the Abramoff scandals believe that his crew's dirtiest dealings involve the SunCruz casino ships and the murder of owner Gus Boulis. (SunCruz goes by another name in the film.) One senses that a secret scandal rests beneath the one which newspapers -- and Hollywood -- feel comfortable discussing.

I have an idea as to what that secret might be. Believe it or not, it indirectly involves Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, we'll need a lot more background before we get to Obama's long-ignored links to the Abramoff milieu. If some of this material is already familiar to you, allow yourself a smirk at the expense of your dullard fellow-citizens: Many Casino Jack reviewers on IMDB don't know who Jack Abramoff is or Gus Boulis was.

The casino ships. Gus Boulis was a Greek who had made millions from a chain of sandwich shops. Some writers strongly hint that his restaurants functioned as money laundries; I've never seen any proof for that allegation.

In 1994, he started SunCruz in Key Largo, offering gamblers luxurious trips outside the reach of Florida's laws. The venture proved very successful. It also attracted the attention of certain Florida authorities who became fixated on the goal of shutting Boulis down. Eventually, they discovered a little-known law which indicated that Boulis could not legally operate these ships because his American citizenship was in question.

Boulis needed to transfer ownership pronto. But he still wanted to run the operation and to keep at least part of the profits. Enter Jack Abramoff.

Toward the end of the year 2000, Abramoff bought the SunCruz line for some $147 million dollars, even though he didn't really have that kind of money. His partner and front man was Adam Kidan, an old chum from his college Republican days who had made some decent coin running a chain of mattress stores. Kidan was, as they say, somewhat "mobbed up" -- that is, he had acquaintances in organized crime.

Here's where things get murky. The movie gets murky, the documentary gets murky, and about three zillion Abramoff stories available via Google get murky.

We know this: Boulis at first wanted nothing to do with Abramoff and Kidan. In order to turn the Greek around, Abramoff sicced his paid-off congressional pal Bob Ney on the SunCruz operation. In essence, Abramoff and his political cronies acted like classic mafiosi, pressuring a businessman to sell out to the made guys.

Result: Boulis agreed to a deal which allowed him to keep a silent ten percent of the take. Kidan offered a down payment of $23 million, which came in the form of a wire transfer. The transfer turned out to be a phony cooked up at Kinkos.

Enraged by this fraud, Boulis confronted Kidan and physically attacked him, using (of all things) a pen. Kidan acquired a bodyguard, then paid a visit to "Big Tony," an underworld associate.

In the film -- whose makers obviously consulted both Abramoff and Kidan -- Kidan asks Big Tony to deal with Boulis, but not to employ violence. "I abhor violence," says Kidan. Accept that story if you will. As a general rule, fragile souls and lovers of peace rarely ask guys named Big Tony to do their negotiating.

On February 6, 2001, hit men ambushed Gus Boulis in his car.

In the film, we see Big Tony and a junior associate pull off the job personally. (In real life, Kidan blames the killing on a mobster who conveniently died in 2003.) Just before the hit, Big Tony mentions something about a plan to take over the casino boat operation himself, indicating that the decision to commit murder was his and his alone. Although I can't be certain, that line appears to have been looped in after filming was completed. It's the most suspicious and unconvincing moment in the movie, because it absolves Abramoff and his partner.

A "cruise to nowhere" can still make pick-ups. What were these men fighting over? Why were so many inside players -- mobsters and lobbyists and congressfolk -- scrambling to gain control of those casino ships?

One reason is obvious: The gambling operation was, in and of itself, extraordinarily lucrative. But that fact doesn't really explain the hit.

As the film makes (more or less) clear, Boulis and Team Abramoff reached a deal which gave Boulis ten percent. Distribution of the casino profits had been settled. The true bone of contention was the issue of who would run the day to day operations.

Why was that so important?

In the film, Boulis insists on maintaining daily "on site" control because he wishes to secure employment for family members. I don't buy it. The Greek tycoon was worth millions and could easily have secured all kinds of jobs for cronies and relatives.

So what was going on aboard those boats? What made actual command of the ships a life-or-death matter? Why did Kidan ask a guy called Big Tony to take charge of "catering" on those cruises?

If you're a grown-up, one possible answer should have already popped into your mind.

