Unidentified Al Qaeda Leader Targeted in Missile Strike

Update: The killed Al Qaeda leader was reportedly Abu Laith al-Libi. Al-Libi is the fourth picture on these terrorist playing cards.

ABC News (1-30-08) reports:

Pakistani intelligence sources say they believe a "high-value" al Qaeda target was killed in a missile strike yesterday in the country's tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

U.S. officials said there was no indication that the target was Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al Zawahri, but one senior official told ABCNews.com the strike was aimed at one particular figure.

"We don't know whether we got him yet, we are sorting through it," the official said, indicating the intended target was a top leader of the terror group.

...Both the Pakistani military and the CIA have used missile attacks in the past to target top al Qaeda leaders.

The CIA uses missiles attached to the unmanned Predator aircraft which fly over Pakistani airspace with tacit Pakistani government approval. (Full text).

Grandma Gildersleeve's Words Rise from Her Grave and Give the Lie to Ward Churchill and Russell Means!

Banquo's Ghost Confronts MacBeth with his murders and usurpation of power.

"[AIM] took complete control of the telephone service and local residents were not permitted to answer any of the phones. When my phone would ring, an armed guard would immediately answer the phone and direct the call over to the trailer house where Banks, Means, and Bellecourt were located..." Agnes Gildersleeve (See Trimbach p. 88)

When the American Indian Movement (AIM) terrorists took over the Indian village of Wounded Knee in February 1973, they robbed Agnes and Clive Gildersleeve's Trading Post and held them hostage. Agnes was a 68-year-old Chippewa Indian; her husband was white. They had spent most of their lives in Wounded Knee.

The Gildersleeve's store was looted by AIMsters and some villagers of about 150,000 dollars worth of merchandise, and the elderly couple were kidnapped by the terrorists and held hostage in the basement of a church.

AIM's mouthpiece Ward Churchill is a discredited former professor and a white man who masquerades as an Indian. Ward Churchill claims in his book Agents of Repression (1988 p. 143) that the Gildersleeves were white.

Perhaps Ward Churchill thought that people would not listen to the eyewitness account of an elderly Indian grandmother if he claimed she was white.

Read how Churchill describes the terrorist take-over of an American Indian town and then compare his whitewash with Mrs. Gildersleeve's eyewitness testimony of her ordeal at the hands of the AIMsters.

Ward Churchill, who claims he defends fellow Indians, describes AIM's reign of terror on the night of February 27, 1973 as if it were a slumber party:

"They [AIM] settled in for the night in a local church and the trading post of Clive and Agnes Gildersleeve (government chartered white traders who had long been accused of 'ripping off' reservation Oglalas)" (Joseph H. Trimbach. American Indian Mafia, p. 374. Citing Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall's 2002 edition of Agents of Repression, p. 143).

The former Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis FBI, Joseph H. Trimbach, writes that although Ward Churchill claims that the Trading Post was "government chartered," the AIMsters who destroyed it justified their actions by claiming that the store operated without a government license (375).

In my opinion, the AIMsters just wanted to steal, and since Judge Fred Nichol ruled in his court that most Indian property is nothing but junk of little monetary value, the AIMsters were free to steal from poor Indian people and go unpunished.

According to the statement that Agnes Gildersleeve gave to the FBI on March 8, 1973, AIMsters knocked on their door late at night and said, "You are to consider yourself a political prisoner and hostage" (Trimbach p. 87). The terrorists put guards on her house and moved into her kitchen.

On the third day, the Gildersleeves were taken from their house and held captive in the basement of the church. The day before they were moved to the church, an AIM woman came to the house and told Agnes' captors, "You have orders to shoot all hostages" (Trimbach p. 87).

While Gildersleeves were held captive in the basement of the church, AIMsters searched their home looking for guns and stole their property. The so-called Indian activists even took Mrs. Gildersleeve's diamond wedding ring set and Indian jewelry (Trimbach p. 87).

AIMster Russell Means, who would later achieve international reknown as the voice of Powhatan in the Disney cartoon Pocahontas, took over the trailer home of a man confined to a wheelchair named Wilber Reigert. The terrorists pushed Wilber out of his home and made this disabled man's home the terrorists' headquarters (Trimbach p. 87).

They rummaged through Wilber Reigert's documents and stole his Indian antiques. AIMsters stole or or vandalized the people's art and private property. See here and here.

The elderly Gildersleeves settled down (as Ward Churchill would say) on a church bench all night and awaited their fate. Their captors insulted them and ordered: "If you want to get up you ask us, we will let you know" (Trimbach p. 87).

Agnes was told by one of her captors, "We want [Tribal Chairman] Dickie Wilson out and Russell Means in" (Trimbach p. 87). More about Russell Means here.

When Gildersleeves were let out of the church, they were told they could leave town if they wanted to, although their car had been confiscated on the day that AIM arrived (Trimbach 88).

Later the Gildersleeve's ruined car was recovered. It was filled with molotov cocktails (Trimbach 263). Judge Fred Nichol dismissed the charge of the theft of the Gildersleeve's car partly because the elderly Agnes Gildersleeve had not resisted armed terrorists when they demanded her car keys.

Judge Fred Nichol also claimed that their three-year-old car was probably not worth much because cars on Indian reservations tend to be junkers; thus, their car would not be worth much since it was near worthless cars: "Anyone familiar with reservation conditions knows full well that a fairly new car , even if in running condition, might not be worth $100. The jury cannot be permitted to speculate as to an element of a criminal offense. The motion for judgement of aquittal as to Count VIII is granted" (Trimbach 263).

Judge Fred Nichol basically ruled that even if Indians had something nice that it was worthless because it was near worthless property. This meant that criminals could steal or destroy Indian property and not be punished for a serious crime.

I wonder if Judge Fred Nichol would rule like this if Ward Churchill's truck got ruined on an Indian reservation? Would his truck be valued at less than $100 because it was parked near Indian junkers? Or the corollary: If Ward Churchill drives a junker, I suppose it is deemed to be an expensive junker because he lives among wealthy people.

The elderly Agnes Gildersleeve decided to stay in her home in order to protect her property and was guarded by AIMsters who subjected her to profanity.

The terrorists took away the people's free speech and their ability to use the telephone to call the outside world for help or to tell their side of the story without coercion. Agnes was interviewed by the media while she was held under the control of her armed captors, so she had to say that she was fine.

When the AIMsters were on trial, their lawyer Mark Lane, claimed that his "right" to speak privately on a party-line phone with his clients had been violated, but Agnes Gildersleeve shows in her statement that the AIM's hypocritical defense of American Indians' legal rights is nothing but empty cant:

"[AIM] took complete control of the telephone service and local residents were not permitted to answer any of the phones. When my phone would ring, an armed guard would immediately answer the phone and direct the call over to [disabled Wilber Reigert's stolen] trailer house where Banks, Means, and Bellecourt were located..." (Trimbach p. 88)

Recently Russell Means declared that he was starting a new country called the Republic of Lakota. I don't think people would like to be ruled by an unelected terrorist leader who once expelled a handicapped man from his trailer home, took hostages, didn't permit people use their phones, stole private property, and burned down the town. There are also reports of rapes and murders during AIM's reign of terror in Wounded Knee.

