Get Ready For The Most Violent Election Of Our Lifetime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfWkoq6BXEY

How A Conman Got the State of California to Pay $50 Million For His Worthless Trucks

California California A truck company founder was indicted for fraud. California still paid $50 million for its vehicles By Tony Briscoe, 11 hours ago Trevor Milton, the founder and former chief executive of Nikola Corp., helped raise over $1 billion by touting the company as an emerging rival to Tesla. He boasted that Nikola, founded in 2014, had developed the world’s first fully functional hydrogen-powered semi-truck — the Nikola One. He told investors that the company had over 14,000 preorders, representing billions of dollars of future revenue. He claimed Nikola operated the largest hydrogen production facility in the Western Hemisphere to fuel the company’s fleet. The only problem was, none of that was true: Nikola did not develop the world’s first hydrogen truck, and the Nikola One was never fully functional. Also, the company never had that many preorders, and it never developed a hydrogen production facility. Even after Milton was criminally indicted in 2021 and the company reached a costly settlement, the California Air Resources Board allowed Nikola to compete for state funding and sell vehicles through its Clean Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project in 2022. State officials ultimately paid more than $50 million to help Nikola customers purchase more than 166 of the company’s electric and hydrogen-powered semis — making them the most heavily subsidized vehicle in the program on average. Less than three years later, the company collapsed. Most of Nikola’s trucks that eventually went to market were recalled for fire-prone batteries and hydrogen tank issues. In February 2025, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving its customer base — mostly in California — without vehicle warranties, a limited supply of spare parts and additional costs for maintenance. California’s $1-billion clean truck voucher program was designed to accelerate adoption of zero-emission vehicles through state-funded vouchers, as well as to reduce pollution from the state’s robust shipping industry. But 17 years after it was launched, nearly 1 in 4 automakers that have participated in the state program have ceased production or exited the zero-emission market, according to a Times analysis. One in five program vouchers went to vehicles made by these companies. Much of the turmoil is due to an industry-wide struggle to manufacture and monetize heavier electric vehicles. But trucking industry experts say CARB and its nonprofit partner CALSTART have failed to properly vet the manufacturers and vehicles they are bankrolling. A Nikola hydrogen electric semitruck on display in Long Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) A CARB spokesperson said Milton’s fraudulent conduct did not have any bearing on the company’s trucks, which qualified for the program. What’s more, the 166 state-funded Nikola vehicles represent a small percentage of the nearly 12,000 clean trucks and buses that the agency has helped deploy, the spokesperson said. “CARB was aware of Trevor Milton’s legal issues,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “However, Milton stepped down as chairman of Nikola in 2020, more than a year before the first Nikola vehicle became eligible in [the voucher program]. CARB determined that these circumstances did not affect the viability or the performance of the eligible vehicle.” When asked by a Times reporter about the funding Nikola vehicles received from California’s voucher program, Milton said: “I wasn’t at the company after August 2020. So unfortunately, I can’t comment on anything that happened after I was there.” Milton declined to answer further questions, but in a July 2024 podcast, he insisted that he had committed no wrongdoing. “I haven’t done anything wrong. ... I have nothing to worry about. If I would have had something to worry about, I would have stayed there and tried to essentially cover up whatever stuff that I had done wrong, that I didn’t do,” he said. CARB critics, however, say the state should have known better than to engage with the company Milton founded. Nate Anderson, a short seller and the founder of financial investigations firm Hindenburg Research, had leveled the original fraud accusations that triggered federal investigations of Nikola. “Trevor Milton was indicted in July 2021 with Federal prosecutors alleging he ‘made false claims regarding nearly all aspects of Nikola’s business,’” Anderson said, noting DOJ documents in an email to The Times. “If California officials couldn’t figure it out in 2022 they are obviously hopeless.” State Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach), a longtime opponent of CARB zero-emission mandates, said the blunders demonstrate that these major state funding programs should be overseen by state lawmakers, not gubernatorial appointees. “It’s unbelievable,” Strickland said of the Nikola funding. “There needs to be more safeguards. They’re wasting millions of hardworking tax dollars. We need to bring back more transparency, more accountability and more oversight. You can’t spend $60 million here, and $58 million there — and especially when someone has a background with fraud and serious misrepresentations of the development of their zero-emission vehicles.” Environmental advocates were more cautious about criticizing the program, which they say provides critical funding to reduce pollution from ports, railyards and distribution centers. “Raising the idea of guardrails and accountability, if it improves the program, I’m all for it,” said Sam Wilson, a senior vehicle analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. But “at a time when the funding for zero-emission freight electrification is so uncertain, what we’re supporting is an accountable [incentive] program, and not supporting its demise.” Jennie Abarca, head of trucking company King Fio Trucking in Long Beach, is among the business owners who purchased Nikola trucks with California incentives. She now has to navigate a future where the automaker no longer exists. “The sad thing is it’s actually an amazing vehicle,” she said about the electric Nikola Tre. “I wish the company had been run differently. In hindsight, they [the vehicles] probably should not have been offered through the program.” Other Nikola customers include major logistics company J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Los Angeles International Airport and even Fresno Unified School District. At an unveiling in Salt Lake City in December 