Obama staffer says: Infiltrate & undermine groups that disagree with Obama Admin

Obama staffer wants cognitive infiltration of 9/11 conspiracy groups http://rawstory.com/2010/01/obama-staffer-infiltration-911-groups/

In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated "cognitive infiltration" of groups that advocate "conspiracy theories" like the ones surrounding 9/11.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine" those groups.

As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs," according to the White House Web site.

Sunstein's article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that "our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a 'crippled epistemology,' in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources."

By "crippled epistemology" Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust. Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public -- the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.

Story continues below...

Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government "enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts."

Download a PDF of the article here.

Sunstein argued that "government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories." He suggested that "government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."

"We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI," Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that "a high-level presidential advisor" would support such a strategy.

Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of "extremist" groups so that it undermines the groups' confidence to the extent that "new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group s virtual networks will doubt each other s bona fides."

Sunstein has been the target of numerous "conspiracy theories" himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting "a second Bill of Rights" that would do away with the Second Amendment. Sunstein's recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as "a blueprint for online censorship."

Sunstein "wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading 'rumors,'" wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker.

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Got Fascism? : Obama Advisor Promotes 'Cognitive Infiltration'

Presidential advisor and long-time Obama buddy Cass Sunstein.

Your government appointees at work:

Cass Sunstein seeks 'cognitive' provocateurs

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2010

Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures." (J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the language and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?

* It is "extremists" who "supply" "conspiracy theories."

* Their "hard core" must be "broken up" with distinctive tactics. What tactics?

* "Infiltration" ("cognitive") of groups with questions about official explanations or obfuscations or lies. Who is to infiltrate?

* "Government agents or their allies," virtually (i.e. on-line) or in "real-space" (as at meetings), and "either openly or anonymously," though "infiltration" would imply the latter. What will these agents do?

* Undermine "crippled epistemology" -- one's theory and technique of knowledge. How will they do this?

* By "planting doubts" which will "circulate." Will these doubts be beneficial?

* Certainly. Because they will introduce "cognitive diversity."

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader? Eat the Rich?

It's easy to destroy groups with "cognitive diversity." You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don't come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called "provocateurs" -- even if only "cognitive." One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members, and raise the costs of organization and communication -- which Sunstein applauds as "desirable." "[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group s virtual networks will doubt each other s bona fides." (p.225).

And are we now expected to applaud such tactics frankly proposed in a scholarly journal by a high-level presidential advisor?

The full text of a slightly earlier version of Sunstein's article is available for download here.

Marc Estrin. The author gets in the last word.

[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.] http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/got-fascism-obama-advisor-promotes.html

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Conspiracy Theories

Cass R. Sunstein

Harvard University - Harvard Law School

Adrian Vermeule

Harvard University - Harvard Law School

January 15, 2008

Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-03 U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 199 U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 387

Abstract:

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by a n attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585

The Truth about Haiti's Suffering

The Truth about Haiti's Suffering By Finian Cunningham

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16964

Global Research, January 14, 2010

Even in its hour of utter devastation, Haiti, the western hemisphere's poorest country, teaches the rest of the world some valuable truths. This Caribbean island nation of nine million people has right now a third of its population cut off from basic supplies of food, water, medicine or shelter. In the blink of an eye, the earthquake that hit the country has buried a capital city of three million people under rubble for which the eventual death toll may be between 100,000 and 500,000. Just like that. Like shutting the proverbial stable door after the horse has bolted, the US and other world powers are promising to send emergency aid to Haiti. Well intentioned no doubt. But where was the aid and economic development assistance to Haiti – over half the population live on $1 a day and 80 per cent are classed as poor – in the years before this calamity? Haiti's poverty – as for other poor countries hit by natural disasters – leaves its people wide open to the kind of devastation that has befallen them. And make no mistake, Haiti's poverty is not just bad luck or something inherently faulty about its natural resources and people. The country has been kept underdeveloped by decades of political and economic interference from Washington to ensure that this former slave colony continues to serve as a cheap source of agricultural exports to the US and as a labour sweatshop for American corporations making textiles and other consumer goods. While Washington spends $1,000 billion on wars allegedly to combat the threat of terrorism, Haiti's poor – whose country's economy is valued at $7 billion – show us a sobering perspective on what a real threat to life looks like. We live in a physical world where floods, tsunamis, earthquakes happen. These disasters claim multiple more lives than the threats that the US is fixated on and spends multiples more money on. Can you imagine how many lives could have been saved in Haiti's earthquake if a fraction of the money squandered on futile wars had been directed to economic and social development of that country? Of course, the moral and sensible logic of that idea does not apply in a world dictated by Washington's foreign policy. This is because of the imperatives and logic of US-led capitalism, which requires countries like Haiti to be kept in a state of poverty for the sake of corporate profit and which requires the fixation on illusionary threats to cover up its need to control geopolitical resources (mainly energy). This is the true face of the economic system that Washington and its allies impose on the world. And Haiti has pulled the mask of this ugly face. The harrowing anguish and suffering of Haiti teaches us something else. Heart-rending reports of streets filled with corpses and blood running from under rubble, children crying for parents, parents digging with their fingers for children, the sound of dying voices pervading the darkness of night. This is the horror of hundreds of thousands of people suddenly engulfed by suffering. Some observers have compared what has happened in Haiti to the aftermath of an atom bomb being dropped. So the next time, Washington spokespeople airily float plans on Sunday morning chat shows to obliterate Iran – that other “serious threat” (meaning not serious threat) – we should remember: this is what human suffering on a massive scale looks like.

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Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up

Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up A Failure to "Integrate and Understand," or a Thin Tissue of Lies By Tom Burghardt

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16888

Global Research, January 11, 2010

Antifascist Calling...

