-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Spy vs. Spy CIA Lied About Contacts with Wilson Then covered up the lie with the help of the Dept. of Justice HOUSTON (AP) -- The Justice Department acknowledged in a court filing made public Tuesday that the lead prosecutor in the 1983 arms-dealing case against former CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson introduced inaccurate testimony. The revelation comes in the government's response to Wilson's appeal of his conviction for shipping 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives from Houston's Intercontinental Airport to Libya. Wilson is serving 52 years in prison. Wilson, who had retired from the CIA, said the agency had authorized him to ingratiate himself with the Libyan government for intelligence-gathering purposes. The testimony in question concerns an affidavit in court records from CIA executive director Charles Briggs, then the No. 3 agency official. The affidavit said ``Wilson was not asked or requested, directly or indirectly, to perform or provide any services, directly or indirectly, for CIA,'' after his 1971 retirement. That affidavit was reread to jurors at their request; an hour later, they returned a guilty verdict. Wilson's appeal included dozens of once-classified documents showing CIA lawyers argued with prosecutors against using the affidavit as then written. According to the documents, Wilson had 80 contacts with the CIA from his retirement through 1978 and provided a variety of services at the government's request, including arranging gun sales to a Saudi Arabian security agency and the shipment of two desalinization units to Egypt on behalf of the CIA. The Justice Department's response doesn't challenge the accuracy of the documents in Wilson's appeal. In fact, the agency included similar memos outlining an eight-month discussion between the CIA and Justice Department over what to do about Briggs' affidavit. One such memo recounts a discussion between Stanley Sporkin, then the CIA's top lawyer, and Theodore Greenberg, the lead Wilson prosecutor. Sporkin told Greenberg ``it was a bad idea to use the declaration. Mr. Greenberg responded that the use of the declaration was vital to his case and he intended to use it,'' according to a memo in the government's filing. Another memo shows that Sporkin argued that ``at minimum, the word `indirectly' should be removed.'' After the conversation, Greenberg introduced the testimony in court. The Justice Department's response says ``the objective inaccuracy of a statement proffered by a government witness or otherwise introduced by the government does not, itself, provide the defendant a basis'' for the conviction to be overturned. The prosecutors also said the ``inaccurate'' information was corrected during another appeal by Wilson. The prosecutors claim Wilson failed to offer any evidence he was specifically authorized to conduct the Libya deal. ``A mere belief that he was acting in the interests of the United States did not constitute a legitimate defense,'' the motion reads. David Adler, a lawyer for Wilson and himself a former CIA officer, said he was not surprised false evidence was introduced. ``What is surprising is how well the Justice Department and the CIA documented their efforts to conceal the lie,'' he said. Whether Wilson benefits from that extensive documentation -- 800 pages of which were made public -- remains to be seen. U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes must decide whether Wilson deserves a new trial. The Associated Press, January 18, 2000 Digital Society Can a Virtual Virgin Fly? Unshagged in cyberspace. Oh, dear. LONDON - Since he dropped out of school more than 30 years ago to start a student magazine, Richard Branson has exhibited a penchant for risk. >From taking on British Airways PLC and Britain's dilapidated train network to trying unsuccessfully to circle the globe in a hot-air balloon, Mr. Branson has taken on challenges with a mixture of bravado, humor and a keen sense of consumer tastes - and often come out on top. Now, Mr. Branson is trying to circle the globe in a figurative sense by turning his Virgin Group Ltd. into a leading worldwide brand on the Internet - a challenge that analysts say could be his toughest yet. Virgin plans a series of initiatives this year to broaden its on-line offerings in music, travel and other areas and to reach customers beyond the British market. He starts with a severe handicap. Unlike America Online Inc., which used its highly valued stock to acquire Time Warner Inc., his private company lacks the currency to do deals on such a scale. ''If we could be worth just half of AOL, I'd be happy,'' he said with a smile during an interview in his West London home. Even though Mr. Branson made £600 million ($979 million) by selling 49 percent of Virgin Atlantic Airways to Singapore Airlines in December, that figure is ''pitiful'' by Internet standards, he noted. But Mr. Branson is convinced that his own buccaneering image and reputation for delivering good-value products with flair will ultimately help make Virgin the consumers' champion on the Internet. ''Brand is going to be all important on the Internet,'' Mr. Branson said. ''Virgin is perhaps the only British brand that can become a global Internet site.'' Few people doubt Mr. Branson's marketing prowess, but analysts say that he may find himself at a severe disadvantage by coming late to the Internet dance - especially in the United States. ''In our view, the battle is over - Yahoo and AOL won,'' said Mark Zohar, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yahoo Inc. boasts 100 million users of its portal site, while AOL has 22 million subscribers. ''It's going to be difficult for Branson to get those consumers,'' Mr. Zohar said. Even in Britain, where Virgin has focused its Internet efforts and where Mr. Branson is a national icon, Virgin.com does not rank as one of the 10 most-visited sites, according to MMXI Europe BV, an Internet audience measurement firm. Still, Virgin does boast Internet revenues of about £150 million last year. And a director of Virgin, Will Whitehorn, contended that the business has been valued at anywhere from £3.5 billion to £6.5 billion by investment bankers