-Caveat Lector- http://www.questionsquestions.net/documents2/corn2.html
There are type stylings and other type-nuances at the web site that help to understand whom is talking where. Om K ----- (revised 5 June 2002) David Corn smears Mike Ruppert yet again... this is getting fatiguing... Capital Games by David Corn The September 11 X-Files 05/30/2002 @ 1:56pm On March 25, during a Pacifica radio interview, Representative Cynthia McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, said, "We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11.... What did this Administration know, and when did it know it about the events of September 11? Who else knew and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered?" McKinney was not merely asking if there had been an intelligence failure. She was suggesting--though not asserting--that the US government had foreknowledge of the specific attacks and either did not do enough to prevent them or, much worse, permitted them to occur for some foul reason. Senator Zell Miller, a conservative Democrat from her state, called her comments "loony." House minority leader Dick Gephardt noted that he disagreed with her. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer quipped, "The congresswoman must be running for the Hall of Fame of the Grassy Knoll Society." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called her a "nut." Well, that just about settles it! Seems like a respectable bipartisan consensus... even Ari Fleischer's in there! I think it's very important that everyone hear these remarks about McKinney one more time; good thing Corn has included them. (Incidentally, a top-flight scientific study recently concluded on the basis of extensively re-examining audio recordings from JFK's assasination, that there was indeed a shot fired at the President from the area around the notorious "Grassy Knoll." Better than 96% certainty; this was reported in the Washington Post. The newly recalculated odds of the official "lone gunman" theory being correct? 1 in 100,000. Can someone please let Mr. Corn know that the "Grassy Knoll" joke is a little played out...) http://www.jfklancer.com/LNE/knollstudy.html Two months later, after it was revealed that George W. Bush had received an intelligence briefing a month before September 11 in which he informed told Osama bin Laden was interested in both hijacking airplanes and striking directly at the United States, McKinney claimed vindication. But that new piece of information did not support the explosive notion she had unfurled earlier--that the Bush Administration and/or other unnamed parties had been in a position to warn New Yorkers and had elected not to do so. Mr. Corn, what do you have to say about the Rowley memo? Are you trying to pretend that the news of the intelligence briefing is the only new piece of evidence that supports McKinney's position? With her radio interview, McKinney became something of a spokesperson for people who question the official story of September 11. As the Constitution's editorial page blasted her, its website ran an unscientific poll and found that 46 percent said, "I think officials knew it was coming." Unscientific,yes -- but the results were remarkable no matter how you cut it. Conservative outlet Newsmax made note of this, and also made note of how Democrats were still treating the issue as "radioactive" despite the signs of an unexpectedly positive public respone. A clear indication of an atmosphere of heavy indimidation. Out there--beyond newspaper conference rooms and Congressional offices--alternative scenarios and conspiracy theories have been zapping across the Internet for months. God forbid that normal Americans should dare to think for themselves, and not accept spoon-fed spin from Congressional spokespersons and the corporate press. George W. Bush did it. The Mossad did it. The CIA did it. Or they purposely did not thwart the assault--either to have an excuse for war, to increase the military budget or to replace the Taliban with a government sympathetic to the West and the oil industry. History is full of well-known precedents in which bloody provocations for wars have been fabricated for similar reasons. Not all of the speculations being raised about 9/11 are tenable, but the idea in general of a set-up is not extraordinary and should be examined without prejudice. The theories claim that secret agendas either caused the attacks or drove the post-9/11 response, and these dark accounts have found an audience of passionate devotees. Corn plays the classic, hackneyed "passionate rabble" card. Tends to go over well with the snotty, smarter-than-thou old left establishment. I learned this after I wrote a column dismissing various 9/11 conspiracy theories. Glad to see that Corn is honest enough to use the word "dismissing." I expressed doubt that the Bush Administration would kill or allow the murder of thousands of American citizens to achieve a political or economic aim. Good point -- especially because nothing this awful has ever happened before! It reminds me of those wackos who are still trying to sell the old myth that the US government threw away 58,000 American