The UN, US and Iraq IV

Sounds like our 'shadow government'!

Oddly enough, not all people ascribe to The US a hegomonistic venality, corruupt Administration, and thoroughly surrilous world view. Asserting an argument has been refuted, no matter how often that assertion is made, does not refute the argument. Some folks persist in criticizing and laying allegations against The Current Administration, and in predicting doom and gloom for it and its prospects. Everything presented or accomplished by The Americasn Right is criticized and dismissed by The American Left. That is wholly unsurprising. It is worth noting, as regards refutation of argument, The Left of late has been characterized neither by judicial nor electoral achievement of any significance, something not characteristic of superior argument.
Somehow, I see The US, on the geopolitical stage, as a sort of parallel with The American Right on the domestic political stage. Its resolution, planning and execution prove consistently capable of overcoming the challenges presented. This infuriates some folks, and alarms others. That too is perfectly understandable. None the less, I, and many, many others, see no reason to expect, nor justification for, any lessening of the established momentum. That too is a matter of dismay for some.

Oddly enough, not all people ascribe to The US a hegomonistic venality, corruupt Administration, and thoroughly surrilous world view.

It is worth noting, as regards refutation of argument, The Left of late has been characterized neither by judicial nor electoral achievement of any significance, something not characteristic of superior argument.

uniquenesses

Just as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's story that Bushies blew his CIA wife's cover to get back at his criticism of the war in Iraq was getting old, he has stumbled on new ammo to hit the administration's credibility. Wilson tells us he plans to circulate the text of a briefing by analyst Sam Gardiner that suggests the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted over 50 war stories.

Published on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 by the Philadelphia Inquirer
Depressing Ironies of CIA 'Outing'
by Philip Agee

The current brouhaha over the outing of an undercover CIA officer brings to mind vivid memories and comic ironies. The 1982 law that now threatens Karl Rove, or whoever it was who leaked the officer's name, is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act - and it was adopted to silence me.

I was a CIA agent for 11 years in Latin America, but I quit in 1969 and wrote a book that told the true story of my life in the agency.

In the 1970s, some colleagues and I followed up with a campaign of "guerrilla journalism" to expose the CIA's operations and personnel around the world because we thought we could combat the agency's role in support of so many murderous dictatorships at that time, including those in Vietnam, Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a felony to expose a covert intelligence agent, was designed to stop us.

Here's the first irony: It was President George H.W. Bush who fought to get that law passed as CIA director in 1976-1977 and later as vice president.

To justify the law's restriction of amendment rights, Bush the elder and other CIA officials repeated the same lie many times over: That by publicly identifying Richard Welch, the CIA chief in Athens who was assassinated by terrorists in December 1975, I was responsible for his death.

Bush repeated that lie long after Congress passed the law, during his term as president and even afterward. His wife, Barbara, also repeated it in her 1994 autobiography - and I sued her for libel. As part of the legal settlement, she sent me a letter of apology containing the admission that I had not identified Welch.

In fact, I'd never met Welch, didn't know he was in Athens, and had never published his name or given it to anyone.

But Bush's campaign in the 1970s was effective. While he was CIA director, the agency worked with friendly intelligence services in Europe to label me, at different times, a security threat, a defector and a Soviet or Cuban agent, and they succeeded in having me expelled from five NATO countries.

Fast-forward to today. The son of George and Barbara is now a sitting American president with a harsh, neo-imperialist agenda, including waging war to ensure U.S. control of Middle East oil.

In order to sell this war of choice as a war of necessity, the younger Bush concocts a pack of lies. But when former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV pokes a small hole in Bush's farrago of justifications, someone in the White House outs Wilson's wife as a CIA officer in retaliation, a clear attempt to ruin her career.

One has to wonder what Papa Bush thinks of this clear violation of his law in his own son's office.

We were right in exposing the CIA in the 1970s because the agency was being used to impose a criminal U.S. policy. Today I continue to believe that the agency's operations should be exposed in places like Venezuela, where it is doubtless working overtime to organize and support the forces bent on overthrowing the twice-elected President Hugo Chavez. His apparent crime is to develop programs that will finally bring the benefit of that country's fabulous oil wealth to the common people.

