rigorousintuition.ca

Broadwell’s Denver Appearance: Did She Cover Petraeus’ Bad Briefs?

Petraeus Rules

Posted on November 12, 2012 by emptywheel

...Here’s a decent timeline of Petraeus’ demise (though many of these details–from the start date of the affair, the investigation, and Petraeus’ FBI interview have been reported using different dates, suggesting different anonymous stories may be offering different timelines). I’d like to concentrate on the following, which include a few additions.

[Week of, possibly day of] October 21 [alternately reported as September]: Paula Broadwell first interviewed by FBI. She agrees to turn over her computer, which will lead to the FBI finding classified information on it.

October 24 (written the day before): Petreaus applauds the guilty plea of John Kiriakou, who passed the identity of torturers to lawyers representing Gitmo detainees who have been tortured. Those lawyers have clearance, and they did not publicly reveal the most sensitive name...

October 24: Benghazi suspect killed in Cairo.

October 26: At an appearance at DU, Paula Broadwell says,

Now, I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that’s still being vetted.

The challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position, he’s not allowed to communicate with the press. So he’s known all of this — they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in, in Libya. Within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening.

October 25 [earliest reported date] – week of October 28: Petraeus interviewed by FBI.

October 26: Fox reports that CIA security in annex were twice told to stand down by “CIA chain of command.”

October 31: Acting after speaking to FBI “whistleblower,” Eric Cantor’s Chief of Staff calls Robert Mueller about investigation.

October 31- November 1: Petraeus in Cairo for security discussions.

November 2 [based on a briefing held November 1 while Petraeus was still in Cairo]: CIA releases timeline rebutting Fox report–mentioned by Broadwell–that CIA chain of command told security to stand down.

November 2: FBI interviews Broadwell a second time.

November 2: Scott Shane writes odd article on demise of Petraeus’ image, blaming his absence from media for Benghazi blowback, in part repeating a point made by Broadwell on October 26. It includes the following:

But since an attack killed four Americans seven weeks ago in Benghazi, Libya, his deliberately low profile, and the C.I.A.’s penchant for secrecy, have left a void that has been filled by a news media and Congressional furor over whether it could have been prevented. Rather than acknowledge the C.I.A.’s presence in Benghazi, Mr. Petraeus and other agency officials fought a losing battle to keep it secret, even as the events there became a point of contention in the presidential campaign.

[snip]

But the Benghazi crisis has posed an extraordinary test for Mr. Petraeus. After the killings, intelligence officials concerned about exposing the extent and methods of the large C.I.A. presence in the city would say little to reporters for publication.

[snip]

On Thursday, hoping to subdue the gathering public relations storm, intelligence officials invited reporters to a background briefing to, in their view, set the record straight. They offered a timeline of C.I.A. actions on the night of the attack, countering the idea that the besieged Americans were left alone under fire, and explaining why some would-be rescue efforts discussed in news reports were never feasible.

Notably, they also sought to rehabilitate Mr. Petraeus from some of the negative speculation that has surrounded him. The C.I.A. director, said one intelligence official, “has been fully engaged from the start of the agency’s response, particularly in the rescue mission that was swift and aggressive.”

The article also included a paragraph that sounded like a bid to spin issues that have gone haywire in good light.

Mr. Petraeus has managed the delicate task of supporting rebels in Syria’s civil war while trying to prevent the arming of anti-American extremists. But when his C-17 Globemaster touched down in Turkey in September for consultations on Syria, the trip went all but unnoticed by the news media. He worked for months to address the complaints of Pakistani officials about drone strikes against militants, while keeping State Department officials abreast of likely future strikes, a policy called “pre-concurrence” that has prevented interagency squabbles. In his travels to the tumultuous post-Arab Spring Middle East this week, only a brief mention of his arrival in Cairo surfaced in local news reports.

November 5: Based on second interview with Broadwell, FBI “tentatively” rules out charges.

November 5: Broadwell publishes General David Petraeus Rules for Living, including these...

http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/11/12/petraeus-rules/

NYT Kisses David Petraeus' Boo Boos To Make Them ... - Emptywheel

Posted on November 2, 2012 by emptywheel ... the last three sentences of Scott Shane's 1,500 word “news” piece on how David Petraeus' image has taken a hit because his agency 1) missed that the militias we’re partnering with in Libya were trying to kill us 2) gave poor intelligence that made the Administration look bad 3) asked for drones in response to this massive HUMINT failure...

