Israel Gave Soviets Nuclear First Strike Intel against America

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/03/22/israel-gave-soviets-nuclear-first-strike-intel-against-america/

Pollard and Israel gave Soviets nuclear first strike Intel

He also wiped out 1100 CIA agents and assets in Eastern Europe

 …by Jim W. Dean, VT Editor         …with  Press TV

Jonathan Pollard has been fed well

The time has come to finally wrap up the Jonathan Pollard affair. I agree with former Israeli education minister Amnon Rubinstein that, “It is not humane to keep him in jail any longer.” The Israelis plan to put the hunger squeeze on Obama during his trip.
I agree. It is not humane to the American people to keep Pollard in jail. He should be executed for his high treason, one so horrendous that most of the damage is still classified.
But if he was released I suspect it would be leaked to expose to the American people the full story of his treason which would have killed millions of Americans.
Pollard does deserve to be released…not out into freedom which he does not deserve, but to the infernal regions, which he does. And for all those eminent Israelis who plan to go on a hunger strike during the President’s trip, I would like to air ship bottled water to them with the caveat that they guarantee they will carry their hunger strike out all the way to the end or I get my money back.

As for ex-CIA director James Woolsey, who knows about the classified file, and former secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger who support the Pollard release I have nothing but utter contempt. They have also betrayed the American people, and cheaply so. They stain their generation with shame, but maybe that is not such a bad thing when it comes to Israel because this all happened under their watch.

CIA Director Woolsey – Hillary Clinton – Shame on Them

Here is what is being held back in the classified files on Pollard. The claims that Pollard was just giving Israeli material on Arab countries, with the inference that the U.S. should have been supplying this to Israeli anyway was just the cover story.
The Israelis at the time, enjoying their ‘special relationship’ with American, were spying for the Soviets. They were tasked with providing them first strike intelligence against the United States.
That’s right folks, a nuclear first strike. Our wonderful Israeli friends had hooked up with the Commies to do America in.
The Soviets knew that the Israelis did not have as many of our counter intelligence assets assigned to watching them as did the Soviets. And if there was a problem and Pollard got burned, the Israelis would provide cover for the Soviets, which is exactly what happened.
Let’s stop for a minute to make sure you understand clearly what being tasked to get first strike intelligence meant. Do you think that the Soviets might have wanted it to use at some point in the future if a bad situation arose, a kind of an ace in the hole they could pull out? That would be dead wrong.
First strike information would have a limited lifespan as codes get changed over time and the mission which obtained it might be compromised in a way that the thieves might not be aware of immediately. The only reason to go after the information is because you plan to use. But the key to that is being reasonably assured that the ‘mutual destruction’ retaliation could be defeated.

We are talking about the end of America here folks. That was the game in play and the Israelis obviously had a piece of the action. Somehow they assumed there would be enough of world left to make it worth the risk. Gosh, do you think the Israelis would have wanted control over all the Mid East as their cut on the deal?

B-52 Bone Yard

Pollard was able to give them the naval submarine codes and the ability to defeat our land based missiles. Then only deterrence that we would still have had secure control over were our nuclear bombers, which of course would have been targeted in the first strike.
Are you getting the picture now why the FBI and CIA top echelons threatened Bill Clinton with mass resignations when he was within a hair of letting Pollard go to buy himself some extra retirement benefits from you know who? But they also had another reason.
Pollard had also turned over to the Israelis our entire East European agents and assets network lists that represented a generation of intelligence work to build up. Around 1100 of these people were arrested, tortured, and many of them executed. This was the intelligence failure of all human history, which no American government could admit to for the incompetence that it showed.
And what was that you ask? It was very simple actually. Designed into the system was not having nearly enough manpower and budgeting to be monitoring the finances of all those working in highly sensitive positions. Our system at the time would only trigger such a close look AFTER suspicious activity had been reported. It was not an integral routine security procedure.

An Israeli Pollard Supporter

Many of the major domestic spy scandals we have had showed that most of them could have been picked up and stopped with nothing more sophisticated than reviewing expenditures far in excess of the particular spy’s income.
Jonathan Pollard was just one case. He was not discovered until a coworker made a suspicion report. A spy camera in his office was used to nail him but his financial records showed the whole story.
Even after Pollard this not routinely checking people’s finances security hole remained opened for others to use.
I will let you consider for yourselves whether that was an oversight, or whether we had been penetrated at a level where someone wanted that vulnerability to remain open, as it had for Pollard.
You might be asking why the Israelis cared so much about this one man to risk constantly embarrassing American presidents and our intelligence services for his release. His handler at the Israeli embassy said later that if he had been there when Pollard came in he would have just put two bullets in his head and sent him downstairs for the acid bath treatment.

They don’t care about Pollard really. They care about all the current spies they have working for them in America to visibly see that if they get caught that Israel has promised to never stop doing all that it can to get them released. They even gave Pollard’s wife a million dollars when she moved to Israel as an example.

The Zios also show they are not afraid to put some of their prime ‘assets’ on display, the likes of Woolsey, Schultz, Kissinger, and even Hillary Clinton has signed on for Pollard’s release. And those in Congress who would support it are too numerous to count. The loyal security community is just sickened by all this.

What this does is display Israel’s power in America to demoralize mid level government workers they are trying to compromise. If they resist, the Zios chastise them for being naive dummies and point to all the well heeled top officials they have on the string. They even brag about being able to get promotions for those who play ball with them, and punish those who don’t, the carrot and stick close.

Abe ‘da Fox’ Foxman

One example of this is the ADL, Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League, long suspected by the American Intel community of being an asset for Israeli intelligence. The ADL has been lecturing at the FBI training academy for many years about domestic threat groups, which exclude them by the way.
In effect this puts the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on them and makes it very easy for the ADL to approach young FBI agents later to ‘help the out’ now and then because ‘we are on the same side.’
One of their hooks is their well known career assistance post retirement from the government, a differed compensation spy payment plan that even senior military officers and Congresscritters have partaken.

But we aren’t on the same side with the Zios. Israel is a major national security risk to all Americans. And so are all the American traitors who aid and abet their intelligence and subversion activities here which include, but are not limited to, espionage involving our military, weapons development, political subversion, academic, and media.

Jonathan Pollard and Israel offered our corpses on a silver platter to the Soviet Communists. If I could press a button I would put all the Israelis in the camps for 65 years, let the Palestinians take over all of their homes, and then subject the Israelis to what they have dished out to their victims…arrests, torture, and poverty. I have my own peace plan for the Mid East. Do onto Israel what Israel has done unto others.
But since I lost my button, let us start with sanctions, across the board. And let us work toward any politician who promises undying support for Israel, to be treated as a traitor to his oath of office. For the sake of our children and grand children we must pry the devil’s fingers from our throats.
We must make common bond with all the victims of militant Zionism and their traitorous allies everywhere they can be found. George Bush said we would hunt down all those who have attacked America wherever they are. It’s the only thing I ever agreed with him on. We have the Israelis permission. They are already doing it to us and they don’t aim to stop…until we stop them.

Don’t miss Gordon’s reprint of his 2010 story on Pollard, where much of my material was draw from. And I might add folks that we never get a call from corporate media wanting to give us air time on this issue, nor do any of the Jewish Lobby groups ever call to debate…never.

__________________________________________

MIT to release redacted Swartz file after family's request

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Published time: March 22, 2013 00:25

Aaron Swartz (Reuters / Noah Berger)

Court, Hacking, Human rights, Information Technology, Internet, Politics, USA

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced that it will release documents on the case against Aaron Swartz, whose January suicide came before his trial for allegedly downloading a trove of articles from an online database was to begin.
The declaration came the day after Swartz’s father had called on the university to make its case public.
Swartz, 26, could have faced up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted of downloading the academic articles from the JSTOR database via MIT’s campus network. Swartz helped write the code for RSS 1.0 authentication and was one of the co-founders of social discussion site Reddit. He was also an outspoken advocate of Internet transparency, and was vehement in his opposition to the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation of 2012.
In an email Tuesday to media including Wired Magazine, MIT president Rafael Reif announced that the school will release “internal” documents regarding Swartz following a request from his legal team. Reif did not specifiy when the documents would be made public, adding that MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson would review the documents and remove any reference to other staff members.
“In the time since Aaron Swartz’s suicide, we have seen a pattern of harassment and personal threats,” Reif said as quoted by Wired.
Swartz’s death became a point of contention for fellow Internet activists. MIT administrators say the school’s network has been hacked many times since his January suicide.
“In this volatile atmosphere, I have the responsibility to protect the privacy and safety of those members of our community who have become involved in this matter in the course of doing their jobs at MIT, and to ensure a safe environment for all of us who call MIT home,” Reif's email said.
During an interview with the Boston Globe, Aaron Swartz's father Robert expressed his disappointment that hackers have now been frequently committing “negative or destructive” acts as a tribute to Aaron. He also added that the Swartz family has otherwise been overwhelmed by the level of support they’ve received.
And while many are sure to welcome to document release, Swartz’s attorneys say the heavy redaction by MIT would make the “documents at issue materially less intelligible and thus far less useful to Congress or whoever might review them.”
“Both Congress and the public at large have an important role to play in determining what conduct is considered criminal, particularly in the relatively new and rapidly evolving context of so-called ‘computer crimes,’” wrote lawyers Elliot R. Peters, Daniel Purcell and Michael J. Pineault in the motion.
Swartz’s proponents have blamed his death on a lifelong bout with depression that became overwhelming with the potential for a long prison sentence for a crime some experts described as merely exposing a legal loophole. One of the most popular targets has been US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who has been accused of “prosecutorial overreach” by the Swartz family and an official White House petition signed by tens of thousands of people.
The issue is still so hotly contested that classes at MIT were nearly canceled this week when sophomore student Delian Asparouhov sent a campus-wide email posing as President Reif. Asparouhov said he was “just a kid messing around” when he wrote, as Reif, that classes would be canceled because of a campus threat as a response to the school’s treatment of Swartz.