2016, Milton had declared the Nikola One prototype fully functional. In reality, the semi was inoperable, and did not have a hydrogen fuel cell or electric motors — the two most critical components of the truck. Audrey Strauss, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, speaks to the media in July 2021 about charges against Trevor Milton. (Associated Press) A little more than a year later, the company arranged for a promotional video, even though employees had performed no additional work. The truck was filmed barreling along a narrow highway cutting through the Utah desert. The caption of the video, which was posted on the company’s social media pages, read: “Behold, the Nikola One in motion.” What the video failed to mention, though, was that the prototype had been towed to the top of a small slope and filmed as it rolled downhill. Federal prosecutors eventually launched investigations into the company and Milton. Milton was criminally prosecuted and convicted of securities and wire fraud and eventually sentenced to four years in prison in 2023. Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Nikola. The company settled the case by agreeing to pay a $125-million fine. Milton, who along with his wife donated $1.8 million to President Trump’s 2024 campaign, received a pardon from Trump on March 27, 2025, before a court finalized an order for restitution. Prosecutors had argued that Milton should be ordered to repay investors $661 million. Newly pardoned, Milton sought to recover $70 million from Nikola in bankruptcy court. In September, the bankruptcy judge said a federal pardon does not relieve him from civil liability, and moved the former CEO’s claim to the bottom of the creditor list, making it very unlikely that Milton will receive money from the company. Milton has appealed that decision. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office recently highlighted Milton’s pardon as another example of Trump absolving his political allies. The news release slammed Milton for “selling investors a story that his company Nikola was on the verge of delivering zero‑emission trucking,” adding his deceitful marketing campaign “overstated technology.” When asked why state agencies entrusted Nikola with $50 million in funding, Newsom’s office emphasized it was after Milton’s departure. In the wake of the company’s closure, Nikola truck owners have been left in a bind. Hyroad Energy, a Texas-based company, bought Nikola’s intellectual property and fleet of over 100 unsold hydrogen Tre trucks. It also announced it opened a maintenance facility in Fontana. It has provided Nikola Tre owners with software updates and offered connectivity for $299 a month. However, Hyroad officials say they are unable to honor vehicle warranties that Nikola sold. “Unfortunately it would not be financially viable for Hyroad to backstop Nikola’s warranties for vehicles already sold,” a company spokesperson said. “However, Hyroad provides uptime guarantees for new trucks leased or bought directly from Hyroad.” Abarca, the owner of King Fio, said she purchased a truck through the state incentive program because she was determined to curb her emissions to lessen pollution in her community. She started by incorporating a pair of Freightliner eCascadia, then took a chance on Nikola. “We know how that turned out,” she said with a chuckle. But for her next purchase, she has chosen a more well-established automaker. She’s put in 20 orders for the upcoming Tesla Semi. Times staff writer Sandhya Kambhampati contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

A Second American Civil War???????

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi68gfsA6H8

Be Prepared For An October Surprise Before The US Midterm Elections

We are precisely one month away from the U.S. mid-term elections. What keeps me concerned is the possibility of "An October Surprise." We have two desperate, cornered, and very powerful men we all must be concerned with as follows: Vladimir Putin (Russia) Ahamad Vahidi (Iran) Iran is a couple of weeks away from the economy imploding. (Some readers like Elena get upset with me for this prediction. I refer to the quotation from the Greeks several thousand years ago: "Do not kill the messenger if you do not like the message.") When the economy implodes, the IRGC will fall. Rest assured that they will not "go quietly into the night." The mortally wounded animal will strike out violently one final time. This could come as a terrorist attack or attacks on the US. It could come in the form of "dirty bombs" being lobbed at other Middle Eastern countries, including Israel. Even more concerning is a part of Russia called Kaliningrad. It is one of the most militarized places on Earth. Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend this area. Credible sources warn that Putin is planning an attack on areas of Europe to build a land bridge between Belarus and Kaliningrad. Here is an excellent link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAe5VtkpRT4 Please take the time to watch this podcast.

The CIA Station In Mexico: The Last JFK Assassination Records Secrets

The CIA Station in Mexico: The Last JFK Assassination Records Secrets Film stills from the documentary El Grito of the massacre at Tlatelolco, October 2, 1968 Film stills from the documentary El Grito of the massacre at Tlatelolco, October 2, 1968. Source: FilmotecaUNAM/Youtube Covert Operations Targeted Student Groups Before and After Tlatelolco Massacre On 58th Anniversary, Archive Calls on CIA to Declassify All Remaining Records on 1968 Student Killings Published: Oct 1, 2026 Briefing Book # 931 By Claire Dorfman and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi For more information, contact: 202-994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu Subjects Cold War – General Human Rights and Genocide Regions Mexico and Central America Project Intelligence Mexico Winston M. Scott Winston M. Scott, Chief of the CIA’s Mexico City station from 1956 to 1969. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) President Adolfo López Mateos plays the guitar President Adolfo López Mateos plays the guitar during a barbecue hosted by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson at the LBJ Ranch in Texas, October 18, 1959. (Source: The Portal to Texas History) The Mexican army detains students after the Tlatelolco massacre The Mexican army detains students after the Tlatelolco massacre, October 2, 1968. (Source: Colección Manuel Gutiérrez Paredes/Archivo Histórico de la UNAM) President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz pictured with president-elect Luis Echeverría in 1970 President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz pictured with president-elect Luis Echeverría in 1970. (Source: El Universal) Washington, D.C., October 1, 2026 - The CIA continues to keep secret major substantive portions of an internal accounting of its activities in Mexico, including information on covert operations targeting student groups in the days leading up to the massacre at Tlatelolco 58 years ago this week on October 2, 1968. Long-redacted excerpts from the three-volume Mexico City station history are among the last remaining secrets from the massive trove of records that were reviewed for declassification under the JFK Assassination Records Review Act of 1992. At the same time, other CIA documents from the JFK collection offer clues as to what the Agency is hiding. In 1967, one year prior to the Tlatelolco massacre, a CIA official warned of the consequences of supporting the radical right-wing student group MURO (Movimiento Universitario de Renovadora Orientación). “We appreciate the need for a Station militant action team for specific harassment purposes as the need arises,” the official wrote. “We believe, however, that the long-range negative effect of perpetuating MURO outweighs the tactical short-range benefits to be derived from MURO harassment actions at our instigation.” (Document 3, p. 31) By 1968, the CIA station in Mexico City had been financing far-right radical extremists at universities and adding to the polarization of the Mexican student movement for years. Together, the redacted station history and other declassified documents from the JFK files reveal that, despite dissent within the Agency and State Department, the CIA continued to conduct extensive operations against leftist student groups in Mexico, even after the violence at Tlatelolco. The CIA’s Mexico City station history is an essential document in the JFK Assassination Records Collection that provides a rare view into U.S.-Mexico relations and what the CIA considered its most important operations in a capital of Cold War espionage. The document lists and describes dozens of CIA covert operations carried out in Mexico, including projects with cryptonyms like LIHUFF, LICOAX, LIMIX, LIAGOG, and LINOODLE. Yet full transparency remains elusive, as critical redactions remain in the 2025 release of this record. For the Agency, the secrets still buried represent some of their most sensitive projects and relationships with foreign governments. The records published today by the National Security Archive highlight what the JFK collection does and does not reveal about CIA operations in Mexico. Taken together, these documents provide important context to help identify and understand the secrets the Agency still refuses to release more than half a century later. A close reading of the redacted history and these related records reveals what the CIA is most eager to conceal: Nearly ten completely redacted pages detailing CIA operations against left-wing student groups in the lead-up to the massacre at Tlatelolco on October 2, 1968 Key paragraphs related to Miguel Nazar Haro, one of the architects of Mexico’s brutal surveillance state and a CIA asset Operations targeting labor and campesino groups in Mexico City and the countryside Intelligence gathering against the Mexican government through liaison relationships with high-level members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) The CIA’s Mexico City Station History In 1978, as part of its investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) requested the CIA hand over a three-volume, 539-page history of its station in Mexico City and bases in Monterrey, Nogales, and Merida, covering Agency exploits from 1947 to June 30, 1969. The CIA initially refused but later supplied 227 pages of the history to congressional investigators. Those excerpts made it into the more than six million pages of materials that comprise the JFK Assassination Records Collection. The vast majority of those documents have been declassified in full under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 and Executive Order 14176 of 2025 which mandated the release of all the records. Since the Archive first highlighted the importance of the CIA Mexico City station history, the document has undergone five additional declassification reviews: twice in 2017 and again in 2022, 2023, and 2025. Last year, the Archive posted the version declassified in 2023, anticipating that a fully unredacted version would soon appear in the JFK Assassination Files. When no new document surfaced, the authors visited the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, only to be denied access and informed that “an agency” was actively reviewing it. In January of this year, the National Archives finally released a copy of the history declassified in 2025, but it still contains major substantive redactions. After the Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the document, the JFK Assassination Collection webpage now explains that “The Office of White House Counsel has informed NARA that the CIA may continue withholding portions of the larger [CIA Mexico City station history] document that do not relate to the assassination of President Kennedy under FOIA exemptions.” The Clandestine Services Historical Program In late 1964, the CIA’s Directorate of Plans initiated the Clandestine Services Historical Program (CSHP) to preserve the Agency’s 18-year institutional memory through a series of historical monographs on intelligence and covert operations.[1] These histories were meant to establish “a record of problems and solutions, failures and accomplishments which will put the past into historical perspective as background for the current direction of central intelligence.” Declassifying these histories remains crucial, as they can provide an especially valuable record for the public to refer to in assessing CIA actions and debating necessary reforms.[2] The Mexico City Station history became CSHP number 329 among more than 500 such projects produced.[3] The vast majority of CSHP histories remain classified, especially those that focus on a particular CIA station. Instead of relying on trained historians, CSHP assigned the writing of these histories to CIA officers with direct experience in the subject. For the Mexico City history, CSHP tapped Anne L. Goodpasture, a veteran of WWII’s Office of Strategic Services and a CIA case officer from 1947-1973. Goodpasture, who was stationed in Guatemala during the 1954 CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the Jacobo Árbenz government, joined the Mexico City station in 1957. There, she served for 13 years as the trusted right-hand woman to Winston M. Scott, the Chief of Station. Goodpasture was a natural choice to write the history, as she was one of the few officers who was read-in on the Agency’s most sensitive projects in Mexico. One of these was LITEMPO, the CIA’s operation to build strong liaison relationships with top Mexican government officials, including three Mexican presidents, Adolfo López Mateos, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, and Luis Echeverría, and top officials from the Federal Security Directorate (Dirección Federal de Seguridad, DFS) Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios and Miguel Nazar Haro.