63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read

by Jesse Ventura

  I guess something has changed since then, because the revised Army Regulation 500-3 issued in April 2008 is stamped UNCLASSIFIED. I’m ending this section with some excerpts, which seem like decent contingency planning on the face of it. Still, the emergency relocation facilities do give me pause, not unlike the KBR contract and the civilian prison camps.

  In the wrong hands…I’d better stop there.

  27

  EMBASSY CABLES

  The State Department Cable on Russia as a “Mafia State”

  No doubt by the time this book appears, there will be whole volumes being assembled based on the WikiLeaks slow-but-steady release of U.S. embassy cables. I haven’t had time to do more than peruse some of the most intriguing of these, but I go back to what Congressman Ron Paul has to say about the whole WikiLeaks saga. What’s caused more deaths—“lying us into war [in Iraq] or the release of the WikiLeaks papers? . . . In a society where truth becomes treason, then we’re in big trouble.” He says it so eloquently, I have nothing more to add.

  Here is the first of several of the U.S. embassy cables that caught my eye. It’s our State Department reporting about a senior Spanish prosecutor looking into organized crime, who says that Russia has become a virtual “Mafia state” with the Kremlin using mob bosses to carry out its wishes. I’ve only included excerpts here.

  28

  THE FDA’S BLIND SIDLE

  Our Food Supply Imperiled by Lack of Inspections

  I can’t say I was surprised to read in this report how little attention is being paid to what’s going on with our factory farms and feedlots. I’ve known about this problem since I was governor. The simple fact is, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t I have the manpower. They tell you they’re conducting these inspections, but nobody is actually out there checking to conducting these inspections, but nobody is actually out there checking to make sure.

  The reality is, the conditions by which our food is being supplied to us are very dangerous. Consider that more than half a billion eggs were recalled last year and a salmonella outbreak in August made about 1,700 people sick. Preventable food-borne illness hits about 76 million Americans every year—325,000 become hospitalized and 5,000 die from eating tainted food!

  It all comes back to the same old thing: this is what happens when corporations, in this case agribusiness, take over. It simply becomes bottom line, money, and profits—everything else be damned. There is a staph infection that’s antibiotic-resistant and widely present in our vast hog and chicken factories. It’s called ST398, and the reason it’s a huge problem is because those animals are getting daily doses of antibiotics—which make them grow faster (more bang for the buck) and keep them alive in the stressful and unsanitary conditions where they’re raised.

  You’d think that the federal regulators would want to keep tabs on this, but for years the FDA looked the other way and wouldn’t even calculate estimates of how much antibiotics the livestock industry is using. Finally, in December 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General released a report—it turned out to be 29 million pounds of antibiotics in 2009! And that, my friends, is a veritable shitload. Here are a few excepts from “FDA Inspections of Domestic Food Facilities” (April 2010).

  BACKGROUND

  Each year, more than 300,000 Americans are hospitalized and 5,000 die after consuming contaminated foods and beverages. Recent high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness have raised serious questions about FDA’s inspections process and its ability to protect the Nation’s food supply. The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry requested that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) review the extent to which FDA conducts food facility inspections and identifies violations.

  FDA inspects food facilities to ensure food safety and compliance with regulations. During an inspection, FDA inspectors may identify potential violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as well as other applicable laws and regulations. Based on the outcome of the inspection, FDA assigns a facility one of three classifications: official action indicated (OAI), voluntary action indicated (VAI), or no action indicated (NAI). In addition, FDA may choose to change a facility’s initial classification to another classification under certain circumstances.

  FDA relies on several approaches to determine whether a facility corrected the violations found by inspectors. FDA may review evidence provided by a food facility describing any completed corrective actions. FDA may also reinspect a facility to verify that corrections were made.

  FINDINGS

  On average, FDA inspects less than a quarter of food facilities each year, and the number of facilities inspected has declined over time. Between fiscal years (FY) 2004 and 2008, FDA inspected annually an average of 24 percent of the food facilities subject to its inspection. Except for a few instances, there are no specific guidelines that govern the frequency with which inspections should occur. Further, the number of food facilities that FDA inspected declined between FYs 2004 and 2008, even as the number of food facilities increased. In addition, the number of inspections of facilities that have been designated by FDA as “high risk” has also declined. FDA officials noted that the overall decline in FDA inspections was largely due to a decline in staffing levels.

  Fifty-six percent of food facilities have gone 5 or more years without an FDA inspection. FDA identified 51,229 food facilities that were subject to inspection and were in business from the start of FY 2004 until the end of FY 2008. Of these, 56 percent were not inspected at all, 14 percent were inspected a single time, and the remaining 30 percent were inspected two or more times. If FDA does not routinely inspect food facilities, it is unable to guarantee that these facilities are complying with applicable laws and regulations.