DOJ ‘admits’ to targeting Aaron Swartz over his activism

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Published time: February 26, 2013 16:10
Edited time: February 26, 2013 20:25

Aaron Swartz (Reuters / Noah Berger)

Conflict, Court, Crime, Hacking, Information Technology, Internet, Law, Science, USA

Aaron Swartz’s past activism and ‘Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’ played a part in his prosecution, sources told US media. Prosecutors pursued him even though he had not yet leaked anything, as his manifesto proved his alleged “malicious intent.”
Swartz’s manifesto “demonstrated his malicious intent” in downloading documents on a massive scale, reads a Huffington Post's report quoting anonymous Justice Department representatives.
In his manifesto, Aaron Swartz stated that sharing information was a “moral imperative” and advocated “civil disobedience” against copyright laws. He called for action against the “privatization of knowledge,” which he dubbed a “fight for Guerilla Open Access.”
Swartz's statements played a role in federal prosecutors plan to indict him for downloading millions of scholarly articles from the JSTOR database in 2011, congressional staffers were reportedly told during a recent congressional briefing.
The briefing, held for the Congressional Oversight Committee, was part of an investigation into the government’s prosecution of the late activist and coder, who committed suicide on January 11 at the age of 26.
Family, friends and supporters of Swartz have maintained the aggressive prosecution was a decisive factor in his suicide. At the time of his death, Swartz was facing a felony conviction, a prison sentence of up to 35 years and a $1-million fine.
The Justice Department has defended the federal prosecutors, denying the claims. Steven Reich, an associate deputy attorney general, reportedly said at the briefing the prosecutors acted “in a reasonable manner” and within the frame of “adequate deterrence to criminal conduct,” in order to deter others from committing similar offenses.
It was also confirmed during the briefing that Swartz was offered a bargain for a guilty plea that would have given him a three-month prison sentence. The prosecutors were allegedly pursuing at least seven to eight years of jail time for Swartz.
Not everyone who took part in the briefing has agreed that the prosecution handled the case reasonably.
“Some congressional staffers left the briefing with the impression that prosecutors believed they needed to convict Swartz of a felony that would put him in jail for a short sentence in order to justify bringing the charges in the first place,” Huffington Post reported, citing two aides with knowledge of the briefing.
Critics reacted to the report, saying the government persecuted Swartz for his views, without having any real evidence he had criminal intent.
Swartz's actions were criminalized by the government just because he was an “effective advocate of policies contrary to their views,” human rights lawyer and blogger at Harper’s magazine Scott Horton told Mashable.
Swartz's manifesto was “not quite as extreme as some make it out to be,” blogger Mike Masnick wrote on Techdirt. It mostly referred to material that is out of copyright, and talked about buying access to databases before releasing its contents online, he explained.
“Apparently, the DOJ thought it was a reason to throw the book at Swartz, even if he hadn’t actually made any such works available,” Masnick wrote, referring to the fact that Swartz hadn’t shared any of the JSTOR articles he allegedly downloaded.
The digital library itself has earlier stated it received confirmation from Swartz “that the content was not and would not be used, copied, transferred, or distributed.”
Amid wide public concern over Swartz’s case, the White House issued a directive expanding access to publicly funded scientific research. Last week’s directive was hailed by Open Access supporters as a major victory in a fight in which Swartz took an active part.

Silence of the Homelands: Why is DHS stockpiling guns and ammunition?

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Published time: March 23, 2013 09:01

George Frey/Getty Images/AFP

Arms, DHS, Human rights, Immigration, Law, Military, Politics, Robert Bridge, USA

The Department of Homeland Security has plans to buy enough ammunition to fight the equivalent of a 24-year Iraq War – on US territory – and even US congressmen don’t understand why.
Smack in the middle of the smoking gun-control debate, and despite deep spending cuts across the American heartland, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to buy 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years.
Reports began surfacing in April, 2012 that the DHS, a government agency created in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, had begun arming itself to the teeth. Now, several US congressmen are attempting to get some answers, but so far they have been greeted by a deafening silence.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), Congressman Timothy Huelscamp said the DHS has refused to answer questions from “multiple” members of Congress regarding the plans.
“They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer that,” Huelscamp told Infowars and We Are Change reporter Luke Rudkowski on Friday.
Huelscamp then questioned the stockpiling of bullets at a time when government offices around the country have been forced to tighten their belts as part of the so-called sequestration.
“It comes down to during the budget process, during the appropriations process, are we willing to hold DHS’s feet to the fire,” the Republican asked. “We’re going to find out… I say we don’t fund them until we get an answer.”
Recently, Californian Congressman Doug LaMalfa and 14 other House members wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, in which they suggest that the bullet hoarding is designed to create a shortage of ammunition in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security main complex (U.S. Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP)

“The extraordinary level of ammunition purchases made by Homeland Security seems to have, in states such as my own, created an extreme shortage of ammunition to the point where many gun owners are unable to purchase any,” LaMalfa wrote.
The congressman asked if the purchases are being conducted in a manner that “strategically denies the American people access to ammunition.”
Peggy Dixon, spokesperson for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, attempted to tamp down the suspicions, telling the Associated Press that training facilities overseen by Homeland Security use as many as 15 million rounds annually, mostly on target practice and training exercises.
Yet everybody from critics to congressmen to conspiracy theorists say the numbers, as well as the government agencies lining up for the ammunition, just don’t make sense.
For example, much of the 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition will go to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal government's second-biggest crime investigative department. Incidentally, ICE is now releasing detained criminal illegal aliens onto US streets due to the wave of budget cuts.
Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration has reportedly purchased 174,000 hollow-point bullets - which are designed to explode on impact for maximum damage - for agents who investigate corruption and other crimes.
But why does this government agency need a type of ammunition for Main Street, USA, that has been categorically banned for use in international war by the Geneva Convention?
As former Marine Richard Mason told WHPTV News in Pennsylvania recently, hollow-point bullets are not the best choice for training purposes because they are more expensive than standard rounds.
"We never trained with hollow points, we didn't even see hollow points my entire four-and-a-half years in the Marine Corps," Mason said.

George Frey/Getty Images/AFP

Moreover, it seems questionable to say that the US government is simply attempting to deprive US gun owners of their ammunition when it is also being reported that the government is buying more than just fully-automatic assault rifles and bullets.
Homeland Security has reportedly acquired an undetermined number of Mine Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles, recently decommissioned from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, where they have been retrofitted for possible use on the streets of America.
“Regardless of the exact number of MRAP’s being delivered to DHS (and evidently some to Police via DHS, as has been observed), why would they need such over-the-top vehicles on US streets to withstand IEDs, mine blasts, and 50-caliber hits to bullet-proof glass,” asked ‘paramilblogger’ Ken Jorgustin in September.
Meanwhile, Forbes magazine, in an article asking for a “national conversation” on the matter, asked “why would DHS need such a vehicle on our streets?”
“It is utterly inconceivable that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is planning a coup d’etat against President Obama and the Congress to install herself as Supreme Ruler of the United States of America,” Ralph Benko wrote in the Forbes op-ed piece. “There, however, are real signs that the department bureaucrats are running amok.” 
Buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and deploying armored personnel carriers runs contrary, in every way, to what ‘homeland security’ really means, Benko concluded.
Now, given this spate of unexplained paramilitary purchases, an increasing number of Americans are wondering exactly what the US government is preparing for, especially at a time when Washington seems intent to deprive Americans of their Second Amendment right to arm themselves.

