|
IBM and
the Final Solution
||| EDWIN BLACK, VILLAGE VOICE - When Adolf
Hitler came to power in 1933, most of the world saw a menace
to humanity. But IBM saw Nazi Germany as a lucrative trading
partner. Its president, Thomas J. Watson, engineered a strategic
business alliance between IBM and the Reich, beginning in the
first days of the Hitler regime and continuing right through
World War II. This alliance catapulted Nazi Germany to become
IBM's most important customer outside the U.S. IBM and the Nazis
jointly designed, and IBM exclusively produced, technological
solutions that enabled Hitler to accelerate and in many ways
automate key aspects of his persecution of Jews, homosexuals,
Jehovah's Witnesses, and others the Nazis considered enemies.
Custom-designed, IBM-produced punch cards, sorted by IBM machines
leased to the Nazis, helped organize and manage the initial identification
and social expulsion of Jews and others, the confiscation of
their property, their ghettoization, their deportation, and,
ultimately, even their extermination. Recently discovered Nazi
documents and Polish eyewitness testimony make clear that IBM's
alliance with the Third Reich went far beyond its German subsidiary.
A key factor in the Holocaust in Poland was IBM technology provided
directly through a special wartime Polish subsidiary reporting
to IBM New York, mainly to its headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue.
And that's how the trains to Auschwitz ran on time.
Thousands of IBM documents reviewed for
the first edition of my book 'IBM and the Holocaust,' published
early last year and focused mainly on IBM's German subsidiary,
revealed vigorous efforts to preserve IBM's monopoly in the Nazi
market and increase contracts to meet wartime sales quotas. Since
then, continued research and interviews have uncovered details,
described here for the first time, of IBM's work for the Nazis
in Poland through the separate subsidiary and of the Polish subsidiary's
direct contact with IBM officials on Madison Avenue.
MORE
ORDER
'IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST'
VILLAGE VOICE - The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an
IBM number. And now it's been revealed that IBM machines were
actually based at the infamous concentration-camp complex. IBM's
extensive technological support for Hitler's conquest of Europe
and genocide against the Jews was extensively documented in my
book IBM and the Holocaust, published in February 2001. Last
March, the Voice broke exclusive new details of a special wartime
subsidiary set up in Poland by IBM's New York headquarters, shortly
after Hitler's 1939 invasion, to help Germany automate the rape
of Poland.
The new revelation of
IBM technology in the Auschwitz area constitutes a final link
in the chain of documentation surrounding Big Blue's vast enterprise
in Nazi-occupied Poland, supervised at first directly from its
New York headquarters, and later through its Geneva office. "This
latest disclosure removes any pretext of deniability and completes
the puzzle that has been put together about IBM in Poland,"
says Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the New York-based
Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. "The
picture that emerges is most disturbing."
IBM spokesman Carol Makovich
didn't respond to repeated telephone calls. In the past, when
asked about IBM's Polish subsidiary's involvement with the Nazis,
Makovich has said, "IBM does not have much information about
this period." When a Reuters reporter asked about Poland,
Makovich said, "We are a technology company, we are not
historians."
EDWIN BLACK, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - When Adolf Hitler came to power, many saw
a menace to humanity. But IBM treated Nazi Germany as a lucrative
trading partner. Quickly, its president, Thomas J. Watson, engineered
a strategic business alliance between IBM and the Third Reich,
beginning in the first days of the Hitler regime and continuing
right through World War II. This alliance instantly catapulted
Nazi Germany into being IBM's most important customer outside
the United States. As part of that strategic alliance, IBM and
the Nazis jointly designed, and IBM exclusively produced, technologic
solutions that enabled Hitler to accelerate and automate key
aspects of his persecution of the Jews from the initial identification
and social expulsion, to the confiscation and ghettoization,
to the deportation and ultimate extermination.
Nazi documents contained in the U.S.
National Archives and Polish eyewitness testimony make clear
that IBM's alliance with the Third Reich went far beyond its
German subsidiary. During the rape of Poland and the Polish Holocaust,
which killed millions and plundered a nation, IBM technology
was a key factor. The company's custom-tailored technology was
provided directly through a new special wartime Polish subsidiary
reporting to IBM New York. And that's how the trains to Auschwitz
ran on time.
In the early 1930s, Watson tightly managed
his lucrative German subsidiary, Dehomag. He traveled to Berlin
at least twice annually from 1933 until 1939 to personally supervise
Dehomag. IBM's managers in Berlin personally updated Watson constantly,
generally signing their reports, "Awaiting your further
instructions." No machines were sold -- only leased. IBM
was the sole source of all punch cards and spare parts. It serviced
the machines on site either directly or through its authorized
dealer network or field trainees. There were no universal punch
cards. Each series of cards was custom- designed by IBM engineers
to capture information going in and to tabulate information the
Nazis wanted to extract.
For example, one series of punch cards
was designed to record religion, national origin and mother tongue.
By making special columns and rows showing "Jew, Polish
language, Polish nationality, the fur trade (as an occupation),
and then "Berlin," Nazis could quickly cross-tabulate
exactly how many Berlin furriers were Jews of Polish extraction.
Railroad cars, which could take two weeks to locate and route,
could be swiftly dispatched in just 48 hours by means of a vast
network of punch card machines. Indeed, IBM services coursed
through the entire German infrastructure in Europe.
The
wrecking of Russia
JEFFREY SACHS GIVES HARVARD
TASTE OF HIS MEDICINE
[Apparently
it wasn't' just Russia and eastern Europe that paid the price
of Jeffrey Sachs' "shock therapy" economics. Harvard
was also left with a few problems]
HARVARD
MAGAZINE -
When the Harvard Institute for International Development was
disbanded in 2000, it meant the disappearance of the University's
largest entity devoted to international work. Multiple torpedoes
sank HIID, including structural problems, a 1997 scandal in Russia
over conflict-of-interest charges, and financial deficits in
its final two years. In 1999, HIID's director since 1995, Jeffrey
Sachs, then Stone professor of international trade, resigned
as HIID director to head the newly-created Center for International
Development. The CID emphasizes academic research, rather than
consulting work, in developing countries. . . . The CID's seed
money came from the HIID endowment, with authorized transfers
of up to $13 million (half the value of the HIID endowment at
the end of 1998).