[4] Goodpasture was also involved in the Agency’s most-valued operation in Mexico: project LIENVOY, a joint CIA and Mexican government phone-tapping operation that targeted Soviet, Cuban, and Eastern European diplomatic lines, as well as the perceived political enemies of the Mexican government, including former President Lázaro Cárdenas. (Document 1, pp. 410-413) 2025 Revelations Comparing the 2017 to 2025 versions of the declassified Mexico City station history reveals the CIA is most protective of information on its unilateral operations against Mexican targets; the technical assistance it provided to the DFS and other Mexican security forces despite repeated human rights violations and allegations of corruption; and the degree of cooperation in joint CIA-Mexico projects. In the late 1950s, as the CIA began to realize the limits of its unilateral surveillance activities in Mexico, it sought to increase joint operations with the DFS. The problem was, as Goodpasture would write to the CIA inspector general, that the DFS was a “hip pocket group” comprised of agents that were “vicious, venal, corrupt extortionists.” (Document 2, p. 4) An early example the CIA kept secret until 2025 was the establishment of a joint intelligence group composed of “eight DFS agents under LIVESTOCK-2,” a cryptonym used for one of the Agency’s Mexican contacts, “for training and joint operations against the CP [Mexico’s Communist Party].” Goodpasture writes that LIVESTOCK-2, the DFS official Francisco Luis Velasco, killed a politician and was sent to jail for two years, during which time he remained on the CIA payroll.[5] When he was released from prison in 1955, Velasco continued to work with the CIA for the next four years until the project was terminated “for payroll padding, blackmail, providing false information, and the general unreliability of LIVESTOCK-2.” (Document 1, p. 380) More troubling was the CIA’s relationship with LIELEGANT, who Goodpasture describes as “inexperienced, old, and greedy,” and his son, LIENVOY-2, who was a “masterpiece of deceit and corruption.” (Document 2, p. 4) The identities of LIELEGANT and LIENVOY-2 remain unknown, but the 2025 edition of the CIA Station history explains that “LIELEGANT fancied himself a ladies man… LIELEGANT’s friendship with [President] López Mateos developed through their mutual friend Benito Coquet, a cabinet officer in the administration. The three men shared interests in young girls from artistic and motion picture circles.” (Document 1, p. 406) Despite these concerns, President López Mateos demanded that LIELEGANT stay involved in the Mexican government’s most sensitive joint operations with the CIA. The station history makes clear that López Mateos, LIELEGANT, and LIENVOY-2 used the CIA to enhance their own corruption and power plays as much as the CIA used them to expand its surveillance capabilities against the USSR, Cuba, and other targets. As the CIA history acknowledges, “Neither he [LIENVOY-2] nor his father, LIELEGANT, were subject to any control by CIA except through the tightening of purse strings.” (Document 1, p. 416) But this meant that CIA efforts would be less efficient and more easily compromised. As the CIA history explains, “In their dealings with the [CIA] Station, LIENVOY-2 and LIELEGANT gained a considerable knowledge of the station’s operational assets and capabilities. From a security viewpoint, they knew too much to terminate them with prejudice unless the station was also willing to terminate the operations they knew about, which included LIFIRE, LIBIGHT, LITEMPO, and LIENVOY,” referencing the CIA’s valued surveillance projects and liaisons with high-ranking government officials. (Document 1, p. 418) Despite CIA frustrations and concerns with its Mexican counterparts, the 2025 declassifications show that the Agency continued to provide essential technical equipment, money, and training to the DFS and other Mexican security forces, including the military. The phone-tapping capabilities under LIENVOY cost the CIA $150,000 to install (approximately $1.5 million today), and more than $60,000 in annual maintenance costs, or around $600,000 today. (Document 1, pp. 412-413) CIA engineers from the Technical Services Division flew the equipment from the United States and installed the listening post that included “40 Ampex tape recorders for voices, 30 dial recorders for dial tones of numbers called, 11 Wollensak tape recorders for transcribers, and 11 Revere tape recorders for transcribers.” (Document 1, p. 410) The CIA also provided LIENVOY-2 with the capabilities for a mail intercept unit, though the CIA history explains that once the Mexican officials realized the tedious work involved “the function was abandoned as far as the station could determine.” (Document 1, pp. 416-417) In 1968, as the Mexican government was increasing its use of repression against students and other dissident groups, the CIA provided LIELEGANT with portable phone tapping units. (Document 1, p. 415) Miguel Nazar Haro and LITEMPO Velasco (LIVESTOCK-2), LIELEGANT, and LIENVOY-2 were not the only unsavory relationships the CIA maintained in Mexico and hoped to keep secret. Critical redactions in the station history appear in a section about Miguel Nazar Haro and LITEMPO, the operation that focused on building relationships with high-ranking Mexican officials. The station history describes how the early years of the operation, during which the CIA established a “working level relationship” with the DFS, were marked by inconsistent management and poor intelligence. Goodpasture wrote that “the project produced nothing during its first few years.” Agents in the LITEMPO group chose surveillance targets out of self-interest, either “criminal cases or political enemies rather than those of interest to the station.” (Document 1, pp. 420-421) This all changed when Nazar Haro joined LITEMPO. He was recruited to be a CIA asset by the director of the DFS, Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios (LITEMPO-4). The 2025 version of the station history for the first time