New revelations about the failed Christmas Day attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 continue to emerge as does evidence of a systematic cover-up. With the White House in crisis mode since the attempted bombing, President Obama met for two hours January 5 with top security and intelligence officials. Obama said that secret state agencies "had sufficient information to uncover the terror plot ... but that intelligence officials had 'failed to connect those dots'," The New York Times reports. The latest iteration of the "dot theory" floated by the President, aided and abetted by a compliant media, claims "this was not a failure to collect intelligence" but rather, "a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had." "Mr. Obama's stark assessment that the government failed to properly analyze and integrate intelligence served as a sharp rebuke of the country's intelligence agencies," declared the Times uncritically. While the President's remarks may have offered a "sharp [rhetorical] rebuke," Obama's statement suggests that no one will be held accountable. Indeed, the President "was standing by his top national security advisers, including those whose agencies failed to communicate with one another." While the President may be "standing by" his national security advisers, the question is, are the denizens of America's secret state standing by him? One well-connected Washington insider, MSNBC pundit Richard Wolffe, isn't so sure. Wolffe, the author of a flattering portrait of Obama, Renegade: The Making of a President, when asked on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann January 4 what is the White House "focus here right now?" Wolffe's startling reply: "Is this conspiracy or cock up? It seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda." (emphasis added) "I will accept that intelligence by its nature is imperfect" the President said, "but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged." The question is why? And more pertinently from a parapolitical perspective, what "alternative agenda" is playing out here that would put the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk? British Evidence: Down the Memory Hole As Antifascist Calling reported last week, The Sunday Times and The Observer newspapers disclosed that MI5 had built a dossier on Abdulmutallab which showed "his repeated contacts with MI5 targets who were subject to phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of surveillance." It has since emerged, the Associated Press reported January 4, that British authorities began assembling a security file on Abdulmutallab shortly after his arrival the UK in 2005 when officials claimed he was in contact with "known radicals." Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesperson Simon Lewis said on Monday, "Clearly there was security information about this individual's activities, and that was information that was shared with the U.S. authorities. That is the key point." In an climb-down from Lewis's admission, The Wall Street Journal reported that Home Secretary Alan Johnson, whose brief includes MI5, said in an appearance before Parliament Tuesday, "Whilst we did provide information to the U.S., according to standard operational practices, linked to the wider aspect of this case, none of the information we held or shared indicated that Abdulmutallab was about to attempt a terrorist attack against the U.S." The Brown government has steadfastly refused to say just when the file on Abdulmutallab was passed to the U.S., letting stand the implication it was sent before the aborted Christmas Day attack. The cover story being floated by MI5 now mendaciously claims the agency did not send Abdulmutallab's security dossier on to American officials "because of concerns about breaching his human rights and privacy," The Sunday Times reported January 10. "MI5 has privately conceded that as early as 2006 its surveillance operations had picked up 'multiple communications' between the 23-year-old Nigerian student and suspected terrorists in Britain," The Sunday Times disclosed. Despite these concessions, we're now to accept at face value the absurd claim that information on a terrorist suspect wasn't passed along by British spooks to their closest ally "because of guidance from [MI5's] legal department." Trying selling that fairy tale to Republican victims of the secret state's "human rights and privacy" campaign in Northern Ireland as The Sunday Herald revealed during their multiyear investigation into Britain's dirty war! Under intense pressure by the United States about these disclosures, the Brown government has gone to great lengths to stress "the importance to Britain of close intelligence cooperation with the United States." Still reeling however, from U.S. threats to cut-off intelligence sharing last summer if torture evidence was disclosed to the public by the British High Court, the government is moving to avoid a similar controversy over the Abdulmutallab affair. In late July, The Guardian revealed that "Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today." The Guardian also reported that MI5 chief Jonathan Evans said in a speech in October that the "Security Service had been 'slow to detect the emerging pattern of US practice in the period after 9/11'." While the torture files were eventually released in late October by a High Court order, it is certainly reasonable to ask: what other "U.S. practice(s)" are being suppressed today by the Brown government? The Independent confirms this and states, "The Downing Street comments were reported to have angered the US government, but after talks with the White House, Mr Brown's spokesman tried to lower the diplomatic temperature. He said relations remained 'excellent' between the two countries." As part of a new and improved sanitized narrative, the Home Office now claims that Abdulmutallab's transformation into an erstwhile suicide bomber began only after he left Britain. This, despite revelations by The Sunday Times last week, that he stoked MI5's interest precisely because of his repeated contacts with individuals "who were subject to phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of surveillance." In a further development that can't please the British state, The Guardian reported January 7, that Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Security, Rashad al-Alimi, told a news conference that "information provided to us is that Umar Farouk joined al-Qaida in London." The Wall Street Journal reports that al-Alimi said Thursday, that Abdulmutallab had "no links" to al-Qaeda "when he first came to Yemen in 2004 and 2005 to study Arabic" and that he "was radicalized during his time in the U.K., where he had studied between his two stints in Yemen," charges that "senior British counterterrorism officials" dismiss, claiming "there was no evidence to back them up." Why then, would Abdulmutallab's web browsing habits, cell phone conversations as well as "other forms of surveillance" on "targets of interest" to British spooks indicate a "lack of evidence"? It would seem to suggest just the opposite. Indeed, Abdulmutallab had been in "close contact" with "a key suspect in an Al-Qaeda plot to murder British citizens," according to MP Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the parliamentary counter-terrorism committee. Mercer told The Sunday Times January 10, that the alleged airline bomber "had been in touch" with the suspect, currently a resident in a high-security British prison awaiting trial, "while both men were students in London." Feeling the heat, Lewis has backtracked from his initial statement and now claims that information revealed Monday was simply a "routine exchange of information," and not specific warnings that "Abdulmutallab posed a terrorist threat." This beggars belief. Indeed, the Brown government's climb-down is clearly intended to "disappear" inconvenient evidence from the official record, thus suppressing the actual content of MI5's security dossier on Abdulmutallab, and will only heighten suspicions that a transatlantic cover-up of the affair is in full-swing. A Failure to "Integrate and Understand," or a Thin Tissue of Lies Making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows last week, John O. Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism advisor, claimed that U.S. intelligence officials "had snippets of information" about the suspected bomber but "we didn't have any type of information that really allowed us to identify Mr. Abdulmutallab." The Washington Post reported January 4 that Brennan mendaciously claimed, "We may have had a partial name. We might have had an indication of a Nigerian. But there was nothing that brought it all together." Indeed, the 25-year CIA veteran and former CEO of The Analysis Corporation, the firm which built and maintained bloated watchlists for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's National Counterterrorist Center, went so far as to cheekily proclaim "there is no smoking gun piece of intelligence out there that said he was a terrorist, he was going to carry out this attack against this aircraft," or that America's multibillion counterterrorist apparatus only had "bits and pieces of information." Let's take a look at those informational "snippets" and summarize what is quickly emerging as growing evidence of U.S. foreknowledge of an imminent attack on an American passenger plane: * May: the British government withdrew its student visa for Abdulmutallab, a graduate of the prestigious University College London and placed him on a watchlist, barring his entry into the UK. MI5, and presumably their MI6 military intelligence colleagues in Yemen, compiled a dossier on the would-be bomber, citing his "political involvement" with "extremist networks" that have enjoyed on-again, off-again ties with NATO military intelligence organizations across the decades. This information, as Brown government spokesperson Simon Lewis, who let the cat out of the proverbial bag, was shared with their American counterparts. * August: U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA, intercepted cell- and satellite phone traffic which revealed that a Yemeni affiliate of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as al-Qaeda, were finalizing preparations for an operation that would utilize a "Nigerian." * October: Newsweek revealed in their January 11 issue, that the dodgy cleric, the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who communicated extensively with the disturbed Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, posted "a provocative message on his English-language Web site: 'COULD YEMEN BE THE NEXT SURPRISE OF THE SEASON?'" According to Newsweek, "Al-Awlaki seemed to hint at an upcoming attack that would make Yemen 'the single most important front of jihad in the world'." The Washington Post reported in 2008 that al-Awlaki had extensive contacts with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Hani Hanjour and was suspected of having assisted the 9/11 plot. According to the Post, "three of the hijackers had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church." Despite, or possibly because, of these dubious connections "he was allowed to leave the country in 2002." According to the History Commons, it is only in 2008 that the U.S. government concludes that the shady imam "is linked to al-Qaeda attacks." However, Al-Awlaki's provenance as a new "terrorist mastermind" should be viewed with suspicion, given well-documented links known to have existed amongst the 9/11 hijackers and American, Saudi and Pakistani secret state agencies. * October: the same month Al-Awlaki was hinting at a "surprise," Newsweek revealed that John O. Brennan "received an alarming briefing at the White House from Muhammad bin Nayef, Brennan's Saudi counterpart. Nayef had just survived an assassination attempt by a Qaeda operative using a novel method: the operative had flown in from the Saudi-Yemeni border region with a bomb hidden in his underwear. The Saudi was concerned because he 'didn't think [U.S. officials] were paying enough attention' to the growing threat." A familiar trope we've heard in the aftermath of other terrorist strikes. * Early November: Newsweek published an exclusive report January 4, that two U.S. "intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security circulated a paper within the government last fall that examined in some detail the threats that bombs secreted in clothing--or inside someone's body cavities--might pose to aviation security." According to information leaked to the newsmagazine by anonymous "national-security officials," the report "was prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center in conjunction with Homeland Security and the CIA," and that "one principal point of discussion in the document was whether the detonation of a bomb hidden in clothing on an airliner would have a different explosive effect than the detonation of a bomb secreted in a body cavity under similar circumstances." (emphasis added) This chilling report, prepared in the wake of intelligence information provided U.S. security agencies by Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism czar, should raise provocative questions. No other media outlet however, has followed the trail. * November 19: Abdulmutallab's father, a prominent Nigerian banker and former high state official, visits the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, telling State Department and CIA officials he believes his son is a threat. A cousin tells The New York Times that the father told U.S. officials, "Look at the texts he's sending. He's a security threat." Although Embassy personnel promise "to look into it," the cousin told the Times that "they didn't take him seriously." * November 20: the CIA prepares and files a report on Abdulmutallab that is sent to agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia "but not disseminated to other intelligence agencies," unnamed "officials" tell the Times. Embassy staff also wrote and sent a cable known as a "Visa Viper," to the State Department and National Counterterrorism Center and a security file is opened on the suspect. * December 9-24: Abdulmutallab travels to Ghana from Ethiopia and pays cash, $2,831 to be precise, for a ticket on a Northwest Airlines flight from Lagos through Amsterdam to Detroit, landing on Christmas Day. "It is now known" The Independent on Sunday reported January 10, "that the Ghanaian hotel he listed on his immigration form was not the one where he was actually staying." According to IoS, although the FBI "has officers on the ground in Ghana and believe it is likely the terrorist may well have had his final al-Qa'ida briefing, and supplied with equipment and explosives, there," no steps are taken to apprehend the suspect. "All this" IoS comments, "was more than a month after his father, a wealthy Nigerian banker, had met officials at the US embassy in Abuja to share concerns about his son." * December 22: during a White House Situation Room briefing Newsweek reports that "a document presented to the president titled 'Key Homeland Threats' did not mention Yemen, according to a senior administration official." * December 25: Abdulmutallab boards Flight 253 in Amsterdam with only a carry-on bag for his international flight; the would-be lap bomber holds a 2-year entry visa into the United States. As is standard procedure, the Department of Homeland Security is notified an hour prior to departure that he is a passenger on the plane. * December 25: the Los Angeles Times disclosed January 7 that "U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed." Homeland Security officials "declined to discuss what information reached the U.S. border officials in Amsterdam on Christmas Day." Despite suspicions by Customs and Border Protection agents, who had accessed NCTC's TIDE database, the flight crew is not notified of Abdulmutallab's presence aboard the airliner and additional security precautions therefore, are not made. Preliminary White House Review: Crafting the Cover-Up In remarks January 7 announcing the White House's preliminary review of alleged "intelligence failures" responsible for the near detonation of a bomb aboard Flight 253, President Obama said that "America's first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively." Echoing remarks made Tuesday, Obama reiterated the trope that the secret state "failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from