Gen Sotskov said the documents proved that American and British leaders were often divided over their position on Soviet troop movements and their "public declarations clashed with internal assessments". But Soviet intelligence showed that Churchill decided it was a pragmatic move not to confront Moscow's occupation of neighbouring territory, which ended with the Nazi invasion of the Baltics in 1941. "Churchill realised this was the only way," he said. "He saw it as a not very pleasant but necessary step to prevent Germany from further intrigues and advance."

The fact that Germany's strike at the Soviet Union ran out of steam later in the war was partly because it had to cross the Baltics, thus justifying Churchill's reasoning, Gen Sotskov said.

Publication of the NKVD documents - almost certainly compiled with material uncovered by spies such as Donald MacLean and Kim Philby - was given wide play in the Russian media.

Moscow says its army saved the Baltic states from Nazism. The Baltic states have always bitterly argued that they were illegally occupied and then forcibly assimilated into the Soviet Union at the end of the second world war. Latvia's president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, yesterday told the Financial Times that Nato's first summit in Riga would "remove the very last traces of the iron curtain" from the Baltics.

The dossier was commissioned by the lower house of the Russian parliament and the timing of its release hints at a desire by Moscow to sow dissent between western Europe and the Baltic states which recently joined Nato and the EU. The Kremlin has tense relations with all three Baltic states and is incensed at Estonia's plans to remove a monument to Soviet soldiers who "liberated" the city in 1944 after three years of Nazi occupation, during which some men from the Baltic countries joined Waffen SS units.

Gen Sotskov said he accepted that the dossier would be controversial, but the documents were incontrovertible. "Sober-minded people should say, 'Yes, that's how it was'," he said.

Churchill is on record as saying in 1939 that it was in Britain's interests "that the USSR should increase their strength in the Baltic, thereby limiting the risk of German domination in that area". However, he said two years later that no territorial change made during the war should stand without the "free consent and goodwill of the parties involved". He was said to be furious at the treatment that Soviet troops meted out to civilians in the Baltics in 1940 and he later refused to recognise the countries as part of the Soviet Union.

The Baltic states remained in Moscow's grasp until the Soviet break-up in 1991.

Asked what reaction he expected to the dossier in the Baltics, Gen Sotskov said: "That's their problem. All I can say is that the SS was recognised as a fascist organisation at Nuremberg, but in those countries people still march under its flag."

Sergei Ivanov, a spokesman for the SVR, said the dossier was not published to coincide with the Riga summit but was "probably connected with the fact that monuments are being taken down in the Baltics".

For a brief moment earlier this month, even the most diehard lefties in New York grudgingly admitted to feeling pretty good about the US mid-term elections. Not Mark Kurlansky, though. "I couldn't celebrate that night," says the 58-year-old historian and food writer, sitting on a tiny stool in his drafty Manhattan office, his eyes basset-hound tired. He adds glumly: "I was so unhappy [Joe] Lieberman was re-elected." The democratic senator from Connecticut, and sometime Bush ally, was defeated in early primaries thanks to his support of the Iraq War. But he regrouped, ran as an independent, and won. To Kurlansky, this victory augured everything he needed to know about what Iraq policy would look like in Washington with a new Congress. "Don't forget," he says, "the Vietnam War was brought to us by Democrats."

Kurlansky doesn't have any problem recalling this bitter memory because he lived through the Sixties, refused the draft for the Vietnam War, and protested alongside Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Many of his closest friends were integral to the movement, and a few were involved in the Weather Underground, an offshoot of the radical left that staged a series of bombings, jailbreaks and riots in the late Sixties. "They were crazy," says the writer, who covered some of this territory in his recent book, 1968. A few miles downtown from where we sit is the Greenwich Village townhouse that exploded when a member of the Weather Underground accidentally set off a homemade bomb, killing three. "How can anyone expect, if they know anything about this country, an armed guerilla movement to become popular?"

For many years, Kurlansky kept his thoughts on the matter to op-ed length pieces, since his day job was corresponding from Latin America for the Miami Herald and other papers. But now that his reporting days are a decade behind him, he has expanded these thoughts into a little book called Non-Violence: the History of a Dangerous Idea (Jonathan Cape, £12.99). Shaped like his bestselling works of micro-history, Salt and Cod, it culls the past two millennia, examining moments when non-violence flourished. It ends with a list of 25 pithy lessons, from "Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state" to "A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings."

Kurlansky has been on and off the road with the book already in America, where lists and pithy ideas are a good thing, but questioning the idea of a "just war" a bit more complicated. "Europeans are far more anti-war than Americans," Kurlansky observes mildly, "they've had more wars and they really just don't believe in it any more. But Americans do." It doesn't help that Kurlansky has taken on three of the most sacred "just wars" in the pantheon of US history: the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and Second World War.

Non-violence attempts to dismantle the idea of these wars in particular by dismantling the myths - quite powerful in the US still - that keep them sacred. Namely, that the Revolutionary War was cleanly fought and force the only option at the time; that the Civil War was a dispute over slavery; and that America entered the Second World War to stop the Holocaust. "When I get into arguments with people, they always start off with: 'Well, what would you do about the Holocaust?' To which I reply: 'The Second World War wasn't about the Holocaust: they weren't doing anything about it.'"

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1948 and raised Jewish, Kurlansky grew up in the shadow of this war and knows its darker, more nuanced shape. His father had been a dentist in the medical corps, and his uncle a soldier in combat. "He came home and told stories for the next 70 years," Kurlansky remembers of that uncle, "but they were sort of jolly stories, with important parts missing, till he got old, and then he started talking about really grim stuff." Kurlansky's father did not have to see combat to hate the organisation committed to it. "He really disliked the military. He wouldn't even buy a raincoat if it had epaulets on it."

Kurlansky's own experiments with non-violence began as a boy. "I grew up in a neighbourhood where there was a lot of fighting," he says. "It's what boys did during school, during recess, after school. And I was a fairly large kid. So everyone wanted to see if they could take me on." It seems odd to imagine Kurlansky - burly, bearded, with shoulders so broad he looks too large for his own office - being pushed around. "I hated it," he says. "So I decided to not fight back. I ducked punches, blocked punches, but I didn't fight back. It sort of worked: they all went away, but I lost all standing." Less than 10 years later, in the early 1960s, Kurlansky had a war to duck and he did that, too.

Against the odds, whether it is in Vietnam or Afghanistan, Kurlansky says that governments conclude force will work where diplomacy has not. To justify their actions, they often lean on religion. "Religious elements are big problems in the US government," Kurlansky says, "but the problem is Bush." The President's enlistment of religious iconography isn't unique to America, though. "Religion is a big problem in Israel and the Arab world, but again the problem isn't religion, but political leaders who want to use the religion. It's like that phrase, 'God bless America'. Do you really believe there's a God that goes around choosing which countries to bless?"

For all its discussion of the abuse of religion, Non-violence is actually a remarkably sanguine book about faith. Kurlansky goes back to the beginnings of the three major religions and argues that all of them began in the spirit of non-violence. The Koran forbids wars of aggression, Kurlansky notes, and wars "to spread the teachings of Islam" are not allowed either. In Judaism, Kurlansky writes, non-violence started with the Ten Commandments, the sixth of which is "Thou shalt not kill." "It is one of the shortest commandments and offers no commentary, explanation, or variations," he continues. "It does not say, as many Jews claim, "except in self-defence.