includes a crucial detail about Nazar Haro’s early formation as an intelligence officer. While it has been known for many years that Nazar Haro trained at the International Police Academy in 1965, a newly declassified line reveals it was the CIA who sponsored and subsidized his training in the United States at the request of Gutiérrez Barrios. After returning to Mexico, Nazar Haro (LITEMPO-12) had around 20 agents “assigned to subversive targets” and met daily with Jeremy Benadum, the principal agent of the LITEMPO operation. From 1966 to 1969, Nazar Haro’s team produced around 20 percent of the “positive intelligence production from the station,” covering the activities of the communist party in Mexico, Cuban exiles, Trotskyites, and Soviet Bloc cultural groups. From 1967 to 1968, “his group also cooperated with the station on covering the activities of US radical students traveling to Cuba.” (Document 1, pp. 422-423) The remaining redactions in this section most likely refer to Nazar Haro’s involvement in covert operations against Mexican student groups leading up to the Tlatelolco massacre. Nazar Haro’s team that cooperated with the CIA was known as c-047. This DFS unit was formed in response to the attack by a band of guerrillas from the Ejército Popular Revolucionario Mexicano (EPRM) on the Mexican Army garrison in Ciudad Madera, Chihuahua in 1965. The elite team answered directly to DFS director Gutiérrez Barrios, bypassing the institutional chain of command.[6] Mexican state archives related to c-047 remain classified, and little is known about the group’s specific operations and cooperation with the CIA beyond key research and interviews with former members conducted by historians such as Camilo Vicente Ovalle and Sergio Aguayo.[7] The significant new information contained in the station history relating to Nazar Haro’s early relationship with the Agency and to c-047 operations fill in crucial gaps in the history of the counterintelligence unit, which was constructed by the Mexican state with U.S. assistance. The c-047 group was one of several special units within the government’s security forces tasked with counterinsurgency operations. Another group, the paramilitary organization known as the Olympic Battalion (Batallón Olimpica/Brigada Olimpica), played a central role in instigating the violence at Tlatelolco. Nazar Haro rose through the ranks of the DFS and became director in 1978. His reputation as a brutal interrogator was matched by extensive corruption and criminal activities within his intelligence service. Nazar Haro was later indicted in the United States, along with twelve other individuals from the DFS, for his role in an extensive car-theft ring between Mexico and the U.S. In 2004, he was arrested in connection with the forced disappearance of Jesús Piedra Ibarra in 1975 but was acquitted in Mexican court. CIA Unilateral Operations against Students, Labor, and the Mexican State Most of the redactions in the 2025 edition of the Mexico City station history deal with CIA unilateral operations, meaning actions that took place without the knowledge of the Mexican government. The current declassifications reveal that in 1954, the CIA mounted four covert action operations at a cost of $35,000 (approximately $435,000 today). However, the CIA redacted how many of these were running in 1961 (at a cost of $229,600 or $2.5 million today), 1964 (at a cost of $542,000 or almost $6 million today), and 1969 (at a cost of $208,821 or $1.9 million today). The CIA has acknowledged that several of those projects focused on Cuba and has been willing to reveal propaganda operations targeting Mexican media. However, other fields and groups that the Agency targeted remain redacted. (Document 1, pp. 302-304) Several key documents in the JFK files provide clues as to the targets of these unilateral operations. The first of these is a Related Mission Directive for the CIA’s station in Mexico from 1965 which was published by the National Security Archive last year. This record details the Agency’s targets for unilateral surveillance and penetration, including Eastern bloc diplomatic installations and personnel in Mexico, as well as leftist groups operating domestically—information not released in a partially redacted appendix of the 2025 redaction of the station history that summarizes the evolution of CIA operational directives for Mexico from 1947 to 1969. The Related Mission Directive lists three priorities for the station: to “obtain information on Sino-Soviet bloc plans and activities in Mexico”; to “seek to reduce, and, if possible, eliminate Communist and leftist control or influence in key governmental and nongovernmental organizations”; and to “obtain information on the organizational structure, key personnel, financing, covert plans and activities of the Communist Party of Mexico (PCM)” and other groups that “may be susceptible to exploitation by International Communism.” The second priority specifically directs the station to “continue to support and guide anti-Communist youth and student organizations, publications, or agents, and when necessary, develop additional assets in key schools in Mexico City and selected provinces.” In short, given the broad definition of communism that the Agency adopted, CIA operations would focus on infiltrating, influencing and/or controlling, and gathering intelligence on key offices inside the Mexican government and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as well as labor, media, peasant, and student groups. LINOODLE Another key document from the JFK files that sheds light on unilateral CIA covert operations not discussed in the declassified portions of the station history consists of extracts from the 1964 Inspector General’s Survey of the Mexico City Station. The report describes Project LINOODLE as a “highly successful” operation to target peasant and rural populations in the country. According to the document, the project was headed by a Catholic priest “through whose efforts an extensive network of regional organizations have been established including youth groups, credit unions, agricultural co-ops and peasant unions.” The Agency’s project mechanism, the Mexican Institute for Social Studies, administered around 26 regional centers with 12,000 people enrolled throughout the year. The document reveals that the Archbishop of Guatemala (who is not named in the document but may be Mario Casariego y Acevedo) had contacted the Agency for help in creating a similar organization in Guatemala. The CIA considered that “every effort should be made to exploit this possibility” given the Agency’s lack of penetration of peasant groups in the country at