  The number of facilities that received OAI classifications has declined over time. The number of inspected facilities that received OAI classifications decreased from 614 in FY 2004 to 283 in FY 2008. The percentage of facilities that received OAI classifications also dropped from nearly 4 percent to nearly 2 percent during this 5-year period. In addition, nearly three-quarters of the facilities that received OAI classifications in FY 2008 had a history of violations. Two percent of facilities that received OAI classifications refused to grant FDA officials access to their records.

  FDA took regulatory action against 46 percent of the facilities with initial OAI classifications; for the remainder, FDA either lowered the classification or took no regulatory action. In FY 2007, a total of 446 facilities initially received OAI classifications. FDA took regulatory action against 46 percent of these facilities. For the remainder, FDA lowered the OAI classification for 29 percent and took no regulatory action for 25 percent.

  For 36 percent of the facilities with OAI classifications in FY 2007, FDA took no additional steps to ensure that the violations were corrected. In FY 2007, 280 facilities received OAI classifications that were not lowered by FDA. For 36 percent of these facilities, FDA did not reinspect them within a year of the inspection or review other evidence provided by facilities to ensure that the violations were corrected.

  29

  THE EPA’S BLIND SIDE

  Pesticides and Honeybees

  We all learned in grade school how important the honeybees are to our food production. And we know that they’ve been dying off in droves over the past several years. Nobody’s yet determined exactly why, but the spraying of pesticides is one of the prime suspects.

  At the end of 2010, some brave and outraged individual within the Environmental Protection Agency leaked an internal memo. It’s a lengthy new EPA study of a tongue-twister pesticide called clothianidin, which is manufactured by the German agrichemical giant Bayer. Their Bayer CropScience division had applied to use this particular pesticide as a seed treatment on cotton and mustard. It’s already widely used on corn, soy, wheat, sugar beets, sunflowers, and canola in the States. In 2009, Bayer took in about $262 million in sales of clothianidin.

  This new study says
flat out that the health of our nation’s honeybees is imperiled by this product. That’s actually been a concern for almost ten years, except the EPA under Bush granted “conditional registration” to clothianidin in 2003. Bayer’s own study in 2007 was rubber-stamped by the EPA as “scientifically sound.” And, in April 2010, the Obama administration’s EPA granted full registration to the pesticide. So how come Bayer is being treated with kid gloves? Why are tens of millions of acres of farmland going to bloom with clothianidin-laced pollen this year? And what’s this going to mean for the health of our little pollinator friends?

  This ties in to something that happened when I took my TV show (Conspiracy Theory) to New Orleans to look into the Gulf oil spill. At the time, BP was applying a chemical called Corexit as a means of dispersing the millions of gallons of oil. A guy from BP looked at me and said, “Everything we’ve put into the water was approved by the EPA.” I said, “So what?! Doesn’t your common sense tell you that putting something in the water that has four lethal poisons in it, when you’ve already got all this oil, is not a good thing?” But his answer again was, “Everything we did was approved.” That told me right there that the EPA can be bought and sold.

  Here are some excerpts from the EPA’s study on bees and pesticides, and you can read the whole thing at: www.panna.org/sites/default/files/Memo_Nov2010_Clothianidin.pdf.

  30

  EMBASSY CABLES

  America’s Fight against Europe over Biotech Crops

  In case you still imagine our government isn’t completely in bed with the mega-corporations, this WikiLeaked cable ought to make you think twice. Our former ambassador to France was a guy named Craig Stapleton, who before that used to co-own the Texas Rangers baseball team with George W. Bush. In 2007, he called for “moving to retaliation” against France for having the gall to ban Monsanto’s genetically modified corn, and against the whole European Union because they at the time had an anti-biotech policy. “In our view, Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue,” Ambassador Stapleton determined, as if somehow we had the right to tell them how to think!

  31

  MILITARY STUDIES CLIMATE

  Climate Change as a Threat to National Security

  Back in 2006, the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), a federally funded R&D center for the Navy and Marine Corps, brought together a Military Advisory Board of eleven retired three-star and four-star admirals and generals. Their task was to examine the impact of global climate change for future national security. The report came out in April 2007, and I’m reprinting the Executive Summary here. Its conclusion is that climate change represents a “a serious threat” that is likely to create “instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world.” (The entire report is viewable online at http://www.cna.org/reports/climate.)

  I find it very chilling that the U.S. military would recognize this situation and begin preparations for how to deal with it, when many of our elected officials are still prepared to think climate change is some kind of hoax! I don’t think it’s such a good idea to have the military being out front on things like this, it isn’t their proper role. We’re the ones who should be leading them, not the other way around—unless we’re like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand.

  32

  CORPORATE INFLUENCE

  Koch Industries Seminars for the Rich and Powerful

  Ever since the Supreme Court decided last year (Citizens United v. FEC) to override Congress and allow unlimited secret cash from corporations—and even foreign governments—to influence American elections, following the money has gotten difficult. One mega-player, though, that we’ve found out a lot about is Koch Industries.

  The Koch brothers, Charles and David from Wichita, Kansas, are each worth more than $21.5 billion. Charles has come right out and admitted that their major goal is to eliminate 90 percent of all laws and government regulations, so as to further the “culture of prosperity.” The Kochs are the biggest funder of right-wing front groups in the country.