lives in Vietnam and Southeast Asia just to achieve political and economic aims. Even more outrageously, these nuts have tried to claim a large number of these youths were sent to their death even after leaders in Washington knew that the war was unwinnable, but -- get this -- supposedly hid the fact from the public! What a crock! I won't even mention how some social deviants have been trying to claim that US government documents declassified in the last few years have provided the final smoking gun proof of the old allegation that FDR knew Pearl Harbor was coming and let it happen. They probably smoke crack, anyway. (How could Karl Rove spin that, if a leak ever occurred?) Answer: with a lot of help from David Corn and the "Loyal Opposition" Having covered the national security community for years, I didn't believe any government agency could execute a plot requiring the coordination of the FBI, the CIA, the INS, the FAA, the NTSB, the Pentagon and others. Those who believe that 9/11 was an inside job argue, according to my understanding, that it would have been done by a very tightly compartmentalized and off-the-record "black ops" group, perhaps utilizing foreign assets under contract to maximize secrecy and plausible denial, and assisted by the Bush Administration and a small number of individuals at strategic choke points in the government bureaucracy (as a speculative example, specific FBI officials who obstructed terrorist investigations). Corn's insistence that such an operation would require massive inter-agency coordination (through normal channels??) is obfuscatory and is totally out of touch with everything I have heard from credible people with in-depth knowledge of covert ops. And--no small matter- -there was no direct evidence that anything of such a diabolical nature had transpired. Corn is playing a semantic game here in order to avoid admitting that there is an extraordinary circumstantial case, involving a wide and consistent body of evidence, to support the allegations that Ruppert and many others have made. If he had just protested the fact that there is still no signature "smoking gun evidence", it would be fine... as long as it is made in the proper context of acknowledging the ongoing levels of coverup, secrecy, and lack of disclosure from official 9/11 investigations. Instead, Corn uses the term "direct evidence" to give a half-impression that there is no evidence at all. This is one aspect of his use of a well-known disinformation technique of shifting the burden of proof on those making factually supported allegegations, and away from the government which should be bearning the brunt of pressure to provide honest answers and full disclosure. A responsible and non-disinformative approach requires recognizing a continuum of possibilities. For example, from bad to good: Proven falsehood Unsubstantiated rumor Educated guess Credible allegation Proven fact Corn's approach reflects the establishment's slander and emotional intimidation tactics aimed at average citizens, trying to make them feel that they have no right to challenge their government with credible allegations, and must wait in silence pained by limitless self-doubt until the authorities choose to hand down proof. Moreover, the bottom line fact that is being obscured by all of this debunkery and poisoning of the water is that Corn and some other "leftists" are failing to aggressively confront the Bush Administration with tough questions that are fair to ask without making any kind of risky leaps or "conspiracy" assumptions, even in the context of the most prudent caution. That is the Big Lie going on here. Hundreds of angry e-mails poured in. Some accused me of being a sophisticated CIA disinformation agent. Others claimed I was hopelessly naive. (Could I be both?) Poor David Corn! You use The Nation as your mouthpiece to smear well-intentioned, truthseeking citizens as deluded, X-Files addled maniacs in a transparently manipulative hit piece, and then everyone starts picking on you and saying awful mean things about you, and some in public, even? I'm so sorry. And that stuff about being a disinfo agent... Well, for starters, when are people going to realize that this sort of thing just doesn't happen in America? Never has, never will. Why would anyone let the fact that you were picked to write the officially sanctioned biography of notorious CIA über-criminal Ted Shackley give them doubts as to whether you are credible as a critic of the National Security establishment? Why don't people realize that it is none of their damn business to ask why The Nation receives funding from CIA-linked sources like the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York, and a group of CIA foundations grouped under the umbrella of the CIA-funded Roger Baldwin Foundation? Why would anyone be so indiscreet as to publicly gripe about the fact that you get to travel around to the world's "hot spots" on a State Department visa? (they must be jealous). You know, lately I've read a couple of those blood-chilling articles about activists who were traveling to demonstrations being stopped from boarding their flights at the airport