that time. The IG report recommends LINOODLE be expanded into Guatemala. (Document 4, p. 8) Student Operations and the Tlatelolco Massacre The Student Operations section in the station history contains the most heavily redacted pages still left in the 2025 version. This section provides a history of the student movement and internal struggles at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) between its left- and right-wing factions, which culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre on October 2, 1968. Massive student demonstrations had raged throughout the country since July of that year, and the CIA was reporting almost daily on the growing instability. Ten days before the Olympic games were set to begin in Mexico City, the students held a rally at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. Police and army units surrounded the plaza and fired on thousands of demonstrators. The station history describes the massacre as a “shooting contest” between “rioting students and the Mexican army,” in which “the students lost.” (Document 1, p. 331) Hundreds of people were detained by the military, including LIEMBRACE-4, a CIA asset tasked by the station to report on the demonstration. In the aftermath of the October 2 massacre, the government blamed extremists and communist agitators for the violence. Documents published by the National Security Archive show that, for the most part, the U.S. dutifully followed the Mexican government’s line at the time, with the CIA’s high-level contacts in the PRI reinforcing the narrative that the leftist students were to blame. Almost 60 years later, the Tlatelolco massacre remains an open wound in Mexican society, yet the Agency continues to deny access to critical information about the episode from its station history. (Document 1, pp. 331-341) Nevertheless, important clues about the CIA’s knowledge and possible involvement are scattered throughout the JFK assassination files. First, the endnotes from the redacted pages on student operations in the station history are declassified and mention the following projects: LICOAX, LIMIX, LIAGOG, and LINOODLE. Second, while the CIA’s student operations section in the IG report was excised in the final version, the last page of the student section references project LIHUFF and CIA’s financial support for the conservative think tank Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales y Económicas (IISE) and the right-wing student group MURO. (Document 4) Finally, the 2025 station history does provide one new detail, which dates back to 1952 when the CIA “had a hand [in]” the ouster of the university rector through the right-wing student group LILISP-C. (Document 1, p. 329) Taken together, the CIA had at least five projects spanning two decades of student operations in Mexico: LIHUFF, LICOAX, LIMIX, LIAGOG, and LINOODLE. Another important source of information on unilateral CIA operations in Mexico from the JFK files is a series of project renewals for LIHUFF from 1963 through its termination in 1970. These documents make clear that LIHUFF was a controversial project within the CIA. Chief of Station Winston Scott was a major proponent of the program, but covert action evaluators at CIA headquarters raised multiple concerns from the start related to its efficacy, cost, overlap with other projects, and association with radical right-wing elements. (Document 3) The main agent for the project was Alfonso R. Wichtrich (LIHUFF-1), an American businessman who would become the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.[8] The CIA station valued Wichtrich’s connections with right-wing circles in Mexico. One of those groups was the conservative think-tank IISE, which was led by Agustín Navarro Vázquez (LIHUFF-2), a lawyer, economist and prolific writer. IISE impressed the CIA station when it provided the names of three thousand Mexican communists. IISE also had offices in El Salvador and Guatemala that the Agency wanted to exploit. In addition to intelligence, the CIA used IISE as a front organization to support the publication of anti-communist books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles, as well as to influence the PRI and support the right-wing student group MURO. (Document 3) Starting in 1963, the CIA began to fund MURO at a rate of $6,000 per year ($65,000 today). The Agency classified its support for MURO as a political action campaign to influence student politics across Mexico. But as a CIA report explains, the group specialized in militant harassment operations with “200 shock troops [that] have campaigned vigorously against Communism and pro-Castro groups at the National University (UNAM), and in the Universities of Puebla and Guadalajara.” Agency proponents of LIHUFF claimed that “MURO takes major credit for the ouster in past months of Communist rectors from the Universities of Monterrey, Puebla, Guadalajara, and Morelia.” (Document 3) Defenders of LIHUFF saw Agency support for MURO as complementary to other CIA student operations. In justifying its renewal for the project, the Mexican station explained that project LILISP-C, described as a “National Student Confederation” (a likely reference to the conservative Confederación Nacional de Estudiantes that worked at the national level), was complementary to MURO’s on-the-ground operations. Similarly, the station explained that “MURO is working the Catholic side of the street while LICOAX works the so-called ‘independents.’” (Document 3) Project LICOAX focused on gaining control over student leadership in Mexican universities, including in the Federación Universitaria de Sociedades Estudiantiles (Document 5). Finally, LIMIX was a larger project with the goal of infiltrating and influencing the PRI, the Federación Nacional de Estudiantes Técnicos (FNET), and student leaders at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. (Document 6) Some in the U.S. government raised serious concerns over LIHUFF. In the IG report, the CIA acknowledged that the U.S. ambassador to Mexico would “strongly object” to the Agency’s support for the think tank IISE. (Document 4) In 1967, Kenneth Y. Millian from the CIA’s covert action evaluation team warned that “any encouragement or support to MURO, for whatever reasons, will have the inevitable by-product of maintaining and building up the prestige and influence of MURO on the UNAM campus--a result antithetical to the objectives of other Station and embassy efforts in the student field in Mexico (e.g., Project LICOAX).” Considering the long-term costs of empowering radical, violent instigators who only served to polarize student politics, Millian argued in favor of terminating U.S. support for MURO. (Document 3) It is not clear from the available documents when the CIA ended its direct support for MURO, as other projects also contributed to the coffers of the student “shock troops.” By 1964, the Mexican government had also taken interest in the MURO group. As historian Renata Keller explains, “Mexican officials with close connections to [President] Díaz Ordaz had supported the anticommunist student group MURO and encouraged their violent activities.”