A Holiday Guide to a Cinematic Shadow Pantheon (Part 2)

The perfectly disturbing New Year’s Eve cinematic experience could be nothing other than Victor Sjöström’s 1921 film, The Phantom Carriage, an adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s 1912 Theosophical novel entitled Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!  Though little known today, this film had a tremendous impact on such major filmmakers as Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick.  Despite a relatively complex story structure composed of flashbacks within flashbacks and stories within stories, the central conceit of The Phantom Carriage is not at all dissimilar to that of a traditional fairy tale….

Once upon a time, on New Year’s Eve, three men sit in a dilapidated cemetery passing a bottle of cheap liquor back and forth while talking about a local legend:  that of Death’s Driver.  According to the prevailing myth, the last person killed on New Year’s Eve must take over the reins of a horse-drawn carriage fashioned by Death himself.  For the next year, that person must serve Death by collecting the souls of the recently deceased until the following New Year’s Eve.  Inevitably (at least according to the logic of fairy tales), our protagonist, an alcoholic ne’er-do-well named David Holm (played by the film’s director, Victor Sjöström), is accidentally murdered just before the stroke of midnight.  Then comes Death’s Driver, who just so happens to be a fellow derelict named Georges (Tore Svennberg), the man who first told Holm about the legend.  Georges died exactly a year before in Holm’s presence under very similar circumstances.  (As in all fairy tales, coincidence and fate play a crucial role in this film.)  Georges removes Holm from his physical body, binds his astral body hand and foot with rope, and leads him on a soul-searing journey through the world of the living, forcing Holm to confront the consequences of his misspent life in a sermonizing manner that might remind one of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843), but The Phantom Carriage lacks all of the sentimentalism so integral to Dickens’ far more famous novel.

I’ve recently completed a rather lengthy article about this film for a forthcoming anthology about Expressionism edited by film scholar Gary D. Rhodes for Edinburgh University Press.  The article, nearly 10,000 words long, is entitled “Here Among the Dead:  The Phantom Carriage and the Cinema of the Occulted Taboo."  When I learn more details about the publication date of the anthology, I’ll be sure to pass it along.  In the meantime, get your hands on the digitally restored Blu-ray/DVD of The Phantom Carriage, released by Criterion in the Fall of 2011, and watch Sjöström’s groundbreaking phantasmagoria as the clock strikes twelve….

A Holiday Guide to a Cinematic Shadow Pantheon (Part 1)

If you're looking for an alternative X-mas experience, to offset the perennial screenings of such classic films as A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life, then I recommend cuddling up with a cup of Irish Hot Cocoa and watching some of the unjustifiably obscure X-mas themed films recommended by our knowledgeable staff here at the barbed-wired, high security Cryptoscatology.com compound.  We have chosen to call this series "A Holiday Guide to a Cinematic Shadow Pantheon."  In this inaugural installment we recommend a pair of peculiar Yuletide tales....



The Curse of the Cat People (1944).  This was the first film directed by Robert Wise, who would later direct such cryptoscatological classics as The Body Snatcher (1945), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and The Haunting (1963).  This is ostensibly a sequel to Jacques Tourneur's groundbreaking horror film, Cat People (1942); however, no knowledge of the previous film is required to appreciate the sublime strangeness of this metaphysical paean to the dream worlds of childhood. 

Not only is this one of the most unorthodox B-films produced by Val Lewton for RKO in the 1940s, it's also one of the most offbeat sequels ever filmed by a major Hollywood studio.  Its evocation of both the wonder and alienation of childhood is reminiscent of the haunting tales Ray Bradbury began to write at around this same time (see, for example, the tales in Bradbury's1947 collection, Dark Carnival).  Since Bradbury often cited Lewton's films as an influence, this is almost certainly not a coincidence.  In fact, Lewton's films had a tremendous impact on several major writers of dark fantasy, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, and Harlan Ellison included.  Though many film scholars do not hold The Curse of the Cat People in the same high regard as some of Lewton's other masterpieces (e.g., the aforementioned Cat People as well as I Walked with a Zombie and Isle of the Dead), nonetheless a faithful coterie of Lewton aficionados maintain that this particular offering is among the most personal and profound of his darkly fantastic oeuvre.


Quentin Lawrence's Cash on Demand (1962), produced by Hammer Films in England, is a Yuletide suspense story about a Scrooge-like bank manager named Harry Fordyce (Peter Cushing) who, on Christmas Eve, is terrorized for precisely 84 minutes by a master thief and conman named Colonel Gore Hepburn (André Morell).  A noirish, mirror-world alternative to Dickens' most famous saccharine morality tale, A Christmas Carol, Lawrence's Cash on Demand will add a much-needed dose of anxiety to your stocking this merry X-mas season. 

It's interesting to note that Lawrence also directed the cryptoscatological classic, The Crawling Eye (1958), a UFO disclosure film in which a United Nations troubleshooter named Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker) goes head-to-head (head-to-eye?) with a giant, telepathic, tentacled eyeball from another planet.  In his 1997 book, Hollywood Vs. the Aliens:  The Motion Picture Industry's Participation in UFO Disinformation, Bruce Rux insists that The Crawling Eye featured "accurate UFOlogical elements, most notably in the recurrent abduction/implant remote alien control and sabotage motif" (236).  Filmmakers who are drawn into this esoteric field, whether by chance or by choice, tend to end up making more than one film that could be considered cryptoscatological in nature, and Quentin Lawrence (like Robert Wise) is no exception

Stay tuned for Part 2 of "A Holiday Guide to a Cinematic Shadow Pantheon" in which our crypotoscatology.com staff will recommend a special New Year's Eve cinematic experience....

