USA Hidden and Unpopular History the CIA Nd MI6 Controlled Mainstream Media Do Not Like Brought To Public Light
Some Unpopular History of the United States The Richard Nixon Years - Jan. 1969 – Aug. 9, 1974 Book eight by Richard McManus
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this book is to inform readers about historical facts that most US history books omit. Most US citizens do not know about the unnecessary and unjust wars, violations of international law, and covert operations by the CIA and other US government agencies. I hope future historians and you will find my mistakes so together we get closer to the truth.
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Leroy Fletcher Prouty former discusses his exposing of covert operations of the CIA and his book The Secret Team
Leroy Fletcher Prouty Born January 24, 1917 Springfield, Massachusetts, US Died June 5, 2001 (aged 84) Service/
Joint Service Commendation Medal Spouse: Elizabeth B. Prouty Children: David F. Prouty,
Jane E. Prouty, Lauren M. Prouty
Leroy Fletcher Prouty (January 24, 1917 – June 5, 2001)[1] served as Chief of Speci United States Air Forceal Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. A colonel in the United States Air Force, he retired from military service to become a bank executive. He subsequently became a critic of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which he believed was working on behalf of a secret world elite.
Prouty's commentary on the Kennedy assassination circulated widely from the 1970s-90s, as a key source for conspiracy theories about it. He was the inspiration for the character "Mr. X" in Oliver Stone's film JFK.
As a critic of the CIA, Prouty pointed out its influence in global matters, outside the realm of U.S. congressional and government oversight. His works detailed the formation and development of the CIA, the origins of the Cold War, the U-2 incident, the Vietnam War, and the John F. Kennedy assassination. Prouty wrote that he believed Kennedy's assassination was a coup d'état, and that there is a secret, global "power elite," which operates covertly to protect its interests—and in doing so has frequently subverted democracy around the world.
After the war, Prouty accepted an assignment from the U.S. Army in September 1945 to inaugurate the ROTC program at Yale University, where he also taught during each scholastic year from 1946 to 1948. This timeline intersects with the years that George Bush and William F. Buckley, Jr. also spent at Yale. Prouty fondly recalled Buckley at that time in his role as editor of the Yale Daily News, and Prouty later told an interviewer in 1989 that he had written for Buckley on several occasions.
In 1950 he transferred to Colorado Springs to build Air Defense Command. From 1952 to 1954 he was assigned to Korean War duties in Japan, where he served as Military Manager for Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) during the post-war U.S. occupation.
In 1955 he was assigned to the coordination of operations between the fledgling U.S. Air Force and the CIA. As a result of a CIA commendation for this work he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the U.S. Air Force, promoted to colonel, and assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Following the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency and termination of the OSO by Secretary Robert McNamara, Prouty was transferred to the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and charged with the creation a similar organization on a global scale.
From 1962 to 1963 he served as Chief of Special Operations with the Joint Staff.
L. Fletcher Prouty - Wikipedia
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Some Unpopular History of the United States The Richard Nixon Years - Jan. 1969 – Aug. 9, 1974
Book eight by Richard McManus
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this book is to inform readers about historical facts that most US history books omit. Most US citizens do not know about the unnecessary and unjust wars, violations of international law, and covert operations by the CIA and other US government agencies. I hope future historians and you will find my mistakes so together we get closer to the truth.
________________
Vice President: Gerald Ford (Oct 10, 1973 –1974)
Spiro Agnew (Jan. 1969 – Oct 10, 1973)
White House chief of staff: Bob Haldeman (?? to middle 1970s)
Alexander “Al” Haig (middle 1970s to ??)
White house aides: John Dean
John Ehrlichman
Chief Counsel Charles Colson
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Nixon graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937 and returned to California and practiced law. He and his wife Pat moved to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937 and returned to California to practice law. In 1942 he and his wife Pat moved to Washington DC and he started working for the federal government. As a lieutenant from about May 1943 he served as a naval passenger control officer for the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command. In about March 1944 he served as the Officer in Charge of the Combat Air Transport Command at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and at Nissan Island east of Papua New Guinea.
The New Zealand 3rd Division landed on Nissan Island in February 1944 as part of the Solomon Islands campaign against the Japanese. Shortly after the landings two airfields were constructed on the island. Nixon’s unit on this island prepared manifests and flight plans for C-47 operations and supervised the loading and unloading of the cargo aircraft.
Nixon was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1946 and to the US Senate in December 1950.
Chicago mafia boss Sam Giancana allegedly told his half brother Chuck Giancana, "Nixon's done me some favors, all right, got us some highway contracts, worked with the unions and overseas. And we've helped him and his CIA buddies out, too. Shit, he even helped my guy in Texas, (Jack) Ruby, get out of testifying in front of Congress back in forty-seven (1947)”
A FBI documents supports Giancana's contention. It was addressed to a congressional committee investigating organized crime. It stated, "It is my sworn testimony that one Jack Rubenstein (aka Ruby) of Chicago ... is performing information functions for the staff of Congressman Nixon, Republican of California. It is requested Rubenstein not be called for open testimony in the aforementioned hearings."
In exchange for Ruby's testimony, the FBI is said to have eased up on its probe of organized crime in Dallas.
Luis Kutner, a staff member on Estes Kefauver's special Senate committee investigating organized crime, described Ruby as "a syndicate lieutenant who had been sent to Dallas to serve as a liaison for Chicago mobsters."
President Nixon’s administration intervened on the side of mafia figures in at least 20 trials, mostly for the ostensible purpose of protecting CIA ''sources and methods.'' Nixon even went so far as to order the Justice Department to halt using the words ''mafia'' and ''Cosa Nostra'' to describe organized crime. Presidential assistant Charles Colson was Nixon's emissary to the Teamsters Union. He once voiced the theory that mafia bosses owned Rebozo and had gotten "their hooks into Nixon early."
Annie Jacobsen- Operation Paperclip.
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Inside CIAs Darpa The Pentagons Brain - Annie Jacobson
Ted Gunderson Interview with Beau Abbott
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to help the CIA Distribute and Smuggle Illegak Drugs
Jack Ruby Trial Panel Discussion
The following is a list of some of the members of the North American Jewish super mafia. I thought since most people understand the American mafia was being Iralian, it was important to show just how many men of Jewish ancestry were involved in the mafia. In Gus Russo’s book, Super-mob:
How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America’s Hidden Power Brokers, he coined the term for the Jewish mob. Russo explains how the North American Jewish super-mafia had been able to protect itself from prosecution by aligning itself with key judges and politicians – both local and national. An example was the Nevada’s Lieutenant Governor Clifford A. Jones (1945-1954). (Sources: Mr. Mob: The Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz by Michael Newton)
http://www.bollyn.com/the-zionist-criminal-network-behind-the-cover-ups-2/
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Edward "Monk" Eastman (New York's crime boss), died in December 1920.
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Arnold Rothstein (New York's crime boss) was shot and killed in 1928.
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Harry “Nig” Rosen was a prominent racketeer in southeast Philadelphia who became involved in prostitution, extortion, labor racketeering and later in narcotics with Arnold Rothstein during the mid-1920s.
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Dutch Schultz (aka Arthur S. Flegenheimer); (Newark's crime boss) died 1935.
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In 1931, Joseph “Doc” Stacher built up Las Vegas by pairing the Jewish and Italian Mafia into a national organized crime syndicate. He helped Meyer Lansky organize a conference of Jewish organized crime leaders which later would see the alleged merging of the Jewish and Italian Mafia into a national crime syndicate (American mafia). Stacher ran the West Coast and Caribbean gambling operations for Meyer Lansky during the 1930s, as well as becoming a silent partner of movie studio Columbia Pictures in the late 1930s. Stacher continued running mafia gambling operations until 1964, when Federal authorities arrested him for tax evasion. While the US government was in favor of deporting him to his native Poland, federal law prohibited deporting anyone to a communist-controlled country. Because of the Law of Return, Stacher was successfully immigrated to Israel in 1965 where he lived until he died 1977.
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Harry ‘Pittsburg Phil’ Strauss was a Murder Incorporated hit man who killed over 100 men from the late 1920s up to 1940 died by electric chair in 1941.
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Abraham “Abe” Reles a hit man of Brooklyn-based Murder, Incorporated which was an almost totally Jewish organization, who turned informant on Dutch Strauss and was murdered in 1941.
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Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter was the original head of Murder Inc, Incorporated. He was the only national crime boss ever to have been convicted executed by the electric chair in 1944.
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Benjamin "Bugsy" Sigelbaum (aka Siegel) who came from New York. He became the Las Vegas' crime boss and was instrumental in creating the legalized gambling starting things off at the Flamingo Hotel and Sands Hotel. He died 1947.
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Meyer Lansky was born in Belarus to a Polish-Jewish family. His family immigrated to the US and settled New York City. Lansky met Bugsy Siegel when they were children. They became lifelong friends, as well as partners in the bootlegging trade. During the 1930s, Harry “Nig” Rosen and Meyer Lansky worked on expanding drug trafficking operations in Mexico as an alternative to older routes such as Japan now closed with United States entry into World War Two. By 1939, a lucrative heroin network had been established from drug traffickers based in Mexico City to major cities across the United States including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles as well as Havana, Cuba. Lansky was never found guilty of anything more serious than illegal gambling. Lansky was also close friends with Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the two met as teenagers. He Lansky died in 1983.
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In the 1950s, Harry “Nig” Rosen used such Swiss bank accounts to launder his heroin trafficking profits. Soon, Lansky and his associates established their own banks.
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Mickey Cohen was raised by an Orthodox Jewish family living in the Jewish Brownsville section of Brooklyn of New York City. In 1939, Mickey Cohen arrived in Los Angeles to work under Jewish American mafia boss Bugsy Siegel. Cohen helped Siegel founding the Flamingo Hotel and casino in Las Vegas and ran its sports book gambling operation. Siegel used money from the syndicate to build a drug trade route from the US to Mexico and he was also was instrumental in setting up the race wire, gambling with the Chicago mafia crime family. In the mid-1940s, while Siegel was setting up the casino in Las Vegas, his lieutenant, Mickey Cohen worked to secure all illegal gambling in Los Angeles.
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Abe Bernstein, leader of the Detroit Purple Gang which was responsible for the deaths of more than 500 men during the so-called ‘bootleg wars.’ Abe and his gangsters joined the National Crime Syndicate in 1931. He died in 1968.
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Abe and Sam Bronfman were from a wealthy family that immigrated to Canada from Russia by their rabbi and two servants. In 1903, the family bought a hotel during Prohibition they r made tremendous profits by shipping liquor into the United States, reportedly shipping booze through Cleveland, Detroit and New York. The Bronfman crime family of Montreal, Canada set Kemper Marley up in liquor business and for 40 years, Marley was Meyer Lansky syndicate’s front man in Phoenix, Arizona. Marley headed the Valley National Bank, which lent Bugsy Siegel, the money to build the Flamingo casino in Las Vegas. Siegel was murdered on orders from the nation mafia syndicate in 1947. Siegel nationwide gambling wire was turned over to Kemper Marley in Phoenix, Arizona. The murder of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles, in Phoenix set off an important investigation of the influence of Kemper Marley in Phoenix. Bolles was killed in a 1976 car bombing. Law enforcement believed that the Marley gang was behind his murder, but they could not prove it. http://americanfreepress.net/the-king-of-the-jews-is-dead/
The Bronfman’s makes Seagram brand alcohol that was the largest distiller in the world. The Seagram assets have since been acquired by other companies, notably The Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, a British distiller and Pernod Ricard, a French distiller. The aggregate assets held by the various branches of the Bronfman family were estimated to be $7 billion in 1978, by Peter C. Newman in his book King of the Castle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_organized_crime
http://eurofolkradio.com/2015/10/18/jewish-gangsters/
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Jeremy M. Jacobs, Sr. is the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. The Jacobs crime family was originally from Buffalo, NY and they got rich bootlegging during Prohibition as partners with the Canadian Bronfmans crime family. In May 1972, the Jacobs’ Sportservice was convicted of a federal conspiracy charge for attempting to hide its ownership of share in the Frontier hotel and casino in Las Vegas.
