The CIA in Crisis: Part One

The tightly knit old boy school at the core of the agency began to feel under siege when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger implemented a policy of détente with the Soviet Union. They felt betrayed by this policy and were in sympathy with the Joint Chiefs of Staff s efforts to undermine it. The military even develop-ed a spy ring, known as the “Admirals Plot” to spy on the Nixon White House as though it was the Politburo in Moscow. On the other hand, Kissinger willingly consented to the wiretapping of his subordinates.

All round, Washington had became a’sewer”, and neither common morality nor the law restrained behavior. It is not known if the C.I.A. helped the JCS, but agency insiders were clearly sympathetic with the military’s lawlessness. As Nixon tottered and fell, Paul Wolfowitz tried to sink Salt II by lobbing for a new ballistic missile system. Corporate interests pumped money into fairly right-wing think tanks in an effort to force Gerald Ford into abandoning détente. An alliance of interests defending cold war orthodoxy took shape: the defense intellectuals who would become the Neocons, the C.I.A. old boys, the military, and corporate.

A C.I.A. contribution to the effort was to intensify Cold War activities in Latin America. Robert Gates, working on the Nixon and Ford National Security staff clearly opposed détente, but it is unclear if he was responsible for some of the leaks that so damaged détente from 1973 through the Ford years. Most of these allies hoped that the GOP would nominate Ronald Reagan in 1976 and that the Dems would pick cold warrior Henry’scoop” Jackson.

They were to be disappointed, but they continued funding their think tanks and attempting to revive the cold war. All was not lost as Dick Cheney, a cold warrior, was Ford’s chief of staff and Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor was to be Zbigniew Brzezinski Robert Gates continued in power as a Brzezinski aid. They persuaded Carter to bring in reactionary Samuel Huntington as a consultant and the three of them persuaded Carter to begin a new arms buildup.

In 1973, the C.I.A. entered turbulent years that extended through the directorships of James Schlesinger and Stansfield Turner, in which many so-called “Cowboy” agents were sacked because they were suspected of illegal behavior. Schlesinger replaced Richard Helms, who was fired for refusing to pay blackmail money to E. Howard Hunt. Schlesinger said, “The clandestine service was Helms’s Praetorian Guard. It had too much influence in the Agency and was too powerful within the government. I am going to cut it down to size.” He promptly fired 7% of the case officers. He then issued an order that all employers were to cease illegal activities and report those illegal actions they knew about.

Agent Cord Myer noted that the directive was was “a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.” Some senior agents decided to punish Nixon by leaking information about Watergate. A thousand covert agents and 500 analysts were fired. There were threats on Schlesinger’s life.

After six months, Schlesinger was replaced by William Colby, who alienated many by releasing damaging information to Congress. Before he gave a Congressional committee a 600 page report on C.I.A. abuses, he insisted that the hearing room be swept for bugs and that only electedofficials be present, without their assistants. Helms hated Colby for what he did and hinted that Colby was a soviet agent. James Jesus Angleton flatly said this was the case. Colby was probably murdered April 28, 1996.

These were the years when the C.I.A. was teaching young people the methods of terrorism but not counter terrorism. At the Border Patrol School at Los Fresnos, Texas. The “Bomb School” was abolished in 1974 but the agency just carried on the training elsewhere, including military bases. Someone should have asked why the agency was training terrorists and looking into other matters. When the Pike and Church Committees began their rather gentle probes, the agency simply went on as before. In one operation a Cuban plane was blown up in October, 1976 under Director George H.W. Bush, and even in 2007 nothing was done to resolve the case.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s potential for wrong doing does not rest so much on its budget—about 10% of the nation’s total intelligence budget-0- but from the fact that it is considered the president’s private army and hass a license to engage in all sorts of black operations. Allen Dulles knew covert action was a very powerful weapon and that it acted “like a damn good drug.” But he added, “if you take too much of it, it will kill you.” Presidents became dependent upon the agency because almost all of them seemed to want hidden means of accomplishing things. Some, like Colonel Fletcher Prouty, have suggested that the agency has sometimes directed the nation’s foreign policy in a manner independent of the White House. Prouty has offered little proof of that, but there was Richard M. Nixon’s comment that “I don’t want the goddamn C.I.A. to make policy anymore.” . DCI Richard Helms told the president he agreed.

A report on C.I.A. abuses was compiled for Director James Schlesinger in 1973. It ran to 693 pages and was Called “Potential Flap Activities,” or informally the “family jewels.” Its contents were were not partially revealed until June, 2007, but William Colby did brief Congress on it. As a result of the report, Schlesinger fired nearly 1000 people and left the agency. Richard Nixon believed the agency was bloated and ineffectual and he was angry that it had not helped to coverup White House involvement in Watergate .

NATO's Stay Behind Armies

After World War II, latter was founded by the US and later operated by the C.I.A. and NATO in 1956 with the specific mission of preventing an increase in the power of the Italian Communist Party. Often former SS officers were involved. Local units assembled considerable arms caches NATO ambassadors were finally briefed on the existence of these “armies” on November 7, 1990. US Field Manual FM 30-31B briefs military intelligence people on the existence of this network and makes it clear that its existence must be kept secret. Parts of the document have been surfacing since 1973, but the Pentagon and C.I.A. consistently disavow it.
The networks came under the supervision of SAEF, the military arm of NATO and was run by its Clandestine Coordinating Committee.

Very frequently, the Stay Behind networks are considered the same as the Gladio operation. In reality, Gladio is the name for the Stay Behind operation in Italy. The program was created by Allan Dulles after World War II. He feared that the Russians would invade Western Europe, so he began organizing an underground network of anti-communist fighters, many of whom had been avid Nazis or Italian Fascists. This network was used to combat Communism in Greece and Turkey in 1947. In Greece, the network was called Sheepskin, and in Turkey it was Red Sheepskin. In Austria it is Schwert, and in France the name is Glaive. There the Stay Behind network, consisting of about 500 secret soldiers, was tasked with Plan Blue, preventing France from becoming red. Elements of the network worked with the Secret Army Organization against President De Gaulle in 1962, and one member was executed. A key figure in the French operation was Jean Vilot, founder of the Pinay Circle, a group of right-wing anti-communist intellectuals. He was also front-man for some of Otto Von Hapsburg’s operations. Vilot is also a mamber of the Circle of Nations, a group of aristocrats who are mostly monarchists. He is also a member of Opus Dei. According to a Belgian magistrate’s report, Vilot works for French and Vatican intelligence agencies and has close ties to the secretive Italian organization, P-2. Many of the members of the stay-behind organization in Belgium have been accused of child sexual abuse. Vilot has a hand in running the Belgian group, but there is no proof he was involved in child sex abuse.

The name of the left-behind group in in Switzerland is P26, and in Sweden it is Sveaborg. Historian Daniele Ganser states categorically that Prime Olf Palme was murdered by a Stay Behind operation. We know that P 26 ( Swiss Gladiators) people were having regular training exercises in Britain as late as the 1980s. A 1990 investigation revealed that Italian members of the network in the 1970s trained with the 10th Special Forces Group in Bad Toelz. The Portuguese network in filled with veterans of the fighting in Africa. All these branches have symbols featuring the NATO sword. Here is the Italian symbol.

The Gladio symbol

In the 1970s, “ Stay Behind “ people in Great Britain, embedded in the military and intelligence communities, produced in Operation Clockwork Orange false evidence showing that some people in the British Labour Government of Harold Wilson were dupes of the Communist. This led to Wilson’s resignation. In 1977, the Spanish network slaughtered people in the office of a Communist lawyer in order to slow the transition to emocracy .
The unit in Turkey staged a coup and ousted a Prime Minister in 1960. In 1965, the C.I.A. and Greek unit forced George Papandreou from office by Royal edict. There was another coup in 1971 that was followed by widespread violence against dissidents. It carried out another coup in 1980. The Belgian network sometimes engaged in sprees of violence. On one occasion, the Italian Gladio staged a silent coup that forced the s to leave a coalition government.
Former Italian President Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga said the strongest leg of the Stay Behind operation was in the Federal Republic of Germany. We have very little solid information on Left Behind operations in Germany. Some of the weapons stashes were found in forests. The problem is that West Germany intelligence was built on the Gehlen organization, which is dominated by the C.I.A. and filled with old Nazi operatives. Former Intelligence Minister attributed many of the murders carried out by the Badren Meinhof Gang to the Stay Behind operation. At the least, they were heavily infiltrated. All but one of those sent to prison committed suicide simultaneously. The remaining terrorist, Horst Mahler, became a right-winger when released.
James Jesus Angleton, who became the C.I.A.’s counter-intelligence chief used family and business connections to establish Gladio. The key to the success of Gladio in Italy was OPERATION DEMAGNETIZE, which began in 1951 and resulted in placing the Italian secret police more or less under the control of Glaudio people.
In 1969, it was decided the Italian Gladio should be used to carrying out bombings and acts of violence and attribute them to the Italian Communists. This was called “the strategy of tension.” The idea was to force the authorities to clamp down on left-wing organizations. The first major terrorist event was the bombing of Piazza Fontana in Milan that year.

The usual pattern was that Propaganda Due carried out the terrorist acts by using the police and secret police. There were many other sad events, including the bombing of the Italicus express in 1974 and the bombing of the Naples-Milan express in 1984. Seven-time premier Giulio Andreatti was suspected by some of being involved in these and other crimes. In 1974, White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig had a secret meeting with P-2 head Lucio Gelli. Haig approved P-2’s plan to use bombings and violence to discredit the Communists by attributing those actions to the left. Aldo Moro, then Foreign Minister , had other plans and told Henry Kissinger in 1970 that the time had come to reach an accommodation with the Communists. Four years later. Moro, now Prime Minister offering his “opening to the left,” was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigade. P-2 was behind this. Maro’s widow said Kissinger warned him that if he moved to reach an accommodation with the Communists, some people on the fringes of Italian politics might harm him. She added that Moro was terrified.

This Lodge financed its operations with money Robert Calvi was stealing from the bank in operated in Milan, the Banco Ambrosiano. It was the largest private bank in Italy and was connected to the Church. Calvi moved money out of it to his accounts in the Vatican Bank ( Instituto per de Religione, IOR), and looted the IOR through dealings he had with it. In addition he was laundering the mafia’s drug money and skimming those funds to keep Banco Ambrosiano appearing solvent. In all, he removed $1.3 billion. Finally, he found it necessary to go to London to negotiate the sale of part of the bank to Opus Dei, a secretive, conservative Catholic organization. He was found hanged below Blackfriar’s Bridge. Years later, Francesco Mannoia, a mafia defector, revealed that Calvi had been strangled by Francesco Di Carlo, who managed the mafia’s drug operations in London.