"Christianity was probably the least violent of all religions, and the least followed," continues Kurlansky. This began to change with Constantine I, who coissued the Edict of Milan, decriminalising Christianity, and solidifying a connection between warfare and the cross. While many Christians believe great damage was done to the faith by Constantine, Kurlansky believes that St Augustine was more responsible for giving a state ruler's abuses the patina of theological justification. "He was on very shaky theological ground," Kurlansky argues.

From the increasing uneasiness of evangelicals to talk of war, to the continued pressure of Quakers, there are signs that non-violent resistance to the current war in Iraq is growing in the religious communities. It's also being felt by the armed forces. Kurlansky is in the middle of four books now, one of which is a cultural history of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the oldest fishing port in the US. The town has sent a lot of soldiers to wars thanks to its maritime tradition. "It has very active veterans groups, and they're not happy about the war," he says. "They don't believe there's any glory in Iraq."

The problem with non-violence has always been how to demonstrate it. Looking backwards, the questions are even thornier. Should Palestinians have resisted non-violently in 1948? If so, what does that mean? Kurlansky doesn't have entirely clear answers to these questions. But he points to successes as a reason why it should be considered for the future. "It takes very little imagination to be violent," he says, "but it takes a great deal of imagination to be non-violent."

As Kurlansky notes throughout this book, there is no word for non-violence in any language that isn't a negative of violence. Without a word, or an image, protest has to look good to be effective, he says. "I think the thing is when people are watching you on CNN, or reading about you in The New York Times... you want them to be sympathetic toward you. You don't want them to think, 'jeeze, these people are really scary.' I think, you know, the 'Clean for Gene' thing isn't a bad idea. Eugene McCarthy, in his 1968 presidential campaign, told all his supporters to be clean-shaven and straight looking. I think they should do that."

Mark Kurlansky will discuss his book with AC Grayling at the South Bank's Purcell Room, London SE1 (08703 800 400) on 28 November at 7.45pm

Biography: Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky was born in Connecticut in 1948. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing for the Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the International Herald Tribune. His first book, A Continent of Islands, about the Caribbean, was published in 1992. It was followed in 1995 by A Chosen Few, a book about European Jewry and in 1997 by Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, which was an international bestseller. His other books include Salt: A World History and a novel, Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue. Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea is published by Jonathan Cape this week. Mark Kurlansky lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

Bush then explains that he planted explosives in the base of the World Trade Center towers. The missing planes were diverted to an airport in Pennsylvania. Two military jets filled with explosives flew into the twin towers. Then he blew up the Pentagon with a cruise missile. Bush boasts: "It was only the world's most intricate and flawlessly executed plan ever ... ever."

By the end, the show has mocked everybody involved. But the following day, Web traffic to 911truth.org multiplied by five times, spiking the site's number of views to 58,000 a day. A fact omitted from the South Park episode - and from the Web site itself - is that 911truth.org is run by Janice Matthews, a single mother of six from Kansas City, Missouri.

Matthews has become well-known nationally within what's called the truth movement: those who believe that Bush and his buddies were behind 9/11. The idea that the World Trade Center fell in order to fuel President Bush's war machine has become the trendy conspiracy theory, replacing such old standards as aliens in Area 51 and government agents on the grassy knoll.

But those behind the 9/11 conspiracy theories aren't comics-store nerds lamenting the loss of The X-Files. In Kansas City, they include the owner of a popular theater, a dentist, and a group of conservatives that meets every week.

Mostly, truthers, as they call themselves, meet online. The Internet has become their way to spread a message they say is suppressed by the mainstream media and ignored by those who provide research funding. Of course, Matthews knows many people ignore the truth movement because it includes a whole lot of kooks posting some bizarre theories. "We have a whole society to remake," she says. "You go, 'God, people, focus.'" Matthews fights back tears in the children's section of the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library. She's surrounded by hundreds of brightly bound bedtime stories. Nearby, sunshine filters through a row of large windows.

She has short brown hair streaked with gray and piercing blue eyes that are intently focused, despite the tears. She has a silver stud in her nose and a Disney Pooh watch strapped to one wrist. She wears a baby-blue version of the shirt featured on South Park.

On this early Monday morning, she has just returned from dropping off her kids at school. Sometimes, the weight of her mission just gets to her. She's surrounded by mothers who are still oblivious to the idea that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by the U.S. government.

She explains that she began crying when she thought of the 9/11 victims: the rescue workers, the orphans, the family members of those who died.

"It is just the pain," she says, "that our society isn't even looking at what these people are living through and dying through, that we could be so callous to this depth of pain on so many levels."

The mothers circling the stacks ignore Matthews. She says she's positive that she's being watched.

"I don't have some sense that they are out to persecute truth seekers," Matthews says of the phantom G-men she thinks she's seen around town. "I think they are just doing their jobs."

Matthews wasn't always this way. She earned a psychology degree from the University of Kansas in the '80s and trained as a midwife. A conservative Christian, she voted for Bush in 2000. On 9/11, Matthews was raising her children in the small central Kansas town of Lindsborg. "I had a gradual reawakening," she says.

In November 2001, she moved to Kansas City to work as a secretary. Then she read The 9/11 Commission Report. She says the congressional document found that a large number of stock shares in United Airlines had changed hands before the attack, which shows that certain segments of big business knew to expect the attacks.

Two years later, Matthews helped found the national 9/11 Visibility Project, a group that encourages people to protest government cover-ups. It's now active in 35 cities. She organized rallies on the Plaza but realized that most people wanted to avoid the stigma that came with protest marches. A year later, she founded 911Truth.org, which serves as a networking forum, a research hub and an independent news source.

In July 2005, she organized the D.C. Emergency Truth Convergence in Washington, D.C. The conference pulled together various watchdog groups, including Project Censored and the Oklahoma City Bombing Committee. She says their cell phones didn't work at the event, their remote-control car-door openers failed and their computers crashed. "Then we realized it was all electronic jamming," she says. Returning to Kansas City, Matthews found her front door unlocked. She believes her computer was hacked.

She says she learned a month later that her house was bugged, after a friend called and left her a prank message, pretending to have been captured by G-men. "You got me! You got me!" the friend shouted into her answering machine. But after the friend hung up, the machine kept recording. Matthews says she heard two people laughing. "They said, 'Yeah, we got her. We got her,'" she says.

In September, she joined a public-records request filed by peace organizations. The groups asked the government for documents detailing government surveillance of Kansas City-area anti-war activists ("Granny the Terrorist," September 21).

After the South Park slam, Matthews received hundreds of e-mails calling her "retarded," the same word that the show's characters had used to describe the truth movement. The tone of her usual hate calls shifted. "The reaction is much stronger," she says. "It went from 'you are fucking lying' to 'you are going to burn in hell, and your children are going to burn in a fire, you fucking cunt.'"