His three sons have taken over running their crime family called Sportservice which is a New York based company (now called Delaware North). It is the largest nonpublic, family-owned corporations in the world, a conglomerate with control or partial control over 450 separate companies. Its stated annual profit is $350 million, from holdings in North American and British sports complexes, race tracks, and food consortia.
On June 3, 1976, Don Bolles an investigative reporter for the Republic was murdered due to a bomb planted under his car. He had been investigating the likely illegal relationships between Arizona racing regulators and the tracks owned by the Jacobs family.
In 1972 the Democratic Party members of the House Select Panel on Crime decided to terminate their hearings on Sportservice . US Senator Robert Dole, (R-KS) revealed that the decision had followed a private meeting between Jeremy Jacobs and Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien. O'Brien subsequently left his Democratic Party post and assumed a lucrative job as president of the National Basketball Association—an organization with heavy representation by the Jacobs family. Senator Dole publicly protested the decision by the House Select Panel. (Source: May 24, 1972 issue of Sports Illustrated "Jacobs — Godfather of Sports) https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2017/11/part-3-final-judgmentthe-missing-link.html
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Reuben Sturman was born in 1924, the son of immigrant Russian Jews and who grew up on Cleveland's East Side. By the late 1970s, he owned perhaps 800 retail pornography stores in the US, often through very complex patterns of concealed ownership. In England he worked in close collaboration with local organized criminals, like the Holloway family, a well-established pornography group. On the European continent, his chief foothold was through a firm called Intex Nederland, a key distributor of pornographic videos. A subsidiary of Intex is Video-Rama, which distributed pornographic videos throughout Europe and to the extremely lucrative Middle Eastern market of Cairo, Beirut, Kuwait City, and Riyadh. It was Sturman's refusal to pay taxes properly that finally brought him down. In 1989, Sturman was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to ten years in jail and $2.5 million in fines. Another charge, this time for the interstate transportation of obscene material, resulted in a plea bargain for Sturman, but he was later caught trying to bribe a juror, via his ex-wife, and was sentenced to 19 additional years for extortion. He died in a federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky on 1997.
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Joseph H. Reinfeld (1891–1958) (last name later changed to Renfield) during the Prohibition era he was a major bootlegger smuggling liquor from Canada in the United States using ships. After prohibition ended, he owned several large liquor import and distribution companies. Testimony during the Kefauver Committee hearings estimated that Reinfeld's mafia syndicate imported nearly 40 percent of all the alcohol consumed in the US during Prohibition. Reinfeld was charged in 1925 for the murder of a former government prohibition agent, but the government failed to get an indictment from the grand jury and the charges were dropped.[ After Prohibition ended in 1933, Reinfeld founded Browne-Vintners, a liquor import and distribution company.
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Abner "Longie" Zwillman (1904 –1959) a Jewish American was a member of Reinfeld’s gang. After Dutch Schultz's murder in 1935, Zwillman took over those of Schultz's criminal operations that were in New Jersey. The press began calling Zwillman the "Al Capone of New Jersey." Abner "Longie" Zwillman New Jersey crime boss took over those of Dutch Schultz's criminal operations. In 1929, Zwillman helped organize the Cleveland Conference, one of the first meetings between Jewish and Italian organized crime leaders, later resulting in the establishment of the Mafia Ruling Commission and also associated with Murder Incorporated. Shortly after taking over Dutch Schultz's operations, Zwillman became involved in local politics, eventually controlling the majority of local politicians in Newark for over twenty years. During the 1940s Zwillman dominated gambling operations in New Jersey, in particular the Marine Room inside Zwillman's Riviera nightclub, The Palisades. He was suicided (murdered made to look like a suicide) by the mafia in 1959.
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Joseph Stacher (1902 – 1977) in the 1920s, he was running much of Zwillman's gambling operations. In 1931, Stacher helped Meyer Lansky organize a conference of Jewish organized crime leaders at the Franconia Hotel, which later would see the alleged merging of the Jewish and Italian Mafia into a national crime syndicate. Running West Coast and Caribbean gambling operations for Lansky during the 1930s, as well as becoming a silent partner of movie studio Columbia Pictures in the late 1930s, Stacher would later supervise gambling in Las Vegas, Nevada, particularly the Sands and Fremont Casinos.
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Charles "King" Solomon (1884 –1933) was a Jewish-Russian mob boss who controlled Boston's bootlegging, narcotics, and illegal gambling during the Prohibition era. Attending the Atlantic City Conference in 1929, Solomon was one of the several leaders in the "Big Seven" who helped negotiate territorial disputes and establish policies which would influence the later National Crime Syndicate in 1932.
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Joseph Linsey (1899 –1994) was an organized crime figure in Boston's underworld during the Prohibition era and he associated with Joe Kennedy and Meyer Lansky. At the start of Prohibition, the 21-year-old Linsey began bootlegging illegal liquor with Charles "King" Solomon. Linsey also has dealings with Raymond Patriarcha, the titular godfather of New England narcotics trafficking and who became the boss of the New England mafia in 1955.
From the 1930s, Linsey sits on the board of International Airport Hotel Systems Inc., a Miami-based company with Lansky sitting was a member of the board of directors. FBI wiretaps show that Linsey also had dealings with Raymond Patriarcha, the titular godfather of New England narcotics trafficking. Patriarca of Rhode Island had important ties to the five families in New York, especially the Colombo’s, and became the boss of the New England mafia in 1955.
Linsey sits on the board of International Airport Hotel Systems Inc., a Miami-based company whose board also includes Lansky. Hotel Systems is also connected to Resorts International. Linsey also owned two liquor distributing firms and a dog racing track in Tauton, Massachusetts. Linsey was one of the top contributors to John F. Kennedy's 1976 senatorial campaign.
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John Torrio was a Bronfman man and by 1928 he was able to cal1 a meeting in Cleveland to establish a nationwide crime syndicate. Under the auspices of Lansky and Torrio, Lucky Luciano succeeded in wiping out all recalcitrant godfathers. In the early 1930s Murder, Incorporated was formed as a regulatory commission of sorts to police any overzealous free enterprise style crime advocates who might try to buck the syndicate. A special assassination bureau was set up by Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugs" Siegel. The Bugs and Meyer Gang had originally been used to protect Bronfman liquor shipments across the border against freelance hijackers.
The third item on the agenda at the meeting in Cleveland was what to do after Prohibition. The commodity, Torrio proposed the commodity to replace big profits from selling liquor was to focus on selling narcotics. http://www.lyndonlarouche.org/dope9.pdf
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During Joseph P.”Joe” Kennedy Sr own bootlegging days in Prohibition he entered into a coalition with Newark's Reinfeld Syndicate. It was 50 percent owned by the Bronfman gang. During Canada's four dry years from 1915 to 1919, the Bronfmans established their contacts with US criminal figures for illegally importing liquor into Canada. In 1916, the Bronfmans established their first link with the opium trade. In Yiddish Bronfman means "liquorman." Yechiel “Ekiel” Bronfman, emigrated to Canada in 1889. Since 1920 the Bronfmans had been importing British scotch whiskey from the Distillery Company of London (DCL) with Bronfmans splitting 50-50 the profits.
Joe’s father Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy began his rise to fortune as owner of three taverns and he who bought his way into the corrupt Democratic Party machine. At the age of 26, he sold his taverns and went into the more lucrative wholesale whisky business. P.J. Kennedy was one of the shanty-town mobsters of late 19th century Boston. South Boston teemed with them. “Shanty” meant rough, uncouth, usually a drinker.
As historian Lawrence McCaffrey notes, from the 1830s to the 1960s, Irish Catholics voted heavily Democratic. Their precincts showed average support levels of 80 percent. During the 1920s, mobsters Frank Wallace and his brothers lead a crime family in Boston during prohibition and due to their local political influence; they were rarely convicted, and spent relatively little time in prison. Frank is reported to have been arrested more than 25 times, but only served time twice, at Deer Island House of Correction in 1919 and 1928.
Joe Kennedy retained his business dealings with the syndicate thugs all the way until 1946 when he sold his liquor company, Somerset Importers Ltd., for $8 million to the "Renfield Importers," the legal version of the Reinfeld Syndicate after prohibition ended in 1933.
In 1933, Joe Kennedy was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to head the new Securities Exchange Commission, for helping to swing the Boston Democratic Party machine behind the FDR at their 1932 nominating convention. In 1936, FDR appointed Joe Kennedy US ambassador to Great Britain. Once in London, the Royal Family further obliged Kennedy by posing with his family in full regalia for the newspapers. He aligned himself with all the British backers of Hitler. Kennedy was a personal friend of Herman Goering. He was in total agreement with the Nazi's. There were reports that Jews would come to Kennedy asking for help for relatives being put to death by the Nazi's and he would tell them "I'll do nothing for you" and sent them packing.
He quickly attached himself to the most pro-Nazi British aristocrats including the opium-trading Sassoon family. The Jewish Sassoon family of Baghdadi Jewish was based in Baghdad, Iraq, before moving to Bombay, India and then spreading to China and England. Between 1830 - 1831 the Sassoon’s were busy trafficking in opium in Canton, China. They traffic 18,956 chests of opium earning millions of dollars. Part of the profits went to Queen Victoria and the British government. In the year 1836 the trade increased to over 30,000 chests and drug addiction in coastal cities became endemic. In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered that it be stopped and 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium were seized and threw it into the river. An outraged David Sassoon demanded that Great Britain retaliate. Thus, the First Opium Wars began with the British Army fighting as mercenaries of the Sassoons. They attacked cities and blockaded ports.
The Chinese Army, decimated by ten years of rampant opium addiction, proved no match for the British Army. The war ended in 1839 with the signing of "The Treaty of Nanking." This included provisions especially designed to guarantee the Sassoon’s the right to sell opium to the entire population.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's fortune was inherited from his maternal grandfather Warren Delano. In 1830 he was a senior partner of Russell & Company. It was their merchant fleet which carried Sassoon's opium to China and returned with tea.
Sassoon’s company was totally operated by Jews only! The corrupt British monarchy honored them with privilege and knighthood. To this day the Sassoons are in the history books as "great developers" of India but the source of their vast wealth is never mentioned!
http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/history/asia/news.php?q=1234729944
One way the profits from crime moved between America and the Far East was for Asian gamblers to visit Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe, where they spent a few nights at the casino tables and signed IOUs to cover their "losses." These IOUs were then sold to West Coast banks that redeemed them through banks in Hong Kong. Everyone involved made money through commissions at each stop, and in the process large sums were transferred across the Pacific.
Concerned that President Harry Truman was wobbly in his support for creating a new nation of Israel, Meyer Lansky pressured the Kansas City mafia and so they responded by using their connections in the White House to persuade Truman to change his mind, reminding the President that the union had helped elect him to office. (Source: Sandi Lansky Lombardo (Meyer Lansky’s daughter) http://www.fivefamiliesnyc.com/2010/05/meyer-lanskys-mafia-secrets-exposed-by.html
In 1946, FBI agents in New York were investigating Bugsy Siegel and Frank Costello. They were getting together to come up with the financing for the Flamingo casino.But the New York FBI agents soon received an order from Truman's Attorney General, Tom Clark, to cease the investigation on the grounds it "lacked federal jurisdiction." It was later learned that Nevada’s US Senator Pat McCarran had interceded on behalf of his newly emerging Las Vegas mafia. Senator McCaran charged that the FBI investigation had been designed to "damage the economy" of Nevada.
The source of this information was Joseph Yablonsky, the FBI special agent in charge of the Las Vegas district office from 1980 through 1983. Yablonsky said he didn't see a lot of integrity among the Navada’s major politicians, with the exception of US Senator Dick Bryan, when he assumed the governorship in 1980. http://www.newsnet1.com/electricnevada.com/pages96/mob1.htm
Heroin from Frank Coppola in Italy went to John Priziola in Detroit, and from there to Canada, New York and elsewhere. Frank Coppola arrived in Detroit in 1926. During the early 1930s with the help of and Coppola’s Detroit mafia helped in union strikes. Jimmy Hoffa was able establish the Teamsters as a powerful labor union on a par with the AFL-CIO. In exchange for their help, Jimmy offered up Detroit's trucking industry to the mob. Coppola was instrumental in Hoffa's rise through the labor ranks offering support once again when the Teamsters made their big push forcing the AFL-CIO out of Detroit in 1941.
