EIR SEPT. 7 PRESS BRIEFING

Ukraine Blacklist Targets from the U.S. and Abroad Speak Out; Demand Congressional, UN Action To Shut Down Kiev ‘Kill-List’ Operations

by EIR staff

[Print version of this article]

Sept. 9—The international press conference Sept. 7 hosted (online) by Executive Intelligence Review gathered a powerful group of former military and intelligence professionals, political leaders and candidates, journalists and peace advocates from the U.S. and other countries, documenting the criminal and evil “hit list” compiled by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), founded March, 2021 and the “kill list” compiled by the Myrotvorets (Peacemaker, founded in 2014) website in Ukraine. They demanded these operations be shut down, and that all U.S. funding be immediately stopped.

The five opening speakers—whose remarks are summarized below, and many of the other participants in the event, are on the Kiev CCD list, and several are on the Peacemaker death list as well.

The 2.5-hour event, with in-depth exchanges, was action-oriented. Several of the speakers are among the 16 CCD-targetted Americans, who contacted Congress in August, to move against the murder threat and assault on free speech.

New initiatives came from the meeting. There is a proposal to find Constitutional attorneys to take legal action to force U.S. agencies to desist their funding and collaborating with the Kiev kill list threats to Americans and citizens of other nations. There are rights of free speech, association and other fundamentals involved.

There is a proposal to take this deadly scandal to the international community, through the mission offices in New York of every member nation of the United Nations, whose General Assembly convenes Sept. 13.

EIR will follow up its Sept. 2 release of an investigative report with more investigative reports in the coming days, and other media are planning publicity. It is notable that within 12 hours of the EIR event, the Washington Post ran an apologetic article for the occurrence of hit list targets and killings in Ukraine, chalking it up as the excesses of war, and simply lying that it was strictly limited to Ukraine. (“Ukrainian Hit Squads Target Russian Occupiers and Collaborators,” Sept. 8).

The full video of the Sept. 7 event is available here, and a transcript is available here.

Opening Speakers

Col. Richard H. Black (ret.), a former Marine officer and the head of Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, as well as a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate, described his patriotism and extensive military experience, but insisted on his absolute opposition to the U.S. proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, which “risks triggering a global nuclear war.” The CCD, which has accused him and over 70 other prominent international citizens as “war criminals” and “information terrorists,” had a parallel operation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the U.S., the Disinformation Governance Board, whose director was the “outrageous narcissist Nina Jankowicz,” so outrageous that the popular outcry against her forced the closing of the Board, at least officially. But it is continuing the operation by running the CCD in Ukraine, he said, with representatives of the U.S. government co-sponsoring CCD events.

Col. Black reported that it is unlawful for the U.S. government to fund other institutions, foreign or domestic, to do things which are illegal for them to do themselves. Congress, he said, must stop all funding to the CCD.

Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector in the Soviet Union and in Iraq, described his exposure of the lie that Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction: “Had people actually listened and absorbed what I was trying to speak and warn about, we might have been able to avert a very costly war that has done immeasurable harm to the reputation of the United States, killed thousands of Americans, wounded tens of thousands of others, and resulted in the death, dislocation, and otherwise disrupted the lives of millions of Iraqis and other citizens of the Middle East.”

Now, being called a “Russian propagandist” by an organization sponsored by our government, “has a chilling effect. If you disagree, debate me, but don’t sentence me. Don’t mark me for death for telling the truth.”

Ritter galvanized the discussion saying: “We need a constitutional lawyer to take a hard look at the First Amendment issues that are accrued when Congress funds an appropriation bill that empowers a foreign entity to do that which is prohibited by Congress! Namely, the suppression of free speech! We also need to focus on terrorism laws, and is Congress complicit with political terrorism? These are important issues, and I believe if we frame them right and we target the right people, we can actually get a federal judge—and I can tell you right now, in the State of New York, they exist! We can say, the justice system doesn’t work. It works here in New York! And if I, as a New York citizen filed an injunction in a federal court in the State of New York, they will freeze the funding! If it’s a legally sound injunction.”

