tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24936269485794323482024-03-13T11:53:57.964-07:00Sherm SaysThis blog includes posts on current politics, the economy, religion, and explorations into what I call parahistory. For a full explanation of parahistory, which deals with alternative explanations to important events, see the three postings that begin September 25, 2009. This is not the same thing as "conspiracy theory," and evidence is offered for alternative explanations of past events.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-34991603271641106162011-02-24T17:11:00.000-08:002011-02-24T17:14:09.082-08:00Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part 7<strong>The Contras Send Drugs to the US</strong><br />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. <br /><br /> 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 (President Clinton rescinded this ruling in 1995.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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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 <br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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<br /><br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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.” <br /><br />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/Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-17199238141722676422011-02-17T17:56:00.000-08:002011-02-17T17:59:06.521-08:00REagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part 6<strong>The White House and Drugs</strong> <br /><br />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 <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. 4Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-66930400785138251852011-02-12T13:53:00.000-08:002011-02-12T13:57:47.827-08:00Reagan and Bush's Not-so-Secret War: Part 5<strong>Provisioning the Nicaraguan Contras </strong><br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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<br /> <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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<br />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 <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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 –<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /> <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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 <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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<br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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. 9Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-26312762682046178682011-02-09T16:44:00.000-08:002011-02-09T16:48:31.936-08:00The North Plan and Its Descendants in Recent YearsFEMA 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<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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<br /><br /><br /><strong>Expansion of North Plan under George W. Bush</strong>The 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. <br /><br /> 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.” <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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….” <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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.”5Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-30419536004717365562011-02-08T12:34:00.000-08:002011-02-08T12:36:56.688-08:00Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part FourConservative 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.<br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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<br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br />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. 2Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-57822467901196125282011-02-02T10:49:00.000-08:002011-02-02T10:51:22.405-08:00Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part ThreeThe 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. <br /><br />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<br /><br />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.''<br /><br />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<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />However the most interesting place is a deserted facility in Indianopolis for which Congress keeps appropriating money for reconstruction. <br />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. 3Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-75639922925628941082011-02-01T16:56:00.000-08:002011-02-01T16:59:09.986-08:00Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part TwoOnly 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<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /> <br />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.<br /> <br />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. <br /><br />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.'" <br /><br />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.<br /> <br />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.”Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-30291591203208513662011-01-26T12:03:00.000-08:002011-01-26T12:04:39.742-08:00Reagan and Bush's Not-So-Secret War: Part OneThrough 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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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<br /> <br /> 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. 2Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-38180322612952407742011-01-24T16:32:00.000-08:002011-01-24T16:34:35.814-08:00Arms Sales to Iran After the October (1980) SurpriseThe 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<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-86416863918028045232011-01-18T17:34:00.000-08:002011-01-18T17:53:13.936-08:00A Pilot's Claims about t he October Surprise and Iran-ContraAn 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<br /><br />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<br /><br /> 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 <br /><br /> <br /><br /> 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<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /> <br />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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /> <br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> <br />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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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<br /><br />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.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-21029947417931938872011-01-17T13:15:00.000-08:002011-01-17T13:18:51.452-08:00The "Shadow CIA": The Revenge of the Spooks and the October (1980) Surprise: Part ThreeItalian 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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /> <br /> 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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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 . <br /><br /> 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<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br />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 . <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br />THE AFTERMATH OF THE OCTOBER SURPRISE<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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.<br />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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />Young claimed that some members of the team were involved in Operation Mount Rushmore ( 1992), the failed effort to kill candidate Bill ClintonSherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-23109409425741360132011-01-13T16:27:00.001-08:002011-01-13T16:29:17.900-08:00The "Shadow CIA" and the Revenge of the Spooks: The October Surprise, Part TwoCasey 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. <br /> <br />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.<br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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<br /><br /> 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 <br /> <br />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. <br /><br /> 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.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-53733608761354343842011-01-10T11:51:00.001-08:002011-01-10T11:53:57.633-08:00The "Shadow CIA" and the REvenge of the Spooks: The October (1980) Surprise: Part IIA 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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /> <br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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<br /><br /> 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. 2Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-67931898710139721522011-01-05T07:54:00.000-08:002011-01-05T07:56:28.053-08:00THE “SHADOW C.I.A.” AND THE REVENGE OF THE SPOOKS: THE OCTOBER (1980) SURPRISE: Part OneIn 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.<br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /><br /> 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br /> 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 <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> 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.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-65090035485025717222011-01-04T13:11:00.000-08:002011-01-04T13:13:56.162-08:00The CIA in Crisis: Part IIIJimmy Carter’s administration sought to curb the agency’s appetite for “cowboy” tactics and worse. Carter had campaigned against the “rogue C.I.A..” The Georgian sacked C.I.A. Director George H.W. Bush and replaced him with Admiral Stanford Turner, who eventually fired over 700 agents in the famous Halloween massacre, October 31, 1979. He had previously fired 200 in 1977. He was appalled about the agency’s use of hallucinogenic drugs, its abuse of a Russian defector, its stockpiling of venoms and poisons banned by executive orders, the spying on American critics of the Vietnam war including Jane Fonda, and its abuse of the US mails. The agency gave police departments special instruments to beat up peace groups, spied on reporter Jack Anderson and Brit Hume, and kept a Washington Post report on round the clock surveillance. <br /><br />Turner also abolished the agency’s private air force, Air America. From the time of his arrival, Admiral Turner encountered the determined opposition of the covert wing and had great difficulty extraction information from those people. He had the firm impression that the people in O He had the firm impression that the people in Oations were reluctant to do anything that could be exposed later and that they were adverse to all of his suggestions for relatively clean operations. It is difficult to determine if he knew much or anything about covert operations underway in Latin America. He later wrote that “The covert operations cupboard was bare.” <br /><br /> Turner was stunned to learn that a former agent, Ed Wilson was possibly involved in murder for hire and in weapon running to Lybia. When the admiral learned that seniorofficials Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines were close to Wilson, he decided their career advancement had to be derailed. Turner also ruled that Mossad no longer had a special status within the C.I.A.. Before leaving the agency, Clines disregarded an order to avoid business relationships with Wilson and set up his own weapons and consulting business before resigning. Shackley also left but kept close ties with George W. Bush. The Wilson matter became public knowledge in 1981, and he eventually went to prison. Former agents as well as covert officers still in service saw the Carter administration as the enemy and did as little as possible to cooperate with it, Much of Carter’s own NSC staff thought him too idealistic and was disloyal to him. There is no way of knowing if the Carter realized that Operation X was still going on, the transplanting from Vietnam to Central America counterinsurgency torture techniques. The Carter policy was that covert action should only be used as last resort. With the accession of Ronald Reagan, that policy was exactly reversed. 