Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part 7

The Contras Send Drugs to the US
In the 1980s, the Contras started selling cocaine in the United States with no prompting from anyone in our government. The C.I.A. picked up on the trade almost immediately and repeatedly reported new developments in it. The evidence on this is abundant. Yet, have no evidence on when the US government decided to aid and abet the transportation of drugs from Central America in order to pay for weapons for the Contras.Moreover, it is clear that enormous amounts were raised and that relatively little went to the Contras. By one estimate, only 3% reached them.

It is known that the first Conta drug shipments entered the United States in 1981, and that a subsequent ( 1982) Amemorandum of understanding@ issued by Attorney General William French Smith freed the C.I.A. of an obligation to report any criminal activities on the part of the Contras. (President Clinton rescinded this ruling in 1995. ) Director Casey wanted protection because knowing about the trade and not informing the F.B.I. or another domestic agency could have been a crime. There a large pool of former operatives who had been cut loose in the seventies who could be employed by North and others in the covert operations in Latin America.

These men detested Jimmy Carter and his party and were willing to do anything necessary in the service of Ronald Reagan. They were motivated by anti-communism, but fundamentally were driven by a quest for money and power, and , above all, “the adrenaline that stems from being able to create chaos.” Moreover, a number of small airlines were available for hire. They had sprung up when Air America was decommissioned in the seventies.

In 1981, President Reagan instructed the C.I.A. to help Argentina strengthen the Contra. This plan was hatched by Bill Casey, and there is no indication that Casey revealed in selling it, that the C.I.A. had been using the Argentine military in the seventies to train right wing elements in Central Americas. One wonders if this was because, this had occurred without the knowledge of Jimmy Carter. Casey could not pronounce “Nicaragua” and continually said “Nic-a-wha-wha.” He saw aid to the Contras entirely in the context of the cold war and paid no attention to people in the agency who saw it in as larger context.

Although the Sandanistas had stopped supplying insurgents in Salvador, Casey sold the plan to the intelligence committees as an effort to cut off the arms flow. Representative Lee Hamilton wondered if the operation violated standing treaties and international law. Nevertheless, the committees gave their assent. This was the camel head getting under the tent. Soon it became clear to insiders that the real plan was to overturn the Nicaraguan government, a clear violation of u\US and international law. The members of the intelligence committee bided their time, giving Casey limited support, waiting for clear e4vidence that he was attempting regime change. Later they moved against him when the agency was caught mining Managua harbor. 1

The Argentines were working with Bolivian drug lord Roberto Suarez in drug operations in a number of countries. Some of proceeds went to the Contras. The C.I.A. had helped the drug lords come to power in the so-called “Cocaine Coup” of 1980. The coup was led by Suarez cousin Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez and was engineered by Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie, using the name Klaus Altmann. He deployed paramilitary squads called “Fiances of death” that wore swastika armbands.

Barbie was a long-time C.I.A. asset there and had worked with previous governments there. Barbie became the security advisor for Gomez, when he took power in 1980. Barbie was in business with Licio Gelli of P-2 in peddling arms in Latin America. This action was an outgrowth of a US-inspired Operation Condor, an effort on the part of right wing military elements in Latin America to weaken leftist elements by any means possible, including assassination. Barbie had played an important role in establishing Condor and in teaching Bolivia’s military intelligence people advanced methods of interrogation and torture. 2 Garza gave the Interior Ministry to his nephew Roberto Suarez, a major drug dealer. A more important drug dealer linked to these men was Sonia Atala, the “Bolivian’snow Queen,” who was closely tied to the C.I.A. and became the main tie between Bolivia and the Columbian cartels.

The C.I.A. assisted her by breaking her competitors. It is believed that companies established by Barry Seal in Hondouras were used as fronts for preparing the coup. Seal did not use them for his drug business, instead relying upon his companies in Panama and the Cayman Islands. In the 1980s, there was a huge drug lab in Huanchaca to support C.I.A. drug operations in South America.

Seal dealt directly with the Snow Queen. For a time, her main companion was Joe Bonnano's granddaughter. When she was finally arrested by the DEA, she gave up a few underlings and went back in business. One of her trusted pilots was Bo Abbott, a DEA agent who had been trained by the agency to land on short dirt airstrips. It appears that the DEA cooperated fully with the C.I.A.'s Operation Condor. It had its own well-publicized Operation Condor, which was mainly aimed at nailing drug dealers not tied to the US. There were many agents who did not understand what was going on so there were occasional arrests of drug people the US cooperated with. Quoting Seal, Abbott said that at any given time only 10% of the Americans in the drug trade were private operators; the rest worked for the C.I.A. or DEA. Abbott often flew loads of drugs to Addison, Texas, where the DEA has a major base.

Another key figure was Stefano “Alfa” Delle Chiaie, an Italian Fascist and member of P2, who led a band of Argentine veterans of the “dirty war” who called themselves “the Phoenix Commandos,” named for the famed American mass murder program. Their victims were raped, murdered, and castrated. Reverend Moon’s Unification Church also had close ties to these thugs, but it left Bolivia when the regime acquired a terrible reputation for drug running. The church, instead, invested in Honduras and Uruguay, and had close ties with drug traffickers in both places.

By then the whole Honduran government was deeply involved in the drug trade, and by the early eighties, Dewey Claridge, lead C.I.A. agent in the area, depended upon drug operators there to help fund the contras. He was a seasoned and charismatic operative who had the ability to inspire subordinate to follow him through the very gates of hell Claridge, a member of the C.I.A. old boys network, was a flashy dresser and viewed a “can do” man and was given a direct line of communications to DCI Bill Casey. The DCI and Claridge were “intoxicated with their certitudes” and uncaring about any cautionary criticism. Together they were involved in several near fiascoes before Claridge was moved to another post. Their blind certainty would foreshadow the outlook of the Neoconservatives who later led the United States into invading Iraq. Argentine assistance In the secret war ended when the US gave the United Kingdom in the Falklands War. Claridge was later convicted on seven counts of perjury and was pardoned by George H.W. Bush. 3


Dewey Claridge was a favorite of Ronald Reagan, who was in touch with him sometimes several times a week to learn of his progress and exploits. At a minimum, Clarridge reported once each week to Reagan, who in other areas left the impression he was a hands-off chief executive. The president left a great deal of governing to others but he followed his secret war in Nicaragua very closely. When Clarridge’s role was exposed in 1984 he handed day-to-day control of operations over to Oliver North, and he took a post in Europe.

Bill Casey subsequently introduced North to General Manuel Noriega and to key C.I.A. operatives in the region. Noriega had been dropped from the C.I.A. payroll by Admiral Turner and was promptly reinstated by Casey. The ambassador to Honduras in 1981-1985 was John Negroponte. At the time that was the largest US embassy in the world, and it was believed that Negroponte played a guiding role in the US secret war against Latin American progressives. Negroponte later held three top positions in the administration of George W. Bush, most important of which was Director of National Intelligence.

In the late seventies, Barbie had worked with a Bolivian dictator and his counterparts in Latin America in identifying and eliminating people likely to oppose them. At the same time, his forces were protecting the drug trade. A generation of Latin American security people learned interrogation techniques from this master of the bullwhip and pushing needles under fingernails, the use of truth drugs, and sending electricity “by nodes attached to the nipples and testicles.”

He also instructed them in creating a network of concentration camps. He travelled from country to country giving lectures in rooms adorned with the iconography of the Nazis. He was adept at targeting for murder priests, missionaries, and their friends who sympathized with the suffering of the poor, even though a fascist priest in the Vatican, with the assistance of the OSS, helped him and his family find safety in Latin America. These assassinations were part of the Banzer Plan, which was an intrinsic part of the C.I.A. Condor Operation to protect Latin American dictators. These operations became the prototype fot the US anti-leftist operations in the 1980s. Barbee, the “butcher of Lyons,” was only one of hundreds of Nazis and their collaborators spirited out of Europe to serve the US as spies, scientists, and guerilla warriors. Many were saved from war crimes prosecution so that they could serve the US in Europe battling Communism. Many of them were tied to Reinhard Gehlen’s Nazi military intelligence network, more than a few turned out to be soviet double agents. Harry Truman said he did not want an American version of the Gestapo, but the C.I.A.'s Allen Dulles seemed to have been able to accomplish a great deal moving in that direction without Truman’s full knowledge. Under American guidance, the Gehlen people were placed in Interpol and Gehlen ran the BND, West Germany’s secret police. 4/

REagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part 6

The White House and Drugs

There is no absolutely irrefutable evidence that a decision was made in the White House to permit the Contras to sell drugs. We do know that the government of Costa Rica examined the matter thoroughly and found it necessary to ban Lt. Colonel Oliver North and three other high US operatives for life from its territory. In 1998 Frederick Hitz, C.I.A. Inspector General confirmed that the agency was involved in this trade. In his report to Congress, the general referenced a memorandum, to Vice President Bush that provided specific information on one set of drug operations. 1The agency admitted to tolerating the trade by Contras, but it did not claim that its own personnel were involved. It has also not denied evidence that it acted in the eighties to torpedo investigations that would have exposed the Contras" drug trade. Lewis Tambs, former ambassador to Costa Rica, later wrote that it was his impression that North, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, and C.I.A. official Alan D. Fiers, Jr. were “triumvirate” operating the secret war. 2

The Oliver North diaries do not establish clearly that the NSC and C.I.A. was dealing in drugs North was a Marine Lieutenant Colonel and a C.I.A. agent working in Reagan’s National Security Council. . They make it clear that North and American agents clearly knew that the Contras were involved in drug running. There is no evidence North notified the DEA of these activities. North worked hard to obtain the release of an Honduran general who could have exposed the drug running activities of the Contras. 3 However, it was also clear that many actions were taken to facilitate drug running.

The Oliver North diary for August 9, 1985 noted that a plane flown for Mario Calero, the brother of the head of the Contras, was probably carrying drugs to New Orleans. The July 12, 1985 entry notes that General Richard Secord told North that weapons in a Honduran warehouse had been purchased with drug money. Secord’s partner, Albert Hakim, an Iranian who became an US citizen, handled the procurement of weapons for him. Hakim also sold weapons to Iran and helped the shah’s generals park the bribes they received in Swiss bank accounts. Secord had been dealing weapons while still an active duty Air Force officer. Later, as a private citizen, he helped North move arms to Iran in the Iran/Contra deal and told a Congressional committee that his commission was $8,000,000.