As an important part of Gladio, P-2 had dealings with the Grey Wolves. Though banned by parliament, they have infiltrated the military, industry, the Judiciary, politics, and probably the church. They have been tied to the arms and drug trades and to assassinations and violence. Former members have disclosed its money laundering operations and ties to the Mafia.
There sere several parliamentary investigations of the European secret armies in the 1990s, and it is believed that they no longer exist. These days, people use the term “Salvador Option” to describe the use of people in other countries to quietly remove leftists and other considered threats to western interests. Seymour Hersh wrote about this in 2005, and he has shown that the US was then using a secret army in Iran. es were all about. We know that they were the creation of Allen Dulles, and it is possible that Winston Churchill first came up with the idea.

The La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin was bombed on April 5, 1986. As far we know ths Shield people in Germany were not involved. Rather it was a Muslim terror cell led by Abu Jabar, who, it turns out, had C.I.A. ties. His right-hand man was a Mossad agent, and a third figure, Musbah Eter, had C.I.A. connections.

Jabar was Libian and using a communications system called Trojan that had been set up for him by the Mossad. The Mossad used Trojan to broadcast messages to Libian embassies around the world relaying terrorist instructions, and the Americans intercepted them. These messages were used by Ronald Reagan to bomb Khadaffii’s home, and this ended efforts to obtain the release of some hostages. The bombing in West Berlin followed thbese events, so wone can only wondeer if the C.I.A. helped the Mossad maneuver the US government into the bombing of Libia.
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Propaganda Due and the Vatican

More on P-2

P-2 is a fiercely anti-communist organization with neo-fascist tendencies. Its members are given to secret rituals and they consider themselves a parallel intelligence service. It is said that the ceremonies are guarded by men carrying axes. For some reason, these people seem addicted to numerous arcane rituals. Odd stuff!
The lodge has over 1000 members, each of whom has sworn an oath of loyalty to Grand Master Licio Gelli. Gelli fought on the side of the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, was liaison to Hermann Goering’s SS Division, and may have worked in counter-intelligence for the UD Fifth Army near the end of the war. He was a personal friend of General Juan Peron. Almost 120 Catholic prelates turned up on a list of members. The involvement of churchmen is a bit odd but consistent with human nature. P-2 springs from a Masonic strain that was particularly anti-clerical and hostile to Roman Catholicism. Perhaps some or all the ecclesiastical members secretly shared these views. Perhaps their ambition and anti-communism were decisive factors in joining.

Leo Zagami, a repentant former leader of P-2, has said, “P2 is the Vatican and the Vatican is the real mind of GLADIO and I'm probably a dead man as my wife is saying in the last few days but I don't care and will go on.” He claims his family had long been tied to the Illuminati and that he is related to Queen Elizabeth II. In 2005, he married an Islamic woman, and he converted to Islam in 2006, taking an Islamic name and suggesting he was tied to the Sufis. His family subsequently broke up, and he left Islam. He is sometimes located in Norway and talks about exposing the secrets of P-2. He claims that P-2 engaged in black magic and Satanic rituals.
Prominent politicians and industrialists turned up on the list, including Silvio Berlusconi, who is both a politi C.I.A.n and industrialist. It is said that P-2 played an important role moving C.I.A. and Vatican money into Eastern Europe to combat Communism. The P-2 Lodge has close ties to the Israeli Mossad, and the Jewish community has close ties to the Lodge. Gelli’s protégé Michael Sindona handled Vatican finances under Pope Paul VI and later convicted of fraud in the United States and Italy.

John Paul I, Paul’s successor, asked Cardinal Jean Villot, papal Secretary of State, to investigate the Vatican Bank in early September. The “Smiling Pope” also ordered a thorough reorganization of the curia, which Villot opposed. Papa Lu C.I.A.ni’s orders were not carried . Items, including his will, slippers, and glasses , were removed from his rooms. There was no autopsy, and the body was immediately embalmed. On February 2, 1980, the Vatican withdrew its permission for Cardinals Guiseppe Caprio and Sergio Guerri and Bishop Paul Marcinkus to testify via videotape in the US fraud trial of Sidona.

The late Sherman Skolnick, who has proven to be correct far more often than wrong, thinks John Paul I was murdered because he did not want Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank dealing with the Mafia and the American C.I.A.. He thinks the murder was arranged by Roger D’ Onofrio, the C.I.A. paymaster in Rome.

Both Sindona and his friend Calvi laundered drug money for the Mafia. Gelli was imprisoned in 1998 for corruption and fraud. It is likely that his son Raffelo will lead P-2. According to C.I.A. agent Dick Brennke, quoted in the Times of London, Propaganda Due now uses the name P-7, and was not wound up after the imprisonment of the senior Gelli. n to be a member of Propaganda Due. His arrest might suggest the organization’s power has finally diminished.


Propaganda Due has clearly acted as a front for the Italian Mafia and has done the work of the C.I.A. in Italy and elsewhere. It active in Uruguay, Argentina’s “Dirty War, and Brazil. In each case it was doing the C.I.A.’s dirty work. In Bolivia, it helped the C.I.A. finance the so-called “Cocaine Coup.”
P-2’s self-identification as an intelligence organization is accurate, as they have functioned as part of NATO and the C.I.A.’s Operation Gladio.

Other Aspects of the Agca Case ??

In 2005, Agca told La Repubblica that he had help from people within the Vatican, adding that "the devil is inside Vatican's wall.” A week later, he Told Turkish Weekly that he had said nothing about getting help from within the Vatican. In 2007, Agca allegedly converted to Catholicism.

Some link Agca’s remark about help in the Vatican to a threefold murder there on May 4, 1998. Allegedly, 23 year-old Swiss Guard Vice Corporal Cedric Tornay shot his commander, Colonel Alois Estermann and Estermann’s wife, and then himself. Estermann was remembered for his heroism the day John Paul II was shot. It was believed that Tornay resented the Colonel’s treatment of French speaking guards and was angry that a medal was withheld from him. A second autopsy of Tornay’s body revealed some inconsistencies in the Vatican’s autopsy report. The team assembled by the corporal’s mother said he was shot by a shell that did not come from his gun and that a supposed suicide note was a forgery.

Estermann had been promoted by the pope to lead the Guard a few hours before this. Estermann and his wife were close to the secretive order Opus Dei, and some believed that Tornay was a source for Vatican Intelligence Agent Yvon Berterello, who was investigating the extent to which the order had penetrated the Guard. It was known that the Guard’s chaplain. Monsignor Alois Jehle, the Guard’s chaplain, was concerned that the Colonel was recruiting Guards for Opus Dei.

Later, Monsignor Giovanni Danzi, head of the Guard’s Security Committee carried out an investigation, suggesting he may have thought a fourth witnessed the shooting. The Vatican’s view was that the forensic evidence clearly showed that Tornay did the shooting. The odd thing was that there were people two paces from the apartment, and they heard nothing.

The

Times

of London reported that Estermann and Tornay has a sporadic sexual relationship for about two years. Estermann was involved with other guards.

Colonel Roland Buchs-Binz, the former commander, temporarily returned to service and made it clear he did not believe the official explanation. He had Tornay dressed in his uniform and laid beside Estermann and his wife for an observance by the Guard. Soon, two- thirds of the Guards non-commissioned officers resigned.

A Polish paper quoted Marcus Wolf, former second in command of the East German intelligence service, the Stassi, as saying Estermann had been employed by them since 1979. A Turin paper checked with Wolf who said Estermann was not a spy and that the East German mole was a German Benedictine working in a Vatican science office.

The Attack on John Paul II: Three Possibilities

There are at least three theories of who hired Agca. At times, the C.I.A. suggested the Russians had hired to Bulgarians to control Agca. Russia’s motive would have been to end John Paul II’s involvement in Polish and east European affairs. Prior to his pontificate, the Vatican showed little interest in its branches in Poland and eastern Europe.

At one point Agca gave hundreds of pages of testimony to flesh out this view. He fingered a Bulgarian agent named Sergei Antonov, who was arrested and held for three years before being cleared. Agca had been able to describe the interior of the man’s Rome apartment and accurately described in detail the structure and operations of the Bulgarian intelligence agency. However, Agca said nothing about the Bulgarians and Soviets until after he had been in solitary confinement and was visited by Italian intelligence people.

For a time, the Bulgarian Connection theory got a lot of play in the US press. The Americans backed off this theory when Yuri Andropov moved up from head of the KGB to head lead the Soviet Union in 1982, and soon the American press was making fun of the theory that the Soviets were behind the assassination. Senator Alfonse D”Amato went to Rome to pressure American officials there to cooperate with the Italian investigation. He was neither welcomed nor given cooperation. In fact he had been asked not to come. Much later, C.I.A.officials told Congress that they knew all along this was not true because they had spies within Bulgaria’s secret service.

At later point, Agca said that Propaganda Due ( P-2 ) member Francesco Pazienza offered him freedom in return for implicating the Bulgarians and Soviets. He said P-2 offered him a prison break. Agca told the court that Propaganda Due had kidnapped the daughter of a Vatican employee in order to have someone to bargain in exchange for him. Pazienza, who had been a high official of SISMI , Italian military organization, said this idea came from Terry Ledeen, a right wing Reagan Administration official . Ledeen denied the charge.

There is clear evidence that Ledeen had ties to both Propaganda Due and the C.I.A., but the exact nature of those links are unclear. Ledeen and Pazienza began working together in 1979 when Ledeen wrote for The New Republic. Together they were responsible for keeping “Billygate ” alive. Billy Carter admitted to accepting a loan from Libya. They got details on his visit there and later floated a story that Carter also got money from Yasser Arafat. SISMI paid Ledeen $120,000 for his work. Ledeen is considered an expert in Italian affairs and has many contacts there. One of his friends in the Italian cabinet was mysterious connected to the forged documents allegedly from the Nigerian embassy that Dick Cheney used to claim that Iraq was searching for nuclear material.

Cheney and the C.I.A. tapped Propaganda Due again in the February 17, 2003 kidnapping of Egyptian citizen Nasr Osama Mustafa Hassan in Milan. This extraordinary rendition led to the indictment of 26 American C.I.A. agents. Some of the C.I.A. agents flown in for the abduction foolishly used their own credit cares, which made it easy for the Italian police to track their activities. P-2 people within Italian police agencies helped the C.I.A. carry out the abduction and they later spied on the Italian prosecutors who handled the case.