[9] An internal review of Agency files in 1969 reveals that the CIA and the Mexican government collaborated in their support of MURO through LITEMPO-4 (DFS Director Gutiérrez Barrios), who “was paid $4,000.00 [$41,000 today] by the Station to organize and rally as many students as possible in addition to the MURO planned demonstration in front of the Soviet Embassy.” (Document 3) A close read of the JFK files reveals the extent to which the CIA had become deeply involved in all aspects of student politics in Mexico and actively worked to destabilize left-wing student activism hand-in-hand with Mexico’s security state. A Brutal Legacy Remains Redacted The JFK Assassination files reveal a wide range of CIA covert operations against student groups in Mexico. The Agency assisted in the construction of an extensive surveillance state and either encouraged or ignored its repressive consequences in the final decades of the PRI’s control over the country. As the declassifications currently stand, there is much that remains unknown about the CIA’s involvement in the student massacre on October 2, 1968. At best, the Agency played an active role in the polarization of student politics at the time. At worst, given the Agency’s close relationship with Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, Miguel Nazar Haro, and the DFS, it played a more direct role in orchestrating the violence. The National Security Archive urges the CIA to comply with the JFK Records Act and fully declassify its Mexico City station history, more than half a century after the massacre at Tlatelolco. The Documents ebb391 d1 Document 1 Mexico City Station History [Extracts] Central Intelligence Agency, secret station history Aug 23, 1978 Source National Archives, JFK Assassination Records, 2025 release, Doc ID: 104-10414-10124 This is the 2025 edition of extracts from the CIA’s Mexico City Station history. Even though the JFK Assassination Records Act and Executive Order 14176 required the full declassification of this history, it still has major redactions. The most significant redactions are pages 331 through 341 that appear to deal with student operations. ebb391 d2 Document 2 Background on Mexico Station Support Assets Central Intelligence Agency, secret memorandum Feb 10, 1977 Source National Archives, JFK Assassination Records, 2023 release, Doc ID: 104-10050-10005 In this memorandum for the CIA’s Inspector General, Anne Goodpasture, the author of the CIA’s Mexico City Station history, summarizes the main elements of the surveillance on Soviet and Cuban facilities and provides a candid assessment of the Mexican officials involved in joint Mexico-CIA operations. ebb931 d3 Document 3 [Project LIHUFF] Central Intelligence Agency, secret project renewals [various dates] Source National Archives, JFK Assassination Records, 2023 release, Doc ID: 104-10218-10044 This fully declassified collection of CIA renewal requests for project LIHUFF from 1963 to 1971 provides insight on CIA divisions over Agency support for the radical student group MURO, as well as descriptions of other CIA student operations, LICOAX and LILISP-C. ebb391 d4 Document 4 [Extracts of Inspector General’s Survey of Mexico City Station] Central Intelligence Agency, secret IG report Jan 1, 1964 Source National Archives, JFK Assassination Records, 2025 release, Doc ID: 104-10301-10010 These rich extracts of the CIA’s Inspector General Report on CIA operations in Mexico provide a detailed description of project LINOODLE, which focused on the Mexican countryside and included a student element. Most of the other references to CIA student operations were removed from this document except for the conclusion on project LIHUFF. ebb391 d5 Document 5 [Project LICOAX] Central Intelligence Agency, secret cable Nov 2, 1963 Source National Archives, JFK Assassination Records, 2025 release, Doc ID: 104-10093-10277 This secret cable on project LICOAX from the Mexico City Station to the Director of Central Intelligence, John McCone, shows the CIA’s deep involvement in student politics and the penetration and influence over the Federación Universitaria de Sociedades Estudiantiles. ebb391 d6 Document 6 Status Report, Project [LIOGLE/LIMIX] Covering Period 1 February thru 29 February 1968 Central Intelligence Agency, classification unknown Mar 9, 1968 Source National Archives, JFK Assassination Records, 2025 release, Doc ID: 104-10070-10009 This CIA status report on projects LIOGLE/LIMIX provides crucial details on the Agency’s goals to infiltrate and influence the PRI, the Federación Nacional de Estudiantes Técnicos (the official Mexican government student organization), and student leaders at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. Notes [1] REDACTED, “Launching the CS History,” December 21, 1964. CIA-RDP78-06202A000100100015-5. [2] REDACTED, “History of the Clandestine Service, Preliminary Appraisal of the Problem (Part 2),” May 21, 1964. CIA-RDP80M00165A002900010109-3. [3] Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA’s Clandestine Services Histories of Civil Air Transport,” pg. 5. For a heavily redacted inventory of CSHP history titles, see CIA “The CIA History Program,” Inventory 1995. Ironically, the CIA’s Mexico City Station history is redacted. [4] The CIA used the cryptonyms LITEMPO-4 and LITEMPO-12 to describe high-ranking Mexican security officials. Jefferson Morley has persuasively shown that these likely refer to Gutiérrez Barrios and Nazar Haro. Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA. University Press of Kansas, 2008. [5] For the identity of LIVESTOCK-2 see JFK Assassination Records document No. 104-10187-10026. [6] Vicente Ovalle, Camilo. (2019). [Tiempo suspendido]: una historia de la desaparición forzada en México, 1940-1980. México: Bonilla Artigas. [7] Aguayo Quezada, S. (2001). La charola. Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en México. Grijalbo. [8] The CIA’s Personal History Statement for Wichtrich noted he was a good horseback rider, but only fair at bridge and gardening as part of his “special qualifications.” JFK 104-10175-10179. [9] Renata Keller, Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution, Cambridge University Press, p. 223.

