Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?

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Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?

Postby brownzeroed » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:21 am

(link)Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?(link)

Wednesday, 18 July 2007, 12:03 pm
Column: Bob Fitrakis

July 16, 2007

At the time of its announced closure, Antioch College, perhaps America’s most progressive and well-known peace college, had a few visible capitalist hawks on its Board of Trustees.

Bruce P. Bedford, one of only three Trustees not a former alum, had been appointed to the board of Arlington, Virginia company GlobeSecNine in 2005. The company is described by a representative of investment corporation Bear Sterns as having "a unique set of experiences in special forces, classified operations, transportation security and military operations." One can only speculate why the nation’s longest-standing anti-imperialist education institution would appoint a trustee with extensive ties to the military and security industrial complexes.
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Business Wire on May 4, 2005 described GlobeSecNine as follows: "GlobeSecNine invests in companies providing U.S. defense, security, global trade management and supply chain solutions to the public and private sectors, and has a strategic alliance with The Scowcroft Group, a business advisory firm headed by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft."

Bedford served on the GlobeSecNine board of advisors with Scowcroft and co-founder of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center Fred Turco. Others affiliated with the company are tied directly to the prison industrial complex and the anti-liberal "war on drugs," for example Jack Lawn, former Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who serves on the board of directors.

On July 3, 2007, Michael Alexander’s name was removed from the list of Antioch trustees. Two days earlier, he had been sworn in as president of Lasell College in Newton Massachusetts. There has been speculation that Antioch’s campus would make a great retirement community, much like the one at Lasell, known as Lasell Village, "a state-of-the-art eldercare community with the first-of-its-kind built in educational component."

In 1998 Alexander founded AverStar, where he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and did business primarily with NASA and the Defense Department. In 2000, Alexander’s AverStar defense company merged with the Titan corporation.

In March 2005, Titan pled guilty and paid the largest penalty under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in history for bribery and filing false tax returns.

L-3 Communications acquired the Titan Corporation on July 29, 2005. As their corporate website described the company, it "is a leading provider of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems, secure communications systems, aircraft modernization, training and government services. The company is a leading merchant supplier of a broad array of high technology products, including guidance and navigation, sensors, scanners, fuzes, data links, propulsion systems, simulators, avionics, electro optics, satellite communications, electrical power equipment, encryption, signal intelligence, antennas and microwave components. L-3 also supports a variety of Homeland Security initiatives with products and services. Its customers include the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, selected U.S. Government intelligence agencies and aerospace prime contractors."

The L-3 Communications Titan Group brags that 8000 of its 10,000 employees have "security clearances" and that they are a leading provider of C4ISR, Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance – "developing and supporting the systems of today and tomorrow for the United States and Allied Militaries and defense-related agencies in order for them to carry out their assigned missions," according to their website.

While Anitoch board members Bedford and Alexander cozied up with U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security, students at the university sponsored a national teach-in to expose the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay on October 5, 2006.

How a college targeted by the FBI and its notorious COINTELPRO operation during the Cold War as a "vanguard of the New Left" managed to place two "spook"-connected trustees on their board is a mystery worth exploring.

Antioch resides in the shadow of the Wright Patterson Air Force Base and its legendary Foreign Technologies Division that reverse engineers weapons systems from other nations. Its larger neighbor to the west, Ohio State University, has long been tied up with the CIA’s favorite nonprofit institution, Battelle, and was one of the 30 or so universities involved in the MK Ultra mind control LSD experiments in the 1960s.

The Dayton Daily News is reporting that a $5 million accounting error caused the radical college to close. Others have pointed to the long-standing rumors of intelligence ties to the Antioch Europe in Transition study program.

If the CIA or U.S. intelligence services were involved in the subversion of America’s most anti-imperialist and pro-peace college, it wouldn’t be the first time that the progressive college campuses have been infiltrated. The CIA subverted the National Student Association in the late 50s and early 60s. The agency also has been accused of subverting everything from fraternities to Fullbright scholars to Peace Corps workers.

The role of these trustees must be heavily scrutinized. Antioch alumni should be ashamed to allow their college to die until they get to the bottom of this spooky mystery.