Diane Sare, an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate from the State of New York, said that the principles of the nation are under assault. “The most patriotic thing to do is to stop the perversion of our founding fathers’ principles which have left us on the side of the Nazis.” She thanked Scott Ritter for his letter to Senator Schumer, her opponent in the November election, who is implementing a “roundabout way of targeting his opponent”—namely herself—by funding the CCD in Ukraine and setting her up for possible physical attack.

Sare ridiculed the U.S. and European representatives claiming to defend “democracy” in Ukraine, where 13 opposition parties have been banned, Russian-language newspapers shut down, trade unions stripped of their rights, and anyone voting in a referendum is threatened with 13 years in prison.

She particularly cited the ugly irony of a Canadian official who said: “Canada understands the threat of propaganda to the freedom of speech!” Sare added, “It is astonishing, that 77 years after defeating the Nazis, people don’t find a problem with siding with Nazis today. Why has the U.S. refused to vote in the UN to condemn the revival of Nazism?”

Ray McGovern, former CIA officer and cofounder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), noted the hypocrisy of the sudden and total denunciation and sanctioning of Russia by the Obama Administration after that Administration had run the 2014 coup, overthrowing the elected government, and inserting puppet officials with extensive Nazi supporters, then blaming Russia for “annexing Crimea without provocation.” He quoted Vladimir Putin’s response: “Americans appear to conduct experiments with people and nations as if they were rats, without understanding what they were doing.”

The mantra today that the Russian military operation in Ukraine was “unprovoked,” McGovern said, brings to mind a quote by humorist Will Rogers: “The problem is not what people know—it’s what people know that ain’t so.” He then quoted the George W. Bush gaffe in Texas recently when he denounced the fact that: “One man, on his own, launched a brutal, destructive war in Iraq—I mean, Ukraine!” He took note that Bush was never tried for his open support for genocidal wars based on lies, or for his promotion of torture. Asked why the Schiller Institute was singled out on the CCD hit list, he replied: “Where is any other unfettered discussion of the truth in the Ukraine/Russia war? It doesn’t exist!”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, who is number two on the CCD hit list announced July 14, as well as being on the Myrotvorets “kill list,” said that the Schiller Institute conferences, 31 of whose speakers were placed on the hit list, were not about Ukraine per se, but about how to avoid World War III, calling for a new architecture for global security, and development for all nations. She stressed that political assassinations were always aimed at those challenging empire, which is true about the Schiller Institute today. The fact that the neo-liberal system is bankrupt, with economies in the West in hyper-inflationary free fall, while famine is sweeping the Global South, can only be resolved by the U.S., Russia, China, and others sitting down together rather than going to war. The West must join the new paradigm being forged by the BRICS, the SCO, and others, not try to destroy them.

Zepp-LaRouche said that after the assassination of JFK, a deep pessimism took over the U.S., nearly as severe as in Germany, which is a “colony of the Empire.” If the U.S. would return to being the Beacon of Hope and Temple of Liberty of its best traditions, the world would admire it once again.

She closed the EIR press conference saying, “If you are attacked, if you are fighting for a right cause, then you have to fight back. Help us to get this message out. [We must] shut down the CCD, shut down Myrotvorets, stop funding these illegal, criminal operations, and start negotiations about ending the war!”

“We in the Schiller Institute, have over many years, but especially since April, discussed concepts for a global security and development architecture. This is very much in line, and it was completely independent because I said it first, and Xi Jinping said it one week later; and he did not coordinate it with me, but Xi Jinping proposed a Global Security Initiative and a Global Development Initiative, also saying these two things have to go together.

“So, I think if we could concentrate on solving the urgent needs of this poor, tortured world, there is so much to do: And are we not human beings capable of reason? And can we not correct a political course when we realize it was a mistake?

“So, in that spirit, I really ask you all to get this program out, as far as possible, and follow the wise words of Kirk Wiebe: Work with the Schiller Institute!”

The five opening speakers were joined by journalists and other individuals also on the Ukrainian “kill list,” as well as a former analyst from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Among other speakers were Sonja van den Ende, a Dutch journalist, Alessia Ruggieri, a trade unionist from Italy, and Dragana Trifković, the Director of the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Serbia.