Mind Control & the Boston Bomber

According to Boston Globe journalists Sally Jacobs, David Filipov and Patricia Wen, Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev believed he was a victim of mind control.  The original 12-15-13 Boston Globe article, entitled "The Fall of the House of Tsarnaev," can be read HERE.  A brief excerpt follows:

"[Don] Larking and Tamerlan, who met when Tamerlan visited his mother at work, took an immediate liking to one another and shared their views on conspiracy theory and American politics. Larking loaned his young friend copies of a newspaper he reads, 'The Sovereign, newspaper of the Resistance!’, which suggests that US military explosives were used in the World Trade Center attack. But Larking found that Tamerlan had strong political views of his own. He did not, for example, approve of President Obama’s use of drones in foreign conflicts or what he considered the US government’s expansive foreign policy.

"'He felt the US should not get involved in other people’s affairs and should stick to its own business,' said Larking. 'He did not like the country’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq at all.'

"As their relationship grew closer, Tamerlan confided in Larking his troubling secret about the voice inside his head. Tamerlan told him that he had been hearing the voice for some time, and that he had a theory of what might be afflicting him.

"'He believed in majestic mind control, which is a way of breaking down a person and creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist,' explained Larking. 'You can give a signal, a phrase or a gesture, and bring out the alternate personality and make them do things. Tamerlan thought someone might have done that to him.'

"The person inside him, as Tamerlan described it to Larking, 'was someone who wanted to control him to make him do something.'"

Paul Joseph Watson's illuminating analysis of the Globe's reportage can be found HERE.

Nature Magazine Confirms the Theories of Stanislaw Szukalski?

Earlier this year, in a post entitled "BEHOLD!!! THE PROTONG," I wrote extensively about Stanislaw Szukalski's unique theories regarding humanity's connection to what he calls "the Yetinsyny."  According to Richard Chang of the Orange County Register, "[Szukalski] believed that the human race had bred with a competitive race of Yeti (Abominable Snowmen or Bigfoot, for the uninitiated), and the result was a hybrid that polluted the purity of homo sapiens.  Szukalski argued further that the hybrids [i.e., the Yetinsyny] were responsible for many of people's problems throughout history." 

In that very same Orange County Register article (from the 2-7-13 edition), Chang describes Szukalski's theories as "pseudoscientific."  Apparently, no less an authority than Nature Magazine now disagrees with Mr. Chang's opinion.  According to Nature, the highly respected international weekly journal of science, recent genome analysis might very well prove that Szukalski's "pseudoscientific" theories contain far more than just a kernel of truth.

Click HERE to read Ewen Calloway's 11-19-13 Nature article entitled "Mystery Humans Spiced Up Ancients' Sex Lives."

Let's fade out on one of my favorite Szukalski drawings (from p. 73 of Szukalski's book, Behold!!! the Protong)....



"The howling chest-beating gorilla in the Yetinsyn is perpetually pressed towards its biological preordainment.  It works overtime pounding on the pulpit of subversion, calling all the misfits of the world to unite against the hated Human.  The phrases ring hours after their delivery, 'We must fight against the Tyrants, the Capitalists, the Educated and well... why not against the Good-looking who are loved by beautiful women, too!  Long live da Peep-hole!  Long live the Revolution!'"
--Stanislaw Szukalski, BEHOLD!!! THE PROTONG, p. 72

Colin Wilson R.I.P. (1931-2013)

According to Loren Coleman, Colin Wilson passed away on December 5th.  You can read Coleman's full obituary by clicking HERE. 

Rest in peace, Mr. Wilson, and thanks especially for giving us The Mind Parasites (1967) and "The Return of the Lloigor" (1969).  If I had to single out only a handful of favorite H.P. Lovecraft pastiches, these two works by Wilson would certainly sit near the top of the list alongside Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness (1977) and Robert Bloch's Strange Eons (1978).  "The Return of the Lloigor" can be found in August Derleth's Arkham House anthology entitled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and is well worth seeking out.... 

                         

Happy Thanksgiving, La Carcagne

Not many people are aware that the American holiday called Thanksgiving is often marked by the mysterious appearance of an elusive cryptozoological beast known only as "La Carcagne."  For at least the past fifty years, usually near the end of November, this gigantic winged creature has been sighted in the skies above North America (particularly where Canada borders the United States).  Dozens of witnesses over the years have insisted that this legendary monster is "as big as a battleship."  In French Canadian folklore, its appearance is believed to be a harbinger of imminent death.  The first authentic photograph of this enigmatic being was taken by an American named Fred F. Sears in June of 1957.  Since this photograph had been seldom seen outside rare archives stored within hermetically sealed vaults located thousands of feet beneath Langley, Virginia, I have decided to reproduce the photograph here for your illumination:



We here at cryptoscatology.com wish "La Carcagne" a very happy Thanksgiving, indeed....

In Memoriam: Lee Harvey Oswald R.I.P. (1939-1963)

“If Oswald was working for the FBI, it could explain many things […].  It […] might explain a well-documented instance of the FBI destroying evidence after the assassination.  In August 1975, the Dallas Times Herald reported it had recently learned that two weeks before the JFK assassination, Oswald had delivered a note to the Dallas FBI office and that the note had been destroyed after the assassination.  This story prompted an investigation by the Justice Department and eventually became the center of hearings before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

“It is now certain that two to three weeks prior to the assassination, Oswald came to the Dallas FBI office and asked a receptionist to see Agent [James] Hosty.  When told Hosty was not in, Oswald left a note.  The receptionist, Nancy Fenner, noted that Oswald asked for ‘S.A. [Special Agent] Hosty… [in] exactly those words.’  It’s surprising that Oswald would be so familiar with Bureau jargon.  Years later Fenner recalled the note said something like:  ‘Let this be a warning.  I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police Department if you don’t stop bothering my wife—Lee Harvey Oswald.’

“Hosty, who said he was told not to mention the note at the time of the assassination, said the note was not violent in tone and that it said something like:  ‘If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly.  If you don’t cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities.’

“Hosty also said the note was folded and expressed doubts that Fenner had read it properly.

“He said that within hours of the assassination, he was called into the office of the special-agent-in-charge, J. Gordon Shanklin.  Hosty said Shanklin was visibly ‘agitated and upset’ and wanted to know about the Oswald note.

