Tag: news

The Whitefish Contract is a Natural Consequence of FEMA’s Mismanagement

Congress approved some $36.5 billion in appropriations to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for disaster relief efforts. Taxpayers should hold out little hope this money will be well spent.

Take, for instance, the $300 million no-bid electrical grid repair contract Puerto Rico’s power utility PREPO handed to the inadequate, but well-connected Whitefish contracting firm. PREPO reportedly is paying Whitefish’s electrical workers $332.41 a day for accommodations alone.

The Whitefish contract expressly forbids FEMA (which is responsible for bankrolling the contract) from auditing Whitefish’s performance, as Reason‘s Eric Boehm reported earlier today.

It’s an insane provision, but probably an unnecessary one, given how little audits of FEMA’s past spending have done to improve agency performance.

The latest audit of FEMA’s 2015 disaster relief spending found nearly a third of it “questionable costs, such as duplicate payments, unsupported costs, improper contract costs, and unauthorized expenditures.”

From 2009 to 2015, FEMA misspent or wasted more than $10 billion, or 37 percent of the funds examined in the audit. Despite the damning results, FEMA has failed to act on nearly 90 percent of the improvements recommended by the auditors.

The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth—who is responsible for overseeing FEMA—was so angry about it he sent a letter in June to Homeland Security Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wis.) expressing”frustration in our lack of progress in getting FEMA or Congress to pay attention to this,” Bloomberg reported yesterday.

Roth was particularly piqued by another $2 billion FEMA award to the City of New Orleans to fix its sewer system, after having given the city $785 million in December of 2015 to repair sewer damage from the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

From January through May of 2016, DHS staffers repeatedly expressed the opinion the damage was the result of local negligence and questioned the appropriateness of a federal fix. FEMA listened carefully—and in July gave New Orleans another $1.25 billion.

A quick survey of DHS audits of FEMA spending this year shows millions in no-bid contracts and duplicate spending everywhere from Suffolk, Connecticut to Lavellette, New Jersey.

The availability of federal disaster relief encourages this kind of burden shifting by local governments, Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, tells Reason. “When they know the federal government is going to bail them out, it provides less incentive to prepare for disasters, and make these places more resilient.”

Long before Hurricane Maria knocked out power to some 95 percent of residents, Puerto Rico’s PREPO power company suffered from mismanagement, crumbling infrastructure, and crippling debt. The grid was particularly vulnerable to hurricane damage and the hurricane ensured that federal taxpayers would pick up the bill.

FEMA’s track record suggests many of its functions should be spun off. “Poor management year after year, decade after decade,” Edwards tells Reason, “suggests that maybe some of these things should be moved out of governments and into markets.”

Until the unlikely chance that happens, we can expect hurricanes will continue to wash up plenty of Whitefish.

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Senator Feinstein Demands Twitter Hand Over Wikileaks DMs

Shortly after representatives from Twitter, Google and Facebook agreed to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday – and just days before the chief counsel from each firm is set to testify before a joint meeting of the House and Senate Intelligence committees – Wikileaks tweeted that a formal request had been sent from Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary committee, for DMs from several Twitter accounts associated with Wikileaks, along with other sensitive account information about advertisements paid for by Russia Today and accounts suspected of being bots programmed by Russian agents.

While the request isn’t a subpoena – and thus Twitter isn’t legally compelled to comply – we imagine Jack Dorsey wouldn't hesitate to accommodate Congressional Democrats who are insistently trying to prove that Russian President Vladimir Putin orchestrated a destabilizing propaganda campaign that somehow swayed the election in Trump’s favor, while Republicans are pivoting to an investigation into the Clinton’s ties with Russian businessmen and a possible quid-pro-quo involving the Obama-era Uranium One deal.

The ranking member of the US Senate Judiciary Committee is seeking information "not routinely shared with Congress," the letter read. It also asks Twitter to reveal how it identified the Russian-linked accounts for which it had previously produced ads or posts.

Dianne Feinstein

The letter calls for the release of all content from direct messages and data showing the sender, receiver, date and time of each message, for the following accounts: @wikileaks, @WLTaskForce, @GUCCIFER_2, @JulianAssange_, @JulianAssange, and @granmarga.

As Wikileaks points out, one of those accounts, @granmarga, is the account of the wife of Wikileak’s late chief counsel.