TIDBIT: FLASH! CYPRUS CAVES IN TO EU TECHNOCRATS

March 23, 2013 By Joseph P. Farrell This just in courtesy of Ms. P.H. and a couple others of you who forwarded it to me… It appears the banksters are calling their theft a “tax” and it is 20% of all deposits in Cypriot banks over 100,000 euros… Theft is theft, folks, whether it be rich or poor. And note the propaganda meme being promoted: no other alternative to “hard choices,” but there IS another choice: leave the EU… the Iceland solution:
Cyprus, Troika agree to 20% tax on deposits over 100,000 euros at Bank of Cyprus

Read more: TIDBIT: FLASH! CYPRUS CAVES IN TO EU TECHNOCRATS
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Freemasons, Chase Manhattan & the Arming of Saddam Hussein

By Dean Henderson
Intellihub.com
March 23, 2013
(Excerpted from Chapter 14: Saddam’s Banker in Atlanta: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
The Chase Manhattan Two-Way Mirror
Chase Manhattan Bank’s board of directors had a huge presence on Banca Nacionale de Lavoro’s (BNL’s) Consulting Board for International Policy.  In fact the two boards mirrored one another.  Along with Chase Chairman David Rockefeller and his long-time lieutenant Henry Kissinger, interlocks between the boards included Fluor Saudi partner Sheik Ahmed Juffali, Indian tycoon Ratan Tata, Royal Bank of Canada insider Gustavo Cisneros, Giovanni Agnelli of the Italian Fiat conglomerate, Pehr Gyllenhammer of the Swedish Volvo, Mitsubishi Chairman Koichiro Ejiri and British Lord Carrington.  Members of the BNL advisory board included former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, former British Defense Secretary Lord Thornycroft, Britain’s Lord Ezra and chairman of Petrofina Jean-Pierre Amory. [1]
Roy William Harris didn’t hang out with this cadre of international oligarchy elite, but he was a star trader at Salomon Brothers Philbro Energy trading unit, which Salomon (now part of Citigroup) purchased from the Oppenheimer family.  With financing from David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan, Harris founded Arochem, a private oil refining company that went bust in 1992 after squandering $200 million.  Harris insists he lost the money on oil trades, but the judge who sent him to prison wasn’t buying it.
Harris did deals with Bayoil, an affiliate of the Iraqi weapons front Bay Industries.  Bayoil was run by David Bay Chalmers and in 1987 served as middleman for an Iraqi oil for arms network involving Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, who had ties to Pinochet’s DINA secret police.  Cardoen owned Industrias Cardoen-Chile and quickly became the biggest arms supplier to Iraq.  The company built and shipped weapons for the South African company Armscor- a long-time CIA conduit.  According to an ABC Nightline investigation, Bush CIA Director Robert Gates worked closely with Cardoen.
Bayoil once claimed to own Arochem. The companies shared an office building in Stamford, Connecticut.  The $200 million which Harris had misplaced was likely skimmed from the Chase-financed Arochem to bankroll Cardoen’s CIA oil for arms scheme.  Harris’ attorney was David Lewis, CIA defense lawyer for Company fall guys Manuel Noriega and Ed Wilson. [2]  Bayoil was founded as Bay Petroleum in 1935 by Chalmers’ great uncle- an OSS operative.  Bay was sold to Tenneco is 1955 and Chalmers’ father started Coral Petroleum, which operated throughout the Middle East.  Coral went bust in 1983, but David’s father found the means to retire on a grand estate in Mexico. [3] Coral Petroleum is also the name of the Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz firm which has joint Caspian Sea ventures with the Four Horsemen.
David Bay Chalmers started dealing with the Iraqis in 1987 while working with Carey Petroleum, which was owned by New York Governor Hugh Carey’s brother Ed.  Chilean arms dealer Cardoen was sending boatloads of cluster bombs to Saddam.  The shipments were paid for in Iraqi oil, deals which Chalmers brokered for Cardoen, who was getting zirconium for his cluster bombs from the Oregon-based Teledyne Industries. [4]
DEA informant John Pastis said Chalmers assured him that the US government had approved the deals.  In 1988 Chalmers floated plans to construct a $3 billion PC-2 mustard gas complex in Iraq, later built by Bechtel.  That same year Oscar Wyatt, chairman of oil refiner Coastal Corporation, bragged to Vanity Fair that he did many favors for Reagan CIA Director Bill Casey in Coastal’s numerous dealings with the Iraqi government.
Roy William Harris founded Arochem when he bought a Puerto Rican benzene plant in 1987.  Chase Manhattan financed the deal, putting up twice the money Harris actually needed, money that may have been diverted to Cardoen’s efforts.  Harris associate John Moller ran USA Petroleum in Los Angeles.  He and Harris would buy put options on overpriced stocks, with the profits from this short-selling going into private Harris accounts.  Delaney Petroleum of London, which was owned by David Bay Chalmer’s friend Michael Linehan, was also buying put options and skimming profits.  One of Delaney’s oil traders was Coastal Chairman Oscar Wyatt’s son Steven.
The mastermind of these complex oil and metals trades was Irwin Vosko, who ran Bayoil’s office in the Bahamas with Peter Shaddick.  Shaddick helped Banco Ambrosiano President Michelle Sindona loot the pedophilia-ridden Franklin National Bank in 1974.  Sindona, a good friend of Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy, was never convicted. Shaddick received a paltry one year prison sentence.  Arochem had its offshore offices in the Cayman Islands, where Saudi Intelligence was busy laundering Medellin Cartel drug money.
When the Attorney General of Connecticut launched a probe of Arochem, Chase Manhattan hired future FBI and CIA Director William Webster.  Webster made sure an FBI unit close to him nabbed Roy William Harris before a different FBI group in Stamford, CT could. Arochem skated.  Chase Manhattan dumped its bad Arochem loans on a syndicate of small European banks who took a $15 million bath, then sold Arochem’s refinery in Puerto Rico to Israeli investor Gad Zeevi, who owns another Chase-financed refinery on the island, for $6 million.  The European banks sued Chase and lost.  A lawsuit by Arochem’s bankruptcy trustee alleged that Chase “looted Arochem’s assets”.  Chase denied any knowledge of its Arochem loans brokering Iraqi arms for oil deals. [5]
Another international oil high-flyer Roger Tamraz donated $300,000 to the Democratic Party in 1995-1996.  Tamraz was charged with fraud and embezzlement in France, where he controlled Paris-based Banque de Participations et Placements from 1987 until the French government shut it down at the same time the Bank of England was shuttering BCCI.  Tamraz’ bank’s name was strikingly similar to the BCCI Swiss branch Banque de Commerce et de Placements.  The story line is similar as well, with depositors, including the Congolese government, getting swindled when $47 million disappeared into thin air.  Tamraz transferred the money to his Almashrek Bank of Beirut in his home country of Lebanon, taking Almashrek depositors to the cleaners for another $200 million. [6]
Tamraz was President of both Oil Capital Ltd. and Tamoil Inc.  He was an early promoter of the Caspian Sea oil pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan through Turkey and had taken Chinese National Petroleum Company as a partner in the project.  He accompanied Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on trade missions to Russia and headed First Arabian Corporation of Luxembourg, whose investors included Gaith Pharaon and Sheik Mohammed Bedrani, nephew of Saudi Intelligence chief and BCCI crook Sheik Kamal Adham. [7]
Tumbleweed’s nephew went gambling in Monte Carlo.  Ron Brown died of a gunshot wound to the head in a plane crash over Yugoslavia.  Caspian Sea pipeline pioneer Tamraz became expendable and went to jail.  And the Caspian Sea Pipeline Consortium opened November 28, 2001 under the control of the Four Horsemen, whose buddies at Bechtel built it.
In May 2005 a scandal emerged involving illegal Iraqi oil deals done during the 1990’s sanctions period..  According to a May 18, 2005 report on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, it was Bayoil that imported over 200 million barrels of black market Iraqi crude during the sanctions period.
See No Evil
From July 27-29, 1989, a week before the FBI raided BNL Atlanta offices, the bank wired large amounts of money to BCCI through Morgan Guaranty Trust.  On August 4th, the day of the raids, William Hendricks III, a top official at the Bush Justice Department, resigned to take a job with a law firm representing BNL.
There he joined former Carter Attorney General Griffin Bell, who had earlier brokered the BCCI takeover of National Bank of Georgia; and William Rogers, former Nixon Secretary of State and Eisenhower Attorney General.  Bell was retained by George Bush during the Iran/Contra hearings and worked for EF Hutton when that company was accused of check-kiting in 1985.  Bell represented Exxon during the Valdez oil spill, stumped for AH Robbins during their Dalkon Shield controversy and went to bat for Dow Corning when it came under scrutiny for its bogus silicone breast implants.  Rogers came to the rescue of Saudi Intelligence Chief Adham during the BCCI investigations.
Bush Justice Department official Joe Whitley quietly stepped down to join an Atlanta law firm representing Matrix-Churchill.  For his efforts Whitley was named US Attorney for Atlanta by Attorney General Richard Thornburgh the day after Iraq attacked Kuwait.  Whitley replaced William Barr, who moved up to replace Thornburgh as Attorney General.  Thornburgh named Roberto Martinez, the lawyer representing Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, as US Attorney for Miami. [8]
BNL’s New York auditor Louis Messere was shredding documents during the FBI raid. A few days after the raid, Italian military attachéto Baghdad Colonel Guiseppe Schiavo was gunned down at his home in Turin.  Former Citigroup executive Paolo Di Vito took charge of damage control at BNL Rome on the recommendation from Henry Kissinger.  US Ambassador to Italy Peter Secchia aided in the Rome sanitation effort.
Bush Justice Department hacks served up BNL’s Atlanta manager Christopher Drogoul as fall guy in the ensuing cover-up.  BNL official Franz von Wedel put a serious dent in this strategy when he testified that Drogoul had acted on advice from the bank’s consultants- Kissinger Associates.  Drogoul was debriefed for six weeks by a government BNL investigative task force led by Arthur Wade, who testified under oath that RD&D was a CIA front for BNL/Iraq transactions.  Yet official court transcripts show a “no response” to this question.  Customs officials who tried to call Dale Toler, the NSA spook who headed of RD&D, were disconnected immediately. [9]