1<br /><br />It is difficult to assess the extent to which the C.I.A. has been under the control of the White House in various times in recent history. Almost certainly, an element within it began to conceal information from the president when Jimmy Carter became president. Later, when Bill Clinton was president, the agency spied on one of his ambassadors because she was concerned about human rights in Guatemala. The agency bugged the bedroom of Ambasador Marilyn McAfee and her her “cooing endearments to Murphy.” The spooks assumed that she was having an affair with her secretary Carol Murphy and it spread the word of a lesbian affair in Washington, hoping to get her removed and protect Guatemala’s brutal intelligence service. It turned out that “Murphy” her two-year old poodle. 2<br /><br /><br />Gene Wheaton, a military crime investigator with experience in three services, worked closely with C.I.A. agents and reported that C.I.A. officers he knew<br /><br />decided way back when, ‘75-’76, during the Pike and Church Committee hearings, that the Congress was their enemy... Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters and Frank Carlucci and Ving West and a group of these guys used to have park-bench meetings in the late 70s in McClean, Virginia so nobody could overhear they conversations. They basically said, "With our expertise at placing dictators in power," I’m almost quoting verbatim one of their comments, "why don’t we treat the United States like the world’s biggest banana republic and take it over?" And the first thing they had to do was to get their man in the White House, and that was George Bush. Reagan never really was the president. He was the front man. They selected a guy that had charisma, who was popular, and just a good old boy, but they got George Bush in there to actually run the White House."<br /><br />The former military criminal investigator added that his former friends had a low opinion of the American electorate. The average citizen was ignorant and needed to be guided by true patriots for his own good. <br /><br /><br />Wheaton believed that the network that Oliver North and George H.W. Bush deployed in the eighties was created among these angry agents. Another term for this network was Ted Shackley’s’secret Team,” in the words of Joe Trento. Shackley thought the best way to procede was to privatize some covert operations. Of course some privatizing had gone on since the early 196os. This renewed privatgization was funded by the ‘safari Club, which was created when Bush was director . It was like the Pinay Circle in Europe, politicians, businessmen, and agents. In February, 2002, speaking at a Georgetown Alumni affair, Prince Turki described it.<br /><br /><br />In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here (in the US), your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything… In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa.<br /><br />The head of Saudi intelligence then was Sheikh Kamal Adham, who was a great friend of DCI Bush. Later his nephew HRH Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Sa’ud held the post.<br />At that time, the Saudis opened a number of covert accounts at the Riggs Bank, where Jonathan Bush was a director. The Saudis financed some covert operations for renegades in the C.I.A. and its General Intelligence Department worked closely with the C.I.A., sometimes taking the lead in delicate operations. In this way, the Saudis gradually developed a deep knowledge of US intelligence operations and placed plants within the US agencies. In the late 70s, the small Pakistani bank, Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), became a big money lauindering machine for covert operations of all sorts throughout the world. Shackley used some of the money in operations he made sure would not be followed back to Langley. Poppy Bush had an account in the Paris BCCI branch. Time was to report that the bank had its own spies and hitmen, but it is likely that it contracted out the work to existing intelligence services. 3<br /><br />The activities of the Safari Club were directed by ranking agency retirees and military men from their posts overseas. Richard Helms played an important role when he was ambassador to India. Indeed, the station chief in Tehran complained that Ambassador Helms seemed to be operating an laternative C.I.A. out of the embassy. Others have reported that the Safari Club was using some money that came from the shah or Iran. He added that Theodore Shackley had "formed the cadre of a private, shadow spy organization within America’s official intelligence service."4 <br />In 1966, Shackley was sent to Laos, and he took many of his people with him. Before this Anthony Poshepny (Tony Poe) was having his operators turn in the ears of people they killed in the local war against Communismh. Ted Shackley was to increase the number of operatives from 30 to 250. 5 There is some question about which of their activities in southeast Asia were official ly sanctioned and which were rogue initiatives of Shackley and Clines. Shackley worked with Laotian drug king General Vang Pao and he put the general in contact with Santo Trafficante so that they could cooperate bringing drugs into the United States. Apparently, their assassination program, Operation Phoenix, was sanctioned and funded by drug money administered by a naval officer in Siagon named Richard Armitage until sometime in 1973. After that, its sanction may have been lifted and they found another mechanism to go on, while still using Armitage. By then they had far more money than they required for Operation Phoenix and deposited the rest in Australia. They also established a massive secret arms cache in Thailand. In those years, 1973-1975, Operation Phoenix still had the blessing of the State Department, and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs acted as Kissinger’s liason officer with Phoenix. However, it appears that C.I.A. Direector James Schlesinger moved on May 9, 1973 to shut down all of the agency’s illegal operations. On t hat date he asked active agents to report on illegal activities and invited former agents to do the same.<br /><br />When Saigon fell, Armitage was sent to Tehran. He was to reroute the flow of money and drugs from Vang Pao drug money so that the secret team could set up an assassination program to wipe out s and communists in Iran. Edwin Wilson was sent to Iran to handle the murders. Daniel Sheehan, who first discovered the operations of the secret team, thought this was a a private, non-sanctioned operation. Armitage was soon posted in Bangkog as a special consultant to deal with missiong prisoners. He was perfectly positioned to handle the finances for Wilson through the Nugen-Hand Bank in Australia. He also organized the escape of Meo tribesmen who had worked for Phoenix from Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Jerry O. Daniels, another diplomat, was Armitage’s bag man.<br /><br /> They also saw that some arms were removed from the secret cache to Iran. The State Department learned of Armitage’s activities and his failure to do anything for the MIAs, and he was forced to resign near the end of 1977. For the next two years, he operated the Far East Trading Company in Bangkog. He was living in a home owned by a friend of Major General Richard Secord, who had become linked to the Shackley team. He then became an advisor to Senator Bob Dole and eventually occupied high positions in the State Department. If the Iranian venture were a rogue operation, it is difficult to believe he could have reached such heights. <br /><br />Secord was then Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary. In that capacity, he was able to purchase at bargain prices surplus equipment which he would route to Middle Eastern countries through middleman Albert Hakim. The goods were sold at a higher replacement cost. The difference was deposited in the Nugen Hand bank for covert, non-sanctioned operations. A number of front companies existed to serve the needs of these black operations. 6 <br /> <br />In those trying years for the “cowboys,” many quit rather than be moved to remote outposts. Former agents frequently created private intelligence organization ( PIOs) and private military or mercenary forces (PMFs). Together with colleagues still with the agency, they created a’shadow C.I.A.” or what they called “the Enterprise.” Later, some called it the “K-Team.” Although The Enterprise worked through existing agents, allies in the military, and friends in the agency, people at the top in Langley, Virginia C.I.A. headquarters often had no clear idea of what was going on. These people were right-wingers and were convinced that Carter and Turner were destroying the agency. Two of the key players were Ted Shackley, General John Singlaub and General Edward Lansdale. Lansdale won a leading position in the Enterprise through his access dormant C.I.A. accounts originally created with Japanese war loot Lansdale fell out of favor with the Kennedy administration, was promoted to lieutenant general, and forced to retire. Lansdale played an important role in financing, and in the late 1970s, he sent Taiwanese officers to train Salvadoran right wing soldiers. Lansdale was also famous for his ring of assassins. A third founder of The Enterprise was former C.I.A. deputy director Ray Cline, whose expertise was in finance, keeping track of C.I.A. proprietary companies, and counterinsurgency. Cline later worked on Reagan’s political campaigns and was a special security advisor. They worked through many organizations including the Council for World Freedom. <br /><br /> Eliot Abrams, a late arrival, is at the hub of the Enterprise today. These people worked with well-known right wingers such as the Hunt brothers, the Unification Church, and the John Birch Society. Later, through its CAUSA and Linda Guells, the church helped Oliver North fund the Contras. Hundreds former C.I.A. agents of them worked hard in the primary campaign of George H.W. Bush. When Ronald Reagan was nominated, C.I.A.-tied Bill Casey became his second campaign manager, and evangelical Christians, often tied through foreign business interests and missions to the C.I.A., proved top be very useful political allies. <br /><br />In 1979 “retired” C.I.A. officers Richard Helms, Ted Shackley, and and Ray Cline worked actively to oust Carter from the White House. Miles Copeland, organized’spooks for Bush.” Copeland liked Carter personally and praised his intelligence but believed that Carter’s genuine idealism was a threat to national security. He said there was a “ C.I.A. within the C.I.A.” which was the true protector of the nation’s security.<br /><br />7These C.I.A. people were joined by Major General John Singlaub. In December, Singlaub and another military retiree, Lt. General Daniel Graham led an American Defense Council delegation to Guatemala where they assured right-wing leaders that Ronald Reagan would not be critical of death squads. Their efforts and those of Michael Deever would result in $10,000,000 from Guatemala and Argentina being funneled into the Reagan campaign. Singlaub became a key figure in the World Anti-Communist League, whose chapters in three European countries were controlled by former Nazis., The WACL would later send arms to the Contras in Nicarauga. 8 It was founded by Chaing Kai-Shek, Reverend Moon, people in the Nisson Corporation, and some figures who had been tied to the Third Reich. Nixon deployed it against as a counterinsurgency took in Latin America and South East Asia. In the Reagan era, it was used for assassinations and operated in many places, including Afghanistan. 