The ships routinely went out beyond U.S. territorial waters and returned without any interference or inspection from the Coast Guard or any other governmental authority. These floating casinos were unregulated, and they carried large amounts of money on a daily basis.

Hypothetically speaking, such an operation could have provided a perfect cover for drug smuggling. Hypothetically.

Now let's take the issue a step further. Why did the Florida authorities go after Gus Boulis with such gusto? The Broward County state attorney was a guy named Michael Satz, derisively nicknamed "Michael Sitz" because he was notorious for sitting on cases involving political corruption. Yet in the late 1990s, the lethargic Mr. Satz went gunning for Boulis with a vengeance -- "Sitzkrieg," as it were.

Were those Floridian officials truly bothered by the possibility that Boulis' citizenship problem might have placed him afoul of an obscure law? Or is it possible that someone in a powerful position coveted his operation?

Now let's take our ship into even stranger seas. Newspapers occasionally publish certain stories which average citizens are later required to flush down the memory hole. In our political culture, facts are considered permissible topics of discussion not when they enter the published record but when they are mentioned day after day by the talking heads on cable news.

Here is a fact reported by Associated Press writer Vickie Chachere on September 26, 2001 -- not long after the attack on the World Trade Center. Although the talking heads will probably never mention Cachere's report, her words deserve remembrance:

SunCruz Casinos has turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers.

Michael Hlavsa, chairman of the gambling cruise company, said Wednesday two or three men linked to the Sept. 11 hijackings may have been customers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach on Florida's gulf coast.

These visits occurred shortly before the terror attacks, at a time when Abramoff owned the SunCruz ships. That AP story was not the only one of its kind. A flurry of reports appeared in the Florida press linking the 9/11 hijackers to Abramoff's boats.

At that time, those ships were under investigation for money laundering.

If you visit the above-linked website, you'll see a compendium of stories indicating that the 9/11 hijackers spent a lot of time visiting casinos, both on the high seas and in Nevada. These Islamic fanatics don't seem to have had any interest in gambling. Something else was on their minds.

What might that "something" have been? Again, if you are a grown up, one possibility has probably already popped into your cranium -- but just in case that has not happened yet, I'll make matters plain.

Before they hijacked the jets, Mohammed Atta and his crew functioned as stateside representatives for Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden was a man with heroin for sale. Let's rephrase that: Osama Bin Laden held a controlling influence over the leader of Afghanistan, where much of the world's heroin is grown. Bin Laden also needed large amounts of cash to fund a private army.

As noted in an earlier post:

Al Qaeda was funded by drug money. Drug money must needs be laundered. Casinos have been known to be used for that purpose. Casino ships are unregulated.

To repeat: At the time, those casino ships were under investigation for money laundering.

Clear enough?

Casino Jack and Bin Laden. It may be possible to find other links between the Abramoff operation and Al Qaeda.

Although Jack Abramoff was and is a devout Jew and a funder of Israeli sniper schools, he also did PR work for a Saudi billionaire named Saleh Abdullah Kamel, chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks. Kamel sure as hell needed some good PR after newspapers started to discuss his suspected association with Osama Bin Laden.

Kamel has denied any link to Al Qaeda. Even so, he co-founded Bin Laden's bank of choice and was fingered as a sponsor of terrorism in a 2002 United Nations report. A document discovered in Bosnia listed Kamel as a Bin Laden associate. And here's the most interesting link of all: One of Kamel's companies paid (via a third party) the rent for the 9/11 hijackers who lodged in San Diego.

Am I implying that Jack Abramoff knew about the impending disaster or that he sympathized in any way with Islamic terrorists? No. Although I have a somewhat elastic concept of the possible, that notion strikes me as preposterous.

All I'm saying is this: As a general rule, both politics and the drug trade are notorious for creating strange bedfellows.

The germinal phase. Linkages between the worlds of Jack Abramoff and Osama Bin Laden may predate the founding of Al Qaeda.

Early in his career, during his stint with the college Republicans, Jack Abramoff glommed onto Arnaud de Borchgrave and his crowd. If you were alive and politically aware in that period, you will recall the Moon-funded wheeler-dealers who spent the Carter and Reagan years screaming nonsensical conspiracy theories about covert KGB control of the "liberal" media and American foreign policy. (Remember The Spike? Remember the bogus "Bulgarian" plot to kill the Pope?) Casino Jack the documentary goes into some of this; Casino Jack the Hollywood movie does not.

