Letter to President Obama

The following is a copy of a letter that I sent to the president. 

Jun 12, 2014

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, D.C. 20502

Re: Courtesy letter in relation to pending litigation against the CIA, DOJ and Department of State

Dear President Obama,

The primary reason I’m compelled to send this letter has to do with accountability. I’ve reported harassment by officers of the CIA to the Department of State and the Department of Justice to little avail, and have since notified the Director of the CIA as well as the Attorney General of my intent to litigate. The CIA officials locally and in the DC area have been sending mixed signals of late, and since they’ve been stringing me along in a similar manner for quite some time, it’s time to cut to the chase.

The CIA continues to dispatch people my way, some of whom have even recently expressed views objectionable to me for reasons I’ve expressed in earlier communication as well as on a blog I launched in relation to the matter at hand. That would seem to demonstrate more than a simple lack of consideration for my opinions and sentiments, but an extraordinarily myopic hubris, as the communications and blog posts were aimed specifically at preventing the related behavior and addressed to superiors of officers in the field. Apparently they are not concerned in the least with the possible repercussions of the pending complaints.

The CIA has also recently resurfaced officers whom I’ve previously reported for their transgressions against me, and introduced them into my immediate surroundings. I’m still not sure if they were trying to antagonize me by doing so, implying that they can harass me and then act with impunity even after I’ve reported them, or making a conciliatory overture to test the waters, so to speak, as the individuals imparted no impression of ill intent. Absent concrete steps toward a full and comprehensive settlement, however, such action amounts to little more than an empty gesture, and is a distraction.

My intent in directly bringing these matters to your attention, Mr. President, is twofold: first, by personally ensuring that you are made aware of these incidents, it will be possible to demonstrate that you could have intervened in your capacity as chief executive; second, it will be possible to demonstrate that I have made a good-faith effort in pursuit of a remedy to the matter at hand, substantially exhausting all official channels afforded to American citizen for redressing grievances with agencies of their federal government. I am behooved to make certain that you, too, Mr. President, while being afforded the chance to act as chief executive, are deprived of the ability to cloak a failure or refusal to take action on this courtesy notice by making recourse to “plausible deniability”.

              Mr. President, you and I weren’t yet born when with the CIA’s was authorized to recruit Japanese officials that were to be tried for war crimes and, instead, fund them through a notorious underworld crime figure in order to promote them politically under the ideological umbrella of the Truman Doctrine after WWII.

              Finding myself on the frontline of the battle against international organized crime here in Kyoto, naturally I applauded your decision to follow the enactment of the enactment of the Organized Crime Exclusion Ordinances in 2011 by the Japanese Diet with US measures targeting the assets of such groups that are active in the US. It was high time that the US was put back on the right side of history, and a credit to your leadership on the global stage.

              To me that action seemed to signal a turning point, but there have been setbacks here. I’ve documented at least one subsequent covert CIA operation in Kyoto that would seem to have required presidential authorization, though it is exceedingly difficult to imagine that you could have been aware of the details. That incident occurred during the brief tenure of Petraeus as Director of the CIA; in fact, the individual at the center of the complaint about made it a point to use the phrase “I’m all in” in discussing his situation with me in the summer of 2012. That was before I was aware that Petraeus had written a book by that title or that you had used similar verbiage with respect to the US’s “pivot to Asia”. The individual at issue made it a point not to communicate by email, intending not to make the same mistake as his predecessors, apparently, leaving no trace of physical evidence. All in all, the incident demonstrated to me not only a blatant disregard for the law by the CIA, but a direct challenge, made despite the complaints I’d registered up through to the DOJ, which had supplied an official response a couple of months before the incident.

Geopolitical considerations are likely motivating factors in any given covert action undertaken by the CIA, but it goes without saying that the CIA’s attempt to pursue such agendas at the expense of the rights of American citizens living abroad in allied, democratic countries is unlawful, intolerable, and must be brought to account.

Incidentally, Mr. President, I do appreciate the fact that you have pursued a more Jeffersonian tact in foreign policy than your predecessor.

