Sherm Says

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

2011-02-24T17:11:00.000-08:00

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

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 (President Clinton rescinded this ruling in 1995.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-02-17T17:56:00.000-08:00

The White House and Drugs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-02-12T13:53:00.000-08:00

Provisioning the Nicaraguan Contras

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The North Plan and Its Descendants in Recent Years

2011-02-09T16:44:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-02-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-02-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-02-01T16:56:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-01-26T12:03:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

Arms Sales to Iran After the October (1980) Surprise

2011-01-24T16:32:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-01-18T17:34:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-01-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE AFTERMATH OF THE OCTOBER SURPRISE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-01-13T16:27:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-01-10T11:51:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-01-05T07:54:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The CIA in Crisis: Part III

2011-01-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

Jimmy 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.

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.”

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

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

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.
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

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
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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

In October, 2006, the

Los Angeles Times

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The CIA in Crisis: Part II

2011-01-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Jimmy 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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."
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.

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.

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.

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.

The CIA in Crisis: Part One

2010-12-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NATO's Stay Behind Armies

2010-12-26T11:15:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

The Gladio symbol

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

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

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

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

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

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

2010-12-22T16:59:00.000-08:00

More on P-2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Aspects of the Agca Case ??

2010-12-19T16:56:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

The

Times

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

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

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

The Attack on John Paul II: Three Possibilities

2010-12-17T16:37:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2010-12-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Hinckley: Another Lone Nut?

2010-12-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Attempt on the life of Jimmy Carter?

2010-12-14T16:22:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Watch Tower

2010-12-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The. Death of Mrs E. Howard Hunt

2010-12-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Mitrone and Jim Jones: Part Two

2010-12-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Danny Mitrone and Jim Jones

2010-12-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watergate: Part Seven

2010-12-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

The Role of Robert Bennett and Mullen Company

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watergate: Part Six

2010-12-02T12:22:00.001-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watergate: Part Five

2010-12-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watergate: Part Four

2010-11-29T14:24:00.000-08:00

The C.I.A. and Watergate
If the C.I.A. had anything to do with exposing the break-in it could be that it was somehow involved with the sex ring, using it to get information on politicians. After all, this would not have been the only time this actually happened. As will be demonstrated, the C.I.A. was operating another honey trap at the time.

It is often forgotten that the C.I.A. had turned over to the F.B.I. photographs of the White House plumbers in front of Dr. Fielding’s office . The agency refused White House requests to retrieve those pictures.
Martha Mitchell told a journalist that McCord was a double agent who lured the other burglars into a trap to hurt the Nixon White House, and she claimed that Director Richard Helms knew all about it. There is no way to verify her claims, but many others have shared her suspicious. She also said her husband was concerned because Charles Colson had been in touch with Arthur Bremer five days before he shot George Wallace. The problem is that Mrs. Mitchell drank heavily and we cannot be sure what she thought she heard. She feared that her husband was being set up for taking the blame in the Watergate break-in. she was medicated and taken off to a hospital.
Former agent Miles Copeland said Helms knew about the break-in beforehand. He has also written that the GOP sought to obtain mind-altering drugs that could be slipped into the drinks or food of Democratic orators. He hypothesized that this is what happened to Edmund Muskie, when he seemed incoherent in New Hampshire.

Haldeman thought that the C.I.A. was concerned that Nixon would move to reign in the agency after the election of 1972. Nixon considered firing Richard Helms in 1970 but settled for an eventual thorough house-cleaning and large personnel cuts. Nixon was said to distrust Helms because of his liberal, Ivy-league background. The implication is that agency men wanted the second break-in to be discovered to discredit Nixon. By his own account, we know that as soon as the burglars were caught. Helms called Acting Director Patrick Gray to suggest that the F.B.I. look at their ties to John Ehrlichman. Helms wanted to interest the bureau in the activities of the plumbers’ unit.
Those who claim the desire of the C.I.A. to implicatre the White House note that newspaper stories pursued White House ties rather than the C.I.A. link. The burglars also had sequential money that could be traced through Mexico to campaign fund raising. Haldeman speculated that the Howard Hughes faction of the C.I.A. was unhappy with Nixon. The president was allied with the Bush/DuPont cohort in the defense industry.

Some speculate that “ Deep Throat, ” the long unnamed insider who fed reporters Woodward and Bernstein information, had to be a C.I.A. man, but it turned out to be Mark Felt, a disgreuntled deputy director of the F.B.I.. His job was to compile information gathered by the bureau, but the odd thing was that most of what he revealed came from the C.I.A.. Playing a double game, Felt gave Nixon evidence about C.I.A. involvement in the death of John F. Kennedy. Then Nixon used that information to try to pressure the C.I.A. to help in the cover-up. Felt gave Woodward much information that did not reflect well on the C.I.A.. Some believe that “Deep Throat” was a name for at least three separate sources of information.

It is not likely that Felt was a double agent. He was an honest agent who must have resented all the drugs brought into the country. He also shared an animus against Richard Nixon who disliked the F.B.I. and abused it by requiring illegal operations. Like Hoover, Felt wanted to end the illegal operations required by the White House. Woodward recently told the San Francisco Chronicle said that Felt told him about an “incredible” and “ fantastic” black scientific operation that the intelligence people wanted to cover up at all costs. He may have been referencing a break-through in anti-gravity flight in 1971, which was probably funded by drug funds. This was Project Pounce at Nelis Air Force Base under Lt. Col. John Williams. Behind the scenes, there was a great struggle between two coalitions one led by Hughes and the other by the DuPonts and Rockefellers to setle who would exploit the technology. Supposedly, Robert Vesco abscounded with over $200,000,000 in C.I.A./Hughes funds that were intended for the project.

Bob Woodward, a young Washington Post reporter, was a key figure in exposing the extent of Nixon’s abuses of power. A Katherine Graham biographer suggested that Woodward was assigned to work with Bernestein on the Watergate story because there was a suspicion he was an intelligence agent.Woodward was raised a conservative Republican and had worked with the Office of Navy Intelligence, even briefing the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs, and Genereal Alexander Haig. Woodward had no journalistic experience when the Post hired him. Some information he ran came from Robert Bennett of the Mullen Company, a C.I.A. front. Bennett would report to his C.I.A. handler what information he gave Woodward, whom he reported was’suitably grateful .

The president was particularly angry over low C.I.A. estimates of Soviet strength, and his aides pressured the agency to revise their estimates upward. He alsdo objected to the C.I.A. finding, through Operation Chaos, that domestic anti-war groups were not connected with external enemies. He was convinced that they were part of a great, foreign led conspiracy. Nixon was using the BNDD , the drug agency then, as a rival intelligence service. The US was running a very secret assassinations program that paralleled Condor under the Nixon Administration that used the BNDD, forerunner of the DEA, as a cover. Lucien Conei legendary C.I.A. operative, was packed off to the anti-drug agency after the Watergate break-in. He had worked closely with E. Howard Hunt, but there is no evidence he was involved in Watergate. A number of former C.I.A. agents and Cuban exiles joined him in the BNDD ranks. They killed Omar Torrijos ostensibly because he was protecting drug traffickers. Mexico was running its own version of Condor, and some BNN agents cooperated with it.

The established story is that the men who were caught on June 17, 1972 had been removing a easedropping device, but it is assumed they were looking for something else as well. We also know that they photographed many documents. A.T. and T. had swept the premises for devices before the second break-in and found none. The F.B.I. found no listening device there after the second break-in, so those who contend the break-in was to replace a broken one might be be wrong. There is also evidence that Lou Russell worked with Nick Beltrante to sweep the DNC before the A.T. and T. people did. Some speculate that he removed whatever bugs that were there because neither AT& T nor the F.B.I. found bugs in the suite. Months later, according to McCord, a bug was found.

Watergate: Part Three

2010-11-27T16:50:00.000-08:00

The burglars used the nearby Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge as a base. Lou Russell was eating in the motel’s restaurant from 8:30 to 10:30, but he told F.B.I. investigators he did not talk to McCord at that time. He said he left at 10:30 and drove to his daughter’s house in Bennett, Maryland. She said her father told her he had to return to Washington to do “some work for McCord” that night. What he did, we do not know. He told the F.B.I. that he was in his room in a rooming house during the break-in.

Writer Jim Hougan thought Russell was helping McCord sabotage the break-in. Soon after the break-in, Russell was contacted by his old friend Bellino, then working for Senator Ted Kennedy’s Senate Administrative Practices Committee. Russell went to stay with Bellino’s friend William Birley on the top floor of the Twin Towers Complex in Silver Spring, Maryland. Eventually, Birley put Lou in a safe house, and one of the prostitutes moved in with Russell. Republican staffers on the Erwin Committed learned of Russell’s involvement with the bordello and thought that investigasting him might help them clear Nixon. On May 9, 1973, the Committee subpoenaed Russell’s bank and telephone records. They learned Russell never had a bank account. The only long distance calls were made to his daughter, and he kept no job diaries. On May 18, Russell suffered a massive heart attack and remained in the hospital until June 20. He told his daughter that he thought someone “switched pills on me,” causing the heart attack. Russell suffered a fatal heart attack on July 2, 1973 and was buried the next day. Reporter Bob Woodward knew about Russell but concluded he was just an “old drunk.”

Bernard Fensterwald was Russell and Mc Cord’s lawyer. He also helped some of the minor figures in the Watergate scandal. This Harvard-educated lawyer defended some of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s victims. Fensterwald was a close student of the Kennedy assassination and later worked with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. He served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Estes Kefauver and worled for the State Department and Senator Thomas C. Hennings. At one point, he would represent James Earl Ray. In 1979, he represented the family of John Arthur Paisley, a former C.I.A. official .

There are still many questions about the role of John Dean. Some say he may have leaked information about the Townhouse Plan in 1970. It involved a secret campaign financing program operating out of the basement of a townhouse. It was intended to route money to some candidates without the knowledge of the Republican National Committee. Lawyer Jack Gleason was also to make small ( $,000) cash deliveries to candidates and say the money was from “Pat and Dick.” This appeared to be an effort to set these people up for blackmail, as it was unlikely they all would report the payments as campaign contributions. There is no evidence that Nixon had any part in that aspect of the operation. When Dean was given the files on Townhouse, leaks began about it. Critics of Dean also note that he was more interested in prosecuting the plumbers for the break-in at Dr. Lewis Fielding’s office. Dean was behind the Watergate break-in, master-minded the cover-up, and was the first to raise the subject of bribing Hunt and the Cubans. Dean believed that he would become a power in the White House by coordinating all political intelligence. After he had cemented a light prison sentence, he admitted that he had destroyed E. Howard Hunt’s diaries, which had contained detailed accounts of how Gemstone, the Watergate operation, had been planned and executed. With Magruder, he developed an inaccurate sequence of events, and he consistgently placed the blame on John Mitchell, often by saying he was acting in Mitchell’s name.

After he turned on Nixon, he was asked why he did not warn Nixon about the full extent of the cover-up. His answer was that he had been denied access to Nixon simply does not hold up when one reads the White House transcripts. Mitchell made a fatal error in not going early to Nixon with what he knew. He knew Nixon had a paranoic cast of mind and thought things could be resolved without the president. Later, Nixon had been convinced that his old friend and law partner was at the heart of the problems.

Watergate: Part Two

2010-11-26T16:55:00.000-08:00

Robert T. Crowley, a longtime top C.I.A. covert action planner, thought that Hunt had convinced Nixon that George Mc Govern was getting money and information from the Cuban government. This he thought set off Nixon. Hunt later was required to fall on his sword by going to prison, but he did not go easily. Crowley said the C.I.A. was behind the plane crash that killed Hunt’s wife at Chicago Midway. This convinced Hunt to take the fall. Of Nixon, Crowley said:
We could read Tricky Dick like a dime novel. True to form, he believed he was an imperial figure and acted that way right up to the end. Hunt played his part and I’m sure you watched the thing unfold, right on the five o’clock news every night. For a smart man, Nixon was very stupid and played right into our hands.

Some claim White House Counsel John Dean ordered the second break-in because he believed that the Democrats had records on a call girl ring was operating out Columbia Plaza Apartments because he wanted to obtain certain documents that could damage the reputation of a friend connected to the ring. Phillip Bailley, a young lawyer accused of having a role in the operation of the service, claimed the Democratic party was arranging sexual liasons for politicians. Bailley represented many prostitutes and seemed to have a business relationship with Heidi Rikan, aka “Erika” or “Cathy” Dieter, who ran the call girl ring as well as Columbia Plaza. She had previously been a stripper at the Blue Mirror. The service eventually had many Democrat clients and serviced one astronaut, South Korean and US intelligence people, and a Saudi prince, who came from the nearby Saudi Arabian embassy.

Alfred C. Baldwin, who was to work for James McCord during the Watergate break-in, seems to have been tape recording the call girl ring’s telephones. He was using equipment puirchased by one Louis James Russell, who initially used McCord funds to buy equipment to spy on columnist Jack Anderson. He had once worked as a stringer for Anderson. Russell hung out at Columbia Plaza, acting as a customer, bouncer, and friend to the girls, who often crashed at his apartment and shared sad stories with him. Russell had been bounced out of the F.B.I. due to drunking problems and spent years as an investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee. For a time, he was a watchman for the Committee to Re-Elect the President. After the scandal broke, he went on the payroll of Security Associates, a detective agency owned by McCord. In that capacity, he did some work in George McGovern’s headquarters. Russell also worked for another firm that was doing some work for George H.W. Bush. He was a good friend of man who would later head of Senator Sam Erwin’s investigative staff, Carmione Bellino.

Cathy/Heidi’s roommate was Mo Biner, known by t he codename “Clout.” We do not know what role “Clout” played, but her name and code name turned up in Bailley’s address book along with the names of Heidi’s employees. Mo Biner was dating John Wesley Dean at the time. In 1972, Bailley visited the DNC headquarters and succeeded in soliciting some business for the prostitution ring. The arrangement was attractive to the DNC because the Watergate was not far from Columbia Plaza. Bailley, an active Democrat, thought communications between the DNC and the prostitution operation were made on Oliver’s telephone line. Oliver travelled frequently, so so his office could be used for private telephone conversations. Bailley later claimed that Maxine Wells showed photographs of female sex workers to people who were interested in entertainment. In a 1996 deposition, Robert Strauss said he had been told that some state party chairmen used Oliver’s phone to make dates. After the DNC started using the Columbia Plaza bordello, former F.B.I. agent told lawyer Bernard Fensterwald and two of his employees that he was recording conversations between Democrats and the girls; he added that the ladies did not mind. Russell sometimes worked for Fensterwald, who also served as his attorney. Republicans, including White House people, also frequented the brothel near the DNC.

Sometime near when Bailley was making visits to the DNC, John W. Dean became interested in the layout of those offices and sent Tony Ulasewicz to visit the offices and diagram the layout. This was probably a few months before Bailley began his visits. There are three different dates for the Ulasewicz visits, but late 1971 is probably most accurate. Dean wanted to get information on Democratic sexual activities, and must have suspected the Democrats were using services other than those provided by Heidi.

On April 6, 1972, Bailley was arrested for a a Mann Act violation, but it had no connection to Heidi’s ring. The case was given to prosecutor John Rudy, who was soon visited by Louis James Russell, who tried to steer Rudy away from the Columbia Plaza operation and toward another brothel frequented by judges and local politicians. The problem involved in the Bailley case was that the F.B.I. obtained his two address books. At the apartment they obtained films, photographs, a whip, and other sexual apparatus. The Washington Star erventually ran a story stating that Bailley was involved in a sex ring that could involve a White House lawyer and that that ring’s activities were not mentioned in Bailley’s indictment. Dean acted quickly and summoned Rudy and his superior to his office on Friday, June 9, 1972. Dean demanded to keep the notebooks over the weekend, but the prosecutors only permitted him to photocopy them. On Monday, Jeb Magruder told G. Gordon Liddy to break in to the DNC for the second time to repair the O’Brien bug. Recently, Magruder, now a clergyman, admitted that Dean – not Mitchell—had ordered the break-in.

Bailley’s case went to Judge Charles R. Richey, a Nixon appointee, who sent Bailley to St. Eliozabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital, where he spent 15 days and only receivecd 45 minutes with an analyst. He was committed on the basis of sexual photographs the prosecution showed Richey.