In 1985, Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff put together a summit of anti-Communist "freedom fighters," many of whom were outright thugs. The "Democratic International" confab was held in, of all places, Angola -- where the Soviet Union and the United States had turned a bloody civil war into a proxy fight between superpowers. The guest of honor at this confab was the CIA's puppet in the Angolan conflict, a charismatic brute named Jonas Savimbi. For more on Savimbi and the CIA, see here and here and here.

(Just to complicate matters, we should note that Savimbi's other sponsor was China, and that he considered himself a Marxist.)

Abramoff later wrote and produced an action film called Red Scorpion, in which a fictionalized version of Jonas Savimbi wins the civil war -- with a little help from Dolph Lundgren. The movie was shot in apartheid South Africa, which funded both Savimbi and, it seems, the film. For a while, Abramoff tried to deny his links to the apartheid regime, even after the more responsible members of the Hollywood community launched protests of Red Scorpion.

Savimbi, at a later date, appears to have established links with Al Qaeda. Those ties emerged from the trade in "conflict diamonds," which are used to fund both Islamic terror and African revolutionary movements. See here and here.

Also attending that 1985 conference in Angola were Nicaraguan contra commanders and leaders of the anti-Soviet mujahadeen. Afghan fighter Abdul Rahim Wardak attended the meeting at Abramoff's invitation.

Although neither Al Qaeda nor the Taliban existed in 1985, this was the period when Osama Bin Laden emerged as the leading organizer of Saudi aide to the Afghan resistance movement. Thus, we can fairly state that Bin Laden and Warduk fought on the same side -- then. The two men now stand in opposition.

This assessment of Warduk is of some interest:

If you enter the circles within the Washington DC Afghani diaspora, and if you get close enough to hear the hushed comments, you’d be able to make out words like ‘corrupt,’ ‘ties to drug-running warlords,’ or ‘Afghan mafia.’ But for some ‘mysterious’ reasons our Central Intelligence Agency and hard-core Neocons within our foreign policy arena had deemed this general ultra special and important...

The CIA's most important operative in Pakistan at this time was Milt Bearden, who worked with Warduk and the Pakistani ISI. He insists that he did not work with Bin Laden:

"I think it is factually false that the U.S. in any way backed Osama and his group of Arabs. I was there. I know who we backed. No reliable official source has ever confirmed that the U.S. program included Osama and his Arabs.....

Many tell a different tale. See, for example, "How the CIA created Osama bin Laden," written shortly after the 9/11 disaster. Der Spiegel has said that Bin Laden was one of the CIA's best customers. Le Monde has asserted that the CIA recruited Bin Laden. Former UK foreign secretary Robin Cook considers Bin Laden a creation of western intelligence agencies. Both Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia and former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds have said that American intelligence aided Bin Laden.

In this context, perhaps we should mention this rather bizarre post from the Cannonfire archives -- a post which references none other than Milt Bearden. Also keep in mind that the CIA instituted "Operation Cyclone" in the 1980s. One of the goals of this program was to give training in the United States to various mujahadeen warriors -- indigenous Afghans, Arab imports, and even U.S.-born "Nation of Islam" types.

Not long after the Soviets pulled out of Aghanistan, the Pakistanis installed the Taliban. That's when General Warduk moved to America and came under the general protection of the neocons. Today, his son runs a defense firm which does work for (of all things) the Drug Enforcement Agency in Afghanistan -- while the elder Warduk is back in his home country functioning as Defense Minister. The Warduks are still in business with Milt Bearden, although no-one seems to know just what they are up to.

For more info on Bearden's Afghan network -- which includes Joe Lieberman's campaign finance director! -- see here.

Has this side-trip through spookland diverted us from the world of superlobbyist Jack Abramoff? Perhaps. And perhaps not.

The name's Abramoff -- Jack Abramoff. Persistent reports -- unmentioned by either of the Casino Jack films -- hold that, in the 1980s, Abramoff formed subterranean ties to American intelligence. Even though mainstream news stories ignore those ties, you shouldn't consign the notion to the conspiratorial loony bin, because the idea isn't all that controversial.