It should be noted that the Senate never got all of Ollie North’d diaries. His attorneys had the right to expunge whatever they thought was irrelevant and just give whatever remaining text there was to the Senate committee. It never got clean copies or the actual diaries, and it had a very short mandated life, meaning the ten months it had to enforce subpoenas ran out before the wheels of justice could turn.

An April 1, 1985 memo from Robert Owen to North ( “the Hammer”) told of Contras on the southern front running drugs. Owen was a former member of Senator Daniel Quayle’s staff and functioned as North’s eyes and ears in Central America. Owen was on Quayle’s staff in 1980 and worked also as Donald Gregg’s liaison ON Capitol Hill.

He remained on Quayle’s staff until 1983, and took C.I.A. operative John Hull around to meet important Republicans on the Hill. Quayle was close to Bill Casey and Beurt SerVaas, a board member of Veterans of the OSS, which still had great influence in the C.I.A.. In November, Owen joined a lobbying firm that represented the Contras, but he was essentially part of North’s Project Democracy. . In 1985, he founded the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Assistance and received a humanitarian assistance grant from the State Department In a interview with CBS’s West 57th Street, mercenary commander Jack Terrel said that Owen told him he took money to Hull on a monthly basis. He was with Hull on the night of the La Penca bombing. Owen’s role was that of a cut out between the NSA and the Contras.

In a February 10, 1986 memo, Robert Owen tells North--now “ Blood and Guts”-- that a plane previously used by Vortex Corporation in Florida had been used to run drugs. The owner of the firm was a known drug dealer, and a humanitarian venture controlled by North and Elliott Abrams paid the firm $300,000 that year. The memo also detailed Contra drug activities and suggested that two drug dealers working with them were probably just in it for the money. . On July 28, 1988, two DEA agents told the Kerry Subcommittee about a DEA sting operation against the Columbian Drug Cartel. North wanted to take the $1.5 million in bribe money for his purposes or operations. On August 23, 1988, North e-mailed John Poindexter that Manuel Noriega would “take care of the Sandanistas” if the NSC cleaned up his image. The reference was to drug dealing. North suggested giving Noriega $1 million from the profits of the Ireanian arms sale. There are numerous other references to drug money in the North notebooks, including a February 14, 1985 reference to $14 million raised through the drug trade. 4

Reagan and Bush's Not-so-Secret War: Part 5

Provisioning the Nicaraguan Contras

Supplying the Nicaraguan Contras was a major priority for C.I.A. Director William Casey, who sometimes carried out his own foreign policy. Casey essentially carried out his own foreign policy and was repeatedly successful in blocking George Schultz’s arms control efforts. Casey and the NSA also undermined Schultz’s position on bargaining to retrieve hostages. The C.I.A. and NSA dealt not only with Iran but terrorists who held Father Lawrence Jenko and other hostages. On the other hand, Schultz unsuccessfully tried field as peace plan for Nicaragua, thus attempting to end Casey and North’s secret war there.

Casey did all he could to assist Oliver North carry on support for the Nicaraguan contras, while barely staying within the law. After the Boland Amendment became law, Casey was very careful what he did about Nicaragua and he told potential Contra donors they would have to talk to Ollie North. He even signed a document for the Senate intelligence Committee promising he would remain within the law. While some in the C.I.A. approved of Casey’s aggressive policies, others dreaded another round of Congressional investigations and new restrictions and tried to circumscribe some of his most risky policies.

Disgusted with Congressional restrictions, he dreamed of the day when the C.I.A. would be a self-financing, “full-service agency.” To reach self-financing status, he accelerated efforts of the agency to enter private business. There is no way of knowing if he knew of C.I.A. involvement in the drug grade.1


Much of the supply effort was coordinated by Lt. Colonel Oliver North, a deputy in the office of the National Security Advisor. A number of former C.I.A. agents played important roles, as did C.I.A. contractors in central America. At first, it appeared that the C.I.A. was permitting the Contras to bring cocaine into the United States to pay for weapons.

The agency and Justice Department repeatedly shielded US drug dealers who were acting as distributors for the Contras.2 The C.I.A.’s Inspector General testified much later that between 1982 and 1995, the agency had an agreement with Justice hat it did not have to report drug dealing on the part of its assets. Janet Reno classified as top secret the department’s investigation of C.I.A. drig trading/ 3
By late 1985 or 1986, it was clear that the drug trade was being coordinated out of Washington. The operation had become so large that elaborate money laundering schemes in the US had become necessary. Many of those involved in this drug trade were Cuban ex-patriots who were timed to US intelligence work since the Bay of Pigs invasion. There is significant evidence that it also became necessary to share profits with some politicians, mostly Republicans. 4

Of far greater importance was the elaborate executive infrastructure, answerable to Vice President George H.W. Bush, to secretly supply the right-wing Contras. Congress cut legitimate aid to a trickle with the two Boland Amendments, making all other assistance of any sort, including the use of US personnel illegal. Another breach of the law occurred in the Reagan-Bush, Sr., years. The NSC and C.I.A. violated the law by advising and provisioning the Contras in Nicaragua.

They used US military personnel in some operations against Nicaragua, a violation of the Neutrality Act, which forbids use of force against nation with whom the US is at peace. Later, the violation of the law was compounded when Congress legislated against supplying the contra rebels in Nicaragua. Almost certainly, Bush was deeply involved in operational problems. The complexity of this mechanism was necessary in order to give as many people as possible deniability and to circumvent laws requiring the C.I.A. to report its covert operations to Congress –

A year later, a subgroup was created to deal with terrorism (NSDD-30). It was called the Terrorist Incident Working Group. The agencies involved were Department of Defense, F.B.I., C.I.A., and NSC staff. In 1984, Reagan signed NSDD-138, which gave TIWG greater power and the ability to form subgroups. It formed Operations Sub-Group-1 under Ted Shackley; it was the “anti-narcotics group.” OSG-2 was headed by Lt. Colonel Oliver North and was concerned with anti-terrorism. OSG-3 was “our ‘alignment’ group,” under General Richard Secord. It dealt with troublesome agents and others.

At its peak, there were 80 operatives from the US, Israel, Turkey, Britain, and Denmark. It predates the Reagan administration, but what is unique about it is that it is now directly controlled by the Vice President. . In 1987, the Iran/Contra scandal made it necessary for him to step aside. Secord took over his group, and Gene “Chip” Tatum took over the alignment group. From the beginning of SSG, Bush drew upon the advice of his assistant Donald Gregg and representatives of British and Israeli intelligence. In 1984, Dewey Claridge, who had been running C.I.A. operations in Central America, was transferred to Europe. This was also the year a second and tougher Boland Amendment was passed. The first amendment passed the House December 8, 2002, 411-0.5 It is very there would have been no dissent on this kind of vote in subsequent years, when the New Right became a major force in the Republican party.


It is likely in the 1980s that many secret black operations were coordinated by entities under the control of Vice President George H..W. Bush. He chaired the Task Force on Combatting Terrorism, why served as that launching pad for many illegal activities of Lt. Colonel Oliver North and others in Central America. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive-3( -3), entitled “Crisis Management,” which established a Special Situation Group headed by the vice president to deal with terrorism and other matters. Secretary of State George Schultz made it clear he did not agree with this directive. The SSG essentially stood between Reagan and the Secretary of State, ranking far above other interagency groups.

This and subsequent NSDDs effectively placed Vice President George H.W. Bush in charge of US intelligence operations. Moreover, they erected an asbestos wall between Bush, Donald Gregg, his national security advisor and secret and illegal activities being carried out in Central America in the name of the United States. By employing National Security Decision Directives , Reagan effectively kept secret a large part of American foreign policy as NSDDs do not have to be revealed to Congress. 6

The covert war in Central America in some ways laid the foundations for America’s future imperial adventures in the Middle East. Some intelligence was cooked, and administration actions ere covered by the claim that the Communists and their allies were resorting to terrorism. Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams, and Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick gave the public buckets of misinformation about the murders of unarmed men, nuns—more than twenty of whom were thrown out of helicopters-- women, and children. John Negroponte, then ambassador to Honduras, deceived Congress about all this while playing a major role in the Central American black operations Ambassador Negroponte hid and protected the grisly crimes of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, army chief who had promised to employ the same bloody tactics used by neo-Nazis in Argentina.

Indeed, Negroponte played a role in establishing Battalion 3-16, which carried out many barbaric crimes. Negroponte said Alvarez for his “dedication to democracy,” and Ronald Reagan gave the general the Legion of Merit medal. During Negroponte’s term there, civilian deaths reached into the tens of thousands as “special intelligence units” or death squads roamed the land. 7

These clandestine operations involved very serious breaches of the law in the Reagan-Bush,Sr., years. The NSC and C.I.A. violated the law by advising and provisioning the Contras in Nicaragua. They used US military personnel in some operations against Nicaragua, a violation of the Neutrality Act, which forbids use of force against nation with whom the US is at peace. Later, the violation of the law was compounded when Congress legislated against supplying the contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Almost certainly, Bush was deeply involved in operational problems. It is also abundantly clear that the NSC and C.I.A. helped and protected the Contras to bring drugs into the United States as a way of financing their operations. There is considerable evidence that the C.I.A. itself did more than watch and help these operations. The irony is that after moving tons of drugs into the United States to finance the contras, the problem in Nicaragua was solved by threatening Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega" family. He was told that his second cousin, a very close friend, would -be killed on a certain day if Ortega did not announce free elections. After his cousin was murdered, he backed down. It is difficult to understand what those involved in these activities thought democracy demanded of them. Perhaps Lt. Colonel Oliver North’s secretary, Fawn Hall, spoke for them when she said they were obeying a “ higher law.” Two decades later, those who took a similar view of the rights of the executive branch of government were talking about inherent powers of the president which exceeded those concretely spelled out in legislation or the constitution.

There does not seem to be any clear evidence about exactly when the C.I.A. started to use drugs to pay for weapons in Central America. It is clear that Argentine-trained right-wing forces in Central America were financing their operations through the sale of drugs by 1980. But the evidence is unmistakable that the C.I.A. eventually sold or permitted to be sold drugs to support the Contras. In time, it became clear to some White House operatives that the contra leaders saw their activities as essentially a business, yet nothing was done to reign them in make them more accountable.