Former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph H. Trimbach on "The Wiretap That Wasn't"

"I walked out of the courtroom the same way I walked in; with clean hands and a clear conscience."--Former FBI SAC Joseph H. Trimbach (American Indian Mafia p. 224)

When the American Indian Movement terrorists took the Indian village of Wounded Knee hostage in February 1973, they communicated with the FBI negotiators on a party line.

In his book American Indian Mafia, the former Minneapolis Special Agent in Charge, Joseph Trimbach, explains how the terrorists' lawyers tried to exploit this circumstance to claim that the FBI was violating the defendants' constitutional rights.

In a section on pages 215-224 called "The Wiretap that Wasn't," Joe Trimbach explains how the trial "turn[ed] away from deliberation of crimes committed by two ex-convicts to continual allegations of abuses by government agents bent on depriving the defendants [of] their constitutional rights" (215).

Mr. Trimbach explains that the terrorists cut the people's phone lines to keep them from calling for help:

"On the night of the village assault, Agnes Gildersleeve [an elderly Indian who owned the village Trading Post] used her telephone to call the reservation police. When the militants broke into her neighbors' homes, they cut the lines to prevent anyone else from calling for help. Later, phone service was restored to two Trading Post phones as a means to facilitate negotiations. I used that connection and the phone at the Command Post to communicate with the militants during the first few days of the takeover. We had a second phone at RB 1 [Road Block 1] for the same purpose. It was common knowledge that these phones shared a common line, a party line to enable all parties to be in negotiations, and in the early going, receive demands from the hostage takers" (215).

Mr. Trimbach quotes the testimony of AIMster Clyde Bellecourt to show that the hostage takers were aware that the telephones they were using at Wounded Knee were party lines (215-216).

Assistant U.S. attorney Richard D. Hurd argued in court for the prosecution that "the defendants had no right to expect privacy because the government had installed the phone line and was paying for it" (216). Trimbach explains that Mr. Hurd also explained that "the people using the phones were tresspassing invaders, who could not expect to freely exchange in further criminal acts, such as placing long distance calls for weapons and supplies, without law enforcement intervention" (216). Mr. Trimbach comments on the remarkable fact that Judge Fred Nichol, who had sided with the defense, didn't accept this argument.

On about the 5th day of the takeover, two FBI agents listened on the party line and heard someone "talking about leaving booby traps and explosives in the village to discourage an assault...The Agents followed proper proceedure by drafting memos of what they had heard and when they had heard it...Aside from the useful intelligence gathered about the booby traps, a piece of knowledge that saved the life of at least one Special Agent, I attached little significance to the memos" (216).

A year later, while talking to the judge in his chambers, Agent Trimbach assured the Judge Fred Nichol that the evidence for the Wounded Knee trial had been obtained "without the use of wiretaps of any kind." Trimbach writes that he was not thinking about these memos about the booby traps that his Agents had learned of on the party line.

AIMster lawyer Mark Lane, from whose car trunk the FBI had removed materials that could have been used to make molotov cocktails, testified disingenuously that he did not know that he was using a party line while he "engaged in privileged communications with clients in Wounded Knee" (217).

Mr. Trimbach wonders why the court didn't question why Mark Lane would need to talk in confidence on a telephone to his clients moments before entering the village where he would be able to speak privately in person with his clients.

When Mark Lane questioned Agent Trimbach in court about his discussion in Judge Nichol's chambers to the effect that the FBI had not monitored the telephone in Wounded Knee, Trimbach testified:

"I was not trying to convey the impression because I was not, at the time I made the comment to the Judge, even aware of, or I had forgotten about the extension phone that existed there, so I cannot say that that was going around in my mind when I responded to the Judge's question, or volunteered that information, however it came about. This was not even in my mind at the time I was in the Judge's office" (218).

Mr. Trimbach comments that even Judge Fred Nichol "could not honestly refute anything I said on the witness stand or in his chambers. I believe he sensed I had been completely earnest with him...my ill-advised visit [to his chambers] made it more difficult for him to demonize me" (218).

Mr. Trimbach reports that the main topic during the second round of cross examination was the Title III affidavit that had been requested by U.S. Attorney William Clayton after an airplane landed in the village and resupplied the AIMsters holding the town hostage (218-219).

Mr. Trimbach reports:

"This particular memo, with the knowledge and consent of all three government attorneys, made its way to the Justice Department, where it died a certain death in [President Richard Nixon's] scandal plagued Washington. But like the other memos, a paper trail was enough to feed the conspiracy monster once again. The fact that I had no recollection of approving this request, as I surely must have...was not helpful" (219).

Mr. Trimbach explains:

[Defense attorney Mark] Lane was intent on exploring the history of wiretaps, in an attempt to get me on record as a government agent manifestly well-versed in spying on innocent civilians. I am sure he was disappointed to discover I was not conversant with the extensive approval process required to authorize a wiretap...The answer I gave was truthful, but again my choice of words was less than stellar" (219).

Mr. Trimbach testified in court that he had never seen a "general proceedure" wiretap affidavit, and explains in his book that he was referring to a "full blown Title III wiretap application---the kind I had never seen before---not to the preliminary memorandum and transmittal letter" from one of his Agents. He comments that "the judge's interruption (of which there were several), helped clarify the question as referring back to a Title III affidavit, not the preliminary request" (219-220).

Mr. Trimbach writes:

"This was the only time I misspoke on the witness stand, if you can call it that. According to the defense, I had just committed perjury. I supposedly told a big whopper about not remembering the affidavit that I later acknowledged having authorized. But when I said I had never seen a "general proceedure' wiretap affidavit, I was referring to a full blown Title III wiretap application---the kind I had never seen before---not to the preliminary memorandum and transmittal letter from one of my Agents" (219-220).

Mr. Trimbach explains a few pages later that there was no "effort to hide evidence of a so-called wiretap, as [defense attorney William Kunstler] alleged. Had there been a real wiretap, we would have used special equipment---telephones are for amateurs---for the specific purpose of gathering evidence against the perpetrators. A few monitorings on a common phone line in the midst of a life-and-death situation could hardly constitute a violation of the perpetrator's rights. Moreover, our 'wiretap' involved no wire and no taps. There was no attempt to conceal the telephone at RB1 [Road Block 1]. There was no electronic surveillance, no bugging equipment, no recording equipment, no recording equipment, no Nixonian tapes, none of the things Kunstler was sure we were trying to hide" (221).

...Had Judge [Fred] Nichol truly believed that I had lied in his courtroom, I am quite sure he would have held me in contempt, just as he had threatened. And if I had committed perjury, he might have been justified in doing so. This was a man who would have enjoyed savaging my reputation in front of an approving defense team (223).

..."Much to the disappointment of the defense, this was not how it played out. When it came time to issue his final ruling on the wiretap controversy, Nichol could not convince himself that I had deceived him...I walked out of the courtroom the same way I walked in; with clean hands and a clear conscience" (224).