But instead of that appropriate kind of exposure, U.S. intelligence officers are being outed, and the law violated. It would be outrageous if it turned out that the outers are part of the Bush administration, and the exposure part of a cheap political tactic to punish an enemy and maintain support for a dishonest and indefensible war.

The ironies are depressing.

Philip Agee, author of "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," wrote this piece for the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles Times
NATION & WORLD
Tuesday, October 14, 1997

By JAMES RISEN, Times Staff Writer

Espionage: An effort to get secrets for Cuba was foiled, but
he got away before case against him could be made, officials say.
He denies charges.


WASHINGTON -- It was an aggressive, even reckless bit of
espionage, allegedly committed by a man too well known for his
own good.

CIA officials and other U.S. government sources charged that
Philip Agee, a former CIA officer, author and CIA critic, went
undercover as a spy for Cuba in late 1989 to try to pry secrets
out of a female staff member in the agency's Mexico City station.

U.S. officials alleged that Agee was acting on behalf of
Cuba's intelligence service, which has long staked out Mexico as
a central espionage battleground with the CIA. Agee has denied
the charges.

Agee, posing as a member of the CIA's inspector general's
staff, tried to convince the staff member that he needed
information about the Mexico City station as part of a secret
investigation, the officials charged. CIA sources said that Cuban
intelligence traditionally has targeted women staffers in their
espionage operations.

The plot failed, U.S. officials said, when the CIA employee
reported the contact and brought two CIA case officers with her
to her second meeting with Agee. But one of the two case officers
told Agee that he recognized him, the officials said, and Agee
ended his efforts before enough evidence could be collected
against him to bring formal charges.

The two CIA officers later were disciplined for their
failure to notify their superiors of Agee's alleged action early
enough for the FBI to launch a criminal investigation of whether
the former CIA agent had committed espionage against the United
States.

Agee's alleged willingness to act as a field agent for the
Cubans astonished U.S. intelligence officials.

They said they believe that Agee -- who quit the CIA during
the Vietnam War in 1968 and later was known for his willingness
to expose undercover CIA officers and operations through public
lectures, magazines and books -- has been working for Cuban
intelligence since the early 1970s.

A high-ranking Cuban defector in 1992 told The Times that
Agee had repeatedly taken money that the Cuban intelligence
service had received from the Soviet KGB intelligence agency.

But CIA officers said that they had never seen Agee work
openly as a field operative for the Cubans until his alleged
approach to the female CIA staff member in Mexico City -- an
incident that remains classified.

In written responses to a series of questions from The
Times, Agee denied that he was involved in the Mexico City case.
He suggested that the story of his involvement in Mexico City had
been inspired by the CIA to counter a lawsuit in which he is
seeking damages for alleged illegal actions committed against him
by the CIA in the early 1970s.

He stressed that he is not a Cuban agent.

"The story is one more in a long line of false allegations
[inspired by the CIA] going back to the first mention of me in
the New York Times of July 4, 1974," Agee said in a faxed
response from his home in Hamburg, Germany.

"As for Cuba, the CIA has for many years used the word
'agent' to characterize my relation with the revolution because
to them it means 'sold out,' 'controlled,' 'traitorous,' etc.
This is not the case, and I am no 'Cuban agent. . . . '

"As is widely known, for more than 25 years I have been one
more American working in solidarity activities with Cuba and
against U.S. hostility, aggression, blockade, etc. etc. If this
makes me a 'Cuban agent,' then there are certainly a lot of us
out there."

Agee was in Cuba in July at the invitation of the Cuban
Committee for Peace and the People's Sovereignty to attend an
international student festival. In an interview with the official
Chinese news agency, he alleged that the CIA had ordered the
death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Despite their belief that Agee has been a Cuban agent for
years, the CIA and FBI have long been frustrated by their failure
to gather enough evidence to prosecute him.

