Oliver Stone may need to rush to re-edit JFK to more directly implicate LBJ in the assassination. An article by Erik Hedegaard in the new Rolling Stone centers on the claim by E. Howard Hunt's son, Saint John, that his ailing father revealed on his deathbed that LBJ orchestrated JFK's assassination.

E. Howard scribbled the initials 'LBJ,' standing for Kennedy's ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under 'LBJ,' connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that's never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer's name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer's name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales' name, with a line, the framed words 'French Gunman Grassy Knoll.'

Mysteriously, Hunt declined to provide these details in his autobiography. Undeterred, Rolling Stone has opened a Pandora's Box with these "revelations" and opened its blog for discussion, which has promptly devolved into a forum for the 9/11 "truth" movement. This comment by one "Debamboozler" gives you some of the flavor of the debate:

‘9/11′ was unquestionably an INSIDE JOB carried out by the CIA and Mossad and was the latest in a long and sordid history of MANUFACTURED FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS designed to obliterate our liberties and usher in the plutocratic elites’ long sought after tyrannical and despotic New World Order.

These conspiracy-minded folks see JFK's assasination and the leveling of the Twin Towers as following the same pattern: Both preceded and facilitated American wars. Perhaps Oliver Stone should take another crack at World Trade Center, his film about 9/11.

Darren McCollester/Getty

Buried in Saturday's New York Times profile of Rudy Giuliani, Republican candidate for president and former mayor of New York City, was this embarrassing goof:

At a house party in New Hampshire, Mr. Giuliani suggested that it was unclear which was farther along, Iran or North Korea, in the development of a nuclear weapons program.

For the record, North Korea tested a nuclear device on October 9, 2006, while the Iranians have yet to do so. The U.S. intelligence community believes Iran could have a nuclear weapon as early as 2010, but most likely in the time frame of 2012-2015. 

I think it's time for Rudy to get new briefers. Alternatively, he could just read the newspaper every once in a while—lots of important information in there.

Wired's Matthew Cole has discovered that Google Earth is the place to go for the inside scoop on where U.S. intelligence agencies think the al Qaeda leader might be hiding. Cole explains:

After Google recently updated its satellite images of parts of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, much of the region still looked blotchy — the kind of low resolution that persists in coverage of, say, upstate New York. But several small squares (they stand out as off-color patches from 680 miles up) suddenly became as detailed as the images of Manhattan. These sectors happen to be precisely where the US govern­ment has been hunting for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Turns out, Google gets its images from many of the same satellite companies — DigitalGlobe, TerraMetrics, and others-that provide reconnaissance to US intelligence agencies. And when the CIA requests close-ups of the area around Peshawar in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, Google Earth reaps the benefits (although usually six to 18 months later). 

Of course, any shots of an emaciated, 6'6" man dressed in white and sporting a long beard will be long out of date. But it's fun to look around one of the wildest places on Earth nonetheless.

According to the Times of London, the retired Iranian general who was reported to have disappeared in Turkey had already been a Western intelligence asset:

AN Iranian general who defected to the West last month had been spying on Iran since 2003 when he was recruited on an overseas business trip, according to Iranian sources.

This weekend Brigadier General Ali Reza Asgari, 63, the former deputy defence minister, is understood to be undergoing debriefing at a Nato base in Germany after he escaped from Iran, followed by his family.

A daring getaway via Damascus was organised by western intelligence agencies after it became clear that his cover was about to be blown. Iran’s notorious secret service, the Vavak, is believed to have suspected that he was a high-level mole.

The Financial Times, however, contradicts this story:

A former senior Iranian official added on Sunday to the mystery over Ali-Reza Asgari, the former deputy defence minister who disappeared in Turkey last month, by saying his family was still in Tehran.

This contradicted intelligence leaks to western and Israeli media outlets that Mr Asgari had defected, taking his family and a raft of Iran’s security secrets with him.

But the former official, a friend of Mr Asgari, told the FT there was no consensus in Tehran’s political circles over what had happened to Mr Asgari, after Iran’s police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam said last week he had probably been “abducted by western intelligence services”.

This isn't the first time different media outlets have contradicted each other over this story. The Washington Post reported on Thursday, March 8, that Asgari was "cooperating with Western intelligence agencies ... according to a senior U.S. official." But Fox News flatly contradicted the story later that day, citing "a senior U.S. official" as the source.

Whatever the truth of the story, you can be sure that somebody is spreading disinformation to the media about Asgari's fate. It should be relatively easy to confirm whether his family is in Tehran, however, no?

The following are excerpts from reports on military plans of the Taliban that were aired on Al Jazeera TV on February 21 and 22, 2007:

We've all wasted hours playing with Google Earth and wondered what amazing things it might be useful for. Iraqi insurgents, however, have put the technology to a more sinister purpose.