Justice sent a memo to the Federal Reserve telling it not to provide 70 BNL-related documents to House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez (D-TX), who launched the most thorough investigation of BNL to date.  The Federal Reserve also blocked Gonzalez’ attempts to find out who really owned Iraq’s Central Bank.  The National Advisory Council, headed by Bush Treasury Secretary James Brady, withheld minutes of its 1989-1990 meetings on BNL from the Gonzalez hearings. The fiery Gonzalez, who was threatened at the San Antonio airport for his inquiry by G. Gordon Liddy, concluded, “The US has no regulatory oversight on the $800 billion known as ‘Foreign Financial’, much of which is tied to the drug trade”. [10]
NSA Kissinger Associate Brent Scowcroft and (Texas) Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher ignored invitations from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Don Riegle (D-MI) to testify about BNL.  Scowcroft invoked “executive privilege” in dodging similar requests from both House Banking and House Judiciary Committees.  Six days before Christopher Drougal was indicted, Henry Kissinger stepped down from BNL’s advisory board.  That same day Iraq surrendered in the Gulf War.
Atlanta Federal Circuit Court Judge Marvin Shoob, who heard the Justice tirades against Drogoul, shared Gonzalez’ suspicions, once stating, “Smoke is coming out of every window.  I have to conclude the building is on fire.”  Shoob stepped down from the BNL case in October 1992, issuing a 15-page statement exposing a CIA/BNL Rome cover-up.  In a parting shot, Judge Shoob refused to sentence five defendants who plea bargained with prosecutors, describing them as “bit players and pawns in a far more wide-ranging conspiracy”.
In 1992 Shoob’s replacement Judge Frederick Lacey issued a statement denying the need for a special prosecutor because there was “no evidence of CIA involvement in arming Saddam Hussein”.  Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) accused both Lacey and Attorney General William Barr, who appointed Lacey, of having conflicts of interest.  Schumer said of the Lacey dismissal, “I think it’s a run around the facts.”[11]
Barr colluded with Lacey in denying repeated Congressional requests to appoint an independent counsel to investigate BNL, the first such denial by an Attorney General since the independent counsel provision was created in 1978.  Rep. Jack Brooks (D-TX) accused Barr of stonewalling, while House Banking Committee Chairman Gonzalez prepared a House Resolution calling for Barr’s impeachment on obstruction of justice charges.  Rep. Charlie Rose (D-NC) stated, “I believe documents have been falsified, government officials have lied to Congress and there has been a cover-up by the White House.”
As the chorus of dissent grew louder, Barr ordered FBI Director William Sessions to open an investigation by his agency into BNL connections higher up the political and economic food chain.  Four days later Justice announced that it would launch a separate investigation into the Attorney General’s use of his expense account.  Someone was sending Barr a not so subtle message.  The FBI probe never got off the ground.
Lacey, Barr and Thornburgh all have close ties to the intelligence community.  Lacey was formerly one of seven judges who sit on the super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), which issues quick warrants for NSA electronic and phone intercepts.  Another former FISA judge Albert Bryan is Grand Master of the Freemason Lodge in Washington, DC, the most powerful in the nation. [12]  Chairman Gonzalez accused CIA cover-up point man Thornburgh of, “delaying the BNL indictments and repeatedly trying to have the investigation of the committee obstructed and curtailed under the false pretense that it would endanger national security.”
In 1993 President Clinton issued a statement exonerating Bush officials of wrong doing in the BNL case after his Justice Department blocked attempts by Christopher Drogoul’s lawyers to subpoena George Bush, Lawrence Eagleburger and James Baker III.  Federal Judge Marvin Shoob said Clinton’s conclusion could only be reached in “never-never land”.  Clinton then refused to release executive branch documents to the Gonzalez investigation.  Clinton’s rush to clear the decks had much to do with protecting the First Lady.
From 1990-92 Hillary Clinton, a Wal-Mart director, was also corporate agent and board member at LaFarge Corporation, an affiliate of Kennametal, one of the companies illegally arming the Iraqis through BNL.  According to a letter from US Attorney Marianne Gasior to Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Kennametal was shipping its arms to Iraq via the Ordnance Center at LaFarge’s Marblehead Peninsula facility in Ohio.
In the end lead counsel Griffin Bell won a $400 million settlement for BNL. US taxpayers- already reeling from Iraqi defaults on BNL, CCC and EIB loans- got the bill, while corporations and bankers partied with Saddam in Baghdad.
The Gnomes of Zurich
A 1981 Italian investigation revealed that five top BNL Rome executives, including director general Alberto Ferrari, were members of the Italian P-2 Freemason Lodge. [13]  P-2 had a penchant for working with South American dictators, fascist death squads and drug traffickers.  P-2’s activities affected the European continent as well.  P-2 Grand Orient Lodge leader Robert Calvi controlled Banco Ambrosiano.  Calvi was once invited to John Connelly’s Texas ranch where the two founded another P-2 front called Committee for the Defense of the Mediterranean.
Calvi was referred to as “God’s banker”. When Pope John Paul I launched an investigation into Banco Amrosiano and its connection to the Vatican bank Instituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), he was found dead only thirty-four days after becoming the Holy See.  Calvi was shortly thereafter found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London with $15,000 cash in his pockets and a brick (a Masonic symbol) hanging around his neck.  Hours earlier Calvi’s secretary, Graziella Corrocher, was pushed through a 4th story window at Ambrosiano’s Milan headquarters.  She had also been the bookkeeper for the P-2 Freemasons. [14]
Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy’s good friend Michelle Sindona was Robert Calvi’s partner at Banco Amrosiano.  Sindona funneled CIA cash to the Vatican and to European Christian Democratic Parties, which the CIA much preferred to the Socialists.  Sindona teamed up with IOR and the Vatican’s chief US banker Continental Illinois to buy Milan-based Banca Privata Finanziara (BPF) and Geneva-based Banque de Financement.  The consortium launched Moneyrex in Rome, which over 850 international banks used to move Italian mafia and P-2 heroin proceeds out of Italy. Much of this was laundered through the Vatican to Switzerland. [15]
Sindona had close ties to the Gambino crime family. He looted Franklin National Bank which, according to former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp’s book The Franklin Cover-up, was at the epicenter of an international pedophile ring.  In 1969 Sindona was financial adviser to Pope Paul VI and the Vatican Bank became Ambrosiano’s biggest shareholder. [16]  In 1986 Sindona was convicted for ordering the death of estate liquidator Giorgio Ambrosoli, who was shot in 1979 after finding evidence of criminal activity while working at Sindona’s home.  Two days after being sentenced to life in prison, Sindona was found dead in his jail cell from cyanide poisoning.  Just before his death Sindona stated, “They are afraid I could reveal some very delicate information that they don’t want divulged.”[17]
In 1967 Continental Illinois sent $4 million through BPF to finance a CIA-sponsored right-wing coup in Greece that toppled the Socialists and gave rise to the November 17 underground left, which has since killed both US and British military officers and bankers.  During the 1972 elections Continental used BPF to channel $10 million in CIA funds to the Italian Christian Democrats.  In 1973 Continental CEO David Kennedy joined the board of FASCO, the Liechtenstein holding company which controlled Banco Ambrosiano.  FASCO was a CIA conduit for funding the Italian P-2 and had close ties with Gulf & Western Corporation, controlled by United Brands powder pushers Carl Lindner and Max Fischer.
Continental made frequent loans to the Four Horsemen and was conduit for Chicago diocese funds controlled by CIA asset Bishop Paul Marcinkus, who helped the Company bankroll the Polish solidarity movement and now presides over the National Bank of Cicero, the BCCI immaculate resurrection based in the “Al Capone land” Chicago suburb of Cicero.  P-2 leader Calvi was paymaster to the Polish solidarity movement and helped the Vatican buy US properties, including the Watergate complex.  When Continental went under BCCI-founder Bank of America took control of it for pennies on the dollar at a bankruptcy auction.
The Vatican’s secretive Opus Dei, often referred to as the “saintly Mafia” was behind the ascent of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to Pope John Paul II.  The new Pope launched an Opus Dei/Vatican offensive to roll back Latin American liberation theology movements and East European communism. Robert Calvi had been on his way to meet with Opus Dei financiers the night his brick-laden body was discovered.  In its January 2004 issue, Counterpunch revealed that US Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia is a member of Opus Dei.
Further south Calvi P-2 associate Stephen Delle Chiaie founded Patria y Libertad in Chile.  Delle Chiaie met frequently with General Augusto Pinochet, while P-2 worked with the CIA Trak II program to overthrow socialist President Salvador Allende.  Patria y Libertadand Delle Chiaie associate Michael Townley delivered P-2 violence to the streets of Washington in 1973 when he planted a car bomb killing Pinochet critic Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit of the leftist Institute for Policy Studies.
Letelier was on a hit list that was part of the same Operation Condor under which Chilean DINA agent Carlos Cardoen was smuggling weapons to Iraq.  Others on the CIA hit list were Chilean General Carlos Prats, Argentinean nationalist Juan Torres, Uruguayan politicians Hector Gutierrez and Zelmar Michelini, and Bolivian General Joaquin Zenteno. [18]  CIA Director George Bush, who’d already helped cover up the JFK hit, now suppressed evidence of DINA role (and possibly his own) in the Letelier and Moffit assassinations.  The bloodshed was far worse in Chile where Pinochet unleashed a reign of terror on the Chilean left.