In the 1997 Senate hearings, memos of General Paul F. Gorman , head of Southern Command, were read. In one, he said, : “There is not a single group in unconventional warfare that does not use narcotics to fund itself.” 8 In a civil case deposition, it was revealed that the C.I.A. laundered some drug money through the Republic National Bank and relied on one of its officers, Nan Morabia. When Oliver North needed cash, Morabia's husband and son would deliver bags with hundreds of thousands of dollars to North operatives in New York hotel rooms. These cash drops were carried out to circumvent federal currency laws. North also moved money through Swiss accounts and a Costa Rican seafood company, Figorificos de Pntarenas. 9

The North Plan and Its Descendants in Recent Years

FEMA agency has continued to acquire more and more extensive powers, especially in recent years. In 2006, FEMA employed Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root to build more detention facilities at a cost of $385 million. The old North facilities were usually old military bases and thjey were originally set aside to deal with leftist illegal immigrants, whom North had fear4ed were sent to secretly invade the US to help the Nicaraguan contras. The new legislation says the new detention and processing facilities are for illegal immigrants “or to support the rapid development of new programs.” 1

In January, 2006, the Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton’s Kellogg, Brown and Root a contract for $360 million to build detention facilities to be used in “new programs.” In May, 2001, President George W. Bush resumed these planning tasks and placed them under Vice President Richard Cheney, who had supported North’s efforts when he was a Wyoming Congressman in the 1980s. Later a Northern Command of the US Army(CINC-NORTHCOM) was created to assist with homeland defense within the US. In 2007, it rerquested power to create special operations units similar to those being deployed in Iraq. Some wondered why commandos and special intelligence squads were needed within the United States. 2 In 2010, Amy Goodman found evidence that military people were spying on peace people in Olympia, Washington and that these activities continued after George W. Bush left office. It is likely these activities were coordinated out of Northern Command.

Early on, FEMA began a campaign to show that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 really did not bar use of troops to quell civil disturbances. It might be added that Congress gave George W. Bush the power to suspend the Possee Comitatus Act of 1878. 3


Expansion of North Plan under George W. BushThe second Bush administration’s Patriot ACt provided in section ( 605) which created a permanent and secret Homeland Security force known as the “United States Secret Uniformed Division.” When it thought it had good reason could arrest people without warrant. It would also function at special events of national significance (SENS), which it was free to designate itself.

This new provision is the more worrisome when it is recalled that on January 6, 2003, President Bush signed an executive order permitting himself to set aside habeas corpus and the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits using troops in domestic situations. He did not invoke this power when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, but it remains on the books. This provision was lifted from a 1982 plan by Lt. Colonel Oliver North to give FEMA a new mission.”

The act was overwhelming extended in March, 2006 after some “legislative hocus-pocus” which changed little but provided a “figleaf” of a compromise which enabled moderates and most liberals enough cover to join the stampede. Then in October, Bush signed Senator John Warner’s National Defense Authorization Act further swept aside the restraints of the old Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act of 1807. The president’s power to declare martial law framed in the context of national emergencies “other conditions in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred….” During the duration of the exercise of this authority, he must advise the Congress what he is doing at fourteen day intervals.

In 2002, the Bush administration established the Northern Command at Peterson Air Base in Colorado. Like other commands, it was headed by a CINC, a proconsul or regional commander in chief who does not answer to service secretaries or his service chain of command. This new command was given the task responding to terrorism and preventing the introduction of weapons of mass destruction into the United States.

Even in World War II, there was no domestic command because there was a fear that such a centralized command would not be healthy for the future of democracy. No sooner was this command established and the Pentagon started studying ways to prevent itself from being limited by the Posse Comitatus Act. In 2003, the administration also proposed that the military and C.I.A. be given power to subpoena information from credit card companies, libraries, banks, telephone companies, e-mail providers, and internet providers. The proposal did not include judi C.I.A.l oversight. 4 The Washington Post reported that Norcom had developed plans for declaring martial law in fifteen different situations. In late 2003, General Tommy Franks said that “the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government” if mass destruction is ever visited upon the United States. Leading neocon theorist Terry Leeden has said that in such a situation “preserving liberty may require the role of a single leader—a dictator….”

Three years before that, MSNBC reported that Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a new Pentagon spy agency, had look into 1500 separate civilian’suspicious incidents” over a ten month period. One was a Quaker meeting that was planning to protest military recruiting in schools in the Los Angeles area.

George W. Bush signed Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which included in Section 5122 language giving the president and Secretary of Defense the ability to deploy National Guard troops in the states regardless of the wishes of governors. Section 526 reversed traditional posse comitatus legislation by requiring governors to obtain federal permission before using the Guard. Some might find this troubling, the mores so when it is recalled that in January 2006, Congress gave Kellogg, Brown, and Root $385 to build more “temporary detention and processing facilities,” to augment those build under Ronald Reagan.

In 2007, President George W. Bush moved to resurrect the North scheme with a document entitled “National Continuity Policy,” National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51. It required presidential assistant for homeland security Frances Fragos Townsend to develop a full plan within 90 days. There were “classified Continuity Annexes.”5

Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part Four

Conservative Christians, through its people in the military, first discovered the network of camps and its writers assumed that fundamentalist and evangelical leaders were to be rounded up brought to the detention centers by secular humanists in government. This eventually proved to be absurd.

Indeed, the builders of the camps were possibly expecting the evangelicals to round up secular humanists. Granted, some fundamentalists thought of themselves as strict constitutionalists and, so, they thought they could eventually reside in these places. Over time, information on the camps has become so widespread that FEMA has had to acknowledge that some existed for the continuity of government in a nuclear attack or other emergency.

Attorney General William French Smith attempted to reign in FEMA, and it was forced to turn over 12,000 dossiers on political dissidents to the F.B.I. REX-84 continued to constitute the basic plan for dealing with emergencies. North represented only a minority in the Reagan administration and, he was quickly severed from FEMA. Yet the infrastructure for dictatorship that he established remained in place, and two decades later his allies Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld held high positions in government. Unfortunately the evidence is clear that some conservatives still dream of rounding up opponents and that they manage to get into high places. There probably are not as many William French Smiths now as there were in the 1980s in the Republican party. Still, it is unlikely that these people can act on their dreams without something worse than another 9/11.

In the 1980s, Cheney had discussed COG with Donald Rumsfeld, then a former Secretary of Defense and head of a pharmaceuticals company. During Congressional recesses , Cheney would disappear from Washington leaving his wife only a telephone number for emergencies. With four or five dozen others, he participated in continuity of government exercises. He played the role of presidential chief of staff to someone designated as president during an emergency.1

The COG program, tied to the North plan, included surveillance of dissidents. North was most likely using PROMIS software to track dissidents in conjunction with both REX-84 and the COG. It was probably the use of PROMIS that made it necessary to defer the questioning of Congressman Jack Brooks to an executive session of the Iran/Contra Committee.

Overall responsibility for both plans was assigned to Vice President George H.W. Bush, who headed the administrations’ “anti-terrorism” efforts The Miami Herald speculated that many of the people occupying key positions in this secret government had been involved in the October Surprise as well as in the theft of President Carter’s debate briefing book in 1980. Clark was replaced by Robert McFarlane, essentially a staffer who seemed to be easily used by Bill Casey and Oliver North.
A series of Reagan executive orders placed covert activity under his Vice President George H.W. Bush in his capacity as head of the Task Force on Combatting Terrorism. Bush was also made head of the drugs task force, which placed him in a position to protect the C.I.A.’s drug running activities. During his time as chairman of the task force, the volume of drugs entering the United States tripled. Bush also headed the executive branch committee that pressed for the deregulation of the savings and loan banks, which left them open to subsequent plundering by the C.I.A. 2

Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part Three

The plan , reflecting the Reagan- Meese scheme for dealing with Black activists in California, called for the detention of hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens. Environmental activists, supporters of asylum for refugees, and opponents of nuclear energy were also to be watched. On April 18, 1984, President Reagan authorized FEMA to carry out a readiness exercise to see if it could implement the plan. The exercise also went by the name RX84-Bravo ( also Alpha Explan, or Readiness Exercise 1984). It involved practicing to round up 400,000 imaginary aliens. The exercise was coordinated on the fifth floor of FEMA headquarters where heavy metal doors were installed and only certain personnel were admitted. The rationale for the North Plan was that if the US invaded Nicaragua, thousands of Latinos would cross into the US from Mexico and would have to be rounded up. The more likely rationale was that a plan was needed for rounding up dissidents.

General Louis Giuffrida developed a list of 12,000 people from F.B.I. files he thought should be watched. It soon became the basis for a list that was projected to grow to a database of 100,000. names. F.B.I. director learned of this and demanded that the 12,000 files be returned. The files were returned, but FEMA kept copies and retained its data base even though Congress had been led to believe otherwise. The database was kept in conjunction with a continuity of government plan that Oliver North was detailed to develop in 1981. North was working directly under Vice President George H.W. Bush. One aspect of it was what The New York Times called its “Doomsday Plan, which included 20 super secret black programs to be used in the event of a nuclear war. It is interesting that when George W. Bush admitted he authorized spying on the telephone calls of American citizens he linked it to the continuity of government plan. Few in the press picked up on this remark.1

The North FEMA Plan became intertwined with a Continuity of Government Plan that was also developed by the Reagan administration. The Continuity of Government plan was authorized in National Security Decision Directive 55, January, 1983. Charles Allen, deputy director of the C.I.A., was to run it. It is said that when allen first met North, he joked, “Let's see now. Our job is to throw the Constitution out the window.''

There were some private firms involved in it that were run by former C.I.A. people, George Bush’s “ C.I.A. without the C.I.A..” 2

FEMA’s control center is located at Mount Weather, on Route 601 outside Berryville, Virginia. The skeleton of an emergency government exists there, and FEMA, over the years, has been given extraordinary powers that could be used in a national emergency. Most of these powers were conferred by Richard Nixon on February 10, 1972 in E.O. 11490---before FEMA even existed.

Ronald Reagan expanded upon the emergency program by creating Rex 84 Bravo, created by NSDD 52, a program for detaining dangerous foreign immigrants and US citizens likely to assist terrorists. It was similar to a plan Reagan’s staff developed in California while he was governor. The program was supervised by Kenneth de Graffenreid, special assistant to the president, and seems to have been underway by 1984. About 100 detention facilities have been built. Some of them could hold upwards of 20,000 people. Blue Lists were developed containing names of people to be detained. The four chief centers are at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Fort Drum, New York, Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa., and at Camp A.P. Hill in Virginia.