Today's load of propaganda and manipulation is even more absurd than the misinformation distributed by Scott Shane of the NY Times last week:

Report: Petraeus will not testify on Libya attack - The Hill

2 hours ago – Hours after CIA Director David Petraeus officially resigned as the nation's top spy, Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee excused Petraeus from testifying on the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, hours after the former four-star general officially resigned as the nation's top spy...

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... ntry262575

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:While DiEugenio accurately tears apart the bogus 'Hoover' movie, it's obvious he still doesn't get what Hollywood really is, CIA disinfo conditioning. And this movie was timed to coincide with the anniversary of Oliver Stone's 'JFK' and deliberately be inaccurate to fool the very naive and create doubt in the less naive regarding movies on historical subjects.

I'm also alarmed to hear Black Ops radio still promoting James Fetzer who has been an active 9/11 disinformationist.

Same thing with Jim Marrs who infiltrated the JFK truth movement and waited until the Assassinations Record Review Board was active to unleash his pile of UFO disinfo. Marrs was a sleeper, just like Chip Berlet and David L. Robb. Robb put out a book about the Pentagon and Hollywood and followed up with a book wherein he 'affirms that Oswald dunnit.'

s.o.p.

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 75#p436375

Online Privacy Issue Is Also in Play in Petraeus Scandal

F.B.I. agents at Paula Broadwell’s home Tuesday. Her e-mails led to unintended consequences.
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: November 13, 2012

The F.B.I. investigation that toppled the director of the C.I.A. and has now entangled the top American commander in Afghanistan underscores a danger that civil libertarians have long warned about: that in policing the Web for crime, espionage and sabotage, government investigators will unavoidably invade the private lives of Americans.

On the Internet, and especially in e-mails, text messages, social network postings and online photos, the work lives and personal lives of Americans are inextricably mixed. Private, personal messages are stored for years on computer servers, available to be discovered by investigators who may be looking into completely unrelated matters.

In the current F.B.I. case, a Tampa, Fla., woman, Jill Kelley, a friend both of David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director, and Gen. John R. Allen, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, was disturbed by a half-dozen anonymous e-mails she had received in June. She took them to an F.B.I. agent whose acquaintance with Ms. Kelley (he had sent her shirtless photos of himself — electronically, of course) eventually prompted his bosses to order him to stay away from the investigation.

But a squad of investigators at the bureau’s Tampa office, in consultation with prosecutors, opened a cyberstalking inquiry. Although that investigation is still open, law enforcement officials have said that criminal charges appear unlikely.

In the meantime, however, there has been a cascade of unintended consequences. What began as a private, and far from momentous, conflict between two women, Ms. Kelley and Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s biographer and the reported author of the harassing e-mails, has had incalculable public costs.

The C.I.A. is suddenly without a permanent director at a time of urgent intelligence challenges in Syria, Iran, Libya and beyond. The leader of the American-led effort to prevent a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan is distracted, at the least, by an inquiry into his e-mail exchanges with Ms. Kelley by the Defense Department’s inspector general.

For privacy advocates, the case sets off alarms.

“There should be an investigation not of the personal behavior of General Petraeus and General Allen, but of what surveillance powers the F.B.I. used to look into their private lives,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. “This is a textbook example of the blurring of lines between the private and the public.”

Law enforcement officials have said they used only ordinary methods in the case, which might have included grand jury subpoenas and search warrants. As the complainant, Ms. Kelley presumably granted F.B.I. specialists access to her computer, which they would have needed in their hunt for clues to the identity of the sender of the anonymous e-mails. While they were looking, they discovered General Allen’s e-mails, which F.B.I. superiors found “potentially inappropriate” and decided should be shared with the Defense Department.

In a parallel process, the investigators gained access, probably using a search warrant, to Ms. Broadwell’s Gmail account. There they found messages that turned out to be from Mr. Petraeus.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the chain of unexpected disclosures was not unusual in computer-centric cases.

“It’s a particular problem with cyberinvestigations — they rapidly become open-ended because there’s such a huge quantity of information available and it’s so easily searchable,” he said, adding, “If the C.I.A. director can get caught, it’s pretty much open season on everyone else.”

For years now, as national security officials and experts have warned of a Pearl Harbor cyberattack that could fray the electrical grid or collapse stock markets, policy makers have jostled over which agencies should be assigned the delicate task of monitoring the Internet for dangerous intrusions.