The calls excited Matthews. They were evidence that people were taking notice - even if the attention came with threats and the occasional c-word. "It reflects people's panic," Matthews says. "People feel much more reactionary about this recently, and the ones who can't let go of their belief structure are much more desperate."

Matthews sees her role as providing a public forum for others to post theories about what happened on 9/11. "We don't want to control what people do," she says.

But that leaves users free to push any theory. Some think planes never actually hit the towers but were superimposed on newscasts. Others believe that the planes carried explosives. Some claim that aliens abducted everyone from the twin towers.

Including everyone's voice has been a liability for the fledgling movement. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, a corps of truthers rallies at the Uptown Theater. They have been directed there by a post on 911Truth.org. The event culminates a weekend of activities headlined by showings of independent films, including one that uses physics to make an argument that it's impossible for jets to have brought down the twin towers.

Outside, protesters shout and shake signs that read "9/11 was an inside job." They hand out copies of the low-budget films to commuters stuck at traffic lights.

"Steel buildings don't just fall down," shouts Ed Kendrick, a heavyset dentist with a practice on Independence Avenue. Kendrick believes that the buildings actually collapsed because of what he calls a "controlled demolition" from bombs already set inside the towers.

Inside, the lobby resembles a traveling carnival. Tables are littered with pamphlets and petitions that go as far as advocating presidential impeachment. A giant American flag dominates the faux-Mediterranean interior. The mingling conspiracy theorists, some dressed in tie-dyed clothing, refer to one another in religious terms - "brothers" or "believers" who spread "the word." In a corner of the room, a man talks about the 40 astrological signs that keep us from understanding our inner impulses. A cell-phone ring tone emits The X-Files' theme song.

Uptown Theater owner Larry Sells stands away from the crowd to monitor the action. He provided the venue free of charge. Sells has been questioning government party lines since the John F. Kennedy assassination. In the '60s, he was student body president and head of the Young Democrats at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He served as a Marine during the Vietnam War and has a black belt in karate. Sells imported custom furniture until he bought the Uptown in 1993.

For the past few months, Sells has been playing the conspiracy-theory documentary Loose Change in his lobby during concerts and events. He has handed out 1,500 copies of the movie and other 9/11-related DVDs.

To that end, Sells thinks that he has found a new way to spoon-feed his message. He recently gutted the vacant lobby space abutting the south end of his theater. Sometime next year, he hopes to open a reading salon and a themed restaurant called The Conspiracy. Plans include something of an adult arcade where visitors can try to hit a target with a vintage replica of Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle. Many of the library books will be stocked from Sells' personal 2,200-square-foot library, which spans a four-car garage inside his large home in the Valentine neighborhood.

Sells has investigated the similarities between the World Trade Center collapse and Germany's 1933 Reichstag fire. Each event empowered its country's leader to suspend civil liberties, build up a military and launch invasions. He often compares Bush with Adolf Hitler. "What we are talking about now is as bad as it ever was in Nazi Germany," he says.

At the Uptown on the 9/11 anniversary, a guy reeking of booze stumbles into the reception. Dave Nicholson, a 29-year-old server at Fred P. Ott's, has been canvassing midtown with fliers advertising a drinking book club. Standing outside trying to talk to the protesters, Nicholson grows agitated when they keep handing him "propaganda" videos. "I don't seem to be able to get anyone to talk to me," he says loudly.

Stuart Auld approaches Nicholson. Auld is a member of the Constitution & Freedom Society, a Johnson County group that opposes what it sees as a new world order. As a real-estate and insurance broker in Leawood, Auld considers himself a staunchly conservative Republican. But over the past five years, he has learned to loosen his party loyalties and standards. Nicholson might be drunk and antagonistic, but he receives an open invitation to join the rebellion nonetheless. Auld hands Nicholson a copy of 9/11 Revisited. "I bought that for you," Auld says. On a rainy autumn Wednesday night, 35-year-old Jason Littlejohn waits in a community room in the Department of Motor Vehicles building in Mission. Littlejohn runs a weekly meeting for Midwest Concerned Citizens, a conservative Christian political action group. A former Navy officer, he also is host of a weekly talk show called Lives in the Balance on KCXL 1140 in Liberty. On-air, he talks about issues such as the pending energy crisis and the need to guard the Mexican border.

He believes that the U.S. government had prior knowledge of the attack but simply allowed it to happen. "As far as direct complicity, I don't think the proof is there," he says. Still, he's interested in an independent investigation of 9/11. And he says he's concerned about the legislation meant to keep us safe that tramples civil liberties.

"Our country is moving in a certain direction that is beneficial to a handful of people but detrimental to our country and other countries around the world," Littlejohn says. He has slicked-back hair and broad shoulders. As usual, he wears a pair of tinted aviator shades, though he is indoors and it's well after dark. "I'm trying to create more of a broad base from which I can project this message."

Littlejohn spent the anniversary of 9/11 at the Uptown but, unlike the lefties, shares ideals with the far right. At this Midwest Concerned Citizens meeting, it's clear that the truth movement spans both sides of the aisle.

"A lot of Christians believe that there are very powerful forces that are in control of government around the world," he says. "It was foretold in the Bible. If you actually look at what's been said, as opposed to what's occurring, you can draw some parallels that are rather convincing."

Finally, Littlejohn opts to start the meeting. He expected about a dozen people tonight, but the rain has kept away all but four believers: 79-year-old retiree Esther Miller, 74-year-old part-time file clerk Shirley Mignon, and Roger and Judy Tucker. Roger is 67 and retired. Judy is 50 and between jobs.

The crew skips the usual pledge of allegiance and gathers in a semicircle of chairs. A few large tables are stacked with file folders and satchels filled with photocopied news clippings with blaring headlines ("Fatal Vision - The Deeper Evil Behind the Detainee Bill," "The New World Disorder: 'Shadow' Agency to Issue N. American Border Pass").

"What will happen is, a lot of these articles will come out in newspapers, but when you go back to look for them, they will be gone," Littlejohn says. He stores thousands of duplicated pages at his home in Lawrence.

The five take turns reading long passages from the articles, shuffling their stacks between turns. Sometimes, two people read over each other.

"I'm sure of this," Littlejohn tells the group. "I know what's coming. See, 9/11 was bad. But what's coming out is a whole lot worse."

He asks to borrow Mignon's bottled water. She nods, and he takes it. Everyone in the room looks excited. They've seen him do this before. Littlejohn places the bottle in front of him like a prop. "In the Bible, it says there will come a time when no one will be able to buy or sell something unless it has the mark of the beast," he says, paraphrasing Revelations 13:17.

"The mark of the beast," Mignon echoes.

Littlejohn turns the bottle until he can see its bar code. He says the symbol's longer lines represent the sign of the devil. "Six, six, six," he says.

"If we don't do something," Littlejohn continues, "our way of life as we know it could come to an end."

As usual, they've gotten off the subject of 9/11. Miller adds that three sixes occur in a congressional bill limiting the rights of prison detainees. Everyone agrees that this, too, might be a sign of the coming apocalypse. Kendrick thinks that the woman who enters his dental office on a cool Friday afternoon might be a closet truth-movement sympathizer. She has arrived early for a regular tooth cleaning, and Kendrick has invited her back to his small office to share the word.