“After Oswald had been killed, Shanklin again called in Hosty.  Hosty said Shanklin produced the Oswald note from his desk drawer and said, ‘Oswald’s dead now.  There can be no trial.  Here, get rid of this.’  As Hosty tore up the note, Shanklin cried:  ‘No!  Get it out of here.  I don’t even want it in this office.  Get rid of it!’  Hosty said he took the pieces of note to a nearby restroom and ‘flushed it down the drain.’

“Before the House subcommittee, Shanklin denied any knowledge of the Oswald note.  But assistant FBI director William Sullivan said Shanklin had discussed an ‘internal problem’ concerning a message from Oswald with him and that the presence of the note was common knowledge at FBI headquarters.

“Another Dallas agent, Kenneth Howe, also testified he showed Shanklin the Oswald note the weekend of the assassination.  Existence of the note also was talked about among some members of the Dallas Police Department.

“Mrs. Ruth Paine even mentioned that Oswald had dropped off a note to the FBI in her testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964.  She told the Commission:  ‘[Oswald] told me he had stopped at the downtown office of the FBI and tried to see the agents and left a note…’

“Why then did the Bureau only acknowledge the existence of the note after media reports in 1975?  The House Select Committee on Assassinations said the incident concerning the note was a ‘serious impeachment of Shanklin’s and Hosty’s credibility,’ and that with the note’s destruction, ‘it was not possible to establish with confidence what its contents were.’

“It seems unbelievable, however, that the FBI would knowingly destroy evidence, especially if it would have proven Oswald prone to violence.  Some researchers say a more plausible explanation is that Oswald, as an FBI informant, tried to warn the Bureau about the coming assassination [emphasis added—RG].  This could explain the receptionist’s insistence that the note contained threatening words.  It also could explain why the FBI was so concerned and fearful of the note that it was ordered destroyed.”

--JIM MARRS, CROSSFIRE:  THE PLOT THAT KILLED KENNEDY (1989), pp. 233-34

            The last words of Lee Harvey Oswald, as compiled by the late and lamented JFK assassination researcher Mae Brussell, can be seen by clicking HERE.  They’re well worth reading. 

"The Walk" Now Available in THE MAILER REVIEW Vol. 7, No. 1.

My new short story, "The Walk," has just been published in the latest edition of The Mailer Review (Vol. 7, No. 1, Fall 2013).  Instructions on how to purchase a copy can be found at the website of The Mailer Review by clicking HERE. 

Since The Mailer Review is a literary journal that has absolutely nothing to do with the shadowy world of conspiracy theories, it's quite synchronistic--from a cryptoscatological perspective, at least--that this particular issue should contain an article by none other than Dick Russell, author of the 1992 book The Man Who Knew Too Much (generally considered to be one of the best and most credible books about the JFK assassination).  Russell's contribution to this issue, "Norman Mailer and the Dynamite Club," is a first-person account of Mailer's fascination with "the mysteries" (Mailer's term, not mine), which apparently included not just the JFK assassination but related government conspiracies as well.  "The Dynamite Club" was a series of informal gatherings that Mailer organized to help further his research into the national security state while working on Harlot's Ghost, his epic 1991 novel about the history of the CIA told from the point of view of a secret agent based loosely on the life and career of James Jesus Angleton, chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff for over twenty years (from 1954 to 1975).

According to Russell, meetings of the Dynamite Club were attended by such luminaries as Bernard Fensterwald (attorney for James Earl Ray), Jim Hougan (author of Secret Agenda:  Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA), Edward Jay Epstein (author of Legend:  The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald), Kevin Coogan (author of Dreamer of the Day:  Franics Parker Yockey and the Postwar International), Don DeLillo (author of Libra, a novel that focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald), James Grady (author of the espionage novel The Six Days of the Condor), Robert Gettlin (co-author of Silent Coup:  The Removal of a President) and Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy.  Dick Russell offers the reader the opportunity to be a fly on the wall of these alcohol-laden meetings.

The cover of the latest issue, drawn by Jules Feiffer, can be seen below....

The Assassination of JFK and the High Cabal

If you want to hear one of the very best analyses of the JFK assassination, you must listen to the following interview with Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, author of two groundbreaking books, The Secret Team (1973) and JFK:  The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (1992).  This comprehensive interview, entitled "A Very Special Operation:  The Assassination of JFK and the High Cabal," was conducted by David Ratcliffe in Prouty's home way back on May 8, 1989.  

Prouty, a colonel in the United States Air Force, served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during JFK's presidency, so he had considerable insider knowledge regarding the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the coup d'état in Dealey Plaza on 11-22-63.  He was also the main inspiration for the fictional informant known as Mr. X, portrayed by Donald Sutherland, in Oliver Stone's film JFK (1991). 

Roy Tuckman, host of the late night Los Angeles radio show Something's Happening (90.7 FM), has made an annual tradition of broadcasting the interview every November for at least twenty years now.  This latest broadcast, from last Wednesday night/Thursday morning, is currently archived at <http://archive.kpfk.org/>.  You can hear the entirety of "The Assassination of JFK and the High Cabal" by clicking HERE.  Scroll down to Something's Happening--A (Thursday, November 21, 2013 12:00 am) and click the "Play" button on the right hand side of the screen.  The Col. Prouty interview begins at approximately 35:00. 

           

The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Suppressed Episodes

Today, on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's bloody death in the streets of Dallas, one is certain to be overwhelmed by a plethora of misinformation and disinformation clogging the airwaves and the blogosphere.  This, therefore, would be the ideal time to watch the suppressed episodes of The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Nigel Turner's excellent nine-part documentary about the complex web of global events that led to the assassination.  Almost ten years ago, in April of 2004, the History Channel not only withdrew Episodes 7, 8 and 9 from circulation, but went so far as to apologize for airing them in the first place.  The network did this after being threatened with legal action from the surviving family of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Thanks to a miracle called YouTube, however, all three of these banned episodes are now available to be seen again.  I highly recommend watching all nine parts of The Men Who Killed Kennedy, but the following trilogy of suppressed episodes are undoubtedly the best and most dangerous of all.