However the most interesting place is a deserted facility in Indianopolis for which Congress keeps appropriating money for reconstruction.
It has been disclosed that the Army’s Civilian Inmate Program was being used to provide labor to build detention facilities. It appears that most camps are in the west, but one was found at Tobyhanna, PA. However, it describes itself now as only being interested in disaster relief. It is still building detention facilities. During a joint hearing on Iran/Contra, Representative Jack Brooks tried to publicly raise the North plan, but Senator Daniel Inouye succeeded in moving the matter to executive session. 3

Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part Two

Only months after the Reagan administration took power, theNew York Times reported “Intelligence Groups Seek Power to Gain Data on U.S. Citizens.” Bill Casey, the new DCI, had given C.I.A. lawyers the task of drafting an executive order that would set aside most restraints on the agency’s domestic operations. As soon as it was finished, he signed a recommendation to the White House for its implementation, and he had the strong backing of another right-winger, Richard Allen, the National Security Advisor. In addition to opening the door to spying in the United States and on USD citizens, it deprived the Justice Department of its role in approving some covert operations. The story broke while Casey was out of the country, and Deputy Director Bobby Inman quickly disavowed the proposed executive order and had the backing of Ed Meese, a top Reagan advisor. However, right wing extremists within the administration would seek other means of accomplishing some of these goals. 1

The Reagan administration also laid plans to use FEMA to act against its political opponents. FEMA is a federal agency created by Executive Order 12148 (April 1, 1979). In the beginning FEMA was not funded by Congressional appropriations. There are all sorts of “conspiracy theories” about where the money came from. Some think that it is so loosely drafted that the agency could suspend the fedral constitution.

In the early years of the administration, Major Oliver North established a Crisis Management Center in the basement of the White House. That basement was where George H.W. Bush woulds manage intelligence operations during the Reagan years. North, NSC liason oto FEMA, assisted retired General Louis Giuffrida, FEMA director, 1982-1985 in developing a contingency plan for FEMA called”REX 84” for the surveillance of leftists, the declaration of a state of emergency, suspension of the constitution, and the governance of the united States. Giuffrida had been Reagan’s emergency planning chief in California, where he and Edwin Meese drafted plans for rounding up Black militants and peace advocates. Their plan was called “Operation Cable Splicere” and was a variant of the Army’s “Garden Plot.” As a graduate student in 1970, he wrote a detailed plan for incarcerating radicals and blacks in detention camps. He developed the California Specialized Training Institute for military commandos and police. A bit of a cowboy, he got himself deputized so he could carry a gun to work in Washington.

North and FEMA director Giuffrida also revised Operation Garden Plot, which dealt with civil disobedience and riots. Giuffrida had developed it initially to deal with an uprising of black militants, and it considered the possibility of rounding up 21,000,000 African Americans. .The revised Operation Garden Plot was actually implemented in Los Angeles during the civil unrest accompanying the Rodney King riots in 1987 and during some more recent anti-globalization riots . There was also “Operation Lasso,” a C.I.A. operation, designed to distribute guns among whites before an expected black riot.

The general installed a new telephone system at FEMA and forbade any personal calls. A record was kept of every number dialed. He seemed obsessed with terrorists and “radical environmentalists.” Henry Hyde, a ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, worked with North in developing the martial law governance plan. Major General Richard Secord had also spent some time at FEMA and had worked with these people on the martial law scheme.

In essence, the North plan would place government in the hands of FEMA and the president. The president received power to take over legislative and judi C.I.A.l functions. The North Plan called for FEMA to report directly to the president, but it had power to appoint military commanders and take over state governments. (Executive Order 11490). The plan was predicated upon Frank Carlucci ‘s NSC directive in 1981 that stated: “ Normally a state of martial law will be proclaimed by the President. However in the absence of such action by the President, a senior military commander may impose martial law in an area of his command where there had been a complete breakdown in the exercise of government functions by local authorities.'"

By then, FEMA already possessed many relocation centers where people could be kept, and the federal government has continued to build more up to the time of this writing. North thought it necessary to be ready to detain as many as 400,000 people. These facilities could also be used in the event of uncontrolled population movements across the Mexican border into the United States.

John Brinkerhoff, Giuffrida’s deputy, made the case for using troops in civil disturbanced and played a key role in planning for African-American disturbances. Today, he is with the Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Brinkerhoff told PBS in 2002: “The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.”

Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part One

Through most of American history, conservatives have insisted on the strict observance of law and have opposed the expansion of executive power. The Reagan administration’s administration of legislation affecting the civil rights of African Americans sometimes seemed a bit lax, and it approached economic regulations and labor law with a business-friendly perspective.

But in its public manifestation, it did not appear bent on expanding executive power or on circumventing statutory law. However, in covert matters, its record was very different. In its dealings in Central America, it constantly circumvented the law and lied to Congress. Its weapons sales in the Middle East also circumvented the law and sometimes violated it outright. In matters involving PROMIS software, its representatives consistently lied to courts about government use and marketing of this software.

Reagan established the White House Working Group to coordinate efforts to sell his policies in Latin America and work with many other interests including the Heritage Foundation, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and Pat Robertson’s Freedom Council in getting out their message. The seeds of a new American world order were here and made possible by a new alliance of nationalists, Neo Conservatives, the religious right, and free marketers. Over time, nationalists like Cheney and Rumsfeld allied so fully with the Neo Conservatives that some thought they had changed. Those involved in orchestrating these operations saw them as ultimately successful, but the Contras never dealt the Sandanistas a military defeat. The reform regime fell due to US economic pressure. 1

In battling Communists and their leftist allies, the actions of the Reagan administration strongly suggest that it believed there were almost no legal restraints on what it could do. In 1986, the United States government began selling arms to Iran and using the profits to help the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Both actions were illegal. Ronald Reagan denied having authorized this program. This turned out to be the tip of a massive iceberg of illegal activity. The US had been selling arms to Iran and Iraq since the beginning of the Reagan administration. 2

Arms Sales to Iran After the October (1980) Surprise

The October Surprise deal with Iran did not end US secret and illicit arms sales there. Not counting the sales Associated with the so-called Iran-Contra deal, the United States sold at least $15 billion worth of arms to Iran. Billions more were sold to Iraq. These sales were illegal, violations of the Arms Export Munitions Control Act, but deemed necessary for policy purposes. According to the New York Times, Major General Colin Powell was among the first in the DOD to know that these arms were being transferred, and he facilitated the transfer of 2008 TOW missiles to the C.I.A. which was the middleman in the transaction. 1

Beginning in 1992, the C.I.A. also shared intelligence with Iraq. The act forbade third party transaction, but the latter offered some cover so North and others arranged elaborate third country arrangements. Former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Vice President Spiro Agnew also profited handsomely in arranging them. The profits were needed for Pentagon and intelligence covert operations, and some of the money went to finance the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

The weapons that went to Iran and Iraq were drawn from repositioned stockpiles without the knowledge of the NATO allies or the NATO commander. The allies would have objected as the shortage of arms would have meant at times that only a nuclear response would have been available had the Soviets attacked. The US arranged to let the Soviets learn of this arrangement through a prisoner exchange in 1986. By then the cat was out of the bag as the Italian government discovered that massive shipments were being made out of the ports of Talamone and Tuscania, and an Italian investigative judge turned out a 6,000 page on this part of the arms sales.

At that time, an arms salesman Arif Durrani testified that he witnessed \these dealings and ended up with a long prison term after a trial in which he was prohibited from introducing much evidence to support his claims. In addition, the Israelis sold huge quantities of weapons to Iran and then asked the US to replenish their arsenals. After Iran-Contra was revealed, huge shipments continued from US sources and Israel to Iran. While all of this was going on, the US through Vice President George H.W. Bush manipulated oil prices downward to assure that Iran would have problems buying everything it needed.

The idea was to make money on arms sales while still trying to pick a winner. There is also considerable evidence that Iraq received. Iraq was acquire US chemical weapons through third party channels. US authorities did not consider it a serious matter as these weapons were hard to store and use and had a short shelf life. Some chemical weapons producing equipment and others were shipped by Wakenhut from Eagle Pass,Texas to Chicago, and then to Baltimore. Equipment sometimes originated at a plant in Boca Rotan, Florida.

Some weapons purchases were made with loans diverted from US agricultural credit programs, and the department later had to mislead a House subcommittee under Charles Rose that looked into the matter. C. Nicholas Rostow, special assistant to President Bush, also wrote to departmentofficials on April 8, 1991, instructing them not to give Congress documents about this matter.

A Pilot's Claims about t he October Surprise and Iran-Contra

An August 22, 1985 memo from Admiral John Poindexter to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane stated that Captain Gunther Karl Russbacher ( 1942-2005) piloted a DC 6 taking Tow missiles[ part of eventual 408] and Hawk parts to Iran as part of what was known as the Iran-Contra deal. Oliver North was aboard, and the missiles were mistakenly taken to the wrong Iranian unit. Robert Hunt(ONI and NSC) was also aboard. [ Hunt is now in prison.] Another of the admiral’s memos describes large deposits made in the accounts of those involved. A May 30 Oliver North memo to the admiral describes a snag in further negotiations with the Iranians, which Russbacher attended. A June 16 memo from Vice President Bush to the admiral asks him to thank Hunt and Russbacher for their efforts. A November 11, 1993 letter from Mossad agent Moshe Ben-Manash confirmed the facts of the Iran/Contral exchange of missiles and Russbacher’s role. 1

Captain Russbacher claims that he was the command pilot on the plane that b rought George H. W. Bush to Paris on October 19, 1980 to negotiate the October Surprise at the Hotel Crillion in Paris, an arrangement whereby the Iranians agreed to hold 52 American hostages until after the presidential election. Richard Brenneke, Russbacher’s cousin and also a Portland arms dealer, was another pilot , and the third was Heinrich Rupp. Brenneke, later in court testimony, revealed that he had never been a C.I.A. employee. Rather he was a sole contractor with the agency. Brenneke was later jailed when he discussed the flight but a jury believed his story and released him. 2

Bush was there only a few hours—long enough to see the deal cemented, and Russbacher shuttled Bush back to the US aboard an SR –71, the Blackbird needle nosed spy plane. George H.W. Bush rambled on about Russbacher’s claim at a 1992 news conference. Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer, paid for the return flight’s fuel with his credit card. Khashoggi has invested in real estate and any number of other businesses, at least once as a partner of the head of Saudi intelligence. Khashoggi has often collected commissions through companies in Lichtenstein and Switzerland. In 1986, he was considered the richest man in the world. This ship, the Nabia, was used in the movie “Never Say Never.” He was arrested in Switzerland in 1988 and tried in the United States on fraud charges and, he and codefendant Imelda Marcos, won acquittal. In 2001, his financial empire appeared to have collapsed into bankruptcy



Frank Connolly, writing for the Sunday Business Post, claims Khashoggi made business protection payments to Osama bin Laden. In 1999, Wallace Hilliard, a Khashoggi man, bought Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Long Island Press reporter Sander Hickes found that the C.I.A. was most likely a silent partner. Later Huffman Aviation, where Mohammed Atta trained, was sold to Arthur G. Nadal, who was arrested in 2009 for operating a ponzi scheme. 3

Unfortunately, there is not a solid evidentiary trail for Russbacher's involvement in the October Surprise. . The evidence is amply clear that the October Surprise was negotiated. It is doubtful if Russbacher would have had so many problems in his later life had he not been involved. He has produced flight logs to prove many claims, but there are no logs for the October Surprise.