Although the State Department revoked his passport in 1979
after Agee proposed solving the Iranian hostage crisis by
exchanging CIA files on Iran for American hostages, he apparently
has traveled in and out of the United States without difficulty
and has made numerous public appearances in this country.

In college lectures and extensive interviews, he frequently
attacks the CIA as "criminal, immoral and against the interests
of all but a very few Americans."

But most galling to CIA officers is their belief that he is
regarded as a legitimate critic of U.S. intelligence, not as a
foreign spy. "The media treats him like any other former CIA
officer with a point of view, but he is a traitor," complained
one former senior CIA officer.

In a speech at CIA headquarters on Sept. 17 during
ceremonies marking the agency's 50th anniversary, former
President Bush, who served as CIA director in the mid-1970s,
singled out Agee for his ire.

"Remember Phil Agee, who I consider a traitor to our
country?" Bush asked the crowd. "The guy encouraged the
publishing of names of those serving under cover, sacrificing
their lives."

Agee established his reputation as a critic of the CIA with
the publication of his controversial 1975 book, "Inside the
Company: a CIA Diary." Published in 20 languages, the book
exposed CIA actions around the world. At the same time, he sought
to identify CIA undercover officers.

"It was not enough simply to describe what the CIA does,"
Agee recalled in a recent television interview. "It was important
to neutralize . . . the effectiveness of everybody doing it. And
that's why I was involved after my first book came out in the
exposure of hundreds and hundreds of CIA people around the
world."

His second book, "On the Run," published in 1987, described
what he alleged was a CIA campaign to harass and silence him,
especially during the years in which he was working on his first
book.

More recently, he has been engaged in a legal battle with
former First Lady Barbara Bush. Agee filed a libel suit against
Mrs. Bush and her publisher for alleging, inaccurately, in her
autobiography that Agee was responsible for revealing the
identity of the CIA's Athens station chief in his first book,
just before the station chief was killed. The former first lady
ultimately agreed to remove the allegation from her book.

But CIA officials said that Agee's alleged actions in Mexico
City took him far beyond the role of anti-CIA propagandist.

The female staff member whom Agee was said to have
approached was apparently a member of the Mexico City station's
support staff and was not trained in espionage work. CIA sources
said that they believe Cuban intelligence operatives steered Agee
to her in hopes that she would not report his overtures.

Yet, she promptly went to a case officer in the station to
report the contact, according to senior U.S. intelligence
sources. She agreed to a second meeting with Agee, and two case
officers went along.

One of the two recognized Agee and, according to some
sources, told him that he knew who he was. Agee then quickly
slipped away, the sources said. Later, the female staffer also
identified Agee's picture from mug shots shown to her by CIA
officials.

For failing to notify their superiors soon enough about the
incident, the two CIA case officers were not only reprimanded but
also briefly taken off the agency's promotion list. They were not
fired because they had previously been considered among the best
case officers in the Mexico City station.

"If they had notified their station chief and headquarters,
we could have gotten the FBI involved for criminal investigation,
but we lost that opportunity," said one former senior CIA
official who was involved in handling the matter. "And Agee got
away."

Copyright Los Angeles Times

What of my foregoing do you contest, Gel? Do you argue with my therein stated assertions? If any are untrue, refute them. I fail to see error in any of them.

Asserting an argument has been refuted, no matter how often that assertion is made, does not refute the argument. Some folks persist in criticizing and laying allegations against The Current Administration, and in predicting doom and gloom for it and its prospects. Everything presented or accomplished by The Americasn Right is criticized and dismissed by The American Left. [etc etc]

Had there been a solidly founded organization behind Clinton's impeachment, his conviction would have brought him removal, not mere sanction and censure.

The Right driven and directed by Religion? Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and ilk are of less overall influence on The Right than, say, Dr. Laura or Oprah on The Left

Frankly, there is essential balance in the American Political Makeup ... the rightward tip is just that; a mere tip, and transient at tha, as all such tips always have been. Fortunately, Americans are a fairly level-headed bunch, and not likely to allow that tip to swing to vertical, or really even much past center, one way or the other.