Ask yourself: Could Jack Abramoff have put together that 1985 conference in Angola (the one which brought together Savimbi, the contras, the mujahadeen and other CIA-backed fighters) without the connivance of the American intelligence community? I don't think so. You just can't do a thing like that unless you have some help from the Company.

After the conference, Jack Abramoff helped put together the International Freedom Foundation, which was funded by South African military intelligence. As this documentary makes clear, South Africa became involved with the Angolan war at the behest of the CIA; in essence, South Africa acted as a cut-out. In its publications, the IFF portrayed Nelson Mandela as a Soviet-backed terrorists, and briefly allied itself with the notoriously racist Western Goals Institute. (Earlier, Abramoff's College Republicans had defended apartheid and denounced all critics of South Africa as KGB propagandists.)

Since that period, Abramoff has often skulked on the outskirts of the covert world.

For example: When he needed a congressperson to put pressure on Gus Boulis, he called upon Bob Ney of Ohio. Although Casino Jack presents Ney as a cluelessly corrupt ninny, he's a rather more interesting fellow than Hollywood would have you believe. According to certain unverified but intriguing reports, American intelligence recruited Ney as a young man. He learned Farsi, worked in Iran, and then ran a security firm in Saudi Arabia -- an odd career path for an Ohio lad in his 20s. Some believe that Ney functioned under "non-official cover" while in these countries, and that his friends in the covert world helped grease his entry into Congress. Although such allegations remain unproven, it is beyond dispute that the Iranians later used Ney as a conduit during a brief period of thawing relations between Tehran and Washington. This fact suggests that Ney had previously established relationships with high-ranking Iranians.

Abramoff's former firm, Greenberg Traurig, is of no little interest, and not only because they have represented Diebold, Jeb Bush and Dubya's campaign in 2000. One of the firm's alumni became head of the Office of Naval Intelligence. We have conflicting reports regarding a possible familial connection between Mel Greenberg, the co-founder of the law firm, and Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the AIG founder with undeniable ties to both American intelligence and the Bush family. (Anyone hoping to discover more about Mel Greenberg will find the internet strangely uncommunicative.)

Bob Ney was the one who saw to it that an Israeli company called FoxCom (a.k.a. MobileAccess Networks) got the contract to install a wireless LAN in the House and Senate buildings. As I wrote on an earlier occasion:

By applying a liberal dose of grease, Foxcom managed to edge out another firm whose security arrangements had been cleared by the FBI and the NSA. For some reason, the Israeli company really, really wanted to set up the wireless network used by your congressfolk.

That reason (according to cynics such as yours truly) probably has something to do with spying. Here's former CIA officer Phil Giraldi:

Telecommunications security experts note that equipment that can be used to enhance or improve a signal can also be used to redirect the phone conversation to another location for recording and analysis. The possibility that someone in the Israeli Embassy might be listening to congressmen's private phone conversations is intriguing to say the least.

A number of published sources claim that Ney made this deal because Abramoff pushed for it. FoxCom got the contract after making a hefty donation to one of Abramoff's favorite charities.

The Hollywood version of the Abramoff story demurely neglects to mention one word about spying on Congress.

Abramoff also lobbied on behalf of Verizon and other private firms seeking to benefit from a partial privatization of the NSA's eavesdropping systems. One of the chief execs at Verizon is an old CIA hand.

In short: Jack Abramoff appears to be a fellow who has made a few friends in the clandestine world. Much the same can be said about Barack Obama.

In part two -- coming very soon -- we'll detail the Obama/Abramoff connection.

Spooky links

The Blair Witch project: Tony Blair is the godfather to Rupert Murdoch's young daughter.

Murdoch's third wife, Wendi Deng, who let slip the information in an interview with Vogue, described Blair as one of Rupert's closest friends. Blair's account of the relationship in his memoirs is somewhat different, portraying Murdoch as the big bad beast, who won his grudging respect. That is clearly disingenuous. As other memoirs and diaries from the Blair period are published, we see how close Murdoch was to the prime minister and the centre of power when really important decisions, such as the Iraq invasion, were being made.