Coppola had been involved in the drug trade in Detroit and New Orleans. Carlos Marcello was the mafia boss of New Orleans. Following the death of Lucky Luciano in 1962, Coppola was often called the most powerful mafia figure in Italy.
Coppola was replaced by John Priziola in Detroit and as far west as San Diego, California. Later Joe Zerilli remained the top boss of the Detroit Mafia until his death of natural causes on October 30, 1977 at the age of 80. Coppola groomed the top mafia bosses in St. Louis. Coppola was arrested in June of 1975 and charged with attempted murder. After a lengthy trial the aging mob leader was acquitted and died soon thereafter.
In the early 1960s Joe Zerilli would be given a seat on the American Mafia's leader committee known as The Commission. As a commission member Zerilli acted as a senior north American mafia leader alongside the five New York City bosses and other top Mafia bosses from around the country at the time that included Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo, Sam Giancana of Chicago, Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia, Santo Trafficante Jr. of Tampa, and Raymond Patriarca Sr. of New England.
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In Richard M. Nixon’s first political foray was a successful 1946 race for Congress as a strong anti-Communist from southern California. Nixon received a $5,000 (or some $63,000 in 2017 dollars) contribution from mafia boss Meyer H. "Mickey" Cohen, who let Nixon’s campaign headquarters to use rent free an office in one of Cohen's buildings. Cohen’s mother was a Jewish Ukrainian who immigrated to the US and moved her family to Los Angeles. Cohen went to Chicago, where he ran a gambling operation for the Al Capone's powerful crime family. In 1939, Cohen arrived in Los Angeles to work under "Bugsy" Siegel. During their association, Mickey helped set up the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and ran its sports book operation.
In 1950, Cohen set up a fund-raising dinner for Richard Nixon in Los Angeles. The affair took in $75,000 (or some $768,000 in 2017 dollars). Cohen himself later said, “… It was all gamblers from Vegas, all gambling money. Everyone from around here was on the pad naturally had to go. Looking back on it (the dinner) it was all gamblers from Vegas, all gambling money. There wasn't a legitimate person in the room.'' Cohen later recalled Nixon addressed the dinner and afterwards, Cohen told the crowd the exits would be closed until the whole $75,000 quota was met.
Journalist Drew Pearson wrote that this fund raising dinner of Cohen’s was organized by Murray Chotiner. In his autobiography, Cohen claimed his support of Nixon was ordered by ''the proper persons from back east.” The words “Back east” meant the leaders of the national mafia syndicate, who were Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky. Mickey Cohen died in his sleep in 1976. (Source: a radio broadcast in 1956 by journalist Drew Pearson)
Murray Chotiner was Nixon's earliest campaign manager and political advisor and he was known as a lawyer who specialized in defending members of the mafia. Chotiner had contacts with mafia-connected Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa and New Orleans mafia boss Carlos Marcello.
In 1962 journalists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson wrote that Murray Chotiner was the lawyer who was representing the top gangster of Philadelphia, Marco Reginelli, as well as a long list of mafia guys and income tax violators.
Nixon's appointment of Walter Annenberg as Ambassador to England also echoes the themes of underworld involvement. Annenberg and his father were indicted in 1939 for "aiding and abetting" in connection with their gambling wire service operation in Chicago, an operation run with the protection of Al Capone. The Annenberg family was also a major contributor to Nixon's 1968 election campaign.
Here is a short section of Kefauver Committee Interim Report #1 and #2 of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver Aug. 1950: B. MIAMI;
8. These general patterns of organized criminal activity were specifically evidenced in the situation uncovered by the committee in Florida in Broward and Dade Counties, and the cities of Miami and Miami Beach, which are located in Dade County. Moreover, although hearings bearing on this point have not yet been held, the committee has convincing evidence in its possession that analogous situations exist in other portions of the State of Florida.
9. Groups of known gangsters, from diverse sections of the country, many of whom have long criminal records, assemble primarily at Miami Beach. There they make their headquarters at certain hotels and establishments. Frank Erickson and the New York gang make their headquarters at the Wofford and the Boulevard Hotels; the Detroit gang, at the Wofford and the Grand Hotels, and the Philadelphia gang at the Sands Hotel.
10. These racketeers operate various gambling and bookmaking establishments openly and notoriously in clear violation of Florida law and apparently with the full knowledge of the entire community including the law-enforcement officers, who in some cases incredibly insisted to the committee that they had no knowledge of the operations. Bookmakers focus on accepting bets and paying off winners.
12. In Miami Beach a group of five local residents, through a syndicate known as S & G Syndicate, have controlled the racing-wire services and the bookmaking establishments for a number of years prior to 1949. This control was so tight that the bookmakers in effect worked for the syndicate.
13. The S & G Syndicate operated with the protection of the Miami Beach Police Department and of the Dade County sheriff, and apparently under cover of a complacent city council, at least one of whose members was proven to have had profitable financial dealings with syndicate members.
In all, the committee figures conservatively that $204,700,000,000 (in 2018 dollars) changes bands every year in the United States as a result of organized illegal gambling, a not inconsiderable portion of which stays with the promoters and operators of this illicit activity The S. & G. Syndicate, which dominated book-making operations in Miami grosses upward of $266,100,000 a year (in 2018 dollars)
Being This Close To Nuclear War Should Change How We See Things`_Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone
Dr. Frank Olsens Mysterious CIA Death - A Jimmy Atkins Analysis
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The Chicago mafia was headed by Tony Accardo until 1944 when he voluntarily stepped down. He still had powerful leadership role within the crime family. In 1957 his lieutenant Salvatore “Sam or Mooney" Giancana took over as boss of the Chicago crime family and some evidence points to Giancana as being the head of entire American mafia.
During the reign of Italian American Frank Costello’s Genovese crime family controlled much of the bookmaking, loan sharking, illegal gambling and labor racketeering activities in New York City.
In 1954 Johnny Rosselli helped engineer CIA’s overthrow of the Guatemalan government. Throughout 1956 and 1957 Rosselli travelled back and forth from Mexico City, the planning center for all CIA operations in Latin America. An experienced CIA operative noted that "John (Rosselli) had access to everyone and everything that was going on there. He had an open door at the embassy in Guatemala City and in Costa Rica. He was in there plenty of times. I know because I saw him. He supplied information to the government, and had a hand in a lot of the intrigues that were going on."
In the 1950s lobbyist Fred Black became a business associate and political adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson. He was also a close friend of mafia boss, Johnny Roselli. In the early 1950s, Roselli gradually shifted his focus away from Hollywood and to Las Vegas, Nevada. By 1954, Roselli had become the Chicago and Los Angeles mafia’s chief representative in Las Vegas. His job was to ensure that the Chicago and Los Angeles bosses each received their fair share of the burgeoning casino revenues through "skimming." The skim was profits made from the gambling casinos that were not reported to the IRS and thereby no income tax was paid. In 1947 the FBI identified Roselli as a close associate of Santos Trafficante Senior and Junior, mafia bosses in Tampa, FL. In 1959, Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante, Jr. were hired by the CIA in try and assassinate Fidel Castro.
In 1954, Robert A. Maheu Associates handling sensitive CIA assignments, dirty work, involving prostitution, pornography, illegal wiretaps, (and) assassination. According to Joe Shimon, one of Maheu’s oldest friends, Maheu was a pimp for the CIA. CIA would call him up when Sukarno or King of Jordan Hussein, a long time CIA asset, was coming to town, and ask him to get some prostitutes. Shimon was the chief of detectives for Washington’s upscale Northwest quadrant where almost all of our nation’s capitol’s foreign embassies are located. Shimon was a close friend of Mob figures Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, both involved with Maheu.
Ross A. Schoyer, who once worked with Joseph W. “Joe” Shimon, said Shimon ran the International Police Academy in Washington, DC. Shimon was a lieutenant or inspector with the Washington, DC Metro Police Department. This academy was a CIA front that specialized in training Iranian Secret police. Joe Shimon told his daughter Toni that he was a principal liaison to the mafia for the CIA. She said he confessed to meeting with mafia bosses Roselli, Giancana, Trafficante, and CIA officer William “Bill” Harvey and these meetings included sporadic attendance by CIA boss James Angleton. She said Harvey and her father were very close and he was also close to Angleton.
He told his daughter his job was to kill people. Harvey was in charge of assassination of foreign nationals or Soviet spies after World War Two. Shimon told his daughter that Allied Investigators Inc. was a CIA front and had been used for his undercover work. Shimon was partner of John W. Leon’s Allied Investigators Inc. Their specialty was wiretapping. One of the investigators with whom Shimon and Leon were allied on a part-time basis was Louis J. Russell. (Sources: Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA, by Jim Hougan, (1984) and Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer ...by Peter Janney)
Meyer Lansky founded gambling resorts/casinos on Florida's Gold Coast, in the Bahamas, and in pre-Castro Cuba. Before he fled Cuba, he was said to be worth an estimated $20,000,000 (equivalent to $180,375,940 in 2016). Lansky's brother, Jacob Lansky, managed Lansky’s Nacional Hotel in Havana, Cuba. (Fidel Castro a mixed legacy that includes fighting the mafia, by Mo Barnes, RollingOut, November 26, 2016)
Lansky laundered the profits from his growing casino empire to avoid paying US income tax, as well as profits of other mafia bosses, to a Swiss bank account, where anonymity was assured. He laundered money through a network of shell and holding companies. A holding company is a company whose only job is to watch over the shares of stock it owns in other businesses. Lansky was identified as the mafia's banker, the head of the Combination -- the Chairman of the Board. (Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life by Robert Lacey, pp. 10-11, (1991)
After Bugsy Siegel was killed the Flamingo casino's next manager was Gus “Mooney” Greenbaum. By 1950, Greenbaum was behind the building of the $50 million Tropicana casino-hotel in Las Vages. By 1958 the Riviera hotel-casino was built and Greenbaum owned 27 percent of it stock. In December 1958, the mafia Commission ordered and Greenbaum and his wife killed because he disobeyed their order to sell his share in the Riviera to one of the mafia's front men and leave Las Vegas.
Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo was a New York mobster and a high-ranking capo in the Genovese crime family who set up casino operations with Meyer Lansky in Florida and Cuba. Alo first met Lansky in about 1947 when Alo was setting up a casino in the town of Hallandale, Florida. Alo and Lansky closed their two Hallandale casinos and started planning for establishing casinos in Cuba.
In 1952, Jimmy Alo started flying out to Las Vegas on a regular basis to oversee construction of his latest investment, the Sands casino. However, Lansky had chosen Joseph "Doc" Stacher to run this casino with Charles “Babe” Baron. Baron was chosen to looked after Sam Giancana's shares of stock in the hotel and insure he got his share of the skim. The others owners in the Sands included Joe Fusco, Longy Zwillman, Tony Accardo, a mafia lawyer Abe Teitelbaum, Gerardo Catena in New Jersey and Frank Sinatra. Edward “Ed” Levinson was a prominent member of the illegal gambling fraternity of Detroit, south Florida and Kentucky. He was also one of the investors in the Sands Hotel and Casino, which opened in 1952. Oil businessman Jake Freedman was ostensibly the main shareholder, but it was really controlled by Frank Costello.
In 1956, Howard Hughes made a controversial $205,000 loan to Nixon’s brother Donald. Details of this loan were leaked during the Nixon vs. Kennedy presidential campaign in 1960.
In 1956 Meyer Lansky established the Havana Riviera Hotel and casino in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Three Syndicate gamblers from Cleveland, including Morris ''Moe'' Dalitz, were part owners of Lansky's Hotel Nacional in Havana. According to mafia hit man Angelo ''Gyp'' DeCarlo, during the dictator Batista’s regime, ''the Mob had a piece of every joint down there. There wasn't one joint they didn't have a piece of.''
After Castro kicked the mafia out of Cuba, Lansky became partnered in Las Vegas casinos with Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Sam Tucker, Wilbur Clark of the Desert Inn; Ed Levinson and Sam Giancana of the Fremont Hotel and Hyman Abrams and Morris Rosen of the Flamingo. As with all of Lansky’s dealings, he and his mafia associates hid ownership of the hotel/casino behind layers of managers and front men, whose names were used to fool the Nevada state gambling regulators as to known mafia guys really owning the casino/hotels.