But this March,
Sachs abruptly resigned from Harvard to become director of Columbia
University's Earth Institute. Now much of the international development
work at Harvard reverts to problematic status, with the future
of the CID uncertain and a great deal of red ink to clean up.
The CID had a shortfall of a million dollars on its 2002 fiscal
year budget of $6.4 million, and in fiscal 2003, its deficit
is expected to be $2 million. By the end of the 2003 fiscal year,
it will be necessary to decapitalize $3 million from the $5 million
in unrestricted endowment money that HIID transferred to the
CID.
Work at the
CID is grinding to a halt. As of May, the Center had 18 active
projects; Sachs was the principal investigator for 13 of them.
Sachs planned to take six of these research projects (including
three of the Center's five most generously funded studies) with
him to Columbia, and leave seven at Harvard. But of those seven,
three of the sponsors - including foundations, development banks,
and nongovernmental organizations - withdrew their funding when
they learned of Sachs's unexpected departure. . .
In the first
year Sachs raised $1 million in gift money, although the CID
endowment remained unchanged. The gift money, and more, has been
spent as up to 60 people worked on CID research, their salaries
easily outpacing the center's revenue sources. Last fall and
winter Sachs negotiated with President Lawrence H. Summers for
an increase in the University's support for CID to $2 million
per year. Summers was willing to consider funding the center
at some level, but wanted management changes, especially improved
fiscal controls. . . The dialogue between Sachs and Summers was
still in process when Sachs announced his resignation.
[A few earlier
items on Sachs]
JOHN SPRITZLER
- Sachs is the director of the Center for International Development
and professor of international trade at Harvard University. In
1990 Sachs was an economic advisor to the government of Poland
when he revealed his plans for "helping" the working
class, writing, "Western observers should not over-dramatize
lay-offs and bankruptcies. Poland, like the rest of Eastern Europe,
now has too little unemployment, not too much."
Sachs served
as the chief economic advisor to Russia's President Boris Yeltsin
from 1991 to 1994, where he advocated "shock therapy"
to create market capitalism in Russia. Capitalism in Russia meant
mines and factories becoming the personal property of former
high ranking communists and other businessmen, while employees
went unpaid and starvation conditions emerged for the first time
since World War II. An article in Harvard Magazine 1996 reported
that "Russians are dying at an unprecedented rate. Between
1990 and 1994 the country's death rate increased by 40 percent,
from 11.2 to 15.7 deaths per 1,000 people. Male life expectancy
fell from 63.8 years to 57.7 years, and female life expectancy
from 74.3 to 71.3 years. According to Elizabeth Brainerd, a graduate
student in economics, 'Declines in life expectancy of this magnitude
in only four years are unparalleled in the twentieth century
among countries at peace and in the absence of major famines
or epidemics.'"
LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER - Sachs, known as
the intellectual father of "shock therapy" for the
former socialist world, is getting a lot of press for his criticisms
of the IMF. Of course he's right that the Fund's strategy has
been a disaster, and that no recovery in Russia will be possible
without massive debt relief. But Sachs, director of the HIID,
is himself deeply implicated in the disaster. With his former
Harvard colleague Larry Summers at Clinton's Treasury Department,
the U.S. government deputized HIID to run its "aid"
program in Moscow, a program that amounted to greasing the theft
of state enterprises by the present gang of oligarchs who run
Russia.
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - As far as Harvard goes, Jonathan
Rowe, in a Washington Monthly article on Poland put it nicely:
"Though any number of Western advisers have had a hand in
this program, the one who has gotten the most attention is Jeffrey
Sachs, the globe-trotting whiz kid from Harvard. Sachs preaches
a kind of macro-economic machismo. Raise prices, hike interest
rates, welcome bankruptcies and unemployment as evidence that
the fat of the communist years is sweating off the body economic.
'Western observers should not over-dramatize layoffs and bankruptcies,'
Sachs wrote in The Economist. 'Poland, like the rest of Eastern
Europe, now has too little unemployment, not too much."
The
media-spook connection
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
- In a move roughly akin to the ACLU hiring a CIA director for
its president, National Public Radio has named the czar of American
broadcast agitprop as its CEO. Kevin Klose has been director
of the US International Broadcasting Bureau, which runs or coordinates
all major American broadcast propaganda including the Voice of
America and Radio Marti. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and
Radio Free Asia operate under the oversight of the Broadcasting
Board of Governors, the same body that supervises IBB. Kevin
Klose was president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1992
to 1997. Prior to that he worked for many years for the Washington
Post. The choice raises new questions about the independence
from government influence of the public radio network, which
is already tied by purse-strings to Washington and has shown
considerable deference to the White House in its coverage of
the Clinton scandals. This is not the first time America media
and propaganda have been seamlessly joined. In 1976, the president
of the CIA-connected Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty was
former CBS president Sig Mickelson. Ironically, one of the few
journalists who raised questions about the relationship of media
and the CIA -- to the detriment of his career at CBS -- was Daniel
Schorr, now at NPR. Carl Bernstein, in a contemporary article
in Rolling Stone, estimated that 400 American journalists had
been tied to the CIA at one point or another, including such
well known media figures as the Alsop brothers, C.L. Sulzberger
of the New York Times, and Philip Graham of the Washington Post.
Later the New York Times reported that the CIA had owned or subsidized
more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, and periodicals,
mostly overseas. And, says NameBase Newslines, at least 22 American
news organizations employed CIA assets, and "nearly a dozen
American publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000
books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA. When asked
in a 1976 interview whether the CIA had ever told its media agents
what to write, William Colby replied, 'Oh, sure, all the time.'"
With the bad press, American intelligence began becoming more
subtle. As one CIA asset, Gloria Steinem said, "The CIA's
big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast
enough." One of the results of an increasing sophistication
was the creation in 1973 of a Board for International Broadcasting
to obscure any CIA control of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
But all this is history and largely forgotten even in media circles.
Thus, it is not suprising that there have been signs the Washington
inner party is feeling its oats again. In 1996, the Council on
Foreign Relations suggested that the CIA be allowed once more
to use journalists and clergy as cover for its operations. As
NameBase Newslines points out, "For 70 years, [the CFR has]
rarely recommended anything that has not become policy."
In such an environment, for NPR to hire the head of national
broadcast agitpunkt seems more than a little risky.