The Israeli Mossad told the pope, through Archbishop Luigi Poggi of the Holy Alliance or intelligence service, that the Iranians were behind the assassination attempt and that Agca had been trained in Iran. Agca emphasized the part of his training that was received in Syria. One trainer was a rogue C.I.A. agent, Frank Terpil, who could have been brought in to make the C.I.A. appear involved. They claim that Agca confirmed this theory when John Paul came to his prison to offer forgiveness. After the meeting the pope ordered Poggi to end the investigation of the shooting. All records were sealed and taken to the archives. Shortly before his death, John Paul II said that he did not believe in the so-called “Bulgarian Connection.” tre

The Attempt on the Life of John Paul II and Aspects of C.I.A. Operations in Europe

T
The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II will probably never be explained in full. It does provide examples of how organized crime, drug and arms trafficking, politics, and the work of government intelligence agencies are all intertwined—often in unexpected ways. The story also provides an example of very clever propaganda.
Mehmet Ali Ağca, a professional Turkish assassination, attempted to murder Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981. He was a member of the Grey Wolves, an anti-Communist Turkish terrorist organization. This is not a small organization and has tens of thousands of adherents wherever Turcic peoples are found. They are neo-fascists and ultra-nationalists who were also involved in the drugs and arms trades.. It is clear that much of his payment came through them and that they sprung him from a Turkish military prison. The Grey Wolves facilitated his movements and most probably supplied a back-up shooter who was also responsible for a distraction explosion that never occurred after the shooting. In 1979, Agca he probably killed a Turkish newspaper editor; although, some say he was paid to accept the blame. Abdullah Catli (pronounced Chutley), the number 2 Grey Wolf leader, organized Agca’s escape and gave him the false passport he had when apprehended in Rome. Beyond that, it is unclear who else was involved. In the seventies, the Grey Wolves were helped by the Counter-Guerilla Organization of the Turkish Army Intelligence. They were used against the Kurds.
. For the most part, the American position was that there was no conspiracy at all, even though it seems clear Agca had at least one accomplice on the scene who was seen running away. There was a period, however when elements in the American intelligence community promoted a theory linking the assassination to the Soviets.

The role of the Italian Mafia in the attempted assassination of the pope is unknown. We know that it works closely with the Grey Wolves and Bulgarian intelligence in the international drug trade. It also has links to the C.I.A. in common efforts to fight the left and in the trade in arms and drugs. Former C.I.A. agent, Victor Marchetti noted that the agency capitalized on the Mafia’s right-wing tendencies and used it to control Italy. Different elements in the Italian Mafia handled different parts of the drug and arms trade. Raffaele Cutolo, head of the Neapolitan “ The New Camorra” was able to pass messages to Agca through his chaplain, Father Mariano Santini. Cutolo at the time was being held on the remote Agca Island prison.
The Grey Wolves
The Grey Wolves. Founded in 1969, worked with Operation Gladio ( gladius in latin is sword), an underground network the C.I.A. organized throughout most of Europe. They were initially planted to resist leftist regimes that might emerge. Sometimes Gladio units carried out terroristic acts and blamed them on left wing groups.

In the 1970s, the Grey Wolves were moving top grade weapons from NATO arsenals into the Middle East and were paying for it with heroin. Death squads run by them and the Turkish mafia were active in 1970s. Duane “Dewey” Claridge, a rabid right-winger, was C.I.A. station chief in Ankara during many of those years. The C.I.A. was also tied to the Grey Wolves—Bulgarian operations. The Bulgarian government made little effort to conceal its involvement in drugs and arms, and it ran its illegal arms trade through Kintex, its foreign trade arm. The Grey Wolves were also involved in the drug trade and worked with the Turkish mafia, Turkish military, and Bulgarian Intelligence, which in turn was manipulated by the Soviet KGB. The drugs were moved to Northern Italy, where the Sicilian mafia moved the heroin to Europe and North America. It was called the “Pizza Connection.”

Money from these interrelated drug and guns operations were laundered through Stiban International Corporation, headed by a Syrian, which used accounts in the Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank. Stiban offices are located above the Banco Ambrosiano, which has the Vatican Bank as its main stockholder. Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982 after it had been looted by Robert Calvi, who was working for P-2, a secretive right-wing criminal element organized as a Masonic unit. Because Calvi worked closely with the Vatican Bank and moved much Ambrosiano money there, Italian police unsuccessfully tried to interview Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, head of the Vatican Bank. He had to remain within the walls of Vatican City. Later he was exiled back to the United States, where he worked as a parish priest until his death. Ezio Giunchiglia, a ranking member of P-2, remained in touch with the Cicero, Illinois native until his death.

There was an investigation Turkish government’s ties to the Grey Wolves and mafia in 1996. It was triggered by a November 3, 1996 car crash near Susurkuk. A Mersedes hit a tractor and turned over, killing three and wounding a guerilla leader. Husseyin Kocadig, a top Counter Intelligence official , was dead along with Abndullah Catli, a mafia and Grey Wolves leader, and the beauty queen girlfriend of the drug dealer. Narcotics were found. Soon it was clear that Cati, who admitted giving Agca the pistol he used on the pope, was being protected by the government. At the time Catli had a criminal record and was wanted for murder and drug running. He was carrying a Turkish weapons permit and diplomatic credentials provided by that government. Catli also had weapons with silencers and several thousand US dollars.

More recently, the Grey Wolves have established terrorist training camps in Central Asia for young men of Turcic backgrounds. The Chinese believe that some of the violence in southern China in 2009 involving Muslim migrant workers was inspired by the Grey Wolves. There is a suspicion that the C.I.A. could be behind these destabilizing efforts. At this time, the political party backed by the Grey Wolves is part of the governing coalition, and it claims it has renounced violence. Today, there is another underground network in Turkey called Ergenekon that is devoted to fighting democratic forces there. It is not known if this group is tied to the C.I.A., however Daniele Ganser, an historian at the University of Basel, insists that this is the case.

John Hinckley: Another Lone Nut?

Some allege that John Warncock Hinckley,Jr., who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan in front of the Washington Hilton—now called the “Hinkley Hilton”-- on March 30, 1981, was a victim of mind control. The evidence of mind control is thin. One of the policemen who nabbed Hinckley thought he was hypnotized or in some sort of induced state.

Several weeks before the incident, the papers were printing rumors that someone took a shot at Vice President George W. Bush in the wee hours of the morning. The rumor was traced to a policeman and an official with access to good information. The shooting took place near the town house of the vice president’s long-term mistress, Jennifer Fitzgerald. The Vice President was furious and the Washington Post killed the story. This sort of scare usually heightene concerns about security, but Reagan’s guards at the Hilton advised that he did need to wear his security vest.

When George H.W. Bush made it back to Washington, he immediately ruled out any investigation that the shooting was a result of a conspiracy. Al Haig, in his memoirs, wondered if a conspiracy was involved, but he did not questions Bush’s decision at the time. This is an historical matter that will never be resolved. Orthodox historians have no choice but to accept the official story.

Hinckley was a member of World Vision, a fundamentalist group that sometimes fronts for the C.I.A.. He was also a former member of the National Part of America—Nazis. The weapon he was supposed to have used was a short barrel 22 revolver, an RG-14, using Devastator long bullets. Four people were wounded by the six bullets he fired. There is film of Hinckley firing the first two shots; they hit no one. The sixth shot is said to have hit the side of the limo, ricocheting down the side of the car and hitting the president. Reagan was hit just under the left arm pit, and the bullet supposedly flattened to the size of a dime.

There is confusion about the kind of gun used. Agent Tim McCarthy was hit in the groin and was sure it was stronger than a 22. Hinckley bought a 38 in Dallas, near where JFK was killed. There are photographs of a 38 on the ground and a policeman in a yellow coat picking it up was a handkerchief. There was also a 22 at his feet later. Another hit a DC police officer, and the sixth missed Reagan but is said to have ricoched to strike the Chief Executive.

Before it was fired, Agent Jerry Parr grabbed Reagan and held onto him and pushed him into the limo before the fifth shot was fired. Then he was on top of Reagan. It is hard to imagine Reagan being hit in the chest with Parr on top of him. The last shot was fired when an agent was pushing Hinckley’s gun hand down. If it was fired then, it would have had to climb some way or other. Perhaps another ricochet.

Some think the agent somehow fired that shot, but this writer cannot construct such a scenario and must simply suggest that there are often inexplicable coincidences in such matters. There is the problem that Reagan had to have been hit after there was an armored car door between him and the shooter. They also point to Reagan’s comment that he felt a paralyzing pain just as the agents got him into the car. That sharp pain came after he was out of the line of fire.

Critics of the official story believe that Reagan was only in a position to be hit when Hinckley’s first shot was fired. Indeed, he would have had to been able to shoot through the car door. We know that the bullet had ricocheted, so it must have hit a stone wall and then headed toward Reagan. But a short 22 cannot give a bullet that kind of velocity. A rifle could do that.

Maybe James Brady was hit by something other than a Devastator. The physicians removed a shell with explosive intact from his brain. The Devastator aluminum shell begins to explode on impact. It would be like finding a piece of exploded dynamite with its wrapping intact. The physicians should only have found fragments. There should have been a big area of impact; Brady’s was the size of a pencil eraser

Amateur ballistics experimenters say that the Devastator bullets could not have come out of Hinckley’s 22. Until real experts address this, we can render no judgment


An ambulance bearing a wounded Press Secretary James Brady got to George Washington University Hospital fifteen minutes before the presidential limo, which left five minutes before the Brady ambulance. The Reagan limo got there 15 to 20 minutes after the vehicle carrying press secretary arrived.

The agents claimed they got lost. No motorcycle retinue accompanied them. The story was that they started out for the White House—that was a standing procedure and order. When Parr detected a bit of blood and, he decided to go to George Washington University Hospital. In changing directions, they lost time and for some unknown reason once went three blocks out of their way rather than following a diagonal street. At the hospital, Reagan was mistakenly given a cold blood transfusion. Some think that accounts for the early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.


While the agents were losing time, there was a sharp battle going on in the situation room of the White House between Reagan loyalists and Bush people. Just six days before, Secretary of State Alexander Haig had been replaced by Bush as head of emergency preparedness planning. Haig made a public comment about his being in control until Bush returned. It was made in the context of controlling emergency planning and not in reference to the presidential sucession. The press never got it right and even showed the clip when Haig passed away. Someone told Haig about the connections between the Bushes and Hinkleys, and he immediately ordered a lock down of the White House.