Russbacher, the scion of an Austria noble family, was born July 1, 1942 amid a strange Teutonic Knights ceremony. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, his grandfather, was head of Austrian intelligence in World War II. .Baron Karl Russbacher was allegedly part of the plot to kill Hitler and had to fake his own death. After the war, he worked for the US government under a different name.

Gunther came to Oklahoma as a child with other. After two years in the Army, he joined the C.I.A. in 1963 which quickly placed him in the navy and flight training. He soon joined the ONI in 1968. In Viet Nam he was wounded and tortured as a prisoner. When he returned to the US, he became qualified to fly the most advanced aircraft. He was involved in black ops in Europe, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, as well as the United States. He was apart of a team skilled at murder via car accident and he was also very good at sanitizing intelligence crime scenes here and in Germany. He told his second wife hat he attended assassin school outside Phoenix at Center Point, and that George H.W. Bush was a classmate. The pilot said that Bush was called the Ice Pick because that was his favored tool.

For a time he was on loan to the Department of State for black ops. He infiltrated the Pipefitters Union and even worked for it St. Louis for a time. Gunther also infiltrated criminal and narcotics rings as well as Italian and German terrorist operations. He ran a C.I.A. owned insurance investment advisory service, helped C.I.A. connected companies find tax loopholes, built developments through C.I.A.-financed Crystal Shores Group. All those was part of Operation Cyclops , an effort to put more agents in the business world and expand the number of CIA proprietaries. Gunther has said that Congressman Roy Blunt has repeatedly help the C.I.A. charter proprietary companies in Missouri, and of course this involved pay-offs. Blunt would play a major role arranging Russbacher’s second imprisonment.

Russbacher first served a brief prison sentence in Texas when he was caught moving bags of bearer bonds for the agency. Sometimes he taught languages for the military. He also established a C.I.A. savings and loan that collapsed in Pennsylvania. Within C.I.A. circles he was called “the banker,” because he handled secret accounts and funded black ops.

Captain Russbacher also worked with Robert L. Corson, a known C.I.A. money mule, who was involved in defrauding over twenty savings and loans in Texas and elsewhere, according to the Houston Post sries on the S and L series. To complicate things, Russbacher sometimes even used Corson’s name. He was also involved in assisting the counterrevolutionaries in Central America. Russbacher headed an operation in 1983 that turned sour trying to extricate a Stassi defector from East Germany, lost a close friend in the process, and took a little time off. In the eighties, he also carried PROMIS software to Australia.

In 1989 he married Rayelan Allan Russbacher, his second wife, disregarding the C.I.A. order that he wait two years to remarry. Her late husband was dean of science and engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School, where she first met Gunther. He knew he would never be given permission to marry her because she was a liberal activist, intent on learning about the October Surprise. She had lobbied against the appointment of Donald Gregg as ambassador to South Vietnam, and did not know he then headed the C.I.A. disciplinary committee.

Captain Russbacher defected from the C.I.A. sometime around this time. Maybe he was concerned with abuses of power and maybe it was all about obstacles to his second marriage. In any event, he took a Seal unit with him that had a dozen members.

Two days after the wedding he was arrested and held for several months on trumped up charges. Some months after his arrest, he was released to fly a mission to Moscow and immediately rearrested. In order to save his bride from threatened imprisonment, he pled guilty to impersonating a US attorney and fraud and was sentenced to 21 years. Much of this went back to his operating a C.I.A. proprietary.

His ONI boss, who tried to help him , was killed in a plane crash . Paul Wilcher, his lawyer, was soon suicided July 1, 1993. Wilcher was found dead on his toilet but there was no fecal material in the bown and no urine. His papers and 55 audio tapes of Russbacher were gone. Russbacher was told that Wilcher was taken to Venice, Virginia wherer he was given pizza and questioned about what he knew about the accounts of politicians in BCCI. He was handed a can of pop that was coated with 025 mg of Curare via DSMO. When he weas about to die, he was beaten in the fce to make it appear he had bee mugged. The body was returned to his apartment and because he was in rigor mortis, he was set on the toilet.

His wife embarked on speaking tours trying to get him freed but was nearly killed herself several times between 1990 and 1992. In the first attempt on her life, Gunther’s old Seal team saved her by ramming the car carrying men firing at her.


Missouri released him on probation in December, 1993, after he had been tortured and kept in the hole. Michael W. Brown, the judge who forced his release, died in a head on accident three years later. He had also been subjected to botched heart surgery that left the lower part of his heard dead. Once he had been forced to pull his own tooth and his heart medeicine was often withheld. The ONI then had him orchestrate the transfer of gold from the Philippines to Austria, returning that country gold Hitler had seized in 1938. This was called Operation White Robe. When he completed it, General Hugh Shelton called Gunter to tell him he was reactivated. But he was sent to an Austrian prison for not paying a hotel bill.

In Austria, he ended up in a prison hospital where doctors were appalled by the signs of torture he had endured in the US. Austrian psychiatrists claim to have removed his hospital mind control program. When released from the Austrian hospital December 23, 1996, he had a heart transplant . He resurfaced in a New Mexico hospital with heart complications, and with a beautiful young woman who was not his wife. Because he has skipped out on Missouri probation, he was taken to a Los Alamos jail cell covered with fecies and urine.

When he talked to his wife via telephone he seemed , possibly drugged and still under mind control. He was not the same person and did not seem to remember his wife. He did tell her that the young woman met him at the prison door. After a few calls to his wife,. He vanished for a month. He resurfaced in a New Mexico hospital with heart complications, and with a beautiful young woman who was not his wife. Because he has skipped out on Missouri probation, he was taken to a Los Alamos jail cell covered with feces and urine.


F.B.I. chief William Sessions told his second wife that Russbacher was back at work running intelligence operations for Group 26 ( Defense Intelligence Services—not same as Dia) out of Bristol England. He had a new wife, Jane Ryder, and his father in law was a former MI 6 agent., who freelanced for the C.I.A. and the Vatican Intelligence Service. Allan  Frankovich, her former lover who had some intelligence connectiond died of a sudden heart attack a ffew months before Jane and Gunther began to cohabit. Jane, a respected film producer, says that Father Malachi Martin ( 1921-1999) taught her everything she knows. Martin was a former Vatican Jesuit who became an important figure in American right-wing circles.


Somehow Gunter ended up in a Los Alamos jail, rational sometimes and a little demented at other times. It is believed that Jane worked for the C.I.A. and induced him to return to the US. He and Jane returned to England the same year and married, a year before his second wife obtained a divorce in the US.

In 1996, Russbacher published a piece on Jonestown in which he claimed it was a government operation and that members of the cult had been subjected to various degrees of mind control. Wessley Baker of the Department of State headed the project. The programming proved less than effective and there was a revolt followed by as massacre. In another article, the Captain said that Congressman Leo Ryan knew Jonestown was a government operation and was concerned that it was out of control. He has also written about how subjects are found for mind contro in Project Open Eyes and about five levels of training. Some public figures have been subjected to mind control, and he thinks they include Bill Clinton, John McCain, and Madeline Albright.

Captain Russbacher wrote that there were seven sleepers in the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, but he did not think their programming was sufficient that they could be triggered to carry out any specific actions. Dr. Chomg Sun Kim of the Stone Mountain facility had programmed them. The Davidian Group had been created with the intention of using it to carry out terrorist actions. For some reason, a Delta Group Force was sent to neut4ralize the seven sleepers only, and something went wrong. Somehow the seven sleepers had been prematurely set off and they were building some kind of nerve gas device for mass destruction. Triggers appear in TV advertisements and in newspapers.

Gunther claimed to have taught mind control at the Life Management Institute outside Waco in the early 60s. He said Mark Phillips and David Koresh were students there. Interestingly, he claims that Charles Keating and William Sessions ran an operation against pedophiles out of the LMI. Elsewhere, Gunther called this Operation Cyclone. It was shut down when it began to threaten prominent people.

Captain Russbacher opposed government drug dealing and claimed that the C.I.A. helped organize the Cali drug cartel. The captain claimed to be at a meeting with the Columbians and said that Columbia was divided between the two cartels. The overall name for C.I.A. drug operations in Latin America was Operation Snow Cone. His story was independently corroborated by former C.I.A. agent Trenton Parker, who went into greater detail on the meetings and the role of the Agency. In 1976-1982, Parker was giving evidence of governmental corruption to Congressman Larry McDonald of the Joint Armed Services Committee, and McDonald subsequently died in a plane crash.

Russbacher also claimed there was a plan to’sanction” Bill Clinton in San Francisco during the 1992 campaign. He was obviously in prison at the time, so his information had to have come from friends in the intelligence network. This Operation Mount Rushmore was to be spearheaded by a Lt. Commander from ONI, but the C.I.A. and Mossad were also involved. Clinton was saved by a leak within the organization, but several people lost their lives. Rodney Stich obtained information from the Lieutenant Commander and other sources confirm the plot. Also named in the plot were two men with Chinese names and a major San Francisco law firm.