"Episode 7:  The Smoking Guns" can be seen HERE.

"Episode 8:  The Love Affair" can be seen HERE.

"Episode 9:  The Guilty Men" can be seen HERE.

If you only have time to watch one, I highly recommend "The Guilty Men."  This was the episode that so enraged the likes of Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Bill Moyers, and Jack Valenti, all of whom did their utmost to sweep the evidence in this documentary not only into the trash bin of the History Channel... but into the trash bin of history itself.

"The past is never dead.  It's not even past."--William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, 1950

The Improbable Death of MI6 Agent Gareth Williams

I highly recommend reading today's BBC news article about the improbable death of MI6 spy and codebreaker, Gareth Williams.  The police announced earlier today that they are closing the case, having concluded that Williams' unusual death was "probably an accident."  Here's an excerpt from the BBC's 11-13-13 reportage:
 
"Mr Williams's body was found naked at his flat in Pimlico on 23 August 2010 after colleagues raised concerns for his welfare.

"He had been on a secondment with MI6 from his job as a communications officer at the GCHQ 'listening post' in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

"Police discovered his body inside a zipped-up red sports holdall, in the empty bath of his bathroom.
It had taken a week for MI6 to investigate the code-breaker's disappearance, and a post-mortem examination carried out by a Home Office pathologist failed to determine the cause of death.

"During a seven-day inquest in May 2012, the question of whether Mr Williams could have padlocked himself into a bag in a bath was central.

"Pathologists said he would have suffocated within three minutes if he had been alive when he got inside it.

"None of his DNA was found on the lock attached to the bag and his palm prints were not found on the rim of the bath.

"Coroner Fiona Wilcox concluded that 'most of the fundamental questions in relation to how Gareth died remain unanswered'.

"But she said he was, 'on the balance of probabilities', unlawfully killed.

"At a briefing on Wednesday, the Met Police announced the conclusion of its three-year investigation into the incident.

"Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said he was satisfied it was 'theoretically possible' Mr Williams could have padlocked the bag from the inside, although 'many questions remain unanswered' as to the circumstances of his death.

"But he said there was no evidence that the MI6 officer had intended to take his own life or that his death was connected to his work"

To read the entire BBC article, click HERE.

Four Marines Killed in Camp Pendleton Explosion

Given the maelstrom of conspiratorial strangeness swirling around Camp Pendleton (the Marine base in San Diego that plays such a pivotal role in my "Strange Tales of Homeland Security" article published in Fortean Times #305), I would be hesitant to accept the official story regarding the "accidental" explosion that took the lives of four Marines earlier this morning.  Question:  Who were these Marines and what did they know?  Camp Pendleton has not yet released the identities of these Marines.  I hope to discover more details about this story in the days and weeks to come.

Read Monica Garske and R. Stickney's report about the Camp Pendleton tragedy HERE. 

Note the intriguing necrology of Camp-Pendleton-related deaths that Garske and Stickney include at the very end of the report.

Way To Go, Daddy

Has the strategic infantalism of America now been fully implemented?  It appears we have reached a point where people have no idea how to resolve the simplest problem--even a minor family conflict--without appealing to a Higher Authority (i.e., a politician, a doctor, a police officer, Big Brother, etc.).  In this latest case, an enraged father made the fatal mistake of trying to teach his teenage son a lesson by calling the cops on him.  Bad idea, Daddy.  To find out what happened as a result of this most unwise appeal to authority, click HERE.

The Strange Legacy of Dr. Jekyll

Last night was the culmination of certain risky experiments I have been performing for the past several years inspired by the poorly understood accomplishments of a pioneering visionary named Dr. Henry Jekyll, who (alas) passed away well before his time, somewhere in the West End of London, circa 1885.  Thanks to the tireless efforts of his friend and confidante, attorney Gabriel John Utterson, Dr. Jekyll's research notes were preserved soon after his untimely death.  My connections among highly placed individuals aligned with certain unnamed pharmaceutical companies based in North America allowed me to attain copies of these trailblazing notes some time ago.  Having full access to Dr. Jekyll's nascent efforts to combine the fields of chemistry and psychology, I soon realized how to isolate the predatory nature of man by stimulating the reptilian complex of the brain.  One might think I would wish to isolate this malignant aspect of man's nature in order to eliminate it entirely from the basal ganglia.  This was, from the beginning, my foremost goal; however, my aforementioned associates in the pharmaceutical industry convinced me to alter a minimal amount of ingredients in Dr. Jekyll's original formula in order to file a patent under my own name, and subsequently sell the rights to this unique concoction to the aforementioned pharmaceutical corporation.  This I have now done, and expect to retire on the proceeds very soon indeed.  I have been led to understand that the pharmaceutical company (which must remain anonymous for the time being for obvious legal reasons) has now struck a most lucrative deal with the Science Applications International Corporation, a Virginia-based company that provides engineering and information technology support to the United States military.  I cannot say that I am certain how the military plans to utilize my new formula, but I have no doubt in my mind that this will ultimately lead to beneficial results in our nation's ongoing war against international terrorism.  Thank God for the U.S. military.  Thank God for Big Pharma.  Thank God for Dr. Henry Jekyll, a man whose most vital ideas manifested themselves a full century before their time. 

What follows is photographic evidence of my most recent experiments, as documented by my talented lab assistant, Mrs. Melissa Guffey, ASC, AMC:

War of the Worlds

In memory of the thousands of brave Americans who lost their lives in Grover's Mill, New Jersey during the first salvo of the Great Martian War, let's now travel back in time to that fateful October evening exactly 75 years ago....

To hear Orson Welles' harrowing documentary about the savage extraterrestrial menace that devastated the globe in 1938, simply click HERE. 

But be forewarned, ladies and gentlemen!  This broadcast is not for the faint of heart.  After all, one might call this the first example of "snuff" disseminated over the public airwaves.  We here at cryptoscatology.com, however, are determined to provide this rare archive to you as a public service... lest we forget....