Giancana consolidated his power thru ordering the deaths of over 200 people, some of whom were tortured to death. These killings brought him to the head of an international crime empire, which included interests in the Riviera, Sands and Desert Inn hotels in Las Vegas. In 1960 Giancana made arrangements to buy the Cal-Neva Lodge, located at the north end of Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. The owners of record were Frank Sinatra, Hank Sanicola (an old friend and business partner of Sinatra's) and Dean Martin. Giancana was the real owner. This was confirmed by a FBI wiretapped conversation with him and Johnny Roselli. The FBI estimated these casinos to generate over $2 billion (or some $17 billion in 2018 dollars) in income annually. Some $40-$50 million (or some $375 million in 2018 dollars) of that went directly to Giancana.
In 1967 Lansky and Alo realized a profit of just over $1 million (or $7.3 million in 2018 dollars) each when their man Jack Entratter, working under the guidance of Moe Dalitz, sold the Sands Casino to Howard Hughes for $14.6 million (or some $108 million in 2018 dollars).
It was alleged that Meyer Lansky and his group had skimmed over ten years from the Flamingo, the Sands, the Thunderbird, the Riviera Las Vegas casinos some $300 million (or $2.5 billion in 2018 dollars). And that's not counting the millions taken from joints in New York, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Cuba, the Bahamas and England.
http://americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_155.html
According to historian Anthony Summers, when Nixon was gambling very heavily, and Rebozo covered Nixon's losses and to the tone of possibly $50,000. Most of Nixon's gambling took place at Meyer Lansky's Hotel Nacional in Cuba. Lansky rolled out the royal treatment for Nixon, who stayed in the Presidential Suite on the owner's tab. Lansky developed Cuba for the American mafia during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, when Havana was ''The Latin Las Vegas.'' Under its tall, swaying palms, gambling, prostitution and drug trafficking netted the US Syndicate more than $100-million-a-year, even after handsome payoffs to Batista. Mafia gamblers from Cleveland, including Morris ''Moe'' Dalitz, were part owners of Lansky's Hotel Nacional in Havana. Dalitz was a friend of Rebozo.
Nixon first met Charles “Bebe” Rebozo in late 1950. Nixon had served as a US Representative from California from January 1947 to November 1950. Fearing that Nixon was facing a nervous breakdown, Florida US Representative George Smathers suggested Nixon take a holiday in Florida where he met Rebozo. They became very close friends.
Representative Smathers became partners of an automatic vending machine company called Serve-U-Corporation with Bobby Baker, political lobbyist Fred Black and Jewish mobster Ed Levenson. This company which was established in 1962, provided vending machines for companies working on federally granted programs. And the vending machines were secretly owned by Sam Giancana and other mobsters based in Chicago. (Source: Nonmenclature of an Assassination Cabal, by William Torbitt)
Next Nixon was elected to the US Senate and in November 1952, he was elected as Dwight Eisenhower's running mate despite a scandal over a secret slush fund put together by wealthy California backers.
According to crime investigator Jack Clarke, in 1951 Rebozo had been involved with Meyer Lansky in illegal gambling rackets in parts of Miami, Hallandale, and Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Clarke said,”When I checked the name (Rebozo) with the Miami police, they said he was an entrepreneur and a gambler and that he was very close to Meyer (Lansky).”
Mafia experts connect Richard Nixon to Carlos Marcello and to Jimmy Hoffa through Murray Chotiner and Santos Trafficante Jr. through Bebe Rebozo. Carlos Marcello, the son of Sicilian immigrants, ruled New Orleans crime family from 1947. He took control of Louisiana's illegal gambling network. He had also joined forces with Lansky in order to skim money from some of the most important casinos in the New Orleans area. According to former members of the Chicago Outfit, Marcello was assigned a cut of the skimmed money from Las Vegas casinos, in exchange for providing muscle (assaults) in Florida real estate deals. Marcello had been selected as the godfather of the New Orleans mafia, by the family's capos and he held this position for until the 1980s.
The FBI said Bebe Rebozo was cozy with the mafia, especially Santos Trafficante and Alfred “Big Al” Polizzi of Cleveland. Polizzi was a drug trafficker associated with Lansky. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) branded Polizzi “one of the most influential members of the mafia in the United States.” Rebozo and Polizzi were partners in developing a shopping center in Miami. Rebozo’s parents come from Cuba and he was born in American and he was a big deal in the Cuban exile community in Miami. Investigative journalist Anthony Summers notes that, by the 1960s, there was no doubt among FBI special agents that Bebe Rebozo was pals with a who’s who of the country’s major gangsters.
Rebozo also purchased land in Florida Richard Fincher. It was believed that Fincher worked as a front man for Meyer Lansky. An examination of Fincher's telephone calls revealed that he was in regular contact with mafia bosses Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante. Vincent "Fat Vinnie" Teresa also admitted that he had used Rebozo's bank to launder stolen money. Teresa was an American mobster in the Boston branch of the Patriarca crime family who was a lieutenant of boss Raymond Patriarca (aka the Boston crime family, the Providence Mafia, or the New England Mafia) Rebozo's Key Biscayne Bank was a suspected pipeline for mafia money skimmed from Crosby's Paradise Island casino nearby Nassau in the Bahamas.
Rebozo arranged for E. Howard Hunt to investigate Hoke Maroon, a former partner of Rebozo, Maroon claimed Nixon was once the part owner of Rebozo’s Coral Gables Motel.
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKrebozo.htm
Before Nixon became president, he and Rebozo went to their favourite restaurant, the Jamaica Inn on Key Biscayne, owned by their old friend Donald Berg. The Secret Service eventually asked the President Nixon to find a more suitable restaurant after uncovering Berg’s ties to the mafia. Donald Berg had been indicted in stolen stock deals but never prosecuted. Donald Berg gave Nixon a cut-rate deal on the land for his Key Biscayne vacation home as a favour. The Secret Service never issued a similar warning about socializing with Rebozo.
In 1970, Nixon appointed James Lawrence King as a federal judge. One of King's first cases involved Bebe Rebozo's Key Biscayne Bank accepting 900 shares of stolen IBM stock as collateral for a loan he granted. King decided the case against the insurance company, a great favor to Rebozo, who should have checked to insure the stock was not stolen.
Rebozo sold 600 of the 900 shares, producing $196,984, which -was enough to pay off the loan. Rebozo sold 300 share of this stock for $91,984 cash, even after an insurance company circular was mailed out to every bank listing them as stolen and after an insurance investigator allegedly told him it was stolen. The FDIC discovered that less than a year after the Securities and Exchange Commission barred Franklin S. Deboer him for selling unregistered securities, Rebozo had hired to head Key Biscayne Bank's trust department.
In 1964, Judge King had been a director of the Miami National Bank.
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKrebozo.htm
In 1964 Rebozo started his the Key Biscayne Bank in 1964. It is mysterious as to how he could afford to purchase or start a bank, given that Rebozo’s only education was graduating from high school (aka no banking training) and his working life involved being a steward with Pan American Airways. It was assumed he was really a front man for this bank real owner, like the mafia. Rebozo was a principal secret mafia or CIA go-between in CIA’s plots against to assassination Cuban leader Fidel Castro. From 1959 thru 1960, Vice President Nixon and CIA officer E. Howard Hunt were key figures attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro. Nixon reportedly is the chief mover behind an associated CIA/mafia plan to murder Castro. Hunt later admitted his role in Castro assassination plots. Nixon held Savings Account number one and led dedication ceremonies for the grand opening of Robozo’s bank.
Leonard Bursten, a Milwaukee lawyer became a director of the Miami National Bank and was involved in an attempt to improve the Fisher Island real estate off the coast and nearby Miami. Nixon had a financial interest in Fisher Island’s beach-front houses and golf course.
Then Bursten appears in Los Angeles involved with the Beverly Ridge Estate development in Beverly Hills. This project suspiciously went into bankruptcy after receiving over $12,000,000 in Teamster pension funds. Bursten and two other men were convicted for illegal activities in connection with the failure of the development. Bursten was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for mail fraud, perjury and bankruptcy fraud. However, in early 1973 Nixon’s aide Murray Chotiner called the US Attorney in Los Angeles and this political pressure resulted in Bursten's jail sentence was reduced to straight probation. Bursten was a close friend of Jimmy Hoffa. Nixon first met Bursten when they both were working as lawyers for the McCarthy Committee.
Nixon had appointed Chotiner as a special counsel to the President on January 13, 1970. Chotiner received reports from private investigators who were secretly investigating of Edward Kennedy (aka Operation Sandwedge). Chotiner acknowledged in court papers his role in a milk producer’s scandal by admitting he intervened with John Ehrlichman and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, and others to get the price increase for the milk producers. And as a result, these milk producers contributed money to the Nixon campaign. (Source: Kirkpatrick Sale, Yankees and Cowboys: The World Behind Watergate (1973)
By the 1930s, mafia money was moving into real estate and into ventures like Tropical Park Race Track in Coral Gables, FL, and especially Lansky's Colonial Inn. Al Capone began wintering in Miami in 1927 and two years later bought a house in Miami Beach even though residents voted to pass a resolution to ban him as a notorious criminal. Meyer Lansky also had strong ties to Miami Beach, with casino interests in Florida dating back to the 1930s.
In the 1940s, the Wofford Hotel in Miami was the Florida base for both Lansky and Frank Costello. Tatum Wofford was friendly with Nixon and Bebe Rebozo. In 1948 this company transferred a Key Biscayne property to a shadowy Cuban investment group (ANSAN) in which mafia money was allegedly involved. This linked the anti-Castro Cubans such as Jose Aleman with Batista and Luciano allies.
By the 1950s, organized crime had a well developed role in Miami hotels like the Sands and the Grand. By the 1980s, some estimates claimed that roughly half of Miami Beach hotels were connected to mob money through Lansky or associates like Lansburgh and Yiddy Bloom (Moldea, 1978: 105-107).
Later, control of Keyes Realty Company passed to two new groups: the Teamster's Union Pension Fund and Lansky's Miami National Bank. Author John Andrews wrote in his book, Power to Destroy that Nixon invested heavily in Florida land via a secretive investment syndicate headed by Rebozo. Nixon and Rebozo forged close ties to Keyes Realty which was mainly set up as an investment funnel for the mafia and for ex-Cuban politicians who served under Batista. The lender for one of Nixon's Key Biscayne properties in 1967 was Arthur Desser. He was a real estate developer who consorted with both Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa and Meyer Lansky.
In 1967 this land passed to Nixon and Bebe Rebozo at bargain rates.
Florida banking structure was used by organized criminals from all parts of the US. Keyes Realty Company was named in the Kefauver hearings for its role as intermediary in bribes between organized crime and Miami’s Dade County political officials. One of the Watergate burglars, Eugenio Martinez was Vice President of Keyes Realty. Later Martinez and Bernard Barker formed another real estate firm called Ameritas.
Rebozo came in and out of the White House as he pleased, without being logged in by the Secret Service. Though, as noted, he had no official government position, Rebozo had his own private office with a telephone and a designated bedroom always at his disposal at White House. Known as “Uncle Bebe” to Nixon’s two children, Trisha and Julie, Rebozo frequently bought the girls—and Nixon’s wife Pat—expensive gifts. “Beeb” as Nixon referred to Rebozo (who always called Nixon “Mr. President”) purchased a $100,000 house in the suburbs for Julie after she married David Eisenhower. Rebozo paid for bowling alleys to be put in the White House and Camp David.
In Florida, his home was right next door to Nixon’s. It was equipped with free worldwide telephone service through the White House Office of Communications. The same was true at Rebozo’s private villa on the grounds at the San Clemente, CA White House. Rebozo was there in Key Biscayne in 1952 when Nixon celebrated his election to the vice presidency; he was in Los Angeles in 1960 when Nixon learned that Senator John Kennedy had edged him out for the presidency; he comforted Nixon after his crushing 1962 loss to incumbent Edmund “Pat” Brown for California governor.