Russbacher told his second wife that the Murrah Federal Building was bombed on April 19, 1995 to distract attention from an airplane crash that killed 17 high ranking military officers who were plotting against Bill Clinton. Sherman Skolnick had written about the plotters before the plane crash. The press reported that eight died. 5

Russbacher seemed to have been framed in a bizarre scenario, claiming he was behind the killing of Princess Diana. It is likely that someone put out this bit of disinformation to call into question everything the man has claimed. Russbacher blamed his fate on the activities of a faction within the intelligence community that has placed the interests of George H.W. Bush above those of the nation. He was part of a second faction, mainly ONI, that tried to place the national interest first. Who knows if there re such factions. While in prison, he did historical research and came up with some odd economic theories and the belief that some sort of international conspiracy dating back to the Bavarian Illuminati are behind many human problems. Most of his testimony can be verified, but his historical and economic theories are another matter. He should stick to Black Ops.

The "Shadow CIA": The Revenge of the Spooks and the October (1980) Surprise: Part Three

Italian journalists believe that Licio Gelli, Grand Master of “Raggruppamento Gelli-P2.” Was present at one of the meetings. “P” meant Propaganda 2. Gelli has essentially taken over a defunct Italian Masonic Lodge to use as the superstructure of his criminal and political network. By the 1970s, P-2 practically ran Italy and even had important people posted in the Vatican. Members were very conservative and were dedicated to accumulating power and personal wealth as well as fighting Communism.

The C.I.A. assisted P-2 in Italy, and it worked closely with the C.I.A. in Latin America. 1Gelli took to using the password “Luciano” after the death of Pope John Paul I, suggesting he had something to do with the late pontiff’s death. Gelli eventually took up residence in Uruguay and his influence spread through much of Latin America, and his operatives were deeply involved in the activities of the right-wing death squads.

European journalists claim to have evidence that P-2 eliminated Swedish prime minister Olf Palme because he showed too much interest in the secret deal. Their informant said the C.I.A. used P-2 to help bring drugs into the USA and also to create terrorist incidents in Europe and Italy. 2 The story was circulated all over Europe, but a government inquiry turned up nothing. Often tales like this are linked to real events to discourage interest in the larger occurrence.

The Reagan effort to derail Carter’s efforts to free the hostages was assisted by Republicans in the C.I.A., other parts of the intelligence community, and the State Department. Miles Copeland, a former senior agent, said the “ C.I.A. within the C.I.A.” was invbolved. As a result of their activities, the Reagan campaign often had better information on the Iranian situation than the President of the United States. Sympathetic elements in the press, including columnist Jack Anderson, printed classified information and clever disinformation . A C.I.A.-connected writer for the Washington Star wrote a speculative scenario for rescuing the hostages that predicted Rescue One, the failed effort to extract the detained Americans. Richard Allen’s notes show that the French assisted the Republicans by giving the Iranians spare parts, in an effort to injure Carter;’s negotiations.

There is solid evidence that the Reagan campaign, with the help of C.I.A. people and some military and F.B.I. people, made a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the American election. Oliver North was involved in getting the payment, in the form of arms, to Iran and his diaries suggest some of the money flowing from the deal went to Hezbollah, perhaps as black mail.

There were a number of meetings between Republican operatives and representatives of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Paris and Madrid.. Jamshid Hashemi, an Iranian C.I.A. agent, testified in the 1991-1992 hearings that he accompanied Casey at the two day Madrid meeting with mullah Mehdi Karrubi. After one of the meetings, Casey appeared in London a day later on , July 29, 1980. He went to Madrid four times, were he laid out the main outlines of the deal, which was concluded in mid October at a meeting in a Paris suburb.

The key meetings were in Paris area hotels on October 18-20. A day after they concluded, the Tehran government made it clear it was no longer interested in negotiating with the Carter administration. A key figure at the this meeting was Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian born Mossad agent and arms dealer. Another key figure was Ari Ben Menashe of the Mossad. Iran was represented by Ali Akkabar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of the parliament, and Mohammed Ali Raja, a future president of Iran. The Iranians were promised weapons for delaying the release of the hostages, and it has been suggested that millions were given to the Iranian leadership in bribes.

The weapons and parts, worth about $5 billion, were shipped to Portugal on ships by means of false documents, where other items were added to their cargoes. The payment in arms then went to Israel for transshipping to Iran The Portuguese Prime Minister, who objected to his territory being used for the transfer of weapons, later died in a plane crash, along with one cabinet minister.

It has often been charged that vice presidential candidate George Bush attended that meeting, and there is evidence to sustain the charge. Israeli agent Ari Ben Menache told Frontline that there were three meetings in Paris, and that George W. Bush attended one of them. An intelligence agent testified at the subsequent hearings that he had seem a November 18, 1980 copy of a French intelligence agency ( SDECD) reporting that it has successfully moved Bush around Paris without being recognized. This agent said Bush attended three meetings with Iranians rather than one.

The Congressional task force that investigated all this found two separate witnesses, who did not know one another, who knew Bush was flying to Paris for the final meeting with the Iranians. The task force people also knew that many current and former C.I.A. people were involved. For them, it was unthinkable that people still on the government payroll could participate in what amounted to a coup against a sitting president. Too little was done to pursue all this, and investigators were further discouraged by the vigorous stone-walling activities of the Republican leadership under Senator Robert Dole.

Bush’s explanation of where he was then cannot be proven and seems somewhat implausible. He has refused to release the kind of information that would settle the matter. Moreover, the Secret Service eventually had to admit that it had lost track of George H.W. Bush for 23 hours at that time. This came out in the trial of intelligence operative Richard Brennecke, who had talked to the congressional investigators in 1991. He was subsequently arrested on charges not related to t he October Surprise of 1980 and eventually acquitted. He was cousin of Captain Russbeacher and part of his flight crew.

Whether Bush was flown there by Captain Gunter Russbacher of ONI is another matter. The captain claimed to have evidence that he was Bush’s pilot. Russbacher had taken part in a number of Naval Intelligence and C.I.A. operations, and was son of a famous US intelligence operative.

A Russian speaker who even knew Gorbachev, Russbacher was eventually accused of profiting from covert operations and imprisoned. However, there is not enough solid evidence to prove that Bush attended the Paris meeting. He claimed to fly a BAC-111, owned by the Saudi royal family. Bush was joined by passengers Bill Casey, Donald Gregg, Robert Gates, Robert McFarlane, Richard Allen and Dr. Carl Brian. The latter was later to own UPI and the Financial Times,, had been on Reagan’s California cabinet, and was a close friend of Ed Meese. He was convicted in 1994 in California of nine counts of fraud, but the court released no information on the exact nature of the charges, and news of trhe case was not made public until 1995.

Jennifer Fitzgerald, Bush’s longtime paramour, was also aboard. According to some sources, two DemocratsBDan Rostenkoweski and Senator Robert Byrd-- were also present. The plane arrived in the military section of a Paris airport, and Bush departed on the same day via a SR71- Sources disagree on whjether it was Le Bourget .

Blackbird was flown by Russhbacher to McGuire AFB in New Jersey. His five Secret Service agents returned later. A second plane piloted by intelligence agent Heinrick Rupp, a former Nazi pilot, brought others to Paris. Later, as a C.I.A. operative, he was convicted of bank fraud in connection with the savings and loan scandal. Testimony at the 1991-1992 joint congressional hearings revealed that Dr. Earl was entrusted with paying the Iranian leaders $40 million, which was deposited in a Luxemburg bank. Bill Casey told CIA agent William Buckley that the money had been contributed by wealthy Republican businessmen. 3

Earl's payment for these services was the right to sell a copy of sophisticated information-gathering software called PROMIS to the Canadian government. The Department of Justice had seized this software from Inlaw, a firm that had leased the software to the government. Justice refused to pay, claiming that not all terms of the contract were met. Litigation over this would continue for years. Brian and others subsequently sold the software to intelligence agencies and banks throughout the world.

During the subsequent hearings, both Newsweek and the New Republic, were parties to efforts to discredit the claim that Casey was in Madrid at that time. When their evidence collapsed, they did not retract their comments. The Congressional Committee staff then tried to prove that Casey was at Bohemian Grove, in northern California, and they stuck with this story even after business receipts showed he was there a week later than that.

The investigation chaired by Democrat Lee Hamilton was shut down, probably for national security reasons. Hamilton’s chief counsel was Larry Barcella, who was lawyer for the Bank of Commerce and Industry, when it was indicted in 1988. That institution was the depository for all manner of covert action funding. Barcella’s senior law partner was former Senator Paul Laxault, a close friend of Ragan. Barcella was also a good friend of Michael Ledeen, whom some believed was tied to the October Surprise. Hamilton was not interested in looking at the arms for drugs business and seemed to accept Oliver North’s testimony. Hamilton and 18 other members of the House pressed hard to force Costa Rica to release drug operative John Hull.

Newsweek assigned Bob Parry to follow the story but forbade him to attend the hearings. He arranged for someone to surreptitiously bring him document transcripts and followed the story subsequently. Later, he played a role in breaking the Iran-Contra story, which ended his career in mainstream journalism.

The hearings into the October Surprise resulted in the jailing of several intelligence agents who spoke to the Joint Committee or its staff. Lee Hamilton, who chaired the investigation let Henry Hyde, a C.I.A. man, veto the hiring of one investigator. Hamilton refused to look at files the Soviet Union provided. 4 After serving in Congress, he was vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission, which endorsed the George W. Bush administration’s account of what happened when the World Trade Center and Pentagon wre attacked .

Rossbacher’s incarceration may have been more connected to a recent re-marriage than to the October Surprise. After his divorce, he was ordered not to remarry for two years because there was a fear that the intended bride could be a KGB agent. He quickly wed her and ended up in prison, a situation that prompted him to start talking. As he successfully battled one charge, he would be accused of something else, including the kidnaping of his niece. Michael Riconosciuto, who provided information on how the deal was financed was imprisoned in Pierce County, Washington and then removed to another site. He was accused of operating a meths lab. Two other agents were jailed, one of whom later won acquittal. Covert operatives call the October Surprise C.I.A. agents who later went to jail the Brown Helmet Society. They were expected to do their time and keep quiet. Though not directly involved in the October Surprise, Michael R. Senci had been in a position to know more than one should as he had worked for the C.I.A.’s Republicans Abroad. In 1991, he was convicted of six counts of mail fraud and put on ice.