The Stately Ghosts of England

Another entry in our special cryptoscatological Halloween roundup….

"Ghosts inhabit four out of five of England's historic houses."

I bet you didn't know that.  And neither did I until I saw The Stately Ghosts of England, an obscure and fascinating--on various levels at once--television documentary from 1965 featuring actress Margaret Rutherford (most famous for her portrayal of Agatha Christie's venerable detective, Miss Marple) and "society clairvoyant" (yes, I know, it's good work if you can get it) Tom Corbett as they tool about the British countryside in a vintage convertible in search of "the stately ghosts of England" ...all of it "brought to you in LIVING COLOR on NBC!"  The entire documentary can be seen on YouTube in five parts, all of which are highly recommended by several prominent ectoplasmic beings in this dimension and elsewhere.  Part One can be seen by clicking HERE.

It's worth noting that The Stately Ghosts of England was produced, written and directed by Frank DeFelita, who would later write the supernatural novel The Entity as well as the screenplay adaptation that eventually became Sidney J. Furie's 1982 film The Entity starring Barbara Hershey.  According to DeFelita, his novel was based on the real life haunting of a California woman named Doris Bither who lived in a small bungalow in Culver City, California during the most harrowing of her poltergeist experiences.  The actual incidents that gave birth to The Entity can be read about in detail by clicking HERE, which will guide you to the personal website of veteran paranormal investigator, Dr. Barry Taft, author of the book Aliens Above, Ghosts Below (and, as you may recall, the subject of our previous Halloween entry).

An Unknown Encounter

Yet another entry in our special cryptoscatological Halloween roundup for 2013….

Submitted for your approval:  an intriguing documentary about the paranormal entitled An Unknown Encounter which draws heavily upon the research of Dr. Barry Taft, an experienced parapsychologist who worked at UCLA's Parapsychology Laboratory from 1969 to 1978.  This documentary, produced and directed by Barry Conrad, purports to be a true account of a 6-year-long investigation of a malevolent haunting centered on a house located near the shipping ports of San Pedro, California.  It's well worth watching in its entirety.  You can see the full-length film HERE.

LOU REED R.I.P. (1942-2013)

Here’s my one and only Lou Reed story: I met Lou Reed in the Spring of 2005 at UCLA’s annual Festival of Books. Only the day before, I’d heard—almost by accident—that Reed was scheduled to perform a dramatic reading based on The Raven followed by questions-and-answers and a book signing. I told my friend Sharon about the event and asked her if she wanted to accompany me. Since Sharon is habitually late—to the extent that it seems to border on being a serious medical condition—I took the precaution of telling her the event was at noon even though it was actually beginning at one o’clock… and yet somehow we still managed to arrive twenty minutes late.

Nonetheless, we saw the entire Q&A, which was quite illuminating. I recall being impressed by the fact that Reed’s knowledge of Edgar Allan Poe didn’t seem to be at all superficial, which of course is exactly what you’d expect from almost any other popular musician who had taken upon himself the daunting task of distilling the essence of Poe into a series of rock 'n' roll songs. At one point he even commented on Poe having presaged the Big Bang Theory in Eureka, the pre-Fortean book of which only the most ardent Poe scholar is even aware. Reed seemed to have actually read the damn thing from cover to cover. (I’m not even sure Poe’s biographers have done that.) At one point, in answer to a question about his attitudes toward the Bush administration’s apparent obsession with redneck-style End Times theology, I recall Reed claiming he’d been thinking about that exact same issue during the plane ride from New York to Los Angeles and as a result had written a brand new country-western song called “Jesus Was a Jew.”

After the Q&A everyone in the audience lined up to meet the great man himself. The line wrapped around the building—needless to say, an anomaly at the UCLA Festival of Books. As Sharon and I approached Reed, I found myself growing inexplicably nervous. I was nowhere near that apprehensive while sharing an elevator ride with all four of The Ramones in San Diego in 1990, and yet here I was getting a tad jittery. I had planned to ask Reed a question about Little Jimmy Scott, but by the time I reached the table I looked into his weird-ass bulging eyeballs trapped behind those wraparound shades and drew a complete blank. It was one of the few times in my life when I found myself absolutely tongue-tied. My original question evacuated my brain, and instead I heard myself uttering a complete non sequitur: “Are you… aware… of the work of Neil Gaiman?” I have absolutely no idea why I said this. Perhaps because Gaiman quotes Reed so much in his own work? I really don’t know to this day. Unfathomable. Just plain dumb. Anyway, there the question was, floating in the air the two of us now shared, utterly irretrievable.  

Reed just stared at me with those monstrous, compound eyes—they seemed as if they were trying to escape Reed’s skull and leap through his sunglasses—for quite a long time (or at least what seemed like a long time to me) before finally responding with a snarl and a distinct hint of disgust in his voice: “You mean that comic book guy?” He said nothing more about the subject. He signed my copy of Between Thought and Expression, slid it toward me across the wooden table, and that was it. 

I once told this story to Jack Womack (author of Random Acts of Senseless Violence and many other brilliant books), who immediately responded: “Lou Reed is a weasel, and anecdotes like that are why I’ll always love him.” Amen. 

By the way, I once saw Lou Reed in concert. This was in 1988 during the New York tour. The memory of Reed and Mike Rathke engaged in a virtuoso two-way guitar duel that seemed to last for a quarter of an hour during the middle of “The Original Wrapper” will forever be emblazoned in my brain. Blessed Be, Lou—to both you and your over-engorged, diseased liver, you son of a bitch.

Let’s fade out on “HALLOWEEN PARADE,” shall we?

Oh, one last note: According to Victor Bockris’ 1995 biography, Transformer, Lou Reed’s favorite comic book story of all time was “Foul Play” by Al Feldstein and Jack Davis from the infamous 1950s EC horror comic book, The Haunt of Fear. So, in honor of both Lou Reed and Halloween, here it is—an encore performance of “Foul Play” by that transgressive punk rock duo known as Feldtein & Davis….

Click HERE to read “Foul Play.”  