In Bailley’s second hearing, The Judge then instructed both sides to dispose of the case. Bailley, now completely demoralized, accepted a plea bargain that resulted in getting him 5 years in federal prison. He was now thoroughly disgraced. For some reason, the paperwork on his two hearings was sealed and subsequently lost. By settling the case without a hearing, the judge made it impossible to bring up the material on the sex ring. But all of this took some time, and it was not certain how much evidence needed to be buried.
The second break-in occurred on the night of June 16-17, two days after Dean talked to the prosecutors. It was ostensibly being done to change the bugs placed on Larry O’Brien’s telephones. However, hust before that, AT&T had swept the offices and found no bugs. James McCord, on the pretext of delivering a typewriter, stuffed and taped a lock on door accessing the building. The team knew that the tape had been found and removed, but Gordon Liddy thought it was still safe to go ahead with the operation. He reasoned that a maintenance man might have removed the stuffing and simply gone home. After all, there were no police on the scene. This time Gonzales probably taped the door again and the operation went ahead at 1:30 AM. It was McCord’s job to remove the tape once they were in, but he did not do so.

Subsequently, James McCord and five Cubans were arrested in the DNC headquarters. Also arrested were Liddy and Hunt, who were monitoring what the break-in at a distance. The F.B.I. arrested Alfred E. Baldwin at his listening post. Baldwin was supposed to be listening to DNC phone calls for about twenty days. He recorded nothing, but supposedly took some notes. Some now think there were no bugs in the DNC. If that was the case, it is likely he was only listening to phone calls and bugs in the bordello down the street from the DNC.

Watergate: Part One

2010-11-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

The Watergate Affair began on June 17, 1972 when 5 burgulars were caught inside the Watergate complex, where they had illegally entered the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. In time the matter revealed that the people around President Richard Nixon had been attempting to cover-up their involvement. Numerous abuses of power by the Nixon administration came to light, and the affair ended with the resignation of President Nixon on August 9, 1974.

The break-in was initiated by White House Counsel John Wesley Dean and was approved by Jeb Magruder of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). At the time, Dean was assuming a major role in gathering political intelligence for the Nixon White House. Though he claimed to barely know Anthony T. Ulasewicz, whose services he had inherited from former-Counsel Ehrlichman, the fact is that Dean used Ulasewicz in a number of operations. Dean misled Congress by testifying that he was a restraining influence in the Nixon White House. The Senate Committee had evidence that proved otherwise, but must have decided to bolster Dean’s credibility by burying that material. Magruder did not seem to have a clear idea of why the break-in was necessary. He testified that Mitchell identified the DNC as a break-in target, and John Dean consistently lined up Mitchell to take the blame. John Mitchell, then campaign chairman, said he was bypassed. It seems that he was, indeed, briefed, but it is likely that he repeatedly tried to derail the project.

The resignation became necessary when the’smoking gun” audio tape was found, in which Nixon discussed the details of the cover-up effort. Interestingly, the same tape would have revealed the involvement of another president, George H.W. Bush, in the cover-uip, but the press did not pursue this. When the’smoking gun” tape was found, George H. W. Bush was among the people called to the White House. Bush realized it would expose his involvement in the $700,000 hush money he helped move. He feared the Mexican money pipeline would be exposed and White House official Dean Burch said that Bush “broke out into assholes and shit himself to death.” It is almost a certainty that Bush was still working for the C.I.A. at the time. This pipeline used the same mechanisms the agency employed to wash and move money into the United States.

Why Burgularize the DNC?

Most of the explanations for why the Republicans sent men to bugularize the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex have something to do with DNC chairman Larry O’ Brien. According to a sworn deposition given by G. Gordon Liddy, James McCord and other Republican operatives entered the Democratic National Committee headquarters on May 26 and supposedly placed listening devices on the telephone of Larry O’ Brien, chairman of the DNC, and that of R. Spencer Oliver, who ran the Association of State Democratic Chairmen.

There is sworn evidence from Liddy and McCord that the bugs were planted. It also appears that they planted some sort or room motion monitoring device, and it may have been that this device or bug later malfunctioned. The problem is that all the testimony about the first break-in is so contradictory. McCord once called it just an orientation run. In the second break-in, they were to replace the room monitoring device and the bug on O’Brien’s phone. There is no independent evidence that the bugs were planted in the first place, but it is true that when the burglars were caught they had a replacement bug or motion devce that was about the size of a football. Bugs were also found at McCord’s House and at the White House. Ervin committee testimony shows that Baldwin gave McCord some summary information about the calls he was supposed to have monitored. McCord then passed the summaries to Liddy, who resummarized them into a tape recorder, from which his secretary typed records, which were never produced.

It is theorized that they were interested in O’Brien because he had represented Howard Hughes in Washington. Nixon thought that Hughes aid Robert Maheu must have told O’Brien about the illegal contributions Hughes gave Nixon. Nixon suspected and much later had proof that O’Brien was on retainer to look after Hughes interests in Washington. Both O’Brien and Hughes had been fired by the odd multi-millionaire. Moreover, John Mier, a former C.I.A. man, had told O’ Brien and Hubert Humphrey about the Hughes $1,000,000 gift and apparently had turned over some paperwork. Meier was getting ready to run as a Democrat for the Senate in New Mexico. Instantly, he faced tax problems, which Don Nixon told him would go away if he recovered whatever he gave O’Brien. Eventually, Meier briefed the Senate Watergate Committee for 7 hours.

The IRS then told the committee that Meier had stolen money from Hughes, so the committee decided it could not use his information. Meier was subsequently hounded by the IRS and financially ruined. He spent some time working for British intelligence and then obtained Canadian citizenship and working for police intelligence agencies there. In July, 1979, he was extradicted to the United States. He ended up in solitary confinement in Boise, Idaho. From there he went to four other federal prisons and was eventually transferred to a Canadian prison and was relesed in 1981. In 1983, he was rearrested on Los Angeles murder charges and settled for a plea of harboring a fugitive. Because of this rough treatment, one might wonder if , in his bitterness, he embellished his story.

Oliver’s father was involved in a scheme to prevent the nomination of George McGovern and probably replacfe him with Terry Sanford. The elder Oliver, like O’Brien was tied to Howard Hughes and Oliver was also linked to Robert Bennett of the Mullen Company, a C.I.A. front. Bennett was in charge of the Domestic Operations Division. Both Olivers feared that McGovern would be easy to defeat. Nixon would not have wanted to see McGovern replaced by Sanford. Oliver subsequently sued the Republican party and had his pay cut off for doing so by the next chairman of the national committee, Robert Strauss. Oliver thought Strauss and John Connally used information gained by the tap to help George McGovern succeed in the Texas Democratic convention. The tap on O’ Brien’s telephone never worked. Oliver’s conversations were transcribed by Alfred Baldwin, III, a former F.B.I. agent who had been involved in bureau black bag operations. Baldwin was acquainted with Watergate arresting officer Don Shoffler, who told his former commanding officer that the earrest was the result of a tip. Shoffler later told the Senate that the story about the tip was not true. Baldwin was lookout during the second burgulary, but he could not warn the burgulars about the police because Bernard Barker had turned off his walkee-talkee.

After the Texas state convention, the Oliver tap was no longer useful. According to John Erlichman and some historians, the Oliver telephone was being used to make appointments with call girls for politicians. Hunt and two of the burglars much later said they were after sexual information about prominent Democrats. Eugenio Martinez, one of the Watergate burgulars, was found to have the key to the desk of Ida “Maxie” Wells’ desk. Martinez tried to swallow the key rather than turn it over to police. She was Oliver’s secretary. When interviewed by Senator Howard Baker , he admitted that he had participated in three or four hundred break-ins for the C.I.A.. Sam Dash was only onc e permitted to look at the F.B.I. investigative files, which ran to more than 30,000 pages. For that reason, it is fair to assume that the Ervin Committee never had any idea that Maxie could have been very important in this case.

Martinez had also participated in the break in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in Beverley Hills. The “plumbers” did not find Ellsberg’s records. They broke windows, used a crow bar on the front door, and scattered papers and pills about. Why would professional burgulars be so sloppy unless they wanted to generate a police report of the incident?

Decades later lawyer Phillip Bailley said that Wells kept pictures of the prostitutes in her desk to show to politicians who needed entertainment. Gordon Liddy thought the second break-in was to see what information the Democrats had about Republicans using call girls. Initially, he was told he was to replace a bad bug and learn what the DNC had no Nixon.

He now adds that the break-in was to steal pictures of prostitutes Wells had in her desk. Wells, now a community college teacher in Louisiana, recently sued him for slander in Baltimore and lost. A comment by Jeb Magruder makes it clear the break-in was to see what Democrats had on the Republicans, but Magruder might not have had sexual information in mind. Some of the Cuban burglars thought they were there to get information about Castro’s contributions to the Democrats.

There is no direct evidence that Richard Nixon ordered the “plumbers” to break into the DNC offices at the Watergate. At one time or other Magruder has blamed Mitchell, Nixon, and Dean for ordering the action. There is no evidence to support his claims about Nixon or Mitchell, and we have learned that he had contradictory tales to tell about many details involving Watergate. At that time, he was working very closely with White House Counsel John Dean, and it is not unreasonable to guess that Dean told him to send men into the DNC headquarters. We know that the operation was directed by someone at the White House. Most observers seem to think the GOP wanted to know what O’ Brien knew about Nixon’s dealings with Howard Hughes. We know that Hughes gave Charles “Bebe” Rebozo for the Nixon 1972 campaign. Some think there were concern about Hughes’ business ties with Donald Nixon. Both O’Brien and Oliver had links to Hughes. Of course, Republican operatives were always interested in Democratic strategies. What else could the Nixon White House have wanted to cover by sponsoring the Watergate break-in ? We know that the Greek military hunta donated $549,000 to the 1968 Nixon campaign, but we do not know if the Democrats knew about it. The Hughes Tool Company gave a huge $100,000 gift to Nixon in his first term. The money was skimmed from a Las Vegas casino. The cash came in two installments and was delivered by two top Hughes men to Bebe Rebozo, who gave it to Nixon. When there was danger the Watergate investigators would hearn of the payments, Rebozo returned the money to Hughes.

It is said that it is likely that Larry O’Brien, who became head of the DNC, had worked for Hughes and could have known about the gift. For whatever reason, Hughes hired many Robert Kennedy operatives after the senator’s assassination. It was also known then that Nixon took $400,000 from ITT in return for dropping charges against it. The money was to be used for the Republican National Convention. There could have been a concern that the DNC had solid information on this.

There is an alternate version of why the break-in occurred that involved Howard Hughes. Mr. Hughes passed a million dollar bribe to Bebe Rebozo for Nixon to ease the way for Hughes to purchase Air West. For reasons that elude this author, the C.I.A. also had an interest in the arrangement. The problem was that John Meier, a Hughes scientific advisor and Donald Nixon business partner happened to witness part of the transaction and Rebozo did not think he should be there. In fact, Meier had kept the money in his room overnight, after it was delivered by another Hughes man and two C.I.A. agents. Meier was a known leftist and the Nixon people assumed he passed the information to the DNC. John Ehrlichman instructed the IRS to investigate Meier. With no evidence, some writers think the DNC lured Nixon into the break-ins to get the Meier materials. Meier, a Hubert Humphrey Friend, foolishly told Donald Nixon that Larry O’Brien knew about some Hughes pay-offs to President Nixon. According to the affidavit of a deep cover C.I.A. agent given in Mexico City in 1975, Meier, indeed, did contact a Jack Anderson’s assistant George Clifford and told what he knew and told about bribes that he knew about. Meier was soon in prison on forgery charges. The C.I.A. visited him and administered a lie detector test , asked who his government sources wre, and demanded that he sign some documents. He refused. He was eventually released and tried unsuccessfully to testify before Congress, only to be told to go home. From 1981 to 1986, he fought murder charges. Throughout all this, he remained a friend of J. Edgar Hoover, and the F.B.I. left him alone. He was kept under C.I.A. surveillance but found eventually received some cover from the RCMP. Mr. Meier contacted Attorney John Teeter, lawyer for Sirhan Sirhan, sometime during the week of February 19, 2005 in Beverley Hills and gave him tapes and documents. Teeter wanted a new trial for Sirhan Sirhan. Teeter died in Chochitas. Mexico on July 31, 2005.

Dale Pope, Meier’s attorney, then unsuccessfully sought the help of the California Bar Association in seeking the return of the materials Meier had given Teeter. In the end, it turned out that Teeter’s home was burgularized, and the Meier matgerials were taken. Meier told a Vancouver neighbor that when the Mormons took over handling affairs for Hughes, Meier retrieved as many documents as he could to protect himself and stumbled across some pay orders he thought could be tied to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Of course, Hughes was the most important front man the agency had in those days.
The first break-in at the Watergate could have been part of Dean’s efforts to get information on Democrat sex practices. At same time, Dean sent Jack Caulfield to investigate the “Happy Hooker” ring in New York City, but the information was useless because the indiscretions discovered were bipartisan.

The Military Spy Ring in t he Nixon White House

2010-10-19T16:49:00.001-07:00

Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, planted spies in Nixon’s National Security Council. This was known as the “Moorer-Radford Affair.”

There was much conflict between Lyndon Johnson and the Joint Chiefs and they began to use their NSC liason office to obtain information they could use in their bureaucratic turf battles. It is likely they also fed information to Republican Congressman Melvin Laird, an expert on defense.

When Moorer became chairman he replaced Army personnel with Navy men in the liason office. They were led by then- Captain Rembrandt Robinson. Robinson was then replaced by Rear Admiral Robert Welander. The brass feared Henry Kissinger and thought he believed that the dynamic of history was on the side of the Soviet Union. They wanted to observe his every move. The military disliked Nixon’s tendency to keep policy making confined to a small circle. They were not being informed about détente with China, aspects of SALT talks, or the dimensions of Nixon’s Vietnamization policy. Sometimes Nixon seemed reckless in military planning, and his shifts in Cold War policy, especially détente, seemed downright dangerous. They believe Nixon often followed’soft” policies toward North Vietnam. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt came close to saying in his book that Nixon’s shifts were downright treason.

The military came to rely on Yeoman Charles Edward Radford to learn what was being planned and to bring it useful documents. In all he copied about 5000 documents. Radford accompanied Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Dr. Henry Kissinger on trips. He had full access to their brief cases. On one trip, he even made notes on their conversations. While in Washington, he had access to NSC files, and by his own admission, photocopied “thousands, just thousands” of documents to be fed to Moorer. He would rifle briefcases and read documents. In 1971, Nixon began tilting toward Pakistan in the India-Pakistan dispute. Radford and his wife were sympathetic to India, and some think he started feeding columnist Jack Anderson information. The Radfords were social friends of the Andersons, who were fellow Mormons. Mrs. Anderson helped the radfords with genealogical research that was vital to the practice of their religion.

One famous Anderson column, on December 14, 1971, revealed Nixon”s “tilt” toward Pakistan and matters that suggested he had access to several very sensitive documents. Nixon asked John Ehrlichman to find the leak. Admiral Weander assumed that only Radford had access to all the documents in question and informed Ehrichman of this. Radford was polygraphed and was surprised when the questions went beyond the Anderson matter. The yeoman was sure he could pass questions on that matter. He was asked if he was gathering information for anyone outside the White House, and he had to tell the truth. In this way, the Navy’s spying operation was revealed. nd Radford was found. It turned out that Anderson’s main source was an Army communications specialist who disagreed with administration policy.

Nixon got the details on December 21, 1971. Nixon closed the liason office and had Radford reassigned and kept under surveillance. Admiral Wealander refused to sign a confession, perhaps because it would have admitted to political spying. He did agree to permit Ehrlciham to tape his confession. Moorer was not punished and returned documents to Haig. He was then reappointed chairman of tue Joint Chiefs. Though confessing, he tried to shift most of the blame toward the yeoman. He hinted that Haig must have understood what was going on, but Ehrlichman only came to see Haig’s likely role later. When Kissinger learned what had occurred, he fired Admiral Wealand and shut down the liason office. He unsuccessfully demanded Moorer’s head
Whether the military had any role in bringing down Nixon cannot be established.

Arthur Herman Bremer and George C. Wallace

2010-10-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

On May 12, 1972 Arthur Bremer, 21, shot George Wallace in Laurel, Maryland. Bremer had attended other Wallace rallies, but only this time did he get a clear shot. He can be found on films of those rallies. Wallace was paralyzed for life.

Some theorize that there could bave been Nixonian involvement in the shooting of George Wallace. The greatest objection to these theories is that Wallace was not running for president as an independent candidate. After his brother Gerald was investigated for channeling kickbacks to George, Governor Wallace decided to run in the Democratic primary. Nixon had a special IRS project to audit enemies, and part of it was the Alabama Project, in which 75 IRS agents worked at getting dirt on Wallace and his circle.

Nixon worried that Wallace would break his word and had Colson run an operation to take the U.S. Constitution Party off the California ballot. It had backed Wallace in 1968. There was a back channel for communications between Hubert Humphrey and Wallace, and Nixon must have known about it. Then the federal investigation against his brother were dropped. Wallace was still keeping the third party open, but there is no evidence he would deploy it. He had learned that Nixon played hardball. Despite the case for a conspiracy is outlined belief for those who are interested.