THE AFTERMATH OF THE OCTOBER SURPRISE

Robert Gates established Operation Ringwind in 1981 to take care of everyone who was likely to reveal the October Surprise. Lt. Commander Robert Hunt (ONI) later named most of the men involved in the operation John Aldridge; Phil Burgess; Bob Burdige; Gregg Note; Robert Lister; Fred White, and Rodney Harmon . Some of the victims were investigators and some were participants. Assassins were trained at Camp Perry in Virginia, Fort Story, and Mint Farm Hill. Among those killed was the Portuguese Prime Minister.

It is unclear who else was killed but there is evidence that the same hit team was active for more than decade. Young named some of the victims: Danny Casolaro, Alan Standorf, Barry Kumnick, Dennis Eisman, Alan May, David May Paul Macesca, David Mayer, Dexter Jacobson, Gary Pimmell. Michael Hand, Anson Ng, Jonathan Moyle, Arnold Raphel Mohammed Rajai, Cyrus Hashemi, and Shahpour Bhktior.

Casolaro was investigating many things including the October Surprise, and Alan Standorf was his NSA source. Kumnick was a software developer who helped the US government refine PROMIS, a program the Justice Department seized from a private firm. Casolaro was also investigating this. Kumnick disappeared while Congress was investigating the matter and it was being litigated. Attorney Eisman was shot to death April 5, 1991. He was defending Michael Riconosciuto, a C.I.A. employee who led in the effort to modify PROMIS.
Iranian banker Cyrus Hashemi , along with his brother, were middle men in the October, 1980 surprise. There were damaging F.B.I. wiretaps on his phone then and his elder brother Jamshid later testified to the Hamilton Committee, which whitewashed the whole business anyhow.

The brothers were tied to BCCI and the shah and had many reasons to cooperate against Jimmy Carter. Reuters reported in 1992 that the tapes showed that Cyrus was also tied to Ronald Reagan and that the Gipper himself appeared on one tape. The Reagan administration indicted him in 1984 for selling arms to Iran and he died in 1986. ( One thing this writer has learned is that the best way to control hostile witnesses was to indict and jail them. This appeared many times in the Reagan-Daddy Bush year.) Three months before he was killed, he started talking to Customs about the Iranian arms trad3e and to Frontline about the October Surprise. Shahpour Bhktiar , the last imperial prime minister of Iran, was assassinated in 1979. It was assumed that revolutionaries were guilty.

Attorney Jacobson was found murdered the night before he was to present evidence about massive corruption in California bankruptcy courts. Michael Hand was a US intelligence agent who helped run the Nugan-Hand Bank. The chairman of the board was a retired US admiral whom this writer has found protecting sderveral unsavory intelligence operatives. Anson Ng, stringer for the Financial Times, was killed in Guatemala wher he went to inverview the agent who paid for the murder of three men who complained about whent on at the reservation where PROMIS was modified and weapons were manufactured for the Contras. Moyle was a British defense expert who was murdered on March 30, 1990 in Chile, where he was checking out a story that the US and Israel were modifying an helecopter so it could be sold to Iraq. Frankly this writer and others thought he was killed by MI6. Rajai, President of Pakistan, died in a bomb blast on August 30, 1981.

Young claimed that some members of the team were involved in Operation Mount Rushmore ( 1992), the failed effort to kill candidate Bill Clinton

The "Shadow CIA" and the Revenge of the Spooks: The October Surprise, Part Two

Casey was able to get in touch with the Iranians with the help of the French intelligence service, Count Alexandre de Marenches. Carter had unwittingly sealed his own fate by refusing to trade arms for hostages. However, there is strong evidence that the Israeli’s played a major role in opening dialog between the Republicans and the Iranian government. The Israelis had been asked to sell a limited number of arms to Iran, and they wanted a green light from potentially the next American government to sell more. For that reason, Israeli intelligence sent an Arab merchant with Iranian ties to negotiate with Republican operatives at the L" Enfante Hotel in Washington. He proposed the kind of deal Casey negotiated, except that Israel would immediately begin unlimited arms sales The main Iranian spokesman was Ayatollah Mohanned Baheshti, an aid to Speaker Ransanjani and assistant to Ayatollah Khomeini.

Casey was a hard-bitten capitalistic high-roller with intelligence experience. He knew how possession of power would have positive economic consequences for himself and his friends. Others may have been driven more by ideology. Carrying on diplomatic negotiations with a foreign enemy is a violation of the law, as was coordinating arms shipments to Iran, before and after Reagan took power. One would think that patriots would want the hostages returned as soon as possible and would support the nation’s foreign policy in a time of crisis, even if the president was a Democrat. What led these people to violate the law overcame any patriotic impulses to carry on their own destructive foreign policy.

The best answer is that they were so convinced by their own ideology and attacks on the Democrats that they felt justified in doing anything necessary to restore Republican control of the White House. It was as though elected Democrats automatically lack legitimacy, except when they co-operate in enacting and carrying out Republican policy. There was an op-ed piece and a PBS special outlining the facts in this matter in 1991.

Not one Republican politician or pundit expressed any interest in the possibility that this may have happened. So-called liberal politicians and journalists showed little interest when it became clear that there was not overwhelming evidence that President George Bush was involved. The Secret Service records for Bush at that time were only partially made available to Congress. Because they were redacted, Bush’s claims to have been in Washington could not be proven.

One agent claimed to have been with the Bushes much of that day, but it was later proven thqat the agent was jogging along the C and O Canal that day and not on duty. Years later, Yasir Arafat told Jimmy Carter that the Republicans had asked them to help with the arms deal used to keep the hostages captive until after the election. In 1993, Russia Supreme Soviet agreed to give Congressional investigators files that showed that Casey met with the Iranians in 1980 and that Robert Gates and George H.W. Bush were involved in the deal with Iran.

The Russian report added that Robert Gates, then a Carter NSC staffer, was in Paris negotiating on behalf of Reagan and that Casey attended meetings at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid and Paris. The Russians saw a bidding war between Carter and Reagan for control of release of the hostages, with the Republicans able to disrupt the Carter operation and make a deal with the Iranians.

A Congressional task force had just concluded that the Republicans did not interfere in the hostage crisis before the Russian report arrived, and nothing was done to change the Congressional report. Some of the Russian report was based on allegations of former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe. Israel said he had never been a government employee until he produced documents. Then the Israelis simply said he was lying about the October Surprise. The Russian Report was ignored, and ended up in a box of documents in a former ladies room in the Rayburn Building.1

Among other things, Casey promised that Israel would sell some arms and parts to Iran immediately and that they would sell many more after Ronald Reagan became president. The Republicans promised to provide about $5 billion worth of arms. Much later, in May, 1986, McCarlane visited Iran and was taped saying that up until then the Reagan administration had provided 1.3 billion in arms and add3ed that it would provide trhe rest. The Iranians were also promised the return of $12 billion in blocked funds. Prime Minister Menachin Begin, who had promised not to sell so much as a shoelace to Iran, cooperated with the Republicans" efforts to undermine the Carter position. These activities thoroughly undermined the activities of the legitimately elected government of the United States and weakened the U.S. position in bargaining for the return of the hostages. Former Iranian president Bani-Sadr was ale to provide investigators with details of the money transferred to Iranians , along with bank account numbers. 2

Italian journalists believe that Licio Gelli, Grand Master of “Raggruppamento Gelli-P2.” Was present at one of the meetings. “P” meant Propaganda 2. Gelli has essentially taken over a defunct Italian Masonic Lodge to use as the superstructure of his criminal and political network. By the 1970s, P-2 practically ran Italy and even had important people posted in the Vatican. Members were very conservative and were dedicated to accumulating power and personal wealth as well as fighting Communism. The C.I.A. assisted P-2 in Italy, and it worked closely with the C.I.A. in Latin America. 3 Gelli took to using the password “Luciano” after the death of Pope John Paul I, suggesting he had something to do with the late pontiff’s death. Gelli eventually took up residence in Uruguay and his influence spread through much of Latin America, and his operatives were deeply involved in the activities of the right-wing death squads.

European journalists claim to have evidence that P-2 eliminated Swedish prime minister Olf Palme because he showed too much interest in the secret deal. Their informant said the C.I.A. used P-2 to help bring drugs into the USA and also to create terrorist incidents in Europe and Italy. 4 The story was circulated all over Europe, but a government inquiry turned up nothing. Often tales like this are linked to real events to discourage interest in the larger occurrence.

The "Shadow CIA" and the REvenge of the Spooks: The October (1980) Surprise: Part II

A pro-Reagan operative at the National Security Council stole President Carter’s debate briefing book on foreign policy and delivered it to the Reagan campaign. A subsequent investigation found James Baker’s fingerprints on the book, but a committee suggested William Casey was probably involved in the theft. There was suspicion that Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Major General Richard Secord sabotaged Operation Eagle Claw, the failed rescue mission launched by Carter on April 25, 1980.

According to Mansur Rafizadeh, a secret C.I.A. team directed by William Casey sabotaged the mission.Rafizadeh was a C.I.A. agent who had run SAVAK. Rafizadeh had been a C.I.A. operative for 18-19 years. In his book, he added that the Reagan-Bush people specifically required that the hostages not be released until Reagan was sworn in. They did not want Carter to have any role and opposed return of the hjostages after the election was over.

He also said that people on the C.I.A.’s Iran desk were wildly anti-Carter in 1980. However, it is unthinkable that Americans involved in the rescue effort could have wanted it to fail and there is no good evidence that they did anything to produce this result. Yet, several people who would be closely tied to George H.W. Bush’s black operations in subsequent years were part of the rescue effort. Oliver North was aboard a helicopter near the Turkish border. General Richard Secord was the main planner, and Albert Hakim was involved in ground operations. Hakim fled Baghdad 24 hours before the operation; his job was to obtain ground vehicles. . As is known, only 5 of the eight helicopters got to the site in working condition. The Pentagon review board found astonishing incompetence and negligence in the operation Later, Cynthia Dwyer, who had not yet been taken as the 53rd hostage, told a minister that the C.I.A. deliberately botched the operation.

It is known that the C.I.A. paid for polling by Richard Beale and Richard Wirthlin to learn what would be the effect on Reagan’s lead in the campaign of Carter were to secure the release of the prisoners. The results were swent directly to the Reagan campaign. They confirmed the opinion of some that Reagan must disrupt Carter’s efforts to gain the release of the hostages.