Experimentation
by the government
BOISE WEEKLY:
Since early June [2001], newspapers in Australia and Great Britain
have published articles about experiments conducted in the 1950s
and 1960s by U.S. scientists on the bodies of deceased and stillborn
babies. Documents declassified by the U.S. Department of Energy
show that scientists from the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority worked
with their American counterparts to take the bodies of 6,000
infants from hospitals in Australia, Great Britain, Canada, Hong
Kong, South America and the U.S., then ship them to the United
States for the nuclear experiments-without permission from the
parents. It was called Project Sunshine. Sunshine began in 1955
at the University of Chicago when Willard Libby, later a Nobel
Prize laureate for his research into carbon dating, instructed
colleagues to skirt the law in their search for bodies. "Human
samples are of prime importance, and if anybody knows how to
do a good job of body-snatching, they will really be serving
their country," Libby is quoted as saying. The reasoning:
Nuclear tests released great amounts of Strontium 90 into the
atmosphere. Libby and others connected with the American defense
industry wanted to know how much radiation was entering the food
supply. The bodies and body parts were cremated and the ashes
tested with a sophisticated Geiger counter. MORE
Pearl
Harbor
The
Smoking Gun
gathered a collection of U.S. government records documenting
the 1941 attack by the Japanese. The documents, which TSG obtained
from the National Archives and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library,
The collection begins with a February 1941 note about a rumored
Pearl Harbor attack, a warning dismissed as unfounded by Navy
officials. We've also included a December 7, 1941 White House
memo to President Roosevelt describing that morning's attack
as well as a draft of the president's famous remarks to Congress
(which includes FDR's handwritten revisions). You'll also find
eyewitness accounts of the bombing of the USS Arizona (where
1,177 crewmen perished) and Navy "after-action" reports
prepared by ship commanders, documents that offer a harrowing
tale of bombs and body counts.
JOHN
MCCASLIN, WASHINGTON TIMES: Not only has new evidence surrounding the attack
on Pearl Harbor been uncovered, but historian and author Daryl
S. Borgquist, a Justice Department official in Washington, believes
the U.S. Navy and others are keeping crucial documents "under
wraps." Inside the Beltway has learned that, in a lengthy
paper being presented at a World War II conference at New York´s
Siena College, Mr. Borgquist will offer new findings about Pearl
Harbor. He´ll say the verdict on Pearl Harbor was reached
too soon (upon conclusion of the 1940s investigations), well
before crucial documents were declassified and other materials
uncovered. Of note, Mr. Borgquist draws attention to a "major
historical error" based on the typed text of the first draft
of President Franklin D. Roosevelt´s "Day of Infamy"
speech. Mr. Borgquist says the text was drafted by a State Department
team led by former Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle
between 8:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. -- after the first 13 parts
of the 14-part Japanese reply to the American ultimatum had been
intercepted, decoded, and delivered on Saturday night, Dec. 6,
1941. The attack came on Dec. 7.
That supports
Mr. Borgquist´s earlier argument, published in 1999 by
Naval History Magazine, that the attack on Pearl Harbor was no
surprise at all. He wrote that Helen E. Hamman, the daughter
of Don C. Smith, who directed the War Service for the Red Cross
before World War II, wrote a letter to President Clinton revealing
a conversation she had with her dad: "Shortly before the
attack in 1941, President Roosevelt called him to the White House
for a meeting concerning a top-secret matter. At this meeting,
the president advised my father that his intelligence staff had
informed him of a pending attack on Pearl Harbor, by the Japanese.
He anticipated many casualties and much loss; he instructed my
father to send workers and supplies to a holding area. When he
protested to the president, President Roosevelt told him that
the American people would never agree to enter the war in Europe
unless they were attack[ed] within their own borders. . . . He
followed the orders of his president and spent many years contemplating
this action, which he considered ethically and morally wrong."
||||||
PEARL HARBOR
PRIMARY SOURCES: With the bombing of Pearl Harbor now the subject
of the summer's most hyped movie, the Smoking Gun has gathered
a collection of U.S. government records documenting the 1941
attack by the Japanese. The documents, which TSG obtained from
the National Archives and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library,
The collection begins with a February 1941 note about a rumored
Pearl Harbor attack, a warning dismissed as unfounded by Navy
officials. We've also included a December 7, 1941 White House
memo to President Roosevelt describing that morning's attack
as well as a draft of the president's famous remarks to Congress
(which includes FDR's handwritten revisions). You'll also find
eyewitness accounts of the bombing of the USS Arizona (where
1,177 crewmen perished) and Navy "after-action" reports
prepared by ship commanders, documents that offer a harrowing
tale of bombs and body counts.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/pearlharbor/pearlharbor.shtml
||||||
DOWN THE MEMORY
HOLE
REUTERS: Walt
Disney Co. is hoping that when Japanese remember the movie "Pearl
Harbor," they will recall a heartwarming love story -- and
not all that nasty stuff about how Japan drew the United States
into war. Consideration of the huge Japanese market came into
play even while the movie was being made, and, additionally,
the version sent to Japan will have "some very minor changes,"
said Mark Zoradi, president of Buena Vista International, or
BVI, the Disney subsidiary that will distribute the film outside
the United States. One of the changes is a dogfight scene in
which a character played by one of the stars calls the Japanese
pilots "Japs," instead of "Jap suckers" as
in the U.S. version . . . Critics have said that in its eagerness
not to offend Japan, the world's second-largest movie market,
Disney almost completely ignored Japan's aggression in Asia and
took the line espoused by many Japanese that they were compelled
to attack Pearl Harbor because of a U.S. oil embargo . . . Hideo
Suzuki, in charge of marketing the movie in Japan, said "Pearl
Harbor" had all the elements to make it big in the country:
a compelling human drama, touching love story, big stars, big
action and a pair of box office champions in producer Jerry Bruckheimer
and director Bay. "We are marketing the movie without thinking
of it as a war movie," he said, adding that one of the keys
would be in how the filmmakers portrayed the Japanese. "If
the movie portrays Japan in too harsh of a light, then it will
not be a hit here." MORE
ROWAN SCARBOROUGH,
WASHINGTON TIMES: In this politically correct era, with Japan
now one of the United States´ strongest allies, the ['Pearl
Harbor'] script focuses on the combatants´ heroism and
a love story about a Navy nurse and her two Army Air Corps suitors.