Lucio Gelli, a pro-Franco Spanish Civil War veteran, was P-2’s founder.  He helped the OSS lay down the “rat line”, by which Nazi war criminals escaped to South America.  Gelli was an early version of Carlos Cardoen, negotiating numerous arms for oil deals on behalf of the Four Horsemen and CIA.  He served as economic consultant to Argentine strongman Juan Peron and was Ambassador of the Knights of Malta to Uruguay, a major South American drug money laundry where Vatican chum Umberto Ortolani owns a major bank.  Gelli was a business partner of Klaus Barbie and an honored guest at the 1980 inauguration of President Reagan.  Gelli claimed to be friendly with George Bush, honorary P-2 member and 33rd Degree Mason.
By 1981 Italian authorities had uncovered what one court document described as “a secret structure (that) had the incredible capacity to control a state’s institutions to the point of virtually becoming a state-within-a-state”.  In a search of Lucio Gelli’s home, police found a list of fellow Freemason collaborators that included three cabinet ministers, forty members of Parliament, forty-three military generals, eight admirals, intelligence heads, police chiefs of four major cities, industrialists, bankers, diplomats and celebrities. [19]
They also found a document titled The Strategy of Tension, which proposed fabricating terror to discredit the leftist Italian Red Brigades and to compel Italians to demand a more authoritarian fascist government.  The plan evolved from Gladio, a secret NATO strategy implemented after WWII that advocated an alliance between the mafia, CIA, Vatican and Knights of Malta.
In 1980 P-2 operatives bombed a Bologna train station killing 85 people, then blamed it on the Red Brigades.  In 1978 Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and murdered, allegedly by the Red Brigades.  Both Moro’s widow and one his closest associates say Moro was told by Henry Kissinger to halt his stabilizing policies or “you will dearly pay for it”.  Kissinger was called as a character witness by ex-Italian Prime Minister Guilion Andreotti- a close friend of Lucio Gelli’s- who was being tried for mob involvement. [20]  ALondon Independent article stated that Moro’s murder may have been a CIA/P-2 hit.
P-2 financed Manzur al-Kassar’s top-secret CIA COREA heroin trafficking ring in Syria. The Italian media reported that P-2 was financed through a Panamanian company called Amitalia and claimed that part of the purpose for the US invasion of Panama was to destroy documents connecting George Bush, the CIA and P-2 Freemasons to the Lockerbie bombing.  P-2 recruited high-ranking South American military officials, ran guns and drugs, and supported both extreme right and extreme left parties, utilizing this “strategy of tension” to create a climate of fear conducive to military coups which would bring “law and order” fascists to power. [21]
The Vatican’s Opus Dei had strong ties to P-2 and Patria y Libertad South American fascist movements.  The CIA and P-2 propped up the narco-terrorist regime of Alberto Fujimori in Peru during the 1990s, through their Peruvian surrogate the National Intelligence Service, whose acronym is quite appropriately SIN.  Fujimori launched a state terror campaign against the Peruvian left, temporarily obliterating two Indian rebel groups, the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru.  In 1991 SIN killed seventeen civilians in the poor Lima suburb of Barrios Altos.  Two years later SIN disappeared nine university students and a professor in La Cantuta.  The head of SIN was Vladimiro Montesinos, who defended drug traffickers in court as a sideline.
In 1996 Tupac Amaru rebels seized the Japanese Ambassador’s residence in Lima and took several hostages.  Fujimori’s chief negotiator during the crisis was Bishop Juan Luis Cipriani, a right-wing Fujimori backer and member of Opus Dei.  SIN and Peruvian Special Forces tunneled into the house and ended the month-old standoff in typically bloody fashion, killing all the kidnappers.  One hostage who was released early was Kieran Metcalfe, a Canadian mining executive.  Metcalfe said of his captors, “I’m not sure if anybody took sides with the people involved, but I think many people developed some respect for these people (Tupac Amaru)”.
In 2001 SIN Chief Montesinos was found in the pay of drug traffickers and forced to flee to Panama to avoid prosecution.  President Fujimori knew he was next and fled to Japan, his ancestral home, where he was quickly given a teaching appointment at Kyoto University.  The new Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo requested that Japan extradite Fujimori to stand trial.  The Japanese government refused.  Toledo, a former World Bank executive, became increasingly unpopular due to his privatization agenda.
In 1993 Argentine President Carlos Menem, a close friend of Citigroup and the Bush family, resigned amidst a major drug scandal.  Menem was just the latest in a series of crooks to run Argentina, long a favorite drop point for Southeast Asian HSBC-financed heroin entering Latin America.  In 1968 the CIA began training police and right-wing death squads in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina to attack leftist revolutionary groups.  The region became an Orwellian nexus of bloody fascist dictators and CIA/P-2 drug running.
The Argentine juntas were particularly brutal.  The CIA used August Ricord’s Corsican heroin mafia to infiltrate leftist movements.  In Argentina Ricord smuggler Christian David infiltrated the Tupamoros revolutionary group which kidnapped CIA torture experts Dan Mitrione and Claude Fry.  Mitrione was executed. [22]  David recently stated from his prison cell that he was offered a contract to assassinate John F. Kennedy, but turned it down.  He said old money Sicilian banking families ordered the Kennedy hit.
In 1997 Mothers of Plazo de Mayo, an Argentine group of mothers whose sons and daughters died in that country’s CIA-sponsored genocide, accused the Vatican’s Envoy to Argentina from 1974-1980, Pio Laghi, of playing a role in the tortures, disappearances and murders of their children.  Laghi was Vatican Envoy to the US and currently heads the Congregation of Catholic Education, which oversees Catholic schools worldwide. [23]
Decades of drug corruption have left the Argentine economy in shambles.  In late 2001 Argentina defaulted on its $132 billion debt to the international bankers led by Citigroup.  Argentine protestors attacked banks, the Argentine peso was severely devalued and the IMF issued the typical austerity demands.  Five Presidents later, Argentina has refused to comply with IMF demands and remains cut off from international lending.
The directorate that presides over the P-2 Freemasons who terrorized South America and armed Saddam through BNL is based in Switzerland at the Alpina Lodge.  Members of the Alpina Lodge Directorate include Stephan Delle Chiaie, Lucio Gelli, Club of Rome founder and depopulation advocate Aurelio Peccei and Henry Kissinger.  The Alpina Lodge is joined by every Swiss banker worth his salt.  The Alpina power-brokers are often referred to as the Gnomes of Zurich.  The Alpina Lodge, Banco Ambrosiano, P-2 and Lucio Gelli have all been linked to Priory of Sion through a pro-Nazi French group known as Alpha Galates. [24]
P-2 predecessor P-1 was founded by Guiseppe Mazzini, the 33rd Degree Grand Master Mason of the Grand Oriente Lodge in Rome, whose name is synonymous with mafia.  Mazzini’s P-1 did not consist of the illiterate Italian restaurant goons which the US corporate media likes to pass off as the mafia, ala The Godfather, The Sopranos, etc.  Rather P-1, P-2 and Freemason lodges worldwide, which house the real mafia, are chartered by the delicate tea-sipping white glove hands of the Duke of Kent in London, who answers directly to his cousin Queen Elizabeth II, the Bush family relative who presides over the British House of Windsor. [25]
Numerous Priory of Sion documents housed in the French National Library were published by the Alpina Lodge.  French journalist Mathieu Paolio claims to have seen these same documents in the Alpina library.  A short time after publishing a book detailing the Priory’s interest in the Merovingan bloodline, Paolio was reassigned to Israel where he was executed as a spy.  Other Priory of Sion documents which list genealogies for the Merovingan dynasty were held at Silver Triangle player Lloyd’s of London until 1979.  All Englishmen connected to the Priory are executives at a huge insurance firm known alternately as Guardian Assurance and Guardian Royal Exchange Association. [26]  All have aristocratic titles or are connected to international banking, the Churchill family or British Intelligence.
[1] “Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq and BNL”. Chair Henry Gonzalez. H2694. Senate House Banking Committee. 4-28-92
[2] “Oilman, Trader, Banker, Spy”. James Norton. Forbes. 1-30-95. p.84
[3] Ibid
[4] Shell Game: A True Story of Banking, Spies, Lies, Politics and the Arming of Saddam Hussein. Peter Mantius. St. Martin’s Press. New York. 1995. p.56
[5] Norton. p.85
[6] “Fundraising Figure Faces Trial in France”. Anne Swardson. Washington Post. 10-10-97
[7] “Oil Financier Got US Security Briefing While Negotiating to Build Big Pipeline”. Michael K. Frisby. Wall Street Journal. 3-14-97. p.14
[8] “A Gift for George: Why is Bill Clinton so Desperate to Bury Bush’s Iraqgate Scandal?” Stephen Pizzo. Mother Jones. 11/12, 1993. p.62
[9] “CIA to Furnish Files in BNL Case”. John J. Fialka. Wall Street Journal. 9-21-92. p.A1
[10] “My Advice to the Privileged Orders”. Chairman Henry Gonzalez (D-TX). H1107. Senate House Banking Committee. 3-9-92
[11] Evening Edition. National Public Radio. 12-9-92
[12] The Puzzle Palace: America’ National Security Agency and its Special Relationship with Britain’s GCHQ. James Bamford. Sidgwick and Jackson. London. 1983
[13] Mantius. p.101
[14] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.258
[15] Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. R.T. Naylor. The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. New York. 1987. p.52
[16] In Banks We Trust. Penny Lernoux. Anchor Press/Doubleday. Garden City, NY. 1984. p.146
[17] Marrs. p.259
[18] The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence and International Fascism. Henrik Kruger. South End Press. Boston. 1980. p.204
[19] Marrs. p.257
[20] Ibid. p.258
[21] Naylor. p.78
[22] Kruger. p.78
[23] “Group Accuses Papal Envoy of Role in Argentina’s Dirty War”. AP. Missoulian. 5-21-97
[24] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992. p.367
[25] Ibid
[26] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK.
Dean Henderson is the author of four books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries,