It is said that Bremer wanted to become famous by shooting someone of importance. He began a diary in March, 1972 and wrote that he planned to assassinate either Richard Nixon or Wallace. There was no evidence Bremer stalked the president, except once in Ottawa. A second Bremer diary turned up in 1980. Gore Vidal, who had studied the novels of E. Howard Hunt ventured the guess that the diaries were written by Hunt.

It is said that Bremer must have financed his travels and car purchase with $1611 he had saved. This included stays in the Waldorf Astoria and two other top hotels, a plane trip from Milwaukee to New York, a helicopter trip, and renting of a limo. He purchased three guns, a tape recorder, a police radio, and binoculars. He made at least one massage parlor visit. The F.B.I. seized the Waldorf’s recore of his stay and told personnel there not to talk about what Bremer spent there.When arrested, he had less than $2. Bremer told his brother he had been paid by accomplaces to shoot Wallace. $10,000 was found in the floor boards of the Bremer house.

Witnesses commented Bremer seemed to be in a fog of somesort, he had a’spine-tingling" smirk,27 or’silly grin “ In November, a policeman found him pulled over in a no parking zone in Fox Point, an upscale Milwaukee suburb. Bremer seemed incoherent as though he was on drugs of some sort. There were bullets on the car seat. Bremer had a hypnoptist friend named Michael Cullen.

His .38 caliber gun had five bullets, and four bullets actually hit actually hit Wallace that day. The doctors hypothesized that possible a fifth bullet hit Wallace as well. Three other people suffered wounds. At the very least, seven shots were fired, assuming two somehow did double duty. The New York Times noted that four people suffered at a minimum seven separate entry woulds though five shots were fired. A bullet was removed from a woman and another from a secret service agent. The gun found there did not bear Bremer’s prints, and several of the bullets could not be linked conclusively to the gun. CBS footage showed him with a gun, but he was not wearing gloves. The bullet taken from the agent’s jaw was not damaged though police spokesmen said the bullets were all crushed. The gun itself was picked up off the pavement by an agent and not placed in evidence until 9 P.M.

When Nixon learned of the shooting, he instructed Chuck Colson to find a way to blame the McGovern campaign for the shooting. Nixon added, “Wouldn’t it be great if they found left-wing propaganda in that apartment… Too bad we couldn’t get somebody there to plant it.” Nixon said Colson was lying, but these remarks were taped. Of course, left wing and right wing propaganda was found in Bremer’s apartment. The next day Bob Woodward and the Detroit News carried stories that Bremer was a left-winger. Woodward had a way of breaking important stories. It is true that he worked Very hard and lived five minutes away from the Washington Post so that he could log a lot of time there. He came from a Republican family and served 5 years in the Navy as a communications officer and had a top secret clearance.

Aboard the Wright, he served under Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, who would later be involved in the Pentagon ring that was spying on the Nixon White House. In Washington, Woodward was on the staff of Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was also involved with that ring. The evidence is clear that Lt. Robert Woodward gave top secret briefings to ranking brass and the White House and National Security Council personnel, including Alexander Haig. He also took top secret documents to General Alexander Haig, then working for Henry Kissinger. For some reason, Woodward has repeatedly deined the Haig connection. At the time, he supecised an office of 30 navy signals people who handled very secret communications channels, and he also advised Admiral Moorer. Some have assumed that he was working for the Office of Naval Inteligence, but he denies this and the claim that he gave briefings or delivered materials to the White House. However, journalists have come up with audiotape interviews that dispute his last denial.

As soon as Nixon was told of the Wallace shooting, he had the F.B.I. take control of the case. The president was preoccupied with the matter for days, initially demanding reports every 30 minutes.

It was odd that the Secret Service broke into Bremers apartment and removed items. The F.B.I. was surprised to find them there and almost fired on them. There was an 80 minute period when the apartment was unsealed. Some reporters entered and took some items. Among them were people from Transcontinental International Press Services., an agency of the Church of Scientology’s extremist wing, the Guardians. Someone could also have planted the ACLU and Black Panther literature that was found there later. An ACLU attorney was there and claimed he saw womeone with a press pass planting Black Panther and Angela Davis material.

In May, 1974, Martha Mitchell visited Wallace and said that her husband said that Charles Colson had met Bremer four days before the shooting. We know from the Nixon tapes that Colson ran numerous 20 black bag projects out of Boston. He said to Nixon, "I did things out of Boston," “15 or 20 black projects." "We did some blackmail and... my God, uh, uh, uh, I'll go to my grave before I ever disclose it." In The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, Anthony Summers mentions a William Gilday who said Nixon people recruited him in Boston to carry out various schemes including murder. Among the people to be killed were Senator Edward Kennedy and Governor George Wallace. Nixon may have been in an unusual position to recruit c riminals for his schemes.

According to Mrs. Mitchell, ''Nixon is involved with the Mafia. The Mafia was involved in his election.'' The comment, of course, was dismissed as the raving of a drunk. But this writer has learned that alcohol loosens tongues more ofteh than it prompts people to lie. Charles Colson has said that the mob got "their hooks into Nixon early” and that it owned Nixon intimate Charles Beebe Rebozo. One of Nixon’s earliest advisors was Murray Chotiner, who often defended mobsters. In 1968, Murray won Nixon the support of Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello of New Orleans, and Mickey Cohen of Los Angeles. Cohen had been helping Nixon since 1946 when he donated $5000 and gave Nixon’s campaign office space. In 1950, he donated $75,000. Cohen said people back East told him to donate, meaning Frank Costello and Myer Lansky. Beebe Rebozo, Nixon’s close friend, was a partner of Lansky in his Hotel Nacional in Havana. In the 1950s, Nixon and Rebozo gambled in Havana and Rebozo covered the vice-president’s losses. The two also made real estate investments together. Through Rebozo, Nixon met other mobsters.

Bill Bonanno, former consiglieore for Joe Bonnanno said Nixon would ''would never have gotten anywhere'' without mob help and added that Nixon worked for years with Florida’s Santos Trafficante's in casino licensing, real estate, and anti-Communist activities. In 1960, the New Jersey and Florida mobs gave the Nixon campaign $500,000. As president, Nixon stopped mob wiretapped and intervened in different ways to help 20 mob figures. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig worried about Nixon’s ties to sinister elements and ordered an investigation through the Army’s Criminal Investigative Unit.

Wallace then had his own investigation and told Jack Nelson that Bremer had been seen with a man who looked like G. Gordon Liddy on a Lake Michigan ferry. The governor said he thought he saw Liddy standing behind Bremer. The bureau advised the Wallace family to drop the matter. George Wallace, Jr. gave an interview to the Montgomery Advertiser on December 13, 1992 in which he said someone close to Nixon was connected to the shooting. We know that Nixon on May 20, 1972, Nixon called Anthony Provenzano's top guy, Joseph Trerotola, an expert money launderer. We do not know about what they said.

Richard E. Sprague turned up some evidence that Donald Segretti and Dennis Salvatore Cossini passed some money to Bremer, and others have claimed that Bernard Barker, one of the Watergate burglars, actually passed the money to Bremer. Cossini was a C.I.A. agent, posing as a Marquette journalism student, used to infiltrate student groups, and was linked by tim Heinam, a Marquette student, to Bremer. After the shooting, Cossini headed to Toronto, where he was found dead of a drug overdose or “hot shot.” He was not known to use drugs.

Film producer Cibacuyo Aguay Banar( a.k.a. "Ciba, who interviewed Wallace, said that burglar Frank Sturgis was Bremer’s control officer on the road and that the two of them stayed at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa when Nixon was there. Ciba claims the money for Bremer came from Robert Vesco’s drug trade money and was routed in part through Congressman William O. Mills of Maryland.

Bremer had a reputation of being very odd, and prisonerofficials later said he was know for talking to Coke machines and inaminate objects. His behavior was often sisAssociated with behavior and his movements could be robotic. There was a quick five day trial in which his lawyer said it is likely Bremer did not even know he shot Wallace. Bremer maintained his silence on the matter from that day up to now. He is now free.

Chappaquiddick, 1969

2010-10-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

The sad news of Senator Kennedy’s deadly illness brought to mind the decades he courageously stuck by his guns, bucking a national conservative tide, seeking justice and to improve the lives of his fellow citizens. He was known for a great sense of humor and compassion for the sufferings of others. For example, he often sat by the bedside of Senator Phil Hart and performed many kindnesses for columnist Mary Mc Grory, when a stroke felled her and made it difficult to speak.

Yet, it is likely that he will be remembered for the incident at Chappaquiddick, in which Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, drowned in an accident most blame on Kennedy. Witnesses said she did not drink that night or at other times, yet she had a high blood alcohol level. There was a puncture mark on the back of her neck, and it is possible to inject ethanol that way. Ms. Kopechne was a self described “novena Catholic,” who did not like bad language or sexual impropriety. She described as an idealist and serious. She was close to being engaged to a foreign service officer. She was one of the “boiler room girls” who had worked in the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign. They were all well-educated and professional people of good character, not mere secretaries looking for a good time. Mary Jo was simply attending a reunion of campaign friends.

The public perception of that incident is based largely on the assumption that Kennedy was a very different man. It could be that we do not have the full story of the event that was to be forever linked with his name.

Days before the announcement of Kennedy’s illness, Christopher Shays, an allegedly moderate Republican Representative from Connecticut led Republicans in savage denun C.I.A.tions of Kennedy for his conduct back in 1969, when a young woman died in Kennedy’s submerged automobile. The Sharon( PA)Herald the Salem (Oregon) News and many conservative blogs, led by Matt Drudge, have brought up the Chappaquiddick controversy to discredit Ted Kennedy’s efforts to get behind the loss of some torture tapes. Of course, the idea was that somehow torture, water-boarding, and destroying evidence of it are on a par with possibly covering up evidence of driving while drunk, which resulted in an unfortunate death. Conservatives assume heavy drinking and sexual involvement without a shred of evidence about either. Kennedy admits to letting 9 hours elapse before reporting the accident, which would place the blame for a death on him. However, very little of that story makes a lot of sense.

A writer named Bob Cutler put together a scenario of what could have happened. Here it is in the words of Richard Sprague ( in bold print).

The Group hired several men and at least one woman to be at Chappaquiddick during the weekend of the yacht race and the planned party on the island. They ambushed Ted and Mary Jo after they left the cottage and knocked Ted out with blows to his head and body. They took the unconscious or semi-conscious Kennedy to Martha's Vineyard and deposited him in his hotel room. Another group took Mary Jo to the bridge in Ted's car, force fed her with a knock out potion of alcoholic beverage, placed her in the back seat, and caused the car to accelerate off the side of the bridge into the water.

They broke the windows on one side of the car to insure the entry of water; then they watched the car until they were sure Mary Jo would not escape.
Mary Jo actually regained consciousness and pushed her way to the top of the car (which was actually the bottom of the car -- it had landed on its roof) and died from asphyxiation. The group with Teddy revived him early in the morning and let him know he had a problem. Possibly they told him that Mary Jo had been kidnapped. They told him his children would be killed if he told anyone what had happened and that he would hear from them. On Chappaquiddick, the other group made contact with Markham and Gargan, Ted's cousin and lawyer. They told both men that Mary Jo was at the bottom of the river and that Ted would have to make up a story about it, not revealing the existence of the group. One of the men resembled Ted and his voice sounded something like Ted's. Markham and Gargan were instructed to go the the Vineyard on the morning ferry, tell Ted where Mary Jo was, and come back to the island to wait for a phone call at a pay station near the ferry on the Chappaquiddick side.

The two men did as they were told and Ted found out what had happened to Mary Jo that morning. The three men returned to the pay phone and received their instructions to concoct a story about the "accident" and to report it to the police. The threat against Ted's children was repeated at that time.
Ted, Markham and Gargan went right away to police chief Arena's office on the Vineyard where Ted reported the so-called "accident." Almost at the same time scuba diver John Farror was pulling Mary Jo out of the water, since two boys who had gone fishing earlier that morning had spotted the car and reported it.

Ted called together a small coterie of friends and advisors including family lawyer Burke Marshall, Robert MacNamara, Ted Sorenson, and others. They met on Squaw Island near the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport for three days. At the end of that time they had manufactured the story which Ted told on TV, and later at the inquest. Bob Cutler calls the story, "the shroud." Even the most cursory examination of the story shows it was full of holes and an impossible explanation of what happened. Ted's claim that he made the wrong turn down the dirt road toward the bridge by mistake is an obvious lie. His claim that he swam the channel back to Martha's Vineyard is not believable. His description of how he got out of the car under water and then dove down to try to rescue Mary Jo is impossible. Markham and Gargan's claims that they kept diving after Mary Jo are also unbelievable.

Leaving aside talk of an unidentified “group,” Cutler’s still theory makes a lot more sense than Ted Kennedy’s first statement, which follows: ( again in bold print)
On July 18, 1969, at approximately 11.15 on Chappaquiddick Island, Martha’s Vineyard, I was driving my car on Main Street on my way to get the ferry back to Edgartown.
I was unfamiliar with the road and turned onto Dyke Road instead of bearing left on Main Street. After proceeding for approximately a half mile on Dyke Road I descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge. The car went off the side of the bridge.
There was one passenger with me, Miss Kopechne, a former secretary of my brother Robert Kennedy. The car turned over and sank into the water and landed with the roof resting on the bottom. I attempted to open the door and window of the car but have no recollection of how I got out of the car. I came to the surface and then repeatedly dove down to the car in an attempt to see if the passenger was still in the car. I was unsuccessful in the attempt. I was exhausted and in a state of shock. I recall walking back to where my friends were eating. There was a car parked in front of the cottage and I climbed into the back seat. I then asked for someone to bring me back to Edgartown. I remember walking around for a period of time and then going back to my hotel room. When I fully realized what had happened this morning, I immediately contacted the police.

It took Kennedy and his circle three days to concoct a more complete explanation of what happened. They had to deal with the fact that young woman died in the back of his car after running out of air. Ted’s pregnant wife Joan was at Martha’s Vineyard, and the girl had been at a party that Kennedy attended.

It was better to let people make assumptions about alcohol than illicit sex. Oddly, the Kennedys paid to have tests conducted to see if the car would have come off the dock and into the water in the manner Ted said it did. They should have looked into the likelihood of his getting out of a submerged car. They must not have really known what happened. It is doubtful if anything the Kennedy circle said after the official story came out can be believed. Their comments all supported a very implausible story.

He said he got out of the car, which was underwater and then started diving into Poucha Pond to save Mary Jo. Did he open the car door, exit, and then close it? This might happen in the movies, but not in real life. and then close it, In The Bridge at Chappaquiddick, Jack Olsen argues that the water pressure would have been too great for Kennedy to open the car door. A window was broken, admitting water, but only Harry Hudini could have gotten out through it.

After eight attempts to rescue her, Kennedy went back to the cottage, got help, and returned to the diving.

The wounds above his ear and the large bump on the top of his head indicate he was probably knocked unconscious. But how and where? Police saw the broken windshield and wondered why Kennedy’s head and face did not reflect the level of damage Associated with a wreck of that scale. . His face bore no marks.

Markings on the bridge suggest the car was at rest and then somehow greatly accelerated. It had to have been in the air for a distance before landing in the water. There was a rope attached to a stick that could have been attached to the rear-view mirror, which was askew and hanging only by one screw.

The Kennedy story does not match the testimony of Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look and three others, that two women were with Kennedy that night at 12:45 . Of course, the senator was completely familiar with those roads, but there had to be an explanation for where the car was found.

There are some other odd things about the official story. All the witnesses who knew Mary Jo said she did not drink at all and that she did not drink that night. Yet there was alcohol in her blood stream.

It is just assumed Kennedy was smashed, but no witness said this was the case. His chauffeur John Crimmins was present and could have driven Kennedy. If he wanted sex with Mary Jo, he would have stayed at the Lawrence cottage. Why did he not have Crimmins drive and Mary J to the hotel?
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Senator Kennedy said he swam a complicated route from Chappaquiddick back to the inn on Martha’s Vinyard. Professional swimmers have not been able to duplicate swimming that route at the same time against and against the same tides. People assume he swam it dressed, but if it happened at all, he had to be in his shorts. But Kennedy, exhausted from the night’s exertions, claimed he was able to do this. No one saw an all wet Kennedy when he reached the Edgartown inn.

Even at the time, in 1969, many noted that he did not behave at the hotel the next morning as though he knew that Mary Jo was dead or that anything was wrong. It is pretty clear that he did not know until former U.S. Attorney Paul Markham and Joe Gargan arrived and told him about the tragedy. An elderly couple saw Kennedy coming into the dining room. He was relaxed and completely at ease. When the two men spoke to him he seemed to be completely shocked and upset.

The three men then made the trip over to Chappquiddick to use the payphone. . This makes no sense unless they went there to receive a call, not make one. There were pay phones at the hotel.