boarding a plane for America." In a maneuver to deflect public attention from the glaring similarities between the 9/11 provocation and the near-tragedy Christmas Day over Detroit, Obama claimed that "intelligence reforms" instituted under the previous regime had "largely achieved" the goal of generating said "timely intelligence." Leaving aside overwhelming evidence that secret state agencies and a Pentagon data mining program had amassed terabytes of data on the 9/11 hijack team, including detailed profiles and intelligence dossiers, and that the Bush administration had been repeatedly warned by elements within their own counterterrorism agencies as well as their foreign counterparts in Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Morocco and Russia, in other words possessed "timely intelligence" that an attack was imminent, the "connect the dot" meme, as with 9/11, is handmaiden to today's transparent cover-up. The President then alleged that despite knowledge of the "al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen," and that secret state agencies had amassed considerable information on Abdulmutallab's ostensible Yemeni confederates, and that "we knew they sought to strike the United States and that they were recruiting operatives to do so," as with 9/11, "the intelligence community did not aggressively follow up on and prioritize particular streams of intelligence related to a possible attack against the homeland." The preliminary review released by the White House presents an even more damning indictment of these purported "intelligence failures." According to the declassified version of the report, "The U.S. Government had sufficient information prior to the attempted December 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] plot--i.e., by identifying Mr. Abdulmutallab as a likely operative of AQAP and potentially preventing him from boarding flight 253." The document further charges that "the Intelligence Community leadership did not increase analytic resources working on the full AQAP threat." Despite evidence to the contrary, the administration claims that "the fundamental problems ... are different from those identified in the wake of the 9/11 attacks" and that "firmly entrenched patterns of bureaucratic behavior as well as the absence of a single component that fuses expertise, information technology (IT) networks, and datasets ... have now, 8 years later, largely been overcome." However, as I documented last week in "The Strange Case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab," as with 9/11, a similar pattern of concealing information from relevant counterterrorism officials who might have intervened and rescinded the suspect's U.S. visa, and thus preventing him from boarding Flight 253, were replicated. Indeed, the CIA's Nigerian station had prepared a dossier on Abdulmutallab that included biographical details and texts handed over by the family, an analysis of NSA electronic intercepts, reports from their own on-the-ground operatives in Yemen that were sent to the agency's Langley headquarters "but not disseminated to other intelligence agencies," as The New York Times revealed December 31. The CIA says it is now taking steps to "improve" its handling of "terrorist-threat" information. Agency spokesperson, George Little told the media that CIA Director Leon Panetta specifically ordered the Company to implement several "new measures," including "formally disseminating information on suspected extremists and terrorists within 48 hours," expanding "name traces" and "reviewing information" on individuals from "countries of concern" to determine whether the Agency should recommend "changes in status on U.S. government watch lists." One would have thought these were precisely the policies already implemented after the September 11, 2001 attacks! And yet, here we are eight years later and the CIA, perhaps more concerned with protecting their intelligence assets--a motley crew of killers and sociopathic riff-raff that include neofascists, mafia kingpins, drug traffickers and terrorists--from scrutiny by law enforcement officials, have to be ordered by the reputed head of their Agency to protect something as trivial as the lives of airline passengers, is stark commentary on the state of affairs in an allegedly democratic republic! It cannot be ruled out that the CIA was interested in recruiting Abdulmutallab as an asset. After all, the Nigerian youth came from a prominent family, was a graduate of an up-scale British university and was well-versed in the close relationships amongst British and Yemeni Islamist networks. Indeed Abdulmutallab, like MI6's man during the Yugoslav destabilization campaign of the 1990s, the reputed 9/11 bag man, ISI asset and al-Qaeda leader, Omar Saeed Sheik, a graduate of the London School of Economics, would seem to fit the bill quite nicely. On the face of it, however you care to slice it, the "connect the dots" conspiracy theory floated by the White House doesn't pass muster. Two separate agencies, the CIA and NCTC, had all the information required to identify the would-be bomber and yet both, if we are to believe the official narrative, failed to do so. This despite the inconvenient fact that NCTC was stood up precisely as a central repository to collate, fuse and "connect" each seemingly minute piece of intelligence, the "dots," flowing into the U.S. security apparatus. The White House cover story, accepted uncritically by the media, suggest that a mass of disparate data points--raw intelligence--when taken separately, is not incriminating in and of itself. However, after each fragment is subjected to the massive data mining and analytic capabilities of the U.S. Government which "fuse" these datasets into a coherent whole, only then will a dodgy pattern emerge. In Abdulmutallab's case however, each seemingly innocuous piece of information on its own should have set alarm bells ringing. That this didn't happen Christmas Day cannot be explained away as either incompetence or "firmly entrenched patterns of bureaucratic behavior" but rather, by conscious action, or if you prefer, sinister inaction by factions within America's secret state. Conclusion As of this writing, it is not yet possible to provide a comprehensive answer as to why these events unfolded as they did. I am however, certain of one thing: the Obama administration, the security agencies presumably under its control and the corporate media, johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to covering-up imperialism's multitude of crimes, are lying to the American people. There are however, several preliminary hypotheses which can be advanced, all of which raise further troubling questions worthy of additional investigation. Were the Christmas Day events a pretext to expand the "War on Terror" into yet another strategic petroleum chokepoint as analyst F. William Engdahl suggests in an excellent piece published by Global Research? Nor can we dismiss out of hand the analysis offered by the World Socialist Web Site that the failed Christmas Day airline plot was a maneuver by extreme right-wing elements deeply embedded in the U.S. National Security State "to destabilize and undermine the Obama administration." To this can be added Richard Wolffe's provocative statement that factions within the secret state may have had their own "alternative agenda," and thus failed to act. Add to the mix, the systematic outsourcing of intelligence and security functions to a host of giant defense firms, outside of democratic control; in other words, rightist grifters who answer to shareholders and not the American people, and suddenly another piece of Wolffe's "alternative agenda" comes into sharp focus. Chock-a-block with ex-CIA officers, NSA analysts, FBI agents and U.S. Special Forces veterans of America's dirty wars who now staff the privatized U.S. security complex, in other words well-paid mercenaries who know a thing or two on how to run a clandestine operation, and we just might have another plausible theory why a "dot" or two was ignored Christmas Day. Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Federal Disinformation Agency & Center for Disease Creation spend 6.4 Billion for pandemic that never happened.