As the Duran concludes, Twitter is learning the hard way that when you give the US Congress an inch, they will take a yard. Soon, the US Deep State will be able to request DM’s from any individual or organization at any time. This is just the beginning of America’s descent into surveillance hell…and the end of Twitter as a reliable and trusted communication platform. Why in God’s name would anyone invest their time and money into building a twitter presence, only to have it handed to Congress or the Deep State at anytime?

Whether Feinstein makes similar requests from Facebook and Google remains to be seen, though time to receive the documents before the hearings is quickly running out.

Now it's up to Jack Dorsey: Will he continue to acquiesce to lawmakers' demands? Or will he be forced to draw the line here?

Read the whole document below:

2017.10.27feinsteinne by Anonymous pk7NsM on Scribd

 

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Bannon Declares War On “Phony Culture Brokers” In Hollywood Who “Turned A Blind Eye” To Weinstein

Steve Bannon, per an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, has opened a new front in Breitbart’s war on the Left.  After already seizing several victories in his war on the GOP establishment, Bannon says he’s taking direct aim at the “phony culture brokers” in Hollywood who “disingenuously seized the moral high ground” when Trump’s “Access Hollywood” recording was revealed but has simultaneously ignored “Weinstein’s horrible behavior” for years.

“Hollywood isn’t a new battlefront for Breitbart, it’s the original battle,” Bannon tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The fact it’s blowing itself up isn’t a new stage in the culture war, it’s an inevitable one.”

 

“They’ve ignored half the country’s values for far too long and now these Hollywood elitists’ values are publicly on display, and bankrupt,” Bannon says. Adds Marlow, “Hollywood turned a blind eye to Weinstein’s horrible behavior, now it’s turning a blind eye to the conservatives who work there and who make up half its audience.”

 

“These are the same people who disingenuously seized the moral high ground as they attacked our president based on a standard they do not live by,” Bannon says. “Americans took their country back not only from the permanent political class but also from these phony culture brokers who have waged war against their way of life for decades. Make no mistake, we didn’t start this war, but how Hollywood responds from here will determine whether or not it survives.”

Bannon

Of course, as we noted earlier this month (see: Did Bannon Just Take Down Harvey Weinstein?), Bannon has been rumored to be the mastermind behind Harvey Weinstein’s takedown but apparently that was just the beginning.

For his next project, Bannon has enlisted the help of a former joke writer for Sarah Silverman and Tracy Morgan who says his family has been the victim of a “pattern of discrimination” from Hollywood elites for his “conservative political views and especially his support of Trump.”

First up in this invigorated battle is a 14,000-word article written by a Hollywood insider who will outline what he says was a pattern of discrimination against him and his family due to his conservative political views and especially his support of Trump.

 

The article, to be published this week, was written by Patrick Courrielche, a former joke writer for Sarah Silverman and Tracy Morgan who started his career as a dancer on American Bandstand and now writes and produces. Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow says “he was embedded in Hollywood for years working on the project.”

 

Bannon and Marlow figure the time is right to focus anew on what they say is an entertainment industry that pushes a liberal agenda while silencing conservatives in its employment because, in part, the industry is being roiled by accusations of sexual assault.

 

“Hollywood’s war on conservatives is backfiring, so this is a new phase. Hollywood has no more moral authority to lecture us. It can’t even keep its own house in order,” says Marlow, adding that Breitbart wants to establish itself as a safe place for more Hollywood insiders to “come out of the closet. It will be a moment of vindication for Andrew Breitbart’s vision.”

 

“There is a populist movement taking over politics in this country,” Bannon says. “Breitbart was founded on the notion that culture dictates politics, and if Hollywood doesn’t understand this movement and these people, then they better be prepared for the consequences.”

Courrielche says he plans to expose the “organic process” that Hollywood uses to “weed out conservatives” which entails the following: “weed out, ostracize, repeat.”

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Will Alias Grace Adaptation Replicate Success of The Handmaid’s Tale? New at Reason

'Alias Grace'Whether it’s a metaphor or an omen, the confluence of the debuts of CBS’ S.W.A.T. and Netflix’s Alias Grace this week is painful. Broadcast television is showcasing its antiquary status by wrapping up its fall season with a tepid remake of a failed 1970s cop drama, while Netflix, the model of TV’s future, offers a subtle, layered dissection of the nature of truth wrapped inside a macabre double-murder.

