Hi Kevin!

Hamilton's words jumped out at me the minute I heard them, a rolled-out red carpet for all of us...

Have been in the process of drafting a letter for the NYT & Philadelphia Inquirer, basically saying, "Good point, Lee, let's do it, let's let the American public see the evidence (and not just the theories) that the mainstream media is complicit in not revealing, can you help us with that?"

:)

Betsy

I trust readers are familiar with this essay:

How They Get Away With It
by Michael Green
Version 1.2: June 28, 2006
Originally published: June 18, 2006

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/HowTheyGetAwayWithIt.html

Read the whole thing, but here is a central theme excerpt:

"USGIC domestic covert operations do not come from nothing. They have a history, and Lee Hamilton has a history of covering them up. To be brief, and regrettably cryptic through summary: the 1980s were rocked by a series of gargantuan scandals about activities whose underlying purpose was in part the consolidation of power by the factions responsible for 911. These included: 1) October Surprise, the secret deal cut between the Bush-Reagan team to have the Ayatollah hold the Iranian Embassy hostages until after the November 1980 election, to assure a Bush-Reagan victory over Carter, in return for US arms delivered to Iran via Israel. Principals directly involved included George Casey, Donald Gregg, and George H. W. Bush; 2) Inslaw, the theft by the USGIC of William Hamilton’s PROMIS software, and its enormously profitable privatization by Bush41 cronies, to facilitate world-wide economic spying on competitive and allied countries. PROMIS and its successors also serves as the software foundation for the data integration of the growing police state, Poindexter’s TIA, and its privatized versions in Florida using the Matrix software provided by Seisint, a company founded after 911by Hank Asher and since sold to Lexis-Nexis for $750,000,000. Asher also founded DBT (Database Technologies), the company that rigged the 2000 presidential election for Jeb Bush in Florida on behalf of his brother by scrubbing eligible Democratic voters from the voter rolls. Hank Asher by his own admission spent the early 1980s flying cocaine and marijuana to and from South American but dismissed this major felony as due to “a hunger for adventure” and remarked of it “I didn't feel like I had done a crime.” The only persons I know of who do not feel that their participation in international drug running is a crime are CIA sponsored and protected drug-runners. 13 3) The Savings & Loan scandal, a deliberate scheme to de-regulate the thrifts so that the CIA, the Mafia and their friends in high places could buy up such institutions, commit gross fraud free from government regulation, and pass on the nearly trillion dollar costs to the taxpayer. 14 4) Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), a CIA/military controlled bank that channeled S&L lucre as well as laundered drug and arms profits into covert operations throughout the world. 5) Iran-Contra, a keystone in the destruction of the Congress as an autonomous political body. The Secret Government, in which Bush41 played a major direct operational role during Iran-Contra, deliberately and flagrantly ignoring both versions of the Boland Amendment in funding the Contras by setting up secret training sites for the Contras in the United States and in Mexico outside the regular chain of military command. These sites trained privatized armies for covert military and para-military actions that were outside regular command structure but that had access to support and supplies from the US military, i.e., a privatized off-books department of covert operations. Financing was through CIA drug running, and the sale of illegal arms often obtained from military storehouses though such figures as Generals John K. Singlaub and Richard Second. Dick Cheney (ranking House Republican in Iran-Contra) played a key role working directly with Lee Hamilton (who chaired the Iran-Contra panel) to make certain that Bush41 did not have to testify before Congress, and was rewarded accordingly. (The “Iran” part of the scandal was a separate operation that was put into the mix to confuse the public by pretending that a patriotic motive of freeing the Lebanon hostages was involved; it wasn’t.) And, most importantly, recall that just before Bush41 left office, he issued a Christmas Eve blanket pardon to all his Iran-Contra co-conspirators, on the grounds of their “patriotism,” whose upcoming trials threatened to expose Bush’s central role in the operation. 15

Lee Hamilton played key roles in covering up two of these inter-connected scandals, October Surprise and Iran-Contra. Defrauding America provides an excellent account of Hamilton’s role in the October Surprise Committee, which he chaired, links particular players amongst all these scandals, and documents in detail Hamilton’s refusal to allow relevant testimony from whistle-blower CIA operatives, and concluded that October Surprise never occurred. As summarized by FAA whistle-blower Rodney Stich, whose offer to facilitate testimony of eyewitness participants in Iran-Contra was refused despite a long personal letter to Lee Hamilton detailing the evidence:

In July 1992, the Hamilton committee released an interim report stating there was no evidence that Bush was in Paris [to clinch the October Surprise deal] or that there was any support for the October Surprise charges. The Hamilton Committee didn’t obtain testimony of any of the parties willing to testify that would prove the existence of the scheme and Bush’s presence at the Paris meetings. 16

Though short on specifics, Michael Ruppert writes of Hamilton’s role in Iran-Contra:

Iran-Contra was effectively “managed” by Lee Hamilton in the House and John Kerry (among others) in the Senate throughout the late 1980s to conceal the greatest crimes of the era, crimes committed by a litany of well-known government operations. At the time, Hamilton was the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Ruppert quotes famed investigative reporter Sarah McClendon regarding October Surprise:

Congressman Hyde elicited and obtained a promise from Chairman Lee Hamilton, D., Ind. Of the House Task Force on October Surprise, that the group would clear President Bush of going to Paris to cinch a deal of weapons for Iran in exchange for retaining American hostages to be delivered to President Ronald Reagan and not to outgoing President Carter. …Hamilton held a press conference to clear Bush before the investigation into the deal between the Reagan-Bush candidates for presidential office and the Iranians had even started. Hamilton then admitted he had not interrogated witnesses or talked with his special attorney hired to investigate the matter.

Perhaps the best line, though short, is that Hamilton declared himself “satisfied” with the testimony of Lt. Colonel Oliver North in the Iran-Contra hearings. 17"

"As a point of clarification, nowhere in our correspondence have I expressed an unwillingness to examine evidence."

and...

"Since you believe that the official reports on the events of 9/11 fall far short of the truth, presenting your arguments in public, with the strongest available evidence, and through multiple media outlets is probably the best path forward for you."

As being extremely positive and the most Lee Hamilton was willing to go as far as saying.. Keep doing what you are doing. I don't deny you are right, I just can't say so in exact terms or publicly at this time??

Will an elephant grow wings and fly?

is, like the rest of his ilk, a liar, a cheat and a fraud ...

Lee Hamilton and co have nothing but contempt for truth and justice ...

This clique of corrupt politicians use the privileges bestowed by office to conceal their criminality and advance their illegal agenda in secrecy, without regard to the consequences for the nation as a whole.

These corrupt politicians must be confronted and exposed before there can be any remediation or improvement in the current state of affairs

There is clearly no one who has investigated the George H.W. Bush cabal more than Lee Hamilton.

In the mid-80s, he investigated the October Surprise holding of the hostages, and said it wouldn't be "good for the country" to have another impeachment.
Then he led the Iran-Contra investigation, along with his friend and co-chairman Dick Cheney.
He led the 9/11 Commnission of course.
He also led the Iraq War Study Group for George W. Bush, working closely with James Baker.

It's interesting to me that Hamilton worked with Norman Augustine on the Hart-Rudman Commission and he was was also co-chairman of the "Commission to Investigate Certain Security Issues at Los Alamos."

Related to the October Surprise was what I would call the April Surprise, which led to the creation of the special operations branch US SOCOM and also dictated the Presidential election outcome in 1980. This was the failed April 1980 rescue attempt in Iran. The failure seemed to be very convenient for those who wanted to unseat Carter. If you read Dan Briody's book The Iron Triangle, you might have noticed that David Rubenstein, the founder of The Carlyle Group, had access to the secret plan for this operation, when he was "shuffling through some papers in the president's inbox." He was actually in the president's office by himself one night, ostensibly looking for a memo he wrote. The book says "President Carter questioned Rubenstein about his late-night foray into his office, asking him pointedly and repeatedly what he had seen while he was there (p 4)."

The rescue operation appears to have failed through a hard to believe sequence of mechanical problems with the helicopters. It was a difficult plan to accomplish, for sure, but it never really got off the ground at all. See this link for a description of the events.
http://middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/f/me090413c.htm
First, one of six helicopters failed due to rotor blade malfunction, then a second failed in a sandstorm (the common notion is that all of them failed in this way), then a third helicopter failed by way of a faulty hydraulic pump. Finally, a ground-based refueling accident resulted in the deaths of nine people. The article suggests that it was at this time that "Carter's presidency did not recover."

Hugh Shelton was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Oct 1997 until 2001, replaced for the day by Acting Chairman Richard Myers during the 9/11 operation. But Shelton, who was a Special Ops soldier himself, had run US SOCOM at the time that the 9/11 operation was finalized (imho) that time period being 1996 through late 1997.