Mira Terada, the head of the human rights organization Foundation To Battle Injustice, based in Moscow, addressed a question and a proposal for joint action to Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Terada’s personal data were also published by the Myrotvorets database as a result of her efforts to get it shut down as a terrorist organization. Her foundation, she said, “held two press conferences in Moscow, the main purpose of which was to attract the attention of world community to the illegal publication of personal data of underage children and of journalists” by Myrotvorets. There are 326 children and minors named on that death list.

She continued, “Moreover the human rights defenders of the Foundation To Battle Injustice have transferred the collected materials to the United Nations through the First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy, and to the UN Children’s Fund minister. I was happy to see today Sonja van den Ende on this video. She was talking about the press conference that took place yesterday and was arranged by my Foundation.

“I would also like to inform you that just yesterday the Foundation To Battle Injustice submitted documents to the Federal Security Service of Russia to investigate the activities of the Myrotvorets website and recognize those involved in the creation of this resource as a terrorist organization. We have prepared, also, an open letter to the UN that has been signed by many journalists and we came to the conclusion that the database of the Ukrainian nationalist resource contained the personal data of at least 341 journalists from 31 countries of the world.

“We ask all participants and viewers of today’s press conference to sign it. I will send an email to the organizers of the conference, with the open letter. And as the head of the Foundation To Battle Injustice, I’m convinced that only through the joint efforts of human rights organizations, law enforcement agencies and international intergovernmental organizations, is it possible to achieve a concrete blocking of the Myrotvorets resource and complete deletion of personal data collected and posted illegally.

“I have a proposal to sign the petition, to sign an open letter that I will email to the Schiller Institute. Thank you.”

Bradley Blankenship, who writes for Xinhua and RT, described himself as “the youngest person on the list” at the event, adding that he has been attacked for what he writes in several parts of the world—in Syria, in Ecuador, and now in the Czech Republic, where he has been summoned to the Interior Ministry. He said he has become so disillusioned by the situation in his native U.S., that “I don’t feel like a patriot any longer.” He pointed out, however, that “70,000 people marched against the government’s anti-Russia policies in Prague last week.”

Jens Jørgen Nielsen, a former Moscow correspondent for the major Danish daily Politiken, and author of several books about Russia, is one of three Danes on the hit list. He reported that a courageous member of Denmark’s Parliament challenged the Foreign Minister to denounce the CCD’s threatening attack on his right to free speech, but the Foreign Minister refused to do so. Instead, the Foreign Minister just spoke of the necessity for victory over Putin. “This is a scary thing,” Nielsen said. “Our rights are apparently not inalienable, as we believed.”

Geoff Young, who won the Democratic primary as the candidate for U.S. Congress in Kentucky’s 6th CD, said “The government of Ukraine, since 2014, has not been a democracy at all. It has been totally controlled by the U.S. State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, and groups of well-armed Ukrainian Nazis who have been attacking ethnic Russians for the last eight years. The Ukrainian military has been shelling innocent civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk since 2014, and has killed over 10,000 civilians, which is more than three 9/11s.”

If elected, he said that he would correct the impeachment laws so that presidents would be impeached not for trivial things such as political burglaries, sexual picadilloes and false charges as foreign agents, but for the genocidal and illegal wars, such of those waged by George Bush, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

David Pyne, Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a private grouping, said that he earned a place on the hit list by, first, offering a means to avoid war before the February Russian move into Ukraine, requiring simply a U.S. pledge that Ukraine would not join NATO; and, after the war started, proposing an agreement similar to the Minsk accord. “My intention was to save the world from a nuclear holocaust,” he added, and blasted then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Joe Biden for sabotaging the peace negotiations in April. He offered his thanks and support to EIR for leading this campaign.

Kirk Wiebe is a former National Security Agency expert who exposed the NSA sabotage of systems which could have targeted terrorists and prevented the 9/11 disaster. The system, he said, has instead been used for mass surveillance of Americans and others. Wiebe emphasized that “we are all under attack,” and that there “must be no spectators, but a full-court press” working with the Schiller Institute to counter “this cabal of fascists.”

The new EIR Investigative Reports: “Kiev’s ‘Info Terrorist’ List: ‘Global NATO’ Orders a Hit on Advocates of Peace;’” and “Ukraine’s Deathlist Database: myrotvorets.center” are available in EIR, Vol. 49, No. 34, September 2, 2022.