Transgender Man Murdered By His Wife's Family

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/nyt-engineer-east-bay-shooting-court-documents-22454532.php?utm_content=hed&sid=53b99920a256ab0848000710&ss=A&st_rid=7b0b9bde-a404-40e4-b986-a4c78b628ce7&utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_term=headlines&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2ZjaHJvbmljbGUuY29tL2NyaW1lL2FydGljbGUvbnl0LWVuZ2luZWVyLWVhc3QtYmF5LXNob290aW5nLWNvdXJ0LWRvY3VtZW50cy0yMjQ1NDUzMi5waHA%3D&time=MTc5MDc4MTYzOTI1OQ%3D%3D&rid=N2IwYjliZGUtYTQwNC00MGU0LWI5ODYtYTRjNzhiNjI4Y2U3&sharecount=MA%3D%3D

Nepal: 6,000 still missing and big problems for China and India

Catastrophic Floods Saddle Nepal With a Power Conundrum and a Massive India-China Headache NEPAL Nepal Weeks after catastrophic floods swept through Nepal, people continue to bury and mourn the more than 1,400 people who died, while searching for thousands still missing after a glacier collapsed, sending a torrent of water, ice, rock and mud that engulfed entire villages. But anger is growing, too, especially toward Nepal’s two powerful neighbors, India and China, which many Nepalis blame for contributing to climate change, which they say caused the disaster. “After the glacial collapse happened two weeks ago, people in my region have realized that this can now happen anywhere in Nepal since the Himalayas are warming and glaciers are melting faster,” said Shreya KC, 28, whose home lies downstream from Himalayan glaciers in Solukhumbu, a mountainous district in eastern Nepal that includes Mount Everest. “Because of other countries, today Nepalis are the ones most impacted by climate change. So people want justice.” The Aug. 26 catastrophe began when a mass of rock and glacier ice broke away from a high mountain slope, unleashing debris-laden floodwaters that destroyed homes, roads, bridges and hydropower plants in parts of Nepal and Chinese-controlled Tibet. In Nepal, more than 6,000 people remain missing. Scientists don’t yet know precisely what triggered the collapse, but say global warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions causes glaciers to melt faster and thaws permafrost that anchors ice and rock at high altitudes. Authorities estimate recovery will cost $5 billion. Now, Nepal is demanding compensation from the three largest greenhouse gas emitters – China, the United States and India. That demand is politically tricky because China and India are powerful neighbors on which tiny, landlocked Nepal depends for its trade routes and other needs. For Prime Minister Balendra Shah, an inexperienced national leader just five months into his term, the disaster has created two formidable tasks – rebuilding safely and performing the tricky balancing act of managing Nepal’s dependence on its two neighbors without leaning too far toward either Beijing or New Delhi. “The disaster serves as a geopolitical stress test,” wrote Fair Observer, a US nonprofit international affairs publication. “It struck precisely where two of Nepal’s long-running strategic dilemmas intersect.” As a landlocked country, Nepal long relied on transit routes through India to export its goods. To reduce that dependence, the country expanded the Kerung border crossing as its principal trade route with China following repeated border disruptions with India, most recently a 2015 blockade that Kathmandu blamed on New Delhi and that caused severe shortages. The floods have now destroyed infrastructure at the crossing, cutting off that trade route. “Kathmandu will need Chinese technical and financial assistance to restore damaged border infrastructure,” said the Diplomat, a Washington-based Asia affairs publication. “The floods could therefore produce a peculiar form of dual dependence: greater reliance on India for immediate trade and transit, even as Nepal turns to China to rebuild the infrastructure needed to reduce that very reliance.” Nepal now depends more heavily on India for electricity, too. The floods knocked out more than 10 percent of its generating capacity, forcing it to halt power exports and seek additional electricity from India. Before the disaster, almost all of Nepal’s power and nearly $200 million in annual export earnings came from hydropower. Meanwhile, the safety of some of Nepal’s hydropower projects is coming under scrutiny. Take Upper Trishuli-1, for example. The 216-megawatt hydropower project was being built in the flood’s path near Nepal’s border with Tibet. More than 90 percent of the $647 million project’s “upper facilities” were destroyed, a project official said, prompting questions about whether flood and landslide risks were truly addressed by its backers, which included the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private-sector development arm. The Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower plant, which was also severely hit, was funded by the Export-Import Bank of China. International lenders were “acutely aware of the extreme danger to which they were exposing thousands of laborers, officials, residents, rivers, infrastructure and landscape,” Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, told the BBC. “Their own reports repeatedly highlighted it. But they did not take any preventive steps, did not demand stringent checks and balances, nor were they prepared for a calamity they knew could occur.” Some lenders defended the Upper Trishuli-1 project, saying its design “reflected findings from independent technical assessments that looked at the risks of flooding and landslides affecting the project site, using studies of the glaciers and glacial lakes and historical evidence available at the time.” Now, the government faces a major reconstruction challenge: rebuilding foreign-financed hydropower projects with stronger safeguards while restoring the electricity, export income and livelihoods they support. Nepal has already halted electricity exports and begun importing power from India to cover domestic shortages. “The disaster therefore presents Nepal with more than an immediate humanitarian emergency,” said the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. “For Kathmandu, Beijing and New Delhi, the question is not simply how to respond to this disaster, but how to reduce the economic and human consequences of the next one.”