Some wonder about the June, 1964 airplane crash in western Massachusetts in which only Edward Kennedy emerged a survivor. He was laid up for some time with serious injuries. Teddy came out of that alive. If anyone wanted to harm Ted Kennedy it was either to prevent him from running for president or, more likely, to prevent him from using the power of that office to examine the deaths of his brothers. After the airplane crash and the shooting of JFK and RFK, killing Ted Kennedy would not do. Gullible as the public is, too many would think some sort of plot was afoot. Kennedy had to be neutralized by some sort of scandal that would damage any run for White House. Kennedy was discredited in connection with the death of Mary Joe Kopechne, 29, on 18 July 1969

One witness has said that all through 1969 James McCord, a C.I.A. agent, and one Albert Peterson followed Kennedy throughout 1969. The witness added that Peterson was an alias for E. Howard Hunt. Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt were on Martha’s Vineyard at the time for a Regatta. Both had C.I.A. connections and would be among the Watergate burglars later. Hunt explained to Watergate investigators that he was there to gather dirt on Kennedy but only admitted to getting there after the accident. He came to see some unknown person and admitted to having a disguise and a voice alteration device. Charles Colson later obtained the disguise from the C.I.A. and Hunt used them at the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and at the break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate. Hunt’s son St. John said his father spoke with approval of the murders of JFK and RFK and wanted to finish the job on Ted Kennedy. David Morales, a C.I.A. hit man, was photographed at the Ambassador Hotel.

Richard Milhouse Nixon also had an operative there that day, but the president may not have known about it at the time. Nixon had established Operation Sandwedge to keep track of Kennedy and other enemies. Tony Ulasewicz, a skilled investigator in Nixon’s employ, admits being there the morning after the accident. He said he was sent there to dig up dirt on Kennedy. However, he was seen there that morning before news of the accident was public. In a conversation between John Dean and President Nixon, Dean refers to him without mentioning him by name mentions that he was there again in 1971, both times posing as a reporter and steering other reporters to look into matters that would damage Kennedy. However, it appears he was poking around there for about two years and may have come up with something that showed Kennedy had been set up. Dean said to Nixon, “If Kennedy knew the bear trap he was walking into –” It sounds as though they could prove the White House had nothing to do with the accident, but perhaps they knew who did. If Nixon had an even more damaging story about Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, he would have used it. Ulasewicz’s salary was financed with money left over from the 1968 convention. He was controlled by John Caulfield, who first answered to John Ehrlichman and then to John Dean.

The Boston office of the F.B.I. investigated the incident on orders from the White House. The agency had earlier put out stories that Ted Kennedy had cheated on an exam and was a poor student.

Finally, there is the remote possibility that Mary Jo’s death had something to do with dealing with two birds with one stone or event. Mary Jo shared an apartment with Nancy Carole Tyler, a real looker who worked for Bobby Baker, who owned the building and had parties there while the girls occupied it. . She later expressed frustration that Baker did not leave his wife to marry her. Tyler died in a 1965 plane crash. At one point she refused to talk to investigators about Bobby Baker but then had changed her mind. She knew a great deal about Baker and corrupt deals in the Senate and could have shared information with Mary J. Kopechne worked for Senator George Smathers, who was close to LBJ and Baker. Smathers claimed to be a Kennedy friend, but he put out the story about the Kennedy brothers involvement with Marilyn Monroe. She became RFK’s secretary after the assassination of JFK. These two girls knew about JFK’s efforts to dump LBJ and leaked the story. After RFK’s death, Mary Jo allegedly had the job of packing Bobby’s files and then worked for a Kennedy-connected consulting firm.

It is said that Edward Kennedy does not express an interest in getting behind the official accounts of his brothers’ deaths and that he urges friends not to probe these questions. What happened at Chappaquiddick will never be known. He may have learned something then that convinced him it was best to leave these matters alone. Christian Cafarakis, Jackie’s butler in Athens, wrote in 1972 that Aristotle Onassis hired a New York firm to look into the JFK assassination. It gave Jackie the names of the four assassins and told who was behind it. Jackie was dissuaded from turning over the report to LBJ by threats to the lives of members of her family.

There is no way to know what happened that night at Chappaquiddick. We do know that John Dean said to Nixon in 1973, "If Teddy knew the bear trap he was walking into at Chappaquiddick. . . ."[5]Those who have long disliked Senator Edward Kennedy will assume the worst and think that he somehow got out of that car and went back to the inn without another thought about that young woman. Others may see the courageous, compassionate man he has proven himself to be and give him the benefit of the doubt or even analyze the evidence more closely and conclude that Bob Cutler was not that far wrong.

Operation Condor

2010-10-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

Operation Condor provides the background for Reagan policy in Central America in the 1980s. This term has been assigned to the cooperative efforts of Latin American dictators and/ or national militaries to gather intelligence of dissidents and often kill them. The Condor allies were Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. Condor's roots go back to President Dwight Eisenhower, who briefed John F. Kennedy on plans to rid Latin America of leftists and prepared the way for major US investments. These cooperative efforts were underway from the 1950s but seem to have taken a more organized form after their intelligence chiefs met in Caracas in September, 1973. The C.I.A. laid the groundwork by arranging meetings and urging intelligence officers to meet counterparts in other countries and to organize.

On September 11, 1973, the forces of General Augusto Pinochet, with much help from the C.I.A., overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende. The president and some of his aids died defending themselves; he had refused to permit a militia to be organized in his defense. Subsequent U.S. Senate hearings revealed that ITT also played a role in the coup. Potential opponents, numbering 13,500, of the new regime ere rounded up in two stadiums, where hundreds were killed. Brazilian soldiers were on hand to instruct colleagues on the most effective torture techniques.

Victor Jara, a legendary folk singer, had his hands broken so he could not play a guitar, and then was shot forty-four times. A roving death squad, under General Sergio Arellano Stark, was sent to northern prisons where other opponents had been gathered. The executions were called the Carnaval of Death. The Pinochet regime was to eventually imprison 80,000, and another 3,200 were disappeared. Still another 200,000 fled. The Chileans sometimes pushed mutilated bodies out of choppers over dry land. Pinochet also liked mass graves, to better terrify people. The terror was necessary in part so that the generals could carry out economic reforms with the assistance of scholars called the “Chicago Boys,” Chileans and Americans who had studied Milton Friedman’s ideas at the University of Chicago. Their plans concentrated wealth in the top 10% of society and reduced the standard of living for most other Chileans. State industries were privatized; the safety net was slashed; and economic regulations were greatly reduced. Chile because the first real laboratory for the testing of neoconservative economics. Pinochet was an active supporter of Operation Condor, and his participation led to the assassination of Allende’s close friend Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C.

The C.I.A. and military promoted exchanges of information among the CONDOR states and made available its vast computer resources. The US, as in the case of Chile, would conduct economic warfare that would benefit the right wing forces in South America. There was never a threat that Communists would make headway there. The US wanted to remodel those societies and economies on the basis of Milton Friedman’s theories.

In 1974, the C.I.A. suggested to the Nixon administration that Condor activities be coordinated out of Miami. There is no way of knowing if this suggestion was followed. Argentine intelligence did establish a center in Florida for the laundering mof money and procurement of arms.

The military seized power in Uruguay in 1973; and the Argentine generals took over three years later. In Argentina, care was taken to avoid the public executions, but repression was equally effective. The Argentine rightists did engage in some public terror, just enough to keep people in line. For example police might board city busses and pull people off by their hair. Sometimes the early morning arrests occurred after light, just to frighten neighbors. Graves were sometimes barely covered. The Argentines called this “the dirty wear,” implying their opponents employed violence. Recently, in sentencing the former Buenos Aires police commissioner to prison, Judge Carlos Rozanski noted that a one-sided “genocide…took place in the Republic of Argentina between 1976 and 1983.” Rightists in the CONDOR countries targeted leftist guerillas and others who opposed them. This included the “Dirty War” in Argentina and similar activities in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile.

The Argentines were the most thorough in disappearing people. They would cut open bodies before dumping them into the ocean so they would not float or be found. Union members were preyed upon in the latter. In all about 50,000 people were murdered and another 30,000 disappeared , while hundreds of thousands were incarcerated. One one occasion, their activities extended to a September, 1976 car bombing in Washington, DC, where Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the UN, and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt and were murdered in a car bombing. Recently declassified documents prove that both the C.I.A. and the State Department had enough advance knowledge to prevent the bombing. Some State Department personnel were so concerned about Condor that they drafted a list of admonmitions to be sent to the three countries involved. One was a warning against assassinations. The document reached Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who ordered that “no further action be taken on this matter.” This occurred days before Letelier was murdered.
At about that time, the Uruguayan secret police put out a contract on Congressman Edward Koch because he wanted to cut off that nation’s aid. Condor operative usually were trained at the School of the Americas where they learned that that rounding up progressives, populists, and s was a desirable policy. They also used the torture manual provided at the SOA. The rightist regimes used American torture techniques and used them to break and refashion personalities. Activists were prodded to abandon compassion and a desire to help others. They were placed in situations where they betrayed others and learned there was nothing wrong with selfish and ruthless behavior. Paraguayan materials released in 1993 revealed that these intelligence forces employed former Nazis and that Israeli agents pursuing Nazis were murdered. Two prominent Nazis involved in Condor were Walter Rauf and Klaus Barbee. Stefano Delle Chiaie, an Italian Fascist, was active in Bolivia. The documents showed that these agencies had extensive ties with drug traffickers and the C.I.A..

The public reaction to the murder of the highly respected Orlando Letelier brought an end of Condor as a carefully coordinated and efficient inter-state assassination operation. It had been particularly effective in rooting out enemies of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile. Much pleased by these results, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher heaped honors on him. General Pinochet worked closely with a secretive former Nazi enclave in southern Chile called Colonia Dignidad. It was founded in 1961 by Paul Schafer, a former corporal and a very active pedophile. Germans who located there were forced to turn over their children to the leadership and were not permitted to leave. The enclave played a role in Operation Condor and Pinochet used it as a political prison, where people were murdered.

J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University has demonstrated that the US was a secret partner in Operation Condor. Ambassador to Paraguay Robert White complained to the State Department that the military and C.I.A. facilitated communications between the murderous Latin American intelligence groups. It also provided the agencies with special encoding machines. The C.I.A. had close ties to Manuel Contreras, head of the Chilean intelligence agency (DIN) and mistakenly made one payment to him. AS late as 2001, a French judge attempted to question Henry Kissinger about US involvement. The former Secretary of State fled France rather than appear before the judge. There is also an effort to question Kissinger in connection of the murder of US journalist Charles Horman, who was killed by the Chilian military after the US back coup in that country in 1973. Prosecutors in Spain, Argentina, and Chile have expressed a desire to question Kissinger about Condor.

Frank Teruggi, another American reporter, met the same fate as Horman. There are documents that prove that the C.I.A. helped the Condor organization nab sociologist Jorge Isaac Fuentes and deliver him the Chilean intelligence. The F.B.I. assisted by checking out his contacts within the US.

For years, talk about Condor was just the stuff of fiction and those wild “conspiracy theorists.” Then the reformist government of Paraguay released four tons of documents on these terroristic activities. The role of the US in helping the Southern Cone countries round up dissidents is clear. Moreover, the US taught the intelligence people in these countries methods of torture.

Far West Ltd.: An Occcasional US Partner

2010-10-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

Professor Scott maintains that the business front for this group is Far West LL C, a private security firm once headquartered in Switzerland and now in Dubai. This would represent only one powerful element within the Russian mafia, a large network of competing and antagonistic criminal elements. The firm also has closes ties to Pravda-info. Far West represents the C.I.A., Saudi Arabia, Britain, the Ukraine, and several other countries in opposing the current Russian government. Its officers are Russians and Ukranians, and it is active in Kosovo, Columbia, Afghanistan, and parts of the old Soviet Union. The firm imports cocaine from the Columbian FARC rebels to St. Petersburg. It is estimated that Far West accounts for 80% of the drugs coming into Russia from Columbia and Afghanistan. It also sends some Afghan heroin to Western Europe. It was a creation of four companies in Russia, Turkey, and the United States, but no one will name the firms. One of its founding entities is a division of a major, unnamed American corporation. It has done some work in Georgia for KBR/Halliburton. Closely tied to it are two other private security firms, Diligence Ltd. and New Bridge Strategies. Diligence, Ltd. Is another military company founded by William Webster. It also has a number of Russian figures. New Bridge Strategies is a third such company and has a number of major Republican investors and is headed by Joseph Albaugh, former head of FEMA and a close friend of George W. Bush. Neil Bush is tied to it in some way. Far West is also in the arms sale business and has sold weapons to Iraq and even the anti-American Venezuela.

Major General Vladimir Filin and two other Russian founders of Far West met George W. Bush at the White House in 2005. He owns several Ethanol factories with George Soros in Brazil. He is also a force among the Bavderovites , or Ukranian fascists. Filin, the head of Far West and a major force in Ukranian Military Intelligence, has had C.I.A. ties since the 1980s. They thought about establishing headquarters in Washington but were advised that they could be arrested becauses they sold X-55 missiles to Iran in 2001.

In 2006, General Filin flew to Bolivia for the inauguration of its new president, Evo Morales . Then he made an odd speech to Bolivian intelligence people. Though a longtime C.I.A. asset, he said that the agency is “absolute and universal evil, the Satan and the enemy of human kind" and called the Bolivians to “be vigilant and rely only on themselves.” He said Bolivia could not rely upon the support of foreign leftists and that it should seize control of its natural gas.

Former GRU Major Ruslan Saidov is also inclined to say unpleasant things about his American colleagues. He printed an article in Great Britain that claimed that the US was shipping via plane heroin to the Middle East and that Colonel Caleb Temple of DIA and his colleagues were laundering their share of the profits through Muslim Hawala, the traditional Islamic method of moving money based on mutual trust. SAidov added that they were selling heroin to the very terrorists they were expected to fight.

Far West personnel were involved in provoking a crisis in Georgia, Operation Clean Field, by inspiring actions against the South Ossetians. Robert Kagan, an informal McCain advisor, met with Far West principals in March, and the whole operation had been cleared through the Office of Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Arms were sold to the Georgians through Far West and one of its cut-outs. Their unlicensed arms came from pirate factories in Jordan, Bulgaria, and Poland. Some say the goal was to convince Europeans that the old Cold War was not over and that an incidental goal was to help Senator John McCain in the US election of 2008. His international affairs advisor, Randy Scheunemann, has close ties to Far West.

Far West had an undetermined, probably tangential role in a myusterious missiles sale to Iran. In 2005, the Ukranian Defense Ministry acknowledged that rogue elements within it had sold KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001 and that planes transporting them were able to cross the airspace of several countries with no difficulties. All this was facilitated by forms ultimately owned by Kellogg , Brown, and Root, a firm Richard Cheney headed until he became Vice President of the United States. Israeli intelligence cooperates with the United States in many matters, but not the arming of Iran. It helped the Ukranians piece together the story. The matter resulted in the firing of threeofficials. Some Russian intelligence people, who had been helping Iran with arms since the 1980s, were involved in the sale, as were Alfa Group, a network of off-shore companies, and Diligence LLC, Ameerican firms with ties to the intelligence community and Dick Cheney.

Since the discovery of the missile sales, there have been signs that the Ukranians and Russians in Far West were becoming disillusioned with the US , and by 2009 there were indications they may be going their own way.

Covert Finance: Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar

2010-10-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi, two wealthy foreigners and sometime C.I.A. assets, were both involved in the October Surprise. They both were involved in the preliminary plans for the deal between the Republicans and Iranians. Both would play important roles in other important events and were involved in BCCI, one of the most corrupt enterprises of our day. The Kerry Committee report said both were US agents in the Iran/Contra scandal, Khashoggi as a banker and Ghobanifar as an arms dealer.

Ghorbanifar, and Saudi billionaire and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, according to Wayne Madsen, had economic ties to George H.W. Bush and the Bin Ladens through Potomac Capital, a C.I.A. front which Bush established in Geneva in 1976. It was to be the template for BCCI. After that bank’s demise, Potomac again becme important and is in the same building as Ghobanifar’s Panamanian corporation, TopazLiberty, Inc. It was tied to BCCI and deeply involved in US operations in Central America in the 1980s. Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile, has close ties with Iranian dissidents and the Neoconservative who want to invade Iran. He is considered a long-time Mossad agent of influence. Today, Ghorbanifar seems to be largely discredited due to the bad information he provided prior to the US invasion of Iraq.

Potomac was later investigated for possible imvolvement in Iran/Contra transactions. Some intelligence men complained that Bush sometimes used Potomac to fund domestic political operations.

Arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi would turn up time and again in major events. Khashoggi ( 1935- ) is a Turkoman Saudi billionaire who is a socialite in the West and Middle East and has been involved in arms dealing, legitimate business, and intelligence activities. His business career began in the 1950s, while a student at Chico State College, when he sold a fleet of US trucks to Mohammed bin Laden. His father was the Bin Ladens’ physician. There was an early connection with Barrick Gold in Canada. It was a spin-off of Barrick Resources International, a C.I.A. shell corporation set up by Kermit Roosevelt. Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars worth of arms deals for the Saudi government. His main firm seems to be Triad Holding Company. He runs the firm, but his two brothers are partners. There are other firms he has named Triad, including one chartered in Ohio. He has invested in real estate, oil, broadcasting, and any number of other ventures.

His greatest importance for this work flows from his ties to US intelligence operations. He clearly was a major C.I.A. asset, and probably worked for the Mossad as well. Beginning in the 1960s, he made made payoffs on behalf of the C.I.A. in the form of kickbacks from arms contracts.

Khashoggi became owner of the famous Safari Club in Kenya. Former Saudi intelligence chief openly talked about another Safari Club which met at this location in Kenya. It was a meeting of US, British, French, and Middle Eastern intelligence people who met there to discuss covert activities that were difficult to pull off as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Khashoggi admits he started the ball rolling in the October Surprise. He told Belgiam HUMO in 1987, "I am still convinced that it was all based on a grand idea. I cannot think of it in any other way: after all, I started the ball rolling.” In 1992, the Senate report on BCCI described him as one of the “principle foreign agents of the U.S.”

On September 24, 2007 , a Gulfstream II crash landed 40 miles from the capital of Yucatan. It was carrying 5.5 metric tons of cocaine from Venezuela was downed in Mexico. Ownership has been tied to Khashoggi and his lieutenant Wally Hilliard. Mohammed Atta and a colleague took flying lessons at Hilliard’s school. Hilliard was tied to the C.I.A. through Myron DuBain, who had worked for the OSS and C.I.A.. Du Bain became chairman of Fireman’s Fund, which took over a Hilliard company in the eighties. Later the European of Safety of Navigation investigated the matter because it was believed the same plane was used by the C.I.A. in renditions of suspected terrorists.

One of his business partners was Mario Renda of the Luchesse mafia family. Another business partner was former Chechen First Deputy Premier Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, who entered politics after a successful career in organized crime. His political philosophy is indistinguishable from that of Osama bin Laden. Another partner was banker Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya who has been accused of involvement in arms for drugs trading through Columbia and Cuba and a botched kidnapping.

In 1983, Khashoggi established Five Star Trust to manage the assets of Ferdinand Marcos, but came under the control of the Bush family and was established on the Isle of Man in 1989. Some say the Bushes got Marcos’ gold and assets in return for granting him asylum. In the 1980s, he was a middle man for Oliver North’s deals with the Iranian mullahs. He borrowed much of the money for his part in the transactions from the notorious BCCI. The senior Bush pardoned him for his role in the Iran/Contra scandal. In 1983, Khashoggi established Five Star Trust to manage the assets of Ferdinand Marcos, but came under the control of the Bush family and was established on the Isle of Man in 1989. Some say the Bushes got Marcos’ gold and assets in return for granting him asylum. The senior Bush pardoned him for his role in the Iran/Contra scandal.

Counterterrorism expert Jean-Charles Brisard and British reporter Greg Palast write that Khasoggi attended a May, 1996 meeting at which Saudi Arabia bought off Osama bin Laden, in return for protecting his homeland. Turki al-Faisal, then head of intelligence, wass there as well as an unnamed bin Laden brother. Businessman Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, who bailed out George W. Bush’s Harken Energy was also present along with a representative of the Saudi Defense Ministry.

In the same year, Khashoggi represented Saudi Arabia in the Tashkent, Uzbekistan meetings on the formulation of twin pipelines through Afghanistan which was to involve Enron and Unocal. A 1991 Pentagon study, declassified in 2004, listed him as being involved in the drug trade with thee Columbians. He was described as a “narco-terrorist.”

He was also involved with the C.I.A. in the 1990s in efforts to support Bosnian Muslims. He has also entertained Muslim radicals believed to be tied to violence in Russia. In 2008, Indian press reports claim that he has given hundred of millions of dollars to businessman Hassan Ali Khan, who some think was tied to Dawood Ibrahim, the underworld kingpin who could have been behind the bloody attacks on Mumbai. Ibrahim was once a C.I.A. operative; his recent activities might be seen as an effort to settle old scores.

In the early 1960s he worked with Democratic National Chairman Edwin Pauley who was a partner of George H.W. Bush in Zapata Oil. Pauley taught Bush and Khashoggi how to launder money through Mexico, and this system was used by Bush to launder money for the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972. He visited President Nixon several times.

Gus Greenspun, who had run guns for Israel in the late 1940s, provided Khashoggi with contacts that enabled him to do business with the State of Israel. There after, he was able to serve the C.I.A. as a “cut-out” for it in joint opertions with Israel. Cut-outs are necessary when the agency desires to engage in operations that are illegal or forbidden.

He made heavy contributions to the contributions to Nixon and Reagan.campaigns. In 1972, he secretly gave Nixon $1 million. Presumably he “accidentally” left the cash behind in a suitcase after visiting the president. He also left several million in Rebozo’s bank to be drained by the president’sw close friend. Beebe left $200,000 in the account. Al Ahram editor Mohammed Haykal claimed that Arabs pumped between $ 10 and 12 million into that campaign.. Teresa LaPore, deputy elections supervisor of Palm Beach County, who was moonlighting as a stewardess on Khashoggi’s private airplanes in the 1980s, designed the famous butterfly ballot that confused thousands into inadvertently voting for Pat Buchanan rather than than Albert Gore 2000. Some have reported that Khashoggi probably servd as a conduit for a great deal of off-shore money finding its way into the 2004 George W. Bush campaign.

Khashoggi is a resident of Monaco and a close friend of neoconservative leader Richard Perle, who also has a residence there. Adnan was the uncle of Dodi Fayed, After the death of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie Kennedy was briefly involved with him. He has invested in real estate, oil, broadcasting, and any number of other ventures. Once the richest man in the world, he is now down to his last $50 million and spends much time in Spain fighting litigation against him.

On July 4, 1999, an interesting meeting took place at his villa in Beaulieu , near Niece. Present were representatives of the Yeltysin crime family and people from the United States, Columbia, Venezuela, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany. Peter Dale Scott believes they comprise the “meta-group” that controls the international drug trade. They represented Al Qaeda, the revolutionary FARC in Columbia, the Turkish military, the Kosovo Liberation Army, Cuban and Russian military intellience, Saudi intelligence, and the C.I.A.. The first postwar meta-group was BCCI, and this group has some ties to its historical predecessor. BCCI inherited from American agent Kheshoggi the ability to broker deals with partners all around the world. Before, 1977, the US used him arrange trans-global transactions and move money. Congress, in that year, made it illegal for American corporations to make payments to foreignofficials. BCCI emerged to carry out that function and to laundere drug and intelligence money.

The meeting at Kheshoggi’s villa is claimed to be where a vew men also planned the Russian 9/11, the bombings of 1999. This story need not concern us. An American scholar at the Hoover Institution believes it was planned by people in the Putin administration to make him more popular. The Russian version, attributes the work to Russians tied to Far West Ltd. who happened to be anti-Putin. The firm is now known as Far West DDC and has headquarters in Dubai. They are part of what Russians call OPS, Organized Crime Society.

Since the early 1990s, then OPS, with the help of elements in the Russian military, have been moving drugs from Afghanistan to Europe. Some of the drug dealing tied to this group finances Islamic insurrections in Russia. Macedonia, and Kosovo. A reason for this may be that it is easier to move drugs in areas where governments are weak. From 2000 on, they have also moved Columbian drugs to Europe via Novorossiysk and St. Petersburg. So much heroin has been moved into Russia, that the government has had to act against OPS, resulting in a truce, sharing of profits, stabililization of the situation in Chechnia, and killing of some troublesome ethnic leaders.

Seven days after the 1999 meeting, Russian paratroopers seized the Pristina, Kosovo airport. The action was taken without the knowledge of the Russian Defense minister. The official position of the Russian government was to support Serbia against the Islamic extremists in the KLA. After some debate, the Russias troops were permitted to remain until 2003, and that airstrip was for that time the main outlet for Russian drugs. Anton Surikov, a Russian scholar with C.I.A. ties and links to Putin’s opponents, comfirmed in 2006 that the seizing of the strip had been planned at the Beaulieu meeting and arranged in conjunction with the KLA.

Covert Banker: Colonel Russell Hermann

2010-09-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

The story of Colonel Russell Hermann (aka Herrmann) is almost as interesting as that of Leo Wanta. Both held covert funds on behalf of the U.S. government. Both seem to have concluded that the funds they held should be used for the benefit of the people of the United States rather than for dubious black operations. Wanta remains alive, but Herman may have died as a result of his efforts to hang on to funds.

Born in Lansing Illinois on July 2, 1927, Russell Hermann served in the military for 53 years, beginning with a stint in the Coast Guard when he wa far under age. Mostly he worked mostly for the Office of Naval Intelligence. He attempted to retire in 1990-1991 and was refused. Like Army Colonel Al Carone, he became a banker for the C.I.A. using military cover. He was also a C.I.A. paymaster and a launderer of money. Don Hughes was another of these government bag men. According to Herman’s widow, V.K. Durham, he once had a meeting with Vincent Foster in Marion, Illinois, and he was tasked with overseeing 175 secret accounts. He once couriered $30 million to Mexico for Ed Meese to acquire TIAS 12087 "Multilateral Inter-American Investment Corporation securities. Twelve years later, a TIAS 12087 GROUP bought space at One Worlds Trade Center. Durham Limited had five shares in the venture. Mrs. Herman said she gave the account numbers to Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Dan Burton.

Herman held some US government funds and securities through Cosmos Investment Corporation and Cosmos Seafood Energy Marketing in Nevada..V.K. Durham, claimed that , without her permission, Secretary of State James Baker used her Hereditary Owner Bonus 3392-181 as collateral for some Brady Bonds. Her owner bonus 3392-181 was based on gold certificates issued by the treasury under the Transcontinental Agreement of 1875, to some Latin American countries The Treasury thought it had redeemed all the certificates and considered them cancelled. . The U.S. government used this instrument and other non-performing foreign instruments to issue ten-year Brady Bonds, which in turn were used as collateral to acquire currencies, including dollars. The Brady Bonds were to come due September 12, 2001 and be redeemed through the auspices of the trustee, Cantor Fitzgerald. It is difficult to determine whether the government or the Hermans were owners of land and water rights in their name in California.

Hermann had been involved with the C.I.A. in the 1980s and had objected to the murder of women and children. He was tossed into a Latin American jail, but with the help of Chiapas Indians made his way back to the United States. Herman’s widow claimed that he had spent two years looking into the involvement of the G.H. Bush administration and Bill Clinton in the laundering of drug money. The Clinton involvement was about whether Governor Clinton permitted the C.I.A. to fly drugs into Mena, Arkansas. Mena is a town of about 5,000 was an extraordinarily large Interregional Mountain Airport. The arms and drug trafficking was called Operation Black Eagle. An Arkansas Republican Congressman carried on the same investigation but produced nothing on Clinton. Russell Welch, an Arkansas State Police investigator, says his doctor believes he was exposed to weapons grade anthrax because he would not ignore the drug shipments.

Colonel Herman was sprayed with something while mowing his lawn on July 1, 1993. He later found it was SERINE. He was never well after that. Herman was kidnapped on October 28, 1993. He was found at St. Mary’s Hospital , Clayton, Missouri in a wing occupied by ONI personnel. There is no evidence he was held in the Springfield, Missouri prison hospital where whistle blowers and dissidents are often sent. When he saw his wife, he told about how he had been tortured. At a Marion, Illinois Veteran’s Health Care Center, He complained that the hospital fed him rotten chicken and mashed potatoes cooked in water. He was being asked to sign over some securities, including her Bonus 3392-181, which was held in the Durham Family Trust. He claimed that high governmentofficials, including former President Bush, Alan Greenspan, and Oliver North came to the hospital to urge him to sign over the accounts. She claimed that when exiting an elevator, she saw the three men leave his room and go down the hall to another elevator.

On or about August 29,1994 Colonel Herman died. Mrs. Herman obtained the opinion of a second coroner who showed her the signs of torture and offered the opinion that Herman had been frozen to death. Grisly pictures of his tortured corpse are posted on the internet.

Subsequently, Nevada Secretary of State Frankie Sue Del Papa changed the names of the board of directors for his holdings there. Still later, the couple’s signatures were forged on a Goldman-Sach account certification.

Mrs. Hermann was denied widow’s benefits on the grounds they were married two days less than necessary. They had lost their 1987 Mexican marriage certificate and were remarried in 1993. She went to her Illinois Congressman for help, and a staffer shouted at her: RUSSELL HERMAN had no right to break his CODE OF SILENCE. RUSSELL HERMAN was U.S. Treasury. He had no right to break his CODE OF SILENCE!" There is other evidence, including his will, that he may have been an employee of the Secret Service, like Wanta. Later the Department of Health and Human Services dealt with her request for disability due to an auto accident and other factors by claiming she was “deceased.”

Clandestine Intelligence Bankers: Leo Wanta

2010-09-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

Leo Emile Wanta, a 63 year-old Appleton, Wisconsin native, is acknowledged to be a very effective commodities trader and international financier. Los Angeles commodities trader and Democratic operative Tom Hanneghan is no fan of Wanta but called him a Abrilliant engineer " with a lots of technical skills." Wanta worked for the U.S. intelligence agencies@ and helped bring down the Soviet communist government." His government service included working for the U.S. Treasury, the C.I.A., and the NSC. He worked for the 1988 Bush campaign and raised $50,000 for Bush’s reelection. His activities as a US government operative are shrouded in mystery, but what little is known about them reveals that there is a vast world of clandestine activity that powerfully effects events.

Wanta claimed to be Ronald Reagan’s favorite “junkyard dog. “ He went to work for the US government in 1963 , working for the DEA and C.I.A., and became a Republican operative in 1965. In 1988, the Associated Press carried stories about his selling 30,000 automatic pistols to Manuel Noriega. It has been speculated that the guns had homing devices that later enabled the US to find Noriega’s security people. He was known to travel frequently with General Vernon Walters, an US ambassador to the UN, and visited F.B.I. head William Sessions through the secret entrance to his office.

While fronting various Treasury operations abroad, he accumulated a fortune for himself. A prime front for the Treasury was his Aneko Credit PTE, LTD in Singapore. He also conducted business for the C.I.A. through a front named Miracle Investments and AmeriTech, which seems to be partly owned by the C.I.A.. He has been accused of working covertly to drive down the price of gold on the international market, but there is very little information on it. His 1992 tax documents listed his net wealth at $432 billion. It is likely he was fronting much of that for the government. He was a specialist in currency swaps and in selling and trading arbitraged guaranteed currency deposits called “prime bank guarantees” to banks for the US Treasury. Unfortunately, his funds and those of the Treasury were commingled, and the government continued to use his funds after he was no longer in a position to direct their use.

His great accomplishment was destabilizing the Russian currency in 1990-1991. One of his firms was New Republic/USA Financial Group Ltd was used in this operation. US journalist Claire Sterling, who has a record of being friendly to the C.I.A., described the Great Ruble Scam in Thievs" World ( Simon and Shuster, 1994). Wanta came off as a scoundrel but a highly effective one.

In fact, he was working in cooperation with Israel and China and used the services of the Russian mafiya to acquire vast amounts of counterfeit rubles. He started with over a hundred billion dollars from the U.S. Treasury, money he repaid with interest. The idea was to accumulate rubbles and then present them for redemption as payment to debts owed the Soviet Union of for redemption other currencies or gold. Speculation with real currency against the rubble was also involved. Marc Rich, an Israeli agent and US citizen was also involved. The Chinese and Israelis helped him accumulate rubles on the black market. The accumulated funds were used to bring down the ruble and were used in part by the Chinese to pay debts. Some rubles were sold to east European countries, who also paid down their debts. Still others were used to buy 2000 tons of Russian gold. The rubble was pegged at $1.20 to a rubble, but they could not be legally purchased. Wanta and others started with more than a hundred billion from the US treasury and other funds and bought the currency at about .28 and sold them to people with debts to Russia at .88.

Rich received his commission, but George W. Bush prevented Wanta from getting his commission. Wanta made the great mistake of talking about how he was cheated and saying that + Bush wanted to divert a large portion of the $70 billion profits into his own accounts and Wanta refused to help. Later, Wanta said Bush had managed to seize some of his commission and place it in his own accounts abroad. This money was sent to accounts in the Republic pf Vanuatu, about 500 miles west of Fiji, where many world intelligence agencies have accounts. Some of that money was then sent to the South Pacific Islands Bank, LTD. of the Philippines. At the same time that gold was reported missing from the Russian central bank, 2000 tons of soviet gold was routed to Algemene Bank in the Netherlands, now known as ABN-Amro. That bank used its share of the profit to allow its American flagship, La Salle National in Chicago, to establish 15 branches and buy out a number of other big banks.