For the longest time -- even after the Iraq invasion -- I tried to convince myself that Blair wasn't such a bad fellow. He reminded me of Bill Clinton, at least at first. Now he reminds me of Obama: The man who ruined his party.

Come to think of it: Maybe Blair provided the Obama template...?

"The name's Cole. Juan Cole." Juan Cole has worked for the CIA, or at least has offered consultations to the Agency.

This is not to claim that Cole is on a mission for the CIA to convince the left to support the imperial wars, most notably at the moment the war on Libya. Nor is this a claim that the revelation about the White House seeking information on Cole was a contrived psyops effort to rehabilitate Cole so that he could continue such a mission. That cannot be claimed, because there is as yet no evidence for it. But information flows two ways in any consultation, and it is even possible that Cole was being loaded with war-friendly information in hopes he would transmit it.

We shall see. I'm not sure what to make of this right now. For one thing: It is, in fact, a matter of some dispute as to whether or not the CIA favored the invasion of Iraq in the first place.

The end of Wikileaks? I was going to offer a shorter version of this affair, and may yet do so. But you would do better to read this history of the Great Wikileaks Fuckup in Der Spiegel. It's in English, and it's a gripping read.

Once you've devoured that piece, you may agree with my view that it is a bit silly to harp on Guardian writer David Leigh for publishing the password to that fabled (and still largely unexplored) treasure trove of secret cables. Leigh has made clear that he was told that the password would be good for only a limited time -- maybe hours, maybe days.

That said, it is obvious that he didn't need to publish any password. I think Leigh was going for writerly verisimilitude and went too far.

Leigh is a good writer, so I'm willing to cut him so slack. I was very impressed with his work on the Wilson plot.

Unbeknownst to him, Daniel Domscheit-Berg -- a former Assange associate -- put the whole secret file onto bittorrent, and let it be known that the thing could be opened with the password published in Leigh's book. Once the file was on bittorrent, it could not be called back.

The question now is whether Domscheit-Berg (who has founded his own version of Wikileaks) is a spook of some sort. Assange, from what I've been told, seems to think so.

Note that Domscheit-Berg redacted material about the Bank of America and various neo-Nazi groups in Europe -- but he allowed dissemination of raw State Department cables revealing the names of sources and informants. (Previously, Assange has usually been pretty good about redacting that stuff.)

Sources and informants will now think twice before talking to U.S. personnel. So, yeah, Assange got screwed -- but the U.S. got screwed much worse. And the screw-ER, in this case, was not Julian Assange.

Yet the Nazis and the B of A were protected.

Anyone who trusts DomScheisse-Berg and his new "OpenLeaks" operation is an idiot. Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber Alles...

(By the way: I am positive that poor Bradley Manning did not make those cables available. But don't be surprised if he one day so confesses.)

"The name's Penn. SEAN Penn."

There's something decidedly strange -- even spooky -- about that Sean Penn/El Chapo interview which led to the capture of the fugitive Mexican drug lord.

The talking heads on teevee want us to talk about Penn's alleged promise that Chapo could review the interview before publication. As always, the pundits have pounced on a non-issue. The real issues: Since when is Sean Penn a journalist? And is he really working for Uncle?

When the story broke, my first reaction was: "Well, I'm glad to see that Mr. Penn has resolved his little tax problem. Pretty gutsy way to do it." Actually, I did not know that Penn had a tax issue (or any other type of legal complication), but the presumption seemed fair under the circumstances.

Then I remembered that the actor also had a close relationship with Hugo Chavez, who was absolutely detested by American intelligence. Penn gets around. He's a fine actor -- but he's not just an actor.

Here's Marcy Wheeler's first post on this controversy. She notes that one of the men who set up the meeting -- unnamed, but called Espinoza -- wears a surgical back brace. Marcy hints that this "brace" may actually have been a tracking device.

Curiously, when Penn provided his bona fides to Chapo — which for the cartel boss, largely rested on the actor’s relationship with Hugo Chávez — he didn’t mention that he had a relationship with people who would be privy to otherwise unavailable information about what really went down in October, though he did admit he has “many relationships inside the United States government.”

I tell him, up front, that I had a family member who worked with the Drug Enforcement Agency, that through my work in Haiti (I’m CEO of J/P HRO, a nongovernmental organization based in Port-au-Prince) I had many relationships inside the United States government. I assure him that those relationships were by no means related to my interest in him.

