Interview 1019 – Michael Springmann on Visas for Terrorists
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J. Michael Springmann of MichaelSpringmann.com joins us to discuss his new book, Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts that rocked the world. We discuss Springmann’s experience at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and the ongoing CIA program to illegally provide US visas for their terrorist operatives that he discovered there.
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As a relative newcomer to alternative news these past couple years, I have noticed a trend in these types of interviews as well as in articles. First of all, Americans are spoken of pejoratively, usually by referencing their football watching or other activities that are deemed shallow, and secondly, when the expert, in this case Springmann, is asked by someone like James what do we do, the response is usually something along the lines of, “I don’t know.”
Personally, I am absolutely clueless as to what to do. I’ve heard that dropping out of the matrix, growing your own garden, and buying food from farmers’ markets and clothes, etc., from non-corporations is a place to start. Yet, again and again, Americans are put down as sheeple and as virtual Bubba’s and the female equivalent of Bubba.
Anyone who has rudimentary knowledge of Buddhist psychology is well aware that we are all products of complex, interdependent, ongoing conditioning. In my case, I was fortunate enough to meet a guy at a coffee shop a couple years ago who slowly opened my eyes to what is really going on in the world. When I first met him, I thought that voting for a Democratic candidate must do some good when compared to the evil Republican. I now realize that voting “just encourages the bastards.”
The reality may be–and I think it is–that there is absolutely nothing we can do, aside from the grow your own garden suggestions, which do not impact the plans that are in place in any way, shape, or form. In the U.S. we are going to soon experience a collective trauma of the collapse of the economy and perhaps a false flag nuclear event. Both the uninformed and well-informed are going to be absolutely traumatized to an unprecedented degree. This trauma will be so severe that the great majority, especially those with young families, are going to sign on with whatever the post-trauma program might be so as to regain some sense of safety and normalcy. And who could blame them? For all I know, I’ll sign up for two RFID chips rather than one, because when death or a FEMA camp is facing me in that moment and not in some conceptual future as it is now, my bravado may prove to be as hollow as it already sounds to me.
The state of the world and the game of the Pathological Powers is so advanced that it’s comparable, IMO, to having stage four cancer with no treatment in sight. The PP have every weapon at their disposal including non-stop disinformation. Instead of belittling ill-informed Americans who are engaged in activities to which they have been conditioned, I think having compassion for the ill-informed and well-informed is a wiser approach. I feel very sad for the horrific traumas that are being visited upon people throughout the world by the PP. People in first world countries are soon going to be similarly traumatized. My heart goes out to all, because the human species has so much potential for creativity and love that is being co-opted by the PP.
I am better informed than I used to be. I share what I am learning with others. I have yet to hear from anyone, whether alternative news people or people I talk to, what we can do to counteract the Pathological Powers. My congress critters have been bought and paid for (they bounce up and down like seals when Nutnyahoo comes to town), and I don’t know how to contact my non-representative neocon. Even if I could, given their deep-seated conditioning and decades long agenda for massive population reduction and total control of all life, what could I say? Please stop? Have a change of heart?
One thing I intend to do is not call people “sheeple” or put them down for how they are living their lives or for being ill-informed or not wanting to known or for wanting to do whatever they find to be pleasurable in life, whether fly-fishing in Montana or watching football and eating cheeseburgers.
What is constructive NOW is gaining education and insight into the true state of affairs, including the psychological pathologies of our species which underlie our susceptibility to the machinations of psychopaths.
While it may appear there is no way out from under the psychopathic oligarchy now, the future is full of surprises. Now is when we should be getting our heads straight, learning the true landscape of our world in place of the media fairy tale, and taking other appropriate steps for getting ourselves and as many other as will listen, mentally and situationally prepared for a tumultuous future.
Conditions may very well have to hit a hard bottom before the very question of survival itself forces our species to devise a method of protecting our society and institutions from psychopathic parasites. The trick is living through that phase.
To the right on this page is a link to BoilingFrogsPost.com The “what to do now” dilemma is under intense discussion there now, by subscribers and Sibel Edmonds, as part of the Probable Cause podcast series. Give it a look if you haven’t yet.
I would also look at the waynemadsenreport.com, http://www.justice-integrity.org, and globalresearch.ca.
Mike Springmann
It’s hard to give precise prescriptions for change, given the American government and the voters’ acquiescence in it. However, one way I’m trying is to write books like “Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World”–and getting people to read them.
