Abuse Your Illusions

more info about the book ~ more books from Russ Kick

Abuse Your Illusions contains newsworthy information that has never before been published or that has appeared only in obscure sources (such as small-circulation journals or self-published books). Below you will find pointers to some of the most startling and important revelations.

Illegal US Bioweapons Program. Under international treaty and federal law, it is illegal for the US to make biological weapons for offensive purposes; they can only be created in order to study ways to defend against them. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Sunshine Project has unearthed documents which show that the military is proposing—and is already working on—bioweapons for use in warfare. These declassified documents are the smoking guns that prove the military is violating an international treaty and federal law. The Sunshine Project discusses what they've discovered, how they discovered it, and what it means. Abuse Your Illusions reproduces two of the documents in question. According to Edward Hammond, one of Sunshine's cofounders, a New York Times reporter interviewed him about this for 45 minutes and was eager to do a story on it, but the Times' editors killed it. [pages 56-66]

Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. When he leaked a massive classified study of the Vietnam War, former State Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg earned a place in history books. In "Speer," he writes about the day he turned himself in to the authorities for giving the Pentagon Papers to the media. He also discusses how Albert Speer—the number-three Nazi, whom Ellsberg believes was rehabilitated—became the only member of the Third Reich to accept full responsibility for not only his own actions but the actions of the entire government. It's something that no other government official has apparently ever done. This material was going to be in his book Secrets but was cut for space reasons. In a second article, "Are Secrecy Oaths a License to Lie?" Ellsberg looks at the troubling aspects of the secrecy oaths that many government employees must sign. [pages 114-119]

Rape and Sexual Harassment in the US Military. Rapes at the Air Force Academy have caused a scandal in the past few months. The authorities assure us, though, that sexual assault of service members by other service members is only a problem in this one institution of this one branch of the service. Terri Spahr Nelson knows better. The author of a book on the subject, this Army veteran's article "The Enemy Within" exposes the rape crisis in all branches of the military. According to the Defense Department's own studies, 55 percent of women and 14 percent of men on active duty experienced unwanted sexual attention at work in the year prior to the surveys. And 4 percent of active-duty women experienced rape or attempted rape in the preceding year. This is an average across all branches; members of the Army and the Marines experience even more sexual harassment and violence. Spahr Nelson uses the military's own findings to blow the lid off of this disturbing situation, and she shows why it's happening. [pages 141-145]

Operation Tailwind. In pack-dog fashion, the media excoriated April Oliver's CNN report on Operation Tailwind after the Pentagon and veterans screamed that it wasn't true and CNN subsequently withdrew it. In "Unanswered Letters," Oliver mounts a hard-hitting defense of her story about an operation to kill American defectors with nerve gas in a North Vietnamese prison located in Laos. She reveals exactly who has lied about the incident and her reporting of it. She discusses the unpublicized results of lawsuits in her favor, and she digs up hard documentary evidence to back her up. Abuse Your Illusions contains this previously unpublished evidence, including a Kissinger email and an uncut interview with Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Tailwind occurred. [pages 39-53]

Death of a Leading Microbiologist. On November 15, 2001, during the height of the anthrax mailings, world-renowned microbiologist Don Wiley—who specialized in viruses and immunity—died under mysterious circumstances. Investigative reporter and syndicated columnist Wayne Madsen has written the first investigation into this troubling death. Using old-fashioned gumshoe techniques of investigative reporting, he uncovers the holes, flaws, and fatal problems with the official story around Wiley's death. At the very least, he has found a bizarre case of extreme police incompetence, including an apparently willful blindness to pursue strong leads regarding foul play. [pages 87-97]

