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

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

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 (President Clinton rescinded this ruling in 1995.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Provisioning the Nicaraguan Contras

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

The CIA in Crisis: Part III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NATO's Stay Behind Armies

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

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

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

The Gladio symbol

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on P-2

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

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

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

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

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


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

The. Death of Mrs E. Howard Hunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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