--
*************

Bob Fitrakis is the author of The Fitrakis Files: Spooks, Nukes, and Nazis, on the role of the CIA in Ohio politics. This article was published by http://freepress.org.

Last edited by brownzeroed on Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby brownzeroed » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:31 am

Doh. Almost forgot. Courtesy of Professor Hex
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Very interesting

Postby chlamor » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:20 pm

Both of my partners parents are Antioch alums and they are at a loss as to how the school could've just closed it's doors. They recently returned from an Antioch reunion.

Thanks for this I'll pass it along to them and will be interested in hearing their responses. Perhaps this will be the one that will convince them I'm not batshit crazy when I suggest such things are business as usual here in The Homeland. LOL.
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Postby brownzeroed » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:24 pm

Chlamor:
...Perhaps this will be the one that will convince them I'm not batshit crazy when I suggest such things are business as usual here in The Homeland. LOL...


Good Luck. I'm a son of two bona fide anarchists and they won't go near where I'm coming from. :)
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As a side note

Postby chlamor » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:27 pm

It should read "anti-imperialist" in the second to last paragraph.
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Re: Very interesting

Postby Seventhsonjr » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:57 pm

chlamor wrote:Both of my partners parents are Antioch alums and they are at a loss as to how the school could've just closed it's doors. They recently returned from an Antioch reunion.

Thanks for this I'll pass it along to them and will be interested in hearing their responses. Perhaps this will be the one that will convince them I'm not batshit crazy when I suggest such things are business as usual here in The Homeland. LOL.


I too am an alum of one of the branches of Antioch...

So this is more than a little distrbing ifo.

Places like Antioch provde a danger to the elites and fascist in the same way that many intellectuals and free thinkers did in nazi Germany.

Scary
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Re: Very interesting

Postby chlamor » Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:37 pm

Seventhsonjr wrote:
chlamor wrote:Both of my partners parents are Antioch alums and they are at a loss as to how the school could've just closed it's doors. They recently returned from an Antioch reunion.

Thanks for this I'll pass it along to them and will be interested in hearing their responses. Perhaps this will be the one that will convince them I'm not batshit crazy when I suggest such things are business as usual here in The Homeland. LOL.


I too am an alum of one of the branches of Antioch...

So this is more than a little distrbing ifo.

Places like Antioch provde a danger to the elites and fascist in the same way that many intellectuals and free thinkers did in nazi Germany.

Scary


I should add that Antioch is not going to close it's doors in 2007-2008 as I misstated above. Just found out that they, Antioch, are going to scale back for the coming year with "plans" to close the next year but "hopes" to not close at all as they look for funds to keep the doors open.

The big question seems to be what were these two spooks doing at a college like Antioch? It's not as if these characters were interested in academia and if so given their track record in other facets of National Security they would've found positions at the likes of RIT or Yale.
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Postby MinM » Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:16 pm

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon
Image
Were U.S. intelligence assets propping up Antioch College?

or

Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?

Given the powers that be at the school from the op...
brownzeroed wrote:(link)Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?(link)

Wednesday, 18 July 2007, 12:03 pm

Bruce P. Bedford, one of only three Trustees not a former alum, had been appointed to the board of Arlington, Virginia company GlobeSecNine in 2005. The company is described by a representative of investment corporation Bear Sterns as having "a unique set of experiences in special forces, classified operations, transportation security and military operations." One can only speculate why the nation’s longest-standing anti-imperialist education institution would appoint a trustee with extensive ties to the military and security industrial complexes...

Business Wire on May 4, 2005 described GlobeSecNine as follows: "GlobeSecNine invests in companies providing U.S. defense, security, global trade management and supply chain solutions to the public and private sectors, and has a strategic alliance with The Scowcroft Group, a business advisory firm headed by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft."

Bedford served on the GlobeSecNine board of advisors with Scowcroft and co-founder of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center Fred Turco. Others affiliated with the company are tied directly to the prison industrial complex and the anti-liberal "war on drugs," for example Jack Lawn, former Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who serves on the board of directors.