Elsewhere in the story Penn claims he is telling the truth, but keeping information compartmentalized.

I take no pride in keeping secrets that may be perceived as protecting criminals, nor do I have any gloating arrogance at posing for selfies with unknowing security men. But I’m in my rhythm. Everything I say to everyone must be true. As true as it is compartmentalized.

Perhaps the most interesting detail is that when Chapo asked Penn to come back in 8 days for a return visit that never took place, Penn responded by asking for a photo — for Rolling Stone. Except that he arranged it so that it would be usable for facial recognition.

I say I can. I ask to take a photograph together so that I could verify to my editors at Rolling Stone that the planned meeting had taken place.

[snip]

I explain that, for authentication purposes, it would be best if we are shaking hands, looking into the camera, but not smiling. He obliges. The picture is taken on Alfredo’s cellphone. It would be sent to me at a later date.

All right, I'll just say it: Chapo is, obviously, an idiot. How can any man stay alive so long in that line of work while remaining so bloody naive?

In a follow up story, Marcy notes that Rolling Stone did nothing to protect Chapo or his entourage, but did protect Espinoza ("Spiny") and the other middle-man.

If Penn is sincere in his stated desire to end the war on drugs, ending the profits for American banks tied to illicit trafficking would need to be one of the first steps.

But he doesn’t name those companies that are laundering Chapo’s money, which will continue to be laundering Sinaloa cartel money even as Guzmán gets removed from the network.

Of course, Spiny and El Alto probably share Chapo’s desire to keep those names out of print, in part because they’re part of the power structure that the banks bolster, in part because banks sometimes narc on their customers to save their own hides.

But it’s funny how the press, too, seems uninterested in learning the names of the banks that continue to prop up both our own country’s power structure as well as facilitate traffickers like Guzmán.

It has been widely stated that drug money was the only thing keeping certain large banks afloat during the 2008 financial crisis.

Now let's look at what Moon of Alabama had to say:

Even more suspect than the Sean Penn piece itself is the fact that the NYT published a large front page piece on the the Rolling Stone story some minutes before the Rolling Stone story itself was published. Who gave it to the NYT and when? The NYT repeats essentials parts of the Penn piece but in a more polished version.

It also adds this to the overall story:

A Mexican government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential matters, said the authorities were aware of the meeting with Mr. Penn.

Well, that's kind of a giveaway, isn't it?

The NYT is (largely) owned by Carlos Slim, the Mexican zillionaire who staunchly denies having anything to do with the drug trade. Funny thing: That allegation keeps popping up, despite the denials.

Penn's name came up in one of Hillary's emails -- in a very honorable fashion, we should note: The email references an award Penn received from Mikhail Gorbachev, in gratitude for the actor's work in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. But...

Hillary Clinton’s top State Department aides gushed over actor Sean Penn in an April 2012 email, State Department records show.

“I am just so friggin proud of you,” Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, wrote in an April 26, 2012 email seemingly sent to Penn’s account. The email address is redacted but is listed as “CIA.”

“Do we call you mr ambassador laureate now?” Mills’ senior advisor, Caitlin Klevorick, wrote to Penn.

The email traffic has taken on new significance in light of news that Penn, a two-time Oscar winner, traveled to Mexico in October to meet with and interview Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious boss of the brutal Sinaloa drug cartel. Penn published a laudatory article about the visit for Rolling Stone. The piece, in which Penn calls Guzman “Robin Hood,” was published online late Saturday.

According to several reports, Penn’s visit to Guzman helped lead authorities to the fugitive. The drug trafficker had escaped from a Mexican prison in July and sought out a meeting with Hollywood actors in order to pitch a movie about his life. He was captured earlier this week, just before Penn’s article was published. According to some Mexican officials, Penn’s meeting with Guzman helped lead investigators to the criminal.

Hillary Clinton has not commented on Guzman’s arrest or on Penn’s visit. During an interview on Sunday, President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said that Penn’s “so-called interview” with Guzman “poses a lot of very interesting questions, both for him and for others involved in this.”

The Daily Mail has been having a great time with the "Penn as spy" theory...