The Diamond Trade. Janine Roberts has spent 20 years researching the worldwide diamond trade for the BBC, Doubleday, and others. She is the only reporter ever to see the inside of certain mines and workers' compounds (she had to be smuggled in, of course). Her article, "The Underside of De Beers Diamonds," is a chapter from her unpublished book, which Doubleday commissioned but then refused to print for fear of legal repercussions. She looks beneath the glitter and finds horrific grime in the lives of the mine workers—especially the black ones—who are treated like slaves: working in needlessly dangerous conditions, not allowed to leave their compound, paid an embarrassingly small wage, constantly X-rayed and cavity-searched (to make sure they're not stealing stones), and living in crushing poverty. (Note: Roberts' spiked book was subsequently published in full by the Disinformation Company in late 2003.) [pages 120-126]

The Creation of Panama. We know that certain Wall Streeters and political operatives will go to great lengths to make money, but would they create a nation just for that purpose? Yes, they would, and they did. Panama-born Ovidio Diaz-Espino has discovered the roots of his home country by digging through crates of old newspapers, evidence from Congressional investigations, the memoirs of participants, and other contemporaneous sources. The plot is pretty complicated, but it boils down to this: A group of powerful businessmen and political insiders found a way to make an outrageous fortune through the building of the Panama Canal. The problem was that Panama was a part of Colombia, and the Colombian government was starting to balk. So this group of powerbrokers engineered a revolution in which Panama seceded from Colombia, and the new Panamanian government allowed the building of the canal. This is hidden history at its more important and amazing best. [pages 250-260]

The Creation of the UN. Once again the Freedom of Information Act has proved indispensable in liberating forgotten truths. Former reporter Stephen Schlesinger, now head of the World Policy Institute, got his hands on intelligence documents that show in graphic detail how the United Nations was really created: The United States intercepted and decoded the encrypted diplomatic cables of almost every country involved. Using this purloined knowledge, the US was then able to manipulate the proceedings to its advantage. This important article was published in an obscure cryptology journal in 1995; Abuse Your Illusions is bringing it to a much larger, wider audience. [pages 278-283]

Operation Pipeline. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gary Webb wrote a report for the California Assembly in which he detailed the Highway Patrol's program to pull over minority motorists on flimsy pretexts in order to search them and their vehicles for drugs. Webb was given access to lots of raw documents, reports, and videotape that showed "Operation Pipeline" in action. Primarily Latino motorists were pulled over for such things as having a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. Out-of-state drivers were pulled over for not having a license plate on the front of their vehicle, even if their home state doesn't issue one. These hapless motorists were often interrogated on the side of the road for half an hour about where they were going, why they were traveling, what prescription drugs they use, etc. Sometimes their pulses were taken. If their cars were searched, the entire stop could last well over an hour. Yet for all this zealousness, the program intercepted a remarkably small amount of drugs. Webb's report was suppressed by the California Assembly; it took the threat of a lawsuit to release it. It appears here in print for the first time. [pages 146-160]

The CIA's Radiation Weapons. John Kelly is one of the world's foremost experts on the CIA, having produced and/or written numerous documentaries on the Agency, including a six-part series for the BBC. In "The Agency and the Atom," he breaks new ground by revealing the CIA's attempts to create radioactive and atomic weapons for use by saboteurs and assassins. He also examines the CIA-funded experiments in which unwitting citizens were subjected to radioactivity simply to see what would happen. Based on interviews, newly-released documents, and articles in dusty medical journals, Kelly has recovered a forgotten aspect of the CIA's misdeeds. [170-177]

Watergate. More than 30 years later, the central question of Watergate remains unanswered: What was the purpose of the break-in? Two recent trials provide some important clues. Jim Hougan—author of the Watergate classic Secret Agenda—took part in the defamation trials of G. Gordon Liddy, and in "Watergate Redux," Hougan provides fascinating, previously unreported accounts of what happened. The evidence strongly suggests that the "plumbers" were trying to dig up dirt on a call-girl ring being run out of Democratic National Headquarters. [pages 17-23]