Rebozo and Nixon drank and sunbathed together in Key Biscayne after Nixon narrowly defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election. During Nixon’s White House years, rough estimates show Rebozo was at Nixon’s side one out of every ten days. The president made 50 trips to Key Biscayne with Rabozo, most of them without any of Nixon’s family members. Rebozo was at Nixon’s bedside when the former president died in 1994. When Rebozo died in 1998, he left $19 million to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif.
Nixon biographer Fawn Brodie wrote, “Nixon seems to have been willing to risk the kind of gossip that frequently accompanies close friendship with a perennial bachelor, this despite his known public aversion to homosexuals, and his acute sensitivity to the damage that the label of homosexual on a friend could bring to a public man.”
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J. Edgar Hoover
According to Anthony Summers, the author of The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993): oilmen had started cultivating him in the late forties-inviting him to Texas as a houseguest, taking him on hunting expeditions.
Hoover and his boyfriend, Clyde Tolson were regular visitors to Murchison's Del Charro Hotel in La Jolla, California. Allan Witwer, the manager of the hotel at the time, later recalled: Witwer estimates that over the next 18 summers Murchison's hospitality in $100-a-day suites and including meals was worth nearly $300,000 ($2,520,000 in 2018 dollars).
He was friends with Walter Winchell, who was extremely close to many gangsters, including Frank Costello, and he regularly spent time at clubs frequented by gangsters. Hoover’s daily lunch tab at an expensive Washington restaurant was picked up by a friend who owned a large laundry service. Furthermore, he claimed that his annual trips to California were official FBI “inspection trips,” so they were paid for by taxpayers. Hoover had also invested in oil companies and railroads owned by Murchison and Richardson. The FBI was responsible for renovations and new furniture for his house.
In 1955 a Senate committee discovered that 20 per cent of the Murchison Oil and Gas, Inc. was owned by Vito Genovese and his family. The committee also discovered Murchison had close financial ties with Carlos Marcello.
In 1958 Murchison purchased the publishers, Henry Holt and Company. One of the first book's he published was by his old friend, J. Edgar Hoover. The book, Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America (1958) was an account of the Communist menace and sold over 250,000 copies in hardcover and over 2,000,000 in paperback. It was on the best-seller lists for thirty-one weeks.
The head of Federal Narcotics Bureau (FNB), Harry Anslinger stated that the CIA and Hoover subverted a grand jury that had been convened in Miami to probe the financial affairs of dozens of top mobsters. (The Strength of the Wolf, pgs. 260- 261)
As might be expected, that kind of money wielded enormous political power, and not just in Texas; then congressman Lyndon Johnson was bought and sold by Texas Big Oil, a feat that was apparently not so hard to accomplish. Likewise, in the days before campaign finance reform, Dwight Eisenhower owed a great deal to Big Oil, in particular from investing in wells drilled by his new best friend Sid Richardson. As author Burrough relates it, through an old family friend: “There's an old game in oil, you know, where your friends, they only invest in your good wells, not the bad wells? You understand? It was that way with Eisenhower. You never could prove it. But he did it. I know he did. Sid told me.”
(Source: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough
http://www.weeklystandard.com/liquid-assets/article/272299
http://historyonfilm.com/j-edgar-hoover/
According to attorney Kenneth D. Ackerman, author of Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, by 1960, the FBI had open 'subversive' files on some 432,000 Americans.
In November 2011, by way of a Freedom of Information Act request, The Los Angeles Times received old FBI files on journalist Jack Nelson. J. Edgar Hoover, 85-year-old, was mistakenly convinced that Nelson planned to write an article stating that the FBI director was homosexual. Hoover began compiling a dossier on the reporter and tried to have Nelson fired and he met with the paper's head man in Washington, Dave Kraslow. Kraslow refused to fire Nelson, but did ask him to send Hoover a response which read, in part, "I emphatically deny that I have at any time under any circumstances ever said or remotely suggested that Mr. Hoover was a homosexual."
In 1970 Nelson wrote a story about how the FBI and police in Meridian, Mississippi shot two Ku Klux Klan members in a sting operation bankrolled by the local Jewish community. One of the Klan members, a woman, died in the ambush. Hoover attempted unsuccessfully to kill the story, which would appear on page one, by trying to smear Nelson, falsely, as an alcoholic.
Hoover limited the Los Angeles Times’ access to information and complained about Nelson, calling him “a mental case.”
http://www.truth-out.org/long-shadows-nixon-and-hoover/1321454408
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By 1966 Lansky's men were in full control of Miami National Bank. CIA tax lawyer Paul Helliwell was legal counsel for the Miami National Bank and he was an active leader in the Florida Republican Party. This bank was also used by Meyer Lansky to launder to move the Las Vegas casinos’ profits (skim) thru the banks in Bahamas or Caymon Islands to the International Credit Bank in Switzerland, founded by the Israeli gunrunner Tibor Rosenbaum. (Cook and Carmichael; Scott et al., 1976: 356-358, 1981).
The McClellan Committee (1957 to 1960) observed that perhaps 150 men with organized crime contacts played an important role in the Teamsters Union with Hoffa's approval. After hearing testimony from 100 of these men on their crime careers and relations with Hoffa, the Committee summed it up in 1958 by saying: "James Hoffa, from his early years in the labor movement, has formed an alliance with the kingpins of the nation's underworld, a partnership which has moved him swiftly up through the ranks of the Teamster hierarchy to his present powerful post ... Hoffa's first association was with the Detroit mob.
It is alleged that the McClellan Committee did not conduct its investigation with clean hands. Conservative Republican Senators Irving Ives, Barry Goldwater, Carl Curtis and Karl Mundt displayed more of an interest in developing legislation to limit the power of trade unions rather than simply helping the unions get rid of parasitic labor racketeers. (Source: The Breaking of a President 1974 - The Nixon Connection by Marvin Miller)
President Kennedy wanted to expel Air America, the CIA’s front company airline drug smuggling from Laos. In 1962, Bobby Kennedy indicted Sea Supply Company’s manager for having bribed a US official in Laos. This prosecution was blocked by JFK’s ultra right-wing, political enemies and Air America kept its contract in Laos. But during the Kennedy administration's war on organized crime was highly effective with the number of defendants convicted jumped from zero to 619. (Ibid. 262)
http://www.crimemagazine.com/06/mobpresidentnixon,0205-6.htm
By the 1970s, a group of banks in southern Florida was linked by "interlocking directorates and major investors." Besides the Miami National Bank, there were the Bank of Miami Beach, International Bank of Miami, the Key Biscayne Bank, and Southeast First National. Federal prosecutors linked Southeast First National to the intelligence community. These banks have also been associated with the Lansky and Luciano and the Cleveland, Boston, and Las Vegas crime organizations. (Freed, 1980: 141).
Robert Morgenthau, former US Attorney for New York, discovered that Lansky was using the Exchange and Investment Bank of Switzerland in tandem with the Miami National Bank to launder money illegally skimmed from gambling casinos or other illegal activity, hiding these profits from the IRS so they did not have to pay income tax on it. A 1969 federal indictment charges Lansky, Cohen, Lansburgh and six others with using the Miami National Bank to skim funds. According to Morgenthau, Cohen cleaned more than $2,000,000 in gambling skim from the Flamingo by sending it through the Miami National Bank and then to the Exchange and Investment Bank of Switzerland.
In 1958 Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa was far from being a mere user of Miami National Bank. He actually controlled it for a substantial period of time authorizing all large loans. In 1959, three years after the bank was founded, the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund made a loan of $2,000,000 to Lou Poller, the original founder of this bank. Poller was one of the owners of record of the Exchange and Investment Bank of Switzerland along with Bugsy Siegel and Ed Levinson, the overseas bank also used to launder money.
In 1964, Sam Cohen, a close associate of Meyer Lansky, made a sizeable loan to Miami National Bank. By 1966 the Teamster loan was paid and Meyer Lansky's mafia guys were in full control of the bank. Cohen was a partner of Miami businessman Morris Lansburgh. Cohen and Lansburgh between them own eight Miami Beach hotels. The two partners also lease King's Inn on Grand Bahama, and bought the Flamingo in Las Vegas from Albert Parvin. A decade later, Lansburgh and Cohen were convicted and given one-year prison sentences on charges related to skimming casino proceeds, estimated at $10 million, from the Flamingo.
According to United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Robert M. Morgenthau, Cohen cleaned more than $2,000,000 in gambling skim from the Flamingo hotel and casino in Las Vegas by sending it through the Miami National Bank and the Exchange and Investment Bank of Switzerland. In October 1971, Lansky, Cohen, and Lansburgh were charged with conspiring to conceal and distribute unreported and illegal proceeds from the gambling activity in violation of Federal law. Also Lansburgh, Cohen, and four others were charged in a second count with conspiring to evade income taxes on unreported Flamingo Casino income of about $4.5million a year from 1960 through 1967.
In January 1969, the Nixon Administration tried to force Morgenthau to resign. Morgenthau and his supporters claimed the reason Nixon might be seeking to replace Morgenthau, was to prevent him from pursuing investigations that would prove embarrassing to Nixon or his friends. Morgenthau was eventually forced out of office at the end in January 15, 1970.
Rebozo purchased land in Florida with a man called Richard Fincher. It was believed that Fincher worked as a front for Meyer Lansky. An examination of Fincher's telephone calls revealed that he was in regular contact with Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante. Vincent Teresa, a high-ranking mafioso, later admitted that he had used Rebozo's bank to launder stolen money. https://www.mail-archive.com/This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it./msg11475.html
During the 1930s Wallace Groves had become a very successful financier in New York City. He moved to the British Bahaman Island and in August 1955 he made an agreement with the government of the Bahaman to develop land and create jobs for the people on Grand Bahaman Island. The Island was the ugliest, least promising of all the habitable islands in the Bahamas. A big chunk of this unsightly island was converted by Wallace Groves into the swinging community or a city named “Freeport.” Freeport had big, garish hotels, a casino that looks like an Arabian harem, an old English pub with deep-chested wenches for waitresses, International Shopping Bazaar, girlie shows "direct from Las Vegas," gangsters, discothèques, and a scuba club.
Wallace Groves had a millionaire business associate Daniel Kieth Ludwig. Ludwig developed a port on Grand Bahama Island and built a couple of hotels in Freeport. He leased these hotels to Morris Lansburgh who controlled substantial hotel interests in Miami Beach and was a front man for Meyer Lansky. In other words, because Lansky had a reputation of being associated with organized crime, casino gambling at these hotels would not be authorized if he was on the deed as the real owner.
Another businessman who tried to get rich in the Bahamas in 1959 was Huntington Hartford who inherited and ran A&P supermarkets and was one of the world’s rich people. He bought a small island near Nassau Island and re-named it Paradise Island. And he spent $30 million building luxury hotels there. But then he discovered that the place could not break even without a casino. So 1966 Hartford gave up and sold Paradise Island to Resorts International Incorporated. In 1967 the Paradise Island casino opened with a glittering assembly of guests including Richard Nixon.
By 1960 Groves’ Bahama Port Authority business almost went bankrupt. In December 1963 Lou Chesler, a Canadian invested $12 million, ($97.2 million in 2018 dollars) to set up the Grand Bahama Development Company (Devco) and gave Groves' Port Authority 50 per cent of Devco's stock. Among Chesler’s specialties was fencing stolen securities thru Switzerland and the Bahamas. He was involved with the mafia stretching back to at least 1942. Meyer Lansky provided him much of the 1958 investment capital for another of Chesler’s property, Miami’s International Airport Hotel.
Meyer Lansky picked the Grand Bahamas Island as the site for a plush casino-resort by using front man, his longtime business associate Louis A. “Lou” Chesler,
Chesler also owned a paint making company and had hired James M. “Jim” Crosby to manage it, the Mary Carter Paint Company. Crosby's brother, Peter Crosby, was a convicted stock swindler and a close business associate of Dino Cellini.
The Grand Bahama Development Company (Devco) spent the next three years building the Lucayan Beach Hotel on Grand Bahama, and roads, sewers and stores for the city of Freeport. Devco also was interested in selling nearby residential lots to Americans who might like to live near a gambling casino.