The profits from these operations were estimated at $27.5 trillion in 1992 and about $70 trillion in 2006. Comprised of many accounts, it is called the Global Security Fund. Wanta was insisting in 2006 that the money should go to the US treasury. Eventually, international banks decided that these funds could be used to solve various liquidity problems and opposed the money being used. According to Wanta, US intelligence agencies have been able to get control of some of the money. Dark motives have been ascribed to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but it seems Clinton only wanted to use some of it to buy peace in the Middle East by bribing various Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab leaders.

Wanta agreed to divert one billion to an account in Spain for the use of George H.W. Bush and he reported that he was co-trustor of another $210 billion which Bush wanted under his sole control. Although the Bush did not get control of this money, his family was able to siphon off $100 billion through the use of various banking connections. They laundered it through Pilgrim Investments. Marc Rich was able to steal a similar amount, and he gave half a billion to Neil Bush . It is assumed that the senior Bush and Rich were acting on behalf of the C.I.A. and Mossad respectively. In all, he claims that $745 billion hs been taken from the accounts over which he claims to be “trustor.”

Wanta had worked for the NSC, C.I.A., and the Treasury and was also a White House operative for Ronald Reagan, who called him his favorite “junkyard dog.” Apparently, his main employment then was as a Secret Service agent. Close friend and traveling companion of Vernon Walters, a longtime government operative. Wanta claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate his friend “Dutch.” In 1988, he was caught trying to sell 30,000 machine pistols to Manuel Noriega for his by his security force. It has been speculated that the weapons carried devices that would enable the US to later locate Noriega loyalists.

Wanta used to visit F.B.I. director William Sessions by accessing the office through J. .Edgar Hoover’s secret tunnel, called “back of the stage.” While there he also met with the two agents charged with enforcing RICO statute against organized crime.

V.K. Durham has traced ten massive transfers of money made by Wanta after F.B.I. raided BCCI’s false front, the Banco Lavoro Nazionale’s branch in Atlanta. The feds found that the bank had loaned $4 billion to Saddam Hussein. All of Wanta’s transfers were routed through BANCO EXTERIOR DE ESPANA ~ MALAGA. Of course, he was not the only person moving massive amounts of money after that event. What is interesting is that federal authorities apparently permitted him to move the money for some reason, but he was still not in control of the funds. Some of the money went to a London house controlled by Marc Rich, to Switzerland, Monaco, China and Panama, but the bulk went to US firms such as Chase, Prudential Bache, Morgan, and several trust attorney firms.

The roughly $70 trillion held by Wanta as trustor is held in accounts around the world and are held by Title 18 , Section 6 US intelligence community corporations. Wanta is now trying to recover more than $200 billion he claims deposited abroad. He is also claiming that the huge amounts the federal government has deposited abroad should be brought home and that he be given the 1% customary finders fee. In 2005 and 2006 Wanta and an tried to access $4.5 trillion which they wanted to put to use for the American people. They believed that they had an agreement with the White House that allowed them to distribute this money in return for his giving up trusteeship for a much larger amount that Wanta thought belonged to the people of the United States. His legal efforts to access the money were blocked.

A German party source reported that a German bank twice attempted to honor Wanta’s request for payment and was prevented from doing so by Herman Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury.

This led to unbelievable reports that Germany issued an arrest warrant for Paulson. There were also press reports that Treasury Secretary Herman Paulson asked the German Chancellor to turn the money over to him. The press insisted he was briefly held. None of this is believable. It is known that by the end of the week chancellor met with President bush in the White House, and she did not look happy. As for the rest of the story, there will never be enough information to verify it.

Two interesting memos -- November 2, and December 14, 2001-- from Ambassador Leo Wanta to Vice President Dick Cheney have turned up in which Wanta indicates that he knew that ten crates of cash and other valuables were moved from the Philippines several weeks after 9/11. He suggested the money was going to several U.S. law firms . Wanta also said that a “family” is demanding repayment for funds advanced for black operations. The “family” must be a cod name for something Three of the men named in moving the crates worked for the F.B.I.’s Division Five. Fake savings certificates, covered in Business World (May 30, 2001), were also mentioned. There is no way to know what black op may have been involved .

Covert Finance: The S and L Sacandal and More

2010-09-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

Many write that the C.I.A. and its cronies, some of whom were mafia, took down the savings and loan industry all by themselves. That cannot be proven Organized crime figures Mario Renda, Carlos Marcello of New Orleans, and Santos Trafficante of Tampa were involved. It is said that the F.B.I. obtained hundreds of hours of tape from Marcello’s prison cell, and that Carlos told an informant that he was involved in the assassination of JFK.

F.B.I. documents indicated that he claimed on three different occasions to having been involved in the death of President Kennedy. Trafficante once made the same admission. These men were involved in US efforts to kill Castro since the last days of the Eisenhower administration, and they managed to become involved in a Robert F. Kennedy plan to orchestrate a palace coup against Castro. RFK and gone to great lengths to keep them out of the operation, but somehow they infiltrated it. Their involvement in the planned’second invasion,” made it possible for them to cover tracks in the assassination of JFK. Dean Rusk later confirmed that there was a planned second invasion in the works.

It is believed that more than a million assassination records have been kept secret to protect people in Cuba who were involved. However, Castro uncovered the key figure in 1990 and appears to have forgiven him.

The names of C.I.A.-connected drug movers keep turning up in the various investigations. .We know that 21 of the failed institutions were involved in laundering C.I.A. drug money. One of the most troublesome cases was that of the First National Bank of Maryland, which was looted by a C.I.A. front company. Robert Maxwell, a former executive of the bank, tried to make public what was happening and ended up taking the blame and going to prison. The presiding judge refused to permit him to introduce information about the C.I.A. front company.

The industry was in serious trouble since the 1970s, and deregulation under Reagan seemed to encourage abuses. The Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982 may well have been written with a view to making it easier to lopot savings and loans. Moreover, the administrators Reagan appointed did not pursue many deep audits. As early as July, 1987 Edwin Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan and Bank Board lost his job because he was warning of corruption in the savings and loan industries and an impending crisis. He was replaced by a crony of Senator Jake Garn. Eventually the scandal would cost the taxpayers $500 billion.

The taxpayers have had to put out 32 billion a year for thirty years since the crisis became public knowledge in 1989. How much was looted by the C.I.A. and allies like Neil bush will never be known. There was much corruption Associated with the “clean-up” of the savings and loans, as well connected individuals bought failed institutions for very little and then received huge federal subsidies. . . With his partners, Neil Bush controls about 40 real estate operations. He was deeply involved in what has been called the “St. Joseph Paper Land Deal,” perhaps the largest real estate fraud in US history. When the press started reporting it, CocaCola poured $150 into it to settle the matter and protect the Bushes. Coca-Cola chairman Bob Goizueta was a close friend of the Bushes. Over $70 million in taxpayer funds were also used to make things right for investors.

In the Gloryhole Mining scandal in Colorado, investors lost $150 million. In all these fraudulent schemes, it does not seem that Neil came away with a great deal of money for himself--perhaps as much as $4 that can be found. He may have been doing most of this work to benefit the nation’s illegal covert operations.

The government- protected fraud has moved from real estate developments and shady securities deals to matters where much more money is involved. In 1991, the C.I.A. established the Blackstone Investment Group, which included many old Bush hands including Richard Armitage and Frank Carlucci. Carlucci had been deputy director of the C.I.A. from 1978 to 1981 and Deputy Secretary of Defense , 1987-1989. Blackstone’s purpose is to open more trade routes with the former Soviet Union. Its main objective has been buying up nuclear weapons and production equipment. However, most of this has been resold to China. They have developed various scams to garner funds intended to bail out the Russian economy. In 1994 and 1995, they entered Mexico to sop up more bail-out money. In adition, they bought many businesses dirt cheap, spent a little to make them look healthy, and then peddled them to unwise US investors. Armitage was so close to General Colin Powell, that the general called him “my white son” in 1995.

The Alfa Group is probably a front for the Russian mob or an ally. It has been connected to drug smuggling, but its main activity is oil development. It has also been connected to money laundering, through Alfa Bank, for the Latin American cartels. The Russian FSB ( similar to our F.B.I.) has claimed that Alfa Group has been a link in moving drugs into Western Europe. It is a business partner of Halliburton, and its lead Washington attorney was a major Bush fundraiser in 2000. Halliburton is a partner in Alfa’s Russian oil fields. These could all be coincidences.

Covert Finances: Rewards for Politicians

2010-09-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to nail down how CIA and Pentagon money is routed to politicians, but we know it happens. Not long ago, a senior CIA official resigned in part because he was present at parties where politicians were entertained by prosatitutes. A contractor who helped sponsor the parties was getting money from the CIA and Pentagon and was routing some of it back to Republicans. The scandal was not thoroughly investigated and the California US Attorney who was pursuing the matter was unceremoniously fired. Then her investigative team was dismantled.

John Meier, a Howard Hughes assistant, has written about how the C.I.A. asked Hughes to make contributions to its favorite politicians, among whom were Wallace Bennett, John Tower, James Eastland, Gerald Ford, and Strom Thurmond. Here is the list that appeared in Playboy.

Paul J. Fannin, Arizona
Wilbur D. Mills, Arkansas
Craig Hosmer, California
Robert L. Leggett, California
Gordon L. Allott, Colorado
J. Herbert Burke, Florida
Hiram L. Fong, Hawaii
Larry Winn, Jr., Kansas
Joe D. Waggonner, Jr., Louisiana
Gerald R. Ford, Michigan
James 0. Eastland, Mississippi
William J. Randall, Missouri
Paul Laxalt, Nevada
Howard W. Cannon, Nevada
Norris Cotton, New Hampshire
James R. Grover, New York
William H. Harsha, Ohio
Frank T. Bow, Ohio
John N. Camp, Oklahoma
Strom Thurmond, South Carolina
Dan H. Kuykendall, Tennessee
James H. Quillen, Tennessee
James M. Collins, Texas
Olin E. Teague, Texas
Omar Burleson, Texas
Abraham Kazen, Texas
John G. Tower, Texas
Wallace F. Bennett, Utah
W. C. Daniel, Virginia
Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia
Vernon W. Thomson, Wisconsin

Al Martin, a former intelligence operative who specialized in financial operations, wrote that intelligence operatives routinely made payments to Republican office holders in the states where they operated and to Republicans in Congress. He thought that a few Democrats were involved supporting illegal operations in Central America. He mentioned Senators Bumpers and Prior, but he did not say whether they received pay-offs. Martin said he made payments to the dentist husband of the governor of Kentucky and to an aid to Illinois Governor Jim Thompson. He thought Texas Senator John Tower was paid through his involvement in Houston Energy Partners, which was run by James Baker III. Tower later headed the Tower Commission , which looked into the Iran-Contra scandal. When Tower mysteriously died in a plane crash, Department of Defense agents arrived at the scene before the FAA people removed Tower’s metal briefcase briefcase. Tower’s daughter Penny had copies of some of his files and leaked a bit of information to the Atlanta Constitution. She then gave her papers to someone in government and her $85,000 mortgage was paid off. The check came from a corporation in the Netherland Antilles.

At a 1995 White House press briefing, Sarah Mc Clendon asked press secretary Mike Mc Curry if President Clinton was going to do anything about drug money being funnelled into both parties. She said that Vice President Albert Gore learned about it and demanded that Clinton do something to stop it. Clinton did not know this was going on. McCurry dismissed her question with “That sounds like the plot of a very good novel," but she insisted it was the truth. McCurry promised to report back but he never again addrerssed the subject.

People involved in the efforts to raise money for the contras called their operation “The Enterprise” or “The Cause.” They were intensely committed to what they were doing. Over time, however, it seems they thought that funneling money to Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC or other Republican entity was as important as helping the Contras. It was expected that some of the money raised through various government-protected fraud be channeled to the party. However, there is no evidence that money from drug running went to the party. . Martin described how he mad $135, 000 using government created shell corporations to participate in taking down a financial corporation. In this instance he was permitted to keep half the proceeds if he gave the rest to Republican organizations.

The Bush Family and Covert Finances

2010-09-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

Al Martin and some others have written that the Bush family was active in intelligence community financial opertions. Some have implied that they may have prfitted in some way, as did other people tied to intelligence work.

Jeb Bush was particularly adept in real estate schemes, but Al Martin, a former Office of Naval Intelligence operative, recalled Bush discussing with him how he was going to take down M Corporation. Martin also claimed that Bush had caused Broward Savings and Loan to write off $3.85 million in loans to Bush Realty. His partner was Armando Codina, a Cuban exile. Bush used the money to purchase a building which was later reevaluated by FDIC at $505,000. The balance of the loan was not repaid.

They bought the downtown office building in 1984 for seven million, using Edward Houston to front the deal and contribute $4.56 millikon. He borrowed the money from Broward Federals Savings. When the $1.7 for renovations and the $1 million reserve is added, the total cost is over $9 million. In the end, the $4.56 loan was closed out for $505,000 . Yet, Bush and Cordina paid the IRS $1.3 million, an acknowledgement that the building was worth a lot more than $505,000. Nothing was done about their use of a “straw borrower,” but ordinary folks playing this trick would have had endless legal problems. The Great American Bank and Trust Company of Marvin Warner also lost $9 million in a deal that involved Bush.

Jeb Bush was also involved in the Marine Research and Development Corporation. It was involved in many things, including direct trade with Cuba through licenses held by two Hungarian intelligence operatives that Jeb claimed not to have known. It also moved drugs and limited partnership securities. When the prime minister of Turks and Caicos Islands tried to interfere with a drug shipment, his parliament lifted the sovereign immunity that went with his office and he was tried in the US for moving drugs. Securities deals were used to entrap Democrats.

After first experiencing a good deal from MRDC, the Dems would buy into a bad deals. Then they faced loss of their funds if the investigated some things too closely or the eventual return of their money. Among them were Congressmen Bill Alexander , Ron Dellums , Steve Solarz, and Senators Dale Bumpers and David Prior. General Secord said that “If a Democrat doesn’t have a problem that we can control him with, we"ll create one for him” Dellums, who already had financial problems, was given another--cocaine addiction. Senator David Boren was entrapped in a gay relationship on an agriculture subcommittee trip in 1984 and became a solid backer of the intelligence community.

Jeb Bush was also involved in Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company, a former C.I.A. proprietary firm or cut-outs. It held some old, pumped out wells. This scam involved several hundred millions in useless securities and even cost some big New York Banks and Merrill Lynch.

Neil was mainly involved in real estate schemes in several states Neil Bush was a director of Silverado Savings, whose crash cost the taxpayers about $1.6 billion. However, Bush was only responsible for a little less than $200 million in losses. He became a director of the bank at age 30 and helped two people who had invested in his energy company obtain large loans. He did not disclose his business relationship with either or the fact that he received a salary for serving on one of those boards. Bush survived the mess with a $50,000 fine. Five directors of the bank were banned for life from involvement in federally insured institutions, Bush was just told to refrain from unsafe financial practices.

Neil Bush faced charges of defrauding Silverado Savings and Loan of millions of dollars. The daughter of Judge Richard Matsch was mysteriously murdered, and Bush was freed of all of the charges with the proviso that he could no longer serve as a bank director. ( The same judge later got the Timothy McVeigh case.) The Silverado collapse cost the American taxpayers over one billion dollars.

Much evidence suggests that Neil continues to handle the day to day affairs of the Bush family throughout the world. The late Sherman Skolnick insisted that he uses his far flung accounts to launder drug money and funds from illicit weapons sales and gold smuggling. He and Jeb often pass funds through the Chicago unit of the major French bank, Credit Lyonnais. When Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris was in a position to help the Bushes launder money because she had the ability to hide records of shell corporations. This “laundrylady” worked through another French banking house, Banque Paribas.

George W. Bush participated at a distance in family real estate ventures. He had good connections with American International Group and other insurance providers and arranged to provide insurance and/or guaranty fidelity instruments for the deals. At worst it amounted to skirting the law, unless it could be proven he knew what his brothers were up to. The deals were often based on assets fraudulently obtained from HUD or options to buy land rather than land actually held. On a few occasions, banks got burned. But this was fairly rare.