On July 3, 2007, Michael Alexander’s name was removed from the list of Antioch trustees. Two days earlier, he had been sworn in as president of Lasell College in Newton Massachusetts. There has been speculation that Antioch’s campus would make a great retirement community, much like the one at Lasell, known as Lasell Village, "a state-of-the-art eldercare community with the first-of-its-kind built in educational component."

In 1998 Alexander founded AverStar, where he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and did business primarily with NASA and the Defense Department. In 2000, Alexander’s AverStar defense company merged with the Titan corporation.

In March 2005, Titan pled guilty and paid the largest penalty under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in history for bribery and filing false tax returns.

L-3 Communications acquired the Titan Corporation on July 29, 2005. As their corporate website described the company, it "is a leading provider of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems, secure communications systems, aircraft modernization, training and government services. The company is a leading merchant supplier of a broad array of high technology products, including guidance and navigation, sensors, scanners, fuzes, data links, propulsion systems, simulators, avionics, electro optics, satellite communications, electrical power equipment, encryption, signal intelligence, antennas and microwave components. L-3 also supports a variety of Homeland Security initiatives with products and services. Its customers include the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, selected U.S. Government intelligence agencies and aerospace prime contractors."
ImageImage
The L-3 Communications Titan Group brags that 8000 of its 10,000 employees have "security clearances" and that they are a leading provider of C4ISR, Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance – "developing and supporting the systems of today and tomorrow for the United States and Allied Militaries and defense-related agencies in order for them to carry out their assigned missions," according to their website.

While Anitoch board members Bedford and Alexander cozied up with U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security, students at the university sponsored a national teach-in to expose the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay on October 5, 2006.

How a college targeted by the FBI and its notorious COINTELPRO operation during the Cold War as a "vanguard of the New Left" managed to place two "spook"-connected trustees on their board is a mystery worth exploring.

Antioch resides in the shadow of the Wright Patterson Air Force Base and its legendary Foreign Technologies Division that reverse engineers weapons systems from other nations. Its larger neighbor to the west, Ohio State University, has long been tied up with the CIA’s favorite nonprofit institution, Battelle, and was one of the 30 or so universities involved in the MK Ultra mind control LSD experiments in the 1960s.

The Dayton Daily News is reporting that a $5 million accounting error caused the radical college to close. Others have pointed to the long-standing rumors of intelligence ties to the Antioch Europe in Transition study program.

If the CIA or U.S. intelligence services were involved in the subversion of America’s most anti-imperialist and pro-peace college, it wouldn’t be the first time that the progressive college campuses have been infiltrated. The CIA subverted the National Student Association in the late 50s and early 60s. The agency also has been accused of subverting everything from fraternities to Fullbright scholars to Peace Corps workers.

The role of these trustees must be heavily scrutinized. Antioch alumni should be ashamed to allow their college to die until they get to the bottom of this spooky mystery.

My guess would be the former and not the latter.

Also given it's location...
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and alums. :fem2:
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Here's the trigger for this rant:

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Diversion of the Day: Dave McGowan's The Strange Spooky Rise of Buffalo Springfield
Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
Part XV
June 6, 2009 by DAVID MCGOWAN
In July 1964, Stills found work as one of the nine members of the Au Go-Go Singers, the newly-formed house band for New York’s famed Café Au Go-Go. Singing alongside of Stills was a young Richie Furay, the son of a pharmacist who had run a family drugstore in Yellow Springs, Ohio...

http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2009/ ... range.html

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Postby MinM » Wed Jun 24, 2009 9:47 pm

Another Antiochian ... For your consideration.
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Seven Days in May and General Walker - Education Forum
Rod Serling attended Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, Ruth Paine's alma matter, where I had taken a course on the history of Vietnam in 1971 while at nearby University of Dayton.

Serling had a heart attack while in Ithica, upstate New York, where he was to give a lecture.

When I read in the newspaper that he had a heart attack I sent him a one-page letter c/o the hospital, but about a week later he died of a second massive heart attack. I wondered if he got my letter, which included a poem by William Butler Yeats, and a question as to what interesting projects he was working on at the time.