because they had been put on some kind of black list. I guess some people just don't have "the knack." Hey Corn, of course we don't doubt how much you must be feared and resented in the corridors of power... but how do you pull it off? What's your secret for getting that red carpet treatment? I know a lot of folks who could use some of that. Much of it concerned two men, Michael Ruppert and Delmart "Mike" Vreeland. Ruppert, a former Los Angeles cop, runs a website that has cornered a large piece of the alternative-9/11 market. Hey, it's a market! Do you mean to hint he's just in it for the money? Actually, it seems like everyone who is pursuing alternative views of 9/11 is making buckets of cash with their slick new websites. As for myself, I'm thinking of marketing a line of collectible 9/11 conspiracy action figures. It's almost like the 90s stock market, everybody's getting on the bandwagon. This is fun! An American who was jailed in Canada, Vreeland claims to be a US naval intelligence officer who tried to warn the authorities before the attacks. Ruppert cites Vreeland to back up his allegation that the CIA had "foreknowledge" of the 9/11 attacks and that there is a strong case for "criminal complicity on the part of the U.S. government in their execution." My article discounted their claims. But, I discovered, the two men had a loyal-- and vocal--following. Fanatics, all of them. In fact, fanatical enough to cry foul when Normon Solomon started an all-out campaign to keep Ruppert off the air at KPFA, a radio station in Berkeley, CA. Freaks! They were being booked on Pacifica stations. Ruppert was selling a video and giving speeches around the world. (In February, he filled a theater in Sacramento.) I decided to take a second--and deeper--look at the pair and key pieces of the 9/11 conspiracy movement. Oh yeah, the 9/11 conspiracy movement... I've been hearing about that. Aren't they like some kind of Scientology cult or that sort of thing? The Ex-Cop Who Connects the Dot By his own account, Ruppert has long been a purveyor of amazing tales. In 1981 he told the Los Angeles Herald Examiner a bizarre story about himself: While a cop in the 1970s, he fell in love with a mysterious woman who, he came to believe, was working with the mob and US intelligence. Only after she left him, Ruppert said, did he figure out that his girlfriend had been a CIA officer coordinating a deal in which organized crime thugs were transporting weapons to Kurdish counterrevolutionaries in Iran in exchange for heroin. In an interview with the newspaper, the woman denied Ruppert's account and questioned his mental stability. Whatever the truth of his encounter with this woman, the relationship apparently extracted a toll on Ruppert. No need to be so cautious, Corn... we can already tell that he must be lying about her... In 1978 he resigned from the force, claiming that the department had not protected him when his life was threatened. According to records posted on Ruppert's site, his commanding officer called his service "for the most part, outstanding." But the CO also said Ruppert was hampered by an "over-concern with organized crime activity and a feeling that his life was endangered by individuals connected to organized crime. This problem resulted in Officer Ruppert voluntarily committing himself to psychiatric care last year.... any attempts to rejoin the Department by Officer Ruppert should be approved only after a thorough psychiatric examination." Wow, what a nut... who has ever heard of a cop being threatened by the mob and screwed over by his superiors? It's true, Ruppert must be paranoid! You know, I hear that being a police detective is actually a pretty cushy job. All those tales you hear about it being so rough are just conspiracy theories. A review of Rupperts records on line will show that Corn is blowing smoke, and viciously: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/mcr_lapd.html In short: by trying one more time to recycle these smears, Corn has immediately reduced his credibility to zero. I smell desperation. Why?? In 1996 Ruppert showed up at a community meeting in Los Angeles concerning charges that the CIA had been in league with crack cocaine dealers in the United States. There Ruppert claimed the agency had tried to recruit him in the 1970s to "protect CIA drug operations" in South Central Los Angeles--an allegation that was missing from the guns-and-drugs story published in 1981. The CIA's involvement with narcotics trafficing is now very well documented, confirmed by information released in a 1998 report from the CIA Inspector General. It has also been covered in a number of well-respected books, for example Dark Alliance by reporter Gary Webb and Powderburns by former DEA agent Celerino Castillo. Ruppert has been a leader in exposing this corruption to the public. At this point in time, anyone who still believes that CIA drug smuggling is a "conspiracy theory" is an out-of-date dupe. In 1998 he launched his From the Wilderness alternative newsletter, which examines what he considers to be the hidden currents of international economics and national security untouched by other media. On