Reagan began to walk into the George Washington Emergency Room even though his lung was collapsing. At first they could not find where he was hit, and then someone found blood coming out of a small cut below his left armpit. It was a single would with a razon rhin line. What they removed was “thin as s dime” and “razor edged.” Whatever it was, it bounced off a rib and slightly cut his aorta before bouncing off a rib again and then missing the aorta by a quarter of an inch and then went into the lung.

Lt. Colonel Bo Gritz, a veteran of many intelligence operations, suggests that Reagan was struck by a thin planchet rather than a bullet. But he would have no way of knowing for sure. Aerodynamic disks were used in intelligence work and were fired by tubes or guns. Sometimes they bear poison, but this did not.


There were three odd situations that day. Army Colonel Rodreguez, carrying the “football” or case with nuclear arming codes took off running, and he was gone for several hours and ended up with the Secret Service. At George Washington University Hospital, the F.B.I. got the coded card our of Reagan’s wallet which could be used to open the suitcase. The F.B.I. would not give Rodriguez the card. On that odd day, SAC bombers flew with no code books. Hinckley ws not turned over to civilian authorities; he was whisked off to Quantico Military Base. Then he went to Fort Butler in South Carolina for psychiatric evaluation.

At the time, Judy Woodruff, now a CNN anchor, insisted the shot came from an overhang above Reagan’s automobile. Later, she said a Secret Service agent up there fired the shot.

Young Hinckey was obsessed with women, particularly actress Jodie Foster and allegedly shot Reagan to impress her. John Chancellor reported "the bizarre coincidence" that Scott Hinckley, an older brother, was scheduled to dine with Neil Bush and his wife on March 31, 1981. RCA then owned NBC and it made sure Chancellor was prevented from investigating the coincidental connection.


At the time of the shooting, Scott, vice-president of C.I.A.-connected Vanderbilt Energy was meeting with Energy Departmentofficials trying to answer claims of overcharges from 1977 through 1980. Incensed because the media did not trace any of the odd aspects of the shooting, Journalism Professor and former Rhodes Scholar Nathaniel Blumberg wrote a novel The Afternoon of March 30 on what might have been going on.


The Hinkley family started in Texas where his father was an oil man and friend of George H.W. Bush and they moved to Evergreen, Colorado. In the 1960 s, the Hinckley’s Vanderbilt Oil was in trouble, getting little out of its six wells. The Bush family bailed them out, and the company changed its name to Vanderbilt Energy. Somehow, several millions trinkled in every year. . Oilman John Hinckley, Sr. was a reputed C.I.A. man and a leader of World Vision, a right-wing Christian evangelical organization. It became important in the 1950s. It was fiercely anti-Communist and worked with refugees from Communist nations. It often used missionaries to recruit people for intelligence work, following the long-established Rockefeller pattern of working through missionaries in Latin America.

World Vision people did espionage work for the C.I.A. in Southeast Asia and ran recruiting camps for the Contras in Hondouras During the Vietnam War, World Vision had military equipment and USAID money, some of which was a poss through or pass over for its C.I.A. sponsor. Later, its money came from the National Endowment for Democracy. In Lebanon, it permitted its camps to be used by the fascist Phalange to kill Palestinians. In the United States it had refugee camps for Cubans and Thai, where a steady diet of anti-communism was offered. In the camps for Cubans, Alpha 66 and Omega 7, anti-Castro militants, worked openly and recruited. John Hinckley Jr. worked in the Arkansas camps for the Thai as did Mark David Champan, who eventually killed John Lennon.

World Vision became involved in Jonestown after the massacre, developing a plan to repopulate it with C.I.A. mercenaries from Laos. In 1977, the American Council of Churches and other religious bodies forced the C.I.A. to outlaw the use of mssionaries on intelleigence work, except under exceptional circumstances. The Southern Baptists and Worle Vision, both of which had been coopative said they forbad missionaries from doing intelligence work. Critics in 2009 claim that World Vision in Nicosea, Cyprus is a C.I.A. front and is involved in sponsoring terrorist activities. Indian critics note that World Vision is funded by the US government but that it continues to proselatize. The organizationsofficials seem to use a revolving door that takes them in and out of US government positions.

Like the organizations that Sarah Palin’s religious organizations are tied to, these people think they are engaged in’spiritual warfare” with the forces of evil. Hinckley stalked Jimmy Carter in 1980, hoping to shoot him. He was detained in Nashville for 5 hours in October, 1980 because he had guns in his possession. Carter was expected in that city then.

The story gets stranger. Some make the case that Hinckley was shadowed by an evil twin or Doppelganger. His name was Edward Richardson, a follower of Carl McIntyre’s International Council of Christian Churches, looked just like Hinckley and also wrote sick love letters to Jodi Foster. He wrote threatening letters to Reagan and Foster, and was arrested a week after Hinckley by the New York Port Authority Police. Why had he followed Hinckley from Connecticut to Colorado?

Another person who looked somewhat like Hinckley and was the same age was Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon about a month before the attack on Reagan. A policeman who apprehended ihim thought he was under mind control; he was clutching a copy of The Catcher and The Rye. He said a voice in his hea commanded him to kill Lennon. Chapman was in therapy at the time and had been with World Vision. Some insist he had been involved in a remote viewing program, but this writer cannot nail that down. Money was no problem for him. He was a world traveler, staying in the best hotels, and he and his wife collected art ane even owned a $7500 Norman Rockwell lithograph. Their monthly ren was $400. When he was nabbed, he had over $2000 in cash and credit cards. New York columnist Jimmy Breslin concluded Chapman was under mind control. He was eventually able to prove that Lennon was under constant F.B.I. surveillance, but that is quite different from killing someone. John Lennon, who had become a powerful spiritual force, had made the mistake of asking fans to join revolutionary movements for human rights.

We know that the C.I.A. had its own remote viewing program for 25 years and that it was conducted in cooperation with the Church of Scientology. The military also had a RV program.The first publif information on remote viewing appeared in a Jack Anderson column on 23 April 1984. Years later Ted Koppel did a rather dismissive report on RV.

In the 1980s, the Army’s RV program was called “Grill Frame.” The DIA’s program was “Sun Streak,” which was renamed “Star Gate” in 1991. After 1995, it was transferred to the C.I.A.. We do not know for certain, which /RV program, if any, was involved with Chapman. The Carter Administration tried and failed to kill off the C.I.A.’s RV program, but it continued, using many people supplied by the Church of Scientology. In 1995, John Mc Cahon, who ran it for a time, said more than $20 million had been spent on it.

An Attempt on the life of Jimmy Carter?

Oddly, President Jimmy Carter said while still in office:” We are going to have to go all the way back to the assassination of president Kennedy to get
this country right."

When Jimmy Carter was about to visit Los Angeles in 1979 for a Cinco de Mayo event , police arrested two Hispanics on May 5 near where the president was to appear. They test fired a starter [pistol. They had an additional 70 rounds. It was reported that they were to create a diversion while two professionals dealt with Carter. One of the Hispanics was named Osvaldo Ortiz, 27, and the other was Raymond Lee Harvey, a 35 year Anglo. The Secret Service said he was obviously a derelect.

All information on the incident disappeared. President Carter had requested TV time to outline broad changes in government. . When he heard of the incident, he cancelled the broadcast and retreated to Camp David. He told his advisors, “I have lost control of the government.” Among those he brought to Camp David for advice was Reverend Billy Graham.

Stryker Mcguire of the LA Times broke the story of the two vagrants, but it only ran once, buried in the back pages. He later moved to a job in London. A ffew other papers carried small stories, and Newsweek had a longer piece.

John Simkin believes John J. McCloy and David Rockefelleer may have been behind the attempt on Carter. Of course, both were leaders of Chase Manhattan Bank, which had loaned Iran $500,000,000 nad handled Iranian money. Carter resisted their efforts to get the shah in the United States, thnough Carter did give in when he learned the shah had cancer.

In 2007, Walter W. Blanck, then a prisoner in Wisconsin, unsuccessfully sought representation so he could sue the F.B.I. and two agents. He claimed the two agents gave him mind altering drugs in 1975. He was also working for AFT at the time. Blanck wanted $60,000,000 for psychological damages. He wanted FOI claims filed against all defendants, but the judge ruled the request frivolous.

In 1976, he was subjected to “indoctrination” and had to give one of the agents handwriting and rifle shhoting samples. He claims to have briefly met George H.W. Bush, then director of the C.I.A.

He was given Carter’s 1976 itinerary and told to assassinate him, but Blanck refused. In 1990 he began serving 4 years of a 73 year sentence for kidnapping in Illinois. That was reverse, and he was taken to Wisconsin where he is serving a 67 yerar sentence for kidnapping and false imprisonment.

Operation Watch Tower

Watch Tower was a C.I.A. operation that began in 1976, under the Nixon Administration. Drugs were moved from Columbia to Panama, and from there to the US and other destinations. It was named Watch Tower because it began as a series of electronic beacons and transmitters. With the towers up, radio beacons enabled US drug planes to fly below Columbian radar from Bogotá to Albrook Air Base in Panama. They could be used to create a safe corridor for planes that would not be bothered by Customs. The idea was to use the corridors to move guns south and cocaine north. C.I.A. agent Edwin Wilson fronted the operation and answered to Thomas Clines. Michael Harari of the Mossad was also playing a supportive role, and the people in the Panama based 570th Military Intelligence Group believed Harari’s authority came from the US Southern Command. While the Mossad carried a great deal of water for the US in Central America, Reagan’s C.I.A. thought it often withheld important intelligence in the Middle East.

Colonel Edward P. Cutolo , second in command and then commander of the 10th Special Forces (airborn)Group. He later became concerned that he could be hung out to dry if the operation were discovered and learned that George H.W. Bush, Bill Casey, and Donald Gregg were behind the mission. Gregg was a key figure on Bush’s staff, and Colonel Douglas Menarichik was an important Gregg functionary. Some believe Gregg was a member of the 40 Committee.

Cutolo feared something could happen to him and left behind a sword statement in April, 1980. He was murdered in 1980 and some claim the job was done by Mossad agent Colonel Michael Harari, who later became a security advisor to Manuel
. There was another affidavit signed by PFC William Tyree, who added that members of the Panama Defense Force under Major Manuel Noriega helped unload the drug planes. Tryee was uncomfortable with this mission, and his wife kept a diary describing it. This probably accounts for her murder, which was blamed on Bill. Tryee thought that some of the drug profits were used to establish FEMA.
The operation provided arms for right wing El Salvador guerillas who were seen as freedom fighters. However, large quantities of drugs were not immediately shipped for sale but were prepositioned so they could be sold later when more money was needed to finance counter-insurgency operations . The C.I.A. agents involved were concerned that Archbishop Oscar Romero had precise knowledge that the US was training them in five countries. Romero was murdered while saying mass on Monday of Holy Week, 1980. Cotulo’s affidavit said they were sure Romero had solid evidence about Watch Tower . The killing was orchestrated by Roberto D’ Aubuisson, who was trained by the Argentine Brigade 601 and the Israelis. On November 16, 1989, six progressive intellectuals were murdered in El Salvador. They were Jseuit priests; and the murderers also slaughtered their housekeeper and her young daughter. Twenty years later, in November 2009, the Spanish press published the order of the chief of staff of the Salvadoran Army calling for the murder of the six priests and any witnesses. He was so closely linked to the Pentagon that Americans must have known and approved of his action.

