Microsoft Windows

NSA has done somethuing similar with computers. In September 1999, leading European investigative reporter Duncan Campbell revealed that NSA HAD ARRANGED WITH Microsoft to inser special “keys” into Windows software. In all versions from 95-OSR2 onwards. An American computer scientists, Andrew Fernandez of Cryptonyum in North Carolina, has disassembled parts of the Windows instruction code and found the smoking gun- Microsoft's developers had failed to remove the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for two keys. One was called “KEY” The other was called “NSKEY” Fernandez presented his finding at a conference ay which some Windows developers were also in attendance. The developers did not deny that the NSA key was built into their software, but they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without user's knowledge. Fernandez says that NSA 's “back door” in the world most commonly operateing system makes it “orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer.”

In February 2000, it was disclosed that the strategic Affairs Delegation (DAS), the intelligence arm of the French Defense Ministry, had prepared a report in 1999 which also asserted that NSA had helped to install secret programs in Microsoft software. According with the DAS report, “it would seem that the creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by the NSA, and that IBM was made to accept the [Microsoft] MS-DOS operating system by the same administration. “ The report stated that there had been a strong suspicion of a lack of security fed by insistent rumours about the existence of spy programmes on Microsoft , and by the ptesence of NSA personnel in Bill Cates development teams” The Pentagon, said the report, was Microsoft biggest client in the world.

From the book “ROGUE STATE”, by William Blum

1980s, the United States and the Cocaine Import Agency

In naddition to the cases cited above of drug-laden planes landing in the US unmolested by the authorities, there is the striking case os Oscar Danilo Blandón and Juan Norwin Meneses, two Nicaraguans living in California. To support the Contras (particularly during a period in which Congress banned funding them), as well as enriching themselves, the two men turned to smuggling cocaine into the US under CIA protection. This led to the distribution of large quantities of caciane into Los Angeles' inner city at a time when drug users and dealers were trying to make the costly white power more affordable by changing it into little nuggets of “crack.” The Nicaraguans funneled a portion of their drug profits to the Contra cause while helping to fuel a disastrous crack explosion in Los Angeles and other cities, and enabling the gangs to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from Blandón himself.

The ties between the two Nicaraguans and the CIA were visible not far beneath the surface, as the following indicate:

When Blandón was finally arrested in October 1986 (after Congress had resumed funding for the Contras and his services were much less needed), and he admitted to crimes that have sent others away for life, the Justice Deaprtment turned him loose on unsupervised probation after only 28 months behind bars and subsequently paid him more than $166,000 as an informer.

According to a legal mption filed in a 1990 police corruption trial in Los Angels: in a 1986 raid on Blandón' money-launderer, the police carted away numerous documents purportedly linking the US government to cocaine trafficking and money-laundering on behalf of the Contras. CIA personnel appeared at the sheriff' department within 48 hours of the raid and removed the seized files from the evidence room. At the request of the Justice Department, a federal judge issued a gag order barring any discussion of the matter.

When Blandón testified in 1996 as a prosecution witness in a drug trial, the federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing defense lawyers from delving into his ties to the CIA.

Though Meneses was listed in the DEA's computer as a major international drug smuggler and was implicated in 45 federate investigations since 1974, he lived openly and conspicuously in California until 1989 and never spent a day in a US prison. The DEA, US customs, the Los Angeles Country Sheriff's Department and the California Bureau fo Narcotic Enforcement all complained that a number of the probes of Meneses were stymied by tha CIA or unnamed “national security” interests.

Lastly the Cia-Contra-Drugs nexus brings us the case of the US attorney in San Francisco who gave back $36,800 to an arrested Nicaraguan drug dealer, which had been found in his possession. The money was returned after two Contra leaders sent letters to the courts swearing that the drug dealer had been given the cash to buy supplies “ for the reinstatement of democracy in Nicaragua.” The letters were hurriedly sealed after prosecutors invoked the Classified Information Procedures Act, a law designed to keep national secrets from leaking out during trials. When a US Senate subcommittee later inquired of the Justice Department the reason for this unusual turn of events, they run into a wall of secrecy. “The Justice Department flipped out to prevent us from getting access to people, records – finding anything out about it, 2recalled Jack Blum, former chief counsel to the Kerry Senate subcommittee referred to above, which investigated allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking. “It was one of the most frustrating exercises that I can ever recall.”