Banks here and abroad were used to unload the shares, and they were assured they would be made whole along with god profits. When prices plunged, something would be done to pump up prices so tht banks could recover losses and make a profit. Stock would be “back doored@ to the bankers and marketers at this point. Another round of profit-taking for the insiders occurred when there was a “Areverse split” of the stock. Insiders gained profits without making an investment and sometimes big GOP contributors were enabled to participate in the same way.One of these deals involved the refinancing of a HUD backed property along the Overtown, Hialeah bodder. There were 830 apartments inbaibted by Blacks and Hispanics. The operation was called “Blackboard” and involves seven refinancing that the usual circle, but Secord’s code name was “Blackbird.” Each time HUD lost money. Not one penny was used to improve these places.

Another profitable program was the processing of fraudulent HUD loan applications. There is no evidence that the Bush family was involved in this, but it has been suggested that the intelligence community used this one to raise money for its operations. To do this well required recruiting some licensed real estate brokers. Of course, the cooperation of state and federal attorneys and a few judges was also required. The most effective of these scams operated out of the Denver HUD office. Several billion dollars was involved in this fraud. Eventually one man went to prison and two federal judges were discredited. At lest 17 cases of fraud against HUD by government operatives have come to light since the mid-1980s.

Covert Finances: Financing the Contras

2010-09-10T17:40:00.001-07:00

Intelligence operatives of the special operation group undertook to raise money for right wing insurgents in Central America by in many ways. They used the records of the Republican National Committee and GOPAC, Newt Gingrich’s political action committee, to solicit donations. There was a long term program to raise money by defrauding banks, savings and loans, brokerage houses, and insurance firms. In several instances in the early 1980s, the agency bilked several Greyhound entities out of at lest $120,000,000.

In most cases officers of the banks and insurance companies knew what was occurring and went along. Frequently, FDIC or another federal agency entered these situations and repaired much of the damage at the expense of the tax-payers. The great advantage they had in perpetrating various frauds was the certainty that the Department of Justice would not come after them. Eventually, some of the agents learned that this was not quite true. If they were considered unreliable or possessing too much information, they did eventually spend time in prison. Al Martin, a low level operative, best stated his motives and those of his colleagues: “at least I can say I did so to help my country, which was the truth. And to line my own pockets.”

Economist Linda Napoleoni estimated that the intelligence community drained a little over a billion dollars out of the US economy through insurance and banking fraud. She claims Oliver North was mastermind of the scheme, and that it acted as an indirect tax because the taxpayer eventually had to intervene and make good the losses.

In the case of the banks, intelligence people usually obtained large loans and then began selling the bank’s stock short. When the bank collapsed, the loans either disappeared or were eventually repaid at 30 or 40 cents on the dollar. Sometimes the banks did not collapse but simply endured huge losses through bad loans. Bayshore National Bank in Florida was stripped of 13 million. Congressman Henry Hyde, who was OSS in World War II, was deeply involved in covert operations employed these tactics in defrauding the Oak Saving Bank in Illinois. The Resolution Trust Corporation brought a suite (93 C 2477) claiming that as a member of the Board of Directors, he did much, through gross negligence, to take down the bank, and with great losses. The case went to Federal Judge Brian Barnett Duff, a pal of George H. W. Bush, who ruled that almost all proceedings were to be kept secret. That ended the case.

One could guess that Hyde helped loot the bank on behalf of the agency and might have received a share. On the other hand, he paid a private investigator to keep track of the bank scandal, so he may have been acting on his own. But that is only a guess. Hyde had close ties with the Paradise Island Casino in the Bahamas since 1969, and would have been in a position to launder C.I.A. and other funds through it. Hyde , a key member of important committees, played the leading role in preventing the House investigation from turning up anything about C.I.A. involvement in Contra drug dealing. He was also the central figure in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

In the end, the Bush administration gave some of the healthier failed S&Ls , along with tax breaks, to political friends at fire sale prices One the major benefi C.I.A.ries were Ronald Pearlman and the Bass family. Pearlman and his partners paid $315 million for $7.1 billion in good assets and $5.1 billion to make good bad loans.

There were also government-sponsored crooked real estate deals and bogus oil and gas contracts. Fraudulent securities transactions and false insurance claims were common. Many shell corporations were established, but not all their functions were scams. If they were they would very soon have no customers to prey on at the appropriate times. There were government-sponsored real estate deals and bogus oil and gas ventures. Fraudulent securities transactions and false insurance claims were common. People were encouraged to give airplanes and boats to covert agents for use in Central America. The donors were assured they would collect far more in tax breaks than the values of the donations. Donors were also helped to file false insurance claims for the allegedly "stolen "items. In one case, ATF agents accidentally stumbled onto some of the stolen items that were warehoused in Joplin, Missouri and brought the DEA into the case. Both agencies were quickly warned that they were interfering in a national security operation.

Some of the early scams were fairly benevolent. Big contributors were asked to buy securities and told they would profit and that some of the money would be channeled to fighting the contras. In the end they lost half their money. Commissions to the salesmen came to 15% and another 35% went to some accounts controlled by Oliver North. They were told that they could write off their losses on a 2 for one basis and that the IRS would not challenge this. There is no evidence that the IRS ever did. They lost nothing on an after-tax basis.

Major General Richard Secord’s companies usually had the name ‘stanford” in them. Lawrence P. Hamil alone had 39 corporations, all with the word “Gulf” in their names. Some were used to launder money, but most were deployed to raise money through fraud. Hamil often used Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan to provide up-front money for his schemes. The bank received worthless securities as collateral. Frequent players in Hamil’s ventures were Major General John Singlaub, Major General Richard Secord, Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, George W. Bush, Prescott Bush, and Wally Bush.

Hamil attended Georgetown but did not graduate. In the late 1970s he served the C.I.A. by peddling American Express cards in Argentina, despite a trade embargo imposed by the Carter administration. During the Falklands War he worked with Amaro Pintos Ramos, a Brazilian industrialist, smuggling a few Exocent missiles into Argentina. He came into the Contra supply effort early and had copies of the C.I.A. plan for Operation Eagle, the effort to arm and supply the Contras. It is unknown how be obtained this Bill Casey document, perhaps it came through his ties to Ramos, George H.W. Bush friend and occasional partner.

Perhaps it came from Casey himself as he was a family friend. He was to excellent at real estate swindles, notably the a Boca Chica deal and the notorious Topsail Development Limited scam in Pensacola. In the 1990s, he seemed to be working for the Department of Defense. When he travels it is on a DoD Lear jet, and his luxury hotel bills are paid by the same agency. In 1998, it is said that he was busy channeling Chinese contributions into Bush gubernatorial campaign. The Justice Department claims to have no information on him, but has used a national security block to keep him off the witness stand. A few reporters who have explored his activities have lost their jobs,, but Gloria Borger survived after briefly showing an interest in him.

According to Gene Wheaton, a military criminal investigator with ties to the agency, rogue agents or “crazies” in the covert division carried out some operations to make money for the agency and themselves and becauses they were fun. In Operation’screw Worm,” they created an air base on the border of Mexico and Guatemala so they could move weapons into Peru to fight the insurgent Shining Path but also just to keep the conflict going and sell arms. They had customers on both sides. It was essentially a business operation.

Covert Finances: Pinnacle and After

2010-09-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

One of the successors of BCCI was Pinnacle Banc Group, whose flagship is the First Bank of Cicero, Illinois. Fof a long time, the key figure behind that bank was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was also head of IOR, the Vatican Bank. Under him, an Italian criminal syndicate known as P-2 looted the Vatican Bank. Pinnacle has also been deeply involved in the financial schemes of Roger D’ Onofrio, a former C.I.A. paymaster in Italy. D’Onofrio was charged in Italy in 1995 of dealing in stolen drugs, nuclear triggers, other radioactive materials, US securities, drugs, and arms. It is said that he also dealt in exceptionally high quality counterfeit currency. In the past he acted as a C.I.A. paymasters for operatives and business partners. According to Sherman Skolnich, John Tarullo, who is connected to the Cicero bank and wasonce a member of London Gold Pool helped the C.I.A. and several criminal organizations, and D’Onorio –who could well still be C.I.A.—transport stolen gold. He was murdered after Skolnich discussed these operations on a Chicago TV show.

The Cicero bank is also entangled in ventures with the C.I.A.’s Household International and Household Ban, Marcinkis, and the Giannini family. SISMI, Italian intelligence, is also involved in some of the C.I.A./Pinnacle ventures. Wallace Lieberman , a likely Mossad asset, was found near the Cicero bank in 1991. It was said that, on behalf of Israel, he was trying to shakedown the Pinnacle partners. Perhaps he was trying to obatain the release of Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy. Pollard’s family was in Chicago at the time, and Ariel Sharon had just been there. Subsequently his son, Barry, faced treason charges.
Enron and C.I.A.

When BCCI eventually collapsed, Enron became the C.I.A.’s chief vehicle for laundering money. Some Enron operations were to morph into Clearstream International, a bank that most likely has C.I.A. ties. Another C.I.A. front was Coopers and Lybrand, where many former agents can be found. Maria Carlucci, wife of former Deputy Director Frank Carlucci also worked there.

Clifford Baxter retired as vice chairman of Enron in May 2001. He was probably eased out because he had complained to Kenneth Lay about the creation of 2,800 partnerships where Enron debt could be parked, thus creating the impression that the firm was generating more revenue. Early in the morning of January 25, 2002, he was found dead in his Mercedes, dead of an apparently self-inflicted wound to the head. The Sugar Land police immediately labeled it a suicide as did the coroner, who did not wait for the results of a police investigation.

Baxter had made $30,000,000 in unloading his Enron stock and was in the process of upgrading to something bigger than his 72 fool yacht. There was no evidence presented that his fingerprints were on the typed suicide note or the spent shell casing. The autopsy suggested he may have fallen down to the left before his death. He was shot with rat shot, though one would wonder if someone with that much wealth would do his own exterminating. Days before, he was discussing the possible need for a bodyguard.e had agreed to testify before a Senate committee and a House Committee was also interesting in calling him.

If he was only going to testify about unorthodox accounting procedures and the use of off-shore partnerships, it is difficult to understand why his life was in danger or why he might commit suicide. All of this soon became part of the public record, and there was no way of getting details on the off-shore entities. If he knew anything about how the George W. Bush campaign financed its operations during the Florida electoral dispute, he might have been in some trouble. It is likely that the Bushes spent 40 million dollars from Carlos Lehder, founder of the Medellin drug cartel and that the money was laundered through Enron to James Baker III and Governor Marc Racicot. The Montana governor is said to have used the money to buy the assistance of south Florida Democratic leaders in preventing an effective recount.. The drug lord has been in a federal prison and then mysterious disappeared.

It is well known outside the United States that Enron was negotiating with the Taliban before September 11, 2001 over what Afghanistan would be paid to permit two pipelines bearing Caspian gas and oil to cross the country. Baxter may have been able to shed light on this and he could have been privy to Enron’s role in complex transactions aimed at propping up the sagging stock market. There was a close relationship between Enron and the C.I.A., with the C.I.A. loaning the firm a number of its agents. Some speculate that C.I.A. software was used to invest about $7 billion in missing Enron funds. Former German minister of Technology Andreas von Bulow has charged that there was about $15 billion in insider trading investment profits on the events of 911. Marc Racicot, former attorney general and governor of Montana, has been identified with the drug trade across the Canadian border int a Chinook Reservation, but key witnesses have turned up dead or were intimidated into silence.

Enron played a bigger role than another firm in election George W. Bush. Second in importance was Halliburton, particularly through its subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown ,and Root. This firm has had multiple linkages with the international drug trade, and it can only be assumed that it has played this role at the behest of the intelligence community. It played a major role in the drug trade through Turkey and Kurdistan and has close ties with the Russian underworld.

Eight years before its collapse , twenty C.I.A. agents were on loan to Enron. These agents trained other employees in intelligence matters, with a view to increasing interntaional sales."It was the C.I.A. trained employees and C.I.A. insider information that made it possible for Enron to force its will on the citizens of Dabhol," claimed a retired C.I.A. agent. The people of that part of India were almost forced to accept an electricity generating plant they did not want. This may just have been a case of using the C.I.A. in industrial espionage, a parctice that began with President George H. W. Bush. . Whether the corporation was tied to the government and the C.I.A. cannot be determined with any certainty.
Ken Lay was a Pentagon official under Nixon, and board member Frank Wisner, Jr.is son of a man who was present when the agency was created. The corporation was almost created by Bush Sr., in that it grew by capitalizing on his deregulation of energy. From the beginning, it funded right-wing think tanks and pursued national objectives by seeking to gain control of energy resources abroad. In return, it was rewarded with a huge contract as a result of the First Gulf War, Desert Storm. Enron has had a very close relationship with a technology services corporation named DynCorp. Founded in 1943, it has become a major public contractor, dealing with Pentagon, State Department, and F.B.I.. Herbert APug@ Winokur of Enron was its chairman for a time and former head of the C.I.A., James Wolsey served on its board. It is particularly active in Columbia, allegedly helping the C.I.A. and Pentagon root out the drug trade and drug crops.

In January, 2002, four of C.I.A. employees on loan from the agency
and a former F.B.I. agent formed Secure Solutions International, which worked on contract with Enron. David M. Cromley's, their leader, had been head of business analysis for Enron. One wonders if he ever used the government’s Echelon commuications’ monitoring program in this task or other C.I.A. tools. The Houston Chronicle claimed to have information that this was the case. Was this software used in parking assets off shore or in generating what former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Bulow guestimated to be $15 billion in inside trader profits.

Apparently some Enron money was moved to the Cook Islands, because the Bush people wanted “A quick folding tent”that could be taken down almost without a trace. Some of this money was routed through Saudi-controlled Five Star Trust in Houston for use in the 2004 ele3ction. It was reported that $29,000,000 was used to pay techni C.I.A.ns to poses as Homeland Security and F.B.I. agents and go to various counties to adjust county-wide electronic voting mechanisms. Five Star Trust has been accused of also funnelling money to Osama bin Laden.

Catherine Austin Fitts is a former Reagan sub-cabinet member who was hired by the George H.W. Bush administration to deal with funds seized in various financial frauds, including BCCI. Her job was expanded to include tracking down missing federal money. By 1996, she was looking for $4.4 trillion dollars, much of which was stolen from HUD. In that year, she said the Ahonest people@ were removed from HUD and the Department of Justice set out to shut down her firm. She wondered how all that money could ever be laundered, and then she noted that J.P. Morgan-Case , Arthur Anderson, Lockheed, and Dyn Corp were heavily represented at Enron and that suddenly massive and unaccounted amounts of money started flowing through Enron. It was the perfect entity for money laundering with over 3000 subsidiaries. There were over 700 subsidiaries in the Caymen Islands alone. What occurred soon thereafter was the classic “pump and dump” operation on the Enron stock. It might be recalled that the operators tied to Ollie North were masters of pump and dump schemes. Operating through foreign entities, they would be hard to trace. She noted that the government’s dealing with the collapse of Enron was highly irregular.

Its imminent collapse was clear but none of the normal steps that should have been taken occurred before bankruptcy was filed. Enron and its accountant Arthur Anderson were permitted to shred documents at will. She assumes that many important documents are now under the protection of Swiss bank secrecy law. The firm was even permitted to have gold derivatives and bullion transferred at will. After the filing, no effort was made to seize cash payments for on-going government contracts. As almost any newspaper reader knows, the firm was also given a quarter of a billion dollars in tax rebates. Pitts noted that when Noriega was arrested, the US government used PROMIS software to track down and seize $2 billion in his assets. This was not done with Enron. The US government knew of the 700 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and of other subcontracting firms there. The government of the Cayman Islands offered to help, but the Department of Justice never filed a request for assistance.

Fitts looked to the Senate investigation of the collapse for evidence that there was no real interest in getting at the truth. A professor who headed an internal Enron audit testified that no notes were taken of his meetings but that a very carefully written summary memo was produced afterward. She called him a typical “white shoes” respectable fellow who had no idea what was going on and was there to give the internal probe some legitimacy. The Senate did not press him. It treated Herbert “Pug” Winokor with kid gloves. He headed the Enron board’s finance committee and headed DynCorp. He said he had been lied to and they left it at that. She said Dyn Corp. uses the most advanced PROMIS software, has access to everyone’s bank account and other financial dealings, and and could quickly make anyone look like a criminal. She thought “Pug” was today’s J.Edgar Hoover. She is now past 80 and has lost all faith in government.

Former Enron CEO Ken Lay died of a heart attack on July 5, 2006 in Aspen. He had been convicted but not sentences for fraud. Dying before the sentencing meant that his assets , wherever they are secreted away, will remain with his family. While Lay wass alive and before the sentencing, a restitution order could have been found had prosecutors been able to find Judge Sim Lake, who had presided. On July 12, Neil Coulbeck 53, died a suicide in woods outsided London. He had been head of an Enron affiliate in Scotland and his information was considered essential in the UK case against Enron. There were complaints that he had been “hounded” by the F.B.I.. One would think that the F.B.I. would treat a potentially friendly witness better. The F.B.I. has recently been granted extraterritoriality rights in the UK.