Hicks Law?

Reaction Time In Combat

Modern Research Challenges The Martial

Training Sales Pitch!

By W. Hock Hochheim

Remember when, "be there is a second!" meant really fast? Or the common expression "it'll take half-a second." Half a second! Man that is really fast, isn't it? There are 1,000 milliseconds in on second. So a half a second is 500 milliseconds. Just think about how fast a second is, then envision half a second? We have split the atom and we have split the second.

In the fast paced world of super science and equations, experts needed to split the second into 1,000 parts. For almost all normal activity slitting seconds in tenths, quarters and halves is just a trial pursuit question, unless you are worried about the finish line of NASCAR races, Olympic athletes or the Kentucky Derby.

How fast is fast? And, how much faster can we get? And how many changing variables are there interfering with your speed? When did a split-second, or half-a-second become slow-motion? These are also questions that come up also in martial arts marketing and sales pitches. I will dissect the misunderstood 1952 Hicks Law, and its twisted use in dumbing down training problems.

Action beats reaction. If you are reacting to an attack, as the good guys generally are, you are already behind the action curve. How behind, scientists have labored intensely to discover over the last 50 years, and like splitting the atom, they have split the single second into one thousand parts to do it.

It was about 25 years ago when I attended a police defensive tactics course and was rather insulted by the attitude of the instructor. We were treated like Neanderthals. He declared, “KISS! Keep it simple, stupid. Hick's Law says that it takes your mind too long to choose between two tactics. Worse with three! Therefore, I will show you one response." I wondered then and there, "Am I to stay simple and stupid my whole life? Who is this Hick and what is his law?"

And, it takes too long? How long was long? How long is TOO long? I wondered? We learned one block versus a high punch that day. What about against a low punch, I thought? My one high block fails to cover much else but that one high attack.

Later that evening while coaching my son's little league baseball team, I saw this very instructor coaching his boy's team on another ball field. He was teaching ten year-olds to multi-task and make split-second decisions as his infielders, worked double plays with runners on base. It was clear the coach expected more from these kids than he did from we adult cops that morning. Hick's Law was not to be found on that kid's diamond.

Next, I slid both feet into this thing called Hick's Law, to discover it was a growing favorite among law enforcement trainers. Other famous police trainers kept mentioning Hick's Law :

“ - lag time increases significantly with the greater number of techniques.”

" - it takes 58% more time to pick between two choices."

“ - it takes 'about a second' to pick a tactic.”

“Selection time gets compounded exponentially when a person has to select from several choices... ”

What is the definition of "significant time?" 58% of what? What exactly is "about a second?" Exponentially? Compounded? I had to delve even deeper into these cavalier statements. They seemed to have an agenda. The agenda was to sell training courses and dumb-down people and training? If I was going to become this pessimistic, I needed more proof. I hit the textbooks and contacted the experts.

The actual Hick's idea was based on a computer study, a paper written in 1952 and simply set up an equation that states it takes time to decide between options. Just for the record, the equation is TR+a+b{Log2 (N)}. A computer performance study? Do you think that 1950 computers ran a bit slow? The 1950 idea was then extrapolated into human performance, usually based on very primitive, 1950 see-then-push-button tests. The lab method had the testee selecting from several buttons on sudden command. Somehow from this alone, the mythology of the slow brain, the slow, stuttering, decision-making brain premise developed into a combatives training doctrine.

Exponentially decision making? Instructors often ignorantly tag Hicks law with exponential math. Any exponential function is a constant multiple of its own derivative. Many still just blindly associate a never-ending doubling ratio to Hick - that is, for every two choices, selection time doubles per added choice. Yet, despite all these quotes on times, Hick made no official proclamation on the milliseconds it takes to mentally decide between option choices. Meanwhile, experts say that logarithm math actually relates to Hicks.

There is a general, consensus in the modern Kinesiology community that Simple Reaction Time, called SRT, takes an average of 100 or 150 milliseconds to decide to take any action. That's considerably less than a quarter of a second-or 250 milliseconds, or a 500 millisecond "half-a-second," or the loose "about a second" we hear from martial trainers. Lets re-establish that there are 1,000 milliseconds in one second-a fact that makes all these time studies fall to include into a proper perspective. 1,000 of them! More than 1,000 milliseconds passed before you can read the first number in that number aloud.

Based on the doubling/exponentially rule with the commonly discussed SRT average, then choosing between two choices must take 300 milliseconds. Run out that time-table. Three choices? 600 milliseconds. Four choices? 1 second and 200 milliseconds. A mere five choices? 2 seconds and 400 milliseconds! Six? 4 full seconds and 800 milliseconds. Should a boxer learn 5 tactics? That would mean 9 seconds and 600 milliseconds to choose one tactic from another? You would really see people physically shut down while trying to select options at this point and beyond. Has this been your viewing experience of a football game? Basketball? Tennis? Has this been your experience as a witness to life? Under this casual, exponential increase rule, it would seem athletes would stand dumbfounded, as index cards rolled through their heads in an attempt to pick a choice of action. Every eye jab could not be blocked if the blocker was taught even just two blocks. The eye attack would hit the eyes as the defender sluggishly selects between the two blocks.

One then begins to wonder how a football game can be played, how a jazz pianist functions, or how a bicyclist can pedal himself in a New York City rush hour. How does a boxer, who sees a spilt-second opening, select a jab, cross, hook, uppercut, overhand combination or to step back straight, right or left? If he dares to throw combination punches how can he select them so quickly?

Simple, modern athletic performance studies attack the simplistic, doubling rule, but we need not only look to athletes. How can a typist type so quickly? Look at all the selections on a computer? 26 letters-plus options! How can you read this typed essay? How can your mind select and process from 26 different letters in the alphabet and spell with speed? How can an elderly person drive a car across town? A child play soccer? It is obvious that the exponential rule of “doubling” with each option, has serious scientific problems when you run a simple math table out, or just look about you at everyday life. And, despite the constant use of the word exponentially by quoters, real experts clarify that logarithms should be used. Exponential or logarithms the math of many choices do not play in the life we see around us.