March 31 of last year, for instance, he published a report on an economic conference in Moscow where the opening speaker was a fellow who works for Lyndon LaRouche, the conspiracy-theorist/political cult leader. "I share a near universal respect of the LaRouche organization's detailed and precise research," Ruppert wrote. "I have not, however, always agreed with [its] conclusions." Ruppert claims that twenty members of Congress subscribe to his newsletter. Ruppert is not alone in his opinion of LaRouche; I have heard a number of credible people whom I respect make the same appraisal -- that LaRouche himself, and his organization's agenda, are not to be trusted, but the background research work done by his hired hands has proven over time to be reliable and top notch. Because of this, many believe that LaRouche is a deep cover asset -- but no one can quite figure out whom he is serving. He attracts people by offering "real dirt" but then diverts them towards suspicious ideological conclusions. In this sense, LaRouche's organization seems quite similar in it's functioning to the classic concept of a "phony opposition" press front. As a hypothetical example, one might see "dissident" or "progressive" media outlets which attract a loyal following by carefully cataloguing the day by day crimes and misdeeds of the establishment, accompanied by an abundance of convenient outrage, but, when needed, aggressively tack on a whitewashing interpretation (one example being "the government is just incompetent and out of control; sure, those in charge are bad and causing lots of harm, but they r eally don't know what they're doing and simply couldn't pull off any really big crimes or conspiracies"). A controlled opposition has always been a far more effective tool in protecting corrupt regimes than the obvious, easily mistrusted chorus of loyalists close to those in power. There are plenty of warnings about this in the history books. Ruppert is not a reporter. He mostly assembles facts--or purported facts--from various news sources and then makes connections. Is Corn's arrogance without limit? The proof is not in any one piece--say, a White House memo detailing an arms-for-hostages trade. The proof is in the line drawn between the dots. Funny, this phrase rings a bell... I think I've been hearing a lot of people people claiming recently that a failure to connect between the dots was what resulted in the death of 3000 Americans last year. "Connecting between the dots" is exactly the way that convictions work in many court cases. The notion that innocence or guilt must be proven solely on the weight of one spectacular "smoking gun" piece of evidence is a simpleminded popular fiction, possibly due to the influence of too many hokey TV courtroom dramas. Sometimes, prosecutors present a jury with hundreds of pieces of evidence, many which may not mean much on their own; the judge instructs the jury not to consider each piece in isolation (which is exactly the approach to the evidence being taken here by Corn) but instead to put together a "big picture" and use the strength of how all of the individual pieces fit together to reach a verdict. There is a reason that juries are told to make their decision by the standard of BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT and not TO A SCIENTIFIC STANDARD. Furthermore, while many people say "I won't buy any of that until there's a courtroom standard of PROOF," what does this mean outside of a courtroom? The validity of a courtroom verdict is based on some fundamental requirements: ¤ Both sides have the ability to call witnesses. ¤ Both sides have the ability to fully cross-examine witnesses. ¤ Both sides have equal access to the evidence, and the evidence is not kept secret from the jury. None of these principles yet apply to any opportunity for the public to examine the 9/11 scandal now unfolding, and, depending on what results from the current calls for a "full and independent investigation", may never apply. What then? What if the allegations of willful negligence or complicity are true, but government secrecy succeeds in keeping the smoking gun evidence hidden? Do we ultimately just sit back and default on the official story being fed to us? There is no simple answer to this, and it is a gross disservice to the public interest to try and insist that there is. A better analogy for the current situation might be a Grand Jury, whose job is not to reach final unassailable proof, but instead to look at the available evidence and to decide whether there is sufficient justification to file criminal charges, and what the charges should be. Since Congress has so far not come through adequately on its responsibility to investigate, and the media have generally marched in lock step with official coverup, it has fallen into the hands of the people to function as this Grand Jury for 9/11. In the circumstances of extreme cover-up and obfuscation by government officials, and apathy in the media, it is not only the general public's right but their RESPONSIBILITY to try as best they can to "connect between the dots." There is always a need for restraint and skepticism in looking at controversial allegations, and different people will have different levels of skepticism, but it is extremely disturbing to me how Corn's blustering insistence on black-and-white standards appears to be a transparent effort to spin obfuscatory bullshit and defend the Bush Administration from valid questions of culpability. His masterwork is a timeline of fifty-one events (at last count) that, he believes, demonstrate that the CIA knew of the attacks in advance and that the US government probably had a hand in them. Ruppert titled his timeline "Oh Lucy!