9<br /><br /> During the Republican primaries of 1980 retired and active C.I.A. agents worked for the former director, George H.W. Bush. A House committee report later affirmed this. 10 In the 1980s, Robert M. Sensi, sometimes an agent and sometimes a contractor, collected funds abroad for the Republican party. He was so slick that it was said he “could go into a revolving door behind you and come out ahead of you." Sensi was also involved in the October Surprise, a deal that prevented Carter from recovering the hostages held by Iran. Sensi made financier Richard Hirshfeld ( aka Richard Marshall) an asset, and in 2004 they developed an elaborate scheme to financially link Democratic nominee John Kerry to Al Qaeda through his campaign treasurer, Robert Farmer. The scheme failed, but only barely ass this writer recalls when the first accusations hit the press. Hirshfeld was close to Senator Orrin Hatch. Representatives Henry Hyde, Bill McCullom and James Sensenbrenner.<br /><br /> Sensi and Hirshfeld were profiting from the sale of unspecified services to the Department of Homeland Security. Hirshfield was enjoying federal contracts while facing federal fraud charges. He tried to scam Habitat for Humanity and markeded "the world's only known cure for herpes," He killed himself January 11, 2005. Sensi twice served time for embezzlement while serving as a C.I.A. agent. He worked closely with the Kuwaiti royal family and was accused of defrauding the firm. Both men, coincidentally, were represented by an attorney who had represented the RNC and George H. W. Bush. 11<br /><br /> When Ronald Reagan became president, he permitted the intelligence agencies to work closely with the PIOs and the PFMs and authorized total secrecy about these arrangements. This meant that the private operations were not burdened with any public accountability.12 <br /><br /> In the 1990s, there was a growth of the private intelligence community that paralleled the growth of the PIOs in the late seventies and early 1980s. In the 1990s, President Clinton somewhat accelerated the outsourcing of intelligence work and in 2001 and 2002 George W. Bush greatly accelerated the letting of contracts to the private spy industry. It should be noted, that the NSA has long been operated by private firms. Some of the firms involved were Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Abraxas, and Booz Allen Thompson. One great advantage of using private intelligence officers is that they are less restrained by the rules of government agencies and more difficult for Congress to monitor.<br /><br /> In October, 2006, the <blockquote>Los Angeles Times</blockquote> reported that more than half the worlers in the Baghdad and Islamabad stations were industrial contractors or “greedbadgers,” as they are called. The private spy companies send case and watch officers to crisis centers, and their people serve as regional desk officers who are in charge of black operations. The various intelligence agencies are still run by “blue badges” or government employees but the supervisory structure below them is increasingly filled by contract employees. <br /><br />Many of the contract spies are former C.I.A. employees, and there is little question that they perform well. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte ordered a study of the effects of outsourcing intelligence, but the report never made public and was classified as secret. 13 Now in charge of counter-terrorism, he played a major role coordinating UA-inspired terrorism against progressives in Hondouras and Central America in the Reagan Era. <br /><br />It seems that the felt much more comfortable with Republicans. Yet, it was known to undermine Republican cabinet officers. The Miami Herald found that a “ secret government” was in operation and that it ultimately reported to Bush. Reagan did not always know what this government was doing, and in 1985 it sent William Wilson, Ambassador to the Vatican, to Libya to meet with Colonel Moammar Qadhafi. Secretary of State George Schultz tried to discipline Wilson but was told Reagan knew of this in advance. <br /><br /> People placed in various departments ignored their superiors and reported to intelligence people who, in turn, reported to people in the NSC or tied to the NSC. Arthur Lyman, lead lawyer for the Senate committee that investigated Iran/Contra, referred to a ‘secret government-within-a-government." A key figure in this operation was Reagan intimate and the president’s second national security advisor, Judge William Clark, Reagan’s second National Security Advisor, who saw to it that Oliver North’s power increased.<br /><br />Under George W. Bush, not all elements in the agency agreed to help fabricate a case that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and it was subsequently necessary to purge some of those who disagreed.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-1342809540920698392011-01-01T13:56:00.000-08:002011-01-01T13:58:00.636-08:00The CIA in Crisis: Part IIJimmy Carter’s administration sought to curb the agency’s appetite for “cowboy” tactics and worse. Carter had campaigned against the “rogue C.I.A.” The Georgian sacked C.I.A. Director George H.W. Bush and replaced him with Admiral Stanford Turner, who eventually fired over 700 agents in the famous Halloween massacre, October 31, 1979. He had previously fired 200 in 1977. He was appalled about the agency’s use of hallucinogenic drugs, its abuse of a Russian defector, its stockpiling of venoms and poisons banned by executive orders, the spying on American critics of the Vietnam war including Jane Fonda, and its abuse of the US mails. The agency gave police departments special instruments to beat up peace groups, spied on reporter Jack Anderson and Brit Hume, and kept a Washington Post report on round the clock surveillance. <br /><br />Turner also abolished the agency’s private air force, Air America. From the time of his arrival, Admiral Turner encountered the determined opposition of the covert wing and had great difficulty extraction information from those people. He had the firm impression that the people in O He had the firm impression that the people in Oations were reluctant to do anything that could be exposed later and that they were adverse to all of his suggestions for relatively clean operations. It is difficult to determine if he knew much or anything about covert operations underway in Latin America. He later wrote that “The covert operations cupboard was bare.” <br /><br /> Turner was stunned to learn that a former agent, Ed Wilson was possibly involved in murder for hire and in weapon running to Lybia. When the admiral learned that seniorofficials Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines were close to Wilson, he decided their career advancement had to be derailed. Turner also ruled that Mossad no longer had a special status within the C.I.A.. Before leaving the agency, Clines disregarded an order to avoid business relationships with Wilson and set up his own weapons and consulting business before resigning. Shackley also left but kept close ties with George W. Bush. The Wilson matter became public knowledge in 1981, and he eventually went to prison. Former agents as well as covert officers still in service saw the Carter administration as the enemy and did as little as possible to cooperate with it, Much of Carter’s own NSC staff thought him too idealistic and was disloyal to him. There is no way of knowing if the Carter realized that Operation X was still going on, the transplanting from Vietnam to Central America counterinsurgency torture techniques. The Carter policy was that covert action should only be used as last resort. With the accession of Ronald Reagan, that policy was exactly reversed. <br /><br />It is difficult to assess the extent to which the C.I.A. has been under the control of the White House in various times in recent history. Almost certainly, an element within it began to conceal information from the president when Jimmy Carter became president. Later, when Bill Clinton was president, the agency spied on one of his ambassadors because she was concerned about human rights in Guatemala. The agency bugged the bedroom of Ambasador Marilyn McAfee and her her “cooing endearments to Murphy.” The spooks assumed that she was having an affair with her secretary Carol Murphy and it spread the word of a lesbian affair in Washington, hoping to get her removed and protect Guatemala’s brutal intelligence service. It turned out that “Murphy” her two-year old poodle. <br /><br /><br />Gene Wheaton, a military crime investigator with experience in three services, worked closely with C.I.A. agents and reported that C.I.A. officers he knew<br /><br />decided way back when, ‘75-’76, during the Pike and Church Committee hearings, that the Congress was their enemy... Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters and Frank Carlucci and Ving West and a group of these guys used to have park-bench meetings in the late 70s in McClean, Virginia so nobody could overhear they conversations. They basically said, "With our expertise at placing dictators in power," I’m almost quoting verbatim one of their comments, "why don’t we treat the United States like the world’s biggest banana republic and take it over?" And the first thing they had to do was to get their man in the White House, and that was George Bush. Reagan never really was the president. He was the front man. They selected a guy that had charisma, who was popular, and just a good old boy, but they got George Bush in there to actually run the White House."<br /><br />The former military criminal investigator added that his former friends had a low opinion of the American electorate. The average citizen was ignorant and needed to be guided by true patriots for his own good. <br /><br /><br />Wheaton believed that the network that Oliver North and George H.W. Bush deployed in the eighties was created among these angry agents. Another term for this network was Ted Shackley’s’secret Team,” in the words of Joe Trento. Shackley thought the best way to procede was to privatize some covert operations. Of course some privatizing had gone on since the early 196os. This renewed privatgization was funded by the ‘safari Club, which was created when Bush was director . It was like the Pinay Circle in Europe, politicians, businessmen, and agents. In February, 2002, speaking at a Georgetown Alumni affair, Prince Turki described it.<br /><br /><br />In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here (in the US), your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything… In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa.<br /><br />The head of Saudi intelligence then was Sheikh Kamal Adham, who was a great friend of DCI Bush. Later his nephew HRH Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Sa’ud held the post.<br />At that time, the Saudis opened a number of covert accounts at the Riggs Bank, where Jonathan Bush was a director. The Saudis financed some covert operations for renegades in the C.I.A. and its General Intelligence Department worked closely with the C.I.A., sometimes taking the lead in delicate operations. In this way, the Saudis gradually developed a deep knowledge of US intelligence operations and placed plants within the US agencies. In the late 70s, the small Pakistani bank, Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), became a big money lauindering machine for covert operations of all sorts throughout the world. Shackley used some of the money in operations he made sure would not be followed back to Langley. Poppy Bush had an account in the Paris BCCI branch. Time was to report that the bank had its own spies and hitmen, but it is likely that it contracted out the work to existing intelligence services. <br /><br />The activities of the Safari Club were directed by ranking agency retirees and military men from their posts overseas. Richard Helms played an important role when he was ambassador to India. Indeed, the station chief in Tehran complained that Ambassador Helms seemed to be operating an laternative C.I.A. out of the embassy. Others have reported that the Safari Club was using some money that came from the shah or Iran. He added that Theodore Shackley had "formed the cadre of a private, shadow spy organization within America’s official intelligence service." <br />In 1966, Shackley was sent to Laos, and he took many of his people with him. Before this Anthony Poshepny (Tony Poe) was having his operators turn in the ears of people they killed in the local war against Communism . Ted Shackley was to increase the number of operatives from 30 to 250. There is some question about which of their activities in southeast Asia were official ly sanctioned and which were rogue initiatives of Shackley and Clines.