FDA: 1. Federal Disinformation Agency 2. Fraud and Death Agency CDC: 1. Central Disinformation Campaign 2. Centers for Disease Creation Have They No Shame? Our Regulatory Agencies are Justly Ridiculed and Rejected by 'We the People'! The FDA and the CDC are rapidly becoming the laughingstocks of Washington... a town that already hosts an ever- increasing number of ludicrous and useless agencies. After 'Wave One' and 'Wave Two' of the supposedly deadly "H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic" went missing and failed to materialize; after the agencies (and their HHS overseers) blew at least $6.4 billion on H1N1 vaccines (purchased BEFORE they were approved), which they then conveniently approved, recommended and distributed, the agencies have discovered the missing 'Wave Three' of the dread disease: now, instead of insisting that children and pregnant women should get the jab first, the agencies have discovered that the "pandemic" is such a great threat to oldsters that people over 65 are now, suddenly, the target of the government's vaccine marketing campaign. While the agencies have bamboozled 50 million people who have been given the drug, the vast majority of the 300 million + who they planned to vaccinate have refused the invitation to receive this uninsurable, un-safety-tested, unnecessary immune system assault, despite the agencies' frantic propaganda, aided and abetted by the usual academic and media types who will believe any marketing scheme tricked up in the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of the agencies' approval process. But the world is waking up! Item: Item: "The 'false' pandemic: Drug firms cashed in on scare over swine flu, claims Euro health chief" Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242147/The-false-pandemic-Drug-firms-cashed-scare-swine-flu-claims-Euro-health-chief.html#ixzz0cH3LeUCS Item: Truckloads of H1N1 Vaccine Sent Back in NY State MYFOXNY.COM - "After months of fear, media coverage and government warnings there wasn't as much demand for the swine flu vaccine in New York state as expected. "Truckloads of swine flu vaccines are being returned by counties that say the expected demand for the shots never happened. "When the state's H1N1 vaccination program kicked off in the fall there were fears that there wouldn't be enough of the new vaccine to go around. *"The flu strain has not spread as wide as feared and some people were also unsure of pumping a quickly developed vaccine into their bodies."* Read more at http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/new_york_state/100108-Unused-Flu-Vaccine UK Moves to Recover Cost of Flu Vaccine "The mild nature of the swine flu virus, the need for only a single rather than a double dose of vaccine and public suspicion and indifference to vaccination have led to lower take-up than anticipated in the UK and other countries." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e4d6a46-fe1a-11de-9340-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1 What does all this mean? It means the vaccination hoax is beginning to break down; it means we need to PUSH BACK harder, since our Push Back IS working! Once again, large numbers of 'We the People' are showing that we need not submit to the globalist agenda! The primary conclusion of the Health Freedom War Council, www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4478, last week is that Our Numbers are our Power and so, in order to increase that influence we need to increase our numbers. We need to grow the Health Freedom Action eAlert list and we need ALL Health Freedom Supporters, our Mouse Warriors, to forward these Action Alerts to their own lists, to make this "go viral..." And it is not just the Action eAlerts need to be spread; we also need your help in spreading the word on the Social Networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. For eample, we recently noticed one advocate "retweeting" our Twitter messages to his own Twitter "followers" list of over two thousand people. That sort of leverage is exactly what will make our message reach many millions! To do that, of course, we need a strong donation program from your, our supporters, since we are 100% supporter supported.  You know how much we do for you.  That needs to be a two way street.  Large or small, your recurring donations make the difference. Please make a generous recurring tax deductible donation here, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189.  Please do it now and help get 2010 off to a powerful start!  The globalists are moving fast.  We have to move fast, too! Featured Videos Gen. Bert on the Global Eugenics Agenda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fpgQw7SsO8 Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtg-PrHLm0A Dr. Rima and Gen. Bert report on the Health Freedom War Council: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm_m7K8hfwI Dr. Rima and Gov. Jesse Ventura Discuss the Vaccination Holocaust: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A225zQUnME0&feature=related Watch for the Archived Health Freedom War Council Webinar: If you missed the Health Freedom USA War Council on Jan 2, 3, 2010, you will be able to learn from our outstanding experts.  Stay tuned! War Council Summary: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4478 Internet Radio TUNE IN WEEKLY! Don't Miss The Dr. Rima Show: Your Health Freedom at www.theFreedomLink.org every Wednesday, 8-10 PM Eastern time, archived at www.HealthFreedomRadio.com Watch these videos to learn more about this important series and then forward them to your contacts!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fpgQw7SsO8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtg-PrHLm0A Want to learn more about our radio appearances and interviews? Dr. Rima and General Stubblebine on Blog Talk Radio's True Patriot News Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 10-12 PM Eastern http://www.blogtalkradio.com/freedomizerradio/2010/01/11/true-patriot-news Net Neutrality & Freedom of Speech Health Freedom Requires Free Flow of Information - Net Neutrality Is Urgently Important http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5RQrxkGgCM There's a battle going on for your mind... Our concern grows daily that the "Chinese Model" of Internet censorship is looming throughout the world. No government really wants freedom of speech. It is always easier for the rulers if their subjects cannot reach out to each other. Some governments, are constrained by tradition or law to allow some freedom of speech, of association and petition for redress of grievances. In those countries where the Internet remains largely uncensored, those freedoms still have some meaning; in other countries they are becoming irrelevant , since they cannot be exercised effectively over the world's premiere communication system, the Internet. The threats to Free Speech on the Internet come from formal censors, of government or corporate origin, and from the institutional structure of the Internet itself. For example, it matters little whether a government agency, such as in China, blocks access to certain information, or whether a small cabal as, for example, on various Wiki's distort information about Advanced Healthcare (CAM) modalities, such as those urged by the Natural Solutions Foundation. In either case, information that might be helpful to some people is blocked by those exercising power, to protect their power. In any case, the powers-that-be want to control your mind. That's how they can control your choices and insure their power and profit. Our solutions to the problems facing humanity, however, necessitate that you control your own mind so you can make the choices that will protect your own health and freedom. Thus, we view with great concern continuing developments in this area and urge you all to be alert and to express your rightful demand that all peoples of the world have free and open access to all information voluntarily provided on the Internet. The future of humanity lies in greater freedom, not in more control. If the globalist controllers prevail, we have a bleak future indeed. As Thomas Jefferson expressed it: "Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." Together, we have the ability to resist tyranny and demand liberty! Get Your 2010 Valley of the Moon Coffee Orders In NOW! Premium Valley of the Moon™ Coffee is available only in limited supply.  Get yours now, while it is still available! www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org Wake Up to Health Freedom! Support Health Freedom With Your Morning Coffee www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org 80% of Purchase Price is Tax Deductible Yours in health and freedom, Rima E. Laibow, MD Medical Director Don't forget to follow us - and retweet - on www.Twitter.com/HealthFreedomUS Hashtags: #healthfreedom #foodfreedom #noforcedvax #nogmo Nano Silver: Then Universal Remedy "THEY" Definitely Do NOT Want You to Know About (or Have!) www.Nutronix.com/NaturalSolutions Click on "Products", Scroll Down to "Silver Solutions"