British troops operating in southern Iraq have found printouts from Google Earth showing their military bases during raids on insurgent hideouts. The information (including extremely precise latitude and longitude values) could be used to target mortar attacks far more accurately than would be possible otherwise. Insurgents could dial in coordinates for specific points within bases, for instance. Today's Tuesday Map, a supposedly abandoned British base in Basra that took less than 15 minutes to find on Google Earth, is just another example of the unintended consequences of the march of technology.

Most of the shining objects that our people see in Iran's airspace are American spying equipment used to spy on Iran's nuclear and military facilities."

That was Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi commenting on the prevelance of U.S. unmanned spy drones operating over his country in 2005. Back then, the aircraft were reportedly so prevalent that they stirred up a frenzy of sightings. Yunesi then threatened to shoot down the drones. "If any of the bright objects come close, they will definitely meet our fire and will be shot down," he said at the time.

Now, at least one Iranian official is claiming that Iran has made good on that threat. Iran's Fars News Agency, in an unconfirmed report that quotes an Iranian lawmaker, says the country has shot down an unmanned American spy plane in recent days.

Whether or not the report is true, it is disconcerting. The new head of CENTCOM, Admiral Fallon, is said to be a strategic bombing guru. And the Pentagon is sending a second U.S. carrier battle group to the region in order to counter, in Defense Secretary Robert Gates's words, the Iranian perception that "we are tied down in Iraq." That escalation will no doubt mean increased air operations in the region. And if recent comments coming out of the White House are any indication, intelligence operations over Iran, whether manned or unmanned, are likely to be a part of that.

That should make any student of history a little nervous. Does anyone remember 1964, when another electronic intelligence gathering mission went bad? That one, in the Gulf of Tonkin, helped justify the escalation of the Vietnam War. At least one U.S. Congressman worries that the Pentagon may be preparting to stage a similar incident with Iran. That scenario seems a little far-fetched. But with an escalation of forces in the region, we should hope that history doesn't repeat itself.

Can you keep a secret?  Maybe you shouldn't.  At least, that's what the creators of WikiLeaks.org think. Modeled after Wikipedia, the new website is a place for people to post uncensored documents and memos that can provide information about questionable behavior in governments or corporations. Primarily targeted at oppressive regimes in the Asia, the Middle East, former Soviet Union states, and sub-Saharan Africa, it can also be used by whistleblowers in the West who are afraid of the repercussions of speaking out publicly. The forces behind the website, ironically, want to keep their identities secret. But they are said to be political activists and open-source software engineers who don't necessarily believe that Father Knows Best. According to The New Scientist, people who post will be able to protect their identities too: 

Normally an email or a document posted to a website can be traced back to its source because each data packet carries the IP address of the last server that it passed through. To prevent this, WikiLeaks will exploit an anonymising protocol known as The Onion Router (Tor), which routes data through a network of servers that use cryptography to hide the path that the packets took.

Wikileaks is expected to launch sometime next month.

At long last, Condi will finally have a #2. John D. Negroponte, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., is leaving his current post as Director of National Intelligence to return to the State Department, this time as Deputy Secretary of State. President Bush is expected to formally announce the nomination tomorrow. There's been much ado about Negroponte's decision to step down from a Cabinet-level position as the nation's first intelligence czar to a job that's technically lower-ranking.

Frankly, that debate misses the point entirely. The real intrigue is: Why didn't the Bush administration fill the State Department slot sooner? That post has been empty since the summer. Meanwhile, diplomats have been fleeing Foggy Bottom left and right. Condoleeza Rice could sure use the help. Everywhere around her, there are vacant seats. She's been without a #2 at the State Department for months. She has no Counselor. She has no Ambassador to the UN. She has no Under Secretary for economic, business and agricultural affairs. She'll be losing her ambassador in Iraq.  And rumor has it, she'll be without someone at USAID too. These are all very high-ranking positions, and leaving them empty seems irresponsible to say the least, especially when Bush's foreign policy has been increasingly under attack. In fact, the only one who seems to be keeping things running these days is Nick Burns.

Here's a little background. Last July, Robert Zoellick stepped down to return to the private sector. In early November, Josette Sheeran Shiner, then the Under Secretary for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, left Foggy Bottom to become the head of the UN's World Food Program. A couple weeks after that, Condi's trusted counselor, Philip Zelikow, said he was leaving to go back to teaching. A week later, John Bolton announced he would not be considered for renomination as ambassador to the U.N. And then, in a rumor that went almost unnoticed last month when everyone was busy stuffing themselves with turkey, Zalmay Khalilzad was said to be stepping down as ambassador to Iraq. And sources tell FP that the unpopular USAID head and Director of Foreign Assistance Randy Tobias will also likely leave in the next few months.