<br /><br /> Shackley worked with Laotian drug king General Vang Pao and he put the general in contact with Santo Trafficante so that they could cooperate bringing drugs into the United States. Apparently, their assassination program, Operation Phoenix, was sanctioned and funded by drug money administered by a naval officer in Siagon named Richard Armitage until sometime in 1973. After that, its sanction may have been lifted and they found another mechanism to go on, while still using Armitage. By then they had far more money than they required for Operation Phoenix and deposited the rest in Australia. They also established a massive secret arms cache in Thailand. In those years, 1973-1975, Operation Phoenix still had the blessing of the State Department, and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs acted as Kissinger’s liason officer with Phoenix. However, it appears that C.I.A. Direector James Schlesinger moved on May 9, 1973 to shut down all of the agency’s illegal operations. On t hat date he asked active agents to report on illegal activities and invited former agents to do the same.<br /><br />When Saigon fell, Armitage was sent to Tehran. He was to reroute the flow of money and drugs from Vang Pao drug money so that the secret team could set up an assassination program to wipe out s and communists in Iran. Edwin Wilson was sent to Iran to handle the murders. Daniel Sheehan, who first discovered the operations of the secret team, thought this was a a private, non-sanctioned operation. Armitage was soon posted in Bangkog as a special consultant to deal with missiong prisoners. He was perfectly positioned to handle the finances for Wilson through the Nugen-Hand Bank in Australia. He also organized the escape of Meo tribesmen who had worked for Phoenix from Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Jerry O. Daniels, another diplomat, was Armitage’s bag man. They also saw that some arms were removed from the secret cache to Iran. The State Department learned of Armitage’s activities and his failure to do anything for the MIAs, and he was forced to resign near the end of 1977. For the next two years, he operated the Far East Trading Company in Bangkog. He was living in a home owned by a friend of Major General Richard Secord, who had become linked to the Shackley team. He then became an advisor to Senator Bob Dole and eventually occupied high positions in the State Department. If the Iranian venture were a rogue operation, it is difficult to believe he could have reached such heights. <br /><br />Secord was then Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary. In that capacity, he was able to purchase at bargain prices surplus equipment which he would route to Middle Eastern countries through middleman Albert Hakim. The goods were sold at a higher replacement cost. The difference was deposited in the Nugen Hand bank for covert, non-sanctioned operations. A number of front companies existed to serve the needs of these black operations.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-10571551124913336732010-12-27T17:20:00.000-08:002010-12-27T17:22:29.848-08:00The CIA in Crisis: Part OneThe tightly knit old boy school at the core of the agency began to feel under siege when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger implemented a policy of détente with the Soviet Union. They felt betrayed by this policy and were in sympathy with the Joint Chiefs of Staff s efforts to undermine it. The military even develop-ed a spy ring, known as the “Admirals Plot” to spy on the Nixon White House as though it was the Politburo in Moscow. On the other hand, Kissinger willingly consented to the wiretapping of his subordinates.<br /><br /> All round, Washington had became a’sewer”, and neither common morality nor the law restrained behavior. It is not known if the C.I.A. helped the JCS, but agency insiders were clearly sympathetic with the military’s lawlessness. As Nixon tottered and fell, Paul Wolfowitz tried to sink Salt II by lobbing for a new ballistic missile system. Corporate interests pumped money into fairly right-wing think tanks in an effort to force Gerald Ford into abandoning détente. An alliance of interests defending cold war orthodoxy took shape: the defense intellectuals who would become the Neocons, the C.I.A. old boys, the military, and corporate.<br /><br /> A C.I.A. contribution to the effort was to intensify Cold War activities in Latin America. Robert Gates, working on the Nixon and Ford National Security staff clearly opposed détente, but it is unclear if he was responsible for some of the leaks that so damaged détente from 1973 through the Ford years. Most of these allies hoped that the GOP would nominate Ronald Reagan in 1976 and that the Dems would pick cold warrior Henry’scoop” Jackson. <br /><br />They were to be disappointed, but they continued funding their think tanks and attempting to revive the cold war. All was not lost as Dick Cheney, a cold warrior, was Ford’s chief of staff and Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor was to be Zbigniew Brzezinski Robert Gates continued in power as a Brzezinski aid. They persuaded Carter to bring in reactionary Samuel Huntington as a consultant and the three of them persuaded Carter to begin a new arms buildup. <br /><br /> In 1973, the C.I.A. entered turbulent years that extended through the directorships of James Schlesinger and Stansfield Turner, in which many so-called “Cowboy” agents were sacked because they were suspected of illegal behavior. Schlesinger replaced Richard Helms, who was fired for refusing to pay blackmail money to E. Howard Hunt. Schlesinger said, “The clandestine service was Helms’s Praetorian Guard. It had too much influence in the Agency and was too powerful within the government. I am going to cut it down to size.” He promptly fired 7% of the case officers. He then issued an order that all employers were to cease illegal activities and report those illegal actions they knew about. <br /><br /> Agent Cord Myer noted that the directive was was “a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.” Some senior agents decided to punish Nixon by leaking information about Watergate. A thousand covert agents and 500 analysts were fired. There were threats on Schlesinger’s life. <br /><br /> After six months, Schlesinger was replaced by William Colby, who alienated many by releasing damaging information to Congress. Before he gave a Congressional committee a 600 page report on C.I.A. abuses, he insisted that the hearing room be swept for bugs and that only electedofficials be present, without their assistants. Helms hated Colby for what he did and hinted that Colby was a soviet agent. James Jesus Angleton flatly said this was the case. Colby was probably murdered April 28, 1996. <br /> <br />These were the years when the C.I.A. was teaching young people the methods of terrorism but not counter terrorism. At the Border Patrol School at Los Fresnos, Texas. The “Bomb School” was abolished in 1974 but the agency just carried on the training elsewhere, including military bases. Someone should have asked why the agency was training terrorists and looking into other matters. When the Pike and Church Committees began their rather gentle probes, the agency simply went on as before. In one operation a Cuban plane was blown up in October, 1976 under Director George H.W. Bush, and even in 2007 nothing was done to resolve the case. <br /><br />The Central Intelligence Agency’s potential for wrong doing does not rest so much on its budget—about 10% of the nation’s total intelligence budget-0- but from the fact that it is considered the president’s private army and hass a license to engage in all sorts of black operations. Allen Dulles knew covert action was a very powerful weapon and that it acted “like a damn good drug.” But he added, “if you take too much of it, it will kill you.” Presidents became dependent upon the agency because almost all of them seemed to want hidden means of accomplishing things. Some, like Colonel Fletcher Prouty, have suggested that the agency has sometimes directed the nation’s foreign policy in a manner independent of the White House. Prouty has offered little proof of that, but there was Richard M. Nixon’s comment that “I don’t want the goddamn C.I.A. to make policy anymore.” . DCI Richard Helms told the president he agreed. <br /><br />A report on C.I.A. abuses was compiled for Director James Schlesinger in 1973. It ran to 693 pages and was Called “Potential Flap Activities,” or informally the “family jewels.” Its contents were were not partially revealed until June, 2007, but William Colby did brief Congress on it. As a result of the report, Schlesinger fired nearly 1000 people and left the agency. Richard Nixon believed the agency was bloated and ineffectual and he was angry that it had not helped to coverup White House involvement in Watergate .Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-85506006777940482222010-12-26T11:15:00.000-08:002010-12-26T11:18:13.118-08:00NATO's Stay Behind ArmiesAfter World War II, latter was founded by the US and later operated by the C.I.A. and NATO in 1956 with the specific mission of preventing an increase in the power of the Italian Communist Party. Often former SS officers were involved. Local units assembled considerable arms caches NATO ambassadors were finally briefed on the existence of these “armies” on November 7, 1990. US Field Manual FM 30-31B briefs military intelligence people on the existence of this network and makes it clear that its existence must be kept secret. Parts of the document have been surfacing since 1973, but the Pentagon and C.I.A. consistently disavow it. <br />The networks came under the supervision of SAEF, the military arm of NATO and was run by its Clandestine Coordinating Committee.<br /> <br />Very frequently, the Stay Behind networks are considered the same as the Gladio operation. In reality, Gladio is the name for the Stay Behind operation in Italy. The program was created by Allan Dulles after World War II. He feared that the Russians would invade Western Europe, so he began organizing an underground network of anti-communist fighters, many of whom had been avid Nazis or Italian Fascists. This network was used to combat Communism in Greece and Turkey in 1947. In Greece, the network was called Sheepskin, and in Turkey it was Red Sheepskin. In Austria it is Schwert, and in France the name is Glaive. There the Stay Behind network, consisting of about 500 secret soldiers, was tasked with Plan Blue, preventing France from becoming red. Elements of the network worked with the Secret Army Organization against President De Gaulle in 1962, and one member was executed. A key figure in the French operation was Jean Vilot, founder of the Pinay Circle, a group of right-wing anti-communist intellectuals. He was also front-man for some of Otto Von Hapsburg’s operations. Vilot is also a mamber of the Circle of Nations, a group of aristocrats who are mostly monarchists. He is also a member of Opus Dei. According to a Belgian magistrate’s report, Vilot works for French and Vatican intelligence agencies and has close ties to the secretive Italian organization, P-2. Many of the members of the stay-behind organization in Belgium have been accused of child sexual abuse. Vilot has a hand in running the Belgian group, but there is no proof he was involved in child sex abuse. <br /><br />The name of the left-behind group in in Switzerland is P26, and in Sweden it is Sveaborg. Historian Daniele Ganser states categorically that Prime Olf Palme was murdered by a Stay Behind operation. We know that P 26 ( Swiss Gladiators) people were having regular training exercises in Britain as late as the 1980s. A 1990 investigation revealed that Italian members of the network in the 1970s trained with the 10th Special Forces Group in Bad Toelz. The Portuguese network in filled with veterans of the fighting in Africa. All these branches have symbols featuring the NATO sword. Here is the Italian symbol. <br /><br />The Gladio symbol <br /> <br /> In the 1970s, “ Stay Behind “ people in Great Britain, embedded in the military and intelligence communities, produced in Operation Clockwork Orange false evidence showing that some people in the British Labour Government of Harold Wilson were dupes of the Communist. This led to Wilson’s resignation. In 1977, the Spanish network slaughtered people in the office of a Communist lawyer in order to slow the transition to emocracy . <br />The unit in Turkey staged a coup and ousted a Prime Minister in 1960. In 1965, the C.I.A. and Greek unit forced George Papandreou from office by Royal edict. There was another coup in 1971 that was followed by widespread violence against dissidents. It carried out another coup in 1980. The Belgian network sometimes engaged in sprees of violence. On one occasion, the Italian Gladio staged a silent coup that forced the s to leave a coalition government. <br />Former Italian President Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga said the strongest leg of the Stay Behind operation was in the Federal Republic of Germany. We have very little solid information on Left Behind operations in Germany. Some of the weapons stashes were found in forests. The problem is that West Germany intelligence was built on the Gehlen organization, which is dominated by the C.I.A. and filled with old Nazi operatives. Former Intelligence Minister attributed many of the murders carried out by the Badren Meinhof Gang to the Stay Behind operation. At the least, they were heavily infiltrated. All but one of those sent to prison committed suicide simultaneously. The remaining terrorist, Horst Mahler, became a right-winger when released. <br />James Jesus Angleton, who became the C.I.A.’s counter-intelligence chief used family and business connections to establish Gladio. The key to the success of Gladio in Italy was OPERATION DEMAGNETIZE, which began in 1951 and resulted in placing the Italian secret police more or less under the control of Glaudio people. <br /> In 1969, it was decided the Italian Gladio should be used to carrying out bombings and acts of violence and attribute them to the Italian Communists. This was called “the strategy of tension.” The idea was to force the authorities to clamp down on left-wing organizations. The first major terrorist event was the bombing of Piazza Fontana in Milan that year. <br /><br />The usual pattern was that Propaganda Due carried out the terrorist acts by using the police and secret police. There were many other sad events, including the bombing of the Italicus express in 1974 and the bombing of the Naples-Milan express in 1984. Seven-time premier Giulio Andreatti was suspected by some of being involved in these and other crimes. In 1974, White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig had a secret meeting with P-2 head Lucio Gelli. Haig approved P-2’s plan to use bombings and violence to discredit the Communists by attributing those actions to the left. Aldo Moro, then Foreign Minister , had other plans and told Henry Kissinger in 1970 that the time had come to reach an accommodation with the Communists. Four years later. Moro, now Prime Minister offering his “opening to the left,” was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigade. P-2 was behind this. Maro’s widow said Kissinger warned him that if he moved to reach an accommodation with the Communists, some people on the fringes of Italian politics might harm him. She added that Moro was terrified. <br /> <br /> This Lodge financed its operations with money Robert Calvi was stealing from the bank in operated in Milan, the Banco Ambrosiano. It was the largest private bank in Italy and was connected to the Church. Calvi moved money out of it to his accounts in the Vatican Bank ( Instituto per de Religione, IOR), and looted the IOR through dealings he had with it. In addition he was laundering the mafia’s drug money and skimming those funds to keep Banco Ambrosiano appearing solvent. In all, he removed $1.3 billion. Finally, he found it necessary to go to London to negotiate the sale of part of the bank to Opus Dei, a secretive, conservative Catholic organization. He was found hanged below Blackfriar’s Bridge. Years later, Francesco Mannoia, a mafia defector, revealed that Calvi had been strangled by Francesco Di Carlo, who managed the mafia’s drug operations in London.<br /> <br /> As an important part of Gladio, P-2 had dealings with the Grey Wolves. Though banned by parliament, they have infiltrated the military, industry, the Judiciary, politics, and probably the church. They have been tied to the arms and drug trades and to assassinations and violence. Former members have disclosed its money laundering operations and ties to the Mafia. <br /> There sere several parliamentary investigations of the European secret armies in the 1990s, and it is believed that they no longer exist. These days, people use the term “Salvador Option” to describe the use of people in other countries to quietly remove leftists and other considered threats to western interests. Seymour Hersh wrote about this in 2005, and he has shown that the US was then using a secret army in Iran. es were all about. We know that they were the creation of Allen Dulles, and it is possible that Winston Churchill first came up with the idea. <br /><br />The La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin was bombed on April 5, 1986. As far we know ths Shield people in Germany were not involved. Rather it was a Muslim terror cell led by Abu Jabar, who, it turns out, had C.I.A. ties. His right-hand man was a Mossad agent, and a third figure, Musbah Eter, had C.I.A. connections. <br /><br /> Jabar was Libian and using a communications system called Trojan that had been set up for him by the Mossad. The Mossad used Trojan to broadcast messages to Libian embassies around the world relaying terrorist instructions, and the Americans intercepted them. These messages were used by Ronald Reagan to bomb Khadaffii’s home, and this ended efforts to obtain the release of some hostages. The bombing in West Berlin followed thbese events, so wone can only wondeer if the C.I.A. helped the Mossad maneuver the US government into the bombing of Libia. <br /> .Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-61806721381644519652010-12-22T16:59:00.000-08:002010-12-22T17:01:03.962-08:00Propaganda Due and the VaticanMore on P-2 <br /><br /> P-2 is a fiercely anti-communist organization with neo-fascist tendencies. Its members are given to secret rituals and they consider themselves a parallel intelligence service. It is said that the ceremonies are guarded by men carrying axes. For some reason, these people seem addicted to numerous arcane rituals. Odd stuff! <br />The lodge has over 1000 members, each of whom has sworn an oath of loyalty to Grand Master Licio Gelli. Gelli fought on the side of the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, was liaison to Hermann Goering’s SS Division, and may have worked in counter-intelligence for the UD Fifth Army near the end of the war. He was a personal friend of General Juan Peron. Almost 120 Catholic prelates turned up on a list of members. The involvement of churchmen is a bit odd but consistent with human nature. P-2 springs from a Masonic strain that was particularly anti-clerical and hostile to Roman Catholicism. Perhaps some or all the ecclesiastical members secretly shared these views. Perhaps their ambition and anti-communism were decisive factors in joining.<br /><br />Leo Zagami, a repentant former leader of P-2, has said, “P2 is the Vatican and the Vatican is the real mind of GLADIO and I'm probably a dead man as my wife is saying in the last few days but I don't care and will go on.” He claims his family had long been tied to the Illuminati and that he is related to Queen Elizabeth II. In 2005, he married an Islamic woman, and he converted to Islam in 2006, taking an Islamic name and suggesting he was tied to the Sufis. His family subsequently broke up, and he left Islam. He is sometimes located in Norway and talks about exposing the secrets of P-2. He claims that P-2 engaged in black magic and Satanic rituals. <br /> Prominent politicians and industrialists turned up on the list, including Silvio Berlusconi, who is both a politi C.I.A.n and industrialist. It is said that P-2 played an important role moving C.I.A. and Vatican money into Eastern Europe to combat Communism. The P-2 Lodge has close ties to the Israeli Mossad, and the Jewish community has close ties to the Lodge. Gelli’s protégé Michael Sindona handled Vatican finances under Pope Paul VI and later convicted of fraud in the United States and Italy.<br /><br />John Paul I, Paul’s successor, asked Cardinal Jean Villot, papal Secretary of State, to investigate the Vatican Bank in early September. The “Smiling Pope” also ordered a thorough reorganization of the curia, which Villot opposed. Papa Lu C.I.A.ni’s orders were not carried . Items, including his will, slippers, and glasses , were removed from his rooms. There was no autopsy, and the body was immediately embalmed. On February 2, 1980, the Vatican withdrew its permission for Cardinals Guiseppe Caprio and Sergio Guerri and Bishop Paul Marcinkus to testify via videotape in the US fraud trial of Sidona. <br /> <br />The late Sherman Skolnick, who has proven to be correct far more often than wrong, thinks John Paul I was murdered because he did not want Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank dealing with the Mafia and the American C.I.A.. He thinks the murder was arranged by Roger D’ Onofrio, the C.I.A. paymaster in Rome. <br /><br /> Both Sindona and his friend Calvi laundered drug money for the Mafia. Gelli was imprisoned in 1998 for corruption and fraud. It is likely that his son Raffelo will lead P-2. According to C.I.A. agent Dick Brennke, quoted in the Times of London, Propaganda Due now uses the name P-7, and was not wound up after the imprisonment of the senior Gelli. n to be a member of Propaganda Due. His arrest might suggest the organization’s power has finally diminished. <br /> <br /><br />Propaganda Due has clearly acted as a front for the Italian Mafia and has done the work of the C.I.A. in Italy and elsewhere. It active in Uruguay, Argentina’s “Dirty War, and Brazil. In each case it was doing the C.I.A.’s dirty work. In Bolivia, it helped the C.I.A. finance the so-called “Cocaine Coup.”<br />P-2’s self-identification as an intelligence organization is accurate, as they have functioned as part of NATO and the C.I.A.’s Operation Gladio.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-69676077231813677962010-12-19T16:56:00.000-08:002010-12-19T16:58:05.137-08:00Other Aspects of the Agca Case ??In 2005, Agca told La Repubblica that he had help from people within the Vatican, adding that "the devil is inside Vatican's wall.” A week later, he Told Turkish Weekly that he had said nothing about getting help from within the Vatican. In 2007, Agca allegedly converted to Catholicism. <br /> <br />Some link Agca’s remark about help in the Vatican to a threefold murder there on May 4, 1998. Allegedly, 23 year-old Swiss Guard Vice Corporal Cedric Tornay shot his commander, Colonel Alois Estermann and Estermann’s wife, and then himself. Estermann was remembered for his heroism the day John Paul II was shot. It was believed that Tornay resented the Colonel’s treatment of French speaking guards and was angry that a medal was withheld from him. A second autopsy of Tornay’s body revealed some inconsistencies in the Vatican’s autopsy report. The team assembled by the corporal’s mother said he was shot by a shell that did not come from his gun and that a supposed suicide note was a forgery. <br /><br />Estermann had been promoted by the pope to lead the Guard a few hours before this. Estermann and his wife were close to the secretive order Opus Dei, and some believed that Tornay was a source for Vatican Intelligence Agent Yvon Berterello, who was investigating the extent to which the order had penetrated the Guard. It was known that the Guard’s chaplain. Monsignor Alois Jehle, the Guard’s chaplain, was concerned that the Colonel was recruiting Guards for Opus Dei. <br /><br />Later, Monsignor Giovanni Danzi, head of the Guard’s Security Committee carried out an investigation, suggesting he may have thought a fourth witnessed the shooting. The Vatican’s view was that the forensic evidence clearly showed that Tornay did the shooting. The odd thing was that there were people two paces from the apartment, and they heard nothing.