"The filmmakers made a conscious decision to keep it very
neutral," said Navy Lt. Melissa Schuermann, the Pentagon's
"Pearl Harbor" project officer. "That was their
choice, although we were very sensitive to Japan." Lt. Schuermann
said there were even diplomatic overtures to Japan to make sure
Tokyo did not interpret the project as Japan-bashing. "[The
film producers] were very center-of-the-road here," she
said. "They weren't trying to do it either side." MORE
NICOLE LAMPERT, SUN, ENGLAND: Blockbuster war movie Pearl Harbor
is to be cut for Japanese audiences - to keep the old enemy happy.
The German version of the most expensive film ever is also being
trimmed. Producers are ditching a closing speech by Brit Kate
Beckinsale, 27, telling how the US bounced back from the cowardly
Japanese raid on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor to win the
war. The decision came after Disney chiefs canvassed people worldwide
to see if anyone would be offended. A source said: "We've
tried very hard not to portray the Japanese in a very bad light.
"They are a huge market and accounted for 20 per cent of
profits for Titanic. The film barely refers to the Germans but
we have cut the speech for them, too. "It won't make a big
difference, most people know who won the war." The ending
is not the only change for Japan and Germany. Trailers will focus
on romance rather than the amazing battle scenes. But the conciliatory
gesture may not convince the old foes. The source added: "Many
Japanese fear the film will be seen as a historical document
with them as the baddies."
JAPAN BROKE U.S. CODE BEFORE PEARL HARBOR
Bob
Kerrey in Vietnam
WORLDWIDE SOCIALIST WEB: John Kerry elaborated,
in one television appearance, on the thesis that soldiers should
not be held responsible for actions that were in accordance with
the policies of the US government. The raid on Thanh Phong was
part of Operation Phoenix, he said, and "the Phoenix program
was an assassination program run by the United States of America."
. . . "Journalist Neil Sheehan recently recalled that in
1966, three years prior to the events in Thanh Phong and My Lai,
he personally witnessed an American operation in which US troops
wiped out five fishing villages, killing as many as 600 Vietnamese
civilians. The raids "seemed unnecessarily brutal,"
but "it did not occur to me that I had discovered a possible
war crime... I had never read the laws governing the conduct
of war, though I had watched the war for three years in Vietnam
and written about it for five ... The Army field manual says
it is illegal to attack hospitals. We routinely bombed and shelled
them ... looking back, one realizes the war crimes issue was
always present."
WORLDWIDE SOCIALIST WEB: Students at the New School
University in New York City are demanding the resignation of
the newly installed president of the college, former US Senator
Robert Kerrey, over his role in a wartime atrocity in Vietnam.
A meeting of the Graduate Faculty Student Union May 10 voted
by a nearly 2-1 margin to call for Kerrey's resignation. A second
resolution urging a congressional investigation into the massacre
of 21 women, children and old men in 1969 passed overwhelmingly.
This action came in defiance of the defense of Kerrey offered
by the university's board of directors, most of the media, and
an array of senators and other political figures, especially
in the Democratic Party.
Father
of the New World Order
Frederick Winslow Taylor
The multinational
sweatshop is the most recent variation on one of the most important
and little discussed themes of the 20th century: the human as
a machine, the result of a culture of modernity that Erich Fromm
said was "attracted to all that is mechanical and inclined
against all that is alive."
One of the main
intellectual spirits behind this was Frederick Winslow Taylor,
who sought to improve production through "scientific management"
of workers, including time and motion studies as well as performance-based
pay. Taylor was actually trying to correct some of the evils
of early sweatshops including poor working conditions. Yet it
was not long before Taylor's theories were transformed into manuals
that stated, for example, that a secretary should be able to
open and close a file drawer exactly 25 times a minute and open
a folder in .04 minutes.
Taylor not only
had a huge impact on American industrialists such as Henry Ford,
but he was part of the inspiration for the Harvard Business School
and its case study approach. Peter Drucker ranks Taylor with
Darwin and Freud as the top thinkers of modernity. Ford he dismisses
as just someone who knew how to use Taylor's principles.
Not long after
this death in 1915, Taylor's ideas found their way to Nazi Germany.
The concentration camp has been described as an extreme example
of Taylorism at work. Richard Rubenstein, writing in "The
Cunning of History," notes that "I.G. Farben's decision
to locate at Auschwitz was based upon the very same criteria
by which contemporary multinational corporations relocate their
plants in utter indifference to the social consequences of such
moves." Among those enthralled with Taylorism was Albert
Speer. John Ralston Saul credits the efficiency expert's ideas
with helping Germany hold out against superior Allied forces
later in the war.
But Taylor had
other fans as well, including Lenin, who learned about Taylorism
while in exile. He returned to Russia determined to "Taylorize
Communism." Saul writes: "The First Five Year Plan
was written largely by American Taylorists and directly or indirectly
they built some two-thirds of Soviet industry. The collapse of
the Soviet Union was thus in many ways the collapse of Scientific
Management."
But the ironies
continued: "The Russian government immediately hired a Harvard
professor of economics, Dr. Jefrey Sachs, to help them out of
the crisis. His methods - filled with complete abstract systems
- were strangely reminiscent of Taylor's . . . These brilliant
financial and structural reforms lacked only one element: a recognition
that several hundred million people live in Russia, that they
must east every day. Or at least every second day."
Jim
Jones & Jonestown
JONESTOWN, WHEN FAITH BECAME FATAL
2007 - This fall will be the 30th anniversary
of the mass murders and suicides at Jonestown, Guyana. We use
the term "murders and suicides" because we will never
know how many of the 900 who died did so of their own volition
and how many - particularly the nearly 300 children - died at
someone else's hand.
We have just come across one of the most
of remarkable audio tapes we have ever heard, recording the last
minutes at Jonestown. What comes through is a sickening normalcy
of pending disaster during which Jones never retreats from deluding
his flock.
Why does it matter? Simply because it was
the most tragic example of the consequences of Americans' repeated
infatuation with faith over reality, an infatuation that only
traps the uninformed but, as can be seen below, the supposedly
enlightened in the media and politics. And it would seem that
we haven't learn much from Jonestown in the 30 years that followed
it.
The tape is quite lengthy but it is well
worth listening to in full. But first read some of the background
below.
