Wow. I could have predicted this. Gerald Posner, the guy who got all the publicity during the thirtieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination for his awfully misleading book “Case Closed,” is now chums with Karzai’s bro–you know, the one the NYT just said was receiving CIA help.
But how stupid is Posner? Or worse, how stupid does he think we are?
Given the situation, I wouldn’t have led with this, as Posner did:
Early Wednesday morning at nearly 1:00 A.M., I checked my email for a final time and saw notice of a newsbreak from The New York Times that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and the man often called the Pablo Escobar of the country’s heroin trade, has been on a CIA payroll for the past eight years. I immediately called him.
I reached him on his private cell number.
Where do you think Posner got that number? The phone book? The local drug store? Of course he got that through contacts at CIA. Why would he get that number? Because the CIA trusts him.
And if the CIA trusts him, we definitely should not! If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s yet another reporter whose real agenda is to promote the CIA.
Has Posner always been this chummy with the Agency?
Um, yeah. Where have you been?
One of his earliest books was a novel called “The Bio-Assassins” and featured a Cold War CIA oldie fighting a bureacratic newbie in the changing CIA. Guess who wins? I don’t really have to answer that, do I? The old fart, the one willing to break any law to do what needs to be done, in his view.
Another of his early books was about Mengele. He received wide praise for this, but some not so widely distributed criticism. Essentially, the book is an apologia that attempts to explain why the poor ol’ CIA just couldn’t find Mengele to bring him to justice. It reads like the cover story it probably is. If the CIA really wanted to find him, they could. They found Che Guevara in the Bolivian jungle, for Chrissakes. They cold have found Mengele, if they had the will. They could have found Bin Laden, long ago, too, if they had the will.
And of course, I won’t bother to bore you with the many wrongs in Posner’s awful book on the Kennedy assassination, “Case Closed.” But if you’re curious, read this article, by an actual historian, Professor David Wrone: http://www.assassinationscience.com/wrone.html.
The reason I included Keith Olbermann in the title is because Olbermann is a fan of Posner’s, and has had him on his show many times. Every time he does, my opinion of Olbermann’s intellect goes down. I hope someday Olbermann opens his eyes about this guy, before Posner lowers his credibility even further.
P.S. The fact that Posner is the “chief investigative journalist” for the blog site The Daily Beast makes that site a “must miss” on my daily reading list. Joseph Finder, another guy who both writes novels about the CIA and then defends them in the press is also a contributor there. I love Finder’s novels. I don’t love his unqualified support of the worst excesses of the CIA.
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The officials said he helps the CIA to operate the Kandahar Strike Force, an armed group that is used for raids against suspected Taliban fighters.
On at least one occasion, the newspaper reported, the officials said the strike force had been accused of mounting an unauthorised operation against an official of the Afghan government.
The president’s brother is also paid for allowing the CIA and US Special Operations soldiers to rent a large compound outside the city – the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder – The Times said. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force.
Dyncorp destroying the poppy fields
Or it could also mean a CIA that once again steps beyond the realm of collecting secrets to intervening forcibly in the affairs of foreign states. In that area, the agency’s history has often been one of blunders and worse, from Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s through the Bay of Pigs fiasco under John F. Kennedy to the Nicaraguan war that led to the Iran-contra debacle in the ’80s. Some longtime intelligence watchers are wondering whether a reinvigorated paramilitary wing of the CIA could be a mixed blessing for America once again. And the military itself is not too pleased. It believes its special-ops forces are perfectly equipped to handle these jobs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has reacted in part by planning his own secret unit, which would function much like the SOG but would answer to him rather than Tenet.
FBI interview of Cheney in Plame case revealed
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."was deeply flawed.
Vincent Bugliosi’s is not.
Lisa, did you read “Reclaiming History” yet? Bugliosi demonstrates Oswald’s guilt with a staggering amount of research and reason.
Ed, you are simply ignorant if you don’t know the flaws in Bugliosi’s book.
Start with Jim DiEugenio’s SEVEN PART SERIES re Bugliosi’s errors here:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_review.html
Seven long parts. I dare you to read them all.
read the book?
Why are you afraid to answer a simple “yes” or “no” question?
Ed,
When you read something that is wildly inaccurate within a few pages, it would be beyond a waste of time, but criminally insane, to keep reading.
So no. I haven’t read the book. I read the chapter on the CIA, saw his lies and ducking, and didn’t see the point.
You have. So why not read the other side, Ed.
Btw – Booman, if you’re listening – this is a CIA tactic online – continuing to press an irrelevant question and ducking the real issue. I saw it for five years on alt.conspiracy.jfk. Ed is of the same mold as John McAdams, who was soundly trounced by Jim DiEugenio in an online debate.
Ed needs to read Jim’s rebuttal to Bugliosi. Only then will you know if Ed is honest. Right now he has one side of the story, and is refusing the other half.
Ed, if you can rebut Jim, be my guest. But I know already you can’t, so you keep trying to push Bugliosi’s horsepucky.
Give me examples.
Your admonition that I should “read the other side” presents a staggering example of false equivalence. Bugliosi presents thirty two hundred pages of evidence of Oswald’s guilt. You conspiracy buffs present absolutely NO evidence of ANYONE’S guilt. Zero.
You and your friends are desperately hanging on to the idea that Jim Garrison was something other than a delusional psychopath. Garrison wasn’t Kevin Costner. He was a nut.
As to your paranoid attempts to link me to the CIA – I ask you once again to call and tell them to resend my checks – they must be getting lost in the mail.
You continue to refuse to see the illogic of your own argument.
Oswald couldn’t have done the shooting, and Bugliosi’s own evidence proves it. Do you know what I’m referring to?
If you had read not only his book, but the evidence he is basing his whole theory on, you would know.
No, I don’t know what you’re referring to because you are, as always, afraid to tell me.
You won’t tell me because you have nothing.
Bugliosi’s landmark book is putting you and your paranoid friends out of business. He has demonstrated once and for all that every shred of evidence in the case points to Lee Harvey Oswald and to nobody else. You don’t even disagree with that or you would tell us who your “evidence” points to.
But you have no evidence. Just bullshit.