--You Gotta Lotta 'Splaining To Do." Ruppert's timeline is his effort to put together what is the most essential foundation of any forensic investigation of a crime. In the timeline he notes that transnational oil companies invested billions of dollars to gain access to the oil reserves of Central America and that they expressed interest in a trans-Afghanistan pipeline between 1991 and 1998. He lists trips made to Saudi Arabia in 1998 and 2000 by former President George Bush on behalf of the Carlyle Group investment firm. On September 7, 2001, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed an order restructuring the state's response to acts of terrorism. There's a German online news agency report from September 14 claiming that an Iranian man had called US law enforcement to warn of the attack earlier that summer. The list cries out, "Don't you see?" Oil companies wanted a stable and pro-Western regime in Afghanistan. Warnings were not heeded. Daddy Bush had dealings in Saudi Arabia. Brother Jeb was getting ready for a terrible event. It can only mean one thing: The US government designed the attacks or let them happen so it could go to war on behalf of oil interests. Not a bad beginning of an argument in favor of Ruppert's interpretation, although it's terribly sketchy. Needs some work. Space prevents a complete dissection of all Ruppert's dots. Good thing too, or you wouldn't be able to selectively filter out what you don't have the nerve to attack. But in several instances, he misrepresents his source material. Item number 8 says that in February 2001, UPI reported that the National Security Agency had "broken bin Laden's encrypted communications." That would suggest the US government could have picked up word of the coming assault. But the actual story noted not that the US government had gained the capacity to eavesdrop on bin Laden at will but that it had "gone into foreign bank accounts [of bin Laden's organization] and deleted or transferred funds, and jammed or blocked the group's cell or satellite phones." The NSA was able to trace and block bin Laden's calls but then couldn't listen in?? LOL!! This is a red herring anyway. There have been several other press reports confirming that the NSA did have, at certain times within the timeframe that bin Laden's organization was planning hijacking attacks, the ability to listen in on their communications. This has been confirmed by well-regarded NSA expert James Bamford, and even more importantly came up in courtoom testimony in the trial of the African Embassy bombers. For one thing, the US knew that he told his mother on September 9: "In two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while". Item number 9, based on a Los Angeles Times story, says the Bush Administration gave $43 million in aid to the Taliban in May 2001, "purportedly" to assist farmers starving since the destruction of their opium crop. Purportedly? Mr. Corn, a few paragraphs back you used the word "purportedly" in your attack on Ruppert's timeline. I guess only you are allowed to use this word? Just checking. Was the administration paying off the Taliban for something else? That is what Ruppert is hinting. The newspaper, though, reported that all US funds "are channeled through the United Nations and international agencies," not handed to the Taliban. Unless Ruppert can show that was not the case, this dot has no particular significance. What if Washington funded international programs assisting Afghan farmers? Corn fails to mention that the funds transfer was extremely controversial and met with widespread international disapproval. What did so many US allies find ill-advised about this where Corn seems to find it so harmless? Notably, the transfer occured close to the time that oil pipeline negotiations between the Taliban and the US were getting underway. Also, the UN representatives participated in meetings in Spring 2001 in which US plans to invade Afghanistan in October of 2001 were announced to Pakistani officials (as reported in The Guardian and Times of India). I don't know who Corn is trying to fool here; it seems there are plenty of surrounding circumstances that warrant putting this item on the table. With his timeline, Ruppert implies far more than he proves. It is a document for those already predisposed to believe that world events are determined by secret, mind-boggling conspiracies of the powerful, by people too influential and wily to be caught but who leave a trail that can be decoded by a few brave outsiders who know where and how to look. A bit of a mind-screw here, and a classic example of