New tests upon new tests on skills like driving vehicles, flying, sports and psychology, have created so many layers of fresh information. Larish and Stelmach in 1982 established that one could select from 20 complex options in 340 milliseconds, providing the complex choices have been previously trained. One other study even had a reaction time of .03 milliseconds between two trained choices! .03! Merkel's Law, for example, says that trouble begins when a person has to select between 8 choices, but can still select a choice from the eight well under 500 milliseconds. Brace yourself! Mowbray and Rhoades Law of 1959, or the Welford Law of 1986, even found no difference in reaction time at all, when selecting from numerous, well-trained choices.

Why all these time differences? Sometimes experts challenge test results by questioning the test process and equipment involved. In 2003, I conducted an email survey of 50 college university professors of Psychology and Kinesiology. It is crystal clear that training makes a considerable difference in reaction time. Plus, people, tests and testing equipment are different. Respondents state that every person and the skills they perform in tests vary, so reaction times vary. One universal difficulty mentioned by researchers is the mechanical task of splitting the second in their testing - that is identifying the exact millisecond that the tested reaction took place. Many recorded tests are performed by under-grads in less than favorable conditions.

The test-givers themselves have reaction time issues that effect time recording in their tests. When milliseconds count, milliseconds can be wasted as the tester sees the testee react, then reacts with a stopwatch device, either estimating or losing milliseconds in their own reaction process. Common test machinery takes milliseconds to register a choice. Results can get vague and slippery within the tiny world of a single second. Documenting milliseconds in the 1950s was primitive compared to modern, sophisticated labs.

The KISS Method- not well thought out as a doctrine.

Many unintended messages and consequences are involved.

Discoveries made in 1990s, decades after the 1950s Hicks law began, blowing the original, antiquated "mental rolodex/task selection" concept out of the water as an important martial training tenet. The brain has a fast track! Below, researchers Martin D. Topper, Ph.D., and Jack M. Feldman, Ph.D. write about them:

"Currently, the best explanation is provided by psychologist Gary Klein in Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. He's proposed that the human brain is capable of multi-tasking. Gary's theory works like this: A visual image is picked up by the retina and is transmitted to the visual center of the brain in the occipital lobe. From there the image is sent to two locations in the brain. On the one hand, it goes to the higher levels of the cerebral cortex which is the seat of full conscious awareness. There, in the frontal lobes, the image is available to be recognized, analyzed, input into a decision process and acted upon as the person considers appropriate. Let's call this "the slow track," because full recognition of the meaning of a visual image, analyzing what it represents, deciding what to do and then doing it takes time. Some psychologists also refer to this mental process as System II cognition. If you used System II cognition in critical situations like a skid, you wouldn't have enough time to finish processing the OODA Loop before your car went over the cliff.

Fortunately, there's a second track, which we'll call "the fast track," or System I Cognition. In this system, the image is also sent to a lower, pre-conscious region of the brain, which is the amygdala. This area of the brain stores visual memory and performs other mental operations as well. The visual image is compared here on a pre-conscious level at incredible speed with many thousands of images that are stored in memory. Let's call each image a "frame" which is a term that Dr. Erving Goffman used in his book Frame Analysis to describe specific, cognitively-bounded sets of environmental conditions. I like to use the word "frame" here because the memory probably contains more than just visual information. There may be sound, kinesthetic, tactile, olfactory or other sensory information that also helps complement the visual image contained within the frame - fortunately, the fast and slow tracks are usually complimentary, one focusing on insight, the other on action. Together they produce a synergistic effect that enhances the actor's chances of survival.

But even though these two tracks are complimentary, we know that some people seem to be much more skilled than others at integrating System 1 and System 2. These especially competent individuals seem to resolve critical situations and also adapt to rapid changes in those situations. They invent routines they have never before performed and act in a fluid, seamless manner without employing full focal awareness."

So at this point in our understanding, we have newer models discovered and developing that tell us something about how the brain can operate on two tracks at the same time, but we don't really have a good idea of how the two levels interact, except to say that the interaction is very fast and complex, and some people do it better than others. We really don't know everything we'd like to know. But we do know that specific types of training can help a person develop unconscious competence, and this is enough to make some suggestions about the kind of training that will help make relatively unskilled people more competent in finding solutions to potentially violent encounters.

And then this news on BDNF: Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor :

"If I had to make a signal that could write messages on the brain from the environment, that would be BDNF."

Scientists at Johns Hopkins and the National Cancer Institute have found a "missing link" brain chemical that rises and falls quickly in response to stress, fear or an upbeat mood, and then sculpts nerve circuits in the brain accordingly. Their report, on work done appears in the Dec. 21, 1999 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Further, because research at Hopkins and elsewhere shows that BDNF levels vary with subject's experience as it goes down in stressful situations..."BDNF has all the right features to be the critical signal by which environmental and psychosocial interactions impact on the brain," says neuropathologist Dr. Vassilis E. Koliatsos. "It's very rapid, it's sensitive, and it affects a system critical for emotional life and behavior. "What we believe we've found is a link between what happens to a person on a daily basis and the way the brain responds, from an emotional standpoint, over the long term."

Dr Susan Greenfield has written The Quest For Identity In The 21st Century, in which she discusses the natural ways the human brain grows and adapts. " I'm a neuroscientist and my day-to-day research at Oxford University strives for an ever greater understanding - and therefore maybe, one day, a cure - for Alzheimer's disease. But one vital fact I have learnt is that the brain is not the unchanging organ that we once imagined. It not only goes on developing, changing and, in some tragic cases, eventually deteriorating with age, it is also substantially shaped by what we do to it and by the experience of daily life. When I say "shaped," I'm not talking figuratively or metaphorically; I'm talking literally. At a microcellular level, the infinitely complex network of nerve cells that make up the constituent parts of the brain actually change in response to certain experiences and stimuli. The brain, in other words, is malleable. The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind.

Doctors Richard A. Schmidt (a decades long expert) and Timothy Donald Lee, in the , ground breaking, 1980s book and subsequent new editions since, Motor Control and Learning reported that task selection is made up of two parts, RT (reaction time) - seeing the problem, and MT (movement time) - physically moving to respond, and thus may be a "few milliseconds " for fast, simple chores, not this compounding, exponential, doubling, half-second and full second formats.

And another major factor, so simply explained in a sentence or two concerns "arousal." Arousal is another word for alertness and also adrenaline in performance sports and psychology. "One of the most investigated factors affecting reaction time is 'arousal' or state of attention, including muscular tension. Reaction time is fastest with an intermediate level of arousal, and deteriorates when the subject is either too relaxed or too tense (Welford, 1980; Broadbent, 1971; Freeman, 1933)."

Practice helps. Dr. Robert J. Kosinski of Clemson University reported on his research in September of 2010 - "Sanders (1998, p. 21) cited studies showing that when subjects are new to a reaction time task, their reaction times are less consistent than when they've had an adequate amount of practice. Ando et al. (2002) found that reaction time to a visual stimulus decreased with three weeks of practice, and the same research team (2004) reported that the effects of practice last for at least three weeks. Fontani et al. (2006) showed that in karate, more experienced practitioners had shorter reaction times.... Visser et al. (2007)"

Nine decades of performance testing and technology have passed since Hicks simple, little "Computer Choice Law", with new technology and testing on athletes as well as regular, everyday people. Not only are the testing methods better, and the understanding superior, so are the new methodologies created to increase SRT and selection times. Perhaps no better better statement damning the Hicks law model as a foundation in physical training can be found than from neuroplastician Dr. Michael Merzenich, regarded among experts as a leading source on the human brain when reporting in the book, The Brain that Changes Itself, "we can change the very structure of the brain and increase its capacity...unlike a computer, the brain is constantly adapting itself."

In 2012, in the new book, Wait, the Art and Science of Delay, Professor Frank Partnoy collects numerous studies on the split second, or millisecond-second decision making of mental and physical choices. He has all the very latest, 2012, medical and psychological testing on sports, self defense on down to fast-paced, internet stock trading. It is interesting to note that the infamous In this new book, Hicks Law is not even mentioned, not a whisper. That is how research has advanced from the 1950s.

In many ways Wait refutes a former bestseller, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink by proving that the very best-of-the-best performers know how to delay reaction to the last - well - millisecond, making the best choice. The secret? Some genetics and a lot of proper training. Blink tells the reader to go with your first impulse. Wait tells you to go with your last impulse. All these choices occur in less than a second anyway and the book makes for good reading. It breaks down the three critical steps - vision, decision and reaction averages, all in the milliseconds arena with the latest, high-technology and knowledge. About 100 milliseconds to see, about 200 milliseconds to decide what to do among several choices, and about 200 milliseconds to action. About half a second. (and this does not increase exponentially or in a logarithm with multiple choices.)

How can we possible improve reaction times?

Aside from the fact that Hicks Law exists in a world of 1,000 milliseconds within one single second, here are some proven methods that improve overall reaction time:

* Sequential Learning - the stringing of tasks working together like connected notes in music, really reduces reaction and selection time.