Mr. Trimbach concludes:

"Despite my success in avoiding jail time, none of Nichol's judicial conclusions prevented certain authors from claiming I lied under oath. Today, my name and the word 'perjury' are often found juxtaposed in accounts promoted by people who would not know the truth if it fell in their laps. For them, accusations from a small group of radical lawyers are sufficient justification for libelous bilge...I take solace in knowing the allegations come from otherwise unremarkable ideologues. In the fullness of time, truth wins out" (224).

Mark Lane: AIMster Attorney

Victims of the Jonestown Mass Murders

In 1973, when gun-toting American Indian Movement (AIM) terrorists seized the S. Dakota town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, the terrorists' supporters tried to sneak in supplies, weapons, and explosives. When the FBI tried to keep weapons out of the town by setting up roadblocks, the AIM terrorists shot at them.

You can hear the former FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Joseph H. Trimbach and his son John tell what happened at Pine Ridge on this 1-11-08 radio program.

In Joe Trimbach's just-released book American Indian Mafia, FBI agent Joanne Pierce tells what happened when an AIM lawyer named Mark Lane was stopped at a roadblock:

On one occasion, attorney Mark Lane arrived at one of the roadblocks. The Agent on duty opened the trunk of [Mark Lane's] car and reported back to me that he had found materials that could be used to make Molotov cocktails. The Agent detained him and radioed back for permission to place lane under arrest. I relayed the request to the Assistant U.S. Attorney. After a short pause, he vetoed that suggestion and Lane was allowed to proceed, without the contraband. The following year I was called to testify about what happened March 8th. The lawyer who cross-examined me was the same man, Mark Lane. (p. 122; June 28, 2005 letter from Joanne Pierce to Joe Trimbach)

Joe Trimbach observes:

SA Pierce witnessed first-hand the frustration of federal investigators whose main job, it seemed, was to provide target practice for the same gunmen government lawyers sought to appease. (p. 122)

In footnote 55 on page 571, Mr. Trimbach reports that the AIM lawyer Mark Lane "would go on to achieve further notoriety by becoming mixed up in the Jonestown mass killing and by writing Rush to Judgement, the book that launched a cottage industry of conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination." [Rush to Judgement has been debunked by the lawyer Vincent Bugliosi, author of Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Bugliosi is best known for prosecuting the cult-killer Charles Manson.]

Mark Lane reportedly was one of two lawyers for cult leader Jim Jones' People's Temple at Jonestown, Guyana.

Jones forced his congregaton to drink cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. 913 people died when they were poisoned by a cyanide cocktail, shot, strangled, or injected with cyanide. More than 270 of the victims were children. Mark Lane was one of only nine people who saved himself that day by running into the jungle.

Lane's Wikipedia notes:

[Mark Lane] writes about Jonestown in his 1980 book The Strongest Poison. That book, since its publication, has been criticized by some as a long list of conspiracy theories, and as a repeat of the stories told by Rev. Jim Jones to keep his followers in a state of fear, such as that CIA-employed mercenaries were posted nearby and slaughtered Jonestown residents as they tried to flee through the jungle. Lane was insulted for this in Tim Reiterman's 1982 book Raven.

The Mitrokhin Archive, smuggled notes based on KGB documents, details Soviet active measures and contains information about Mark Lane. According to The Sword and Shield by the Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew and the KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, "Soviet journalists, including KGB agent Genrikh Borovik, met with Mark Lane to encourage him in his research" [see note 12].

According to The Sword and Shield, the KGB also gave Mark Lane money through "the intermediary of a close friend" to travel to Europe and to "help finance his research." According to The Sword and Shield, this intermediary is identified in Mark Lane's KGB file only as a trusted contact of the KGB. "While Lane was not told the source of the money, the [New York KGB] residency suspected that he might have guessed where it came from; it was also concerned that the secret subsidy might be discovered by the FBI" (p. 228). Pages 225-230 of The Sword and Shield are transcribed here.

In 1987 a book jointly written by S.F. Alinin, B.G. Antonov, and A.N. Itskov was published in the USSR. The Jonestown Carnage: a CIA Crime cited Mark Lane's book about Jonestown, The Strongest Poison, and made the mendacious claim that the people at Jonestown were murdered by "U.S. special services" because they were dissidents who wanted to move to the USSR:

"[T]he official version about 'the suicide of the religious fanatics' in Jonestown, which was skillfully circulated in the mass media, was contrived by the US administration as a cover-up for a monstrous act of predetermined murder of several hundred American dissidents by the US special services." (Page 5-6; cited from Wikipedia).

This Soviet-sponsored lie that American intelligence or security agencies poisoned over 900 Americans is a lot like the former professor Ward Churchill's lie that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians. [See also here.]

The former professor at the University of Colorado Ward Churchill, who was fired on July 24, 2007, for research misconduct, published that lie in the Covert Action Information Bulletin (C.A.I.B), a publication started by a CIA traitor who cooperated with the KGB and Cuban DGI, the late and unlamented Philip Agee.

The University of Colorado investigation showed, among other things, that Churchill had not used honest research to document his claim that the American Army deliberately infected the Mandan Indians with smallpox.

It is a common theme of communist propaganda that the American government is complicit in genocide.

Joe Trimbach Interviewed on "Talk of the Sun Coast" (1-11-08)

Photo credit: Talk show host Cliff Roles, left; Joseph Trimbach, center; John Trimbach on the right.

Retired FBI agent Joseph H. Trimbach and his son John are interviewed (1-11-08) about their new book American Indian Mafia on a Florida radio show called "Talk of the Sun Coast." Be patient while this long interview loads.

Details later!

Grave's Mistakes (12-25-06) by Joseph H. Trimbach

This Christmas (2007), the retired FBI agent Joseph H. Trimbach and his son John published the definitive study of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The Trimbachs' book is titled The American Indian Mafia. [paperback or $5 e-book here]

A year before his book was published, Mr. Trimbach published a Christmas 2006 article in News From Indian Country called "Grave's Mistakes" [Scroll down].

Mr. Trimbach's article criticized the writers Peter Matthiessen and Steve Hendricks for writing false histories that rationalized the terrorism perpetrated by the American Indian Movement and vilified the FBI.

"Grave's Mistakes" begins:

Lately, there’s been much discussion about Pine Ridge history of the 1970s, or the version of it that militant members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) would have us believe. Most historical texts follow suit: AIM was essentially an altruistic group of folks somehow badgered into committing acts of mayhem and murder. Few have challenged the fiction largely because books which promote the myths are usually well received; the more fraudulent the better. At the top of the heap is Peter Matthiessen’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, best known for breathing life into the Leonard Peltier legend...

Now comes young Steve Hendricks, Matthiessen’s heir apparent to conspiracy theory and shoddy research. Hendricks’s book, The Unquiet Grave, enlarges the government plot against AIM with new falsehoods deemed necessary to protect the legacy.

Grave’s war against the FBI follows Spirit’s same damned-if-they do/don’t reasoning. If the FBI investigated serious crimes on the reservation, it was interference and harassment. If the FBI failed to investigate, it was callous indifference or, as Hendricks often suggests, a cover-up. Rather than show new insight into AIM’s well-kept secrets, Hendricks shows only that he is another partisan who dares not look at the takeover of Wounded Knee village or any other AIM-led disaster with a critical eye. The politics just won’t allow it...[Scroll down to the full text]

Maoist MIM Wants Someone to Throw Him the Ball!