THE LAST MINUTES AT JONESTOWN
WIKIPEDIA - Jonestown was the short-lived settlement made in
northwestern Guyana by the Peoples Temple, a cult from California.
Jonestown became lastingly and internationally notorious in 1978,
when nearly its whole population died in a mass murder-suicide
orchestrated by their leader, Jim Jones. The name of the settlement
thus became, also, a term for that incident. The site is now
an abandoned ruin. . . Jonestown's population was about one thousand,
once it was fully established and the bulk of Jones' followers
had moved to it, but most of them lived there for under a year.
In November of 1978, United States Congressman
Leo Ryan, accompanied by reporters and a delegation of concerned
relatives of Peoples Temple members, visited Jonestown to investigate
allegations of abuses there. The visit ended in the murders of
Ryan and four others by members of the Peoples Temple, shot at
the Port Kaituma airstrip as they were about to fly out. That
evening, November 18, Jones led his followers in their mass murder-suicide.
Somewhat over nine hundred men, women and children perished,
Jones among them. . .
While in San Francisco, Jones changed his
political image from anti-communist to socialist, vocally supported
prominent political candidates, was appointed to city commissions
and made grants to local newspapers with the stated goal of supporting
the First Amendment. Partly inspired by the eccentric preacher
Father Divine, he began charity efforts with the goal of recruiting
the poor.
After several scandals and investigation
for tax evasion[6] in San Francisco, Jones began planning a relocation
of the Temple. According to the American Journal of Economics
& Sociology, Jones considered locations in California and
Brazil before settling on Guyana. . .
Many of the Peoples Temple members believed
that Guyana would be, as Jones promised, a paradise. Work was
performed six days a week, from seven in the morning to six in
the evening, with temperatures that often reached over 100 degrees
Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), in Guyana's equatorial climate.
According to some, meals for the members
consisted of nothing more than rice and beans while Jones dined
on eggs, meat, fruit, salads, and soft drinks from a private
refrigerator, separate from the others. Medical problems such
as severe diarrhea and high fevers struck half the community
in February 1978. According to the New York Times,[9] copious
amounts of drugs such as Thorazine, sodium pentathol, chloral
hydrate, Demerol and Valium were administered to Jonestown residents.
. .
Various forms of punishment were used against
members considered to be serious disciplinary problems. Methods
included imprisonment in a 6x4x3-foot plywood box and forcing
children to spend a night at the bottom of a well, sometimes
upside-down. Members who attempted to run away were drugged to
the point of incapacitation. Armed guards patrolled the compound
day and night to enforce obedience to Jones.
Children, surrendered to communal care,
addressed Jones as "Dad" and were only allowed to see
their real parents briefly at night. Jones was called "Father"
or "Dad" by the adults as well. . .
Local Guyanese, including a police official,
related stories about harsh beatings and a "torture hole,"
a well into which Jones had "misbehaving" children
thrown in the middle of the night. The mass suicides that would
make Jonestown notorious were rehearsed during "white nights".
In an affidavit, Peoples Temple defector Deborah Layton explains
how these were rehearsed.
"Everyone, including the children,
was told to line up. As we passed through the line, we were given
a small glass of red liquid to drink. We were told that the liquid
contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes. We
all did as we were told. When the time came when we should have
dropped dead, Rev. Jones explained that the poison was not real
and that we had just been through a loyalty test. He warned us
that the time was not far off when it would become necessary
for us to die by our own hands.". . .
There is a great deal unknown about what
happened in Jonestown on the evening of November 18, 1978. .
.
Jim Jones called a meeting under the pavilion
in the early evening. Before the meeting, aides prepared a metal
vat with grape Flavor Aid, poisoned with Valium, chloral hydrate,
and presumably (though not certainly) cyanide. . .
The children were poisoned first. Aides
took the children from their parents and brought them to stand
in line. Some parents apparently went with their children. Poison
was squirted into children's mouths with plastic syringes. Eyewitness
Stanley Clayton, who was assisting already-poisoned children,
reports that many children resisted and were physically forced
to swallow by guards and nurses.
According to Clayton, the poison was extremely effective, causing
death within about five minutes. . .
President Bill Clinton signed a bill into
law in the 1990s, mandating the expiration of secrecy in documents
after 25 years. It has been nearly 30 years since the mysterious
mass deaths in Jonestown. The majority of Jonestown documents
remain classified, despite Freedom of Information requests from
numerous people over the past three decades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
THE HIDDEN STORY OF JIM JONES
JOHN MCCASLIN, WASHINGTON TIMES - As a
San Francisco Examiner religion reporter more than 30 years ago,
veteran White House correspondent Lester Kinsolving sensed something
sinister about Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple - long before
the sect leader, 912 of his followers and a U.S. congressman
perished in the jungle of Guyana. "I went to the religion
editors of 40 newspapers - including The Washington Post, the
New York Times and the Los Angeles Times - begging them to send
reporters" to the temple's California headquarters during
the early 1970s, he says.
On numerous occasions, the reporter was
told and even witnessed for himself bizarre behavior by Jones,
his armed guards and the temple's congregation. "Not one
of them sent anybody," Mr. Kinsolving tells Inside the Beltway.
"They refused."
Besides newspaper editors, the sect leader
was fooling most everybody in those days, from San Francisco's
mayor to the future vice president and even the first lady of
the United States. "We had exposed this [sect activity]
in 1973," Mr. Kinsolving recalls. "Then, wouldn't you
know? Rosalynn Carter invited Jones to have dinner with her [at
a California hotel]. She had a whole bunch of Secret Service
agents with her, and when Jones showed up with his 'gunslingers'
they still managed to work it out. "And can you believe
Walter 'Fritz' Mondale entertained Jones on his campaign plane?"
Not everybody was so enchanted. Armed with
Examiner newspaper articles questioning the activities of the
temple and its subsequent exodus to South America, Rep. Leo J.
Ryan, California Democrat, traveled to Jonestown, Guyana, to
investigate. Before he could report back to Capitol Hill, the
congressman was slain by Jones' followers on Nov. 18, 1978 -
hours before the mass suicide.
"I remember when the news hit Washington
that more than 900 people died ... and all the major media began
acting as if it was something new," Mr. Kinsolving says.
"Any way you look at this, it was such a terrible refusal
of the major media not to tell the whole truth. "There was
only one person that I had gone to [in the early 1970s] who later
apologized for not looking into it further - Brit Hume. He worked
for [syndicated columnist] Jack Anderson then."