The day after he died I got a letter from Serling. I remember reading it on the front porch, and hearing the Twilight Zone theme in my head as I opened the letter.

He said, apparently in a dictation to a secretary, that he was not involved in any new projects, as he was more sick than the newspapers let on, and he thanked me for the poem.

BK

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... opic=14496
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Postby MinM » Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:25 am

More on Rod Serling...

Rod Serling and the JFK Assassination - The Education Forum

John Simkin wrote:I am currently reading Gordon F. Sander's book "Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man". Sander says that within days of the assassination the United States Information Agency (an organisation very much under the control of the CIA) commissioned Serling to produce a documentary for international distribution about LBJ. Serling accepted the contract and afterwards LBJ sent him his "profound thanks" for his work.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... opic=14520

and the future of Antioch College.

The Antioch College Comeback - The Paper Trail (usnews.com)
Call it a comeback. After having its operations suspended for the past two academic years, Antioch College will begin admitting new students as soon as 2011, Inside Higher Ed reports.

Leaders of the failed college's alumni association and the Antioch University Board of Trustees announced on Tuesday a plan to make the college independent of the university that closed it. The deal gives the college ownership of its campus, its $19 million endowment, its name, its literary journal, and, most important, total autonomy from the university. In return, the university will receive $6 million from the college's alumni and other donors.

Antioch's departure and return have been as controversial as its history. Founded in 1852 by Horace Mann, the college played a part in the abolitionist movement and was one of the first institutions to admit students regardless of gender or race. In the 1900s, Antioch was one of the first colleges to promote co-op education, a system in which students alternate between learning in the classroom and learning through on-the-job work experience. The college's famous alumni include Clifford Geertz, Stephen Jay Gould, and Coretta Scott King.

Though the college's campus is designed to accommodate 2,700 students, it saw fewer and fewer students enroll in the years preceding its temporary closure. Many members of the Antioch College community also resented the college's association with Antioch University, an entity created to run branch campuses across the country that offered mostly graduate-level courses. When the university decided to suspend operations of the college, many members of the Antioch College community argued that the university was sacrificing the very foundation of the institution.

Since the announcement, many alumni have pledged to increase the size and frequency of their donations to the college.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail ... eback.html
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Postby Fat Lady Singing » Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:55 am

The suggestion that there's something intelligence-related behind the near-demise of Antioch is interesting. An old friend of mine who I haven't seen in a few years is very highly placed in Antioch's administration. I have to think that my friend would gladly have exposed and fought anything like that. But who knows? Perhaps my friend was coerced in some way to keep silent. I sure hope not...
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Postby MinM » Fri Jul 03, 2009 10:42 am

Fat Lady Singing wrote:The suggestion that there's something intelligence-related behind the near-demise of Antioch is interesting. An old friend of mine who I haven't seen in a few years is very highly placed in Antioch's administration. I have to think that my friend would gladly have exposed and fought anything like that. But who knows? Perhaps my friend was coerced in some way to keep silent. I sure hope not...

Business as usual? :shrug:

My guess would be that no coercion would have been necessary. This synergy between between Institutes of Higher Learning and the Military-Industrial Complex seems to be the standard operating procedure.

Kowtowing to Dow

A few years ago I read a piece by the author of this piece -- Brian McKenna: Dow Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan -- which was called 'Kowtowing to Dow'. In it he lays out the sort of compromises colleges make everyday to secure funding.

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rigorousintuition.ca :: View topic - "USC Marketing Class Helps CIA Recruitment"

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/msu.edu/msu.html
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Postby MinM » Mon Jul 06, 2009 12:44 pm


Rod Serling and the JFK Assassination - The Education Forum

William Kelly wrote:Some more Antioch connections to the assassination:

Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio

CD 46 FBI Estep Report http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archi ... lPageId=16

INFORMATION REGARDING OSWALD’S POSSIBLE ATTENDANCE AT ANTIOCH COLLEGE, YELLOW SPRINGS, OHIO

Sgt. DONDALD SWARTZ, Intelligence Unit, Columbus Police Department, advised on November 29, 1963, he had received the following unverified information from a source he declined to identify:

LEE HARVEY OSWALD alleged attended Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, using his true name for a short period of time in 1957 and was dismissed because he was unable to prove his graduation from high school.