Click HERE to listen to “Halloween Parade.”  

 

Support Your Nazi-style Orwellian Police State

The first in a series of special Halloween Cryptoscatological treats....

What follows is far, far spookier than any Halloween scare you could possibly imagine.  Thrill to the sights and sounds of blissfully unaware Amurrricans signing a petition to support a "Nazi-style Orwellian Police State."  For those of you who have already read my "Strange Tales of Homeland Security" article in Fortean Times #305, the fact that the following sociological experiment occurred in San Diego is particularly appropriate.  Click HERE for your scary little treat.

Masonic "Rant"

All the major news outlets are reporting on Diane Reidy's "rant" about the U.S. Constitution and Freemasonry that took place on the floor of the House of Representatives last night (8-16-13).  As usual, the reportage at Infowars.com tends to be the most pithy, so I'm linking to Paul Joseph Watson's 10-17-13 article entitled "Bizarre 'Freemason' Rant on House Floor During Debt Ceiling Vote."  Here's an excerpt:

"A stenographer staged a bizarre performance on the House floor near the end of the debt ceiling vote last night, ranting about Freemasons before she was quickly dragged away by security guards.

"Moments before House members passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling, a woman later identified as stenographer Diane Reidy approached the microphone at the Speaker’s Lobby in a trance-like state and began to shout.

"'He will not be mocked, don’t touch me, he will not be mocked,' Reidy ranted, adding, 'The greatest deception here is this is not one nation under God, it never was.'

"Officials began to remove Reidy as she screamed, 'It never was, had it been, it would not have been... the Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons, they go against God, you cannot serve two masters.'"

According to ABC News, Reidy was "interviewed by officers before being transported to a hospital 'for evaluation.'"

To read the Infowars coverage, click HERE.

To read the ABC News coverage, click HERE.

My Appearance on Tessa B. Dick's Radio Show

Yesterday Tessa B. Dick, wife of the late Philip K. Dick and author of the memoirs Philip K. Dick:  Remembering Firebright and Tessa B. Dick:  My Life on the Edge of Reality, interviewed me for about one hour on her radio show, Ancient of Days.  You can listen to the entire interview by clicking HERE.  I enter the show at approximately 33:00. 

The Intelligence Codes in A Clockwork Orange

Philip K. Dick claimed, on several different occasions, that in 1972 he was approached by representatives of an unnamed intelligence agency who demanded he embed certain codes into his next novel (which would have been Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, published by Doubleday in 1974).  Dick refused to cooperate.  Science fiction writers and fans have scoffed at this claim for decades, blaming Dick's drug use on this supposed paranoid hallucination... despite the fact that it can be demonstrated easily that professional science fiction writers like Cordwainer Smith and Curt Siodmak, both of whom had definite connections to various American espionage agencies, embedded sensitive intelligence information in their published work.

Apparently the same demands were made of Anthony Burgess in England.  Unlike Dick, however, Burgess didn't refuse the Faustian bargain... and apparently lived to regret it. 

Here's an excerpt from a Dangerous Minds article entitled "Anthony Burgess and the Top Secret Code in A Clockwork Orange" (originally posted on 8-21-13):

"Burgess’s best known novel is A Clockwork Orange, which became an international success once it had been filmed by Stanley Kubrick. Burgess came to hate it and told Playboy in 1971, of all his books it was the one he liked least. But without A Clockwork Orange would anyone have taken an interest in Burgess?

"This question becomes more interesting when considered in light of information revealed in Roger Lewis’s controversial biography of the novelist [...]. Around the 280-page mark, Lewis details his meeting with a British secret service man who informed the Welshman that Burgess was not wholly responsible for A Clockwork Orange. Rather it was a work of collaboration with the British secret services.

"Lewis was told by his source that A Clockwork Orange was about:

'....the mind-control experimentation conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal, between 1957 and 1963, and the Remote Neural Monitoring facility that operated out of Fort George Meade. The CIA were funding controversial research programmes into electronic brain stimulation. They induced exhaustion and nightmares in patients; they put hoods or cones over people’s heads to broadcast voices directly into their brains; they irradiated the auditory cortex or inner ear. When patients had their own speech played back to them, incessantly, they went insane. There was a misuse of civilians in these covert operations, and intelligence on these devices remains classified.'

"Indeed there is an hilarious appendix containing Lewis’s correspondence with the CIA, who neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence on files pertaining to Burgess’s secret service work.
According to Lewis, Burgess 'had been a low-grade collector of intelligence data (or ground observer) in the Far East' for the British. On return to England, he found himself in a world of spy scandals (Burgess, Philby and Maclean) and double agents (George Blake), where the American cousins were questioning their bond with the Brits. A plan was hatched where Burgess would essentially front a novel that would:

'...lift the corner of the carpet and put into his novel classified material about the (then) new-fangled conditioning experiments and aversion therapies being devised to reform criminals—experiments which had wider implications for the concept of social engineering.'

"According to Lewis’s 'Curzon Street contact':

'...Burgess’s collaborator was a former CIA officer called Howard Roman, a languages expert whose particular field had been the Polish Intelligence Service, the Urzad Bezpieczenstwa (UB)—and it was a senior officer in Polish military intelligence, Michal Goleniewski, who upon defecting had told the CIA about the mole at Underwater Weapons Establishment Portland.'

"The US connection explains why A Clockwork Orange is not littered with Russian references (as Burgess always claimed), but Americanisms like 'liquor store,' 'sidewalk,' 'pretzel,' and 'candy.'"

To read the entire article, click HERE.

The Death of Osama bin Liden Is "One Big Lie," According to Seymour Hersh

An excerpt from Lisa O'Carroll's 9-27-13 Guardian article entitled "Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'Pathetic' American Media":

"Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

"It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as 'the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist'.

"He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

"Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends 'so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would' – or the death of Osama bin Laden. 'Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true,' he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

"Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an 'independent' Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. 'The Pakistanis put out a report, don't get me going on it. Let's put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It's a bullshit report,' he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

"The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

"'It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],' he declares in an interview with the Guardian."