Since the fall of BCCI, the C.I.A. has used a number of private banks to launder money. One was Hamilton Bankin Miami, which folded in 2006. It was said to handle money from drug and arms transactions as well as the stashes of crooked Latin American politicians. There are also C.I.A. fronts in the Cook Islands, and the George W. Bush campaign used a bank there in 2004. The advantage there is that there are no rules and banks can be disassembled over night.

Covert Finances: BCCI

2010-09-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

BCCI, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, was founded in the late seventies It facilitated the activities of world intelligence agencies, the C.I.A., and unsavory elements. We know tht Richard Helms of the C.I.A. supported its founding, and one person close to its leaders, said, "What I have been told this is that it wasn't a Pakistani bank at all. The guys behind the bank weren't Pakistani at all. The whole thing was a front." On the other hand Bob Crowley, a long-time C.I.A. covert ops leader, said that the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) had an important part in what he thought was essentially a massive ponzi scheme. He added that F. Lee Bailey fronted for it and tghat “God knows how many thoroughly rotten Congressmen” backed it. In the end, elder statesman Clark Clifford was paid to front for it and unwittingly take a fall.

In the beginning, 1972, the little bank was a front for British intelligence in Muslim lands, and later its role was vastly expanded. Joseph Trentino has written that BCCI emerged after members of the Safari Club, compised of various intelligence agencies, decided they needed their own bank .

BCCI was operated by reliable C.I.A. associates from Saudi Arabia and Central Asia, many of them Pakistanis, and it became the bank of choice for the agency. It had many layers and overalapping parts and seemed to be structured so its functions could not be monitored or regulated by governments. It relied heavily upon shell corporations and subsidiaries in lands where there were strong bank confidentiality laws. It bribedofficials in at least 71 countries. BCCI grew from a small Pakistani bank to the largest secret money network on earth. George H.W. Bush established an account there while still DCI and French police later found it when they raided BCCI. The bank was used by the mafia, all sorts of dictators, war lords, terrorists, skamsters, and criminals around the world. On June 4, 1992, The Houston Chronicle reported that Khalid bin Mahfouz , Osama bin Laden’s brother-n-law owned a large chunk of BCCI stock. He has numerous dealings with George W. Bush’s friend, James Bath. Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission was also a bin Mahfouz business partner. Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, former head of Saudi intelligence, was another important investor. Jack Blum , a former Senate investigator, said, “This whole collection of people were wrapped up in the Bush crowd in Texas.”

It was involved in the arms and drugs trades, blackmailing politicians, and financing terrorism. It was closely tied the Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, and played a central role in the drug trade. It was also the main conduit for financing the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Chinese Communists assisted the C.I.A., through BCCI, in helping the mujahedeen against the Soviets. BCCI also sent money to officers of international banks and banking regulatory agencies to further financial schemes; all of those, some say, prefigured the financial crisis of 2008.

In 1977 it began to infiltrate the U.S. banking system through the covert acquisition of banks. Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI founder, arranged for some of his clients to purchase First American Bankshares, which had probably been a C.I.A. bank for decides. There were three other BCCI banks in the U.S. Jackson Stephens, then chair of Worthen Bank in Arkansas, played an important role bringing the bank to the US when he helped BCCI purchase First American. Doubtless, a good deal of drug money was laundered there. Eventually the ruling house of Abu Dhabi would own a substantial chunk of the bank.

A case can be made that Charles Keating had ties to the C.I.A., and a much stronger case can be made that the agency looted some S and Ls in the late 1980s and routed the proceeds through BCCI.
Some might remember that in 1990, Baltimore financier Robert Maxwell brought suite to obtain Bank of Maryland records. He claimed that his relationship with the bank was ended because he objected to the C.I.A.’s using the bank to issue illegal letters of credit to cover a covert operation. Two years later, the court ordered those records sealed. The case is interesting becaue it raises the question of whether the C.I.A. is essentially exempt from banking regulations.

BCCI operated through many layers of subsidiary entities and became the central bank for some countries and repaying leaders of those countries with bribes Pakistanis and Saudi seemed to be running it, but it is unknown who owned and controlled it. In some ways it was a giant Ponzi scheme, and its financial statements were less than transparent and honest. By the early eighties it owned banks in the US and around the world. Mohammed Hammond, who ran the Luxembourg branch also moved money for Hezballah. Manuel Noriega was instructed to route his money laundering through it, and it soon became his favorite bank’ s favorite bank. It operated at so many levels and through so many fronts that it was almost impossible to follow how it moved money. When Noriega was arrested, the US government was only able to trace the movement of $20 million of his money through BCCI’s labyrinths. BCCI was used to pay people on the C.I.A. payroll in Britain and it was used fund the insurgency against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

BCCI was used by the C.I.A., Mossad, and many intelligence agencies as well as organized crime. It was a key conduit for funding the right wing militias in Central America. The full extent of C.I.A. involvement in the farious frauds perpetrated by the BCCI will never be known. At the least, it must have had knowledge of of these schemes and who was being bribed . Such information would have been invaluable.

A Senate committee eventually described it as “the largest criminal enterprise in history.” When reports of its wrong-doing surfaced, George W. Bush had Robert Mueller of the Justice Department investigate. Witnesses and files disappeared and lower level prosecutors complained of high level pressure to “lay off” Khalid bin Mahfouz, Osama bin Laden’s brother -in-law and likely bag man escaped the net as did almost all key figures. He was later proven to be financing Al Quaeda. Today he sits on the Carlyle Group’s board along with George H.W. Bush. Two minor figures did get jail time for helping BCCI sell $1 billion worth of oscilloscopes and computer equipment to help Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Orin Senator Orin Hatch led the effort to salvage BCCI’s reputation. He had business dealings with two men in Houston connected to BCCI. One of them, Mohammed Hammond, died mysteriously in 1990 .

BCCI bribed politicians in many countries, and among them were members of both parties in the United States. When BCCI collapsed, the Bank of England seized many of its Chicago records, and it is believed that many bribes passed through that city. A list of politicians on the take surfaced in 1991, the same year that the Bank of England took over many of its accounts. The Federal Reserve and Four Media organizations had copies of the list. But little was done with it. Until 1988, when the Chicago branch closed, bribes came to it through the Banca Nazionale del Lavore. Its Atlanta branch also loaned Saddam Huesein $5 billion. A great deal of money was laundered through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and commodities exchanges through the Board of Trade were used channel money to politicians. A cicero bank with links to the Vatican was also tied into some transactions. Sometimes, the politicians just received speakers fees at the exchanges, which were huge but perfectly legal. In “Operation Sour Mash,” the F.B.I. probed these operations and two members of the Chicago Board of Trade went to prison. Judge Marvin Aspen said the feds had only uncovered the “ tip of the iceberg," but little more was accomplished. It was discovered that a financial services outfit named Capcon was a BCCI front for moving money in the Chicago exchanges. Sherman Skolnick, a Chicago investigator, dug up information that George H.W. Bush was a business partner of Manuel Noriega and that they worked through the Continental Bank of Chicago. The BCCI operatives who were caught in Tampa in 1989 claimed to know about the Bush-Noriega tie and managed to get very light sentences.

Probably as part of an effort to cover its own tracks, the C.I.A. , in 1984, sent a report to many branches of government outlining BCCI’s involvement in moving drug money. Of course, it did not implicate itself. No one in power, other than John Kerry, sought to expose BCCI for 6 more years.
Days before the “surprise” arrest of five top BCCI official , some major international drug dealers withdrew their money. There was never a thorough investigation. The firms’ top lawyers became the sacrificial victims, eventually losing large amounts of stock in a bank BCCI had illegally acquired. Investigators thought top Reagan administrationofficials had warned the drug merchants. In 1991, the federal attorney in Miami was blocked by the Bush administration when he attempted to indict some BCCIofficials for tax faud. The Manhattan DA, who shut down BBI’s American branch, claimed that 16 BCCI rankingofficials died during the investigation.

When the bank’s drug money laundering operation became public knowledge, the George H.W. Bush administration prevented a thorough investigation. . The Manhattan DA, who shut down BBI’s American branch, claimed that 16 BCCI rankingofficials died during the investigation. In 1991, Attorney General William Barr refused to conduct an investigation. He and his predecessor had practically admitted that higher powers in the Bush administration had ruled out a probe. Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger , when working for Kissinger Associates, were BCCI consultants. They later accepted high positions in the George H.W. Bush administration. On July 5, 1991, the Bank of England formally shut down BCCI’s operations.

Eleven billion in assets simply disappeared and little was done for innocent depositors other than honor federal insurance on accounts. Asian workers in the United Kingdom and Gulf States lost a great deal and never knew what hit them. It is said that the terrorist Abu Nidal also lost money. It is hard to believe that BCCI could have operated without the protection and sponsorship of people in high places. Yet, Robert Bueller, then head of the F.B.I.’s criminal division, found that to be the case. Christopher Drogoul, manager of BNL in Atlanta, was blamed for the loss of almost half of that money. His defense was that he was told by the US government to funnel money to Saddam Hussein to finance the war against Iran. A federal judge agreed that he and his co-defendants were "pawns and bit players" in a larger drama, but the Clinton Justice Department pursued his case and he accepted a plea bargain. The Clinton administration did not look further into the BCCI scandal. In 1992, George H. W. Bush pardoned a number of people who had been convicted in connection with BCCI.

The Federal Reserve’s records manager said that a large part of the FED’s records on the BCCI disappeared in 1988 sometime after the Kerry Committee was told that Manuel Noriega’s drug money was laundered through that bank.

In the seventies, drugs came through Columbian outlets, and this trade was controlled by the proprietary known as Zenith Corporation, which was located on the grounds of the University of Miami. By the 1980s, the Panama branch of BCCI was actively seeking drug money deposits on the orders of corporation’s vice president, Alaudin Shaik It was a major handler of the contras’ drug money. BCCI, a bank that catered to the international intelligence community, drug dealers, arms merchants, and others was established at the suggestion of Jackson Stephens, head of the Arkansas Financial Group that bears his name. He contributed $100,000 to George H.W. Bush in 1980 and a like amount to the son in 1990. He played a major role in getting Swiss and Saudi investments for George W. .Bush’s Harken Oil and also helped line up for Harkin an oil deal with Bahrain. BCCI had multiple close ties to Beorge W. Bush’s Harkin Oil. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken —- all since George W. Bush came on board -- raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."

In the 1980s, an unbelievable amount of C.I.A. money was routed out of HUD to the C.I.A.. How much of this was intentional and how much was simply stolen is difficult to determine. In 1989, Catherine Austin Fitts was assistant secretary of HUD and discovered that vast amounts were missing. Eventually it was learned that $59.6 billion was lost. Under the Clinton Administration, she was given a contract to contiune reforming HUD finances, and she did a remarkable job. Then a rival contractor accused her of stealing $3.8 million. She and her firm were subjected to 18 audits before she was cleared. Today she remains a crusader for honesty in government.

A number of investigators believe BCCI was also used to handle the profits of Saddam Hussein and George H. W. Bush in whatever racket they operated on middle eastern oil in the 1980s. Saddam also had a steak in the Carlyle Group. He was also a major stockholder in Daimler-Chrysler. He was also a major stock holder in Hachette, a foreign firm that was financing George magazine. He also owned part of the firm that produced and operated people moving systems for airports. Perhaps his most valuable assets were records on the financial activities of the Bush family, and just before the second US Iraq War, someone in his family in Switzerland released 300 Bush wire transfer records to some 25 foreign accounts.

Skolnick, using records of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro --, owned in part by the Vatican with a branch in Chicago, claims that Daddy Bush and Saddam were business partners in a number of areas, including the Middle East protection racket. Eventually, the partnership was dissolved in a Chicago case that was sealed by the court. Apparently Saddam defaulted on some loans. The two men seem to have been skimming off the oil profits that resulted from Reagan-Bush policies. Skolnick, thinks they were running an oil protection racket, which seems a little crude. The House Banking Committee, under Henry Gonzales, sought these records but to no avail.

In addition to BNL, Saddam and Bush used BCCI. Some of the sealed records were said to be the relevant Chicago branch records of both banks. Investigators claim that Bush’s share from this oil scheme and his private selling of weapons to Iraq in the 1980s went into Pennzoil, in which he has a major share. It is well-known that Ross Perot financed a massive investigation of the Bush family and some think these activities were at its center. This writer has a different theory that he cannot prove.

People of the State of Illinois ex rel Willis C. Harris, Bank Commissioner vs. the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the House Banking Committee, No. 90 C 6863, in the U.S. District Court, was the case involving the financial relationshiop between Saddam, Bush, and an Italian Bank. It was finally resolved in the 7th Circuit by a panel dominated by Chief Judge Richard Posner, a well-know right wing judge . The case was sealed and Posner issued an order barring Skolnich and his aids from federal court houses. 1990 or 1991) That led to the dissolution of the partnertship is not known. Tom Flocco notes that the F.B.I. raided the Atlanta branch of Banco Lavoro Nazionale on August 4, 1989 and that it found that the bank had loaned Saddam Hussein $4 billion. This seems to have dried up Saddam’s credit and it may have forced him to do something with partnership funds that angered Bush.

French intelligence claimed that Osama bin Laden later rebuilt the BCCI money laundering network so it could be used to launder drug money and finance Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to a “confidential ‘France only’” report of the Direction Generale de la Securitie Exterieure, the C.I.A. and MI-6 had control of Al Qaeda’s main training facility in Afghanistan as late as 1995.

The story of BCCI insolvency and scandal broke in July, 1991 when the Justice Department finally opened a half-hearted investigation of the failing institution that had lost at least $ 7 billion in deposits. The bank operated in the United States partly by illegally controlling North American Bank, whose officers claimed to know who owned their bank.

A February 23, 1992 NBC newscast described Bill Casey’s close ties to BCCI. He frequently met with BCCI head Abedi every few months at the Madison Hotel.

Covert Finances: Transition to Afghan Drugs

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In 1984 Peter Jennings of ABC aired agent Scott Barnes, who said he asked two fellow agents in Honolulu to kill Ronald Rewald, an agent and officer of the BBRDW bank. William Casey demanded that ABC muzzle Jennings, whjo refused to back off. Then the SEC gave Capital Cities, a firm tied to Casey, permission to purchase ABC. Jennings was silenced and some started calling it the “ C.I.A. Network.” Rewald was not killed. Rather he was sent to prison with an 80 year sentence.

In 1986, a team lead by much-decorated Lt. Colonel James “Bo” Gritz went to Burma to interview warlord General Khun Sa real name was Chang Chi-fu. The general was supposed to have information about missing POWs, but did not. Gritz asked him to cooperate in the US war on drugs, and the general replied that the US was his biggest drug customer. He said he could produce aq long list ofofficials he dealt with over twenty years, After being told in Washington that the general was lying, Gritz returned to interview the general. Khun Sa refused to name some current contacts but he did name Shackley and Armitage. Subsequently, the US indicted Khun Sa, so he could not come to the US and testify, and an effort was made to destroy the good name of Gritz, probably America’s most decorated officer at that time. Gritz also had to defend himself from charges of passport abuse. William Maddox, the US attorney who unsuccessfully prosecuted Gritz, said “”George Bush called me up and told me to get Bo Gritz.”

Nugan Hand was succeeded by Household International, and its general counsel was former C.I.A. director William Colby. He became somewhat outspoken in retirement and died in a strange boating accident in 1996.

The beginnings of American interest in Afghan opium seem to be in the 1970s, when the USAID –funded Helmand-Arghandab Valley authority constructed the Kajaki Dam, which made possible irrigation efforts that permitted opium production to reach new levels. It was handled by the St. Joe Company, a firm tied to the Bush family and Jeb’s Bushb’s Codina Firm. The St. Joe Company was founded in 1936 by the Alfred I. Du Pont Testamentary Trust. It used its Florida National Bank to move drug profits to Switzerland, and it also cooperated with the Lanksy/Trafficante Miami National in moving illicit money. MucSt. Joe Company, Peter Jennings, drugs, Bill Casey, CIAh of the money eventually ended up in Citibank. In 2002, Karl Rove managed to purchase a magnificient beach tract in Florida from the St. Joe Company for a mere $165,000.

Codina and the St. Joe Company had links to th e now disgraced financier Sir Allen Stanford, who was investigated for laundering C.I.A. drug money in his off-shore banks. The Soviets claimed that the C.I.A. allied in 1979 with mujahedeen drug dealers. By 1989, the Times of London reported that half the heroin getting to the United States came from Afghanistan. In July 2000, trhe Taliban shut down poppy production. Production resumed after the Taliban was overthrown. One impediment to even more opium reaching the west is the determination of Ayatolah Khatami to prevent its movement from Iran. However, he has relatively weak border forces.