JIM JONES WAS described by the future mayor
of San Francisco, William Brown, "as regarded among government
officials, civic and religious leaders, and particularly the
black community and working class people, with utter respect..."
BRASSCHECK: For the first time ever and
seemingly out of the blue, nearly 25 years after the fact, a
senior member of the [San Francisco] Chronicle "family"
has just published a limited admission that, indeed, the Chronicle
did not do its job when it failed to report on the Jim Jones'
criminal enterprise which operated in broad daylight in San Francisco
in the 1970s. [Here is the] statement of support Jones received
from a leading member of the family that owned the Chronicle
during the heyday of Jones' "church" in San Francisco:
"Called less formally PT, the church
is best known and highly regarded for its social works, which
include housing and feeding senior citizens and medical convalescents,
maintaining a home for retarded boys, rehabilitating youthful
drug users. . ." - Charles deYoung Thieriot, Publisher of
the Chronicle
A few points about German's language:
"...nearly a thousand followers fled
(to Guyana)" Not quite. Even the State Department, which
conducted a pre-massacre investigation into Jonestown, raised
the issue of the children. What were they doing there? Who did
they belong to? Where were their parents? Where were their passports?
Who cleared them to leave the US? The children didn't "flee"
San Francisco. They were abducted. Many were put in the hands
of Jones' organization by the State of California. (Church records
were ordered removed from the People's Temple within days after
the massacre by then Governor and Jim Jones fan Jerry Brown.
They have never been seen since.)
Finally, as a court in Guyana determined,
there were only three suicides in Jonestown. The rest were victims
of "murder most foul." The death by Kool-Aid story
is largely a myth, one that, like so many improbable stories,
did its job with the help of a compliant news media.
WILLIAM GERMAN, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:
We learned our lesson nearly 25 years ago: Never shrug off a
big story. We did, we got burned badly, and we may never forget.
The story that got away was the one that lifted the lid on the
Rev. Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. The Chronicle could have published
the evidence that brought Jones to final judgment. Instead, it
was handed to a nearby magazine. Over the years, bits and pieces
of the shameful details have oozed out, but that hardly dilutes
the pain. Flashback to early 1977, sixth year of the Jones church's
move to San Francisco. Rev. Jones' public image was at its height
as "a dedicated champion of the underprivileged." The
city's political establishment held him in highest regard. Mayor
George Moscone made him chairman of the Housing Authority. Herb
Caen checked leaders of the Temple neighborhood and was told,
"Jim Jones is a terrific guy, a man the ghetto people can
believe in." Influential politician Willie Brown said, "San
Francisco should have 10 more Jim Joneses." The press sometimes
mentioned dissension in the church, but most stories told of
good deeds by Jones. Some dissidents took their complaints to
City Hall, where they got little official attention. They did,
however, catch the eye of Chronicle City Hall reporter Marshall
Kilduff. Kilduff went to his supervisor with a proposal to investigate
the complaints. The supervisor -- long since departed -- turned
Kilduff down. Everything that needed to be written about Jones
had already been written, he said. Kilduff, a journalist who
even now doesn't give up easily, asked for and received permission
to take his idea to New West magazine, as long as he worked on
his own time . . . The New West revelations stirred up a few
others and the case against Jones was clear -- fraud, sexual
misconduct, medical fakery and general megalomania. Rather than
face his accusers, Jones and nearly a thousand followers fled
to the suicidal horror of Jonestown, Guyana. . .
http://brasscheck.com/jonestown
CALIFORNIA STATE ASSEMBLYMAN & LATER
MAYOR WILLIE BROWN - I have had the great pleasure of knowing
a leader with tremendous character and integrity. . . Rev. Jones
is regarded among government officials, civic and religious leaders,
and particularly the black community and working class people,
with utter respect for what he has done to upgrade the quality
of life in our area and to bring greater health and well-being
to thousands of poor, minority, and disadvantaged people."
-- September 1976 testimonial dinner honoring Jim Jones.
MORE ON JIM JONES
http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown
The
war against the Phillipines
1906 To charges of brutality
in the Phillipine war, Secreatary of War Elihu Root responds,
"The war in the Phillipines has been conducted by the American
Army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare...with
self-restraint & with humanity never surpassed." According
to a contemporary account, "The major [accused of killing
11 defenseless Filipinos] said that General Smith instructed
him to kill & burn, & said that the more he killed &
burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to
take prisoners, & that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness.
Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for
killing, & he replied "Everything over ten." Mark
Twain's description: "We have pacified some thousands of
the islanders & buried them; destroyed their fields; burned
their villages, & turned their widows & orphans out-of-doors;
furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable
patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent
Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have
acquired property in the three hundred concubines & other
slaves of our business partner Sultan of Sulu, & hoisted
our protecting flag over that swag & so, by the Providences
of God -- & the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we
are a World Power."
1969 TIME MAGAZINE: The brief
action at My Lai, a hamlet in Viet Cong-infested territory 335
miles northeast of Saigon, may yet have an impact on the war.
According to accounts that suddenly appeared on TV and in the
world press last week, a cam-company of 60 or 70 US infantrymen
had entered My Lai early one morning and destroyed its houses,
its livestock and all the inhabitants that they could find in
a brutal operation that took less than 20 minutes. When it was
over, the Vietnamese dead totaled at least 100 men, women and
children, and perhaps many more. Only 25 or so escaped, because
they lay hidden under the fallen bodies of relatives and neighbors
. . . Few were spared. Stragglers were shot down as they fled
from their burning huts. One soldier fired his M-79 grenade launcher
into a clump of bodies in which some Vietnamese were still alive.
One chilling incident was observed by Ronald L. Haeberle, 28,
the Army combat photographer who had been assigned to C Company.
He saw "two small children, maybe four or five years old.
A guy with an M-16 fired at the first boy, and the older boy
fell over to protect the smaller one. Then they fired six more
shots. It was done very businesslike." HISTORY
NET o
ROTTEN
HISTORY
o WRITER'S
ALMANAC o
DAILY
BLEED
MK
ULTRA
[From a 1955
CIA document reviewing the agency's research and development
of mind-altering substances and methods]
DRAFT [deleted]
5 May 1955
A portion of
the Research and Development Program of TSS/Chemical Division
is devoted to the discovery of the following materials and methods:
1. Substances
which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the
point where the recipient would be discredited in public.