As for the ill-educated, inward-looking Americans, Susan Jacoby nails them in her book, “The Age of American Unreason” (New York: Pantheon Books, 2008). I reference it in footnote 272 in “Visas for Al Qaeda”: 50% of Americans haven’t read a book in the past year, 25% believe the sun revolves around the earth, and 25% of high school biology teachers think that cavemen & dinosaurs co-existed.
Mike Springgmann
buddy, i’ll eat a cheeseburger with you any day.
Great comment. Thank you!
Mike Spirngmann
I enjoyed reading your compassionate reflection and you are of course right that we should have sympathy for the masses. Their conditioning was indeed from the womb and they are thus, in effect, disabled. And there in lays the problem. Since a great many of them do have the latent intelligence of any well fed human beings with often diverse and complex hobbies and interests, even if they are football and guns. And of course there is their politics and its ubiquitous bedfellow, religion. Overall their politics are as extreme and uncompromising as is their religion.
Of course for people who wake up to the reality of the deep state Mafia there is no turning back. But it’s wrong to think it has ever been different. Back in the 70s and 80s when I was a rebellious teenager there was no shortage of information on the activities of the deep state. Take the JFK assassination. Do you really think the overwhelming majority of people did not know in their hearts and their minds that a dasterdly crime had been committed? Of course they did. Most people alive walk around with a curtain of cognitive dissonance dividing the fundamental self right down the middle. As far as I can gauge there have been more or less the same number of people aware of the deeper truths of our political landscape throughout my own 30+ year journey. Still the same number want to speak out about it and protest in some way. And still the same number aware of the truth but consciously not referencing the realities because of the effect on the psyche or because they are smart enough to know there is fuck all they can do. I have sympathy for all.
What can we do? In truth not a lot other than document and record our living history. Yes we can make personal choices to become modern day Grizzly Adams, search for our Waldenesque pond. But is that really nothing more than a retreat as effective in changing nothing as a burger at the game?
Personaly I think we need to get right outside the box and start developing global law on fundamental human rights and freedom of opportunity. But don’t agree to help me with this because then we have a NWO conspiracy.
Unfortunately it is not capitalism that leads directly to corruption. It is the psychopathic need of some individuals to seek power through wealth. Should we not also, with sympathy and compassion, see that psychopathy as a disease? Of course we should. And shouldn’t. Same goes for the burger guy. We always have to care, but be realistic about it.
As always. A treat.
Mike, as soon as I listened to this interview I went and bought your book, and I’m now more than halfway through. I appreciate your courage in telling the story, as I know that there are risks involved. I should finish the book first before asking questions so forgive me if it’s in there, but I’d be interested to hear more about a couple of things.
You noted that you knew you were being asked by CIA guys to give some dodgy visas, but that it wasn’t until Joe Trento told you about the mujahideen program that you realized what that was really about. Are there specific dots you can connect between visas under your purview and Al Qaeda guys? In other words, what were Trento’s sources and how tight is the connection to your experience?
Secondly, in a couple of places you note the connection between the Arab-Afghan Legion (mujahideen, Al Qaeda) and what is now ISIS/ISIL — a connection most of us here probably presume is true, and of course we have seen some evidence of training and supplies from the US and allies. Do you have more details (say visa-related perhaps) about specific connections that link either the US visa program or the Arab Afghan Legion to ISIS?
I’m just hungry for details and thanks again for taking the time to respond to comments here, and for your valuable voice.
John:
Thank you for the kind words. Just now saw them 04/12.
Once asked Joe Trento about his sources. Quite rightly, he responded that he doesn’t give them up. Joe did ask me, “what would you do if someone came to you with a clean passport and a believable story about his reasons for going to the US”. I replied, issue the visa.
As for tying specific visas to specific people, I can’t do it. My first FOIA request and lawsuit got me nothing. The second one, asking for the shady visas also got me nothing. The file I had kept of really questionable issuances got shredded by person or persons unknown after I left Jeddah. I foolishly didn’t take it with me or make copies.
My questions to knowledable people about links to al Qaeda, etc., such as Ali Ahmed Jallali, Sami Albanna, Aseel Albana, Anes Shallal, Stephen Zunes brought no response whatsoever.
Maybe if I can blow some info out of the shadows, I can flesh it out in a second edition.
Mike Springmann