The Plaque at the Rome Airport
Ever since my friend got killed in a terrorist attack at the Rome Airport on December 17th, 1973, I've felt like his story wasn't told. This guy never got his due in life. At the very least, I've always felt I should write a book about it, or do a documentary. Not that it's anymore important than what happens to anyone else, but there's something about injustice on this scale that calls for a response. No, I'm not talking about revenge or anything in the legal system or any of that. I just felt the guy deserves to have people know. To have some record of what happened to him. I mean this was a great human being. I knew him from when I was in grade school to when he died during his sophomore year at Stanford. We were great friends and band-mates.
He was killed on a Pan Am flight that had stopped in the airport in Rome. Below is a little synopsis of what Walter Chronkite had to say that night on the CBS Evening News. It's always surreal to lose someone close to you, but reading about it in Newsweek? Now that was weird.
Recently, I found out that there is a plaque in the Rome Airport honoring one of the Italians killed in this attack. You can make out a few words about terrorism and the date December 17th, 1973.
It makes me feel better. There's a slight feeling of "I guess it really did happen", but there's also the permanence - the idea that somehow this incident has not just faded completely from view. This attack affected me as much as 9/11 affected many Americans. Recently I've begun writing about my hitchhiking years, and it's really put me through changes. I figured out the reason: I started those adventures in 1972, little knowing I was a year away from this event that would change me forever. It feels odd to go back to who I used to be, but it's been over 30 years. I think I'm just about ready to return to my old self. At least I hope so. Palestinian Guerrilla Attack / Rome Airport (CBS) from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive
posted by Bill McDonald @ 9:32 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Walter Cronkite. And, Bill, it is not going to go away, and in fact the evidences indicate it is spreading wider, so that, at some time, and sooner is better than later, you must in your way of thinking of it and in your own understanding, figure out whether nineteen fanatic hijackers who did not purchase tickets were even aboard those planes, OR if it was all a staged and rigged hoax, by the Bushies, starting back before the 2000 kangerooelection, (and thus: Why they HAD TO HAVE the election come hell or high water), because ... 'I don't know' don't cut it, and it is not going to go away until each and every one of us says what we know to believe of it.
Repeat after me, slowly: There. Were. No. Fanatic. Hijackers. It. Was. All. A. Hoax. And. I. Was. Duped. Like. Everyone. But now I see everything makes sense when all the crazy events are reviewed with the thought there are mass murderers in The Fright House trying to evade the death penalty that's coming to them.
Sing it long, sing it loud:
Verse 1:
Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.
Verse 2:
...
I agree with you that the War on Terror is a hype job. We handled it better back in the 70s, before the neo-cons used it as the big threat to put themselves in power.
But I hope you don't believe that all terrorism is fake. It has occurred in the Middle East for decades. Search for the King David Hotel incident or review the work of Abu Nidal. This situation in Rome was one of Abu Nidal's first hits.
Think gray, Tenks. You're making the same mistake as President Bush. The world is complex, and real terrorism is part of it. Not everything was a false flag operation, even if 9/11 reeks of being one. Don't assume there is no terrorism just because the War on Terror is a hustle. Every hustle uses a little bit of truth.
Say Bill, I've been enjoying your blog for quite some time,and have a few thoughts I'd like to share - privately. Is there an email address through which I can contact you? I'm not a spammer - I promise.
You can contact me at rnbharriman@msn.com if you'd like.
Bill, well, no, indeed fairly much EVERYthing has been a falseflag op since 1946. Specifically, the King David Hotel and agent Abu Nadal's stagings, as you mention, had connections to CIA evident.
Yeah, ain't that a mind rip? Even if all the evidence was available to prove it conclusively, and if there was a core 'interest group' or 'discussion group' which had started somewhere sometime and that had at least registered The Idea as a spot on the radar, no matter how remote, just 'on the radar' somewhere -- even IF The Idea had some preceding appearance -- it would STILL sound so creepy and feel so creepy as it does to say EVERY international criminal political intrigue since 1946 has been CIA-induced. EVERY 'political hot conflict' all around the world this whole time. Saying and thinking so, doesn't need other people to dismiss the idea as silly or preposterous, the person saying and thinking it dismisses it of themself and dismisses them self with SELF-doubts for saying and thinking it.
But you know what? It appears to be true.
What has kept me convinced to keep thinking it, (in the face of a lot of self-doubt ... I mean, I got my 'issues' with me and the things that come in me wee mini-mind, I'm as unsure of me as any and all of us is unsure of our self), however, and I keep coming back to thinking that the CIA has stirred up every. single. bit. of. international. cockamamie. trouble. that. was. ever. in. a. 'news.' item, because I can't find an exception.