The most remarkable thing about Alias Grace may not even be its content, though that’s quite extraordinary, but that it’s the second time in six months that Canadian author Margaret Atwood, now tiptoeing toward her 80th birthday, has had one of her books adapted into a miniseries. Who knew literary feminism could be so profitable?

Except that’s far too narrow a label to pin on Atwood. The intellectual underpinnings of her work are more complex and elusive than many of her fans recognize. Men often behave badly in her novels, but so do women. Like The Handmaid’s Tale, which is as much a critique of totalitarianism as it is of male supremacy, Alias Grace abounds with ideas about a host of subjects in addition to feminism: Class. Poverty. Penology. Religion. Epistemology. Television critic Glenn Garvin takes a closer look.

View this article.

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Ed Gillespie’s Scaremongering On Felon Voting Rights is a Sloppy Return to Crime Hysteria

Anyone within range of a Virginia media market has been inundated with ads lately for the state’s gubernatorial election, pitting Republican Ed Gillespie against the Democrat, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam.

As the race draws to a close, Gillespie unleashed a series of Trumpian attack ads against Northam. One of those ads hits Northam for his role last year in Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s ambitious, unprecedented action to restore voting rights to Virginia felons:

Last year, Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam instituted the automatic restoration of rights for violent felons and sex offenders, making it easier for them to obtain firearms and allowing them to serve on juries. One of these felons, John Bowen, had his rights restored two months after being found with one of the largest child-pornography collections in Virginia’s history. Forty-three prosecutors—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—opposed Ralph Northam’s reckless policy. Now, Virginia law enforcement has endorsed Ed Gillespie for governor.

Virginia is one of only four states where a felony conviction bars one from voting for life. Last year, McAuliffe announced with great fanfare that he was issuing an order to automatically restore the voting rights or more than 200,000 Virginians who had completed their prison sentences, including violent felons. The order also allowed ex-offenders to petition a judge for the restoration of their Second Amendment rights.

Gillespie’s ad is an unsubtle nod to the tough-on-crime campaign spots that got Republicans and Democrats alike elected to office in the 1980s and 1990s. The most infamous of these was the George H.W. Bush campaign’s 1988 Willie Horton ad.

The Gillespie campaign has also released ads trumpeting the dangers of MS-13, a Latin street gang that has been the bête noire of the Trump administration, and Gillespie’s opposition to removing Confederate monuments. The Washington Post editorial board declared Gillespie’s last-minute populist turn “a poisonous strategy for the nation and for Virginia.”

And like those old crime ads, the Gillespie campaign plays fast and loose with the facts in the case of John Bowen. Bowen had been arrested in December—but not yet convicted—for child pornography when his voting rights were restored. Bowen had voting rights for a total of 41 days.

McAuliffe’s administration made a mess of the restoration order, leaving it open to attacks like those on the Bowen case. The order accidentally restored voting rights to some felons who were still in prison, as well as 132 sex offenders held in civil commitment—a process where a judge can continue to indefinitely detain sex criminals in a state treatment facility after the completion of their prison sentence, if their mental illness or disorder is deemed likely they will offend again.

Furious Republicans sued to block the order, and the state supreme court ruled that McAuliffe didn’t have the authority to grant such an en masse restoration without signing off on each individual case. Since then, he has signed off on roughly 168,000 offenders.

One major twist in this story is Gillespie’s campaign website saying, overall, he supports restoring voting rights for felons. Like many Republicans these days, Gillespie’s views on criminal justice are moderate and not unlike mainstream Democrats like Northam.

Gillespie supports keeping questions about prior felonies off of state government job applications. He’d like to end the suspension of drivers’ licenses for unpaid court fines, something Reason reported last year resulted in hundreds of thousands of Virginia residents losing their licenses every year, even if they had no means to pay the fines.

After putting the fear of enfranchised sex offenders in the heart of the audience (they might vote and serve on juries!), the second half of Gillespie’s TV spot tries to return to moderate support for the policy:

Virginians who have paid their debt to society and are living an honest life should have their rights restored. But Ralph Northam’s policy of automatic restoration of rights for unrepentant, unreformed, violent criminals is wrong. As governor, I’ll be both compassionate and protecting of Virginia families. I’m Ed Gillespie, candidate for governor, and I sponsored this ad.

The feel-good half of the ad isn’t what Gillespie’s campaign would like voters to remember. The real message—that Northam wants to make sex offenders full and free members of society after their release—is loud and clear.