The woman faces a screen glowing with a PowerPoint presentation. Kendrick used this for a Communiversity class he taught at UMKC a few weeks ago, "9/11, an Inside Job." The daylong seminar drew 40 people. He reaches over his patient to click the mouse, and President Bush appears on the screen, repeating the word terrorism over and over during various speeches. Kendrick explains that he uses this footage to desensitize his audience to the hot-button words that the Bush administration uses to manipulate Americans.

Kendrick, dressed in brown scrubs, a pair of magnifying goggles around his neck, flips through a series of slides depicting national tragedies that he believes were acts of "state-sponsored terrorism": Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing.

When an image of the collapsing World Trade Center appears on the screen, he points to the "squibs" - signs of controlled demolition - of air blasting out of the sides of the buildings.

The 50-something woman stares, slack-jawed, at the computer. She's a nurse at a local hospital. She has tousled hair and wears thick glasses and a rainbow-colored shirt that clashes with her red slippers.

"Yeah, I'm trying to think," she says. She looks around the room. It's filled with anti-Bush magnets and dental X-rays. Four spools of blank CDs await Kendrick's truth-movement videos and PowerPoint presentation, which he will pass out to patients.

"So what's the purpose? Just for evil?" she asks.

"What it's about is control," he says.

A hygienist in a white coat arrives outside his door with a noticeable sigh. "Excuse me, I need my patient," she tells Kendrick.

Kendrick hands the patient a copy of the two videos, "9/11 Revisited" and "Terrorstorm," and a six-page handout listing 14 parallels between fascism and the Bush administration. So far, he has handed out nearly 500 CDs.

When everyone leaves the room, he becomes somber. "We don't have much time," he says. "I can't help but wonder whether there may be another horrific event."

Kendrick knows that personally delivering his message to patients will get the word only so far. Unlike most people in the movement, he has been trying to find a way to reach people who aren't already inclined to agree. His plan: Hit the streets to find them. Standing at the entrance to the UMKC Student Center, Kendrick looks like a desert commando. He's clad in a beige sweat suit with a canvas vest, and he carries an oversized backpack. His beard is trimmed, and he has a sharp flattop.

To talk to students in the cafeteria, he must get past the food-court manager, a Hispanic guy in a blue polo shirt who stands guard at the cash register. Kendrick greets the manager and launches into his canned speech about how the World Trade Center collapsed by demolition.

The manager cuts him off. "I believe it. I very much believe it," the manager says earnestly. The man steps aside to grant Kendrick entrance.

Kendrick approaches a girl eating a fruit salad by herself. She wears diamond earrings and a glittery barrette in her hair. He asks her if he can talk politics.

"I know nothing about politics," she says dismissively.

Kendrick asks her a series of questions anyway. "How many buildings came down on 9/11?"

"Two," she says.

"It was three. I want to give you this." He slips her a CD of his PowerPoint presentation, like a consolation prize.

"Did you know that a third building came down by controlled demolition?"

Finally, she cuts him off. "Thank you," she answers flatly. "It was informative."

The next table is occupied by a trio of chemistry students. Kendrick introduces himself and slaps down his CD. He waves his dentist's clipboard up and down to demonstrate how the towers fell.

Kendrick repeats the words terrorism and 9/11 over and over, imitating the slides in his PowerPoint presentation. "That has become this administration's mantra," he says.

Kendrick's last stop is a table with two members of the UMKC women's basketball team, one blond and the other brunette. The blonde tells him that she plans to be a history teacher. The brunette wants to be a broadcast journalist.

"People in the towers were murdered," he tells them.

"I've never heard this before. This is new to me," the brunette says. She takes a long sip of soda.

He says that just days before the towers fell, they had been leased by Larry Silverstein, a businessman who took out a huge insurance policy on them. He says President Bush's brother Marvin was a principal at Securacom, the agency in charge of security at the World Trade Center, Dulles Airport and United Airlines.

The blonde stops him. The president's brother -she asks, "That guy in Florida?"

He adds that he believes Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered Flight 93 shot down.

The brunette, too, has a question: "Who is Donald Rumsfeld?"

After his speech, the students gladly accept Kendrick's CD and business cards, which he asks them to give to their professors. "Tell them there's this crazy dentist," he says, "who wants to stir up campus riots."

The young women tell him that they totally sympathize. They'd join the truth movement, they say, if it wasn't for their constant basketball practices.

(1) During Eisenhower administration in the fifties U-2 Flights had raised the suspicions about the Dimona facility in the Negev Desert, and sought explanation from David Ben Gurion, and it was described as a Textile Factory, which contradicted the photographs taken by this spy plane. After JFK became President, these facts came to his attention, and he wanted to confront David Ben Gurion with those pictures and perhaps disclose its real purpose in a Press Conference.


(2) In 1953, Eisenhower to sften the impact of Atomic Bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, floated the idea of Atoms for Peace, and in order to popularize the use of Nuclear Energy, Atoms for Peace Exhibitions were sent to the develioping world to promote generation of electrical power from Atomic energy, and U.S. after signing the Baghdad Pact (aka CENTO Teaty with Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan) it was decided to set up a Research Reactor in Baghdad for cooperative research in nuclear physics, chemistry, medicine, metallurgy, and agricultire, for these four countries. Fearing that perhaps some of these countries might eventually acquire enough knowledge that one day they might pursue nuclear weapons, it was decided by the Zionists to stall such efforts, and his assassination was engineered based on these two factors.


This hypothesis is corraborated by not only many assassinations carried out by Israel relaed to acquisition of nuclear knowhow by the Irais and others, but also expressed by Victor Ostrovsky in his second book "The Other Side of Deception," where ghe devotes Chapter 30, to tell the bizarre story of how the right wing Mossad opperatives had hatched another plot to assassinate George H. W. Bush during 1991 Madrid Peace Talks, and someone leaked this plot to him and it was thwarted with the help of Congreesman McCloskey and secret services in time.
Here are some Historical facts and references:

December 5, 1941: "Manhattan Project" to build Atomic Bomb approved by President Roosevelt came into existence.

1944-1950: Julius Rosenburg, his wife Ethel Rosenberg, Martin Sobel, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, and Dr. Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (all Zionist/Communists) passed the secrets of U.S. Atomic Bomb to Soviet Russia and they were the first nuclear proliferators in the 20th Century.

1945, August 6. US dropped first Atomic Bomb at Hiroshima, Japan killing 75,000.

1945, August 9. US dropped second Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing 40,000.

- In an article published in "The World and I" mid eighties, C.P. Snow credited the development of Atomic weapons to four Hungarian/Czech/Polish Jews: Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Stanislaw Ulam, and Edward Teller, which changed the world forver. .

1953. President Eisenhower proclaimed a program "ATOMS FOR PEACE."

1968. "Operation Uranium Ship," (aka Plumbat Affair). Israel hijacked a German freighter, manifested for Genoa, which disappeared along with its cargo of some 200 tons of Uranium Oxide. When the freighter re-appeared in Turkish port (Cypress), the cargo was missing, as it had been transferred to an Israeli ship and taken to Haifa. [Reference #

1969, September. Golda Meir visits Richard Nixon, and under the persuation of Henry Kissinger, a top-secret document of understanding between Israel& US, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Test," was signed not known to too many people other that Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird and his Deputy, David Packard. Since that time no one ever dared to mention about this secret pact.