<br /> <br />The <blockquote>Times</blockquote> of London reported that Estermann and Tornay has a sporadic sexual relationship for about two years. Estermann was involved with other guards. <br /><br />Colonel Roland Buchs-Binz, the former commander, temporarily returned to service and made it clear he did not believe the official explanation. He had Tornay dressed in his uniform and laid beside Estermann and his wife for an observance by the Guard. Soon, two- thirds of the Guards non-commissioned officers resigned. <br /><br /> A Polish paper quoted Marcus Wolf, former second in command of the East German intelligence service, the Stassi, as saying Estermann had been employed by them since 1979. A Turin paper checked with Wolf who said Estermann was not a spy and that the East German mole was a German Benedictine working in a Vatican science office.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-67424127515128844312010-12-17T16:37:00.000-08:002010-12-17T16:40:18.803-08:00The Attack on John Paul II: Three PossibilitiesThere are at least three theories of who hired Agca. At times, the C.I.A. suggested the Russians had hired to Bulgarians to control Agca. Russia’s motive would have been to end John Paul II’s involvement in Polish and east European affairs. Prior to his pontificate, the Vatican showed little interest in its branches in Poland and eastern Europe. <br /><br /> At one point Agca gave hundreds of pages of testimony to flesh out this view. He fingered a Bulgarian agent named Sergei Antonov, who was arrested and held for three years before being cleared. Agca had been able to describe the interior of the man’s Rome apartment and accurately described in detail the structure and operations of the Bulgarian intelligence agency. However, Agca said nothing about the Bulgarians and Soviets until after he had been in solitary confinement and was visited by Italian intelligence people. <br /> <br />For a time, the Bulgarian Connection theory got a lot of play in the US press. The Americans backed off this theory when Yuri Andropov moved up from head of the KGB to head lead the Soviet Union in 1982, and soon the American press was making fun of the theory that the Soviets were behind the assassination. Senator Alfonse D”Amato went to Rome to pressure American officials there to cooperate with the Italian investigation. He was neither welcomed nor given cooperation. In fact he had been asked not to come. Much later, C.I.A.officials told Congress that they knew all along this was not true because they had spies within Bulgaria’s secret service. <br /> <br />At later point, Agca said that Propaganda Due ( P-2 ) member Francesco Pazienza offered him freedom in return for implicating the Bulgarians and Soviets. He said P-2 offered him a prison break. Agca told the court that Propaganda Due had kidnapped the daughter of a Vatican employee in order to have someone to bargain in exchange for him. Pazienza, who had been a high official of SISMI , Italian military organization, said this idea came from Terry Ledeen, a right wing Reagan Administration official . Ledeen denied the charge. <br /><br /> There is clear evidence that Ledeen had ties to both Propaganda Due and the C.I.A., but the exact nature of those links are unclear. Ledeen and Pazienza began working together in 1979 when Ledeen wrote for The New Republic. Together they were responsible for keeping “Billygate ” alive. Billy Carter admitted to accepting a loan from Libya. They got details on his visit there and later floated a story that Carter also got money from Yasser Arafat. SISMI paid Ledeen $120,000 for his work. Ledeen is considered an expert in Italian affairs and has many contacts there. One of his friends in the Italian cabinet was mysterious connected to the forged documents allegedly from the Nigerian embassy that Dick Cheney used to claim that Iraq was searching for nuclear material. <br /><br />Cheney and the C.I.A. tapped Propaganda Due again in the February 17, 2003 kidnapping of Egyptian citizen Nasr Osama Mustafa Hassan in Milan. This extraordinary rendition led to the indictment of 26 American C.I.A. agents. Some of the C.I.A. agents flown in for the abduction foolishly used their own credit cares, which made it easy for the Italian police to track their activities. P-2 people within Italian police agencies helped the C.I.A. carry out the abduction and they later spied on the Italian prosecutors who handled the case. <br /> <br />The Israeli Mossad told the pope, through Archbishop Luigi Poggi of the Holy Alliance or intelligence service, that the Iranians were behind the assassination attempt and that Agca had been trained in Iran. Agca emphasized the part of his training that was received in Syria. One trainer was a rogue C.I.A. agent, Frank Terpil, who could have been brought in to make the C.I.A. appear involved. They claim that Agca confirmed this theory when John Paul came to his prison to offer forgiveness. After the meeting the pope ordered Poggi to end the investigation of the shooting. All records were sealed and taken to the archives. Shortly before his death, John Paul II said that he did not believe in the so-called “Bulgarian Connection.” treSherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-56906909374150850592010-12-16T14:27:00.000-08:002010-12-16T14:29:01.659-08:00The Attempt on the Life of John Paul II and Aspects of C.I.A. Operations in EuropeT <br />The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II will probably never be explained in full. It does provide examples of how organized crime, drug and arms trafficking, politics, and the work of government intelligence agencies are all intertwined—often in unexpected ways. The story also provides an example of very clever propaganda. <br />Mehmet Ali Ağca, a professional Turkish assassination, attempted to murder Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981. He was a member of the Grey Wolves, an anti-Communist Turkish terrorist organization. This is not a small organization and has tens of thousands of adherents wherever Turcic peoples are found. They are neo-fascists and ultra-nationalists who were also involved in the drugs and arms trades.. It is clear that much of his payment came through them and that they sprung him from a Turkish military prison. The Grey Wolves facilitated his movements and most probably supplied a back-up shooter who was also responsible for a distraction explosion that never occurred after the shooting. In 1979, Agca he probably killed a Turkish newspaper editor; although, some say he was paid to accept the blame. Abdullah Catli (pronounced Chutley), the number 2 Grey Wolf leader, organized Agca’s escape and gave him the false passport he had when apprehended in Rome. Beyond that, it is unclear who else was involved. In the seventies, the Grey Wolves were helped by the Counter-Guerilla Organization of the Turkish Army Intelligence. They were used against the Kurds. <br />. For the most part, the American position was that there was no conspiracy at all, even though it seems clear Agca had at least one accomplice on the scene who was seen running away. There was a period, however when elements in the American intelligence community promoted a theory linking the assassination to the Soviets. <br /><br />The role of the Italian Mafia in the attempted assassination of the pope is unknown. We know that it works closely with the Grey Wolves and Bulgarian intelligence in the international drug trade. It also has links to the C.I.A. in common efforts to fight the left and in the trade in arms and drugs. Former C.I.A. agent, Victor Marchetti noted that the agency capitalized on the Mafia’s right-wing tendencies and used it to control Italy. Different elements in the Italian Mafia handled different parts of the drug and arms trade. Raffaele Cutolo, head of the Neapolitan “ The New Camorra” was able to pass messages to Agca through his chaplain, Father Mariano Santini. Cutolo at the time was being held on the remote Agca Island prison. <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">The Grey Wolves</span><br />The Grey Wolves. Founded in 1969, worked with Operation Gladio ( gladius in latin is sword), an underground network the C.I.A. organized throughout most of Europe. They were initially planted to resist leftist regimes that might emerge. Sometimes Gladio units carried out terroristic acts and blamed them on left wing groups. <br /><br />In the 1970s, the Grey Wolves were moving top grade weapons from NATO arsenals into the Middle East and were paying for it with heroin. Death squads run by them and the Turkish mafia were active in 1970s. Duane “Dewey” Claridge, a rabid right-winger, was C.I.A. station chief in Ankara during many of those years. The C.I.A. was also tied to the Grey Wolves—Bulgarian operations. The Bulgarian government made little effort to conceal its involvement in drugs and arms, and it ran its illegal arms trade through Kintex, its foreign trade arm. The Grey Wolves were also involved in the drug trade and worked with the Turkish mafia, Turkish military, and Bulgarian Intelligence, which in turn was manipulated by the Soviet KGB. The drugs were moved to Northern Italy, where the Sicilian mafia moved the heroin to Europe and North America. It was called the “Pizza Connection.”<br /><br /> Money from these interrelated drug and guns operations were laundered through Stiban International Corporation, headed by a Syrian, which used accounts in the Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank. Stiban offices are located above the Banco Ambrosiano, which has the Vatican Bank as its main stockholder. Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982 after it had been looted by Robert Calvi, who was working for P-2, a secretive right-wing criminal element organized as a Masonic unit. Because Calvi worked closely with the Vatican Bank and moved much Ambrosiano money there, Italian police unsuccessfully tried to interview Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, head of the Vatican Bank. He had to remain within the walls of Vatican City. Later he was exiled back to the United States, where he worked as a parish priest until his death. Ezio Giunchiglia, a ranking member of P-2, remained in touch with the Cicero, Illinois native until his death. <br /> <br />There was an investigation Turkish government’s ties to the Grey Wolves and mafia in 1996. It was triggered by a November 3, 1996 car crash near Susurkuk. A Mersedes hit a tractor and turned over, killing three and wounding a guerilla leader. Husseyin Kocadig, a top Counter Intelligence official , was dead along with Abndullah Catli, a mafia and Grey Wolves leader, and the beauty queen girlfriend of the drug dealer. Narcotics were found. Soon it was clear that Cati, who admitted giving Agca the pistol he used on the pope, was being protected by the government. At the time Catli had a criminal record and was wanted for murder and drug running. He was carrying a Turkish weapons permit and diplomatic credentials provided by that government. Catli also had weapons with silencers and several thousand US dollars. <br /> <br />More recently, the Grey Wolves have established terrorist training camps in Central Asia for young men of Turcic backgrounds. The Chinese believe that some of the violence in southern China in 2009 involving Muslim migrant workers was inspired by the Grey Wolves. There is a suspicion that the C.I.A. could be behind these destabilizing efforts. At this time, the political party backed by the Grey Wolves is part of the governing coalition, and it claims it has renounced violence. Today, there is another underground network in Turkey called Ergenekon that is devoted to fighting democratic forces there. It is not known if this group is tied to the C.I.A., however Daniele Ganser, an historian at the University of Basel, insists that this is the case.