Lansky negotiated a purchase of a large tract of land on the island and oversaw the construction of the grand Lucayan Beach Hotel and Casino Corporation. This hotel/casino opened for business before the end of 1963. It was managed by two of Lansky's longest-established gambling technicians, Dino and Eddie Cellini. Red Ritter was general manager; Max Courtney was credit manager; Charley Brudner was his assistant; and Dino Cellini was supervisor. Dino came originally from Sicily by way of the syndicate casino on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. Cellini was the first lieutenant to Meyer Lansky and was known as Florida's "connection" to Canadian heroin trafficker Guiseppi Cotroni. (Mahon, 1980) https://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2008/05/dope-inc-part-3-organized-crime.html?m=1
Chesler eventual purchased a small island, Paradise Island. It was about 2,000 feet off the shoreline from Nassau Island in the Bahamas. Resorts International hotel/casino was later built on Paradise Island. Chaster sold his paint manufacturing company and incorporated Resorts International Inc. with that money from getting out of the paint making.
Chesler also controlled Universal Controls, which manufactured the pari-mutuel betting machines used at racetracks. Buying Warner brothers lead to a deal by which they set up the Grand Bahama Development Company. This was a dummy corporation which was attempting to build a casino in the Bahamas for Meyer Lansky and Chesler's business partner.
Chesler also founded General Development Corporation (GDC), which was eventually to become the largest real estate developer in Florida which built three entire small cities. http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1982/eirv09n43-19821109/eirv09n43-19821109_058-how_the_us_film_industry_was_sub.pdf
Lou Chesler contributed $14,000 to Nixon's campaign in 1960, and he was a traveling companion of Nixon's during part of the campaign. Chesler was also a contributor to Nixon's 1968 campaign. Chesler was a close friend of Donald Berg, the Cape Florida Development executive who sold Nixon his lots on Key Biscayne. Chesler also had engaged in a number of Canadian mining deals with Meyer Lansky and had operated night-clubs in Miami Beach with John Pullman and Pullman's brother-in-law, A. C. Cown.
Meyer Lansky’s front-man Ed Levinson was a business associate of Maxwell M. “Max” Rabb, a close friend of Nixon's and a Jewish lawyer who served as a secretary of Eisenhower's cabinet. He was a top Republican Party fundraiser. Rabb's first public association with organized crime occurred in 1962 when he joined the board of Ancorp, a newspaper distribution company in New York City with strong mob ties.
Max Rabb was also the chief executive officer of a shady company known as International Airport Hotels, a business front for Meyer Lansky. Rabb also serviced on the board of Sterling National Bank, financed a $27 million fraud operation for mafioso Michele Sindona in 1974. According to the London Sunday Times of July 20, 1980, Sindona was the paymaster for an abortive fascist coup plot in Italy. Sterling National Bank’s principal business was with the mafia controlled New York City garment business.
The shadowy Italian-Jewish Recanati family was the reputed power behind Sterling National Bank, is part of an 800-year old financial elite controlling position in the Israeli diamond trade through Israel Discount Bank, as well as major New York-based ship-owning interests.
(Source: Dope, Inc., by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., and Jeffrey Steinberg, 1978)
In September 1966, Canadian authorities bugged and wire tapped John Pullman’s hotel room, confirming his relationship with Meyer Lansky. John Pullman was a bag man for Lansky carrying cash to Lansky money laundering banks. Pullman also founded the Bank of World Commerce of Nassau Island in the Bahamas. According to Life magazine, $10 million in illegal money was laundered thru this bank. ($241 million in 2017 dollars). http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/10/114820/90
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/01/michael-chertoff-and-sabotage-of-ptech.html
Rabbi Tibor Rosenbaum was a Hungarian Jew who owned and operated the Banque De Credit Internationale (BCI) (aka “International Credit Bank” in English). Mafia money flowed into Rosenbaum's Bahamas branch of Banque De Credit International and from there into this branch in Geneva, Switzerland. John Pullman was partners in this bank with Rosenbaum.
In 1961, the Bank of World Commerce in Nassau in the Bahamas was established and headed by John Pullman and with investors including Ed Levinson. In turn, Levinson and Siegel were active in another Swiss bank, the Exchange Bank of Geneva. Another investor in Exchange Bank of Geneva was Alvin Malnik. Lansky and his closest mafia associate, Joe Stacher had accounts in this bank. Lansky invested $10 million in Italian real estate through this bank. This bank was basically the most important transfer points for money from countless gambling, smuggling, extortion, and drug deals of the North American mafia. Mafia bagmen arrived with suitcases full of cash to Geneva or Rome, flying as tourists from Miami or the Bahamas.
CIA boss James Angelton used this bank to launder CIA money for the Latin American covert operations. Rosenbaum also maintained an insurance agency in London to make contributions to then-British Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Tibor Rosenbaum had immigrated to Palestine with the help of a Britain's Jewish Agency. After the founding of the state of Israel, he was the first Department Chief for Logistics and Finance of Mossad. He came to Switzerland in 1951 with full diplomatic status as an agent for Israeli immigration. Rosenbaum was also the treasurer of the World Jewish Congress and held numerous posts in other leading Zionist organizations. According to authors Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, CBI bank "appears to have been a semi detached Israeli Government money laundry into and out of Israel." The bank collapsed in 1974.
In 1965, Jim Crosby with Wallace Groves purchased a resort/casino on Paradise Island, a small island some 2,000 feet next to Nassau Island in the Bahamas. An expensive bridge had to be built to connect to this smaller island. Crosby hired Ed Cellini, the brother of Dino Cellini to manage the casino. Crosby was the longtime chairman of Resorts International Incorporated which was a corporate front for Meyer Lansky’s mob family.
Lou Chesler’s Florida real estate company the General Development Company, was reportedly worth $50 million in 1959 (some $417 million in 2018 dollars).
Resorts International was financed largely with a transfer of funds from the Banque de Credit Internationale of Tibor Rosenbaum and Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, and the Investors Overseas Service of Bernie Cornfeld and the Rothschild family.
An estimated $14 million in transferred monies traveling through Meyer Lansky's World Trade Bank and the Fiduciary Trust Company of Nassau, found their way into Resorts International during its half-dozen formative years. https://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2008/05/dope-inc-part-3-organized-crime.html?m=1
New Jersey state law enforcement officers claimed that Resorts International had suspicious ties to the mafia. They opposed Resorts' application for a license to run a casino in Atlantic City.
In 1920, due to prohibition in the US the economy of the Bahamas prospered with the help of whisky imported from Britain and blockade-runners smuggling it into the US. American gangsters built big homes in Bahaman islands, and many of leaders of the Island. With the repeal of prohibition in 1932 the Bahamas sank, with the rest of the world, into the Great Depression. The Bahaman islands are almost entirely self-governing, except the British government is responsible only for defense, external affairs, and internal security. The office of royal governor is mostly ceremonial.
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Wallace Groves also founded Intercontinental Diversified (ICD) Corporation with CIA officer Paul Helliwell acting as his attorney. It was Helliwell’s job to establish CIA front companies in Miami and the Bahamas to laundered covert CIA funds. In 1965, Groves was busy laundering millions of dollars for the CIA through banks and casinos in the Bahamas. The CIA hired Wallace Groves to suborn the top elected government officials in the Bahamas to get permission to run gambling casinos. (The Strength of the Wolf, by Douglas Valentine, p. 261)
An attachment to a declassified CIA document stated that Wallace GROVES was connected with Meyer LANSKY and Resorts International Inc. and GROVES is the subject of CIA OS file #473 865. This document reflects that from April 1966 to April 1972, GROVES was of interest to the [CIA] Office of General Counsel for the utilization of GROVES as an advisor or possible officer of one of the Project (DELETED) entities. CIA documents also show that Wallace Groves was secretly working for the CIA from 1965 to 1972. The Bahamas quickly became a major transit point for Latin American drug smugglers. (The Strength of the Wolf, by Douglas Valentine, p. 261)
Groves held 46 percent of the shares in the mutual fund company, Intercontinental Diversified (ICD), until he sold his shares in 1978 for some $125 million in 2018 dollars. A former CIA official said in an interview that between 1970 and 1976, almost $5 million of CIA money that had been invested in Intercontinental Diversified’s funds was sold. (Source: The Grim Reapers by Ed Reid, 1969) and The CIA’s Global Drug Connection and Deep Events by Peter Dale Scott, 2008)
Intercontinental Diversified (ICD) was a Panamanian holding company founded by Paul Helliwell and a spinoff from a Filipino company, Benguet Mining or Benguet International. It was represented by Helliwell’s law firm and partly owned by the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Helliwell and his CIA front companies
In 1943, American lawyer Paul L.E. Helliwell became the head of the Secret Intelligence Branch of the OSS in Europe with the rank of Colonel, and he served as the chief of the Far East Division at the War Department's Strategic Service unit. Helliwell founded CIA front companies to assist in the CIA covertly shipping arms to Burma in cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek’s guerrilla army (KMT) fighting against the People Republic of China and later in the CIA’s secret war in Laos. Sea Supply Corporation of Bangkok, Civil Air Transport (aka Air America), and Civil Air Transport Company, Ltd. (a separate firm not owned by but affiliated with the CIA. These companies were subsidiaries to the CIA’s front, Pacific Corporation, a holding company located in Florida and also run by Helliwell. These companies employed nearly 20,000 people and operated around 200 aircraft. In 1971, the CIA was forced to sell them due to their cover being publically exposed. (Source: 1976 testifmony before the Senate's Church Committee of CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston)
Author Joseph Trento wrote in his book, Prelude to Terror, that through Sea Supply Inc. weapons were ferried into Burma on Civil Air Transport (CAT) airplanes, then the empty planes flew opium from Burma to Taiwan, Bangkok, and Saigon. There the opium was processed into heroin in Taiwan for the benefit of Chiang Kai-shek’s army.
US Naval Intelligence officer William Corson who served in South Vietnam from 1966 until he retired from the Navy in 1968 claims that: "Portable heroin processing facilities were brought in. It was a creation of the CIA's technical services division." Some of the profits from the sale of opium went to help CIA run some unofficial covert operations. (The Betrayal by William Corson)
Retired Admiral Felix B. Stump was the chairman of board of Air America from 1959 to 1970. In 1958, he 64 years old, and a 78 years old he died in 1972. Stump was noted for promoting using nuclear in Vietnam War. During his US Navy career he had been a pilot and commanded a Navy’s aircraft carrier.
Paul Helliwell also had set up CIA front banks and other CIA fronts in Miami, FL to support the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and for operation mongoose. Mongoose was CIA secret economic warfare operation to aid in the overthrow or killing of Fidel Castro.
In 1962 Alvin T. Malnik, a son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was a director of the Bank of World Commerce, a Bahamas-based institution that involved some of the top gangsters and this bank had a relationship to CIA lawyer Paul Helliwell. Helliwell was a money laundering expert for the CIA as well as setting up CIA front companies. Malnik was also a business partner of Bobby Baker, the Senate aide to Lyndon Johnson.
Malnik left his mark on much of the Miami Beach landscape since he moved there in 1956. He had already established himself in the banking and real estate businesses in Miami but soon become Lansky's public front-man. Melnik was alleged to have been picked by some observers of organized crime as Lansky's probable successor. Malnik was a New York gangster/lawyer who moved to Florida.
Malnik with others and bought a controlling interest in Resorts International Incorporated. To get his gambling license for the Resorts international’s casinos, Lansky brought with him old gambling partners like Max Courtney, "Trigger Mike" Coppola, Frank Ritter, and the Cellini brothers. (Mahan, 1980).
According to one investigation, millions of dollars passed through the Bank of World Commerce and the money were reinvested into mafia-controlled legal businesses in the United States. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhelliwell.htm
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5766
Malnik had business dealings with Caesars casino in Las Vegas and he owned two hotels in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. Malnik essentially invented the black art of money-laundering, taking mob money and routing it to legitimate ventures (like real estate). In the 1960s, Malnik set up the Bank of Commerce in the Bahamas. Mob money flowed into its secret numbered accounts by the hundreds of millions, then out again into Tibor Rosenbaum's International Credit Bank of Switzerland before returning to the United States for investment."