1974. India explodes her first bomb, dubbed as "The Smiling Buddha."

1974, Nov. 13. Karen Silkwood (Feb 19, 1946 to November 13, 1974), killed in a hit an run accident, while she was on her way to deliver a brown manila folder containing information regarding about 8,000 lbs of missing Plutonium from the Cimmaron Plant of Kerr-McGee Corporation's Plutonium processing plant, near Oklahoma City, OK. Ref. #

1977-78. NUMEC Plant, Apollo, PA reported to have missing about 572 lbs of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). FBI investigation of its Manager, Dr. Zalman M. Shapiro, curtailed by Presidentail orders, and sealed under "Top Classified" material, not to be seen by anyone again. Zalman Shapiro was fined $929,000, but no one knows if the fine was paid. [Ref. # See

1979, April 6. Mossad operatives blow up the core of a reactor under construction for Iraq at a nuclear plant located in Le Seyne-sur-Mer, nearToulon, France.

1980, June 14. Dr. Yahya el-Meshad brutally assassinated by Mossad through enticement of a prostitute Marie Clause Megal at Meridien hotel outside of Paris. [Ref. #]

1979, September 22. VELA satellite records signature of Israeli/South-African nuclear explosion in Atlantic ocean south-west of the coast of South Africa.

1980, July 12. Megal killed by Mossad through a hit and run accident in Paris.

[Reef #]

1981, June 7. Israeli Air Force F-16's bomb and destroy Iraq's Osirak reactor built outside of Baghdad, upon the directives of Menachem Begin. [Ref.#]

1981, June 8. At 15:30, Menachem Begin announces his act of barbarism on Kol Israel as to how IAF bombed and destroyed this reactor. [Ref #]

1981. Two NYT journalists, Steven Weissman and Herbert Krosney published the book "THE ISLAMIC BOMB [Ref # ] The six chapters in this book were devoted to (1) destruction of Osirak reactor near Baghdad, (2) Col. Qaddafi's nuclear ambitions, (3) India's "Smiling Buddha", (4) Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan, (5) Iraq's desire to become nuclear, and (6) the threat of nuclear holocaust.

We have to remember two important threats made in this book:

1. Page 163: Threat by Henry Kissinger to Z. A. Bhutto: "Stop Chashma or we will make a horrible example of you," and it was carried out. Lately, an ex-US-Ambassador to India disclosed that blowing up of Gen. Zia's plane was carried out by Israel.

2. Page 205: Threat by a Zionist organization calling itself "League for Protecting the Sub Continent (LPSC)." "We will not hesitate to use violent means to make those responsible for nuclear arms proliferation understand the seriousness of their actions. We believe it better to eliminate a feww individuals and destroy a few factories rather than risk the wholsale massacre of millions of human beings." This threat is in the process of execution: destruction of Iraq, next Iran (as predicted by Caspar Weinberger and Maragaret Thatcher in their book "The Next War"), and perhaps Pakistan as shown above by Curren and Karber. The use of "tactical Deep Earth Penetrating" nuclear devices have been a part of testing which very likely resulted the Psunami and the Earth-quake in Northern Pakistan [Ref. Los Alamos scientists upset about testing if the U.S. ever signed CTBT, see The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists www.thebulletin.org (archives:

1985, November 21, Jonathan Jay Pollard and his wife arrested for passing on tons of photocopies of secret intelligence documents from Naval Intelligence Center to Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. His contacts were Rafi Etan (Israel's master spy and Pollard's handler and IAF's Colonel Aviem Sella stationed at Ramon air base in the Negev Desert). The data included information on Soviet submarines, Pakistan and Iran's nuclear activities.

1985. A plan to Dismember Pakistan [Ref # ] published a scenario of the future plan regarding nuclear program and dismemberment of Pakistan. On page 103, under the caption of "Scenario of the future," they published graphic maps to show the scenario of the future in which India with the help from Israel would strike on Pakistan's nuclear facilities. That's why Bush's recent promise to build strategic relationship with India is to use India to make it a reality.

1986, Feb. 28. Olaf Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden mysteriously assassinated by a Mossad gunman for befriending Yasser Arafat and siding with Palestinian cause. [Ref. #]

1986, September 30. Mossad hijacks Mordechai Vanunu at Rome Airport at 21:00 arriving by British Airways flight 504, and kidnap him to Israel, where he spends 14 years in solitary confinement for disclosing the real nature of Dimona ­ the Bomb factory for Israel.

1986, October 5. Sunday Times, London, publishes the information given to them by Mordechai Vanunu, after verification to be authentic photographs.

1990, March 22. Dr. Gerald Bull, was mercilessly killed with five bullets in his head, neck and back, in front of his apartment in Brussells for helping build the Super-gun for Iraq.

1992, July: Physics Today, "Iraq's Secret Nuclear Program," by Jay C. Davis, and David A. Kay. This article describes how the UNSCOM inspectors found and destroyed more than 99% of the items which could be used in Iraq's pursuit for nuclear weapons.

1991, July. Scientific American Magazine: Has a page describing the news blackout for scientists in obtaining the Weather Data for a week coming from NOAA Satellites processing Center in Denver, CO. It was because the U.S. did not want the world to know about the fires set to Kuwaiti oil fields. In fact it was the work of Allied troops but blamed on Kuwaiti troops of Saddam Hussein.

1992, Dec. 7. Dr. Muayad Al-Janabi(52) brutally assassinated by Mossad's hail of bullets in front of his wife and children, while he was parking his car in Amman, Jordan, where he had gone to get Visa for UK.

1998. Both India and Pakistan perform nuke tests.

1994, May, 25. 103rd Congress/2nd Session: Senate,"US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and Their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War." A Report of Chairman Donald M. Reigle, Jr., and Ranking Member Alfonse D'Amato, of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with respect to Export Administration, United States Sernate. Dated May 25, 1994.

2001. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage visits ISI Director Gen. Mahmood on 9/11/01 and the next day, and offers him a choice (aka Threat), "Help us and breathe in the 21st Century along with international community or be prepared to live in the tone Age. [Ref. Deutsche Presse-Agnetur, 912/01 and L A Weekly, 11/9/01]

2001. Mid-September. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, a few days after 9/11: members of elite counter terrorism unit Sayeret Matkal arrive in the U.S. and begin training with U.S. Special Forces in a secret location. The two groups are developing contingency plans to attack Pakistan's military bases and remove its nuclear weapons if the Pakistani government or the nuclear weapons fall into the wrong hands {Ref. New Yorker, 10/29/01. There may have been threats to enact this plan on Sept. 13, 2001. The Japan Times later notes that this "threat to divest Pakistan of its 'crown jewels' was clearly used by the U.S. first to force Musharraf to support its military campaign in Afghanistan, and then to warn would-be coup plotters against Musharraf." [Japan Times 11/10/01]

2002, Arch/April. Article "It's seven minutes to midnight, from the Board of Directors," March/April 2002, pp. 4-7, Vol. 58, No. 2, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In this article the authors show the displeasure of Los Alamos Laboratory's weapons designers that if the U.S. signed the CTBT, it would tie their hands to test the new tactical nukes on the drawing board.