at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Goldman declined to comment. Talk of valuations raises the possibility of a public offering of stock in the Internet operations, even if Mr. Branson says he is not contemplating one now. Mr. Branson contends that the Internet will enable Virgin to bring together all of its varied products in a sort of lifestyle offering. Virgin.com sells tickets on his airline and on his British train company, music from Virgin Megastores, British banking and mutual fund products from his Virgin Direct financial services arm, and mobile telephones from his joint venture with Deutsche Telekom AG's One2One unit. In coming weeks, it plans to sell cars imported from Continental Europe at discounts of as much as 25 percent below Britain's inflated sticker prices. Later this year, he plans to turn the site into a virtual supermarket by offering products from other suppliers. Virgin's on-line travel service could even sell plane tickets on its arch-rival, British Airways, if BA offers the best combination of destination, time and price. Mr. Branson believes the strategy plays to Virgin's strengths and makes comparisons to AOL Time Warner, with its emphasis on news and entertainment content, inappropriate. ''What we're offering on the Internet is primarily products for sale,'' he said. ''We don't need to buy Time Warner in order to do that.'' Virgin also may seek to strike alliances with AOL's rivals to share content, he added, saying it was ''quite possible we could do something with Yahoo.'' Virgin's appeal to U.S. partners was underlined last week when the company applied to bid for a third-generation mobile telephone license in Britain as head of a consortium that included the venture-capital funds of the investor George Soros and Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder. Mr. Branson said he expected that some of those partners would ''stick together to do things in other parts of the world.'' Virgin hopes to enter the mobile business in Australia in the first half of this year and in the United States in the second half. With goals like that, there is little doubt that Mr. Branson retains as much sense of adventure as ever, despite receiving the ultimate accolade of the British establishment - a knighthood - in December. But for such a personalized business empire, the biggest note of caution may lie with the man himself. Mr. Branson said that his 1997 takeover of Britain's dilapidated West Coast rail line from London to Glasgow would rank as his greatest achievement, assuming Virgin succeeds in raising service standards. And he is determined to win his nonprofit bid to run Britain's National Lottery. For all of its importance to his business, the Internet just doesn't get the juices flowing in the same way. ''I don't feel as passionately about it,'' he conceded. ''I'm not good at sitting in front of a screen for hours and hours on end.'' The London Telegraph, January 19, 2000 The Religion Business Christians and Moslems Kill Each Other in Maluku You see, if you cut off the head, the body is easier to drag. FOUR days of fighting between Muslims and Christians have left 250 people dead in Ambon, the capital of Indonesia's Maluku province, better known as the Moluccas or Spice Islands. "It was a war, and we were fighting for our survival," a Christian youth said after one attack. The recent violence in the Spice Islands - the worst in disturbances that began a year ago today - is spreading towards the centre of the country and threatening the reformist government of President Abdurrahman Wahid. Police reinforcements were dispatched from Bali to the tourist island of Lombok yesterday, a day after Muslim gangs ransacked eight churches there after reading press reports of attacks on their religious brethren in Maluku. Violence has eased in Ambon but it continues on other islands in the group and refugees continue to land in the capital, which remains tense and under army control. Richard Rowat, field co-ordinator for Médécins Sans Frontières, said: "I have worked in Sudan, Afghanistan and Cambodia but have seen nothing like this in terms of confusion and this kind of communal hatred." At the height of the violence, which began on Boxing Day, a Christian gang leader marched down Jalan Deponegoro, the street leading to the Protestant Silo Church, holding a sword victoriously aloft in one hand and dragging a headless corpse behind him. Several witnesses reported seeing members of the military, mostly outsiders who belong to the country's 90 per cent Islamic majority, joining Muslim gangs, and policemen, mostly local Christians, joining the other side. The two communities, which had for centuries lived reasonably happily side by side, are now polarised and fearful. They share a city but never meet. Neighbourhoods and villages have been "cleansed" of whichever group was in the minority, a pattern being repeated on outlying islands. The army has designated a narrow no man's land to separate Muslims from Christians. Muslims, who are in a narrow minority, are being denied education and healthcare, as most schools and hospitals are in the Christian centre. Each side has its own refugee camps and 200,000 out of the two million population have left Maluku or been displaced within the province. The president has blamed "evil hands" for manipulating the conflict. Community leaders from both sides believe there is a conspiracy by elements of the army loyal to the former dictator Suharto aghast at the erosion of military political power. Those elements have, it is argued, found common cause with radical Muslim leaders opposed to Mr Wahid's moderate form of Islam. * Christopher Lockwood, Diplomatic Editor, writes: The Government has overridden protests from human rights groups and agreed to sell six Hawk aircraft to Indonesia, despite the escalating violence, it emerged yesterday. The order was blocked last September because of army-backed violence against the East Timorese, when the European Union imposed a four-month arms embargo on Indonesia. The embargo expired on Monday. The London Telegraph, January 19, 2000 ----- 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 not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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