Advocates of civil liberties have been especially wary of the National Security Agency, whose expertise is unrivaled but whose immense surveillance capabilities they see as frightening. They have successfully urged that the Department of Homeland Security take the leading role in cybersecurity.

That is in part because the D.H.S., if far from entirely open to public scrutiny, is much less secretive than the N.S.A., the eavesdropping and code-breaking agency. To this day, N.S.A. officials have revealed almost nothing about the warrantless wiretapping it conducted inside the United States in the hunt for terrorists in the years after 2001, even after the secret program was disclosed by The New York Times in 2005 and set off a political firestorm.

The hazards of the Web as record keeper, of course, are a familiar topic. New college graduates find that their Facebook postings give would-be employers pause. Husbands discover wives’ infidelity by spotting incriminating e-mails on a shared computer. Teachers lose their jobs over impulsive Twitter comments.

But the events of the last few days have shown how law enforcement investigators who plunge into the private territories of cyberspace looking for one thing can find something else altogether, with astonishingly destructive results.

Some people may applaud those results, at least in part. By having a secret extramarital affair, for instance, Mr. Petraeus was arguably making himself vulnerable to blackmail, which would be a serious concern for a top intelligence officer. What if Russian or Chinese intelligence, rather than the F.B.I., had discovered the e-mails between the C.I.A. director and Ms. Broadwell?

Likewise, military law prohibits adultery — which General Allen’s associates say he denies committing — and some kinds of relationships. So should an officer’s privacy really be total?

But some commentators have renewed an argument that a puritanical American culture overreacts to sexual transgressions that have little relevance to job performance. “Most Americans were dismayed that General Petraeus resigned,” said Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U.

That old debate now takes place in a new age of electronic information. The public shaming that labeled the adulterer in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” might now be accomplished by an F.B.I. search warrant or an N.S.A. satellite dish.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/us/da ... h_20121114

JackRiddler wrote:.

Here's the Times' (Scott Shane) play on the shirtless FBI man...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/ti ... nted=print

November 12, 2012

Motives Questioned in F.B.I. Inquiry of Petraeus E-Mails

By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Is a string of angry e-mails really enough, in an age of boisterous online exchanges, to persuade the F.B.I. to open a cyberstalking investigation?

Sometimes the answer is yes, law enforcement officials and legal experts said Monday — especially if the e-mails in question reflect an inside knowledge of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

That was true of the e-mails sent anonymously to Jill Kelley, a friend of the C.I.A. director, David H. Petraeus, which prompted the F.B.I. office in Tampa, Fla., to begin an investigation last June. The inquiry traced the e-mails to Mr. Petraeus’s biographer, Paula Broadwell, exposed their extramarital affair and led Friday to his resignation after 14 months as head of the intelligence agency.

On Monday night, F.B.I. agents went to Ms. Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, N.C., and were seen carrying away what several reporters at the scene said were boxes of documents. A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case remains open, said Ms. Broadwell had consented to the search.

Some commentators have questioned whether the bureau would ordinarily investigate a citizen complaint about unwanted e-mails, suggesting that there must have been a hidden motive, possibly political, to take action. F.B.I. officials are scheduled to brief the Senate and House intelligence committees on Tuesday about the case.

But law enforcement officials insisted on Monday that the case was handled “on the merits.” The cyber squad at the F.B.I.’s Tampa field office opened an investigation, after consulting with federal prosecutors, based on what appeared to be a legitimate complaint about e-mail harassment.

The complaint was more intriguing, the officials acknowledged, because the author of the e-mails, which criticized Ms. Kelley for supposed flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus at social events, seemed to have an insider’s knowledge of the C.I.A. director’s activities. One e-mail accused Ms. Kelley of “touching” Mr. Petraeus inappropriately under a dinner table.

Now footsie's going to be a smoking gun. What game will the ruling class have left, once the surveillance state is complete?

“There was a legitimate case to open on the facts, with the support of the prosecutors,” said the official who described the search at Ms. Broadwell’s home. He added, “They asked, does somebody know more about Petraeus than you’d expect?”

Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office, the official also said. That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, he said. He had no training in cybercrime, was not part of the cyber squad handling the case and was never assigned to the investigation.

But the agent, who was not identified, continued to “nose around” about the case, and eventually his superiors “told him to stay the hell away from it, and he was not invited to briefings,” the official said. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday night that the agent had been barred from the case.

Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, the official said — that the case had stalled. Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama. The agent alerted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who called the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on Oct. 31 to tell him of the agent’s concerns.

The official said the agent’s self-described “whistle-blowing” was “a little embarrassing” but had no effect on the investigation.

A ha! Official Story 2.1: The shirtless FBI guy had no effect on the investigation, except that he was the one who informed Cantor. Otherwise everything would have gone the same way. If true, also explains why Cantor knew and Feinstein didn't.

The hilarious part, if true, is that Shirtless confused protecting Petraeus with protecting Obama, when surely the opposite is the case. Perhaps this makes him a right-winger victimized by his own confusionism.

David H. Laufman, who served as a federal prosecutor in national security cases from 2003 to 2007, said, “there’s a lot of chatter and noise about cybercrimes,” and most of it does not lead to an investigation. But he added, “It’s plausible to me that if Ms. Kelley indicated that the stalking was related to her friendship with the C.I.A. director, that would have elevated it as a priority for the bureau.”

Orin S. Kerr, a George Washington University law professor who specializes in computer crime issues, said it was “surprising that they would devote the resources” to investigating who was behind a half-dozen harassing e-mails.

“The F.B.I. gets a lot of tips, and investigating any one case requires an agent or a few agents to spend a lot of time,” he said. “They can’t do this for every case, and the issue is, why this one case?”

Still, Mr. Kerr — a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s computer crimes and intellectual property section from 1998 to 2001 — said it was likely that several factors, in addition to the Petraeus connection, made the complaint stand out. Ms. Kelley was fairly prominent in Tampa social circles and had previously had dealings with the F.B.I. agent who took her complaint.

Moreover, he said, the F.B.I. has been putting more resources into investigating cyberstalking crimes in recent years.

A government official clarified on Monday that F.B.I. agents’ first interview with Ms. Broadwell — at which she is said to have admitted having had an affair with Mr. Petraeus, and voluntarily allowed agents to search her computer — took place in September. An earlier account had put that interview during the week of Oct. 21.

Before Ms. Broadwell spoke to the F.B.I. agents, Mr. Petraeus had learned that she had sent offensive e-mails to Ms. Kelley and asked her to stop, another official said. By the time agents interviewed the C.I.A. director during the week of Oct. 28, he was aware of the cyberstalking investigation and readily acknowledged his affair with Ms. Broadwell, the official said.

Mr. Petraeus’s former colleagues in the Obama administration have said little about the circumstances preceding his resignation. But on Monday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A. before Mr. Petraeus, criticized the F.B.I. for not informing members of the Congressional intelligence committees of its investigation.

“As a former director of the C.I.A., and having worked very closely with the intelligence committees, I believe that there is a responsibility to make sure that the intelligence committees are informed of issues that could affect the security of those intelligence operations,” he said on a flight to Australia.

His remarks were similar to those by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, on Sunday.

Mr. Petraeus’s former spokesman, Steve Boylan, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that the C.I.A. director was “devastated” over the affair and its consequences.

“He deeply regrets and knows how much pain this causes his family,” he said.

Mr. Boylan, a retired Army colonel, said Holly Petraeus, Mr. Petraeus’s wife of 38 years, “is not exactly pleased right now.”

“Furious would be an understatement.”


Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting while flying on the secretary of defense’s plane between Honolulu and Perth, Australia.

And those of you looking for an Israeli angle will be thrilled to hear that the Khawams are Maronite Christians. Here's the current version of what is sure to be a burgeoning Wiki page on Jill Kelley:

Gilberte "Jill" Khawam Kelley (born January 1, 1975) is an American socialite and volunteer social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa Bay, Florida.[1] She is a key figure in the government investigation into inappropriate communications by U.S. Generals David Petraeus and John R. Allen.

Life and Career

Kelley's family are Lebanese-American Maronite Catholics who immigrated from Jounieh, Lebanon, in the mid-1970s.[2] She grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, and her parents owned a restaurant. She attended Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in the late 1990s, where she was undergraduate class representative. Kelley lived in the area until her mid-20s.[3] She has an identical twin sister named Natalie.[4]

Kelley was given an appreciation certificate recognizing her as an "honorary ambassador" to the coalition of countries at United States Central Command in Florida, but she has no official status and is not employed by the U.S. government. An official told the Associated Press that Kelley sometimes omits the term "honorary" and refers to herself as an ambassador.[3]