Look into the information available for any 'foreign affair' event that happened in the last sixty years, and you can not find one which does NOT connect on a short tether to CIA involvement. Usually, not even very covertly, not even much hidden or covered up 'involvement.'
In some cases it seems a little bit of a stretch to 'see' a connection, but then you look again and it's not really a stretch at all. I'm thinking of a case where CIA installs some dictator in power, and then that dictator goes off on his own and bloodies 'bad' all over some situation, and you can say, see, it was a crazy lone dictator nut and the CIA didn't have a hand in it at all. But ... who put the dictator into power ... and is or isn't that how it started ....
So, essentially, my argument logic that you (someone) need(s) to prove false in order to dispel such thinking, is the exclusion argument of reverse logic: If there HAD NOT been a CIA ever created, then NONE of the 'int'l criminal political intrigue' of the last sixty years would have ever have happened.
Take away the CIA, hypothetically, and see what goes away with it, both in the past and in the future. Whether, or NOT, the connection is seen between the two things that disappear at the same time.
There is a formulaic construct for jokes that uses this 'logic.' See if I can easily remember an example ... help me here, Bill, you're good at this ... one was something like, 'you never hear Bush talking while Cheney is taking a drink of water.' In real life, cops have used it in situations where, (the following is fiction) there is a serial killer or serial bank robber, and they can't prove it but they lock up a suspect for something else or go into overt obvious surveillance mode on a suspect, and the killings or robbings stop.
Anyway, yeah, if the CIA had not come into existence, just as Truman tried to prevent it, then Abu Nadal and the Rome Airport plaque would never have existed and your friend would still be alive. It's like that.
Just think about things a long while. Use just what history you already know in your memory. Certainly there is much more detail to consider, case by case and etcetera etcetera etcetera, but, you know what?, the more you go to look up the details and thoroughly investigate some event, the more you find to sustain The Idea, not disprove it to yourself.
Here are some alternative (offbeat) 'interpretations' in overviewing the 'sweep of history' since WW II, to consider. They sure clear out a lot of 'fog of wars' in my view of these six decades.
The main one to see is WW II never ended for the powerlust types in the USA; we didn't disarm after we beat Hitler, and return to what we were doing 193X before we began 'war build-up.' The despotic power-pushers among us made out like bandits (oh, I guess they were bandits) in 'the war,' and they did not want their gravy train to end. The whole 'communist' thing was promoted for this. 'War footedness' needs to have an enemy for its reason for being, so they basically invented one. In actuality, a communist is fairly harmless and was no threat at all to anybody who has a little selfish personal greed going on. (Stalin is a different matter. He was dangerous, although mostly only within his own borders, like Idi Amin. In any event, Stalin is NOT communism, like Bush is NOT democracy. Stalin and Bush are instances of despotic tyrants, and are not characteristic of a collective category. USA could have kept an army battalion to point guns at Stalin himself, I suppose, but it was completely bogus to hyperinflate a Dept.of Defense and Pentagon and military-ethic in all industrialization, into creation, to point guns at communism. The threat to you of a communist is about as much as the threat to you of a frog. ribbit. scared? No? Consider this: There are millions of frogs !!!! boo !! you don't want your daughter to kiss one or marry one, do you !!!)
One example of someone who didn't want to stop 'playing war' after WW II, because it was the only experience that ever gave him a sense of self-identity and meaning in his personal vacuous life, was GHWBush. He was totally clueless what he wanted to do and be in life, when they discharged him in 1944 for chickening out and bailing out of his pilot's seat a second time, which crashed into the ocean then, killing his crew of two ... for no reason, the aircraft was not disabled, as attested by crews in the planes in formation right behind him, returning from their bombing run together. But buzzing around in a plane above all the mere mortal little people 'down there' was great fun for Poppy poopypants, so when the WWII show was over, he suffered a let down to face himself looking for some personal interest in something, anything, somewhere in his detached and void richkid embodiment. He liked that living on government paychecks thing. So he re-upped, the first thing, as soon as the CIA was invented and had openings for pilots in 'Flying Tigers' operations sneak-landing into China, with hiring advantage for southeast Pacific pilot experience: him. And he has embodied the CIA this whole time, all sixty years.