projection. It is in fact Corn who is writing for an audience which is perhaps predisposed to believe that any conspiracy capable of profoundly affecting world events would absolutely have to be of "mind-boggling" proportions and complexity, hence inconceivable and impossible. Conspiracies do not need to be vast in order to be effective. The German left was devastatingly defeated by the Nazis in part because they failed to anticipate how much damage could be done by a comparative handful of street thugs backed by a small conspiracy of powerful industrial elitists.Few believed, for example, that the massive and widely entrenched institution of the labor unions faced any danger of being destroyed quickly, not without a long and epic struggle. We all know how that wound up. I am afraid that knee-jerk refusal among some on the left to consider conspiracy claims fairly may be setting us all up to take another fall. Corn is also talking out of both sides of his mouth: earlier, he stated with total assurance that high-level conspiracies could never be kept a secret. Here, he argues that if they existed, they would be. Grasping at straws? The ideas that "there are no big conspiracies" and "all conspiracy theorists are degenerate nutcases" have been pounded endlessly into American culture by obedient academics and the corporate media for generations. It's an easy sell for someone who might be prone just to wave the flag and hurl insults at "America haters." It's a tougher sell for those who are highly educated and politically independent-minded. Hence, one sees an attempt to apply a kind of reverse-psychology, the "fellow traveler" approach: "You and I, we're the smart ones, and we know better than to imagine impossible things like big conspiracies, not like the feverish, fantasy-prone rabble..." The "Spy" Who Tried To Warn Us? Ruppert can claim one truly original find: Delmart "Mike" Vreeland. He is the flesh on the bones of Ruppert's the-dots-show-all timeline. On December 6, 2000, Vreeland, then 34, was arrested in Canada and charged with fraud, forgery, threatening death or bodily harm, and obstructing a peace officer. At the time, he was wanted on multiple warrants in the United States--for forgery, counterfeiting, larceny, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, narcotics, reckless endangerment, arson, and grand theft. Months earlier, the Detroit News, citing law enforcement authorities, had reported that Vreeland was an experienced identity thief. While Vreeland was in jail in Toronto, law enforcement officials in Michigan began extradition proceedings. On October 7, 2001, Vreeland, who was fighting extradition, submitted an exhibit in a Canadian court that he says shows he knew 9/11 was coming. And, Ruppert argues, this is proof that US intelligence was aware of the coming attacks. The document is a page of handwritten notes. There is a list that includes the World Trade Center, the Sears Tower and the White House. Below that a sentence reads, "Let one happen--stop the rest." Elsewhere is a hard-to -decipher collection of phrases and names. Vreeland claims he wrote this in mid- August 2001, while in prison, and had it placed in a locked storage box by prison guards. He says the note was opened on September 14 in front of prison officials. Immediately, his lawyers were summoned to the prison, according to one of them, Rocco Galati, and the jail officials dispatched the note to Ottawa. Vreeland's believers, including Ruppert, refer to this note as a "warning letter." It is no such thing and, though tantalizing, holds no specific information related to the 9/11 assaults. In a word, false. There is no date mentioned, no obvious reference to a set of perpetrators. Vreeland didn't know the exact date? Well he's obviously out-to-lunch. In a telephone interview with me, Vreeland said this document was not written as an alert. He claimed that throughout the summer of 2001, he was composing a thirty-seven-page memo to Adm. Vernon Clark, Chief of Naval Operations, and that this page contains the notes he kept during this process. What of the memo to Clark? Vreeland won't share it, maintaining that he wrote in such a manner that only its intended recipient would truly understand what it said. Who can confirm the note was indeed what he had placed in storage prior to September 11? Is it possible some sort of switch was pulled? Tell us, Corn, how could this have been done? Give us a credible, substantive hypothesis here; you're engaging hypocritically in the same sort of tactics you claim to be criticizing. This is ridiculous. Vreeland maintains that during court proceedings, five officials of the Canadian jail affirmed that he had passed this document to the guards prior to September 11. When I asked for their names, Vreeland said the judge had sealed those records. Kevin Wilson, a Canadian federal prosecutor handling the extradition case, and Galati, Vreeland's lawyer, say no seal has been ordered. The note is one small piece of Vreeland's very big Alias-like story. He claims he was a US naval intelligence officer sent to Russia in September 2000 on a sensitive mission: to obtain design documents related to