The Notorious Blago; link to Esquire article

The Notorious Blago

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has a new dog (Skittles), a new source of income (Elvis impersonations) and — despite an old worry (prison) — a confounding optimism. You have to read this.

By: Scott Raab

From the February 2010 "People Who Matter" issue — on sale this week

It's an ill wind that blows no good, even in Chicago in November. Take Skittles Blagojevich, a small white dog — could be a bichon frise, maybe a Maltese — who joined the family shortly after Governor Rod's arrest on December 9, 2008, when it was alleged that he was auctioning off Barack Obama's Senate seat. Whatever Skittles allegedly was doing on or before that date, he or she — I didn't look; who am I, Woodward and Bernstein? — landed soft on his or her paws as the newest member of the former first family of Illinois, obtained to distract and console Rod and Patti's two young daughters, Amy and Annie, when their home was hemmed in daily by satellite trucks and Dad was crowned Blago, clown king of political corruption.

Skittles was there when the indictment was handed down last April, charging Blago with sixteen felonies, including making false statements to federal agents, racketeering, conspiracy, and attempted extortion. Skittles was there when Mrs. Blago went to Costa Rica and ate a dead tarantula on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, because the judge in Blago's case, fearing Blago might not return for the trial, refused to allow him out of the country to appear on the show. And Skittles is here now, at Revere Park, walking the sidelines while Annie's Saturday-morning soccer team plays to yet another scoreless tie under a high autumn sky.

They could be any family anywhere, a fiction they're trying to maintain under dire circumstances. Nobody has a steady job, Blago's staring at a prison stretch as long as twenty years, and however corrupt he may have been as governor, he apparently botched the part about putting a pile of money aside, just in case. Hence the tarantula, which turns out to have been the dignified choice.

"We had all kinds of offers to do reality shows," says Blagojevich. "This bullshit where they come in the house — Keeping Up With the Kardashians — I won't do that shit."

He looks fantastic, Blago. He ran six and a half miles this morning, he says. In his powder-blue shorts and black long-sleeved jacket zippered to his neck, he could easily pass for ten years younger than his age, which is allegedly fifty-three. Here, he's just another dad cheering on his six-year-old, although he's the only dad I can see whose whorled forelocks cover the entirety of his forehead.

"The two biggest sellers this Halloween in the Chicago area were Michael Jackson's jacket and wigs of my hair," he says as we head to the parking lot. Rod, Patti, and Amy are good to go for brunch, but Annie heads straight for the monkey bars on the fenced-off playground, and Skittles, shivering a little, sniffs the gravel.

"Where the fuck is Woodward and Bernstein? It's shocking that this could happen in America. Because I'm telling you, I am innocent of every single allegation. Every one. I've been falsely accused, I've been lied about, I've been maliciously treated. Worse than that, my family and my children have to suffer. And larger than that, the people of Illinois had their governor stolen from them based on false accusations that were made knowingly."

So you're saying ...

"He falsely accuses me, falsely says things that the four hundred hours of taped conversations would show, and after he does it — by taking snippets of conversation out of context — he goes into court and gets a protective order that prevents those tapes from being heard by the public and prevents me from telling you what's on those tapes. Now how's that America?"

But if the ...

"That's the truth of this. That is the truth of what's happened here. And to think that this could happen in America is shocking to me. As the son of an immigrant, whose father fled Communism, as I write in my book, I've lived the American dream. Now there's an American nightmare going on — these malicious prosecutions that are basically undermining the very principles and the liberties that we Americans expect."

When does the ...

"When the full story's heard, and my conversations on those telephones — hundreds of hours that were secretly recorded — are heard and people hear me motherfucking these phony politicians and how sickening they are, because the people are getting screwed, it'll correct itself. Here's a guy who believes in the power of the simple truth, and he doesn't care who's out to get him. He's going to fight back, and he believes that the strength of the truth in America is still more powerful than all these people — and that's what my story will be when I'm vindicated. Don't pass judgment — just wait to see the result. You'll see."

SEE THE WEARECHANGE.ORG interview of Blago here:

I've seen Blago render various iterations of this screed on television — to Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart and the ladies of The View — and I've read The Governor, the 264-page EP version of it, yet it's still invigorating to see it done like this — a live performance, so to speak, delivered in the office of one of his lawyers, a young man whose attention is evenly divided between his computer and Blago's soliloquy.

There is no question of sincerity here, no doubt in the depths of Rod Blagojevich's soul that Rod Blagojevich is innocent and that he and the citizens of his state are the true victims of a foul, foul crime. The man whose criminal behavior is alleged in the seventy-five-page indictment is a veritable Snidely Whiplash, conniving to strip funding from a children's hospital if he can't shake down its CEO for fifty large. But this chipmunk-cheeked fellow sitting here, his voice cracking with hurt and hope and gritty pride, is right out of a Frank Capra movie.

You sound like an optimistic guy, I tell him when his gums finally stop beating.

"I know what the truth is."

So did Galileo.

"But we still talk about Galileo today, don't we? And we do visit his grave at the church in Florence, don't we?"

Well ...

"You know what's interesting? How about this — I believe Galileo and Machiavelli are buried in the same church."

Really?

"I believe so."

The young lawyer, Googling, confirms that Galileo is buried between Machiavelli and Michelangelo.

Fascinating.

"Isn't it? Because a lot of what's happened to me is Machiavellian, and yet my vision and the rightness of what I've done is kind of Galilean."

Let us stipulate, for the sake of our own sanity, that he is not quite sane. This isn't to say that Blagojevich is guilty as charged — or that the line between believing oneself to be a great leader and megalomania isn't easily blurred. But Blago plays in a league of his own. In the course of a conversation, he is not only Galileo; he is Teddy Roosevelt and Robin Hood and Bobby Kennedy and Rocky Balboa. And Mordecai of the legend of Purim.

Purim?

"The Book of Esther."

Purim?

"Yeah. And I'm Mordecai. Falsely accused. I didn't do those things. This whole story is epic. What helps me get up every morning is, I'm fighting the fight for something much larger than me. I'm fighting for what is at the basis of what our country is supposed to be, a place where you're presumed innocent, where if in fact you did something wrong, the system plays out in such a way where the truth comes out, not people being forced to lie and being squeezed to lie. If you love your country as I do, this is a fight worth fighting."

 

Blago's got the Purim story wrong, but that's beside the point. The point is that he's Rod Blagojevich, the Serbian-American kid who grew up in a five-room apartment, son of an immigrant steelworker father and an American-born mom who fed him books about epic heroes and watched Elvis movies with him. He is imperfect — he spent his time in law school at Pepperdine playing hide-the-gavel with California girls and he flunked the Illinois bar exam on his first try — but he is of the people, from the people, for the people, and, above all, a fighter. And having committed every verse of Kipling's "If" to memory, for Blago mere innocence is not enough; he must be a legendary hero.

This sort of hero requires an epic villain, naturally, and Blago's is U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, (I disagree, the epic villain here is the banking cartel. The day before Blago was pulled out of bed by the FBI which in and of itself is not normal for a governor, under these circumstances generally the attorney general would reach out to Blago and his legal team to give them time to prepare to surrender to authorities. They generally don’t show up unannounced – Blago had publicly challenged Bank of America. Telling them in a press conference that the state of Illinois would no longer do business with BOA until they started to lend back to the American people and fullfill the alleged reason for the bailouts to begin with. – The Mad Prophet)

who headed the Blagojevich investigation and held a press conference after his arrest to trumpet that the governor was nailed "in the middle of ... a political-corruption crime spree" and to tell the world that Blagojevich's "conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave." It was, Fitzgerald added, a "moment of truth for Illinois," which — given Chicago's rich legacy of graft, corruption, and political buffoonery, plus the fact that the governor before Blago is serving a six-year sentence on federal corruption charges — is like swatting a mosquito and calling it a landmark in the fight against malaria.