Everything you know that George H.W. Bush ever touched, was therefore touched by the CIA 'being involved.' Now, review the original premise: EVERY international political intrigue since WW II was 'caused by' the CIA, (indeed, was the cause for CIA to (continue to) exist). Every single 'thing' has been a black op, psy op, or false flag op; and if the CIA didn't do something, it didn't happen. (For example, the Soviet Union DID NOT fight a 20 year guerilla war in Canada ... see? no CIA = it didn't happen.) (Remember the JFK; there's a photo of (click to enlarge) you-swear-it-is GHWBush, right height and posture, leaning against the School Book Depository at the time watching 'operations.') Remove GHWB from our lives, get these results: No S & L crisis. No Iran/Contra. No BCCI. Most blessedly: No Cretin POTUS and his brother Jebba the Butt. And now: No Desperate Housewives?
So: WW II never ended and if it had we would have disarmed, because we won. GHWB equals CIA, 1946 to present. And, third 'long term re-interpretation' is this: The two categories of people in the world, the two 'sides' between which the existential tension of existence exists, are NOT the two you were programmed to think of. Most of the years were taught to us as 'the two superpowers,' or communism vs. democracy, or some such bastardization of humankind's great and wonderful variety in itself. No, try this interpretation: In the sixty-year battle (after the war got cold) between the two types of people in the world, it has been the rich-world divinely-touched supremies vs. the poor-world masses. (The revelation in that view is that the USSR rich and the USA rich and the China rich and the Saudi Arabia rich ... are all on the same 'side.' Still are.) It is manifold help to the rich if us poor masses would just divide into groups, let's say Republicans and Democrats, and fight among ourselves to the death. Sort of The Survivor 'reality TV' TV in reality, and I don't know whatever could put such an idea in our heads.
Some homework exercises: Read the GHWB biographics timeline, "the first asset of Zapata Offshore," of what begat seaworthy oil-drilling platforms, (and the CIA of it, the 'technology' -- which is to say, the industrialization of militarization), and think: Dresser -to- (Kellogg)Brown&Root -to- Halliburton. (Halliburton did the contract to scoop off the ocean floor the Japanese maritime students' trawler and students' bodies, who the joyriding Texas oil men and 'wives' killed by torpedoing a US Navy submarine into the trawler off Hawaii, in the Cretin's opening scene, before anyone knew what 'Halliburton' means.)
Maybe for fun, before our time, review what was the big political going's-on in the 1930s which we didn't get back to. FOLLOW the 'sides' following TIME of the "Battle of Washington" HOWL at Florida's Key role in flooding veterans benefits, WW I veterans, that is, Soon after FDR took office in 1933, jobless veterans began assembling in Washington hoping to persuade him and Congress to immediately pay them a bonus for their wartime service that they were scheduled to receive in 1945. Roosevelt opposed early payment but wanted to help the desperately needy vets. And he also wanted them out of the capital and off the front pages of the Washington Post and New York Times. GUARD the lite and WATCH the dark Electric Auto-Lite strike. ACCOUNT banquet captains making Big Bucks an hour ever since 30 May 1937 - Police killed 10 and wounded 30 during the "Memorial Day Massacre" at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago. 25 June 1938 - The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act is passed, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week. The Act went into effect in October 1940, and was upheld in the Supreme Court on 3 February 1941.
And, starting with nothing,
go here: Prouty.ORG
click on: Letters of the month
click on: RE: CIA & Drugs
Read: Letter of the Month October 1996
ask yourself: 363 Tons of U.S. Cash and What Do You Get?
Class dismissed.
Your theory implies that nobody in the Middle East ever became a terrorist on their own. I don't think Abu Nidal was that full of hatred because of the CIA, just as I don't think these suicide bombers are working for the CIA.
But I do appreciate your comment. Have you seen "The Good Shepherd"? I know these people have been very busy, busy, busy.
They don't act so much out of hate for or anti-CIA motives. They are 'operated by' CIA, and each getting what it wants so it seems win-win for 'them' (though they are only persons and it is an immortal institution), and the mechanism that 'operates' them is simply that opportunities are facilitated, and 'the way is cleared for them,' and certain resources are provided and certain other resources are not -- kinda like days when there's a 'glitch' with the blog or there's some holdup on the internet, what's up with all that, who's doing that, why is it always progressive blogs that get hacked and never the drudge report blogs, so you know, that's what it looks like as you might experience it when 'certain resources are provided which you (your life) operate by, and certain other resources are not' -- and just in general, so many many of our world figures (you cite Abu Nidal) do not follow a path of personal charisma or principled conviction they are devoted to, but rather, simply, what from their point of view is the path of least resistance. in life. in earning a living. A lot like you and me.
As you say, it's just a theory.
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