From where I stand, it seems that I’ve been compelled to become an agent of change because I refused to cower in the face of intimidation and harassment by sociopaths in the yakuza, the CIA, etc. It isn’t the case, Mr. President that I went into public service, for example, aiming to improve the world from within an institutional framework. In fact, I left the USA because there were opportunities abroad that seemed to offer the ability for me to pursue various interests I held at the time, including scholarly and artistic, while supporting myself as a private individual in civil society. I’ve managed to achieve a measure of success and am raising a family despite the fact that the CIA has made continual efforts to interfere with my life and impede my ability to make progress over the past eight years or so.

The problems I’m describing undoubtedly predate your election to the presidency. In fact, the subterfuge launched against me was hatched under the administration of GW Bush.

Nonetheless, when I started complaining about the illegal actions of the CIA to the US Consulate in Osaka, the year was 2009. Though I’d noted an improvement on the ground here after you’d appointed Leon Panetta as Director of the CIA, it has since come to my attention—through the staff at Senator Feinstein’s office—that the proper channel for reporting illicit activity of CIA officers was through the Office of the Inspector General at the CIA.

That revelation awakened me to the fact that aside from the acts of individual officers in the field, the very institution of the State Department’s agency of Citizens’ Services Officer has been coopted by the CIA and undermined. The Citizens’ Services Officer whom I met with at the consulate in Osaka to complain in person about the CIA harassment was apparently himself a CIA officer with diplomatic immunity. Moreover, he proceeded to (ab)use his office, in my case, causing injury to an American citizen not only by denying the American citizen the appropriate services incumbent upon the Citizens’ Services Officer, but acting to coordinate further hostilities against said American citizen by the same CIA officers in the field with respect to whom said American citizen had complained, while apparently shielding said field officers from the scrutiny due them by the Office of the Inspector General at the CIA.

That would seem to indicate that a premeditated organizational scheme had been implemented with the aim of depriving American citizens of their rights in order to facilitate the respective agenda of the CIA in a given host country where there is a conflict of interest between the institutional momentum and/or agenda of the CIA and the Constitutional prerogatives and rights of individual American citizens.

Yet further problematic was the eight-month long delay in response to the complaints I filed with the Department of Justice, and the contrived response in the letter, which misrepresented aspects of the complaint and ignored the vast majority of the evidence I submitted, not to mention the specifics of the complaint.

Moreover, Mr. President, the letter from the DOJ seems to indirectly portray the complaints I laid out as being incoherent and frivolous, without merit by claiming that I’d asserted my blog had been propagandized. That only added insult to injury, compounding the problem. In effect, from where I stand it seemed that the failure of the DOJ to hold the CIA officers accountable had given the CIA a pass to continue the harassment unabated.

Furthermore, the DOJ didn’t mention to me that I should file a report with the Office of the inspector General at the CIA, either. On the other hand, it would seem that they interacted directly with someone at the CIA in light of the apparent discipline taken against a couple of the individuals against whom I’d filed complaints.

In effect, it would seem that a bureaucratic strategy was employed to facilitate a cover up of the misconduct by CIA officers under such circumstances by deflecting the loud and clear complaint off the walls of the corridors of a bureaucratic labyrinth until the echo dies out.

              Incidentally, the CIA, citing Executive Order 13526 has denied my Privacy Act request on national security grounds, apparently. That would seem to amount to an abuse of said order insofar as it represents an attempt to cover up the investigation ensuing from my complaints against officers of the CIA, said complaints having been verified as truthful on the basis of the disciplining of several of the officers whom I reported. In a sense, that would seem to expand the magnitude of the complaints to new proportions.

The fact that CIA officers appear to have been disciplined (unconfirmable) internally as a result of my complaints regarding their systemic and repeated violations of my rights does not exonerate those officers of their misdeeds under the law, or absolve the government of the United States of it liabilities for damages caused me and my family by said officers. The attempt to conceal the specifics of the complaints I’ve made or to deny criminal culpability would seem to represent an indirect expression of intent to avoid accountability.

The fact that the very scope of the covert CIA operations I’ve had to expose in the course of elaborating the complaints at hand would be highly embarrassing to highly placed public officials neither exonerates the culprits of their transgressions committed in conjunction therewith, nor justifies a cover up under the pretense of national security.