What sets the Blago case apart, of course, is the little matter of Barack Obama's Senate seat.

"It's a fucking valuable thing," the governor allegedly announced in a phone call taped by the feds the day before Obama's election. "You just don't give it away for nothing."

On a second call, the day after the election, Blagojevich allegedly said, "I've got this thing and it's fucking golden, and I'm not just giving it up for fucking nothing."

Allegedly not. In New Jersey, where I live, some yutz named Jon Corzine made his political debut by spending $60 million of his own cash to buy a Senate seat in 2000, followed the next year by another political tyro, Mike Bloomberg, forking over $70 million for the mayoralty of New York City. So ten years later, figure a Senate seat may be worth $100 million. Giving a Chicago politician naming rights to that seat, what the hell would any sentient American adult expect that pol to do?

Sorry — allegedly do.

"They didn't stop a crime spree," says Blago.

"They stopped a routine political deal that would've put five hundred thousand people to work, given fifty thousand to three hundred thousand people access to health care, helped keep four thousand people a day in their homes — that's what they stopped."

The deal, says Blagojevich, was to name Attorney General Lisa Madigan, daughter of the Illinois Speaker of the House, Mike Madigan, to Obama's seat.

"I hate her and him," Blago says. "But if I could get a public-works jobs bill, if I can get the expansion of health care, if I can get foreclosure relief" — all of which, Blago claims, were being held hostage by the Speaker — "I'd hold my nose and make her a senator. Rahm Emanuel, we talked to him — my chief of staff was talking to Rahm about putting this deal together, and I was prepared to do it because it was the best I could get for the people.

"The day before they arrested me, I directed my chief of staff to work out the tactics and get it done, and all of a sudden, the next morning, they're arresting me? The whole thing's upside down. They stole me away from the people of Illinois. Now that's the truth, okay? So someone's lying here, about whether I'm selling that Senate seat for financial gain, or whether I was positioning and working to try to get a political deal that would benefit the people. Somebody is lying here, and that's an unbelievable lie."

Whoever's lying, the citizens of Illinois seem to have survived the theft of their Blago. One poll, conducted a month before his arrest, showed his approval rating as governor at 13 percent. So it came as no shock when the state legislature voted 59 — 0 to remove him from office, and for good measure voted 59 — 0 to forbid him from ever holding public office again in Illinois.

And whoever's lying, the most eloquent document to emerge from Blago's demise may be a nine-page letter submitted to the Impeachment Committee of the Illinois House of Representatives by a man who served for more than a year as one of Blagojevich's senior advisors. It talks about a governor in permanent combat mode, as detached from state business as Conrad's Kurtz.

"I think Rod Blagojevich is a good father and a great guy to go to a ball game with," he writes, stressing that his critique isn't personal. And then he "suggest[s] this committee seek an independent psychological evaluation of the Governor as part of this process. I believe Rod, the committee and the people of this great state would benefit from such a move. It is clear to anyone who has been around him that there is ample cause for such an extraordinary request."

You have anyone to talk things out with, or just Patti?

"Mostly that — me and Patti."

Rough.

"I've got a friend or two I talk to from time to time, but all the people you knew — friends and all the rest — they want nothing to do with you, because what you've got in your life they don't want in theirs."

Patti must be tough as nails.

"She's great. What people saw in that show is who Patti is — whether they liked her or not, that's who Patti is. When the judge wouldn't let me go and they wanted Patti, she wasn't inclined to do it. I frankly didn't want her to do it. By then I had gotten an advance on the book, so we were okay for a couple of months, but she just made the decision to do it."

Mrs. Blago is no shrinking violet; she's the daughter of a longtime Chicago alderman — he and Blago have been at war for years now — and she can allegedly be heard on the Fitzgerald tapes tossing f-bombs in the background.

"You know what was a reality show? Me with my kids by myself for a month. Every night was an Elvis night; we'd watch one of his movies. Her first night away — it was so sweet. We're about ready to watch Blue Hawaii, and the little one snuggles right next to me, and then my older one gets up and comes on the other side and snuggles next to me. They'd never been away from their mother — they were vulnerable and afraid."

Did they see her eat the tarantula?

"Yeah. My little one, her little nose gets red because she's crying a little bit seeing her mother eat that. You do these things because you love your children. We have no income, we have a mortgage, it costs us on the COBRA plan $1,600 or $1,800 to keep health care for them. I can get my law license back, but who's going to hire me?"

Blago's also hosting a two-hour Sunday show on a local AM talk station. "They impeached me and now unleashed me" is one of his tropes, and he's fond of inviting his gubernatorial successor, Pat Quinn, to come down to the station "so I can kick your ass." He also has a Web site, maybe a shot at being one of Donald Trump's celebrity apprentices, and he may be available as an Elvis impersonator.

Someone e-mailed me a YouTube link of you singing "Treat Me Right" at a block party.

"Yeah — 'Treat Me Nice.' I got paid for it — it's the only reason I did it."

Really?

"Yeah. I think I got paid like $10,000 to do it."

I think my heart just broke a little bit.

"Thank you, but you know what? When I was governor, had someone asked me to sing 'Treat Me Nice,' I'd have done it for nothing."

There was some guy on the stage with you who looked like Fabio.

"You want to meet him? He's a childhood friend. I grew up with him. He knows Fabio — the real Fabio discovered him because he looks so much like Fabio, and he's friends with the real Fabio. But the real Fabio apparently is much bigger than him, he tells me. He's big, but the real Fabio is like six four, I guess."

That's got to be weird, to go around looking like Fabio.

"Evidently he likes it, because he's chosen to do it."

Jeez. Being in a cover band is just one or two nights a week.

"You should meet him — he's a great guy. His name is Butch — Butch Colla."

Tell me something, governor: Would you have eaten that tarantula?

"Yeah. Of course. I mean, all that's shit you do when necessity compels you to find a way to make a living for your kids."

I guess it's better than blowing sailors.

"That I wouldn't do."

On the record?

"That's on the record."