Casey was able to get in touch with the Iranians with the help of the French intelligence service, Count Alexandre de Marenches. Carter had unwittingly sealed his own fate by refusing to trade arms for hostages. However, there is strong evidence that the Israeli’s played a major role in opening dialog between the Republicans and the Iranian government. The Israelis had been asked to sell a limited number of arms to Iran, and they wanted a green light from potentially the next American government to sell more. For that reason, Israeli intelligence sent an Arab merchant with Iranian ties to negotiate with Republican operatives at the L" Enfante Hotel in Washington. He proposed the kind of deal Casey negotiated, except that Israel would immediately begin unlimited arms sales The main Iranian spokesman was Ayatollah Mohanned Baheshti, an aid to Speaker Ransanjani and assistant to Ayatollah Khomeini.

Casey was a hard-bitten capitalistic high-roller with intelligence experience. He knew how possession of power would have positive economic consequences for himself and his friends. Others may have been driven more by ideology. Carrying on diplomatic negotiations with a foreign enemy is a violation of the law, as was coordinating arms shipments to Iran, before and after Reagan took power. One would think that patriots would want the hostages returned as soon as possible and would support the nation’s foreign policy in a time of crisis, even if the president was a Democrat.

What led these people to violate the law overcame any patriotic impulses to carry on their own destructive foreign policy. The best answer is that they were so convinced by their own ideology and attacks on the Democrats that they felt justified in doing anything necessary to restore Republican control of the White House. It was as though elected Democrats automatically lack legitimacy, except when they co-operate in enacting and carrying out Republican policy. There was an op-ed piece and a PBS special outlining the facts in this matter in 1991.

Not one Republican politi C.I.A.n or pundit expressed any interest in the possibility that this may have happened. So-called liberal politicians and journalists showed little interest when it became clear that there was not overwhelming evidence that President George Bush was involved. The Secret Service records for Bush at that time were only partially made available to Congress. Because they were redacted, Bush’s claims to have been in Washington could not be proven.

One agent claimed to have been with the Bushes much of that day, but it was later proven that the agent was jogging along the C and O Canal that day and not on duty. Years later, Yasir Arafat told Jimmy Carter that the Republicans had asked them to help with the arms deal used to keep the hostages captive until after the election. In 1993, Russia Supreme Soviet agreed to give Congressional investigators files that showed that Casey met with the Iranians in 1980 and that Robert Gates and George H.W. Bush were involved in the deal with Iran. The Russian report added that Robert Gates, then a Carter NSC staffer, was in Paris negotiating on behalf of Reagan and that Casey attended meetings at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid and Paris.

The Russians saw a bidding war between Carter and Reagan for control of release of the hostages, with the Republicans able to disrupt the Carter operation and make a deal with the Iranians. A Congressional task force had just concluded that the Republicans did not interfere in the hostage crisis before the Russian report arrived, and nothing was done to change the Congressional report. Some of the Russian report was based on allegations of former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe. Israel said he had never been a government employee until he produced documents. Then the Israelis simply said he was lying about the October Surprise. The Russian Report was ignored, and ended up in a box of documents in a former ladies room in the Rayburn Building.1

Among other things, Casey promised that Israel would sell some arms and parts to Iran immediately and that they would sell many more after Ronald Reagan became president. The Republicans promised to provide about $5 billion worth of arms. Much later, in May, 1986, McCarlane visited Iran and was taped saying that up until then the Reagan administration had provided 1.3 billion in arms and add3ed that it would provide trhe rest. The Iranians were also promised the return of $12 billion in blocked funds. Prime Minister Menachin Begin, who had promised not to sell so much as a shoelace to Iran, cooperated with the Republicans" efforts to undermine the Carter position. These activities thoroughly undermined the activities of the legitimately elected government of the United States and weakened the U.S. position in bargaining for the return of the hostages. Former Iranian president Bani-Sadr was ale to provide investigators with details of the money transferred to Iranians , along with bank account numbers. 2

THE “SHADOW C.I.A.” AND THE REVENGE OF THE SPOOKS: THE OCTOBER (1980) SURPRISE: Part One

In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s Republican operatives worked with the shadow C.I.A. as well as agents within the Langley based agency and with Iran to frustrate President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to secure the release of 52 hostages. At the very least, they violated laws prohibiting private diplomacy.

Most of the plotters had backgrounds in national security work and believed that Carter had weakened the C.I.A. and was not following a sufficiently strong foreign policy. Neo-Conservatives and some conservatives were embracing the idea that the Soviet Union was using terrorism across the globe to attack the West, and they were angry that Carter did not seem to accept their theory. Once in power, Bill Casey, one of the key figures in this October Surprise, would plant false information in the press to make Lybia look even worse than it really was in order to strengthen the Reagan administration’s anti-terrorism offensive.

The idea that the Soviet Union was promoting terrorism throughout the world developed among some of the right-wing old guard in the C.I.A. in the late 1970s and was forcefully propounded in Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network, the contents of which became an article of faith for right-wingers, including, Reagan, Haig, and Casey. There was very little evidence to support the claim, other than evidence that the Soviets were probably behind the effort to kill John Paul II.

When Director of Intelligence Robert Gates instructed subordinates to flesh out this charge in 1985, there was little evidence to support it, but eventually it developed that his guess was correct. An unbiased observer could claim that the US sponsored more terrorism than the Soviets in the 1980s and probably build a very strong case.

Beginning in 1979, the Department of State began listing states that were involved in sponsoring terrorism. The listing began as part of a serious effort to deal with terrorism. Soon it became the centerpiece of a program to claim that the nation’s enemies, including the Soviets were involved sponsoring terrorism. Claims of about communist state-sponsored terrorism frightened people and were useful in obtaining larger and larger military appropriations. 1

Fifty two Americans were seized by Iranian militants in November, 1979 and were being held as hostages through the 1980 American political campaign. . In the 1980 race for the White House, Republicans heard that the Carter administration might trade plane parts for hostages in Iran. The parts were necessary because Iraq had invaded Iran. F.B.I. wiretaps were to show that Cyrus Hashemi, who was supposed to be helping Carter deal with the Iranians was actually helping the Republicans block Carter and make their own deal. The deal saw large amounts of BCCI money sent into Hashemi’s bank , First Gulf Bank and Trust, sometimes flown into Paris . The F.B.I. followed these transactions because it was looking for drug and arms transactions. When the Reagan administration took power, the wire taps were ended and Hashemi was warned of the activities of US enforcement agencies that concerned him.

Thirteen years later, his older brother Jamshid testified before a Congressional Committee about this, but investigators were blocked from pursuing the matter. The investigators who were Senate employees were even barred by Bob Dole, Mitch McConnell, and Jesse Helms from leaving the District of Columbia to pursue leads. The House side of the investigation was run by a Democrat who had a record of cooperating with Republicans on touchy matters.

Republicans immediately and continuously denounced the possible Carter deal with the Iranians as treasonous. They alerted friendly military officers to keep close tabs on military airports for signs this could occur. Meanwhile, the Republicans secretly negotiated with representatives of a enemy foreign power. Active and former C.I.A. officers and assets played major roles in the deal with Iran. They detested Jimmy Carter for his attempts to reform the agency and were determined to keep him from being reelected. Former C.I.A. men manned round the clock an office at the GOP campaign’s Arlington Operations Center in order to keep tract of developments in Iran.


Years later, in a November 7 interview on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, former Reagan national security advisor Richard Allen inadvertently revealed that the Reaganites had made a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election. He said that Cynthia Dwyer, a journalist, was retained by the Iranians to make sure that the Republicans carried out their end of the deal. No one asked him “what deal” and to this day it most mainline commentators deny there was a deal. Allen was also to refer to all the former C.I.A. men working in the Bush operation as” a plane load of disgruntled C.I.A." officers "playing cops and robbers." Robert McFarlane also has acknowledged that the October Surprise deal did occur. Mc Farlane eventually told German reporter Martin Kilian that an an Iranian first alerted Senator John Tower that his country was interested in a deal to exchange the hostages. Tower later led an investigation of the Iran/Contra scandal.

McFarlane was then working for Tower and seems to have been the first person to raise the possibility of the Republicans making a separated deal with the Iranians, Outbidding Carter. McFarlane attended the first Washington meeting with an Iranian emissary. Also present were Richard Allen and Lawrence Silverman, a former C.I.A. man, who would later be appointed a federal judge and was to claim that Lawrence Walsh’s investigation of Iran/Contra and Oliver North was unconstitutional.

The talkative McFarlane later told a Greek journalist that the October Surprise involved the promised shipment of $5 billion worth of arms to Iran, and that $1.3 billion worth had been sent by 1986. In 1988, CBS had a documentary on the October Surprise prepared for airing on Sixty Minutes, but it was never shown 2

Republican campaign manager William Casey, a former C.I.A. hand, Edwin Meese, and others successfully negotiated a deal with representatives of the Iranian government to assure that the hostages would not be released while Jimmy Carter was president. Casey had the help of many active and former C.I.A. personnel who resented Carter’s reforms at the agency. Robert Gates, executive assistant to Stansfield Turner leaked word that Carter was negotiating with the Iranians and the Republicans information, and Carter was certain that NSC member Donald Gregg also fed national security information to the Republicans. “Eyes Only” and “ Top Secret” documents from the US embassy in Tehran were found in Reagan’s campaign files. The Gipper simply said he had no idea how they got there.

Some years later, Reagan’s Second Attorney General Richard Thornburgh blocked a Freedom of Information Request to obtain F.B.I. tapes of the conversations of Iranian banker and arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi. Among the tapes were two telephone calls from a Houston lawyer who said he represented vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush. The first call was about a $3,000,000 payment to Hashemi and the last was about a large payment that was to be made in 1981. They are called the “Pottinger Tapes,” and reveal that a active C.I.A. official was explaining how arms would be shipped to Iran without detection by the Carter government. In 1995, a sworn deposition from senior C.I.A. agent senior C.I.A. officer Charles Cogan was found among discarded papers of the committee that hastily looked into the October Surprise. Cogan told of a meeting at Langley in 1981 at which high ranking Republican visitors bragged about disrupting Jimmy Carter’e efforts to secure the release of the hostages.