There developed a related program called Operation Orwell. It was designed to protect Watch Tower by keeping track of law enforcement figures, journalists, judges, dissidents and religious organizations --especially Roman Catholics and Latter Day Saints-- who might gather information about the C.I.A. drug trade. It was fully operational the US and Columbia in 1980. Both Robert Gates, an NSC official , and Robert Gates, a C.I.A. agent and private citizen, had knowledge of Orwell. According to Colonel Edward P. Cotulo, agents were keeping track of President Jimmy Carter and former President Gerald Ford. Tyree said that his friend Sergeant John Newby was involved in missions watching Senators Kennedy and Kerry, Tip O’Neill, and several governors. Local law enforcement personnel were also hired for surveillance work and two U.S. Roman Catholic cathedrals were placed under electronic surveillance. A team from Fort Bragg kept track of Jesse Helms. Cotulo had been told that Watch Tower was a sanctioned mission and that Stansfield Turner himself was covering for Harari’s long standing drug trading. Cotulo doubted all this and sought to prove that neither operation was official ly sanctioned. Harari is now in hiding because Norwegian prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant in connection with several m murders. . What is interesting about Watch Tower is that some of Cotulo’s military subordinates worked hard to get out the story of why he might have been killed.

Newby died in a parachuting accident. Colonel Robert Bayard , a critic of the programs, was murdered in Atlanta in 1977 where he went to meet Harari. Cutolo died in an automobile accident in Skullthorpe, England, in 1980 after meeting Harari. Colonel James Rowe was murdered on April 21, 1989 in the Philippines after Harari arrived there. Two other colonels died suspiciously and Congressman Larkin Smith, who tried to help the suspicious soldiers, died in a plane crash on August 13, 1989. Tyree was sent to prison.

Watchtower occurred while Jimmy Carter was president, but it is very unlikely that he had no idea it was going on. Carter was dismayed when the Sandanistas took over Nicaragua, but his actions, authorized 6 months after that revolution, were limited to funding to keep an opposition alive. Before the take-over, Carter funded the corrupt Somoza regime even while it was slaughtering civilians. The idea was to maintain stability and prevent a Cuban-style government from emerging. Later, in 1984, the Sandanistas won an internationally monitored election, but the Reagan administration acted as though it had not happened.

In the late seventies, the US was very concerned with the insurgency in El Salvador, but it had not reopened a C.I.A. station there until 1978. There is no indication Carter had any idea that C.I.A. activity there could have been tied to Watchtower. It is also likely that the old boys of the C.I.A. had not informed Admiral Stansfield Turner about what was going on. Turner had strict standards of propriety for what the agency should be doing, but he did worry that Carter was a bit of a “peacenik.” Turner eventually learned about Theodore Shackley’s rogue operations and effectively brought that man’s career to an end. Shackley retired and went into the arms running business with half a million dollars given him by former agent Edwin P. Wilson. Shackley’s association with Wilson was probably the strongest reason for blocking his promotion and ending his career.

Wilson became involved in illegal arms trading with Lybia and possibly even paid hits. Wilson had been fired in 1971 and finally went to prison in 1983. Wilson recruited many agents and techni C.I.A.ns from within the agency to help him move weapons and explosives to Lybia, and C.I.A. “quality control” measures proved ineffective in discovering the extent of his recruiting. Wilson Associated openly with Shackley and Clines.

Wilson used Frank Terpil to move C-4 to Lybia and to supply training camps where former Green Berets were instructing terrorists. These veterans thought they were working for the US government. Perhaps they were part of a deep scheme to learn about Lybian capabilities and Soviet activities in Lybia. Wilson’s defenders claim this is true and that he was reporting to Shackley. According to this theory, Shackley saw that the trainees were murdered in their home countries when they left the training camps. Terpil relocatred in Cuba after Wilson was arrested and has been known to sell equipment to the PLO. He has been accused of killing threeofficials of IBEX Corporation, which had done some work for Iran.

The. Death of Mrs E. Howard Hunt

On December 8, 1972, a United Airlines Flight carrying the wife of E. Howard Hunt crashed near Chicago’s Midway Airport . She had been flying around the country giving money to the families of the Watergate burgulars. She bought an extra first class seat for her luggage. It is not known what happened to it. Did it contain the $1, 900,000 in negotiables ands $10,000 in untraceable cash that CREEP paid to buy the silence of the Hunts ? All the investigators found was the $10,000. Some calculate that there was less, perhaps between $100,000 and $250,000. There is strong evidence, that CREEP was also buying silence about what Hunt could say about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The day after the crash, Nixon appointed his henchman Egil Krough to the National Transportation Safety Board, which looks into crashes. Within minutes of the crash there were 25 F.B.I. agents on the scenee as well as Defense Intelligence Agents.

. E. Howard Hunt ( 1918-2007), G. Gordon Liddy, and James McCord had masterminded the famous Watergate break-in. Hunt was a member of the insiders’ circle of old boys, close to former director Allen Dulles; and Hunt’s protégé was David Atlee Phillips. He was Chief of Cuban Operations and Covert Action at the Mexico City station at the time of the Kennedy assassination and had been involved in an effort to falsely sell the idea that Lee Oswald worked for the Soviets. Hunt was probably also involved, having been assigned to Mexico City in August and September, 1963. In 1963, Hunt was Chief of Covert Operations for the Domestic Operations Division. There are controversial allegations that Hunt was in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and a 1966 memo initialed by Richard Helms and James Angleton stating it was important to conceal Hunt’s presence in Dallas that day. Helms was another member of the charmed circle of C.I.A. insiders. Helms and Dulles worked together to prevent the Warren Commission from knowing about plots, in league with the Mafia, to kill Castro.

Hunt official ly left the agency in 1970 and became part of a secret White House Investigative Unit that carried our a few burglaries. Dorothy Hunt was also a C.I.A. agent and met her husband when they were working in China in the late 1940s. She was unhappy about flying around the country paying off Watergate figures and the way the payoffs were handled. Hunt demanded money in return for silence about who ordered the Watergate break-in, and Dorothy Hunt , also a C.I.A. agent, also participated in the negotiations with White House aid Charles Colson. James McCord claimed that Dorothy told him and her husband’s attorney that they had evidence that would "blow the White House out of the water. ".John Wesley Dean told Nixon on the famous tapes that Mrs. Hunt was “the savviest woman alive.” She had put the whole picture together. A month after her death, Hunt pleaded guilty to conspiracy and burglary and spent 33 months in prison.

Michele Clark of CBS News was also on the plane. She was doing a story on Watergate and may have had inside information, as her boyfriend was a C.I.A. agent. CBS insisted that her body be cremated; although, her family opposed this. The morti C.I.A.n who did the job was later killed in an apparent burglary. Chicago Representative George Collins was also with Ms. Clark and Mrs. Hunt. There were 45 dead, including Collins and 42 other passengers.

Chicago legal reporter Sherman Skolnik received a telephone call urging him to look into the crash. He found that 150 federal personnel converged on the accident site and prevented anyone else from getting to the wreckage. An ambulance driver was outraged that rescuers were held back. On June 13, 1973 John Reed, chairman of the NTSB, told the House Government Activities Subcommittee that about 150 federal personnel were at the scene after the crash. Reed added that he complained to the F.B.I. that they had kept rescue personnel away. There were fifty F.B.I. agents there, and one went into the Midway Tower and seized the tape relating to Flight 553. Up to that time, the mainline press supported federal claims that Skolnich had lied about all the federal personnel being there. Skolnick marveled that many of the feds arrived at the scene before the Chicago firemen and police. A Chicago Congressman learned they were surveiling the plane because of claimed “air piracy.” Skolnich learned from other sources that the DIA and C.I.A. had been ordered to arrest Dorothy Hunt. The day after the crash, the airplane fuselage was buried in a Chicago dump. So much for a careful study of the crash .

Activist Dick Gregory later told Skolnich there had been several efforts to get him onto that flight. Eventually someone slipped him a copy of the 1300 page NTSB document on the crash. Skolnich concluded that the plane had been sabotaged. On June 13 and 14, 1973, the NTSB heard his testimony and that of his eight witnesses. His case was that tower instruments monitoring the plane’s approach were turned off just before the approach and turned back on just after it got on the wrong runway. He thought the evidence suggested that the plane’s electronic buss bar was set to short out, thus disabling key instruments. The NTSB said crew errors caused the accident.

Skolnich was told that a government assassin using the name Harold R. Metcalf sat in seat B 17 and was seen exiting the crash. The NTSB report showed that he told the pilot he was a narcotics agent carrying a gun. One of Skolnich’s people later talked to Metcalf and Skolnick concluded that Metcalf was supposed to be a “double cut-out,” he was to make sure Mrs. Hunt was dead and then someone was supposed to kill him. Metcalf survived.

Later Skolnick interviewed Chuck Colson, who told him that Mrs. Hunt “was murdered by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.." Colson added that he had already said too much. Colson also told Time, “I think they killed Dorothy. Hunt.” .Writers who agree are Robert J. Groden, Peter Dale Scott, Alan J. Weberman and Carl Oglesby.

Dan Mitrone and Jim Jones: Part Two

Jones took social security checks and other things from his people, and some of his opponents turned up dead. Then he claimed a political conversion and said he had become a and he became an outspoken opponent of US imperialism. In 1977 he moved his flock from the San Francisco Bay area to Guyana, with the help of the US embassy. The Jonestown project was a C.I.A. experiment in mind control that was designed and operated by Dr. Lawrence Lands Layton. The code name for Reverend Jones was “Raven.”

Congressman Leo Ryan started looking into complaints about human rights abuses there. There is evidence that Jones supplied mercenaries for the UNITAS forces in Angola. Unable to learn much from the embassy, Ryan went to Jonestown in 1978. Ryan and four reporters were killed at the Port Kaituma airport. A Jonestown defector was killed and US Ambassador John Burke was wounded. Eye witnesses said the assassins walked mechanically, like zombies and were glassy eyed.A mass extermination followed. 408 victims drank cyanide cocktails, the rest died in different ways. Of the dead, 287 were children. 210 of the dead were never identified because U.S. Military personnel removed all identification and papers from the corpses.