2. Substances
which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.
3. Materials
which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
4. Materials
which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
5. Materials
which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases
in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering,
etc.
6. Materials
which will render the indication of hypnosis easier or otherwise
enhance its usefulness.
7. Substances
which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation,
torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called "brainwashing".
8. Materials
and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding
and during their use.
9. Physical methods
of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time
and capable of surreptitious use.
10. Substances
which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs,
acute anemia, etc.
11. Substances
which will produce "pure" euphoria with no subsequent
let-down.
12. Substances
which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency
of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.
13. A material
which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual
under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication
under questioning.
14. Substances
which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency
of men when administered in undetectable amounts.
15. Substances
which will promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or
hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.
16. A knockout
pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food,
cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide
a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types
on an ad hoc basis.
17. A material
which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes
and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a
man to perform any physical activity whatever.
The development
of materials of this type follows the standard practice of such
ethical drug houses as [deleted]. It is a relatively routine
procedure to develop a drug to the point of human testing. Ordinarily,
the drug houses depend upon the services of private physicians
for the final clinical testing. The physicians are willing to
assume the responsibility of such tests in order to advance the
science of medicine. It is difficult and sometimes impossible
for TSS/CD to offer such an inducement with respect to its products.
In practice, it has been possible to use the outside cleared
contractors for the preliminary phases of this work. However,
that part which involves human testing at effective dose levels
presents security problems which cannot be handled by the ordinary
contractor.
The proposed
facility [deleted] offers a unique opportunity for the secure
handling of such clinical testing in addition to the many advantages
outline in the project proposal. The security problems mentioned
above are eliminated by the fact that the responsibility for
the testing will rest completely with the physician and the hospital.
[deleted] will allow TSS/CD personnel to supervise the work very
closely to make sure that all tests are conducted according to
the recognized practices and embody adequate safeguards.
OHIO
AND CORPORATIONS
[The Ohio Committee
on Corporations, Law and Democracy has prepared an excellent
report on how corporations in that state gained the power to
corrupt elections. The information, while focusing on Ohio, is
useful to all concerned with this issue]
When Ohio was
founded, corporations had no rights, only privileges, bestowed
by the citizenry through their elected state legislators -- and
backed up by the courts. Corrupt and corporate-friendly state
officials and judges began granting corporations authorities
never intended. Supreme Court decisions (including the Santa
Clara decision) granted corporations "personhood" rights.
By the end of the 19th century, corporations were at a crest
of power -- politically, economically, culturally. So was public
awareness of the abuses of the "robber barons" and
the giant corporations that formed monopolies and trusts across
the land.
Public pressure
forced Ohio and other states to pass tough laws outlawing monopolies
and also prompted passage of the Sherman (named after US Senator
John Sherman from Ohio) Anti-Trust Act of 1890. Populists in
the south and west organized to fundamentally challenge the nature
of corporations to control economies and communities.
Still other public
reaction was in response to the political power of corporations
expressed through direct political contributions to candidates.
Ohioan Marc Hanna, who ran the Presidential campaign of Canton-native
William McKinley in the 1896 election, introduced the practice
of regularly assessing corporations for campaign contributions
to the Republican Party, with each company paying according to
its "stake in the general prosperity."
"There are
two things important in politics," Hanna once said, "the
first is money and I can't remember what the second one is."
In 1896 Ohio
General Assembly passed a law placing limits on the amount of
money candidates could "pay out, give, contribute or spend"
on their campaigns with the intent to "prevent corrupt practices
at elections."
In 1907 the Teddy
Roosevelt administration pushed through legislation outlawing
direct corporate contributions on federal level.
In 1908 the General
Assembly enacted legislation "to prevent the corruption
of elections and political parties by corporations" by barring
any corporation from directly or indirectly giving money or property
to any political organization, party or candidate.
In 1911 the General
Assembly required that every corporation or public utility which
makes any report, statement or return to the state submit an
affidavit stating that it did engage in any political activity,
either directly or indirectly, during the preceding year. [102,
Ohio Laws, 224]
The legislature
weakened Ohio's tough campaign contributions law in the 1950's
by allowing corporate contributions for the first time in non-partisan
elections such as ballot issues.
The Cuyahoga
County Court of Appeals ruled in 1958 that corporate contributions
to ballot issues is equal to contributing to candidates, and
thus illegal. The judges argued in part that, "Corporations
do not vote. They exist for the purpose of furthering the particular
business in which they are engaged." The next year, the
Ohio Supreme Court struck down the Cuyahoga County ruling, permitting
corporations to contribute for the first time to ballot measures.
The US Supreme
Court struck a major blow against Ohio and all other states'
efforts to keep corporations out of politics in 1978 when its
First National Bank of Boston decision granted corporations the
same First Amendment rights of free speech as citizens, and,
thus, cannot be prohibited from contributing to state referenda.
Corporate Political
Action Committees (PACs) were legally established in Ohio in
1987 "to establish, administer, and solicit contributions
from... [their] stockholders, officers, directors and trustees
that are not corporations or employees." This concentrated
political contributions and clearly linked them to specific corporations.
[From Democracy
for Sale, available from the Ohio Committee on Corporations,
Law and Democracy by calling 330-253-7151 or writing 513 W. Exchange
St., Akron, OH, 44302]
MAKING
CITIES
BLACK & POOR:
THE HIDDEN STORY
THE PROGRESSIVE
REVIEW, JANUARY 2000: TPR recently quoted from a column by Dick
Case of the Syracuse Herald American which revealed that the
practice of redlining mortgage loans for American cities began
in the Roosevelt administration, far earlier than is generally
realized. A former Syracuse city planner, Emanual Carter, who
had come across the practice while reading "A Prayer for
the City" by Buzz Bissinger, told Case, "I think this
program almost guaranteed the demise of our cities."
Now, Jane Levey,
editor of Washington History magazine, points out to us stunning
corroboration contained in a lecture delivered 23 years ago to
the Columbia Historical Society by historian Kenneth T. Jackson.
Jackson, in his address to an organization that is now the Historical
Society of Washington, outlined what was, in effect, a federally-organized
program of urban residential apartheid.
One of the New
Deal's reforms had been the creation of the Home Owners Loan
Corporation, which provided federal guarantees for home mortgages.