a Russian weapon system that could defeat a US missile defense system. He swiped copies of the documents and altered the originals so the Russian system wouldn't work. As one court decision states, "According to [Vreeland], he was sent to Russia to authenticate these documents because he had originally conceived of the theory behind this [anti-Star Wars] technology, when working for the US Navy in 1986." While in Moscow, he also snagged other top- secret documents that, he claims, foretold the September 11 attacks. And now the US government, the Russian secret police, organized crime and corrupt law enforcement officials are after him. As one Canadian judge noted, "No summary of the complex allegations of multiple concurrent conspiracies...can do justice to [Vreeland's] own description." Ruppert and Vreeland assert that Canadian court records back up Vreeland. But court decisions in his case have questioned his credibility. In one, Judge Archie Campbell observed, "There is not even a threshold showing of any air of reality to the vast conspiracy alleged by the applicant." Judge John Macdonald wrote, "I find that the Applicant is an imaginative and manipulative person who has little regard for the truth.... the testimony that he developed the theory for anti-Star Wars technology in 1986, based on high school courses, personal interest and perhaps a law clerk's course and a 'Bachelor of Political Science' degree is simply incredible." Nor did he he believe Vreeland was a spy or that he had smuggled documents out of Russia. Mcdonald's opinion was contracdicted by the courtroom phone call to the Pentagon, was it not? Macdonald, though, did state that the US records submitted in court regarding Vreeland's criminal record were "terse, incomplete and confusing," and he noted that the sloppiness of the filing might suggest the Michigan criminal charges were "trumped up." But he was not convinced of that, explaining "I see no reasonable basis in the evidence for inferring that the Michigan charges are 'trumped up.'" It's not surprising those records might be a mess. Sneaky little move there... After I first wrote about Vreeland, I received an e-mail from Terry Weems, who identified himself as Vreeland's half-brother. He claimed Vreeland was a longtime con man who had preyed on his own family. Weems sent copies of police reports his wife had filed in Alabama accusing Vreeland of falsely using her name to buy office supplies and cell phones in August 2000. Weems provided me a list of law enforcement officers who were pursuing Vreeland in several states. I began calling these people and examining state and county records. There was much to check. According to Michigan Department of Corrections records, Vreeland was in and out of prison several times from 1988 to 1999, having been convicted of assorted crimes, including breaking and entering, receiving stolen property, forgery and writing bad checks. In 1997 he was arrested in Virginia for conspiring to bribe a police officer and intimidating a witness, court records say. He failed to show up in court there. In Florida he was arrested in 1998 on two felony counts of grand theft. In one instance he had purchased a yacht with a check written on a nonexistent account. He was sentenced to three years of probation. The Florida Department of Corrections currently lists him as an absconder. In 1998 he was pursued by the Sheffield, Alabama, police force for stealing about $20,000 in music equipment. Charges were eventually dismissed after some of the property was recovered and Vreeland agreed to pay restitution. In the course of his investigation, Sheffield Detective Greg Ray pulled Vreeland's criminal file; it was twenty pages long. "He had to really try to be a criminal to get such a history," Ray says. A 1999 report filed by a Michigan probation agent said of Vreeland, "The defendant has 9 known felony convictions and 5 more felony charges are now pending in various Courts. However, the full extent of his criminal record may never be known because he has more than a dozen identified Aliases and arrests or police contacts in 5 different states." Michigan state police records (sent to me by Weems, Vreeland's half- brother) show that in 1997, while Vreeland was in jail after being arrested on a bad-check charge, he wrote a letter to the St. Clair Shores Police Department warning that his brother-in-law was going to burn down his own restaurant. The letter was dated five days prior to a fire that occurred at the restaurant, but it was postmarked three days after the fire. "Do you see a pattern here?" Weems asks. I would note that Corn has offered no factually based rebuttal of the sequence of events involving the writing of Vreeland's letter and the handoff to the prison guards. This was first reported not by Ruppert but by the mainstream newspaper Toronto Star. If the sworn testimony in courtroom transcripts does not support this, then why doesn't Corn simply state that fact and win with one stroke, rather than digress into all of this secondary material? --[cont]-- ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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