Guyanese pathologist Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo found that most of the remainder had been injected behind their left shoulder blade. Still others were shot or strangled. By most accounts, over 1200 people were there. There were 913 dead, and 167 returned to the US as survivors. There was also a well-armed, well-fed all white group of guards who were unaccounted for. A Congressional aid told the Associated Press there were about 120 brainwashed white assassins who got away from Jonestown and were ready to kill again.

Michael Prokes, an admitted F.B.I. informant and Jones aid, said the F.B.I. and C.I.A. were withholding a videotape of the massacre. After he made these comments at a press conference he went to the rest room and allegedly committed suicide. Charles Beikman, an adopted son of Jones and former Green Beret, was later arrested for killing a few members of the cult in Georgetown. The body of Jones was never positively identified, but it is believed he dispatched himself with his .357 Python. Before dying, he was heard shouting “Get Dwyer out of here.”Later Richard Dwyer , was deputy chief of the embassy and Jones’ friend, was found at the airstrip. Because he had trained for the State Department’s security service, many thought he was C.I.A. station chief. Actually, the station chief was James Adkins.

Some Black Panther and Weathermen files were found in Jonestown. Perhaps these people were to be of use in strikes against these groups. Jones had hired Mark Lane, who wrote on the JFK assassination, as his lawyer, and Lane was at the airstrip to see Ryan killed. Lane had been writing about how the C.I.A. was trying to infiltrate the community. For whatever reason, Jones also plotted to kidnap Grace Walden Stephens and bring her to Jonestown. She was a witness to the M. L King assassination. She had seen a man running from the murder scene with a rifle and had refused to say it was James Earl Ray. Her testimony was not used at the Ray trial.

It is known that a wide variety of drugs, including truth serums, were pumped into the Jonestown population. Nearby was Hilltown, a similar experiment run by Rabbi David Hill. Still another was Johnstown. There are other cult locations in the Philippines and Chile. One can only wonder if these places have been used for mind control experiments.

Ryan was not the C.I.A.’s favorite Congressman. He had leaked damaging information to journalist Daniel Schorr and he was investigating C.I.A. mind control experiments and possible domestic operations when he was killed. Ryan was co-author of the Hughes-Ryan Amendment that would have required the C.I.A. to inform Congress of all its covert actions and projects. Ryan was also a source for columnist Jack Anderson, who first revealed C.I.A. involvement in mind control experiments. Anderson also tied the kidnapping of Patty Hearst in 1974 to the agency because Donald “Cinque” De Freeze underwent behavior modification acivities and possibly some sort of programming in California Medical Facility Vacaville, California. One of the psychologists there was on the payroll of a C.I.A. front. Four experts testified that he subjected Hearst to classical programming, beginning with 40 days of solitary confinement. This raises the possibility that Cinque was a controlled controller. In a short time, thos hood and unsuccessful robner because a highly successful psychological programmer. Oddly, the remote viewer program was concentrating on the SLA in 1974, having been instructed to do so by Dr Louis Jolyon West.

In 1983 several families of the Jonestown victims sued Admiral Stansfield Turner, claiming that their loved ones died in a C.I.A. behavior modification experiment. The agency’s involvement with Jones began long before Turner became head of the C.I.A., and it is very unlikely that Turner, a liberal and reformer, had any idea what was going on there. Joe Hosinger, Leo Ryan’s assistant and friend, said he was sure Jonestown was a C.I.A. mind control experiment.

The People’s Temple at Jonestown left behind a huge fortune in property and bank deposits in Latin America. According to the Brazilian paper Manchete ( 1/9/79), Brazilian police believe the cult supported itself through involvement in the Guyana-Bolivia-Brazil drug trade. The San Paulo police believe that Jim Jones began his involvement in the trade when he settled in Brazil in 1969. According to former C.I.A. agent Gunther Russbacher Jonestown was known as “Project Blue.” It was run by the Operations Directorate of the State Department, section 6 in cooperation with the C.I.A.. Jones came under the control of the Agency due to his cocaine and heroin (speed ball) use. He was programmed before any other experiments were carried out, and, according to Russbacher, he was given Level Five programming, which meant killing his subjects upon command. The agency sent in physicians. A “Dr. Danvers,” a C.I.A. asset since Vietnam, became a close friend to Jones. The actual project director was Wessley Baker.

The point of the experiment was to induce mass obedience. The Department of State sent in hallucinogenic drugs which were placed on consecrated hosts and distributed in religious services. Children were not programmed until age 8, and the manual for programming people between 8 and 20 was called “Cornflower,” and weas used in Honduras , Belize, and El Salvador. Much of the programming occurred in small churches in the US and Canada, and the subjects were then shipped to Jonestown.

The programming had not been as successful as hoped and some families wanted to leave Jonestown. Their problem was a chain link fence with guard towers. The guards had “shoot on sight” orders for those escaping. In time Jones even had trouble with his Council, which tried to override his orders. The DOS had provided for this eventuality by shipping in cyanide, most of it made in India. Special Forces teams were sent in to gather up evidence and pack it away.

Investigator Alex Constantine insists some other cults were used as fronts for government-sponsored psychiatric experiments. He includes the Finders ( a group the C.I.A. admitted was connected to it) The Symbianese Liberation Army, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Movement, Ordo Templis Orientis, Switzerland's Solar Temple. He includes McMartin Pre-School, in Manhattan, California built by a Hughes Aircraft engineer partly because Hughes was so closely tied to the C.I.A. The McMartin experiments were tied to the Subud sect of Indonesia and The UK. Scientists from a nearby university found sixty feet of underground tunnels, which bore out testimony of the children.

Danny Mitrone and Jim Jones

Dan Mitrone and Jim Jones
America’s systematic use of torture did not begin at Abu Ghraib prison, it began in Latin America. The Baltimore Sun has found a 1983 US torture manual called AKUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. A The earliest edition dates back to 1963. It was used to train Latin American security forces. An especially interesting part deals with equipping safe houses with electric transformers and using shocks to help victims regress to much earlier stats in their lives. It is very reminiscent of all the UKULTRA psychiatric research carried on by the intelligence agencies since the early 1950s. Thirteen years later, in 1986, the government found seven of these manuals in use at the School for the Americas at Fort Benning. There was also a 1984 manual used to train Honduran forces in th4e use of torture and another contemporaneous one for the Contras. John Stockwell, former station chief in Nicaragua, recalled how the Contras would castrate the father in front of the children and then peel skin off his face. Sometimes a grenade was placed in his mouth and the pin was then pulled. Sometimes the children were tortured while the parents had to watch. But the Contras seemed to especially gang rape the mother and then cut her breasts off.

While working as a USAID policy advisor Latin America, Dan Mitrone refined US torture methods. He was especially good at using ultra-thin highly conductive wire to shock victims, sometimes placing it between their teeth like dental floss. Mitrone went to Latin America in 1960 to teach torture techniques. For seven years, he worked with a Death Squad in Brazil that disposed of at least a hundred bodies. In 1967, he returned to Washington to share his knowledge with Agency for International Development Public Safety Police Academy trainees. In 1969 he flew to Uruguay where he headed a four man team training police. Uruguayan sources said he intr4educed torture as a means of dealing with political prisoners and that it soon became normal. Mitrone’s approach was scientific in that he sought just the right amount of pain to get the information he desired, and it was noted that he employed psychological knowledge to induce surrender and despair. Often, he drug beggars off the streets so he could experiment with various torture and sickness inducing techniques. Sometimes he used these poor souls to demonstrate his techniques for visiting intelligence people. One of his favorite techniques was playing tapes of women and children screaming that the subject’s family was being tortured.

Tupamaros rebels kidnapped and executed him in 1970, and Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis Hope did a benefit concert for his family in Richmond, Indiana. His name is honored on a plaque in the Truman Building in Washington DC for losing his life abroad in honorable service to his country.

Jim Jones, founder of the notorious Jonestown, was a close childhood friend of Dan Mitrone, an intelligence agent famous for teaching torture techniques in Latin America. There is much evidence to suggest that Jonestown was a government financed experiment in mind control and behavior modification. However, the evidence is not air tight, and all that can be concluded is that this interpretation of events there fits the facts better than the official explanation.

When Mitrone went to Brazil in 1961, Jones ,his wife , and family found a way to locate there also. Jones had adopted eight children and was described by his landlady as “a gangster who used a Bible instead of a gun.” He had become a faith healer. Jones told a neighbor in Brazil that he was connected with the Office of Naval Intelligence. The US embassy provided him with a large home, transportation, and groceries. This was at a time when the US government was funding the establishment of evangelical ministries in Latin America.

After a few years, he returned to the United States with $10,000 and founded People’s Temple in Ukiah, California in 1965. Jones, a white preacher affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, had earlier founded a People’s Temple in 1954 in Indianapolis. He also established Happy Haven Rest Home. The courts sent him 1509 foster children, and he also attracted former prisoners, the elderly, and the mentally ill. He had the backing of local Republicans, the local John Birch Society, and the local chapter of World Vision, which often operated as a C.I.A. front. In 1968 his operations worked for the Nixon presidential campaign.

Jonestown had a sensory deprevation pit, and there was much use of Tohrazene. Some of the white staff had family ties to the biochemical warfare industry. Electroshock to discipline children had been used in San Francisco, and the practice was carried over to Jonestown. Jones was an expert hypnotist, perhaps having hearned the techniques from a preacher named David Miranda. However, Jones may have been programmed. This is difficult to sort out because it seems there was also a Jones double.

Watergate: Part Seven

The Role of Robert Bennett and Mullen Company

Robert F. Bennett, now a US Senator ( elected in 1992) representing Utah, played a significant role in the Watergate scandal. His father was Senator Wallace Bennett, who was sitting then, and his family was well connected in Mormon society. It is clear that his main role was that of hiding the involvement of t he C.I.A., and it is likely that he knew in advance about the second Watergate break-in and had something to do with another planned operation. Watergate burglar James McCord testified to this and Jack Anderson, though a Mormon, established this.

Tosh Plumlee, a C.I.A. contract pilot for many years, said that Bennett was one of his C.I.A. instructors who sent him to Dallas as part of a team to abort the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Robert Bennett bought the Mullen Robert F. Company in 1971. The company did legitimate public relations work, represented the Mormon Church, and was a C.I.A. front. Firms that it represented often provided covers for the C.I.A.. Bennett brought the Hughes Tool account to Mullen, and Hughes was very closely tied to the agency. Bennett also ran the Supporters of the American Dream, an outfit that raised $10 million for Nixon in 1972. He refused to tell where the money came from but admitted from 75 to 90 committees that raised money where phony .