Albert Fried wrote that Malnik would convert illegal cash by laundering it in various real estate ventures." One of his companies, Title Loans of America, had a history of charging such exorbitant interest rates, at more than 250 percent. The former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth likened it to "legalized loan sharking." (Source: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America, by Albert Fried, 1993) and Forbes magazine "The Invisible Enterprise"),
In the early 1970s, Malnik was also involved with Sam Cohen's sons in land deals in Florida and the Poconos Mountain area of Pennsylvania (about 50 miles west of New York City. Their companies -- COMAL and "Cove Associates" -- dealt with Caesar's World and the Teamsters Pension Fund, both institutions which have attracted a substantial amount of law enforcement attention. Sam Cohen fits the pattern we have seen so often, of continuity from the Prohibition gangs to the financial world of the 1970s and 1980s. He moved from New York to Florida in the 1920s and joined the exodus to Nevada in the 1950s (Messick, 1969: 326-331, 363; Mollenhoff, 1973: 186).
Malnik associated with Donald “Don” J. Aronow, another the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. In 1959, Aronow moved to Miami with his family, where he began building and racing speed boats called cigarette boats. These boats became useful to drug traffickers trying to evade US Customs. Aronow's role in marijuana smuggling was reportedly confirmed by Bill Norris, head of the Major Narcotics Unit at the Miami US Attorney's office. He was the top federal drug prosecution official in south Florida. Aronow was murdered. A subpoena was to be served on him the day after the shooting. It was rumored around Miami that Aronow had been questioned by the authorities about cocaine trafficking prior to his murder. Robert "Bobby" Young was paid $60,000 to murder Aronow on the orders of casino owner and drug trafficker Benjamin Barry Kramer. Young boasted of involvement with gun-running, prostitution rings and violence during the 1970s. The death of Aronow on February 3, 1987 occurred within the time frame when Vice President Bush and Oliver North’s illegally funding of the Contras in Latin America. http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-20-the-phony-war-on-drugs/
Another close friend of Alvin Malnik was Joel Steinger. In 1974 Steinger became a member of Lansky's crime family by marrying the daughter of Philip Simon. Simon was reputed to have been an associate of Lansky and worked at the Miami National Bank. Simon laundered money through the bank for known mafia members, including Lansky.
Meyer Lansky’s wife Teddy and his longtime lawyer David Rosen attended Steinger’s wedding. Steinger was the mastermind of the billion-dollar ponzi scheme known thru Mutual Benefits. This crooked fund was connections to Colombian drug cartels in the mid- to late 1970s. His selling of bogus options on commodities led to his first felony conviction.
Jack Kramer had married a niece of Meyer Lansky. Jack Kramer’s son Ben Kramer was also a notorious Los Angeles casino owner and organized crime figure. On March 28, 1990 Jack Kramer and Ben Kramer were both found guilty of 23 and 28 counts (respectively) of federal money laundering charges. In the previous year, Ben Kramer had also been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for having imported half a million pounds of marijuana.
It was a known fact among the criminal underworld that dealing with Al Malnik was the same as dealing with Meyer Lansky, said Vincent Teresa. Teresa was a convicted criminal and frequent government witness currently in the federal Witness Protection Program. (Source: My Life in the Mafia, Vincent Teresa, 1973) http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Malnik_Al_58621055.aspx
Finally, Allen R. Glick (born 1942) of Pittsburgh attracted a great deal of attention when his firm A.R. Glick Enterprises (ARGENT) seemingly came from nowhere to secure a vast Teamsters loan of about $146 million.
In Burton Hersh‘s book, Bobby and J. Edgar, he wrote that in Cuba, Michael J. “Mickey” McLaney was an associate of mafia boss Santos Trafficante, Jr. After he was released from Castro’s Cuban prisons, McLaney continued to operate a casino on Cat Cay Island in the Bahamas. This is an island about 30 miles due east of Miami and about the size of a small golf course with an airport. McLaney formed a professional partnership with Carroll Rosenbloom. Rosenbloom was a known gambler who was allegedly Jewish and owned the Baltimore Colts football team. He bet a million of dollars on his team in 1958, and allegedly ordered his team to cheat and thereby making millions.
John S. Alessio was the assistant general manager of the Caliente Race Track in Tijuana from 1943 to 1950. He turned race track into the largest legal gambling operation on the North American continent. In the mid-1960s he was conviction for skimming millions of dollars from San Diego's racetrack revenues (hiding the profits from the IRS and failed to pay income taxes on the profits). During the 1960's he bought a number of resort properties, including the Hotel del Coronado, the Kona Kai Club and the Kona Inn in California, a greyhound track in Arizona. His company, the Alessio Corporation, owned a finance company, an insurance company and a leasing corporation. He and C. Arnholt Smith merged their combined interests, and Alessio became a director and major stockholder in the Westgate-California Corporation, a conglomerate Smith controlled. Smith owned the Banco del Pacifico, a bank in Tijuana, Mexico and he was a major contributor to the political campaigns of Nixon.
Alessio was one of the few guests at Nixon's New York hotel suite on election night in November 1968 when he won elections. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/05/business/john-alessio-87-businessman-and-california-political-force.html
Italian American Joseph C.”Joe Dip” Dippolito was convicted for three counts of lying to a grand jury and he was identified by the US Justice Department as one of the leaders of the mafia in Los Angeles. In 1969, the mayor and police chief of San Bernardino, CA and a Superior Court County judge wrote some positive letters vouching for his good character and asking the court to go easy on his sentencing him. They wrote that Dippolito had good community involvement, “enjoyed a reputation of honesty and reliability,” and he “was an outstanding citizen.”
Another source states, in December 1971, Dippolito was paroled after only serving eight months. Joe Dip was released after letters were written to a probation officer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dippolito
The letters were all dated just ten days after Dippolito was convicted of lying about ownership of Charlie’s Market. Because of his background, he had been barred from having a liquor license for the store. Dippolito also falsified the ownership of this store by registering it in the name of a relative. Despite the letters, Dippolito was given five years in prison for lying to the Grand Jury. There was really no secret about Dippolito’s Mafia activities which had been fairly well-publicized by state and federal crime-fighting agencies. Dippolito’s role in Los Angeles’ mafia came to light in the pages of the 1981 bestseller, The Last Mafioso, by Ovid Domaris. It was based on interviews with Los Angeles Mafia leader and government informant Jimmy Fratianno as well as access to police files.
The letters were supposed to have been sealed but a San Bernardino Sun article by writer Ted Harp on July 24, 1970, not only revealed their existence but published copies of the letters.
Mayor’s reaction to criticisms over the letters was to demand an investigation into how they were obtained by the newspaper. ( Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. https://www.insidetheie.com/classification/history-of-the-in
MI6 and FBI Division Five
Louis M. Bloomfield, a Canadian citizen, managed to assume a highly secretive top post within the J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and retained in that post for over 30 years. He was years later a suspect in conjunction with assassinations against officials of three governments.
Sir William Stephenson using the special relationship that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had cultivated with Franklin Roosevelt, arranged for Bloomfield to be assigned to the Office of Strategic Services with rank of Major in the US Army. Major Bloomfield was not the only Canadian brought into the US military under Stephenson's auspices. Stephenson was created clandestine operations under an American cover. This became a particularly important feature of SOE post World War Two political warfare in locations like Italy.
Louis Bloomfield's business interests extend into the field of transoceanic shipping. He was a former head of the Israeli Maritime League of Canada. Bloomfield was the Consul-General in charge of the Western Hemisphere of the Liberian government since World War Two. Liberia is notorious as both a tax shelter and smugglers' port-of-call. With no shipping regulations to speak of, Liberia is the flag of convenience under which the majority of ships bearing bulk shipments of Far East narcotics are registered. Liberia was one of the secondary ($7 billion in average daily transfers) offshore banking centers through which British drug revenues are laundered.
The only other foreign-stationed Consul-General for Liberia is Bloomfield associate and Israeli Mossad official Tibor Rosenbaum.
Beneath his various hats as banker, philanthropist, prominent attorney, Bloomfield was/is? first and foremost an officer of the most secretive branch of British MI6, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). SOE was an allied special forces team that went behind Nazi line in World War Two. In 1938 Bloomfield was recruited to the SOE by its director, Canadian-born Sir William Stephenson,
Stephenson appointed Bloomfield as the recruitment officer and agent handler (case officer) for the newly created counterespionage and espionage branch of the FBI, known as Division Five.
British historian Nicholas John Cull says in his book, Selling War, the British effort to sway the American people was “one of the most diverse, extensive, and yet subtle propaganda campaigns ever directed by one sovereign state at another.” Work was done to counter the American stereotype of the stuffy Brit. The propaganda theme in the winter of 1939-1940 was to reinforce the message of American and Britain’s common values and interests. The trick was to bring to the larges possible US audience without leaving any visible British fingerprint of their sales job. Polls shows Americans saw the British government as guided by selfish interests and imperialism, British society as anti-democratic and class bound. The BBC was persuaded to drop the Oxford accent in programs aimed at Americans. Almost daily SEO officers leaked to the American press rumors discrediting American isolationist leaders and placing unreliable stories of Nazi atrocities in Europe.
An isolationist US Senator, Gerald P. Nye, from North Dakota, threatened to launch an investigation of non-American Hollywood producers who had been injecting war propaganda into films. And the true was they were. British propagandizing hardly ended with the US’s entry in war. Radio programs targeted at the traditionally isolationist plains states contained interviews of Midwestern American soldiers in England and stories about British farm life. http://www.historynet.com/britains-propaganda-war-on-america.htm
During the war, Ian Fleming served as assistant to the chief of British Naval Intelligence. Fleming came to America and met Ernest Cuneo while visiting Sir William Stephenson at his New York apartment. Ernest Cuneo a New York attorney had served as a wartime assistant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and also served as official wartime liaison between British Intelligence, the OSS and the FBI.
In the mid-1950s, the company North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) was purchased by former British Intelligence officer Ivor Bryce and his American associate Ernest Cuneo. They hired reporters who have repeatedly become entangled in clandestine affairs. NANA was a fully functioning intelligence network closely associated with CIA’s Operation Mockingbird (propaganda directed at Americans).
When journalist Priscilla Mary Post Johnson went to Moscow and interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald at the time of his defection. Ivor Bryce and Ernest Cuneo signed her checks. Ian Fleming was NANA’s European Editor and Priscilla Johnson's editor was Sidney Goldberg. Goldberg worked for Fleming at NANA. Johnsoh was given a CIA clearance in 1956 and continued meeting with CIA officials throughout her career. From the records released under the JFK Act, it is apparent she maintained contact with a CIA liaison officer for years, and was passed off from one CIA case officer to another.
Luci and Syd Goldberg were close personal friends and NANA colleagues with Victor Lasky. Lasky was a simple right-wing columnist. From 1956-1960 he was a public relations executive for CIA’s Radio Liberty. Starting just two years later and continuing until 1980, the North American Newspaper Alliance distributed his syndicated column. Sidney Goldberg was part of Nixon’s “dirty tricks” operation that stalked McGovern during 1972.
Journalist Virginia Prewett was an anti-Castro activist who was recruited by NANA founder Ernest Cuneo. Prewett wrote news articles in support of CIA operations. Prewett was also one of the founders of the Friends of Democratic Cuba. Prewett and Life Magazine’s Clare Booth Luce were among the founders of the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC) one of the anti-Castro groups backed by the CIA. https://archive.politicalassassinations.net/2012/07/was-oswald-bottlefed-by-nana/
Operation Mockingbird
Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, “some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts”. Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran and Guatemala.
Main stream media alleged that Garrison was as a reckless ego maniacal politician who played fast and loose with the facts, bribed and coerced witnesses, and ruined the life of an innocent upstanding citizen. They wrote that Garrison was accused of being both a dupe of the KGB and on the take from the Mafia. Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson printed an unsubstantiated rumor that Garrison had fondled a little boy in the New Orleans Athletic Club. It has been suggested that Garrison's investigation was triggered by his opposition to the Vietnam War, but in 1966, when he began the investigation, he was supporting the Vietnam War.
Writers Jim Phelan, Hugh Aynesworth, and David Chandler all published devastating and unsubstantiated attacks on Garrison's investigation and at the same time they were reporting back to both the CIA and the FBI.