OSWALD had lived c/o MICHAEL PAINE and wife, RUTH PAINE nee HYDE, Irving, Texas. RUTH HYDE is a graduate, Class of 1955, of Antioch College…

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archi ... eId=296344

DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE DIVISION 4-6-64

Domestic Intelligence Division concurs with the recommendation of the SAC of the Cincinnati Office that no further action is necessary in this matter. Personnel of the Cincinnati Office who were responsible for the poor wording in the report of SA Charles E. Chapman dated 3-25-64 at Cincinnati, Ohio, in the Oswald case have been issued sharp error slips by the SAC of the Cincinnati Office and have been issued emphatic admonitions. The report in question has not been disseminated outside the Bureau. The allegation that Oswald was receiving money orders through the Miami Deposit Bank of Yellow Springs, Ohio, has been completely run out and has proven to have no basis in fact. Amended pages forwarded by the Cincinnati Office are being inserted in the instant report of SA Chapman and the report will then be disseminated to the President’s Commission in our next regular dissemination to the Commission.


FBI operation against New Left at Antioch
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archi ... eId=152615

Ruth Paine & Dr. Carl D. Hyde, M.D. WC Vol. XXIII pg. 504
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archi ... eId=143742
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Re:

Postby MinM » Mon Jun 14, 2010 3:40 pm

MinM wrote:"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon
Image
Were U.S. intelligence assets propping up Antioch College?

or

Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?

My guess would be the former and not the latter.

Also given it's location...
Image
and alums. :fem2:
Image

Here's the trigger for this rant:

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Diversion of the Day: Dave McGowan's The Strange Spooky Rise of Buffalo Springfield


Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
Part XV

June 6, 2009 by DAVID MCGOWAN
In July 1964, Stills found work as one of the nine members of the Au Go-Go Singers, the newly-formed house band for New York’s famed Café Au Go-Go. Singing alongside of Stills was a young Richie Furay, the son of a pharmacist who had run a family drugstore in Yellow Springs, Ohio...

kenny's sideshow: Diversion of the Day: Dave McGowan's The Strange Spooky Rise of Buffalo Springfield

Antioch College Connections to the CIA, Ruth Paine & John Kennedy Murder | Anti Fascist Encyclopedia - Fascism and Nazism News
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reply to ANTIOCH COLLEGE CONNECTIONS TO CIA,RUTH PAINE & JFK ASSASSINATION - The Education Forum
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Re: Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?

Postby MinM » Fri Oct 30, 2015 1:34 pm

This story from the Roanoke Times brought to mind the Antioch operation.
ImageThe Roanoke Times ‏@roanoketimes: Casey: The CIA - Ferrum College connection http://bit.ly/1MkUyMS
Image

Casey: The CIA - Ferrum College connection

Why was the Ferrum College admissions department's email among those listed in CIA Director John Brennan's personal — and hacked — email account contacts? The possibilities abound. Dan investigates.


Posted: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 11:30 pm

By Dan Casey dan.casey@roanoke.com 981-3423




There’s a curious Franklin County connection to a sensational story that rocketed around the world last week. It raised many eyebrows and prompted some chuckles. It involves the Central Intelligence Agency and a noteworthy bit of computer hacking.

It also involves Ferrum College, a Methodist-affiliated, 1,500-student private liberal arts school that lies on 700 rural acres about 10 miles west of Rocky Mount.

Apparently, CIA Director John Brennan has been in email contact with the admissions department at Ferrum.

While there are potentially innocent explanations for that, nobody has bothered to make them. Instead, officials at both institutions cleverly ducked my attempts to get to the bottom of it. And that raises all sorts of questions.