While Republican governors and lawmakers are coming around to criminal justice reform, the Trump administration has shown scaremongering still works on a significant number of voters. Gillespie is trying to have it both ways. Whether he succeeds will be an interesting test of the durability of Trumpian rhetoric in the GOP.

Either way, it comes at the cost of millions of ex-offenders in this country continuing to struggle to lead productive, meaningful lives because of the stigma of their encounter with the criminal justice system.

Among the most ambitious and talented, like Shon Hopwood, success is rare and hard-fought. While serving time in federal prison for bank robbery, Hopwood became arguably the most successful jailhouse lawyer of all time, as shown in a recent 60 Minutes profile. He had not one, but two successful petitions to the Supreme Court, something most professional appellate attorneys only dream of. But after his release, he was warned that, even if he got accepted to and graduated from law school, it was highly unlikely because of his felony record any state bar association would admit him.

Hopwood beat the odds and is now a licensed attorney and Georgetown law professor. For most other ex-offenders, though, even the most modest dreams of holding down a job are stymied by legal roadblocks and the fear of unredeemable criminality.

Whether he believes in it or not, Gillespie hopes invoking that fear will put him in office.

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Weekend Reading: Markets Love Central Banks – No Matter What They Do

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

I discussed yesterday, the apparent “myth” of the Fed’s proposed “balance sheet reduction” program as the most recent analysis shows a $13.5 billion “reinvestment” into their balance sheet which has helped fuel the recent market advance.

But therein lies the potential “fatal flaw” of the “bullish logic.” 

At the September FOMC meeting, the Federal Reserve announced their latest decision which contained two primary components:

  1. No rate hike currently, although, further rate hikes are likely in the future, and;
  2. The beginning of the process to cease reinvestment of the Fed’s balance sheet. 

That announcement was notable for two reasons:

  1. The Fed did NOT hike rates because the underlying economic data, and, in particular, the inflation data, suggests the economy is too weak to absorb a further increase currently, and;
  2. The unwinding of the balance sheet is generally believed to be bullish for stocks. 

So, despite the clear evidence of the support for the markets provided by near zero-interest rate policy and trillions in monetary injection, it is believed that “unwinding” those supports will have “no effect” on the market. In other words, it doesn’t matter what the Fed does, it’s “bullish.”

The same is also believed to be the case for the European Central Bank and Mario Draghi who just announced yesterday that the ECB’s QE program will begin to be reduced by €30 Billion per month (down from €60 Billion). While this will continue the expansion of their balance sheet currently, the end of “QE,” as the markets have come to know it, is coming to an end.

Don’t misunderstand me, Central Banks are still very actively engaged in the support of the financial markets for the time being which keeps asset prices positively buoyed. However, with Central Banks now “tightening” monetary policy, the risk of a policy error has risen markedly. This is particularly the case when the financial markets insist on ignoring the knock-off effects of less liquidity.

Tax Reform With Complete Disregard

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the Senate-approved budget. This budget is an anathema to any fiscally conservative policy. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget stated:

“Republicans in Congress laid out two visions in two budgets for our fiscal future, and today, they choose the path of gimmicks, debt, and absolutely zero fiscal restraint over the one of responsibility and balance.

 

While the original House budget balanced on paper and offered some real savings, the Senate’s version accepted today by the House fails to reach balance, enacts a pathetic $1 billion in spending cuts out of a possible $47 trillion, and allows for $1.5 trillion to be added to the national debt.

 

Make no mistake – this is a defining moment for the Republican party. After years of passing balanced budgets and calling for fiscal responsibility, the GOP is now on-the-record as supporting trillions in new debt for the sake of tax cuts over tax reform and failing to act on the pressing need to reform our largest entitlement programs.”

Passing fiscally irresponsible budgets just for the sake of passing “tax cuts,” is, well, irresponsible. Once again, elected leaders have not listened to, or learned, what their constituents are asking for which is simply adherence to the Constitution and fiscal restraint.

As the CFRB concludes:

“Tax cuts do not pay for themselves; they can create growth, but in the amount of tenths of percentage points, not whole percentage points. And they certainly cannot fill in trillions in lost revenue. Relying on growth projections that no independent forecaster says will happen isn’t the way to do tax reform.”

That is absolutely correct.

Here is your weekend reading list.