2004, April 21. Vanunu released after spending 14 years in Eshkelon jail for telling the world about the true nature of Dimona.

2005, Feb. 11. Sanger et al., a Full page article describing the sting operation to expose Abdul Qadeer Khan and his network for nuclear proliferation.

2005, Feb. 14. TIME has picture of Abdul Qadeer Khan on its front cover, with the caption: "The Merchant of Menace" Exclusive: How A Q Khan became the world's most dangerous Nuclear Trafficker," page 22-31, by Bill Powell Tim McGirk/Islamabad, Ghulam Hasnain Karachi and Syed Talat Hussain inIslamabad.

2006, April 10. This evening on PBS-News Hour Program, the war monger Richard Perle (former Pentagon official) and Morton Halperin (former Reagan Administration's NSC & State Department official , and Clinton admin.) left no doubt in any-one's mind that the use of tactical nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out in the case of Iran.

Bibliography:

- For Fear of Jews, by Stan Rittenhouse, The Exhorters Press, Vienna, VA 1982. ISBN 0-9609260-0-3.

The Pledge, by Leonard Slater, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1970. SBN 671-20465-3.

- The Nuclear Barrons: The inside story of how they created our nuclear nightmare, by Peter Pringle & James Spigelman, Sphere Boooks Limited,London, UK 1982. Also published in USA by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1981. ISBN 0-7221-7029-7.

- The Islamic Bomb: The Nuclear Threat to Israel and the Middle East," by Steven Weissman and Herbert Krosney, published by NYT/Times Books, New York 1981. ISBN 0-8129-0978-X.

- Israel And The Bomb, by Avner Cohen, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998. ISBN 0-231-10482-0.

- India's Nuclear Programme, by Shamsa Nawaz, Progressive Publishers, Zaildar Park, Lahore, Pakistan 1985.

- Bullseye One Reactor: The Story of Israel's bold surprise air attack that destroyed Iraq's nuclear bomb facility, by Dan McKinnon, House of Hits Publishing, San Diego, CA 1987. ISBN 0-941437-07-8.

- First Strike: The Excusive Story of How Israel Foiled Iraq's Attem,pt to Get the Bomb, by Shlomo Nakdimon ­ Translator Peretz Kidron, Summiot Books, New York 1987. ISBN 0-671-63871-8.

- Dimona ­ The Third Temple? The Story Behind The Vanunu Revelation, by Mark Gaffney, Amana Books, Brattleboro, Vermont. 1989. ISBN 0-915597-77-2.

- Who Killed Karen Silkwood? By Howard Kohn, Summit Books, New York 1981. ISBN 0-671-43654-6 (pbk).

- SILKWOOD, [Hollywood Movie/Video: Starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Sher. Produced by Mile Nicjols and Michael Hausman, Directed by Mike Nichols. Summa Video # 41062, Stamford, CT 1983, 1995. ISBN 1-56949-151-8.

- Critical Mass, by Jacque Srouji, Aurora Publishers, Inc., Nashville, London 1977. [Chapter 13: "Silkwood, Karen Gay: Former Kerr-McGee Employee, pages 222 ­ 260]

- Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S-Israeli Covert Relationship, by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Chapter 4 ­ Sword of Democles, pages 71-97, Harper Collins Publishers, New York 1990. ISBN 0-96-01644-1.

- Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with Militant Israel, by Stephen Green, William Morrow and Company, New York 1984. ISBN 0-688-02643-5.

- Operation Uranium Ship, (aka Plumbat Affair), by Dennis Eisenberg and Eli Landau, Signet Book/New American Library, New York 1978.

- Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community, by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston/London/Melbourne. 1990. ISBN 0-395-47102. (pbk).

- Territory of Lies: The Fascinating Story of Israel's All-American Spy, - The Rise, Fall and Betrayal of Jonathan Jay Pollard, " by Wolf Blitzer, Harper Paperbacks, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York 1990. ISBN 0-06-100024-8 (pbk).

- By Way of Deception, by Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy,St. Martin's Press, New York 1990. ISBN 0-312-05613-3. (also in Paperback)

- The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes The Mossad's Secret Agenda," by Victor Ovstrovsky, Harper Collins Publishers, New York 1994. ISBN 0-06-017635-0. [Plot to assassinate Papa Bush in 1991 during Madrid Peace Talks. Chapter 30, pages 277 ­ 283].

- Depleted Uranium, Metal of Dishonor: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers & Civilians with DU Weapons, by Helen Caldicott, Michio Kaku, Ramsey Clark et al., International Action Center, New York 1999. ISBN 0-9656916-0-8.

- The Longest War ­ Israel in Lebanon, by Jacobo Timmerman, Vintage Books, Random House, New York 1982. ISBN 0-394-71471-7.

- Going All The Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, And The War in Lebanon, by Jonthan C. Randal, Vintage Books, Random House, New York1983. ISBN 0-394-72359-7.

- Israel's Secret Wars: A History of (Israel's Intelligence Services, by Ian Black and Benny Morris, Grove Weidenfeld, New York 1991. ISBN 0-8021-3286-3 (pbk).

- Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East in 1967, by Donald Neff, Amana Books, Brattleboro, VT 1988. ISBN 0-915597-57-8. (pbk).

- Enemies Of The State: Mary Surrat, Albert Fall, Al Capone and The Rosenbergs, by Francis X. Busch, Signet Books, # P2179., The New American Library, New York 1954 & 1962.

- Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War, by Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, St. Martin's Press, New York 1991. ISBN 0-312-06530-2 (pbk).

- The 1986 Jewish Directory & Almanac, compiled by Ivan L. Tillem, published by Pacific Press Inc. New York 1985 ISBN 0-915399-02-4.

- They Dare to Speak Out ­ People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, by Paul Findley (A 22 Year, US Congressman from Illinois), Lawrence Hill & Company, Westport, CT 1985. ISBN 0-88208-180-2.

- Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the FACTS about the U.S-Israeli Relationship," Paul Findley (a former US Congressman from Illinois), Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, IL 1993. ISBN 1-55652-182-0. (pbk).

- Prophecy and Politics: The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the Christian Right, by Grace Halsell, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, IL 1986. ISBN 1-55652-054-9.

- The Armageddon Network, by Michael Saba, Amana Books, Vermont 1984. ISBN 0-915597-07-1.

- Stealth PACs: Lobbying Congress For Control of U.S. Middle East Policy, by Richard H. Curtiss, American Educational Trust, Washington, DC 1990 & 1991. ISBN 0-937165-04-2.

- New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Socities, by William T. Still, Huntington House Publishers, Lafayette, Louisiana. 1990. ISBN 0-910311-64-1

The New World Order: A Reality You Cannot Afford To Ignore. A Book You Cannot Afford to Miss, by Pat Robertson, Word Publishing,Thomas Nelson Publishers Dallas/London/Vancouver/Melbourne, 1991. ISBN0-8499-3394-3. (pbk)

- "NUCLEAR TERRORISM: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe," by Graham Allison, Owl Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York 2004. ISBN 0-8050-7852-5.