E. Howard Hunt became a Mullen employee the day after leaving the agency in 1970. C.I.A. director Richard Helms personally asked that Hunt be hired. Hunt shared an office with his close friend Douglas Caddy, co-founder of Young Americans for Freedom. Caddy was alleged to have C.I.A. ties. Caddy was to serve as lawyer for McCord and the four who ere arrested. (Remember that three others were never found.)

The firm was located at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue; across the street was the Committee to Re-Elect the President at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue. Watergate burglar James McCord, Jr. says the Watergate break-in was planned in a meeting at Hunt’s office there. At that time, Hunt had two jobs, one with Mullen and one with G. Gordon Liddy’s White House special investigative unit.

It seems that Liddy and Hunt did not work together on all the various black bag jobs of the period. Bennett worked as the liaison and contact person for the two. Liddy represented the White House and Bennett looked after the interests of the C.I.A. and Hughes.

Mullen coordinated some spying and dirty tricks against the Democrats in the 1972 campaign. The firms telephone records show twelve calls to trickster Donald Segretti. Bennett testified in secret that he had worked with Charles Colson in playing dirty tricks on Dita Beard, who was offering information about the ITT contract scandal. Wearing a garish red wig and using a voice alteration device, extracted from Beard a statement that she was wrong in saying bribery was used by ITT to get a Justice Department contract.

Charles Colson grew suspicious that the C.I.A. planted Hunt in the White House to spy on Nixon, and he greatly resented all the information Bennett gave Woodward, claiming that the C.I.A. gave Woodward the Pulitzer Prize. In the end, Colson , and apparently Nixon’s family, thought that the C.I.A. brought Nixon down. But they provide no good reason for this belief. H.R. Haldeman and Rose Mary Woods thought Alexander Butterfield was a C.I.A. plant. Some think Nixon’s endorsement to the Huston Plan, a new surveillance operation, was seen as a threat by the C.I.A.. True, Nixon had intimate knowledge of the C.I.A.-mob alliance and many of its other questionable activities. It is known that the Pentagon thought Nixon should be out of office. They thought Kissinger had given the Soviets too much in respect to nuclear submarines, and there was a fear that the US would leave the POWs behind, especially thous captured in Laos out of uniform.

Bennett gave Howard Hughes a price for bugging the home of Clifford Irving but we do not know if it was done. The transcripts of the Nixon White House describe the device to be used. It was an ultra tiny device that would be placed on the arm of a chair and was voice activated.

It seems that Bennett probably planned the burglarizing of the office of publisher Hank Greenspun in Los Vegas. It was believed that he had records that would destroy the Muskie candidacy. This was because James McCord testified that John Mitchell told him that Greenspun had documents that would damage one of the Democratic candidates. In 1986, Hank admitted he had information about Muskie that Nixon wanted. He added that Nixon was unhappy because he had printed a piece about a $100,000 campaign contribution that Howard Hughes had delivered to Beebe Rebozo. It is far more likely that they wre after Hughes-Mahue memoes on Hughes’ gift to Donald Nixon. He was a World War II hero who had been publicity director for Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel. He eventually owned some media outlets and the Los Vegas Sun. He published a famous story that Senator Joseph McCarthy was a homosexual, which resulted in McCarthy marrying his secretary and adopting a daughter. In 1961 , President Kennedy granted him a felony pardon. Hank was allied with Robert Mahue, a former F.B.I. man with C.I.A. ties, who had been Howard Hughes’ right-hand man. Former C.I.A. agent Carl Oglesby said that the plumbers were really after some information Greenspun had on Nixon. Greenspun told Nixon aide Herb Klein tht he had evidence that Nixon used the Hughes money to furnish the San Clemente estate.

Bennett said there was some idle talk about it but that nothing was done because it became clear that the Maine Senator would not be the Democratic nominee. However, the Watergate transcript makes it clear that Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman thought the burglary had come off and that Greenspun’s office was also bugged. Greenspun said his aluminum windows and safe showed signs of having been jimmied. Hughes Tool people assisted Hunt and his crew. The C.I.A. referred him to a retired agent to act as “lockkey.” It was also to loan him cameras and a disguise.

It is also known from secret Senate hearings that Bennett obtained a price from Hunt for bugging Howard Hughes and Clifford Irving.

Bennett admitted to his case officer, Martin J. Lukoskie, that he held back information from Watergate investigators. He used a friend to persuade Chairman Sam Ervin not to look into C.I.A. ties to the Watergate scandal. Bennett also worked with DNC lawyer E.B. Williams to kill off the C.I.A. part of the story and to remove that aspect from the DNC litigation. When Edward Bennett Williams was called before a Watergate grand jury, the C.I.A. paid half his legal expenses. According to Lukoskie, Bennett fed Robert Woodward good information in return for not looking into the C.I.A.’s role in the affair. Bennett testified at a secret hearing that he , on behalf of Hughes Tool, gave the Nixon campaign a check for a huge amount of money.

Bennett also planted stories with the Washington Post to the effect that the Watergate burglary was tied to other black bag jobs on behalf of the White House. Bennett wrote to his case Martin J. Lukasky, his case officer, that he had made friends with Bob Woodward so that he could feed the reporter stories about Charles Colson.

A young, 25 year old, Brigham Young history major, Thomas Gregory, was hired through Mullen to spy on the Democrats. At first he worked in the youth division of the Muskie campaign. Then he was transferred to the McGovern campaign. There he helped the Hunt team bug the McGovern headquarters by leaving a door unlocked. However, he got cold feet and left the operation. He had been a spy for the Brigham Young administration in 1967, entrusted with keeping track of liberal professors. That spying operation became public, and the young spies were expelled to deflect criticism from the provost, who hired them. When Gregory’s role became known, Bennett came forward to try to shield him and attest to his high character. After Richard Nixon resigned, the Justice Department sent the Mormon Church leadership a letter warning it to avoid close ties with the intelligence community.

Many BYU professors were C.I.A. research contractors, and BYU students frequently were summer interns at Langley. The church denied that it ever permitted young missionaries to work for the agency while they were on mission, but the LDS church admits that the agency recruited many of these young men after their missions were finished. These clean cup fellows were loyal and valued obedience to authority.

Bennett was very close to Apostle Mark E. Peterson, who was famous for an anti-Negro speech and his role as enforcer for the Council of 12. He coordinated spying on members who had developed dissenting opinions. It is known that sometimes tapes of their conversations were used in church trials, and the Justice Department warned that bugging for this purpose could present legal problems.

Bennett was also behind the famous and damning interview of Benjamin DeMott on Senator Edward Kennedy’s role in the Chappaquiddick. Given Bennett’s long tenure with the C.I.A., one cannot be blamed for wondering if the agency was behind DeMott’s research.

Watergate: Part Six

Security guard Frank Wills found a lock taped open. He removed the tape and went about his business. When he found the door retaped, he knew there was a problem and called the police. James McCord, one of the burglars, was intensely loyal to the C.I.A., and many think it was he who left a door taped at the Watergate. Either he understood the struggle between Nixon and the agency over drugs or someone instructed him to expose the Watergate burglary. Carl Shoffler, policeman who made the arrest, was close to someone in the C.I.A., voluntarily was doing another shift nearby while skipping his own birthday party. Later, two other men E. Howard Hunt, former C.I.A., and G. Gordon Liddy, former F.B.I., were indicted along with them. Liddy did have certain’special clearances from the C.I.A..” These two men, shared a White House office with a decrambled line to Langley. Kathleen Chenow, who shared the office with them left for a London vacation the next day.

Nixon angered the C.I.A. when he demanded that they play a significant role in the cover-up. He had John Dean call in General Vernon Walters, deputy director of the C.I.A., to induce the C.I.A. to seek to shut down some avenues of investigation. Dean told the general that the F.B.I. theorized that the C.I.A. was behind the bugging and said some of the prisoners might implicate the agency. Some of them were working for a C.I.A. front, the Mullen Company. Dean and Walters met twice more, with Dean trying to get the C.I.A. to provide untraceable money for the Cubans. Eventually, Hunt, who had done black ops at least since the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, was found with $200,000 hush money, but he had not given any to the Cubans. There is a C.I.A. memorandum expressing concern that Hunt was in Dallas the day John F. Kennedy was murdered. Hunt, like Nixon, had several stories about where he was that day.

Vernon Walters, on behalf of Nixon, asked Director Helms ask the C.I.A. to oprovide funds for the cover-up and to warn the F.B.I. that the break-in was a matter of national security. Director Richard Helms reported that he refused. In fact the agency asked the F.B.I. to back off looking at a Mexican source of money for the burgulars, saying it could endanger C.I.A. operations there. According to Walters, Helms told him to suggest to Gray that the investigation not go beyond the five burglars. Helms later denied this, but Walters is not known for dissembling.

Then the agency gave the F.B.I. a green light to go ahead with its investigations. Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman was sure that the president thought that the break-in was somehow tied to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He raised the matter with Helms: “The President asked me to tell you this entire affair may be connected to the Bay of Pigs, and if it opens up, the Bay of Pigs may be blown." . . . “The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.”

Acting F.B.I. Director L. Patrick Gray called Helms to ask about the agency’s involvement, and Helms responded, "there is no C.I.A. involvement." Yet Helms asked Gray not to inverview two unnamed individuals, and Gray told his agents to proceed gingerly with regard to the C.I.A.. He also told the agents nmot to interview the Mexican lawyer who moved some of the hush money to the White House.

How all of this connected to the death of John F. Kennedy is unclear. H.R. Haldeman was certain there was a close tie and he thought that that Nixon meant this when he said the whole problem went back to the Bay of Pigs. Nixon kept bringing up the Bay of Pigs in connection with Watergate and mentioned it in relation to E. Howard Hunt.