"I've received...unqualified support from hard-line Maoists.....[T]he Maoist International Movement (MIM) have used their weekly papers to advance some of the best analysis of my case and its implications yet published"--Ward Churchill

As we have often pointed out, the Maoist MIM is one of Ward Churchill's biggest defenders.

On January 13, 2008, MIM gazed over his keyboard at his reflection on his computer screen and penned this self-revealing fantasy about himself:

MIM has taken history up a whole notch, and intellectuals are not ready, because if they were, right now they would see MIM at the basket like Michael Jordan and start bouncing passes off the backboard for MIM to jump up and slam in. However, our intellectuals lack political capability to understand what it is MIM can and cannot do right now and how to assist. That is holding back the struggle right this very minute, in addition to other crap MIM has been denouncing forever, but which people persist in. There are in fact many people talking to MIM about things without getting that ball up in backboard range. This is another outrage, that people do not know how to work with MIM. MIM has said it before, but in fact the defection of even individuals has changed history.

Promotional Website for Joe and John Trimbachs' "American Indian Mafia"

Joseph and John Trimbach have a new site to help promote their recently-released book American Indian Mafia, a true history of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The book is available in paperback and as a 5-dollar e-book if you are on a budget.

The book has been endorsed by Judge William H. Webster, who was the former director of both the CIA and the FBI, as well as by prominent journalists, politicians, lawyers, and academics.

Joseph H. Trimbach has posted some articles he has previously published about the American Indian Movement (AIM) here.

He has created a file on the convicted murderer Leonard Peltier here.

Joe Trimbach has exposed 12 myths about the American Indian Movement (AIM) and has created a timeline of the AIM History here.

Soon the site promises a blog.

The Frequently Asked Questions link is especially informative:

Why is this book important?

Mafia is the first book of its kind to expose the myths and legends that grew out of a largely falsified history of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Exposing the lies and telling the truth of what happened on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1970s is the first step toward healing and helping the people of Pine Ridge.

Why should I believe what’s in it?

Mafia is the true story as told by the FBI’s former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of South Dakota. Former SAC Trimbach is often referred to as a “primary source” because he witnessed many of the events during the turbulent years of 1973 through 1975, a period that marked the violent rise and fall of the American Indian Movement. Unlike some of the so-called Pine Ridge historians who have distorted the true history for mostly political reasons, Trimbach backs up his account with never-before-published interview material from other primary sources (both Native and non-Native), more than a thousand supportive endnotes, over 80 revealing photographs, and two documentary Appendices.

Why are other books on this topic so wrong?

One of the primary reasons that the real story behind AIM’s true agenda and legacy is so hard to find is that many people were initially fooled by the perpetrators and their supporters. Members of the media were especially prone to being duped into repeating distortions, falsehoods, and outright lies. Consequently, an unchallenged and polluted version of what really happened found its way into the history books. Sadly, the ruse continues today in a relentless attempt to mask the true legacy of AIM by those with a vested interest in keeping the myths alive and the cover stories believable. [See the full text to learn how to help people who live on Pine Ridge]

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by Ward Churchill

"Jim Vander Wall and I have used the figure of 69 as the minimum number of AIM members and supporters murdered on the Pine Ridge Reservation from mid-1973 to mid-1976."--Ward Churchill in From a Native Son. p. 256. 1996.

"[I]n the post-Wounded Knee context of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation, independent researcher Candy Hamilton established that at least 342 AIM members and supporters were killed by roving death squads aligned with and supported by the FBI. (The death squads called themselves GOONs, "Guardians of the Oglala Nation.") This was between 1973 and 1976 alone.---Ward Churchill, 1985 and 1996.

[See Churchill's CV.]

In May 2000, the Minneapolis FBI published a document called "Accounting for Native American Deaths." I wrote about this document here.

The FBI document stated that unsubstantiated allegations about the FBI had eroded the trust of Indian people:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Agents in South Dakota can only operate effectively where we have the trust and help of the American people. For South Dakota, much of our work revolves around crimes occurring in Indian Country. The trust and help of reservation residents are vital to the accomplishment of our sworn duty.

For many years, rumors of unresolved murders of Native Americans have come to our attention. At times, these allegations represented that there were hundreds of murdered Native Americans that had not been investigated by the FBI. [full text]

After the FBI published this document in May 2000, Ward Churchill [who was finally fired from his professorship at the University of Colorado in Boulder on July 24, 2007, for research misconduct] wrote a rebuttal to the FBI document called "Analysis and Refutation of the FBI's 'Accounting' for AIM Fatalities on Pine Ridge, 1973-1976."

Churchill's so-called "refutation" claimed:

[T]his [is] by no means "the first time" the FBI has had an opportunity to address the list of names and allegations in question. Along with Jim Vander Wall, I initially assembled it in 1987 from fragmentary records provided by Bruce Ellison, Ken Tilson and Candy Hamilton, all former members of the Woun[d]ed Knee Legal Defense / Offense Committee (WKLDOC). A portion of it was then published in my and Vander Wall's 1988 Agents of Repression (pp. 184-88), the first six copies of which book were acquired by the FBI library in Washington, DC. Refined and expanded in 1989, the list was then published again in my and Vander Wall's book The COINTELPRO Papers (pp. 393-4), copies of which were also acquired by the FBI library. The same list was also published as an attachment to an essay included in my 1994 Indians Are Us? (pp. 197-205), and still again in my 1996 From A Native Son (pp. 257-60). It has, moreover, been in continuous distribution by the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC) for the past six years. [Until recently, the "Leonard Peltier Defense Committee Statement in Reply to FBI's Accounting of Unsolved Deaths on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (1973-1976)" was posted here, but strangely there is only a coupon for Petsmart on that site. The Google cache is still available. The red highlighting is mine; see full text]

Ward Churchill is not being very sincere when he claims that he “initially assembled [a list of Indians allegedly murdered by FBI-backed GOONS] in 1987 from fragmentary records," because in 1985, Ward Churchill published an article in the Covert Action Information Bulletin that claimed that the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Indians. [See my original treatment of this issue here.] The article was titled "The Covert War Against Native Americans." This article is listed in Churchill's CV under a slightly different title:

Special focus section on repression of the American Indian Movement, including two feature pieces (“The Covert War Against American Indians”[pp. 16-21] and “The Strange Case of ’Wild Bill’ Jank-low” [pp. 22-4]) and three sidebars (“Profile of an Informer” [pp. 18-21], “Dennis Banks” [p. 24] and “The FBI at Pine Ridge: 1973-1976” [pp. 26-7, 29]), CovertAction Information Bulletin, No. 24 (July 1985) pp. 16-29. (The late William Kunstler also contributed an article titled “The Ordeal of Leonard Peltier” to the section [pp. 25-9]). [Cited from Ward Churchill's CV.]