Jackson reported that between 1933 and 1936 alone, the HOLC supplied
funds for one tenth of all owner-occupied, non-farm residences
in the country. The FHA, and later the VA, took over the task.
There was a huge
need. Before the FHA and VA, first mortgages usually covered
no more than one-half to two-thirds of the appraised value and
the term was typically only between five and ten years. By the
end of 1958, the FHA had enabled nearly five million families
to own homes and helped more than 22 million to improve their
properties.
At the same time,
however, the legislation discouraged the construction of multi-family
units and provided only small short-term loans for repair of
existing homes. This meant, Jackson noted, that "families
of modest circumstances could more easily finance the purchase
of a new home than the modernization of an old one."
While such restrictions
are well known, other aspects of the program have been long hidden,
such as the FHA weighting system by which underwriters would
judge a neighborhood by such standards as "protection from
adverse influences," "freedom from special hazards,"
and "appeal." The FHA Underwriting Manual warned that
"older properties in a neighborhood have a tendency to accelerate
the rate of transition to lower class occupancy" and suggested
that apartment owners should look to the suburbs, preferably
a site "set in what amounts to a privately owned and privately
controlled park area."
Jackson continued:
"The greatest
fears of the Federal Housing Administration were reserved for
'unharmonious racial or nationality groups.' The alleged danger
was that an entire area could lose its investment value if rigid
white-black segregation was not maintained. To protect itself
against such eventualities, the Underwriting Manual openly recommended
'enforced zoning, subdivision regulations, and suitable restrictive
covenants. In addition, the FHA's Division of Economics and Statistics
compiled detailed reports and maps charting the present and most
likely future residential locations of black families."
In a March, 1939, map of Brooklyn, for example, the presence
of a single non-white family on any block was sufficient to result
in that entire block being marked black. Similarly, very extensive
maps of the District of Columbia depicted the spread of the black
population and the percentage of dwelling units occupied by persons
other than white."
Beginning in
1936, an inventory was created, largely by those in the real
estate industry, and color coded maps were drawn with neighborhoods
rated A through D.Case described the system:
"* Grade
A neighborhood: Up and coming. In demand. Well planned. Color
it green.
"* Grade
B: Completely developed. Still good but not what people who can
afford more are buying. Blue.
"* Grade
C: Buildings aged and obsolete. "Infiltration of lower grade
populations." Experts say "lower grade',' citizens
were blacks (called 'Negroes' by surveyors), Jews and foreign
born whites. C neighborhoods 'lack homogeneity.' Color them yellow.
"* Grade
D: Detrimental influences. Undesirable population. Mostly rented
homes with poor maintenance, vandalism, unstable families. This
is the red area."
Jackson noted
that "black neighborhoods were invariably rated 'D.'"
These were neighborhoods described with such phrases as "the
only hope is for demolition of these buildings and transition
of the are into a business district" or "this particular
spot is a blight on the surrounding area."
Secret "residential
security maps" were drawn up for every block of a city.
These maps were available to lenders and realtors but were kept
secret from the general public. Some of these maps, including
those for DC, Jackson found to be missing from government archives.
The suburban
bias of the FHA was extraordinary. For example, 91% of the homes
insured by the agency in metropolitan St. Louis between 1935
and 1939 were in the suburbs. This practice would continue into
the 60s and even the 70s. Jackson found that in 1976 the federal
government had supplied three dollars in loans for suburban St.
Louis for every one dollar to the city itself. Between 1934 and
1960, $559 million was loaned for suburban construction in the
St. Louis suburbs but only $94 million for the city itself, a
suburban per capita loan in 1961 of $794 vs. an urban one of
only $126.
While the housing
programs of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations helped to
create America's huge middle class, it also secretly created
extraordinary victims, primarily black citizens and the American
city. As Jane Jacobs would put it, "Credit blacklisting
maps are accurate prophecies because they are self-fulfilling
prophecies."
NUCLEAR,
BIOLOGICAL
& CHEMICAL TESTING
JIM GREEN, ENS:
The British government has admitted that British, Australian
and New Zealand military personnel were used in radiation experiments
during the nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga in South Australia
in the 1950s, but claims that clothing was being tested, not
humans . . . A statement released by the British government said
that military personnel were "transported to or walked in
various uniforms to an area of low-level fallout." The admission
followed publicity surrounding a document found in the Australian
National Archive in February by Sue Rabbitt Roff, a senior research
fellow from Scotland's Dundee University. The October 12, 1956,
document on an "Australian Military Forces - Central Command"
letterhead refers to the Buffalo series of four atmospheric nuclear
tests conducted at Maralinga in September and October, 1956.
The document names 70 Australian military personnel and one civilian,
plus five New Zealand officers, all listed as exposed to radiation
following a September 27 nuclear test. "As far as can be
determined the individual dose for round one was received over
a period of two to three hours while the various indoctrinee
groups were touring the target response area . . . Certain people
were exposed to radiation on dates other than 28 and 29 Sep,
during clothing trials or for a limited number during a tour
of the contaminated area after round two," the document
says.MORE
ASSOCIATED PRESS - The United States
held open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least
three states -- Alaska, Hawaii and Utah -- during the 1960s to
try to develop defenses against such weapons, according to Pentagon
documents. . . A biological agent believed harmless but later
shown to infect those with damaged immune systems was sprayed
on barracks on Oahu in 1965. . . The documents did not say whether
any civilians had been exposed to the poisons. Military personnel
exposed to weapons agents would have worn protective gear, the
Pentagon said. . . Some of those involved in the tests say they
suffer health problems linked to their exposure to dangerous
chemicals and germs. They are pressing the Veterans Affairs Department
to compensate them and the Defense Department to release more
information about the tests.
CUBA
BRASS
CHECK:
In 1962, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff seriously considered using
plastic explosives to carry out terrorist attacks on US buildings
and then manufacture evidence that would place blame on agents
of the Cuban government in order to justify a military invasion
of that country:
FROM ANNEX TO APPENDIX TO ENCLOSURE A:
PRETEXTS TO JUSTIFY US MILITARY INTERVENTION IN CUBA
"We could
foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States
even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized.
Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the
arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents
substantiating Cuban involvement, also would be helpful in projecting
the idea of an irresponsible government." - March 14, 1962
PDF
VERSION |