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-49032391180097342872010-12-15T10:32:00.000-08:002010-12-15T10:39:05.992-08:00John Hinckley: Another Lone Nut?Some allege that John Warncock Hinckley,Jr., who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan in front of the Washington Hilton—now called the “Hinkley Hilton”-- on March 30, 1981, was a victim of mind control. The evidence of mind control is thin. One of the policemen who nabbed Hinckley thought he was hypnotized or in some sort of induced state. <br /><br />Several weeks before the incident, the papers were printing rumors that someone took a shot at Vice President George W. Bush in the wee hours of the morning. The rumor was traced to a policeman and an official with access to good information. The shooting took place near the town house of the vice president’s long-term mistress, Jennifer Fitzgerald. The Vice President was furious and the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Washington Pos</span>t killed the story. This sort of scare usually heightene concerns about security, but Reagan’s guards at the Hilton advised that he did need to wear his security vest. <br /><br />When George H.W. Bush made it back to Washington, he immediately ruled out any investigation that the shooting was a result of a conspiracy. Al Haig, in his memoirs, wondered if a conspiracy was involved, but he did not questions Bush’s decision at the time. This is an historical matter that will never be resolved. Orthodox historians have no choice but to accept the official story. <br /><br />Hinckley was a member of World Vision, a fundamentalist group that sometimes fronts for the C.I.A.. He was also a former member of the National Part of America—Nazis. The weapon he was supposed to have used was a short barrel 22 revolver, an RG-14, using Devastator long bullets. Four people were wounded by the six bullets he fired. There is film of Hinckley firing the first two shots; they hit no one. The sixth shot is said to have hit the side of the limo, ricocheting down the side of the car and hitting the president. Reagan was hit just under the left arm pit, and the bullet supposedly flattened to the size of a dime. <br /><br />There is confusion about the kind of gun used. Agent Tim McCarthy was hit in the groin and was sure it was stronger than a 22. Hinckley bought a 38 in Dallas, near where JFK was killed. There are photographs of a 38 on the ground and a policeman in a yellow coat picking it up was a handkerchief. There was also a 22 at his feet later. Another hit a DC police officer, and the sixth missed Reagan but is said to have ricoched to strike the Chief Executive. <br /><br />Before it was fired, Agent Jerry Parr grabbed Reagan and held onto him and pushed him into the limo before the fifth shot was fired. Then he was on top of Reagan. It is hard to imagine Reagan being hit in the chest with Parr on top of him. The last shot was fired when an agent was pushing Hinckley’s gun hand down. If it was fired then, it would have had to climb some way or other. Perhaps another ricochet. <br /><br /> Some think the agent somehow fired that shot, but this writer cannot construct such a scenario and must simply suggest that there are often inexplicable coincidences in such matters. There is the problem that Reagan had to have been hit after there was an armored car door between him and the shooter. They also point to Reagan’s comment that he felt a paralyzing pain just as the agents got him into the car. That sharp pain came after he was out of the line of fire. <br /><br />Critics of the official story believe that Reagan was only in a position to be hit when Hinckley’s first shot was fired. Indeed, he would have had to been able to shoot through the car door. We know that the bullet had ricocheted, so it must have hit a stone wall and then headed toward Reagan. But a short 22 cannot give a bullet that kind of velocity. A rifle could do that.<br /><br /> Maybe James Brady was hit by something other than a Devastator. The physicians removed a shell with explosive intact from his brain. The Devastator aluminum shell begins to explode on impact. It would be like finding a piece of exploded dynamite with its wrapping intact. The physicians should only have found fragments. There should have been a big area of impact; Brady’s was the size of a pencil eraser <br /><br />Amateur ballistics experimenters say that the Devastator bullets could not have come out of Hinckley’s 22. Until real experts address this, we can render no judgment <br /> <br /><br /> An ambulance bearing a wounded Press Secretary James Brady got to George Washington University Hospital fifteen minutes before the presidential limo, which left five minutes before the Brady ambulance. The Reagan limo got there 15 to 20 minutes after the vehicle carrying press secretary arrived. <br /><br /> The agents claimed they got lost. No motorcycle retinue accompanied them. The story was that they started out for the White House—that was a standing procedure and order. When Parr detected a bit of blood and, he decided to go to George Washington University Hospital. In changing directions, they lost time and for some unknown reason once went three blocks out of their way rather than following a diagonal street. At the hospital, Reagan was mistakenly given a cold blood transfusion. Some think that accounts for the early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. <br /><br /><br />While the agents were losing time, there was a sharp battle going on in the situation room of the White House between Reagan loyalists and Bush people. Just six days before, Secretary of State Alexander Haig had been replaced by Bush as head of emergency preparedness planning. Haig made a public comment about his being in control until Bush returned. It was made in the context of controlling emergency planning and not in reference to the presidential sucession. The press never got it right and even showed the clip when Haig passed away. Someone told Haig about the connections between the Bushes and Hinkleys, and he immediately ordered a lock down of the White House. <br /><br />Reagan began to walk into the George Washington Emergency Room even though his lung was collapsing. At first they could not find where he was hit, and then someone found blood coming out of a small cut below his left armpit. It was a single would with a razon rhin line. What they removed was “thin as s dime” and “razor edged.” Whatever it was, it bounced off a rib and slightly cut his aorta before bouncing off a rib again and then missing the aorta by a quarter of an inch and then went into the lung. <br /><br />Lt. Colonel Bo Gritz, a veteran of many intelligence operations, suggests that Reagan was struck by a thin planchet rather than a bullet. But he would have no way of knowing for sure. Aerodynamic disks were used in intelligence work and were fired by tubes or guns. Sometimes they bear poison, but this did not.<br /> <br /><br />There were three odd situations that day. Army Colonel Rodreguez, carrying the “football” or case with nuclear arming codes took off running, and he was gone for several hours and ended up with the Secret Service. At George Washington University Hospital, the F.B.I. got the coded card our of Reagan’s wallet which could be used to open the suitcase. The F.B.I. would not give Rodriguez the card. On that odd day, SAC bombers flew with no code books. Hinckley ws not turned over to civilian authorities; he was whisked off to Quantico Military Base. Then he went to Fort Butler in South Carolina for psychiatric evaluation. <br /><br />At the time, Judy Woodruff, now a CNN anchor, insisted the shot came from an overhang above Reagan’s automobile. Later, she said a Secret Service agent up there fired the shot. <br /> <br />Young Hinckey was obsessed with women, particularly actress Jodie Foster and allegedly shot Reagan to impress her. John Chancellor reported "the bizarre coincidence" that Scott Hinckley, an older brother, was scheduled to dine with Neil Bush and his wife on March 31, 1981. RCA then owned NBC and it made sure Chancellor was prevented from investigating the coincidental connection. <br /><br /><br /> At the time of the shooting, Scott, vice-president of C.I.A.-connected Vanderbilt Energy was meeting with Energy Departmentofficials trying to answer claims of overcharges from 1977 through 1980. Incensed because the media did not trace any of the odd aspects of the shooting, Journalism Professor and former Rhodes Scholar Nathaniel Blumberg wrote a novel The Afternoon of March 30 on what might have been going on.<br /><br /><br />The Hinkley family started in Texas where his father was an oil man and friend of George H.W. Bush and they moved to Evergreen, Colorado. In the 1960 s, the Hinckley’s Vanderbilt Oil was in trouble, getting little out of its six wells. The Bush family bailed them out, and the company changed its name to Vanderbilt Energy. Somehow, several millions trinkled in every year. . Oilman John Hinckley, Sr. was a reputed C.I.A. man and a leader of World Vision, a right-wing Christian evangelical organization. It became important in the 1950s. It was fiercely anti-Communist and worked with refugees from Communist nations. It often used missionaries to recruit people for intelligence work, following the long-established Rockefeller pattern of working through missionaries in Latin America. <br /><br />World Vision people did espionage work for the C.I.A. in Southeast Asia and ran recruiting camps for the Contras in Hondouras During the Vietnam War, World Vision had military equipment and USAID money, some of which was a poss through or pass over for its C.I.A. sponsor. Later, its money came from the National Endowment for Democracy. In Lebanon, it permitted its camps to be used by the fascist Phalange to kill Palestinians. In the United States it had refugee camps for Cubans and Thai, where a steady diet of anti-communism was offered. In the camps for Cubans, Alpha 66 and Omega 7, anti-Castro militants, worked openly and recruited. John Hinckley Jr. worked in the Arkansas camps for the Thai as did Mark David Champan, who eventually killed John Lennon. <br /><br /> World Vision became involved in Jonestown after the massacre, developing a plan to repopulate it with C.I.A. mercenaries from Laos. In 1977, the American Council of Churches and other religious bodies forced the C.I.A. to outlaw the use of mssionaries on intelleigence work, except under exceptional circumstances. The Southern Baptists and Worle Vision, both of which had been coopative said they forbad missionaries from doing intelligence work. Critics in 2009 claim that World Vision in Nicosea, Cyprus is a C.I.A. front and is involved in sponsoring terrorist activities. Indian critics note that World Vision is funded by the US government but that it continues to proselatize. The organizationsofficials seem to use a revolving door that takes them in and out of US government positions. <br /><br /> Like the organizations that Sarah Palin’s religious organizations are tied to, these people think they are engaged in’spiritual warfare” with the forces of evil. Hinckley stalked Jimmy Carter in 1980, hoping to shoot him. He was detained in Nashville for 5 hours in October, 1980 because he had guns in his possession. Carter was expected in that city then.