Churchill's 1985 article in the C.A.I.B., which claimed that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians, was even republished in January 1996 as "The Covert War Against Native Americans" by a Canadian publication called Arm the Spirit. It is still on the Internet here and listed in Churchill's CV:

“The Covert War Against Native Americans,” Arm the Spirit, Jan. 1996.

My point is this: in 1985 Churchill claimed that FBI-backed death-squads killed 342 Indians. In his 1988, 1989, 1994, and 1996 books that Churchill cites as evidence in his refutation to the FBI, Churchill provided much the smaller number of a minimum of 69 murders, a figure in line with his "Analysis and Refutation of the FBI's 'Accounting' for AIM Fatalities on Pine Ridge, 1973-1976."

For example, in his 1988 book Agents of Repression, Churchill's list doesn't have 342 names, and on page 175 Churchill writes:

The GOONs' anti-AIM activities on Pine Ridge underwent a continuous escalation in scope and virulence through the period of greatest FBI activity on Pine Ridge, roughly mid-1973 to late-1976. During this approximate three-year span, at least sixty-nine AIM members and supporters were to die violently on and around Pine Ridge, while more than 300 were physically assaulted and, in many cases, shot. Virtually all of these murders and assaults are attributed to the GOONs and their counterparts in the BIA police.

In footnote 156, which follows this passage, Churchill claimed:

These data are the compilation of former WKLDOC researcher Candy Hamilton, who performed site investigations at the time of the actual events; Hamilton suggests that her information is "undoubtedly incomplete." FBI and BIA documents bear out much of the substance of her records. [Agents of Repression p. 426]

In 1996, Churchill published From a Native Son and claimed on page 256 that a minimum of 69 Indians were murdered by FBI-backed GOONS. On page 256 Churchill cited the books he noted in his refutation to the FBI:

In our books Agents of Repression (South End Press, 1988) and The COINTELPRO Papers (South End Press 1990) Jim Vander Wall and I have used the figure of 69 as the minimum number of AIM members and supporters murdered on Pine Ridge Reservation from mid-1973 to mid-1976.

Yet in the very same year that he published From a Native Son (1996), Churchill again let Arm the Spirit republish the fantastic figure of 342 Indians killed by FBI-backed death squads, and listed this article in his CV.

I think that even Churchill's more modest statistics are fabricated and that the Minneapolis FBI document is an an honest accounting.

In a later post, I will tell what Joseph Trimbach [search my posts that mention Trimbach], the retired FBI agent who authored The American Indian Mafia, says about Churchill's apocryphal account of the GOONs. The book even has its own site: http://www.americanindianmafia.com/

Communist Propagandist Philip Agee Dies in Cuban Hospital

In 1973 [Philip Agee] approached the KGB residency in Mexico City and offered what the head of the FCD's Counter-intelligence Directorate, Oleg Kalugin, called "reams of information about CIA operations."--Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin

Philip Agee, a former CIA officer who publicized the names of CIA agents, who cooperated with the KGB and Cuban DGI, and who published a forged document that purported to be a classified appendix to a U.S. Army Field Manual, died in a Cuban hospital while undergoing surgery on Monday, January 7, 2008.

According to the Washington Post (1-9-08), in 1987 the former Secretary of State George Shultz "cited CIA reports that Mr. Agee was a paid adviser to Cuban intelligence, had trained Nicaraguan security officials and had tried to thwart the U.S. invasion of Grenada."

According to The Guardian (1-9-08), a former Cuban intelligence officer claimed that Agee received one million dollars from the Cuban intelligence service. Agee denied this.

Philip Agee complained that America didn't support elections in Central America, but then he sold his services to the Cuban government, which does not have real elections. Agee claimed he was a patriotic whistleblower who became disillusioned with the CIA because of his Catholic religious upbringing, but author John Barron, writes that Agee was forced to resign from the CIA "for a variety of reasons, including his irresponsible drinking, continuous and vulgar propositioning of embassy wives, and inability to manage his finances". [KGB Today: The Hidden Hand. (1983). pp. 227-230. As cited from Agee's Wikipedia]

In 2003, Agee denigrated pro-democracy Cuban dissidents who opposed Castro's dictatorship as American stooges. Newsweek (1-9-08) reports that after the Cuban government had a crackdown on dissidents Agee wrote:

To think that the dissidents were creating an independent, free civil society is absurd, for they were funded and controlled by a hostile foreign power and to that degree, which was total, they were not free or independent in the least."

Agee's Wikipedia states:

Agee told Swiss journalist Peter Studer that “The CIA is plainly on the wrong side, that is, the capitalistic side. I approve KGB activities, communist activities in general. Between the overdone activities that the CIA initiates and the more modest activities of the KGB, there is absolutely no comparison.”

Although Philip Agee depicted himself as a patriot---a Catholic, a dissident, and a whistleblower---the KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin provided the British government with notes about Agee's collaboration with the KGB and DGI, communist secret police organizations that persecute religion and crush dissent in their own countries.

According to Professor Christopher Andrew and Mitrokhin, the authors of The Sword and Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (1999):

In 1973 [Agee] approached the KGB residency in Mexico City and offered what the head of the FCD's Counter-intelligence Directorate, Oleg Kalugin, called "reams of information about CIA operations." The suspicious KGB resident, however, found Agee's offer too good to be true, concluded that he was part of a CIA plot and turned him away. According to Kalugin:

"Agee then went to the Cubans, who welcomed him with open arms . . . The Cubans shared Agee's information with us. But as I sat in my office in Moscow reading reports about the growing list of revelations coming from Agee, I cursed our officers for turning away such a prize."

In January 1975 Agee published an uncompromisingly hostile memoir of his career in the CIA entitled Inside the Company: CIA Diary, which identified approximately 250 Agency officers and agents and claimed that "millions of people all over the world had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports." The self-congratulatory KGB file on the book claims, doubtless with some exaggeration, that it was "prepared by Service A, together with the Cubans." [For a description of the KGB's Service A (short for Active Measures), which organizes "Black" or covert active measures operations, forgeries, the publication of KGB-influenced news reports, films, books, and etc. see here and here.]

Mitrokhin's notes do not indicate exactly what the KGB and its Cuban ally, the DGI, contributed to Agee's text. As Agee himself acknowledged, however: "Representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba [the DGI] . . . gave important encouragement at a time when I doubted that I would be able to find the additional information I needed."

While Agee was writing his book in Britain, the KGB maintained contact with him through its co-optee, Edgar Anatolyevich Cheporov, London correspondent of the Novosti news agency and the Literaturnaya Gazeta." [Sword and Shield pp. 230-231]

...On November 16, 1976 a deportation order served on Agee requiring him to leave England turned his case, much to the delight of the Centre, into a cause cause célèbre. According to one of the files noted by Mitrokhin:

The KGB employed firm and purposeful measures to force the Home Office to cancel their decision . . . The London residency was used to direct action by a number of members of the Labor Party Executive, union leaders, leading parliamentarians, leaders of the National Union of Journalists to take a stand against the Home Office decision. [Sword and Shield 231]

...After Agee's well-publicized expulsion from Britain, the KGB continued to use him and some of his supporters in active measures [defined here] against the CIA. Among the documents received by Agee from what he described as "an anonymous sender" was an authentic copy of a classified State Department circular, signed by Kissinger, which contained the CIA's "key intelligence questions" for fiscal year 1975 on economic, financial and commercial reporting. KGB files identify the source of the document as Service A. In the summer of 1977 the circular was published in a pamphlet entitled "What Uncle Sam Wants to Know about You," with an introduction by Agee. While acknowledging that it was "not the most gripping document in the world," Agee claimed that it demonstrated the unfair assistance secretly given to US companies abroad by the American intelligence community.