Then more I Think about it, it's the diference between manslaughet and murder. It's the intent. The intent was not to poison black America but to raise money for the Contras, and they [the CIA] didn't care what it came from. If it involved selling drugs in black communities, well, this was the price of admission Gary Webb

From the book “ROGUE STATE”, by William Blum

The CIA and Drugs: Just Say “Why Not?”

In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigation almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA

Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit

1947 to 1951, France

Corsican and Mafia criminal syndicates in Marseilles, Sicily and Corsica – benefiting from CIA arms, money and psychological warfare- suppressed strikes and wrestled control of labor unionsfrom the Communist Party. In return , the CIA smoothed the way for the gansters tobe left unmolested, and unindicted, and to restablish the heroin racket that had been restrained during the war – the famous “French Connection” that was to dominate the drug trade for more than two decades and was responsible for most of the heroin entering the United States.

From the book “ROGUE STATE”, by William Blum

US Army, "Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla"

US Army, "Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla"
"Measures of controlling the Population and Resources:
 1. ID Cards. An effective system of identification is fundamental to the program.
 2. Registration. A program of registering families is used to supplement the system of ID cards, This is the system of inventorying all families by house, making a list of all members who live in the house along with the family's resources. One can also note the presence of insurgent tendencies and affiliations among the population.
 3. Control by block. The purpose of block-by-block control is to detect the individuals who are supporting or sympathising with the insurgents and the type of support they are providing.
 4. Police patrols. Their purpose is to detect sources of insurgent support, sympathizers, and routes used by the insurgent forces for intelligence, logistics, and routine activities.
 Curfew . The purpose is to permit the authorities to identify violators and take actions based on the premise that anyone who violates the curfew is an insurgent or sympathizes with the insurgents until he can prove the contrary.
 Checkpoints. It is of little use to establish a programme of passes and ID cards unless there is a system of verifying these official papers. Therefore, establishing checkpoints in all travel routes is necessary in all travel routes isx necessary once the use of passes has started."

From the book "Rogue State" by William Blum

'Who was her father?

    'Who was her father? Only a man on the railway and the mother takes lodgers. Why are we beholden to her ?' Mother said. For many years the lady was known to us only as 'Miss H'.
 There was my father sitting in that office with 'that woman' all the week; Mother said: why didn't he stay with her if she was so wonderful. We know she put the money. How did she get it? Cheese paring. My mother was not going to cheapen herself by visiting them. She might not be educated but she knew the difference between sixpence and a shilling and had been brought up straight. We were shocked. Mother was jealous. There were two women; Mrs Eddy and this lady, Miss H.
 And why had we got to be so polite to her?  The Business. Our father had ceased to be our father. He now became 'the Business'. It was a shadow in our fire proof room.
 And then this woman, Miss H, was a woman and women are woman-like, Mother said. Not that she had any doubts about Father, for she knew he was true, but if women don't get one thing they go for another. They don't let go.
 As for Father being true, this is as certain as anything can be. He really hated women. He despised them. They existed to be his servants, for his mother - as my mother said - had waited on him hand and foot. Of course he charmed women; they liked talking to him, he appealed to their masochism. If they fought back or showed any signs of taking charge of him, his face went cold. His favourite gesture was to hold up his hand, palm upwards and wag it insultingly up and down, silently telling them to shut up. Their role was to listen to him and he had a lot to say. But once let them discuss, differ or suggest another idea and the hand went up , playfully at first but, if they persisted, he was blunt with them . He described these incidents to us often. His phrase was 'I put her in her place'. It was unlucky also that in his trade most of the workers were women. It must be said that several of these, who admired his vitality, loved him all their lives. perhaps Miss H the bookkeeper did; Mother scornfully thought so.
Extract from the book “A cab in the door” by V.S. Pritchett