Chances are, there will be some more high-level job-switching in the administration. Already, Bush officials have said that Retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell will take Negroponte's intelligence gig. Khalilzad will probably become representative to the U.N., since he's widely respected and deserves a cushier post after serving time in Kabul and Baghdad. Ryan Crocker, ambassador to Pakistan, may become ambassador to Iraq. But that still leaves some crucial posts empty. The president would do well to act quickly to fill them, as he has only has two more years to redeem his foreign policy track record.

Today marks the 89th anniversary of the establishment of the Soviet secret police. "Day of the Chekist" is originally a Soviet holiday designated by Joseph Stalin and still celebrated by the KGB's successor, the Russian Federation's Federal Security Services (FSB). Also on this day in 1981, the Soviets created (sub. req'd.) the Vymple, a covert intelligence unit that specialized in liquidating people abroad.

This year's celebrations are (hopefully) tamer. Yesterday, members of the Movement for Human Rights staged a protest in front of the FSB building in Moscow, calling on the agency to uphold Russian law. Today the FSB website contains a message congratulating visitors on the holiday. But considering the bad publicity surrounding potential Kremlin involvement in the death of Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, I doubt Russia's spooks are in a mood to celebrate.

AFP/Stringer

There's so much going on in Dafna Linzer's WaPo piece today about U.S. intel on Iran, it's hard to know where to start. First, there's the incredible admission by the State Dept. that a junior foreign service officer was tasked with finding Iranians the United States can slap with sanctions for having connections to the country's nuclear program.

The junior officer's intel-gathering method: Googling "Iran and nuclear" and then passing on the names that come up. Then there's the territorial cat-fighting going on between State and the CIA, which refuses to check the Googled names against their own intel because they don't want to give up their trade secrets.

That left the State Dept. in the unenviable position of recommending to the U.N. Security Council on Friday that 12 Iranians found to have some tenuous connection to the nuclear program (again, because they came up in a Google search) be hit with sanctions. The CIA wouldn't help, but someone told Linzer that:

None of the 12 Iranians that the State Department eventually singled out for potential bans on international travel and business dealings is believed by the CIA to be directly connected to Iran's most suspicious nuclear activities.

Good work, everyone. There's nothing that says "intelligence reform" less than relying on Google searches and refusing to share information between organizations. The Google thing really cracks me up. If the folks at State trust Google so much, perhaps they should check out what a search for "failure" gets them.

With news that traces of the radioactive isotope that killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, polonium-210, are being found all over London, there's a lot of curiousity about just how hard it is to get your hands on the stuff. The Times of London recently reported that polonium is so difficult to come by that the killer must have been "well resourced and possibly state-sponsored." 

Or the killer could have had an Internet connection. It turns out polonium-210 is available online for just $69 plus shipping and handling. United Nuclear Scientific Equipment & Supplies out of New Mexico, which describes itself as putting "the fun back into science" and "not like shopping at K-Mart," sells the stuff. Still, they don't do international orders and stress that the samples they sell are so small that they are completely harmless and, indeed, invisible to the naked eye. Because of all the adverse media attention on polonium-210 in recent days, United Nuclear has posted the following on their isotopes page:

You would need about 15,000 of our Polonium-210 needle sources at a total cost of about $1 million - to have a toxic amount…

If that is a tad out of your range for your enemies list, United Nuclear wants to make sure you have options:

[T]here are dozens of other far more toxic materials, such as Ricin and Abrin, both of which can easily be made, and are also undetectable as a poison and untraceable. Although it obviously works, Polonium-210 is a poor choice for a poison. Another point to keep in mind is that an order for 15,000 sources would look a tad suspicious, considering we sell about 1 or 2 sources every 3 months.

Still, keep them in mind for holiday gifts. You could just tell everyone on your list that you got them polonium-210 samples. After all, they won't be able to see them. It's kind of a George Constanza thing to do. Skip the donation to the Human Fund this year and just get everyone "invisible" isotopes.

Hat tip: Slashdot and The Register. 

Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

Don't hate the player, Alcee. Hate the game. 

Reading CNN's website this morning, I came across an article about how "unseasonably warm" weather in Siberia is disrupting bears' hibernation cycles. It was in the "Offbeat News" section, which contains such headlines as "Suit: Burger King served pot burgers to cops" and "Viking ship to ply North Sea; no invasion planned." So, apparently the lesser-seen effects of global warming are just another quirky story to give you a morning chuckle. I don't know what's more disturbing: This or when the U.S. Geological Survey got excited about the hydrocarbons that will become available as the artic ice caps melt.

In other signs of the decline of civilization: Answers written in "text-speak" by New Zealand's high school students taking this year's national exams will be treated as if they were written in proper English. Isn't that gr8? Lol!