  Twice a year they bring together all the wealthy donors to talk about their game plan. A website called ThinkProgress somehow got hold of a memo that outlines what happened the last time Koch and company got together for a secret election-planning meeting, in June 2010 in Aspen, Colorado. You’ll notice that the agenda included a fair number of the conservative media stars like Glenn Beck.

  PART THREE

  SHADY WHITE HOUSES

  33

  NUKE THE RUSSIANS?

  Nixon’s Vietnam Peace Plan

  “Tricky Dick” had his own version of Operation Northwoods, and if this one had backfired, we would’ve been in a nuclear war. Lining up the bombers to look like we were attacking Russia is so far-fetched it was like reading a comic book when I first came across this. Amazingly enough, during Nixon’s first year in office, he and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, cooked up a plan to end the Vietnam War by pretending to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.

  They code-named the operation Giant Lance; I’m going to avoid speculating whether the sub-title was “Mine’s Bigger than Yours.” they set the whole thing in motion on October 10, 1969, when the Strategic Air Command received an urgent order to ready our most powerful thermonuclear weapons for immediate potential use against the Russkies.

  According to an article in Wired magazine (February 25, 2008), on the morning of October 27, 1969, a squadron of 18 B-52s “began racing from the western U.S. toward the eastern border of the Soviet Union. The pilots flew for 18 hours without rest, hurtling toward their targets at more than 500 miles per hour. Each plane was loaded with nuclear weapons hundreds of times more powerful than the ones that had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki…The aircraft were pointed toward Moscow, but the real goal was to change the war in Vietnam.”

  This was one of a bunch of military measures aimed at putting our nuclear forces on a higher state of readiness. We had destroyers, cruisers, and aircraft carriers doing all kinds of maneuvers in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden, and Sea of Japan. This was all executed secretly but designed to be detectable—but supposedly not alarming—to the leadership of the Kremlin. And our commanders-in-chief (CINCs) had no idea why Nixon had ordered the “Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Readiness Test,” also to become known as the “madman theory.”

  You can find the following document at the National Security Archive website (Electronic Briefing Book No. 81).

  34

  THE CIA VS THE PRESIDENT

  Nixon’s Pursuit of the CIA’s Secret Files

  In December 2010, a new release of documents relating to the Nixon years transpired at the National Archives. One that I found especially telling was this “Memorandum for the Record” by John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s deputy chief of staff, about the president’s attempt to pry out secret CIA files related to the Vietnam coup that overthrew Diem in 1963 as well the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis. Just why Nixon wanted all this material remains unknown to this day, but it seems he definitely wanted to get some “goods” on the Kennedy administration. And he may have had another motive—to find out what the CIA might have on why JFK was killed. Or on Nixon’s own involvement in the attempts to kill Castro, for example. There are a lot of redactions in these three pages, but one thing comes through crystal clear: there was a small war going on between Nixon and Richard Helms, director of the CIA.

  Again, what people need to understand is that it appears the CIA answers to no one. They’re supposed to be the president’s arm on foreign intelligence, but the best way I can put it is: There’s been an amputation. That body part is not attached anymore. Time and again, the CIA thumbs its nose even at presidents. So who runs this agency if the president doesn’t?

  35

  RESTLESS YOUTH

  How Nixon Wanted the CIA and FBI to Crack Down on Youthful Dissidence

  I can’t leave the Nixon years without another tidbit released at the end of 2010. This shows clearly how Nix
on was looking to bring the CIA and FBI together in 1970 to crack down on the antiwar protesters and other “restless youth.” Keep in mind that the CIA was forbidden by statute from taking part in such domestic operations, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. This is the basis of what later became known as the Huston Plan, after the author of the memorandum, Tom Charles Huston.

  Having grown up in that era, though, this doesn’t really surprise me. Not when you learn about all the people the government had under surveillance, from Dr. King to Malcolm X to John Lennon. I thought we’d left those times behind, but everything seems to be circular. It’s worse than ever today, since 9/11, and we’ll get to that in a bit.

  36 & 37

  STOLEN 2000 ELECTION

  The GES Emails and a CBS News Analysis

  We all know how the Supreme Court awarded the disputed 2000 election to George W. Bush. What’s often forgotten is how, on election night, a computer “error” made it look like Al Gore had lost Florida—and prompted the media to announce prematurely that Bush was the winner. This happened in Volusia County, where an electronic voting machine company called Global Election Systems (GES) was tabulating things. GES turns out to have been run by Republicans who were only too eager to see Bush take over after eight years of Clinton. All of a sudden that night, 16,022 votes for Gore got subtracted from his total in Volusia County. It wasn’t until 2003, when a bunch of internal Global Election Systems memos got leaked, that it became clear company officials knew all about this at the time. “The problem precinct had two memory cards uploaded,” according to GES tech guy Tab Iredale in one memo. “There is always a possibility that ‘the second memory card’ came from an unauthorized source.” These emails follow.