<br /><br />The story gets stranger. Some make the case that Hinckley was shadowed by an evil twin or Doppelganger. His name was Edward Richardson, a follower of Carl McIntyre’s International Council of Christian Churches, looked just like Hinckley and also wrote sick love letters to Jodi Foster. He wrote threatening letters to Reagan and Foster, and was arrested a week after Hinckley by the New York Port Authority Police. Why had he followed Hinckley from Connecticut to Colorado? <br /><br /> Another person who looked somewhat like Hinckley and was the same age was Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon about a month before the attack on Reagan. A policeman who apprehended ihim thought he was under mind control; he was clutching a copy of The Catcher and The Rye. He said a voice in his hea commanded him to kill Lennon. Chapman was in therapy at the time and had been with World Vision. Some insist he had been involved in a remote viewing program, but this writer cannot nail that down. Money was no problem for him. He was a world traveler, staying in the best hotels, and he and his wife collected art ane even owned a $7500 Norman Rockwell lithograph. Their monthly ren was $400. When he was nabbed, he had over $2000 in cash and credit cards. New York columnist Jimmy Breslin concluded Chapman was under mind control. He was eventually able to prove that Lennon was under constant F.B.I. surveillance, but that is quite different from killing someone. John Lennon, who had become a powerful spiritual force, had made the mistake of asking fans to join revolutionary movements for human rights. <br /><br /> We know that the C.I.A. had its own remote viewing program for 25 years and that it was conducted in cooperation with the Church of Scientology. The military also had a RV program.The first publif information on remote viewing appeared in a Jack Anderson column on 23 April 1984. Years later Ted Koppel did a rather dismissive report on RV. <br /><br />In the 1980s, the Army’s RV program was called “Grill Frame.” The DIA’s program was “Sun Streak,” which was renamed “Star Gate” in 1991. After 1995, it was transferred to the C.I.A.. We do not know for certain, which /RV program, if any, was involved with Chapman. The Carter Administration tried and failed to kill off the C.I.A.’s RV program, but it continued, using many people supplied by the Church of Scientology. In 1995, John Mc Cahon, who ran it for a time, said more than $20 million had been spent on it.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-24826740959208525502010-12-14T16:22:00.000-08:002010-12-14T16:24:47.805-08:00An Attempt on the life of Jimmy Carter?Oddly, President Jimmy Carter said while still in office:” We are going to have to go all the way back to the assassination of president Kennedy to get <br />this country right."<br /><br />When Jimmy Carter was about to visit Los Angeles in 1979 for a Cinco de Mayo event , police arrested two Hispanics on May 5 near where the president was to appear. They test fired a starter [pistol. They had an additional 70 rounds. It was reported that they were to create a diversion while two professionals dealt with Carter. One of the Hispanics was named Osvaldo Ortiz, 27, and the other was Raymond Lee Harvey, a 35 year Anglo. The Secret Service said he was obviously a derelect. <br /><br /> All information on the incident disappeared. President Carter had requested TV time to outline broad changes in government. . When he heard of the incident, he cancelled the broadcast and retreated to Camp David. He told his advisors, “I have lost control of the government.” Among those he brought to Camp David for advice was Reverend Billy Graham. <br /><br />Stryker Mcguire of the LA Times broke the story of the two vagrants, but it only ran once, buried in the back pages. He later moved to a job in London. A ffew other papers carried small stories, and Newsweek had a longer piece. <br /><br />John Simkin believes John J. McCloy and David Rockefelleer may have been behind the attempt on Carter. Of course, both were leaders of Chase Manhattan Bank, which had loaned Iran $500,000,000 nad handled Iranian money. Carter resisted their efforts to get the shah in the United States, thnough Carter did give in when he learned the shah had cancer. <br /><br />In 2007, Walter W. Blanck, then a prisoner in Wisconsin, unsuccessfully sought representation so he could sue the F.B.I. and two agents. He claimed the two agents gave him mind altering drugs in 1975. He was also working for AFT at the time. Blanck wanted $60,000,000 for psychological damages. He wanted FOI claims filed against all defendants, but the judge ruled the request frivolous. <br /><br />In 1976, he was subjected to “indoctrination” and had to give one of the agents handwriting and rifle shhoting samples. He claims to have briefly met George H.W. Bush, then director of the C.I.A.<br /><br /> He was given Carter’s 1976 itinerary and told to assassinate him, but Blanck refused. In 1990 he began serving 4 years of a 73 year sentence for kidnapping in Illinois. That was reverse, and he was taken to Wisconsin where he is serving a 67 yerar sentence for kidnapping and false imprisonment.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2493626948579432348.post-33757495547302902292010-12-10T16:01:00.000-08:002010-12-10T16:03:31.572-08:00Operation Watch TowerWatch Tower was a C.I.A. operation that began in 1976, under the Nixon Administration. Drugs were moved from Columbia to Panama, and from there to the US and other destinations. It was named Watch Tower because it began as a series of electronic beacons and transmitters. With the towers up, radio beacons enabled US drug planes to fly below Columbian radar from Bogotá to Albrook Air Base in Panama. They could be used to create a safe corridor for planes that would not be bothered by Customs. The idea was to use the corridors to move guns south and cocaine north. C.I.A. agent Edwin Wilson fronted the operation and answered to Thomas Clines. Michael Harari of the Mossad was also playing a supportive role, and the people in the Panama based 570th Military Intelligence Group believed Harari’s authority came from the US Southern Command. While the Mossad carried a great deal of water for the US in Central America, Reagan’s C.I.A. thought it often withheld important intelligence in the Middle East.<br /> <br /> Colonel Edward P. Cutolo , second in command and then commander of the 10th Special Forces (airborn)Group. He later became concerned that he could be hung out to dry if the operation were discovered and learned that George H.W. Bush, Bill Casey, and Donald Gregg were behind the mission. Gregg was a key figure on Bush’s staff, and Colonel Douglas Menarichik was an important Gregg functionary. Some believe Gregg was a member of the 40 Committee. <br /><br />Cutolo feared something could happen to him and left behind a sword statement in April, 1980. He was murdered in 1980 and some claim the job was done by Mossad agent Colonel Michael Harari, who later became a security advisor to Manuel <br />. There was another affidavit signed by PFC William Tyree, who added that members of the Panama Defense Force under Major Manuel Noriega helped unload the drug planes. Tryee was uncomfortable with this mission, and his wife kept a diary describing it. This probably accounts for her murder, which was blamed on Bill. Tryee thought that some of the drug profits were used to establish FEMA. <br />The operation provided arms for right wing El Salvador guerillas who were seen as freedom fighters. However, large quantities of drugs were not immediately shipped for sale but were prepositioned so they could be sold later when more money was needed to finance counter-insurgency operations . The C.I.A. agents involved were concerned that Archbishop Oscar Romero had precise knowledge that the US was training them in five countries. Romero was murdered while saying mass on Monday of Holy Week, 1980. Cotulo’s affidavit said they were sure Romero had solid evidence about Watch Tower . The killing was orchestrated by Roberto D’ Aubuisson, who was trained by the Argentine Brigade 601 and the Israelis. On November 16, 1989, six progressive intellectuals were murdered in El Salvador. They were Jseuit priests; and the murderers also slaughtered their housekeeper and her young daughter. Twenty years later, in November 2009, the Spanish press published the order of the chief of staff of the Salvadoran Army calling for the murder of the six priests and any witnesses. He was so closely linked to the Pentagon that Americans must have known and approved of his action. <br /><br />There developed a related program called Operation Orwell. It was designed to protect Watch Tower by keeping track of law enforcement figures, journalists, judges, dissidents and religious organizations --especially Roman Catholics and Latter Day Saints-- who might gather information about the C.I.A. drug trade. It was fully operational the US and Columbia in 1980. Both Robert Gates, an NSC official , and Robert Gates, a C.I.A. agent and private citizen, had knowledge of Orwell. According to Colonel Edward P. Cotulo, agents were keeping track of President Jimmy Carter and former President Gerald Ford. Tyree said that his friend Sergeant John Newby was involved in missions watching Senators Kennedy and Kerry, Tip O’Neill, and several governors. Local law enforcement personnel were also hired for surveillance work and two U.S. Roman Catholic cathedrals were placed under electronic surveillance. A team from Fort Bragg kept track of Jesse Helms. Cotulo had been told that Watch Tower was a sanctioned mission and that Stansfield Turner himself was covering for Harari’s long standing drug trading. Cotulo doubted all this and sought to prove that neither operation was official ly sanctioned. Harari is now in hiding because Norwegian prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant in connection with several m murders. . What is interesting about Watch Tower is that some of Cotulo’s military subordinates worked hard to get out the story of why he might have been killed. <br /><br />Newby died in a parachuting accident. Colonel Robert Bayard , a critic of the programs, was murdered in Atlanta in 1977 where he went to meet Harari. Cutolo died in an automobile accident in Skullthorpe, England, in 1980 after meeting Harari. Colonel James Rowe was murdered on April 21, 1989 in the Philippines after Harari arrived there. Two other colonels died suspiciously and Congressman Larkin Smith, who tried to help the suspicious soldiers, died in a plane crash on August 13, 1989. Tyree was sent to prison. <br /><br />Watchtower occurred while Jimmy Carter was president, but it is very unlikely that he had no idea it was going on. Carter was dismayed when the Sandanistas took over Nicaragua, but his actions, authorized 6 months after that revolution, were limited to funding to keep an opposition alive. Before the take-over, Carter funded the corrupt Somoza regime even while it was slaughtering civilians. The idea was to maintain stability and prevent a Cuban-style government from emerging. Later, in 1984, the Sandanistas won an internationally monitored election, but the Reagan administration acted as though it had not happened. <br /><br />In the late seventies, the US was very concerned with the insurgency in El Salvador, but it had not reopened a C.I.A. station there until 1978. There is no indication Carter had any idea that C.I.A. activity there could have been tied to Watchtower. It is also likely that the old boys of the C.I.A. had not informed Admiral Stansfield Turner about what was going on. Turner had strict standards of propriety for what the agency should be doing, but he did worry that Carter was a bit of a “peacenik.” Turner eventually learned about Theodore Shackley’s rogue operations and effectively brought that man’s career to an end. Shackley retired and went into the arms running business with half a million dollars given him by former agent Edwin P. Wilson. Shackley’s association with Wilson was probably the strongest reason for blocking his promotion and ending his career.<br /><br /> Wilson became involved in illegal arms trading with Lybia and possibly even paid hits. Wilson had been fired in 1971 and finally went to prison in 1983. Wilson recruited many agents and techni C.I.A.ns from within the agency to help him move weapons and explosives to Lybia, and C.I.A. “quality control” measures proved ineffective in discovering the extent of his recruiting. Wilson Associated openly with Shackley and Clines. <br /><br /> Wilson used Frank Terpil to move C-4 to Lybia and to supply training camps where former Green Berets were instructing terrorists. These veterans thought they were working for the US government. Perhaps they were part of a deep scheme to learn about Lybian capabilities and Soviet activities in Lybia. Wilson’s defenders claim this is true and that he was reporting to Shackley. According to this theory, Shackley saw that the trainees were murdered in their home countries when they left the training camps. Terpil relocatred in Cuba after Wilson was arrested and has been known to sell equipment to the PLO. He has been accused of killing threeofficials of IBEX Corporation, which had done some work for Iran.Sherman De Brossehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12607886884624597357noreply@blogger.com8