* Conceptual Learning - is another speed track. In relation to survival training, this means a person first makes an either/or conceptual decision, like “Shoot/Don't shoot,” or, “Move-In/Move Back.” Rather than selecting from a series of hand strikes, in Conceptual Learning, the boxer does not waste milliseconds selecting specific punches, but rather makes one overall decision, “punch many times!” The trained body then takes over, following paths learned from prior repetition training.

* Implicit and Procedural Memory - Misinformed proponents of Hicks Law would have you believe that people are forever stumbling buffoons when given three or more options to choose from. Yet, In Dr. Lee Dye's 2009 article for ABC News, "How the Brain Makes Quick Decisions,” he reports: "(People) …have been helped by a kind of human memory that scientists have been struggling to understand” Dye reports that people use "implicit" memory, a short-term memory that people are not consciously aware they are using. Doctors Ken Paller at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Joel L. Voss, from the Beckman Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have conducted long-term research on this subject and while they did not specifically involve athletics, the conclusions are consistent with other researchers who are also studying how top athletes can make split-second decisions and take actions. How does a batter hit a fastball when he has to start swinging the bat before the ball even leaves the pitcher's hand? “He relies on visual cues, even if he doesn't know it.” Athletes and people learn to predict and act, and react spontaneously based on very little information. One way is implicit memory.

Implicit memory (IM) is a type of memory in which previous experiences aid in the performance of a task without conscious awareness of these previous experiences. People rely on implicit memory in a form called procedural memory - the type of memory that allows people to remember how to tie their shoes or ride a bicycle without consciously thinking about these activities. Implicit memory taps into procedural memory.

One more definition in this chain of memory and performance. Procedural memory. Connecting small, multi-tasks and problem solving. Examples of procedural learning are learning to ride a bike, learning to touch-type, learning to play a musical instrument or learning to swim as well as performing athletic tasks like sports. For our readers here this includes martial moves, fighting, self defense and combatives. Experts report that procedural memory can be very durable, however perishable like any task. And, the physical fitness to perform these tasks may not be so durable. Given the ravages of aging, a pro tennis player away from the game for many years, is still likely to pick up a tennis racket and beat most common tennis players, but not Wimbleton.

The Good, The Bad and The Simple

Sure, sure, sure, simple is good. I am all for simple. Absolutely. And reaction time is an important concern when you are dodging a knife, pulling a gun, etc. And there may actually come a point in a learning progression when there are way, way too many reactions/techniques to counter an attack, and If these moves are a bit unnatural, and not guided somewhat by some natural reflex, and taught poorly and out of context, a long list of untrained movements may cause performance problems. Poor systems and poor training may lead to untimely confusion. But we are not as simple and slow as Hick's Law misleaders want to scare us.

It seems like the last 8 decades, Hick's Legacy should really be telling us to train more and smarter, not necessarily to be stupid and learn less. Remember one of Einstein's Laws apply also - “Keep it simple…but not too simple.” I like the sound of that much better than stupid instructors KISSING me to keep things stupid. And still we learn more.

I report the following information to remind us that we are not the slugs of Hicks law, or slimed into slow motion in the world of milliseconds, or trapped within a brain that runs like a 1950's morse code program. Take a moment to renew confidence and examine new, 21st Century discoveries of our brain...

Dr. M. Blackspear of the Brain Dynamics Center at the University of Sydney Australia reports that the: "...study of functional inter-dependences between brain regions is a rapidly growing focus of neuroscience research. This endeavor has been greatly facilitated by the appearance of a number of innovative methodologies for the examination of neurophysiological and neuroimaging data." This Blackspear statement was made about the amazing new discoveries in 2005 and of how fast, repeat HOW FAST the healthy, human brain changes and adapts "on the fly" - which is the new medical, catch phrase for such studies on this now.. People select and change options "mid-flight" in milliseconds split into milliseconds.

Intelligence matters as a variable. "The link between intelligence and reaction time is reviewed in Deary et al. (2001). Serious mental retardation produces slower and more variable reaction times. Among people of normal intelligence, there is a slight tendency for more intelligent people to have faster reaction times, but there is much variation between people of similar intelligence" (Nettelbeck, 1980). The speed advantage of more intelligent people is greatest on tests requiring complex responses (Schweitzer, 2001). This study alone destroys the 60 year-old Hicks law.

"Stimulus–response compatibility" is known to also affect reaction time for the Hick's Law. This means that the response should be similar to the stimulus itself. For example, turning a wheel to turn the wheels of the car is good stimulus–response compatibility. The action the user performs is similar to the response the driver receives from the car. Hitting a red button when another red button comes on. Similarity. Familiarity. Training creates this similarity and familiarity.

6 or more choices? 400 milliseconds to choose or 4 or even 6 seconds to rolodex through all of them? Remember the police trainer's quote of "about a second per choice?" Let's go back to the ol' ball game - and back to the baseball analogy that started this article. We expect a common shortstop in baseball to perform a select list of actions instantly at the crack of the bat. The baseball shortstop is expected to:

- catch a ground ball to his left, or
- catch a ground ball to his center, or
- catch a ground ball straight at him, or
- catch a line drive, or
- catch a pop-up, or

- tag a runner out, or

- catch the ball traversing across second base for a double play, or

- instantly consider consequences to the overall game, like diving for the ball and missing

Moves all to be executed in the sheer "splitest" of a split second? Then, our ape man, ball player has even more split-second, follow-up decisions to make with runner's on different bases. Even a child playing shortstop has a lot to decide and very fast, AND can do it faster than 4 or 6 seconds or more! I hope that the police trainer I mentioned in the beginning of this essay is reading this and not just when he teaches his kids in little league, but when he teaches his adults in law enforcement tactics. In fact, I hope all martial instructors are listening?

In Summary

Recently in 2011, someone accused me of claiming that Hick's Law doesn't exist and I was ignorant of what Hick's Law really is. Of course it exists. A Mr. William Edmund Hick existed. This British psychologist, Mr. Hicks created a test and his test had results. The results were that response took time. The central point of all this reaction research? Milliseconds. It is really about milliseconds. Remember, there are 1,000 milliseconds in a second! Various studies produce various millisecond results. All have improved on the Hicks 1950s response times, yet trainers use this law because of their "dumb-down" agendas or they are ignorant and just regurgitate other trainers.

Probably the single reason Hick's Law has been spread in the last few decades in the police, martial and military fields is as a sales pitch to sell training programs. But, just how fast can we get? How dumb should we be to fight back confusion and stalling out? Don't ask Mr. Hick from the 1950s. Mr. Hick was not conducting tests on baseball or fighting, and the 1950's computer he used belongs in the stone age of museum pieces.

Much more workable!

1) Hicks Law exists.

2) It is based on splitting milliseconds. There are 1,000 milliseconds within one second. Not many know this.

3) There are other, more modern reaction studies with differing and even faster results than the old Hicks study.

4) Hicks law is misused. It is misunderstood. It is blindly regurgitated.

5) The misuses and misunderstandings are used to sell training programs, or to feign a certain expertise.

6) It is frequently used to dumb-down police, military and martial arts programs.

7) People can only get so fast within these milliseconds anyway.

8) Hicks widely accepted version of math and expanding delays between multiple choices cannot be played out in the reality we witness in our daily lives around us.

9) Many other definable issues can cause choice-delay and all delays cannot be blamed on Hicks Law.

10) Hicks Law and it's milliseconds are virtually inconsequential as a martial training tenet.

*****

An example of a famous instructor misusing Hick's Law - See the 23 April entry click here

Read more! Brain Size and Intelligence? Fact of Fiction- Click

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Another book to read on this subject...

Thinking Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman

So much training mythology (notice I did not say "methodology") concerns itself with choice selection under stress, and as a result the 60-year-old "Hicks Law" has been regurgitated over and over again, rather mindlessly, as a reason not to learn too many things. Hicks is a very broad, misleading and ill-informed law causing a general dumbing-down" of individual potential. Here's a book that inspects the thinking and decision process in very big way, immaculately researched by this expert - the author himself. This is NOT a book about fighting, though police, military and firefighters are often referenced. This is about about thinking fast and slow, and it shoves the abstract, Hicks law further and further over into the dark corner where it belongs.

"Hi Hock, A friend forwarded me your article on Hick's Law, great job of digging into the concept. Too often, concepts like this from kinesiology or motor control are taken at face value and made into dogma. Motor learning and control is a key area of interest for me; I teach courses in Health and Human Performance (what used to just be called PE) and got into the field because of my interest motor control as a martial artist. The more we can apply those concepts to our training, the better our training will be. I enjoy your work and resources, thanks!" - Randy Simpson M.S. C.P.T."

*****

W. Hock Hochheim is a military and police vet with multiple black belts. he currently teaches practical, tactical hand, stick, knife and gun tactics and strategies in 11 allied countries each year. He can be reached through www.HocksCQC.com