In 1978 Agee and a small group of supporters began publishing the Covert Action Information Bulletin in order to promote what Agee called "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel." Files noted by Mitrokhin claim that the Bulletin was founded "on the initiative of the KGB" and that the group running it (collectively codenamed RUPOR), which held its first meeting in Jamaica early in 1978, was "put together" by FCD Directorate K (counterintelligence). The Bulletin was edited in Washington by Bill Schaap, a radical lawyer codenamed RUBY by the KGB, his wife, the journalist Ellen Ray, and another journalist, Louis Wolf, codenamed ARSENIO. Agee and two other disaffected former members of the CIA, Jim and Elsie Wilcott (previously employed by the Agency as, respectively, finance officer and secretary), contributed articles and information. There is no evidence in Mitrokhin's notes that any member of the RUPOR group, apart from Agee, was conscious of the role of the DGI or KGB.

The first issue of the Covert Action Information Bulletin was launched by Agee and the RUPOR group at a Cuban press conference on the eve of the Eleventh World Festival of Youth and Students, held to coincide with the Havana carnival in the summer of 1978. Agee also produced advance copies of another book, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe, coauthored by himself and Wolf, which contained the names and biographical details of 700 CIA personnel who were, or had been, stationed in western Europe. "Press reaction," wrote Agee, "was not disappointing. In the next few days we learned by telephone from friends in the States and elsewhere that most of the major publications carried stories about the Bulletin and Dirty Work. Perfect."

The Centre assembled a task force of personnel from Service A and Directorate K, headed by V. N. Kosterin, assistant to the chief of Service A, to keep the Covert Action Information Bulletin supplied with material designed to compromise the CIA. Among the material which the task force supplied for publication in 1979 was an eighteen-page CIA document entitled "Director of Central Intelligence: Perspectives for Intelligence, 1976-1981." The document had originally been delivered anonymously to the apartment of the Washington resident, Dmitri Ivanovich Yakushkin, and at the time had been wrongly assessed by both the residency and the Centre as a "dangle" by US intelligence. Agee's commentary on the document highlighted the complaint by DCI William Colby that recent revelations of its operations were among the most serious problems the CIA had to face. Kosterin's task force, however, became increasingly concerned about the difficulty of finding enough secret material for the Bulletin, and recommended that it look harder for open-source material, ranging from readers' letters to crises around the world which could be blamed on the CIA--among them the Jonestown massacre in Guyana, when 900 members of the American religious cult the "People's Temple" had been persuaded to commit mass suicide or had been murdered. [Sword and Shield 232-233]

According to Agee's Wikipedia, the January 1979 #3 issue of Agee's Covert Action Information Bulletin published the FM 30-31B forgery. A patriotic whistleblower does not publish forgeries!

The Wikipedia entry for the US Army Field Manual 30-31B explains:

The US Army Field Manual 30-31B is a forgery purporting to be a classified appendix to a US Army Field Manual describing top-secret counter insurgency tactics. In particular, the need for a strategy of tension involving violent attacks blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for counter-action. It has been called the Westmoreland Field Manual because it had a faked signature from General William Westmoreland. It was labeled supplement B (hence "30-31B"), but FM 30-31 only had one appendix, Supplement A, during the 1970s.

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee determined it to be a forgery in 1979. Testimony of a defector before the U.S. Congress later confirmed the Soviet origin of the forgery. The Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS) concluded in 1976 that the forgery was part of a disinformation campaign waged by the KGB. In 2006, the US State Department again had to deny its authenticity after the document was cited by researchers who were unaware of its falseness.

The forgery first appeared in Turkey in the 1970s, before being circulated to other countries. It was also used at the end of the 1970s to implicate the CIA in the Red Brigades' murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro.

As previously noted, the former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill has contributed a number of articles to the Covert Action Information Bulletin. Ward Churchill's anti-FBI diatribe, "The Covert War Against Native Americans", was originally published in the Covert Action Information Bulletin. [Summer 1985 issue., Number 24 pp. 16-21.---See Churchill's CV where the article is called "The Covert War Against American Indians" and republished in January 1996 in Arm the Spirit.]

Philip Agee's Covert Action Information Bulletin published propaganda, lies, and forgeries. He served communist regimes that terrorized their own people. Philip Agee published lies about the CIA, the FBI, and the American Army.

Philip Agee published ex-Professor Ward Churchill's mendacious 1985 article "The Covert War Against Native Americans" and destroyed the trust between the FBI and America's poorest, most vulnerable citizens---the Indians of Pine Ridge. Ward Churchill followed in Philip Agee's footsteps and became a professor who perfected the BIG LIE about our history instead of searching for the truth.

Philip Agee was not a good Catholic, a patriotic dissident, or a high minded whistleblower. He was a communist, a purveyor of forgeries, a liar, and a traitor who served terrorist regimes.

Oliver Kamm, a British Blogger, also wrote an article about Philip Agee called "Their Man in Havana"and closed with this excellent observation:

"I regard Agee's service on behalf of totalitarianism with unalloyed hostility. His was an ignoble life, and I do not mourn his passing."

"Accounting For Native American Deaths" by the Minneapolis FBI

"The trust and help of reservation residents are vital to the accomplishment of our sworn duty."--Minneapolis FBI

The fired University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill once claimed that FBI-backed death squads murdered 342 Indians on Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.

Churchill made this fantastic claim in a 1985 article titled "The Covert War Against Native Americans" [The Covert Action Information Bulletin, (Summer 1985 issue.), Number 24 pp. 16-21. C.A.I.B., P.O. Box 34583, Washington, D.C. 20043].

See also here.

The C.A.I.B. was not a scholarly publication; it was a propaganda mouthpiece of the KGB and Cuban intelligence. The purpose of this publication was to discredit the FBI and CIA, not to help Indians. [See this post for scholarly commentary about the C.A.I.B. by a British professor named Christopher Andrew, the author of several books based on information smuggled out of the Soviet KGB archives by a defector named Vasili Mitrokhin.]

According to Joseph and John Trimbach, the authors of American Indian Mafia, it is some old leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who have skeletons in their closets, not the FBI.

The Minneapolis FBI has a document posted on its site that responds to Churchill's apocryphal claims:

Accounting For Native American Deaths
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota
Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Minneapolis Division May 2000

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Agents in South Dakota can only operate effectively where we have the trust and help of the American people. For South Dakota, much of our work revolves around crimes occurring in Indian Country. The trust and help of reservation residents are vital to the accomplishment of our sworn duty.

For many years, rumors of unresolved murders of Native Americans have come to our attention. At times, these allegations represented that there were hundreds of murdered Native Americans that had not been investigated by the FBI. The names of murder victims were not attached to the rumors and addressing the allegations could not be accomplished.