Personal life

She is married to cancer surgeon Scott Kelley and has three daughters.[2] They live in Tampa, Florida near United States Central Command headquarters and have frequently hosted glitzy parties for the area's military brass. According to the Washington Post, the Kelleys have been pursued by creditors since 2002 for failures to make payments.[5]

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

On the captors of Richard Engel: the plot thickens

So who kidnapped Mr. Richard Engel? A knowledgeable Western journalist sent me this:

"there is a Shiite village in Idlib called Fu'a, and every time a journalist gets kidnapped in Idlib at first the opposition activists blame Shiites or even Alawites (!) as happened three weeks ago with a different group. ِِِAnyway Fu'a is surrounded by armed opposition supporters, so its unlikely its men could just drive around as is described in the official account, and they would probably not say they were shiites let along brag about their alleged training (and there is no way they got revolutionary guard training) then this video came out:

and it has since been removed, what it showed is Engel and his team in a bare room saying who they are, on the walls in green spray paint are written fresh looking pro Assad graffiti like al Assad or we will burn the country, and something about dhulfiqar which is obviously Shiite it seems very much like a setup, like the kidnappers wanted him to think he was taken by Shiites and if he was taken by Shiites or regime loyalists he would not have been released so quickly so its a bullshit story
maybe A....

i think they took down the video because Engel is made to say something anti-American

PS here is the video"

PPS Now this is me, Angry Arab. I looked at the video and it is so clearly a set up and the slogans are so clearly fake and they intend to show that they were clearly Shi`ites and that they are savages. If this one is believable, I am posing as a dentist.

PPPS Of course, I am not saying that Engel was in on this plot. I think that they were really kidnapped but that the kidnappers of the Free Syrian Army typically lied to them about their identity, which has happened before.

http://angryarab.blogspot.ca/2012/12/on ... -plot.html

Here's another argument against Kerry: He has the backing of David Ignatius, whom Glenn Greenwald once called "the CIA's spokesman at The Washington Post." (Correction: The current CIA spokesman at The Washington Post.) ...

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2012/12/ ... dness.html

Jim DiEugenio wrote:Posted 15 January 2013 - 03:44 PM

Man tied to Mafia: Hoffa buried in Detroit area

As someone pointed out to me, the timing of this story with the Rose-RFK Jr. suggestions about some kind of Mafia plot (which RFK Jr. tried to amend) is interesting.

It just appeared in the news index yesterday. And today, its on the front page at Yahoo.

So, undoubtedly this will drag on for months until the authorities excavate the place. Which, of course, just happened a few months back with another Hoffa lead. Which came up empty.

Thus are the wages of Dan Moldea and his crowd. Maybe he will come out of the woodwork and urge the FBI to dig up the spot also? But here's my point: What if his remains are actually buried there? So what? Everyone knows that someone had the guy murdered. But who thinks it was over anything JFK related? It was because he was trying to return to a position of leadership in the Teamsters.

Another distraction? Sure seems that way I think.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... opic=19867

Zero Dark Thirty filmakers question US use of drone strikes

The filmmakers behind Zero Dark Thirty, have publicly called into question President Obama's use of drone strikes in the war on terror.

Bigelow said critics should perhaps direct their anger at those who ordered US torture policies instead Photo: Jonathan Olley/AP

By Hannah Furness
UK Daily Telegraph
7:47AM GMT 17 Jan 2013

Kathryn Bigelow, who directed the controversial film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, said the inclusion of “really regrettable practices” used by the US to combat terrorism were essential to avoid seeing them repeated.

Screenwriter Mark Boal pointed out that the scale of the Obama administration's use of unmanned drones was beyond George W Bush and Dick Cheney's "wildest dreams".

Bigelow has already defended the use of torture scenes in the film, saying she could not “ignore or deny the role it played in US counter terrorism policy”.

Speaking at a screening in London last night, she said: “Why I’m proud of the movie is that I think if we don’t look at some really regrettable practices we’re doomed to repeat it.

“Otherwise it’s just going to sit there in this kind of nice, contained area, without being explored or exposed or a conversation being had or maybe history being changed as we go forwards.”

Boal, responding to questions from the audience, added: “Drone strikes are continuing at a pace that Bush in his wildest dreams, or Cheney… would never have imagined, that you could do this sort of thing.

“There should be a conversation about that I think.”

The film, which is nominated as best picture at this year’s Oscars, opens by declaring it is based on firsthand accounts of actual events.

Some US politicians have criticised the film as misleading for suggesting torture led to bin Laden's location.