Graham Allison is the founding Dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He has done a superb job of creating hypothetical scenario involving Pakistani scientists like Bashiruddin Mahmood to scare Americans or Western readers about the invented "Suitcase Bomb." He tends to forget that the long term cancer (lasting for 20 billion years)and other related health effects in Iraq, Arabia, Kuwait, Balkans, Afghanistan, etc. by using several thousand tons of Depleted Uranium munitions is far worse than the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. But by drawing up fabricated stories and hypothetical possibilities he has prepared a great script for a Hollywood Horror movie (like the China Syndrome) and instilling the fear in the minds of Western readers that Muslims are the most dangerous people on this planet pursuing the nuclear weapons as stated in Steven Weissman and Herbert Krosney's book "The ISLAMIC BOMB: The Threat to Israel and to the Middle East," NYT/Times Books, New York 1981. The message conveyed in this book is that only Muslims can commit such nuclear terror and pose a threat to the Western Civilization, an extension of "Clash of Civilizations" by Samuel Huntington.

ARTICLES FROM MAGAZINES and JOURNALS:

- Afghanistan's Ordeal Puts a Region At Risk, by James B. Curren and Phillip A. Karber,in Armed Forces JOURNAL International, pages 78-105, March 1985. In this article the two intelligence analysts (Curren and Karber) discuss "Dismemberment of Pakistan (pages 100 -105) under a heading: "Scenario of the Future." With the help of graphic maps or diagrams:

1. An Unresolved Conflict: India vs. Pakistan shown with three graphic maps

Kashmir 1947-48 Indo-Pakistan War 1965 Bangladesh War 1971

Giving brief details of each event.

2. Nuclearization of the Region: Comparing Pakistan with Iraq and India,

regarding trained scientists, universities with nuclear instruction,

nuclear research centers, Uranium resources, Inventories of Plutonium and

highly enriched Uranium, Enrichment capacity: Research reactors

(large),Power reactors (heavy water type and light-water type);

reprocessing capability, and Heavy-water capability.

Sources: Analysis of Six Issues About Nuclear Capabilities of India, Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan, Congressional Research Service for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, January 1982; Leonard S. Specter, Nuclear Proliferation Today, Ballinger, 1984 (Note: There is no mention of Israel).

3. A Scenario of the Future?

a. Graphic Map depicting Indo-Soviet (or American)Air Offensive:

* Pre-emptive attacks on Pakistan's major air-bases

* Soviet (or American) bombing of refugee camps and aitr assault seizure of key passes.

* Indian Strikes on Pakistani nuclear facilities

* Soviet (or American) interdiction of Karakoram highway

b. Second Graphic map showing Ground Campaign for the Dismemberment of Pakistan

* Creation of independent "Peoples Republic of Baluchistan" with American Naval Base and Force Deployment Treaty

* Absorption of northwest tribal territories into Afghanistan

* Absorption of West Kashmir into India

* Administration of Sind/Punjab autonomous zone by India.

Note: This plan was published in 1985 blaming Russia, which has been replaced by USA as the occupying power in Afghanistan. Slowly but steadily conditions are being created to achieve the goals specified in this article.

Compiled by Bashir A. Syed

Following his preliminary identifications, O'Sullivan presented the video images to more authoritative sources, men who knew the three agents personally. While there was a slender degree of uncertainty (circa 5-10%) the men in the videos were positively identified as the former CIA agents:

* David Sanchez Morales;
* Gordon Campbell and
* George Joannides

Morales was known to be involved in coups d'états throughout Latin America and he had a reputation of a dangerous man with an explosive temper who was capable of violence. To entertain his friends, Morales would tell stories about his involvement in the killing and capture of Che Guevara, coups in Latin America and other nefarious covert activities.

Two of the CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel: Morales and Joannides are now dead, while the whereabouts of the third, Campbell, are presently unknown.

O'Sullivan interviewed Bradley Ayers, U.S. Army Captain retired, who had been stationed at JM-Wave, the Miami base for the CIA. In 1963, David Morales was the Chief of Operations at JM-Wave. Ayers and Morales trained Cuban exiles in the arts of sabotage to be deployed in covert action against the regime of Fidel Castro. On camera, Ayers identified Morales and Campbell with what he described as 95% accuracy. Following that positive identification, Ayers introduced O'Sullivan to David Rabern, a freelance mercenary who had been contracted by the CIA to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Rabern had been in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel on the fateful night in 1968.

While Rabern did not know Morales and Campbell by name, he had noticed them talking to each other in the hotel lobby prior to the assassination. Earlier in the same year, Rabern had noticed Campbell in and around several police stations. If true, this report is rather odd, considering that the CIA has no jurisdiction on U.S. soil. Another bizarre fact: Morales was officially stationed in Laos in 1968.

O'Sullivan found video images of Campbell with another figure who has now been identified as George Joannides, a pivotal figure in the CIA and the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

Joannides had been the Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations at JM-Wave. He had retired from his CIA post, but in 1978 he returned to active duty, as it were, as the liaison between the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) during its re-investigation of the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King.

Puzzling, perplexing and problematic, Joannides failed to inform his colleagues at the HSCA that he had ever worked at JM-Wave. This is a troubling enigma, for it suggests that he intended to maintain his covert identity-a fact that would compromise his involvement in the HSCA and jeopardize the entire congressional investigation.

A former researcher with the HSCA, Ed Lopez, identified Joannides as the person in the Ambassador Hotel video with what he described on camera as 99% accuracy. More: Lopez recalled Joannides' obstructive practice of denying the HSCA access to crucial documents in the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

O'Sullivan did not stop there. Moving to Washington, he met Wayne Smith, a veteran State Department official who worked with Morales at the US embassy in Havana in the final year of the Batista regime through the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and 1960. When O'Sullivan asked him to respond to the Ambassador Hotel video, Smith immediately stated, "That's him, that's Morales." From a conversation in 1975, Smith recalled that Morales stated that JFK deserved to be assassinated. From Smith's testimony, O'Sullivan learned that Morales "hated the Kennedys"-because of their cancelling the air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

In a hotel near the CIA headquarters (now named the George H. W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence) in Langley, Virginia, O'Sullivan met with a former agent, Tom Clines who said that all of the men in the Ambassador Hotel videos had been misidentified as former CIA agents. When O'Sullivan informed him that Ayers and Smith had positively identified the men as Morales, Campbell and Joannides, Clines became "disturbed," and he refused to go on camera for the interview.

Following his interview of Clines, senior journalists in Washington advised O'Sullivan to take his testimony with a grain of salt as he was known to "blow smoke" deliberately as a routine function to dissemble facts for the press and public.

Gaeton Fonzi was the lead investigator of the HSCA investigation of the assassination of JFK. In his book, The Last Investigation, Fonzi reported the testimony of Bob Walton, a man who met Morales and discussed JFK with him. According to Fonzi's account, Morales asserted his direct involvement in the assassination of JFK as revenge for the Bay of Pigs.