In December of 1999, the South Dakota Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (Commission) held a community forum in Rapid City, South Dakota to discuss the criminal justice system and how it impacts Native Americans. These allegations were proffered during the hearings and the Commission was sufficiently impressed by them to incorporate the allegation in its findings. (See Native Americans in South Dakota: An Erosion of Confidence in the Justice System, March 2000; p. 38)

Shortly after the forum, the FBI received a list of fifty-seven names with allegations that their deaths had not been investigated. This list came from a number of media outlets and for the first time, provided the FBI with specific information to address. We reviewed our records of these deaths and found that most had been solved either through conviction or finding that the death had not been a murder according to the law. The remaining unresolved murders were known to the FBI and remain under investigation.

The following pages include the allegation and the results of our investigations. The names of unindicted suspects and some other identifying information must be excluded to protect privacy interests. It is hoped the dissemination of this information will clear up allegations of unresolved murders and protect the confidence the FBI must have to accomplish its mission.

Douglas J. Domin Special Agent in Charge (May 2000)Minneapolis Division [Full text includes information about the results of the investigations]

Paul Wolf Watch: The Second Installment

"As for my role in the secret program to "provoke" selfless heroes, I had heard of COINTELPRO in conjunction with FBI operations of the 1960s but was not involved with it, and certainly never used it against AIM."--Joseph Trimbach, American Indian Mafia p. 28.

On October 18, 2006, I posted an article about the lawyer Paul Wolf who--like the charlatan scholar Ward Churchill--postures as an expert on an FBI program called COINTELPRO.

Paul Wolf appeared to me to be an apologist for Saddam Hussein who flogged anti-FBI propaganda about COINTELPRO to the UN. He and the usual suspects wrote propaganda about the FBI and gave it to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, on September 1, 2001.

Now, a poster calling himself Paul Wolf has popped out of his spider hole to post a nasty review of the Trimbachs' book American Indian Mafia.

Wolf snears:

"Every word of the book is dripping with the anger of an old man who believes his career was ruined by left wing radicals and the left wing press. He sets out to set the record straight, but other than his hatred for the leaders of AIM, he doesn't have a lot to say."

Wolf, a cheap agitprop artist, sniffs:

"The fact that the book is less than scholarly is illustrated by the fact that Mr Two Elk was chosen to write the introduction."

In fact, Mr. Two Elk has spent many years collecting the oral traditions of Indian people. He is one of the Indians who tried to get to the truth about the murder of Anna Mae Aquash. He has also been an advocate for Indian children. His testament is central to the Trimbachs' book.

Wolf doesn't tell readers that Judge William Webster, who headed both the FBI and the CIA, wrote that this book is "The first definitive report...of what actually happened..."

Judge Webster's words are on the cover of the book at the top. I guess this powerful old Washington lawyer doesn't think that old Joe Trimbach's "career was ruined." [Scroll to end.]

At least we know who Joe Trimbach works for. Can we say the same for Paul Wolf?

I think people will listen to the eminent old Judge Webster a lot more than some 5th-rate lawyer like Paul Wolf who can't tell the difference between a political police like the KGB and the best crime-fighting law enforcement organization in the world, the FBI.

Wolf scores American Indian Mafia for its supposed scholarly shortcomings but keeps quiet about the fact that Trimbach exposes the stupid, ludicrous, and vicious lies of Wolf's COINTELPRO collaborator--the fake Indian and fake scholar Ward Churchill.

I found reading old Trimbach's book to be an uplifting experience after all those years of Churchill's breathtaking, Soviet-style lies. I feel like a powerful wind has blasted through the gates and freed my history from the GuLag of Ward Churchill's mendacity.

The shame is that our professors aren't exposing the Legend of Pine Ridge. Where are the professors who are always loudly claiming to be speaking truth to power? But it doesn't matter, because we still have the old men to defend us.

Old Trimbach has tremendous integrity and courage. Old Trimbach stood up for the truth against everyone. So what if he is an old man; he still protects us from the likes of Paul Wolf, Ward Churchill, and the AIM.

I guess that fake human rights activist Paul Wolf hasn't heard that Indian people value the wisdom of old people--elders--and that many of them think that Ward Churchill is the underneath of pond scum and that his roadshow is getting real old.

The Churchill lies are being rolled back. It is Paul Wolf's and Ward Churchill's mendacious account of COINTELPRO that is going to be tossed into the ashbin of history--not old Trimbachs' American Indian Mafia.

Trimbach cares about getting justice for Indian people. The fake human rights activist Paul Wolf only cares about cynically using the Indians for his anti-FBI agenda.

It was really noticeable that Wolf failed to mention anything that Joe Trimbach said about COINTELPRO because Trimbach's words would show what a liar Wolf is.

Soon, I will be posting more about what Joe Trimbach has to say about COINTELPRO, but early in the book Trimbach wrote:

"As for my role in the secret program to 'provoke' selfless heroes, I had heard of COINTELPRO in conjunction with FBI operations of the 1960s but was not involved with it, and certainly never used it against AIM. Of course this is not what the AIM defenders want to hear. They do not want the truth. They look only for a confirmation of their staunchly held theory that COINTELPRO was a central part (or any part) of the FBI's efforts to disrupt AIM's illegal activities. In virtually every pro-AIM publication the term appears as a historical fact and a convenient excuse for AIM's worse acts of violence. It is also the chief justification given for the execution of Anna Mae by the Movement leaders, some of whom abandoned the 'FBI did it' theory for the 'FBI made us do it' line." (Joseph and John Trimbach, American Indian Mafia p. 28.)

Ward Churchill Ties His Shoelaces...Together!

“I really have to cite this to people who are capable of tying their shoes without instructions?” ---Ward Churchill

UPDATE: "Albright's Blunder" is an excellent article about U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright's interview on "60 Minutes" (May 12, 1996).

On May 12, 1996, America's U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright was interviewed about the U.N. sanctions on Iraq by journalist Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes." These sanctions were imposed on Iraq after they attacked and annexed Kuwait during the Gulf War. The American military operation to expell Iraq from Kuwait was called Operation Desert Storm. The purpose of the sanctions was to keep the the Iraqi government from reinvading Kuwait or attacking other neighbors.

In the "60 Minutes" interview, Stahl asked Albright a loaded question:

"We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Albright responded:

"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it." [Wikipedia]

In his essay "Some People Push Back," Ward Churchill criticizes the U.N. trade sanctions on Iraq for causing hardships, but he never even mentions that the sanctions were imposed after Saddam invaded Kuwait. Ward Churchill never even mentions that the purpose of the sanctions was to keep Saddam from invading Kuwait again. This dishonest omission shows that "Some People Push Back" is nothing but pro-Saddam propaganda.

In his February 23, 1998 fatwa (judgement) "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders," the terrorist Osama Bin Laden also criticizes the trade sanctions on Iraq without mentioning that the sanctions were imposed to prevent Saddam from attacking Kuwait again.