The C.I.A. had many reasons to dislike Nixon and damage him. At that time, the C.I.A. was infuriated because Richard Nixon demanded all of its intelligence about its drug operations. Nixon was running what became the DEA by remote control, and for some reason wanted to use the drug agency as the nuceeus of his own intelligence agency. Ten days after the Watergate burglars were arrested, Barry Seal and some others were seized at Shreveport Regional Airport. They had a plane full of explosives ready to go to Cubans in Mexico. This temporarily shut down the major Drugs/Weapons connection with Mexico. James Miller, Seal's co-pilot, said they were completely surprised because they thought they were protected. Miller also said that Seal had been working with Carols Gambino in these transactions

The bust at Shreveport was engineered by the Customs Service, whose head, Myles Ambrose, a Nixon friend and appointee, had criminal connections particularly the Carlos Marcello family. Ambrose somehow made a deal with Tip O'Neill to facilitate the creation of the DEA. He first headed the Drug Enforcement Office, and that became the DEA. From the beginning, some C.I.A. agents were planted in the new agency. One of them was Cesario Diosdado, who had been involved in the Bay of Pigs and had worked both sides in Miami/Cuba matters. Mafioso Sam Giancana said one of the JFK shooters had been a Customs agent, and this led some to believe this was Diosdado. At any rate, Diosdado played a big role in the Shreveport action. The new DEA was known for thugish tactics, specializing in brutality, no-knock entries, and pointless beating of in innocent individuals. Nixon wanted it to become a new domestic intelligence operation. According to Brigadier General Russell S. Bowen, there were at least 100 C.I.A. people hidden in the DEA and they were used as a “White House goon squad....” After the Watergate break-in, legendary agent Lucien Conein, “Black Luigi,” moved over to the DEA and was to head its Special Operations Group, which was said to be a hit squad. Chuck Coleson later admitted that the DEA/Special Operations Group was involved in assassinations and kidnapping. Colson told Senator Lowell Weicker to look into the death of Lucien Sarti, an Italian drug trafficker in Mexico, to understand what the Special Operations Group does. This involved eliminating the Fench Connection in Mexico, which might have aided communists, with a drug operation run by Cubans tied to the C.I.A.. Many murders followed and the DEA succeeded in eliminating the Marseilles dealers and replacing them with what is roughly called the Cali Cartel. Conein once foolishly boasted of his membership in the Corsican Brotherhood, a large drug ring. He ran secret operations there from 1973 to 1984, laying the groundwork for the great increase in the drug trade in the US in the 1980s. In a sense, the drug trade in the United States was being nationalized. The justification was that some leftists were involved in the trade in Latin Ameerica, and that meant that some of the proceeds might go to Communists. That had to be prevented.

The DEA seized far fewer drugs than the Customs Bureau had and Colonel Thomas Fox, former head of counterintelligence for the DIA, noted that they did not seem to have very much information about the narcotics trade. Soon Senator Henry Jackson opened an investigation of the DEA. He found one former C.I.A. agent, now DEA, setting up a gambling haven on the Island of Abaco and other agents hanging around with Robert Vesco. Barry Seal, who was then with the C.I.A. but’sheep dipped” in DEA kept a file on Vesco, but his widow says it somehow disappeared. Some were involved with Vesco in manufacturing a machine pistol. Of course it was Nixon who got Vesco sprung from a Swiss jail, and Vesco who then hired Donald Nixon. When Frank Peroff said Vesco was moving heroin, Peroff was imprisoned. Vesco continued at his businesses.

It seems that the planes first just brought “weed” into the US. Cocaine might have been aboard, but it would be dropped off in the Bahamas, or other foreign location aqnd for the benefit of US drug dealers.

The drug running became such a large operation that Gerry Patrick Hemming and Barry Seal ran a school for smugglers in Texas. They also taught pilots how to carry out rescue operations. For the most part, they were teaching men to fly heavy twin engine planes.

When Jimmy Carter and Admiral Stanfield Turner began firing C.I.A. agents who were thought to be reckless, these people found the drug trade a good way to make a living. C.I.A. people caught moving drugs might be charged, but the cases rarely went anywhere. Their defense was that they were involved in some deep, dark intelligence missions. It was during the Carter years, that pilots like Seal began bringing in heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Prior to US involvement in Afghanistan, the country only produced opium for a few limited markets. When the US became involved, the Pakistani ISI began encouraging peasants to grow opium, and tribal leaders began opening heroin laboratories.

The Carter Administration set up a Council on Drug Abuse and tried to deal with the influx of drugs, but the C.I.A., despite Admiral Turner, stonewalled the administration and would not share information with the council.

Customs people, later DEA, were post likely involved in moving money through Mexico for Richard Nixon. Leland Briggs, then a special agent in Mexico City, once saw Myles Ambrose, Assistant Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, and John Caulfield fly into Mexico City. Caulfield, a former New York policeman, was Nixon's bagman and money launderer. This was when an untraceable $50 million was flowing from Mexico to Nixon's campaign. What else could they have been arranging? Later, George H.W. Bush arranged for $700,000 to pay off some of the Watergate people. The money passed through some Bush Texas friends, but many investigators think it ultimately came through the Mexican Connection which was temporarily shut down by the Seal arrest. In 1974, the case against Seal and the other six fell apart.

Watergate: Part Five

Five men were arrested immediately, all had C.I.A. connections. One ,James McCord, was also a Nixon campaign official . C.I.A. fingerprints were all over this operation, and McCord even told an officer at the police station that these men were all good fellows and had worked for the agency. The next day, the others admitted to being tied to the C.I.A., something agents usually do not do. Yet, the first reports of the story did not put the C.I.A. in a bad light. The telephone number of E. Howard Hunt was found in their address books, and this discovery led the investigation to the White House.

James McCord was a veteran C.I.A. agent and friend of former director Allen Dulles, who introduced McCord to an Air Force colonel as the agency’s best agent. In 1969 he ran the physical security and technical divisions of the Office of Security, which reported directly to the Director of Central Intelligence. McCord had no use for Nixon and told another agent that Nixon was not” one of us.” In A Piece of Tape, he claimed that E. Howard Hunt had information that could bring about the impeacnment of Nixon, but we have no idea what that was. Mc Cord lived with his family in Baltimore, but rented a basement apartment in the District. He testified that he had not met E. Howard Hunt until 1972, but his landlady said Hunt often visited the apartment well before that. She finally ousted McCord because he was visited by women she thought were prostitutes. He claimed he had no bugging equipment until April, 1972, but the landlady said he had all sorts of electrical gear. One wonders why he did not use a hotel room rather than an apartment. It is more likely that the apartment was a safehouse for an intelligence operation run through prostitutes. Some think the bug on Oliver’s phone was placed there after the burgulars were caught because it only turned up long after the arrest and many searches. It was clumsily installed and not the kind that would operate on the frequency McCord was supposed to be using. Former F.B.I. agent said he monitored calls to a Columbia Apartments prostitution ring that serviced politicians and diplomats.

Severeal theorize that McCord found it necessary to expose the burgulary to put to an end a White House investigation that could have led to the C.I.A. prostitution intelligence ring. Some who take this view are not sure that Mark Felt was the only “Deep Throat.” The name could have been a compolsite for intelligence people giving former Naval intelligence man Bob Woodward information to steer the probe away from their intelligence operations.

McCord turned out to be a right-wing propagandist. After his arrest, he started cranking out newsletters saying that the liberal Rockefellers were ruling through Nixon. Oddly, Charles Radford, who was involved in the naval spy ring, had similar notions. He thought the Rockefellers and Nixon had plans to control the international money supply to their benefit.

Nixon seemed astonished by the break-in and came to believe that it was part of a plot to make him look bad. He, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman also believed it was part of some sort of C.I.A. operation and they tried unsuccessfully to get the C.I.A. to clean up its own mess. Seeing the involvement of Hunt and the Cubans, the president thought it could be linked to “the Bay of Pigs thing,” and Haldeman and Ehrlichman thought that those words were Nixon’s way of referencing the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

We also know from a report released in 1975 that the C.I.A. had planted a number of observers in the Nixon White House. Alexander Butterfield, whom Rose Woods thought was C.I.A., eventually revealed Nixon’s elaborate taping system. John Arthur Paisley, a ranking C.I.A. officer, was there helping to find leaks and serve as C.I.A. laison with the “plumbers unit.” He was most likely Hunt’s control officer. At the time, he was involved in a sex partner’s swapping ring that was attended by reporter Carl Bernstein. Some think Paisley gave Nixon information about the agency’s involvement in the death of Kennedy. Paisley was considered an expert on that subject. His 1978 death was ruled a suicide even though the right-handed Paisley was shot behind the left ear and his body weighted down in the Chesapeake Bay.

Nixon had been poking around for information on this subject since 1969, when he sent John Ehrlichman to ask Richard Helms for all the C.I.A.’s information on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Helms refused to provide any information and got away with it. Senator Howard Baker once remarked, “Nixon and Helms have so much on each other, neither of them can breathe.” Ehrlichman later told Haldeman that Nixon’s references to the Bay of Pigs was code fcor the Kennedy assassination. Nixon knew immediately after the break-in that the Cubans who were with McCord at the Watergate were tied to the Bay of Pigs, and he told Haldeman this was a fact. Paisley was considered an expert on that subject. His 1978 death was ruled a suicide even though the right-handed Paisley was shot behind the left ear and his body weighted down in the Chesapeake Bay.

Richard Ober, a James Jesus Arrington protégé, had an office in the White House. He developed a very close relationship to Nixon and had unrestricted access to Nixon. Some have theorized that it was then that Ober learned that Nixon was determined to damage the C.I.A.. We have no idea what his role was but must assume that his first loyalty was to the agency. Ober graduated with Ben Bradlee in the Harvard Class of 1943. Obere went into the OSS and Bradlee went to Naval Intelligence. However, at the time of Watergate, Bradlee stated that he had never met Ober. He was also in charge of Operation Chaos, the effort to spy on anti-war people and Nixon’s opponents. The C.I.A. wanted to scale this dangerous operation back. Alexander Butterfield, a former C.I.A. agent working in the White House, told the Senate Investigating Committee that Nixon was having all of his conversations recorded, and General Vernon Walters of the C.I.A. pointed out the smoking gun tape to the committee. Ambassador George H.W. Bush, then head of the RNC and a former C.I.A. man, established the reputation as a strong Nixon loyalist, but he had a way of giving bad advice to Nixon on how to handle the scandal. He also set Lowell Weicher, a Republican on the Watergate committee, on the warpath against the White House when he tried to blackmail the Connecticut Senator with information that Weicher had received some Townhouse money.

We know that McCord was the teams electronics guy and that he earlier planted a bug in Chairman Lawrence O Brien’s telephone that did not work. There is some evidence that he also left a door lock to the parking garage taped so a security man could find it. Oddly, the tape was horizontal rather than vertical, making it easier for security people to spor it. Eugenio Martinez , one of the burgulars, later said they were joined there by someone who had infiltrated the DNC and that they were lookling for proof that Castro donated to the George McGovern campaign. Martinez remained on the C.I.A. payroll until June 17, 1972 and some speculate that he could have told his handler about the break-in before it occurred.