Before we get to those, here’s what we know:

Brennan, 60, is a career spook who’s led the CIA since 2013, following a sex scandal that unseated his predecessor. Before that, he was President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser.
Earlier this month, his personal AOL email account was hacked by persons (so far) unknown. According to various news accounts, the hackers have (A) given anonymous interviews to media outlets such as the New York Post and Wired magazine; and (B) bragged about their exploits on Twitter.
One of the purported hackers claimed to be an American high school student disenchanted by U.S. military support for Israel. Posing as Verizon employees, he and his cohorts phone-pranked other Verizon workers to give up personal information about Brennan, then used that to gain control of his AOL account.
The hackers dumped the contacts list of said account to Wikileaks. It went up on the Wikileaks website last week, along with a treatise about torture policy and other documents the hackers found attached to some of Brennan’s saved emails.
According to the CIA, this is now being investigated by the FBI and the Secret Service.
Brennan’s contact list contains hundreds of different email addresses, including those of government and military officials, major think tanks, university professors and intelligence contractors. Somewhat oddly, it also lists six dozen addresses for employees at Fairfax County Public Schools and one that begins “hottie_200518@. …”
Another one of those contacts is admissions@ferrum.edu.

I spotted that while perusing the list Wikileaks published, and thought, “Hmmm, this is interesting.”

So I called the media relations folks at the CIA and Ferrum. That resulted in me emailing three questions to both: Why is the CIA director emailing Ferrum? When did he do that? And how frequently?

As a huge fan of the old TV show “Get Smart,” I didn’t expect direct answers from the agency. Normally, it’s so super-secretive that it rarely issues any statement beyond a terse, “No comment.” And usually, the person saying that won’t allow their name to be used.

Instead, this is how the CIA replied, within minutes — and twice, from two different people:

“The hacking of the Brennan family account is a crime and the Brennan family is the victim. The private electronic holdings of the Brennan family were plundered with malicious intent and are now being distributed across the web. This attack is something that could happen to anyone and should be condemned, not promoted.

“There is no indication that any of the documents released are classified. The documents released are those that a private citizen with national security interests and expertise would be expected to possess.”

That’s what you call a blistering response, especially considering that it came from folks whose business is plundering information. Notice how they avoided my questions.

Ferrum’s response came from Kimberly Blair, the college’s vice president for institutional advancement. It was much friendlier.

“Our Admissions Office routinely has communication involving reference checks for a Ferrum graduate who is applying for a job with the agency. This is a common practice among government agencies, including the CIA, and you will find this with other colleges and universities as well.

“We have had several Ferrum College graduates, most from our Criminal Justice and Social Work programs, work for the CIA. They (the CIA) have shared with our President, Dr. Jennifer Braaten, that they love hiring Ferrum grads because of their work ethic, sense of civic duty and community service.

“The Ferrum College motto, ‘Not Self, But Others,’ is embodied by our graduates and we are proud for the service they give to our country.”

Blair added that she loves this column. Ha! Perhaps she thought flattery would get my head spinning so hard I wouldn’t realize she had steered around the questions. She must think I fell off a turnip truck or something.

But let’s face it: It’s doubtful the CIA director is doing reference checks for fresh-out-of-college applicants. And even if he was, would he use a personal email account to do that? It strains credulity.

The weird thing is, wholly innocent explanations exist for Brennan having the Ferrum address in his contacts list. Perhaps one of his grown children (he has three, according to other documents Wikileaks posted) applied to Ferrum at some point. Maybe his twin daughters went there.

If someone had simply told me that, I would have shrugged and thought, “Not column material,” and moved on. Instead, the non-answers tend to fuel the imagination.

For example: Is it possible that a tiny college in the rolling hills of southwest Franklin County has cooperated with America’s top spy to develop phony backgrounds for deep-cover agents? You never know with those intelligence agencies. They can be mighty tricky.

Anyway, if we’ve gleaned anything here, it’s that in terms of technology, our CIA director is an honest-to-God old fogey. I mean, jeez, AOL was passe 20 years ago.

The other thing we’ve learned is that Ferrum College may be some kind of pipeline into our nation’s top spy agency.

Who woulda thunk?

http://www.roanoke.com/news/columns_and ... 7ab96.html

By the way related to the previous post in this thread the Education Forum has some new information about Ruth Paine.
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