In his ignorant, propagandistic 9-11 essay "Some People Push Back," Churchill incorrectly identifies then-U. N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright as our Secretary of State. Churchill misspells her first name Madeleine as Madeline. Churchill takes Albright's 1996 interview on "60 Minutes" out of context and claims incorrectly that Madeleine Albright was "responding" on "Meet the Press" to a charge of "genocide" that Ward Churchill attributes (without a dated citation) to the U.N. Oil for Food official Denis Halliday in the fall of 1998 in the New York Times.

Albright could not have been responding in 1996 to allegations made by Halliday in 1998. Our U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright was responding to what Lesley Stahl says "[w]e have heard."

Ward Churchill claims:

[F]ormer U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halladay [sic--Halliday], repeatedly denounced what was happening [under the U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after Saddam's army invaded Kuwait, killed their people, and set their oil fields afire] as "a systematic program...of deliberate genocide." His statements appeared in the New York Times and other papers during the fall of 1998 [no cite], so it can hardly be contended that the American public was "unaware" of them. Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Madeline [sic--U.N. Ambassador/Madeleine] Albright openly confirmed Halladay's [sic] assessment. Asked during the widely-viewed TV program Meet the Press [sic--60 Minutes, May 12, 1996] to respond to his "allegations," she calmly announced that she'd decided it was "worth the price" to see that U.S. objectives were achieved. [My emphasis in red.]

The Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill is not only a dishonest scholar, he is also spelling, fact, and chronology-challenged.

Firstly, the U.N. official's name is spelled Halliday, according to a short biography he wrote about himself. If Churchill had been informed about U.N. aid programs for Iraqis, he would have known that.

Halliday wrote:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Denis J. Halliday, a national of Ireland, to the post of United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level, and he served as such until end September 1998. During this period, the Security Council Resolution 986 “Oil for Food” Programme, introduced in 1996/97 to assist the people of Iraq under the Economic Sanctions imposed and sustained by the Security Council, was more than doubled in terms of oil revenues allowed. This enabled the introduction of a multi-sectoral approach, albeit modest, to the problems of resolving malnutrition and child mortality. Mr Halliday resigned from the post in Iraq and from the United Nations as a whole effective 31 October 1998...

Secondly, Albright's first name is spelled Madeleine, and she was our Ambassador to the U.N. in 1996, not the Secretary of State. Ward Churchill gets all this wrong, but he still thinks that he knows enough to say that Americans should "rise up" and hang Ambassador Madeleine Albright!

An anonymous "contributor" to the Maoist MIM quietly corrects Churchill's spelling [updated link] of Halliday (but not Madeleine!) when he "quotes" Churchill ("What could AmeriKKKans have known about the Iraq sanctions?: Part II." 2-20-05):

U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, repeatedly denounced what was happening as "a systematic program . . . of deliberate genocide." [My emphasis in red.]

Thirdly, U.N. Ambassor (not Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright made her controversial remarks--which she retracted and characterized as stupid--in an interview with Lesley Stahl on Sixty Minutes, not on Meet the Press.

Fourthly, U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright made her controversial remarks on May 12, 1996, so she could not possibly have been "responding" to Denis Halliday's alleged statement about genocide that Churchill claims appeared in the New York Times in the fall of 1998!

The basic facts that support Churchill's argument are wrong. The "scholar" doesn't know how to spell the diplomats' names. He doesn't correctly identify Albright's position. He doesn't know where or when she was on T.V. He has Albright "responding" to Halliday two years before he made the remarks Churchill attributes to him.

The anonymous "contributor" to the MIM quotes Churchill in the first paragraph cited below but changes Churchill's spelling of Halladay to Halliday. In the second paragraph cited below, the "contributor" actually corrects the record about the TV program and the date, without explicitly noting that Churchill said something different just above. MIM still can't spell Madeleine, and he doesn't know that she was our U.N. Ambassador on May 12, 1996.

Read the jumbled nonsense that the "contributor" to the Maoist MIM writes [updated link] as he "cites" Churchill and fixes the spelling of Halliday but not Madeleine:

[F]ormer U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, repeatedly denounced what was happening as "a systematic program . . . of deliberate genocide." His statements appeared in the New York Times and other papers during the fall of 1998, so it can hardly be contended that the American public was "unaware" of them. Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Madeline Albright openly confirmed Halliday's assessment. Asked during the widely-viewed TV program Meet the Press to respond to his "allegations," she calmly announced that she'd decided it was "worth the price" to see that U.S. objectives were achieved.(1)

...Amerikans had knowledge of the child mortality and other undesirable effects of the Iraq sanctions even earlier than Dennis Halliday's statements in 1998, or 1996, the year of the 60 Minutes broadcast with Madeline [sic] Albright. [My emphasis in red. Note that MIM spells Madeleine like Churchill does.]

I can’t find a statement by Halliday in the New York Times describing the UN sanctions as “a systematic program…of deliberate genocide” (Churchill supposedly quoting Halliday) in the fall of 1998. Churchill does not cite the New York Times article he says he got that quote from.

I have written about the issue of Albright and Halliday in other posts.

I think that the Oil-for-Food scandal shows that U.N. officials, Saddam, his media assets, and dishonest businessmen were not really worried about starving Iraqi children. Saddam always had the option to abide by the UN sanctions, and even during the Oil-for-Food Program he was secretly selling oil outside the sanctions.

The FBI official Mark J. Mershon pointed out:

[T]he oil-for-food program... ultimately proved to be a cash cow masquerading as a humanitarian aid program.

Even after the Oil for Food Program was up and running (by 1997), the UN, Saddam, his mouthpieces in the media, and crooked businessmen made Iraqis go hungry while Saddam built his palaces. Denis Halliday was very briefly (September 1997-September 1998) the U.N.'s Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq and was involved with what turned out to be the corrupt Oil-for-Food Program.

NBC News (1-6-2006) explains:

The oil-for-food program ran from 1996 to 2003. It was created to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It let the Iraqi government sell limited — and eventually unlimited — amounts of oil primarily to buy humanitarian goods.

If Saddam was eventually selling unlimited amounts of oil, I think Iraqis were hungry because Saddam and his helpers in the UN and elsewhere took so much of the oil money for themselves.

According to Paul Volcker (10-27-05), Saddam Hussein's manipulation of the Oil-for-Food Program diverted almost two billion dollars from the humanitarian purposes of the program. More than 2000 companies were involved in the illicit payments. According to Volcker, Saddam also made an estimated 11 billion dollars by smuggling oil outside of the Oil-For-Food Program.

The Denver/Boulder chapter of the American Indian Movement even alleged that years ago Saddam gave money to the American Indian Movement (AIM) to help take back the Black Hills. I wonder what Saddam was getting in return from the AIM? The author of this allegation is not identified, but he sounds like he might be Ward Churchill:

Through the IITC, cordial diplomatic relations were developed by 1979 with the Baath Socialist Party of Iraq. Through this relationship, substantial contributions were made to AIM and to the struggle for the return of the Paha Sapa (Black Hills)...

Churchill's inaccurate facts and the American Indian Movement's apparent financial connections with the Saddam regime make me pretty sure that Churchill is not an independent source of information about whose fault it is that Iraqis went hungry.