Supposedly the entire 'clandestine horror show' - as Penn put it - was part of a research project to develop a Netflix-style drama about Guzmán and his prison break.

Though Penn insists he went to extreme lengths to hide the meeting from authorities, the details have sparked widespread speculation that he was in fact tapped by the CIA to locate the fugitive criminal - just as screenwriters were enlisted to make Argo to free US hostages in Iran in 1979.

The Central Intelligence Agency is openly cooperative with Hollywood.

In 1996, the role of Entertainment Liaison Officer was created to provide filmmakers with factual advice and authentic props, and the agency has admitted to collaborating with actors, producers and directors for their own work.

Researchers who specialize in the CIA's connection with Hollywood, Dr Matthew Alford and Tom Secker, told DailyMail.com on Sunday: 'Spies have long used Hollywood as a front, from Pretty Woman producer Arnon Milchan, who admitted to stealing US nuclear secrets for Mossad, to Frederick Forsyth who did 'favours' for MI6. So the theory that Sean Penn was part of a CIA sting operation is an intriguing possibility.'

Arnon Milchan, incidentally, produced Oliver Stone's JFK. Even at that time, Milchan's Mossad linkage -- though never published -- was widely known "in town." There were similar rumors about Golan and Globus, the guys behind Cannon films (no relation to yours truly!).

I'm not wholly convinced by the "Penn as spy" theory, although I'm leaning that way. If it is true, he would hardly be the first Hollywood actor to do a little covert work on the side. Although I don't think the claim has ever been formally published, I've heard that Bill Holden made a trip to Africa on Agency business, where he witnessed something so horrifying that it haunted him for the rest of his life. Cary Grant and Sterling Hayden worked for the OSS during World War II. Frank Sinatra would fly CIA assets in and out of the country on his private jet (which is a nifty way to avoid leaving a paper trail).

And then there's this claim by CIA man John Rizzo...

In his new book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, whistleblower Rizzo, who served as the acting general counsel for the entire CIA, admits, “the CIA has long had a special relationship with the entertainment industry, devoting considerable attention to fostering relationships with Hollywood movers and shakers: studio executives, producers, directors and big-name actors.”

“There are officers assigned to this account full-time,” he reveals, adding many Hollywood denizens offer up information to their country — at a price.

Movie industry vets are “receptive to helping the CIA in any way they can,” Rizzo claims, “probably in equal parts because they are sincerely patriotic and because it gives them a taste of real-life intrigue and excitement.”

In one instance, Rizzo claims, the agency was approached blindly by “a major film star at the time” who “somehow knew that another big star’s production company had an association with the CIA’s clandestine service over the years … Now this guy was offering his own name and services to us. Free of charge. Anything he could do. Just out of patriotic duty.”

But there was a catch...

“There is one little kicker,” Rizzo claims his underling said. “The actor refuses to take any money, but he told us that instead all he wants of us is to score him the best fifty-thousand-dollar stash of cocaine we can find. He seems to think we can get the real primo stuff. So that’s why I’m here. Is it ok for us to do it?”

“‘Uh, no,'” I managed to get out of my agape mouth,” Rizzo remembers. But the other agent wouldn’t back down from the potential deal.

“I later learned that the actor did provide some assistance to the CIA on a particular project,” he admits. “I was assured that his services were totally gratis.”

Rizzo won't name the star. Penn, perhaps? Well, there's this story from 2010, which brought this angry denial from Sean Penn.

Even if Sean Penn has never done spook work, the accusation will -- from now on -- waft around him like a bad cologne, and nothing will ever get rid of the odor. I'm sure that he would angrily deny the charge, but if he has any ability to look at the matter objectively, even he must admit that things look bad.

The next time he offers the hand of friendship to someone like Hugo Chavez, people will whisper about the fate of El Chapo. I have always admired Chavez (who was not a dictator, even though our lying press still uses that label), and thus I admire the words that Sean Penn said in his defense. But when the actor proclaimed his solidarity, was he merely reciting lines from a script? Would Hillary Clinton's State Department have gushed about someone who was a genuine friend to Hugo Chavez?

Is Sean Penn a genuine lefty, or is he an actor playing a role?

By his own admission, his life is "compartmentalized." Interesting word, that. Spies tend to use it.