Father's elevation and dignity had a silence effect, on our home

Father's elevation and dignity had a silence effect, on our home. The words; Managing Director, put him in a trance. He told us  that we had now many privileges; first we were the children of a Managing Director, living in a refined neighbourhood among neighbours who would study our manners. We has also the privilege of living within a hundred yards of a remarkable family and an even more remarkable woman, the secretary to the Company whose brother, high in financial circles, played tennis at a most exclusive club. My father doubted if this family  would feel able to know us immediately, but if by some generous condescension they did, we would remember to have our hands and shoes clean, brush our hair, raise our caps and never sit down until told to do so. Father's face had lost its roundness. It had become square, naked and authoritative. It also looked pained; as if he were feeling a strange imposed constraint.
Mother supported him vogorously; in fact, as we soon  saw, with unnatural vigour. It was irony on her part. Our debt to this family and to this lady was total, she said. The lady appeared almost before Father finished speaking, which took my father and my mother aback, my mother's hair (as usual) being not quite in a state for receiving another woman. And we were taken aback too.  We have expected perhaps another operatic Mrs Murdo in red velvet; instead a tall, beautiful young womanwith burning brown eyes, and black hair, came in. Her eyeslashes fluttered. She had alluring lips and, on the upper lip, a few black hairs at the corner which, before the fashion changed, made women sensually disturbing. . Her voice was a shade mannish, low and practical, she was slender and wore a business-like coat and skirt with a white blouse. She struck us as elegant, even fashionable. To our delight she teasingly addressed our father as "Father" which made him blush. She even called him "Sawdon"; it was as she had called him Lord.She put so much at our ease,that we loved her at once and got boisterous, my father deterred to her and so did my mother who also blushed.
One of her first questions to me was: when I was going to sit for a scholarship to the college ? This was startling to me and I looked for help to my father.
?When he is ready,' said my father.?I do not want him to imagine that just because his father has his own business ha has only to sit about waiting for everything to fall into his lap.'
'Which school are you going to send him to?' she turned to my mother.
'I really don't know,' said my mother.
'We are considering the matter,' said my father in his boardroom manner.'It maybe this or that. It may be the College, though we shouldn't limit ourselves to that. There may be other, better schools,than the College.'
 My father evasions stopped. Certainly appeared and a look of polite but firm rebuke came to his face. He liked the gaiety of the lady but he was not going to allow her to  lead the way in his family or anywhere else. The matter was raised to a graver, higher and crushing tribune.
'He will go where the Divine Mind wishes him to go, for he is a reflection of the Divine Mind.'
Extract from the book “A cab in the door” by V.S. Pritchett

A reaction against this fierce system had set in at the turn of the century

A reaction against this fierce system had set in at the turn of the century. Socialism and the scientific revolution - which Wells has described - had moved many people. New private schools for the well-off were beginning to break with the traditions of the nineteenth century and a little of the happy influence seeped down to ourselves.Mr Bartlet represented it. The Education Officer had instructed Mr. Timms to give Mr. Barlett a free hand for a year or so and to introduce something like the Dalton r tutorial systam in our class. The other teachers hated him and it; we either make some much noise that the rest of the school could hardly get on  with their work, or were silent that teachers would look over the frosted glass of the door to see if we had gone off for a holiday.
Mr Barlet was a stumpy, heavy-shouldered young man with a broad swarthy face, large brown eyes and a lock of black hair wagging romantically over his forehead. He looked like a boxer, lazy in his movements and his right arm hung back as he walked to the blackboard as though he was going to swing a blow at it. He wore a loose tweed jacket  with baggy pockets in which he stuck books, chalks and pencils and, by some magnetism he could silence a class almost without a word. He never used the cane. Since we could make as much noise as we liked, ge got easily silence when he wanted it. Manners scarcely existed among us as a scraping and snivelling; he introduced us to refinements we had never heard of and his one punishment took the form of an additional and excruciating lesson in this subject. He would make us write a formal letter of apology. We would make a dozen attemps before he was satisfied. And,  when, at last . we thought it was done he would point out that still was incomplete. It must be put in an envelope, properly addressed: not to Mr. Bartlett,  not to Mr. W.W. Bartlett, not as I did to Mr W.W.Barlet Esquire, but to the esquire without the mister. It often took us a whole day and giving up all the pleasants lessons the rests were doing, to work out the phrasing of these letters of shame.
At Rosendale Road I said good-bye to Stepehn and Matilda and the capes and rivers of England, the dreary sing-song. We were no longer foredoomed servants but foundour freedom. Mr. Bartlett's methods were spacious. A history lesson may go on for days. if it was about early Britain an old downland encampments he would bring us wild flowers from the Whiltshire tumulti. He set up his easel and his Whatman boards and painted pictures to illustrate his lesson. Sometimes he changed to pastels. And we could go out and watch him and talk about what he was doing . He made us illustrate our work and we were soon turning "Bustlett's by de dozen. He set us tasks in threes or fours, we were allowed to talk to each other, to wander about for consultations: we acted short scenes from books at a sudden order. For myself the lessons on literature and specially poetry were the revelation. No text books. our firsts lessons were from Ford Madox Ford's English Review which was publishing some of the best young writers of the time. We discussed  Bridges and Massefield. Chidren who seemed stupid were suddenly able to detect a fine image line and disentangle it from the ordinary.
Extract from the book “A cab in the door” by V.S. Pritchett