Female Astronauts. Long before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, a group of female astronauts was ready, willing, and able to take part in the early spaceflights. Even though these women were equal to or better than their male counterparts—such as the legendary Mercury 7—they never got to travel among the stars because of cultural attitudes. In "One Giant Leap—Backward," Globe and Mail reporter Stephanie Nolen tells the story of America's forgotten female astronauts. [pages 284-288]

High-ranking Doubters of the Warren Commission. Everyone knows that only ridiculous conspiracy theorists don't believe the official version of President Kennedy's assassination. To doubt the Warren Commission's findings is the height of paranoid lunacy. If that's the case, then there are some very powerful people on the roster of lunatic conspiracy nuts. William W. Turner—the first FBI agent to publicly blow the whistle on J. Edgar Hoover—has assembled, for the first time, quotes from Presidents, Senators, and other uppermost political officials who say that the lone-nut, single-shooter theory is bogus. Their numbers include President Johnson, President Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, two of Kennedy's assistants who were in Dealey Plaza, and two members of the Warren Commission. Even Chief Justice Earl Warren—the head of the Commission—never ruled out the possibility of a conspiracy. (A year and a half after Abuse Your Illusions appeared, Salon published an amazingly similar article featuring most of the same quotations.) [pages 98-101]

The Atlanta Child Murders. From the summer of 1979 to the summer of 1981, Atlanta was gripped in fear as over two-dozen African American children, teenagers, and young adults were viciously murdered. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Wayne Williams was sent to jail for the killings. The problem is, he wasn't sent to jail for the 30 killings. He was convicted of only two of the homicides (and those two were adults who had been put on the list of murdered children, for reasons never made clear). The other 28 murders have never been solved. What's more, 38 similar murders had occurred, but the authorities arbitrarily didn't list them as victims of the Atlanta Child Murderer. Even more troubling, 25 similar murders occurred after Williams had been arrested. True crime authority Michael Newton—author of 33 nonfiction books, including The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers—shows the weak evidence that was used to convict Williams, the ignored evidence that pointed toward others, and the full scope of the murder spree, which went well beyond the 30 acknowledged victims. [pages 108-113]

Islamic Censorship. Although it's become politically incorrect to say anything negative about the world's second-largest religion—Islam—there's another reason you don't hear much criticism. Muslim pressure groups are scaring book publishers into changing, dropping, or shredding books that are critical of Islam. Howard Bloom, the author of "Islamic Censorship," knows about this first-hand. Because his first book contained one chapter about violence in Islamic societies, his publisher was visited by Muslim groups demanding that the book be changed or removed from the market. Bloom found out that he wasn't alone. The pressure groups had scared the publisher Little, Brown into not publishing a book they had contracted about Islam's conquest of Europe. Another big publisher, Simon and Schuster, actually withdrew a religion book from circulation after Islamic groups complained about its portrayal of Mohammed. And then there are the fatwas, which no one wants to incur. Bloom reveals this insidious censorship campaign, naming names and showing us what works have been targeted. [pages 321-326]

Further important revelations:

Investigative reporter Greg Palast reveals how the big media lied about Cynthia McKinney, the Venezuela coup, and election 2000. [pages 10-16]

Former DEA agent Michael Levine reveals inside information about some of the biggest drug busts (and non-busts) of all time. [pages 24-38]

Investigative financial reporter Lucy Komisar looks at the role of the major banks and other financial institutions in money-laundering, offshore banking, and various forms of corporate skullduggery. [pages 130-140]

Editor Russ Kick examines many unanswered questions and hidden aspects regarding 9/11, including the existence of four videos of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon (none of which has been released) and Senator Bob Graham's admission on national television that at least one country actively aided the hijacker-terrorists. [pages 198-227]

James Bacque shows the stunning evidence that the US and other Allies purposely caused the deaths of huge numbers of German POWs and civilians. [pages 261-267]

Pharmaceutical scholar Richard DeGrandpre presents the hidden history of Prozac-type antidepressants and the evidence that they cause violent behavior in some users. [pages 289-301]