Trump, Economy & Fed

Markets

Research / Interesting Reads

“There have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and Central Banking.“ – Will Rogers

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The Economy Grows, Trump Mulls Fed Chair Picks, and Wells Fargo Under Federal Scrutiny: P.M. Links

  • U.S. economy grew at 3% rate in 3rd Quarter, despite storms.
  • Oakland experiences the trials and tribulations of marijuana legalization.
  • Trump to announce pick for Fed chair next week.

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Super Hacker George Hotz—I Can Make Your Car Drive Itself for Under $1,000: New at Reason

George Hotz, known online as GeoHot, became one of the world’s most famous hackers at 17 when he was the first person to break into the iPhone and reconfigure it to be compatible with providers other than AT&T. He was also the first to jailbreak the PlayStation 3, allowing users to play with unauthorized software.

Now this 28-year-old technical wunderkind is up against Waymo, Tesla, Uber, and most of the auto industry in the race to build the first fully operational autonomous vehicle.

“I want to win self-driving cars,” Hotz told Reason. Whereas Tesla and Waymo are developing complex systems with expensive LIDAR and other sensors, his company, Comma.ai, is trying to bring plug-and-play driverless technology to the masses. “We’re running it on a phone,” says Hotz.

He’s taking an approach drastically different than his well-financed competition, and is operating with $3.1 million in seed money. Comma’s dozen-member team, which works out of a residential house in San Francisco, has built technology that takes over the existing RADAR and drive-by-wire systems in modern cars, incorporates a smartphone’s camera and processor, and then makes the car drive itself.

“Google is going to lose because there’s no market for a $100,000 system,” says Hotz. “For us, we’re just going to push the software update. And then—boom—you don’t have to pay attention anymore. Done.”

Click here for full text, a transcript, and downloadable versions.

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FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb Goes to Bat For Evidence-Based Opioid Policies

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is now the highest-ranking member of the Trump administration to say in plain language that America can’t address the opioid crisis by relying on outdated prevention campaigns or forcing dependent and addicted users to quit cold turkey.

“[G]iven the scale of the epidemic, with millions of Americans already affected, prevention is not enough,” Gottlieb said in a statement to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce this week. He also pledged his agency would do everything in its power to “break the stigma associated with medications used for addiction treatment.”

A physician and former resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Gottlieb’s testimony provided a dramatic and welcome contrast to the blunt and shallow statements of other Trump administration officials.

Whereas former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said that methadone and buprenorphine therapy—which can reduce opioid-related mortality by 50 percent—amount to “just substituting one opioid for another,” Gottlieb acknowledged this week that some people with opioid use disorders will need “a lifetime of treatment.” His agency, he added, is “revising the labels of these medical products to reflect this fact.”

He has also instructed Food and Drug Administration staff to develop more extensive guidelines for “non-abstinence-based” products that “address a fuller range of the symptoms of addiction such as craving.”

Lastly, Gottlieb delivered a rousing rebuttal to the idea that addiction and dependence are no different:

Because of the biology of the human body, everyone who uses opioids for any length of time develops a physical dependence—meaning there are withdrawal symptoms after the use stops. Even a cancer patient requiring long-term treatment for the adequate treatment of metastatic pain develops a physical dependence to the opioid medication.

That’s very different than being addicted.

Addiction requires the continued use of opioids despite harmful consequences. Addiction involves a psychological craving above and beyond a physical dependence.

Someone who neglects his family, has trouble holding a job, or commits crimes to obtain opioids has an addiction.

But someone who is physically dependent on opioids as a result of the treatment of pain but who is not craving more or harming themselves or others is not addicted.

The same principle applies to medications used to treat opioid addiction. Someone who requires long-term treatment for opioid addiction with medications—including those that cause a physical dependence—is not addicted to those medications.

Here’s the bottom line:

We should not consider people who hold jobs, re-engage with their families, and regain control over their lives through treatment that uses medications to be addicted.

Rather, we should consider them to be role models in the fight against the opioid epidemic.

Others have drawn this distinction before, so I hesitate to applaud Gottlieb for acknowledging what his peers have said for years. But this is Washington, a place where drug policy experts are often drowned out by quacks, drug cops, and prosecutors. Gottlieb is not the most progressive reformer in this debate—he may end up calling for the removal of still more opioids from the market, which will hurt legitimate pain patients and likely drive non-medical users to the black market—but his perspective on using opioid therapy to treat opioid addiction puts him head and shoulders above the D.C. status quo.

