Operation Paperclip
In the fall of 1944, the U.S. launched a secret mission to secure German weapons, including biological and chemical agents, as well as recruit top Nazi doctors, physicists, and chemists. “Roughly 1,600 of these German scientists (along with their families) were brought to the United States to work on America’s behalf during the Cold War.” President Truman had banned recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters, but U.S. Government agents “bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records.”
Operation Mockingbird
The CIA ran Operation Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media, by placing CIA operatives within news organizations and cultivating relationships with prominent journalists. Overseen by CIA Director Dulles, Mockingbird had a major influence in over 25 newspapers and wire agencies, including CBS, Time and Life Magazines, the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Post, and the Washington Post, and Hollywood film companies. The Church Committee identified over 50 U.S. journalists who were employed directly by the Agency, and claimed many more enjoyed a very close relationship with the CIA, who were “being paid regularly for their services [or provided] occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA.” Although Mockingbird officially ended in 1976, in 1996 Congressional testimony, Ted Koppel, ABC News Anchor, said “the Agency has ... broken American laws in the past, and I have no doubt that it will continue....”
Operation Bloodstone (1948-??)
This covert operation sought out Nazis and collaborators living in Soviet-controlled areas to work undercover for U.S. intelligence. “In reality, many of Bloodstone’s recruits had once been Nazi collaborators who were now being brought to the United States for use as intelligence and covert operations experts.” The Bloodstone recruits were not low-level Nazis, but leaders, intelligence specialists, and scholars who had been key to the Nazi cause. “Some of them eventually became U.S. agent spotters for sabotage and assassination missions.” State Department official George F. Kennan testified many years later, “it did not work out at all the way I had conceived it.” Documents about this project were released in April 2021.
Operation Aerodynamic / PdDynamic (1949-91)
The CIA has long been involved in directing events in Ukraine. Project Aerodynamic, renewed as PdDynamic, continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A CIA document declassified in 2007 states: “The purpose of Project AERODYNAMIC is to [support] the Anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance movement for cold war and hot war purposes.” Going back decades, the CIA has trained Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up an independent Kyiv. Then, current “CIA training of Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel” in the U.S. and Ukraine has been ongoing since 2015, and a former CIA official said “The United States is training an insurgency ... to kill Russians.”
Operation Ajax (1953)
The CIA planned and supported the coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The effort was led by senior officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. “Over the course of four days in August 1953, Roosevelt would orchestrate not one, but two attempts to destabilize the government of Iran, forever changing the relationship between the country and the U.S.” The U.S. government long denied involvement in the coup, which installed the brutal Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahiavi, but eventually admitted CIA’s role in the coup.
In only a month we will begin to learn whether President Trump’s swearing in will result in a major change in the mission and activities of the CIA.
@NoAgendaLara
Ukrainian forces have begun training and testing exoskeletons for battlefield use. Soldiers from the 147th Separate Artillery Brigade are using them in the Pokrovsk sector for both logistics and frontline operations. The goal is to reduce physical strain, especially when loading heavy artillery shells into howitzers without automatic loaders. Artillery crews can handle up to 1200 kg of ammunition per day, and early tests show that exoskeletons help them work faster and with less fatigue Above all, by improving the conditions for those soldiers on the front lines who handle such heavy loads, plus the stress of work. Seeking to reduce overall fatigue in the troops
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🇮🇷🇮🇱 - 14 wounded in Iranian missile strike in central Israel, according to Israeli media.
🇬🇧🇮🇶 - A drone struck British Castrol oil warehouses in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, causing extensive damage.
🇮🇷🇮🇱 - Iran launched 9 missiles towards Israel this morning alone, with at least 3 of them being cluster missiles.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - Over the past 12 hours, Hezbollah launched counterattacks in Khiam and Qantara, in the Nabatieh direction, southeast Lebanon. Hezbollah recaptured northern Khiam, with fighting ongoing for the south of the town. Hezbollah units also re-entered Qantara; frontline sources reported clashes in the center of the town last night.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - 48 IDF soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Hezbollah over the last 24 hours in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli Army.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - "The Israeli army is barely catching its breath in southern Lebanon, and its resources are less than in the previous round of fighting," - Haaretz....
🇺🇸 Blue Owl Capital just disclosed that investors tried to pull 40.7% of one fund and 21.9% of another in a single quarter, and both funds gave the same answer, you can only have 5% back, and everyone else waits in line.
This is a bank run, not a normal withdrawal.
Wall Street spent the last decade selling millions of investors on something called semi-liquid private credit, higher yields, steady income and the promise you could get your money back every quarter if you needed it. What they buried in the fine print was what happens when too many people try to leave at the same time.
Analysts who have covered private credit for decades say nothing on this scale has ever been reported before at any major private credit manager.
These funds do not hold stocks you can sell on a Tuesday afternoon, they hold private loans to mid sized companies that cannot be liquidated quickly without destroying the price for every investor still trapped inside.
This product was originally designed for ...
🇺🇸 President Trump wants to switch to war economy in 2027 with massive increase in military spending and massive cuts to healthcare and other domestic agencies
Once a deficit hawk — he said in 2016 that he thought he could balance the budget in five years — Trump ended his first term with $7.8 trillion in added debt. His 2027 proposal is expected to give an update on 10-year deficit projections currently estimated at around $16 trillion.
The GOP's message for the Midterms will be focused on the "need" for a massive defense build up while the Democrats' message will be focused on affordability.
The fiscal 2027 budget will be the first time Trump puts his second-term governing agenda into one comprehensive document — with the numbers to back it up. The budget he released last year lacked detailed line-by-line spending targets and the economic assumptions necessary to project the long-term cost of his proposals.
Investors in US Treasuries will be looking to see if the debt and ...