I can vouch for the fact that he has a sense of humor wide enough to embrace some degree of self-deprecation, and I saw with my own eyes — at restaurants, stopped in traffic, on the sidewalks — that folks around Chicago greet him with genuine warmth: hugs, shouts of support, requests to take a photo with him. And more than a few times, after he had moved past, they said, "He didn't do anything that the rest of 'em don't do, he just got caught," or some such.

Part of this is authentic charisma. Part of it is Chicago's cynical admiration for a homeboy made bad. Part, no doubt, is simply the strange fruit of celebrity. But he did plenty of things right during his time as governor — enough for some folks to regard him still with gratitude, and for others, in his salad days, to see him as a young man with a bright future.

"There's no governor in America that did free public transportation for senior citizens. Illinois became the first state in American history where every child gets access to comprehensive health care — I did that. And I had to make political deals to get it done; it wasn't easy. Preschool for all three- and four-year-olds here. More money in public education. Never raised the income tax on people.

"David Axelrod called me the day after John Kerry lost to Bush — Wednesday — and he said, You need to think about running for president in 2008. A new face from the Midwest to challenge Hillary Clinton. He used to work for me. He had Obama in his stable already — he's a consultant, so he's just gathering potential talents. That's what these guys do — it's all about picking winners."

Which reminds him: "I'll show you where Rahm lives," he says. We're in my rental; Blago's ride these days is a 1988 Volvo owned by his brother, and alleged coconspirator, Rob.

"That house with the flag, and then there's the lot right next door — he bought that. When he left the [Clinton] White House, he got into some deal where he made a quick $15 million through his connections with Exelon ComEd — amazing. Fifteen million — it's that white-collar stuff people do. He's using his connections in the White House, but I'm the guy facing what I'm facing. And I'm broke."

How ...

"He makes that money, and he's where he is. I'm busted, I'm broke, because I've worked as an honest public official, and the federal government, my very accusers themselves, say I'm indigent. It's unbelievable."

So ...

"People out there who are getting fucked by big, powerful forces in faraway places — they don't know who's doing it to them, or they have some idea who's doing it to them, but they don't feel like they have any control over it. I will show you can fight back when you have righteousness and the truth on your side."

You ...

"It's such a cynical business, and most of the people in the business are full of shit and phonies, but I was real, man — and am real. This guy, he was catapulted in on hope and change, what we hope the guy is. What the fuck? Everything he's saying's on the teleprompter. I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up."

It's nearly impossible to imagine Rod Blagojevich on the witness stand, but it's wholly impossible to imagine that Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama — who has had ties with Chicago real estate developer, alleged Blago coconspirator, and convicted felon Tony Rezko — have not pondered that very prospect.

"I'm absolutely going to testify," Blago promises. "Absolutely. I'm going to go up there and tell the whole truth — and the complete truth."

Let us stipulate that no one has firm purchase on the truth, much less on the truth whole or complete. And let us stipulate also that, however just and noble his ends may be, the means used by Patrick Fitzgerald to effect the climax of his case against the governor — the 6:00 A.M. FBI raid at Casa Blago and the self-congratulatory noon press conference — smack of prosecutorial grandstanding, if not abuse.

That still leaves us with a federal affidavit based on eight weeks of wiretapped phone calls that portray Blagojevich as both a scumbag and a whore, variously — and allegedly — trying to figure out exactly what he could get for Obama's old seat. A job for Patti. A Cabinet post for Blago — Health and Human Services — or an ambassadorship. Up to $1.5 million from those most able and willing to pay among the potential Senate candidates. Had Skittles been part of the family then, some collar bling might have been involved, too.

Blagojevich allegedly even ponders parachuting himself out of the governorship and into the Senate — and allegedly at one point refers to the president-elect as a "cocksucker."

Forbidden to discuss the details of the tapes, Blago characterizes all these things in general terms as tossing around ideas — "some of them were good, some were not so good" — humdrum horse-trading and political spitballing.

"In conversations over the telephone, without me saying what's on it, because I can't, but I recall over and over I'm saying things like, 'If I can get this, how much do I love the people of Illinois to make that cunt senator?' "

How deeply stirred a Chicago jury may be by such stuff is anybody's guess. Likewise, who knows if the prosecutors can spin wiretapped calls about crimes never consummated into criminal convictions? Or if Blago truly has courage and craziness enough to let the government's lawyers cross-examine him under oath? But the apparent chasm between Blago the alleged lout allegedly scheming on the phone and this charismatic fellow quoting Kipling is hardly unusual in politics, and every other form of theater, and it won't be enough to keep him from going up the river for a few years.

The gang's all here — Patti and the girls, Rod and Skittles. We're at a family friend's house to watch Manny Pacquiao fight Miguel Cotto for Cotto's welterweight title, twenty or so people in all, with plenty of food and booze.

It comes as no surprise that Blago boxed Golden Gloves back in the 1970s, or that he identifies with Pacquiao, who began his pro career as a 106-pounder and has battled his way to titles in seven weight classes. Cotto is bigger, more heavily muscled, and — says Blago — doomed to fall in eight or nine rounds tonight.

"For every little guy on the schoolyard, when the big guys push him around, and he's fighting back, Manny Pacquiao is an inspiration to us. It comes down to the schoolyard and little guys kicking the ass of the big guys."

"Come on, Rod," says the host, stopping by the couch with a bottle of Galliano. "You're not keeping up with me."

"I'm good, Bill."

"You keep saying you're good, but you're not drinking it."

"I'm in training," Blago tells him. "I'm fighting the U. S. government."

"You're gonna beat 'em."

"Damn right, baby."

"You're gonna knock 'em out."

Cotto manages to stagger through rounds 8 and 9, but Pacquiao, all angles and quick hands, clearly has the fight won long before the ref stops it a minute into the twelfth and final round.

It's past midnight and everybody's happy, except Skittles, who's sound asleep on the rug.

"Hey, Rod, you smoke a cigar with us?"

"Sure, Bill."

A few of us head out to the deck off the living room for a stogie before we head home.

"We're gonna think positive tonight," Bill says. "No negative. We love America. Great country. Land of opportunity."

Inside, Judy Garland's warbling "Over the Rainbow" — someone must have changed the channel.

"Isn't Rod the greatest, you guys?" asks Bill.

There is general assent.

"Rod," Patti calls from the living room. "It's 1:00 A.M."

Nobody seems to have the cigar cutter.

"Did you take the cutter?" Bill asks Rod.

"I did not," says Blago, giggling. "That's another false accusation."

Find this article at: http://www.esquire.com/features/people-who-matter-2010/rod-blagojevich-interview-0210