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JFK Release Findings: Second Shooter, UK Tipoff, CIA Media Infiltration, and LBJ Fingered In Coup

While yesterday’s pre-planned release of JFK files was significantly neutered at the request of the CIA and FBI, enraging Lou Dobbs among others, the 2800+ files which were released have been poured over extensively, revealing evidence of a second shooter, a massive CIA infiltration of the MSM, a tipoff phone call received 25 minutes before the assassination, and Soviet intelligence indicating the assassination was a coup involving LBJ among other things. 

Summary of findings so far: 

Two shooters, one escaped: 

http://ift.tt/2zTAYKg [p. 3]

J. Edgar Hoover’s comments suggest Oswald wasn’t a shooter: 

The evening of the assassination, J. Edgar Hoover told Lyndon Johnson’s aide, Walter Jenkins, “The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katsenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”

http://ift.tt/2yPuDPQ [p. 3]

Soviet belief in a well orchestrated coup:

“According to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the “ultraright” in the United States to effect a “coup.” They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part.”

http://ift.tt/2y8GPhz [p. 3]

https://twitter.com/williamcraddick/status/923711122926051328

The KGB allegedly had evidence LBJ was behind the coup:

According to a CIA source, “it was indicated that “now” the KGB was in possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy.

http://ift.tt/2y8GPhz [p. 5]

Jack Ruby claimed it was LBJ as well:

  

 

A UK Journalist was tipped off 25 minutes before the assassination

A memo written to the director of the FBI from the deputy director of the CIA notes that a UK journalist employed by Cambridge News received an anonymous phone call 25 minutes before the JFK assassination telling him to call the US Embassy for “some big news.”

http://ift.tt/2yWCRHW [p. 2, 3]

The CIA infiltrated the media and religious institutions

In a February, 1976 note, the CIA’s Office of the Director issued a memo which states “Genuine concern has recently been expressed about CIA relations with newsmen and churchmen.” As a result, the agency instituted a new policy not to enter into paid arrangements with these institutions.

http://ift.tt/2gO911P [p. 3]

http://ift.tt/2gO911P [p. 3]

Over 40 journalists ‘who doubled as undercover agents’ worked for the CIA

http://ift.tt/2gO911P [p. 17]

We then discussed the matter somewhat at more length and I gave ball park figures of various categories of journalists with whom we had contact. I said that the total free lance stringers with whom we had varying degrees of association was in the area of 40.

http://ift.tt/2gO911P [p. 16]

CIA-NBC connection

http://ift.tt/2yZx3xv [p. 2]

Lee Harvey Oswald – agent of the U.S. government? 


Jewish involvement? 

 The secret service interviewed hundreds of people deemed “threats to President Kennedy’s safety” from March – December, 1963. One of the interviewees was an anti-Castro Cuban national named Homer S. Echevarria, who – the day before the assassination – “allegedly approached informant to provide machine guns for Cuban rev.,” (revolution) and allegedly told the informant “We now have plenty of money — our new backers are Jews — as soon as ‘we’ or (they) take care of Kennedy…” The Secret Service note states Echevarria “expressed favorable attitude toward LBJ.”

Before reaching any conclusions, note that this is the only claim of Jewish involvement in the assassination outside Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubenstein), and could be misdirection or scapegoating by Echevarria.

That said, The Sun reports that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby met each other on a trip to Cuba “to cut sugar cane” weeks before the assassination.

They were part of a group of 30 or 40 “hippie looking” people who were on their way to Cuba to cut sugar cane, airport manager George Faraldo told investigators.

This bombshell will shed new light on the truth behind JFK’s assassination and whether Oswald was to blame for the former president’s murder.

Ruby, whose real name is Jacob Rubenstein, shot dead Oswald, 24, two days after the presidential assassination in November 1963.

But just weeks before, Oswald and nightclub owner Ruby were apparently both part of a large group of “mostly young” people heading to Cuba.

Mr Faraldo told the FBI that Ruby and Oswald were dressed casually in a sport shirts and trousers.

The airport manager added that Ruby “spent most of the time not mingling with the group but standing against the doorway that led from the waiting area to the rear plane boarding area.”

At one point he saw Oswald approach Ruby and ask: “Have you heard anything from the Big Bird yet?”

Of note, LBJ reportedly had a huge penis, and Sesame Street wasn’t on the air until 1969 – well after Kennedy’s death.

Download the JFK files here: 

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