Am at Schiphol again at 5.30am, after an overnight flight from Accra, waiting eight hours for a connecting flight to Washington, and thinking “Why oh why do I put myself through this?” Slightly mitigated by the joy of being able to post again on a working internet connection.

AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, IRAN, IRAQ, VIETNAM: EXPOSING OFFICIAL LIES

Ward Circle Building, Room 2, American University

Wednesday, October 21 at 8:10 pm

Keynote Speaker: Col. Larry Wilkerson (USA, ret.) Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the critical period from August 2002 until January 2005; Served as Army officer for 31 years;

Recipient of 2009 Award from Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence

Daniel Ellsberg, Former Defense and State Department official who released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, for which he was put on trial facing a possible sentence of 115 years; Author, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers; Subject of newly released documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” which he was called at the time by Henry Kissinger

Coleen Rowley, Former Special agent and legal counselor, Minneapolis FBI, who called the FBI director’s attention to serious flaws that might have prevented 9/11; Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2002; Sam Adams Award Recipient, 2002

Craig Murray, Former U.K. Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who exposed the use of torture, declaring, “I would rather die than have someone tortured in attempt to give me more security.” Sam Adams Award recipient, 2005

Ray McGovern, Veteran CIA analyst, whose duties included preparing and briefing the President’s Daily Brief under Nixon, Ford, and Reagan; Co-founder Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Colleague of Sam Adams

Peter Kuznick, Professor of History; Director, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute; Co-writer (with Oliver Stone) “Secret History of the United States” (forthcoming on Showtime)

The late Sam Adams, in calculating the number of Vietnamese Communists under arms, came up with more than twice the number Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of U.S. forces, would allow the Army to acknowledge. The country-wide offensive at Tet in January-February 1968 proved Sam right.

Sponsored by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, American University History Department, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute

To Tell the Truth

Coleen Rowley and Ambassador Craig Murray

Ray McGovern, moderator

Date/Time: THURSDAY, October 22, 7-9 PM

Place: Festival Center/Servant Leadership School

1640 Columbia Road, NW

Washington, DC 20009

202 328 0072Cost: free (but free-will offerings welcome)

We are all taught to tell the truth. But when some folks enter government service, they seem to claim an exemption. Truth telling becomes quaint, obsolete. Misfeasance and malfeasance get covered up, and we never seem to learn from our mistakes.

Worse still, governments start wars on flimsy pretexts; and this leads to what the Nuremberg Tribunal labeled “accumulated” evils?”like torture. Although a chosen few in our Congress are briefed on such evils, we the people never get to know, UNLESS…

… people of conscience have the integrity and courage to speak out. Our presenters will draw on their personal experience in this kind of speaking out; what it’s like; and what happened to them as a result:

Coleen Rowley, as legal counsel/special agent in the FBI’s Minneapolis Bureau, became aware of the repeated?”but unheeded?”warnings her colleagues sent to FBI headquarters before 9/11. In a memorandum to the FBI Director and Congress she exposed many of the shortcomings and became persona non grata when a lawmaker gave the memo to the press. Time Magazine honored her by naming her Person of the Year in 2002.

Craig Murray was Great Britain’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan when he discovered that his hosts were boiling people alive to extract “intelligence” on “terrorists.” He discovered to his dismay that his Foreign Office superiors thought that this was okay, so long as Craig didn’t do it. He left the Foreign Service and is now Rector of the University of Dundee?”one of Britain’s leading universities, described by Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney as “having its head in the clouds and its feet firmly on the ground.”

Rowley and Murray are past recipients of the annual Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. This forum is follow-on to the Oct. 21event at American U. (see: http://tinyurl.com/ygm55pe)

Sponsored by Speaking Truth to Power/Tell the Word

Press release

Union of Uzbek non-governmental organisations