To read the entire article, click HERE.

ELF WITH A GUN

Anyone who's read my current Fortean Times article, "Strange Tales of Homeland Security," should have no problem identifying the significance of this latest information about Aaron Alexis (AKA, "the Navy Yard shooter") and his "ELF" shotgun.  Click HERE to read Justin Peters' 9-25-13 Slate Magazine article "FBI:  Navy Yard Shooter Aaron Alexis May Have Thought He Was Controlled by Electromagnetic Waves."


For Loren Coleman's in-depth analysis of the phrase "ELF weapon!," which can be seen etched into Alexis' shotgun (see the photo above), click HERE.

But only postgraduate cryptoscatologists should even begin to consider the multilayered symbology of the following information (courtesy of the late STEVE GERBER):

ELF WITH A GUN.

Adam Lanza's Medical Records Kept Under Wraps

From Paul Joseph Watson's 9-24-13 article "State of Connecticut Refuses to Release Adam Lanza's Medical Records":

"The State of Connecticut is refusing to release Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza’s medical records over fears that divulging the identity of the antidepressants he was taking would, 'cause a lot of people to stop taking their medications,' according to Assistant Attorney General Patrick B. Kwanashie [...].

"Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members during the rampage last December in Newtown, which was the second deadliest mass shooting by a single person in American history.

As we have repeatedly documented, psychiatric drugs have been a common theme in hundreds of murders and mass shootings over the last three decades.

"The most recent example, Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis, was taking the anti-depressant drug Trazodone, which has been linked to numerous murders and a mass shooting at a beauty parlor in 2011.

"Despite it being reported that prescription drugs were found in the apartment of ‘Batman’ shooter James Holmes days after the Aurora massacre, it took nine months to find out exactly what those drugs were. Like Columbine killer Eric Harris, Holmes had been taking Zoloft, another SSRI drug linked with violent outbursts.

"The SSRI Stories website has documented countless examples of school shootings, suicides, violent outbursts and murders linked to psychiatric drugs."

Click HERE for the entire article. 

How to Spot a "Sleeper" (According to the FBI)

What follows is essential reading.

The excerpt below is from a PrivacySOS.org article entitled "When Speech Becomes Suspicious: The FBI's 'Communities Against Terrorism'":

The FBI wants you to know that paying with cash, being concerned about your privacy (or as the FBI calls it, your "privacy"), and taking an "unusual" interest in surveillance or security procedures are all suspicious activities that could be linked to terrorism.

Last week, Public Intelligence posted a file containing a number of FBI "Communities Against Terrorism" cheat sheets, which contain information about supposed terrorism risk indicators, directed at various groups of people or private entities. Among the categories are:

• construction sites
• electronics stores
• hobby shops
• hotels and malls
• internet cafés
• entertainment facilities
• martial arts and paintball activities
• mass transportation and
• "sleepers" -- or "otherwise persons who camouflage their involvement in terrorist activity or planning by attempting to fit in with others in our society."

(That last bit is awfully strange, isn't it? You'd assume that anyone bent on committing acts of terrorism would want to camouflage their involvement with that activity, no?)

You might think: great! The FBI is reaching out to communities and businesses, doing due diligence to ensure that many different communities in the United States have the information they need to protect themselves and their surroundings from those who would do them harm. And indeed, some of the FBI's advice to businesses and the public make sense. For example, when advising farm store suppliers about things to watch out for, the FBI lists a number of chemicals that might be used to manufacture a bomb, and advises that shop owners ask for identification whenever people purchase those materials.

But the cheat sheets go well beyond commonsense advice, and encroach directly on our rights to freedom of speech and freedom from government intrusion into our private lives. We've talked for a long time about the FBI's classification of commonplace activities like taking notes or photography as "suspicious activities,"and these sheets repeat those mistakes. But there are three other trends in these documents that warrant particular concern....

To read the rest of the article, click HERE.

PLAN B Special Preview

As a special preview of PLAN B VOL. II, the editor has posted my story (“Flames”) on the magazine's homepage.  If you'd like to read the entire story, simply click HERE.

Plan B Vol. II Now Available For Pre-Order

Plan B:  A Mystery and Crime Anthology Vol. II (which includes my new short story entitled "Flames") is now available for pre-order... for only $2.99!  Click HERE for ordering details.





And in other news... the September issue of FORTEAN TIMES (#305), which contains my mind-warping feature article entitled "Strange Tales of Homeland Security," has at last invaded the shores of the United States.  Be sure to check out your local Barnes & Noble or a well-stocked newsstand NEAR YOU!

Phone Calls from the Dead & the Hemisphere Project

From Scott Shane and Colin Moynihan's 9-1-13 New York Times article entitled "Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.'s":

"For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.

"The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant. 

"The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987. 

"The project comes to light at a time of vigorous public debate over the proper limits on government surveillance and on the relationship between government agencies and communications companies. It offers the most significant look to date at the use of such large-scale data for law enforcement, rather than for national security. 

"The scale and longevity of the data storage appears to be unmatched by other government programs, including the N.S.A.’s gathering of phone call logs under the Patriot Act. The N.S.A. stores the data for nearly all calls in the United States, including phone numbers and time and duration of calls, for five years."

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Now if only the Clever Boys behind the Hemisphere Project's universal phone surveillance could use their enormous backlog of data (and seemingly bottomless black budget resources) to explain the phone-weirdness phenomena detailed in this classic book of paranormal cryptoscatology, I'd give 'em all a pat on the back....

ENDORSED BY THE CRYPTOSCATOLOGY BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB™:

PHONE CALLS FROM THE DEAD by D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless:
 
Used copies of this wonderful book, out of print for years now, go for ridiculous amounts of money these days, so I recommend haunting used bookstores or your local library until you dig one up.  It's essential reading.  The implications of the Hemisphere Project are mundane compared to having your private phone calls surveilled by a pissed-off dead relative.  Rest assured, my fellow Americans, you needn't be on the terrorist watch list to have your phone calls screwed with by a "spook"....