Even if it were assumed that the CIA “sources and methods” that the CIA claims need protecting are compliant with US law as well as the laws of Japan, the denial of my Privacy Act request on the basis of the need to protect said sources and methods would seem to be problematic in more than one respect. Here, again, the apparent conflict between the CIA’s agenda and civil society in Japan would appear to weigh heavily, and that is reflected in the adverse impact that the substantially unchecked machinations of the CIA have had on my life as well as that of my family.

              The above-described covert operations and administrative acts, severally and together (e.g., inter-agency collusion to avoid public scrutiny), would seem to represent a serial abuse of power by highly placed officials of the executive branch over commencing from the point when I first lodged a complaint through official channels at the American Consulate in Osaka, in person and continuing for nearly five years to date.

The matter at hand is of no insignificant gravity, and I make this request in earnest that you exert your authority as chief executive to bring about a fair and effective remedy, and leave a lasting imprint on the government agencies and institutions involved going forward.

Incidentally, Mr. President, I don’t know whether you’ve had the chance to visit Kyoto—the ‘cultural capital’ of Japan—but a conspicuous increase in the presence of Americans in Kyoto would not be desirable. That is even more so the case with respect to the infiltration of CIA/MI6 officers, etc. using the cover of pseudo-Christian organizations. Religion has played a substantial role in the development of the ‘culture’ for which Kyoto is renowned, including both Shinto and Buddhism. The Japanese have a rich and varied religious tradition and are generally respectful toward other traditions. It seems to me an unforgiveable breach of trust to abuse religion for ends such as those I’ve documented.

For the record, some of the covert activities I’ve exposed include the following.

ž   Undermining of the integrity of institutions of higher education by misappropriating them as sites for recruiting agents by CIA officers that had been acting in the capacity as associate professors, etc.

ž   Attempting to appropriate cafes and other venues in civil society as sites for CIA and other Western intelligence officers to network, recruit, and project a presence of strength, and at which some officers where collaborating with Japanese organized crime groups involved in marketing female college students and other young women at “hostess clubs”

ž   Coopting the free press for use in disseminating false historical accounts about Koreans in Japan (who account for 30% of yakuza group members), squelching criticism of Toru Hashimoto (a descendant of the Burakumin outcaste class (who account for 60% of yakuza group members)

ž   Creating online English language media outlets serving as forums for presenting intelligence officers that have been covertly infiltrated into civil society as paragons of civil society in an attempt to thereby promote them in civil society

Among the above-described activities, those aiming at promoting the public image of Toru Hashimoto were directly aimed at influencing the democratic political process in Japan in an entirely unacceptable manner. Directly related to Hashimoto/Burakumin organized crime connection and the CIA was the establishment of a small and remotely located branch of LIU’s “Global College”—which is associated historically with the Quakers—where a CIA officer had been teaching a course apparently aimed at inculcating an empathetic disposition toward that minority group and their plight. That was before the Organized Crime Exclusion ordinances were promulgated in 2001, but stands as a testimony to the analysis of covert and subversive activities of Western intelligence activities that I have been compelled to make thus far. In short, any program aiming to promote the public image and political aspiration of the likes of Toru Hashimoto (well-known association with organized crime affiliates) is not intent on seeing public institutions serve the public interest.

Taken together, the above-described covert operations represent a virtually wholesale assault on civil society in Japan.

Note that I have omitted the details of the more sordid acts targeting my person.

Mr. President, some of the events described above sound like they might be from a screenplay for a B movie, and I’d rather not have to dwell on them further. I would hope that the extent of exposure my blog has provided should serve to render such unlawful machinations as outside of the pale of the play book in the future.

              It is not my aim to damage the reputation of the United States or your administration. It is rather my goal, Mr. President, to inform you of the matters at hand in the hope that you will take action aimed at restoring integrity to the system of the executive branch. It is a matter of course that it is also my goal to recuperate fair compensation for damages and psychological injury (directly reflected in physical health issues, such as insomnia), and resume life here in Kyoto free of the menace of any vestiges of the US military industrial complex or those attempting to promote a geopolitical agenda that serves the interests of the military industrial complex at the expense of the interests of citizens of the United States, Japan, and others residing in Kyoto.

Should the opportunity present itself, Mr. President, it would be an honor to work with you going forward.

Sincerely,