On the Watergate tapes, Richard Nixon always referred to the assassination of JFK as "the Bay of Pigs thing." During Eisenhower's presidency, Nixon served as the White House liason with the CIA. As Vice-President, Nixon worked directly with Allen Dulles and other senior staff at the CIA on the planning of the Bay of Pigs operation. It should be noted that George H. W. Bush has been known to have been integral to the Bay of Pigs operation since the publication of the enormously popular bestselling book of 1991, Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane.

During his campaign for the presidency in 1960, Nixon was shocked that JFK made public the contents of his top-secret intelligence briefings-and had moved to Nixon's right to advocate overt military intervention against Cuba. The CIA planned to overthrow Castro in an invasion manned with exiled Cubans trained by the staff at JM-Wave. From our perspective today, it is perfectly understandable why JFK would have been compelled to make this policy position public in his presidential campaign. Had he not done so, JFK could have been tarnished with a charge of being "weak on communism," by Nixon, who had been one of the leading witch-hunters of the disgraceful McCarthy Era.

Upon his inauguration as president, JFK continued to support the plans to attack Cuba with the force of exiled Cubans-a project that Nixon had nurtured, supported and managed for the Eisenhower White House. However, JFK decided to withhold U.S. air support in order to maintain an arm's length separation from the Cuban invasion.

The Bay of Pigs became a fiasco. JFK accepted the blame, and he immediately ordered a thorough-going reorganization of the CIA. A few months later, Allen Dulles, who had been a free-wheeling manufacturer of coups d'états while serving as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), 'retired' after a formal conversation with JFK. JFK promptly named a new director, and John McCone, who had been the director of the Atomic Energy Commission, soon took Dulles's place as DCI.

JFK's reorientation of the CIA did not stop there. Recognizing that the agency's mission to wage a covert Cold War was dangerously counterproductive, JFK ordered the CIA to make nuclear non-proliferation its top priority. Eventually, JFK would successfully negotiate the Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khruschev in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis-by far the most significant strategic confrontation of the entire Cold War.

While rogue elements in the U.S. intelligence community have long been suspected of meddling in his assassination and those of his brother and Martin Luther King, Jr., Shane O'Sullivan's identification of three CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination of RFK suggests strongly that the case should be reopened. The third agent in the Ambassador Hotel, George Joannides, now appears to have been engaged in a sabotage mission during the HSCA investigation of JFK's assassination.

The assassination of JFK would seem to be an eternal mystery that has long since passed into the realm of myth; however, that is not the case for today; technology has provided a wealth of new tools with which to examine evidence in criminal cases-even cold cases over forty years old.

While O'Sullivan is calling for a re-opening of the case of RFK, it is only reasonable to re-open JFK's case, as well.

In 1968, I was in my final year at the University of North Carolina. From my meeting with a close associate of RFK, I worked as a college and university organizer in his presidential campaign. At the time of his assassination, RFK was the leading candidate for the presidency-far ahead of his nearest rival in the polls and definitely on track to win the November election.

Seeing the BBC broadcast of videotape evidence of three unassigned CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom at the time of RFK's assassination shocked me. The federal government, Congress and the criminal justice system of the United States failed to protect the president of the United States and its leading presidential candidates. Worse. They have failed to tell the truth to the American people.

Today, on the anniversary of one of the most tragic dates in American history-I propose that the cases of RFK and JFK should be re-opened in either the 110th or the 111th Congress.

We must follow the evidence exhaustively and relentlessly, leaving no stone unturned and no document unexamined regardless of its current status: Sensitive; Secret, Top Secret or Above Top Secret. To do any less would be to become complicit in the lies and cover-ups that have denied the American people of the truth.

Michael Carmichael is a historian and author based in Oxford, England, UK. He is the founder and chief executive officer of planetarymovement.org. This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author. The complete illustrated and referenced article "Death of a Presidency" by Michael Carmichael is online here.

In less paranoid times, Graham's comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways - ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.

Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by "news informers" in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com "Upside-Down Media" or below.]

Detention Centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs," KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]

Later, the New York Times reported that "KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." [Feb. 4, 2006]

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton's reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.

"It's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.

Less attention centered on the phrase "rapid development of new programs" and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these "new programs" might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.

Scott speculated that the "detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law." He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 "readiness exercise," which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 "refugees," in the event of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States.

Farrell pointed out that because "another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge" of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Labor Camps

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program "provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations."

The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a "rapid action revision" on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a "template for developing agreements" between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

On its face, the Army's labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to "establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him" and "make available ... the services of United States prisoners" to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

Though the timing of the document's posting - within the past few weeks -may just be a coincidence, the reference to a "rapid action revision" and the KBR contract's contemplation of "rapid development of new programs" have raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.

These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in "counter-terrorism" operations inside the United States.

Pentagon Surveillance

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act's prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.

The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States. [Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.

The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don't seem to think that new laws are even necessary.

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2006, the U.S. Army's top intelligence officer wrote, "Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information."

Drawing a distinction between "collecting" information and "receiving" information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that "MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime." [See CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2006]

This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn't discuss the details without breaking classification laws.

Tice added that the "special access" surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. [UPI, Feb. 14, 2006]

With this expanded surveillance, the government's list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center's central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.

Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA's domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, "Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA."

Homeland Defense

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush's definitions for words like terrorist "affiliates," used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees "have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program."

Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees "have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place."

The combination of the Bush administration's expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.

A Defense Department document, entitled the "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support," has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an "active, layered defense" both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to "transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the ... U.S. homeland."

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to "defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States." The plan "maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us."

But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges "threats" and who falls under the category "those who would harm us." A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a "threat."

The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.

A secret Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap," approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "full spectrum" information operations and notes that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa."

"PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices."

It calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.

Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between "collecting" and "receiving" intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally "targeted," any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The "roadmap" speaks of "fighting the net," and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of "an enemy weapons system."

In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration's perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

"Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place," Rumsfeld said.

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched "heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans," reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.

Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as "some of the most feared professional killers in the world," Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater's presence in New Orleans "raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here."

U.S. Battlefield

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.

"The President decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian President," wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. "He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general."

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what's in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an "enemy combatant" and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.

But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration's arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.

This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.

"In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield," Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]

Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his "plenary" - or unlimited - powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.

As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, "Can it be true that any President really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is 'yes,' then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?"

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the "rapid development of new programs," which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.

Such tactics have been deployed to distressing effect by a group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, or SHAC, which has targeted the animal testing firm Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in both the UK and US. British law has already been amended to give police more powers to deal with intimidation by animal rights activists.

The US arm of SHAC suffered a serious blow in March when six members were convicted in a New Jersey court for inciting threats and harassment against HLS staff and shareholders. One has been in jail since early October; the remaining five began their sentences last week.

However, obtaining these convictions required an extraordinary effort by the New Jersey authorities to demonstrate breaches of existing laws. "Many US attorneys would choose not to go to that trouble," claims Frankie Trull of the Foundation for Biomedical Research in Washington DC, who hopes the new law will make prosecutors' jobs easier. "Now it needs to be implemented," she says.

From issue 2579 of New Scientist magazine, 24 November 2006, page 6