The Art of Dreaming

"[Don Juan] heavily stressed that the dreaming attention is the key to every movement in the sorcerers' world.  He said that among the multitude of items in our dreams, there exist real energetic interferences, things that have been put in our dreams extraneously, by an alien force.  To be able to find them and follow them is sorcery."

--Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, 1993

Surveillance Role Players in San Diego

Those of you who have already read my latest Fortean Times article, “Strange Tales of Homeland Security" (which focuses on a series of Orwellian events in the city of San Diego), will be intrigued to know that Julie Wilson's 8-21-13 Infowars.com article about "Surveillance Role Players" in San Diego seems to confirm—to an eerie degree—many of the bizarre allegations I've documented in my FT article.  Wilson's piece, entitled "San Diego Craigslist Ad Searches for 'Surveillance Role Players'," begins as follows:
 
"A recent post on a San Diego Craigslist website advertises the need for 'motivated' Surveillance Role Players (SRPs) and scenario driven practical exercise Role Players (RPs). The ad claims to be looking to fill these positions to 'support military training activities in the San Diego, Calif. region.'

"The ad further states: 'Qualified personnel should demonstrate an established track record of conducting surveillance operations at various discretion levels, supporting surveillance training and military practical exercise training. Individuals with previous military, intelligence community and law enforcement experience are highly preferred.'

"The MASY Group, the company hiring, is looking for candidates that have a minimum of five years of counterintelligence (CI) or human intelligence (HUMINT), with at least two years of operational deployments in a CI/HUMINT military occupational specialty. Applicants are also required at minimum, to possess a secret clearance to qualify.

"According to the company’s website, their mission is to 'effectively address and solve our client’s emerging and most complex leadership, organizational and operational challenges.'"

You can read Julie Wilson's entire article by clicking HERE.

Postscripts #30/31 Now Available for Pre-order

Postscripts #30/31:  Memoryville Blues (which contains my short story "Selections From The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook") is now available for pre-order.  Edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers, this hardcover anthology also contains stories by the likes of Forrest Aguirre, Ramsey Campbell, Jack Dann, Barry Malzberg, Mike Resnick and many others.  For ordering information, click HERE.

"Strange Tales of Homeland Security" in the latest Fortean Times

My latest article, “Strange Tales of Homeland Security,” is the cover feature of the most recent FORTEAN TIMES MAGAZINE (#305), the one with the September cover date.  If the issue’s not on the stands where you are now, it should be within a few days or so.  I highly encourage you to seek it out at your local Barnes & Noble (or any well-stocked newsstand).  “Strange Tales of Homeland Security” is a bizarre—but 100% true—first person journalistic account of government harassment taken to the nth degree.  This article covers a great deal in a relatively short space:  Homeland Security agents run amok in the Pacific Beach area of San Diego, the use of electromagnetic nonlethal weapons to torture homeless people, drug users and ex-prisoners in “America’s Finest City” (as the locals refer to San Diego), back-engineered optical camouflage technology misappropriated by Naval Criminal Investigative Services and a nefarious corporation called Science Applications International Corporation (which is based in San Diego), AWOL Marines, stolen Department of Defense laptop computers containing Above Top Secret information compiled by intelligence specialists stationed in the Persian Gulf, homicidal marijuana farmers, UFOs, invisible midgets—and much, much more.  I think it’s safe to say that, no matter what, you won’t be bored by the piece.

Allons-y!

"Cryptopolis" Receives Honorable Mention in Year's Best Horror

I just heard from Leslie What, the co-editor of PHANTOM DRIFT, that my short story "Cryptopolis" (which was published in PHANTOM DRIFT:  A JOURNAL OF NEW FABULISM #2 in the fall of 2012) has received an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in her annual YEAR'S BEST HORROR anthology.  It's quote an Honor Roll!  You couldn't ask for better company.  To see the entire list, click HERE.

Michael Hastings Update (Part 2)

A brief excerpt from Paul Joseph Watson's 8-13-13 article entitled "Michael Hastings Was Investigating CIA Director John Brennan":

"Journalist Michael Hastings was investigating CIA director John Brennan before his untimely death in a suspicious car accident it has been revealed, with the report set to be published posthumously by Rolling Stone Magazine within the next two weeks.

"According to San Diego 6 News reporter Kimberly Dvorak, 'John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project.' Dvorak says she received an email from the CIA, 'acknowledging Hastings was working on a CIA story,' although the text of that email was not displayed.

"Dvorak also cites a Stratfor email hacked by Wikileaks and first published last year which names Brennan as being, 'behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources [...]'

"Before being sworn in as CIA director in March this year, Brennan was a counterterrorism advisor for the Obama administration and helped compile the 'kill lists' for the White House’s drone assassination program."

Read the entire article by clicking HERE.

The Special Operations Division of the DEA

Two recent articles detailing the unconstitutional hijinks engaged in by the Special Operations Divisions of the Drug Enforcement Administration....

First up is a 8-5-13 Washington Post article entitled "The NSA is Giving Your Phone Records to the DEA.  And the DEA is Covering It Up." by Brian Feng.  Here are the first two paragraphs of Feng's article:

"A day after we learned of a draining turf battle between the NSA and other law enforcement agencies over bulk surveillance data, it now appears that those same agencies are working together to cover up when those data get shared.

"The Drug Enforcement Administration has been the recipient of multiple tips from the NSA. DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips [...]. Tips from the NSA are added to a DEA database that includes 'intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records.' This is problematic because it appears to break down the barrier between foreign counterterrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations."

Read the entire article HERE.

John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke of Reuters report the revelations in further detail.  Here's a brief excerpt:


"The unit of the DEA that distributes the [illegal] information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

"Today, much of the SOD's work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked 'Law Enforcement Sensitive,' a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.

"'Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function,' a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD's involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use 'normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD.'"

This unconstitutional "reconstruction" of illegally obtained data is referred to as "Parallel Construction" by law enforcement officials.

Read the entire article HERE.