Bigelow has maintained that avoiding the controversial aspects of the film would mean the world would be “relegated to repeat” the same mistakes.

“That’s what makes me really gratified as a filmmaker and it kind of is illuminating about the power of the medium to ignore conversations that can be so emotionally acute,” she said.

“You’re just going to be relegated to repeat it if we don’t look at it. “Those were difficult, difficult, difficult scenes to shoot. Difficult for me, difficult for the cast difficult for the crew to witness and experience

“But it’s part of the story, I guess as a filmmaker you’ve got to try not to be so emotional towards those kind of situations.”

Writing in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, she added that torture was part of the story and suggested critics should direct their anger at those who ordered US torture policies instead.

Bigelow said it seems illogical to make a case against torture by denying the role it played in counter-terrorism policy and practices.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film ... rikes.html

Editor of major newspaper says he planted stories for CIA
By Ralph Lopez Jan 26, 2015 in World



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm4OUcfiM-8

Becoming the first credentialed, well-known media insider to step forward and state publicly that he was secretly a "propagandist," an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA.
Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.
Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short.
Dr. Ulfkotte is the author of a book currently available only in German, "Bought Journalists" (Kopp 2014.) Aged 55, he was also once an advisor to the government of German Chancellor Helmet Kohl.
The book has become a bestseller in Germany but, in a bizarre twist which Ulfkotte says characterizes the disconnect caused by CIA control of the western media, the book cannot be reported on.
Ulfkotte says:
"
"No German mainstream journalist is allowed to report about [my] book. Otherwise he or she will be sacked. So we have a bestseller now that no German journalist is allowed to write or talk about.""
Among the stories Ulfkotte says he was ordered to plant in his newspaper over the years was a story that Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi was building poison gas factories in 2011. Ulfkotte also says he was an eyewitness to Saddam Hussein's use of poison gas against Iranians in the war between Iran and Iraq, but that the editors he worked for at the time were not interested, because Iraq was a US ally at the time.
Ulfkotte says he is better positioned to come forward than many journalists because he does not have children who could be threatened. Ulfkotte told the Russian newspaper Russian Insider (RI):
""When I told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Ulfkotte's nwspaper) that I would publish the book, their lawyers sent me a letter threatening with all legal consequences if I would publish any names or secrets – but I don’t mind. You see, I don’t have children to take care of. And you must know I was severely injured during the gas attack I witnessed in Iran in 1988. I'm the sole German survivor from a German poison gas attack. I’m still suffering from this. I’ve had three heart attacks. I don’t expect to live for more than a few years.""
Ulfkotte says that remorse of having "lied" to mass audiences over the years drove him to come forward. He told RI that he was:
""taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public." "
Ulfkotte says:
"
"I'm ashamed I was part of it. Unfortunately I cannot reverse this.""
Among the admissions that Ulfkotte makes in the interview are putting his own name to articles completely written by intelligence agencies. He said:
"
"I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service." "
Ulfkotte detailed the pattern of cajolery and outright bribery used by the CIA and other US-allied intelligence agencies, for the purpose of advancing political agendas. Ulfkotte said:
""once you're connected, you make friends with selected Americans. You think they are your friends and you start cooperating. They work on your ego, make you feel like you're important. And one day one of them will ask you 'Will you do me this favor'...""
Ulfkotte noted that a journalists on international press trips paid for by organizations close to the government are unlikely to submit a storyline not favorable to the sponsor.
Dr. Udo Ulfkotte
Dr. Udo Ulfkotte
hungarytoday.hu
Of the gassing of Iranians he had witnessed in the Eighties, Ulfkoppe said:
"
"they asked me to hand over the photo's that I had made to the German association of chemical companies in Frankfurt, Verband der Chemischen Industrie. This poison gas that had killed so many Iranians was made in Germany.""
In an interview with Russia Today, Ulfkotte said that it was "not right" what he had done, and that his fear was that politicians were actively driving the world toward war:
""it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe. … I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don’t like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too. … We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war. … I don’t want this anymore, I’m fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic, and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom...""
In his book "The CIA and the Media," Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein quotes William B. Bader, former CIA intelligence officer, in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Baeder said:
""There is quite an incredible spread of relationships. You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level.""
Bernstein writes:
"
"The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.""
Ulfkotte was on the staff of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation from 1999 to 2003, according to his Wikipedia entry. He won the civic prize from the Annette Barthelt Foundation in 2003.

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