In 1959 Journalist Don Bohning joined the Miami Herald staff in 1959 as a reporter. Five years later he became a foreign correspondent for the newspaper. Over the next 36 years he reported from every independent country in the Western Hemisphere. Don Bohning, who retired from the Miami Herald . Don Bohning was CIA contract agent codenamed AM/CARBON 1. (Source: A Farewell to Justice, Joan Mellen)
According to a CIA memo, which dealt with New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Bohning passed along information about the Garrison probe to the CIA. A declassified CIA memo dated April 9, 1964 explained that the CIA’s covert media campaign in Miami aimed “to work out a relationship with (south Florida) news media which would insure that they did not turn the publicity spotlight on those (CIA) activities in South Florida which might come to their attention...and give (the CIA’s Miami station JM/WAVE) an outlet into the press which could be used for surfacing certain select propaganda items.”
Journalist David Talbot says that Bohning told him, “There were several people in the Herald newsroom during the 1960s who had contact with the CIA station chief in Miami.” Talbot added that over the years, Bohning’s journalism has consistently reflected his intelligence sources’ points of view, with little or no critical perspective. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/10654-don-bohning-and-the-cia/
(Sources: Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, by David Talbot)
William Gurvich, who with his brothers ran a private investigative firm specializing in the Port of New Orleans, and who infiltrated Garrison’s investigation, fits this profile exactly. Gurvich’s chain of communication with CIA went through Hugh Aynesworth, a CIA media asset writing for both The Dallas Morning News and Newsweek. Aynesworth used his Newsweek column to ratchet up the cover of Walter Sheridan who went down to New Orleans. He admitted this openly to discredit Jim Garrison’s investigation undercover as an NBC correspondent. Aynesworth wrote about how fine a journalist operative Sheridan was.
After the JFK assassination about 15 corporate media outfits fell into line and editorially backed the Warren Commission's report after it was issued in October of 1964. In May of 1967, after Garrison's investigation hit the news, Aynesworth wrote a violent attack on Garrison's investigation, and it was published in Newsweek. Aynesworth accused Lynn Loisel, a Garrison staff member, of bribing Al Beaubolf to testify about a meeting to plot the assassination. Beaubolf later denied this accusation in a sworn affidavit and proved Aynesworth and Newsweek to be fabricators of information.
The Newsweek story on the JFK assassination, published in the issue of April 28, 1975 left the impression with the readers of Newsweek that editorial position regarded the (JFK) researchers as kooks who misled or talked Senator Schweiker and Representatives Gonzalez and Downing into the wrong attitudes. "Oswald did fire the shots" is the Newsweek message.
John McCone also attempted to stop Edward Yates from making a documentary on the CIA for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). This attempt at censorship failed and NBC went ahead and broadcast this critical documentary.
In June, 1965, Desmond FitzGerald was appointed as head of the Directorate for Plans. He now took charge of Mockingbird. At the end of 1966 FitzGerald discovered that Ramparts, a left-wing publication, was planning to publish that the CIA had been secretly funding the National Student Association. FitzGerald ordered CIA officer Edgar Applewhite to organize a campaign against the magazine. Applewhite later told Evan Thomas for his book, The Very Best Men: “I had all sorts of dirty tricks to hurt their circulation and financing. The people running Ramparts were vulnerable to blackmail. We had awful things in mind, some of which we carried off.”
In March, 1967, Sol Stern, wrote an article in Ramparts entitled “NSA and the CIA. “ about CIA funding of the National Student Association it exposed the whole system of anti-Communist front organizations in Europe, Asia, and South America. In May 1967 Thomas Braden responded to this by publishing an article entitled,” I’m Glad the CIA is Immoral,” in the Saturday Evening Post, where he defended the activities of this action by the CIA.. Braden also confessed that the activities of the CIA had to be kept secret from Congress. As he pointed out in the article: “In the early 1950s, when the cold war was really hot.
Meyer’s role in Operation Mockingbird was further exposed in 1972 when he was accused of interfering with the publication of a book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy. The book was highly critical of the CIA’s dealings with the drug traffic in Southeast Asia.
According to the Congress report published in 1976: “The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.” Church argued that the cost of misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.
Frank Church showed that it was CIA policy to use clandestine handling of journalists and authors to get information published initially in the foreign media in order to get it disseminated in the United States. Church quotes from one document written by the Chief of the Covert Action Staff on how this process worked (page 193).
For example, he writes: “Get books published or distributed abroad without revealing any US influence, by covertly subsidizing foreign publicans or booksellers.” Later in the document he writes: “Get books published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability”. Church goes onto report that “over a thousand books were produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA before the end of 1967”. All these books eventually found their way into the American market-place. Either in their original form (Church gives the example of the Penkovskiy Papers) or repackaged as articles for American newspapers and magazines.
By analyzing CIA documents Church was able to identify over 50 US journalists who were employed directly by the CIA. He was aware that there were a lot more who enjoyed a very close relationship with the CIA who were “being paid regularly for their services, to those who receive only occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” (page 195).
Church also identified E. Howard Hunt as an important figure in Operation Mockingbird. He points out how Hunt arranged for books to be reviewed by certain writers in the national press. He gives the example of how Hunt arranged for a “CIA writer under contract” to write a hostile review of an Edgar Snow book in the New York Times (page 198).
Journalist Carl Bernstein provided further information about Operation Mockingbird in an article in The Rolling Stone in October, 1977. He claimed that over a 25 year period over 400 American journalists secretly carried out assignments for the CIA: “Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country.
According to researchers such as Steve Kangas, Angus Mackenzie and Alex Constantine, Operation Mockingbird was not closed down by the CIA in 1976. For example, in 1998 Kangas argued that CIA asset Richard Mellon Scaife ran Forum World Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA propaganda around the world.
http://goldenageofgaia.com/2010/03/28/the-cias-operation-mockingbird/
The record of the The New York Times from 1969 to 1971 follows the same pattern as CBS and Life magazine. In 1964 the Times formed a research team headed by Harrison Salisbury to investigate the assassination. The team was made up of six reporters and it included Peter Khiss and Gene Roberts. Their conclusions were never made public by the Times but indications point to their finding evidence of a criminal conspiracy. In June, 1968 Peter Khiss was ordered by the Times management not to do any more research on assassinations or to discuss the subject at the Times.
When the Garrison investigation made the news, the Times began a regular campaign to undermine Garrison's case, to support the Warren Commission, and finally (during the Clay Shaw trial) to completely distort the news and the testimony presented.
Of all the fifteen major US news organizations, from 1967 to 1968 UPI has come closest to really pursuing the truth about the JFK assassination. Yet they did not have the courage of their convictions in analyzing conspiratorial evidence. In 1975 AP and UPI sent out the longest stories ever broadcast over their news service wires. They were so long that they were divided into installments. The stories backed up the Warren Commission and attacked the researchers, especially Jim Garrison. And UPI suppressed the original 8mm color films by Marie Muchmore and Orville Nix.
Dorothy Kilgallen was writing several articles about the JFK assassination for the newspapers who published her column. She said the owner of the New York newspaper where her column appeared refused to let her print stories in opposition to the Warren Commission
The 1991 movie, JFK made by Oliver Stone, was attacked by those journalists who had since 1963 had steadfastly defended the lone-gunman theory. Thomas G. "Tom" Wicker a political reporter and columnist for The New York Times, attacked Stone’s portrayal of Jim Garrison as a hero-figure and complained that he had ignored the claims that he was corrupt. He added that the film treats “matters that are highly speculative as fact and truth, in effect rewriting history” was an American journalist.
Bernard Weinraub argued in the New York Times that the studio should withdraw the movie: "At what point does a studio exercise its leverage and blunt the highly charged message of a filmmaker like Oliver Stone?" When veteran film critic, Pat Dowell, provided a good review for The Washingtonian, the editor, John Limpert, rejected it on the grounds that he did not want the magazine to be associated with this preposterous viewpoint. As a result Dowell resigned as the magazine’s film critic.
Jack Valenti, who at that time was president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, but in the months following the assassination, was President Lyndon Johnson’s special advisor, denounced Stone's film in a seven-page statement.
Journalist Dan Rather, another long-time lone-gunman advocate, hosted a CBS program on the JFK movie, and put down the film as not the truth.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19710
Back to Special Operations Executive /MI6 and FBI Division Five
Stephenson set up Special Operations Executive (SOE) headquarters in New York City's Rockefeller Center under the name of an importing-exporting company and established its communications and another clandestine center at a resort complex at Montego Bay, Jamaica. Under Major Bloomfield, Division Five's spies operated as a Christian missionary group, sending its devotees to every corner of the United States and Latin America.
It should be noted that all the SOE's activities were conducted under the protective umbrella of Britain’s Official Secrets Act. Any British Commonwealth citizen releasing information about the SOE was liable to prosecution on charges of high treason, punishable by execution.
A relevant feature of the wartime Stephenson-Bloomfield SOE teams was its use of the North American mafia as intelligence contract agents for the OSS and FBI Division Five. Charles "Lucky" Luciano is the best-known case of a convicted drug-runner, pimp, and suspected murderer who was "rehabilitated" under OSS-SOE sponsorship.
In early 1943, as the US was planning to invade Sicily, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill discussed using North American mafia guys to aid the invasion. Churchill then had to admit that the Americans possessed an undeniable advantage when it came to dealing with Italians. In a telegram to Churchill, Roosevelt wrote, “In view of the friendly feeling towards America entertained by a great number of citizens of Italy, and in consideration of the large number of citizens of the United States who are of Italian descent, it is my opinion that our military problem will be made less difficult…”
Director of US Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Carl Espe and Captain Wallace S. Wharton, head of the Counter-Intelligence Section, Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington DC, tasked Captain Roscoe MacFall, chief intelligence officer of the Third Naval District, a region that encompassed New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to exploit further their connections with North American mafia. MacFall then tasked US Navy Commander Charles R. Haffenden to set up a special security unit. It was called the B-3 investigative unit.
Fears about possible sabotage or disruption of the waterfront had already been the job of Commander Haffenden. The Mafia represented the most antifascist organization in the world. Under Mussolini’s savage purges, Sicilian mafiosi were bombed, machine-gunned, and arrested in droves. Many of the American mafia had fled their homeland because of Mussolini.
Haffenden sought the help of Joseph “Joe Socks” Lanza who was born in Palermo, Sicily. His criminal history stretched back to 1917 with arrests for homicide, burglary, conspiracy, and extortion. Lanza as a member of Lucky Luciano’s mafia family was in charge of labor racketeering over the United Seafood Workers Union stretching from Maine to Florida.
Haffenden assembled a team of colorful Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) officers, many of them Italian-Americans versed in the Sicilian dialects spoken by the mafia guys. Among these men were Lieutenant Anthony Marsloe, a man fluent in Italian, Spanish, and French; Lieutenant Joseph Treglia, a former bootlegger now in charge of breaking and entering operations; and Lieutenant Paul Alfieri, a safecracker. Lieutenant Treglia, leader of B-3’s breaking-and-entry teams. Their black-bag jobs helped uncover several German espionage rings across the nation.
Wiretaps revealed a startling conversation between Haffenden and Lanza. Haffenden asked how about Harry Bridges, the West Coast union leader saying, “I don’t want any trouble on the waterfront during the crucial times.”
Lanza replied, “You won’t have any. I’ll see to that.”
A goon squad later caught up with Bridges in a popular dance hall and savagely beat up him.
To organize the West Side docks, the Navy required the cooperation of Irish mafia guy, Joseph Ryan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association.
According to Lanza, said only the imprisoned Lucky Luciano could order Ryan to go along with the US Navy. To get Luciano’s cooperation Haffenden had to go thru Meyer Lansky.
Lansky’s hoodlums battled American Nazis in Manhattan’s streets long before the declaration of war. Lansky later recalled, “We got there that evening and found several hundred people dressed in their brown shirts. The stage was decorated with a swastika and pictures of Hitler … We attacked them in the hall and threw some of them out the windows. There were fistfights all over the place.” Extremely patriotic, the Jewish mob busted up Nazi meetings and offices all over the city.
Lansky talked to Luciano in prison and outlined Project Underworld which required gathering intelligence about airfields, naval bases, and power plants in Sicily.
Longshoremen’s Association tough Jerry Sullivan later testified, “Lansky was solving the problem for the Navy on the waterfront by the visible deployment of some of the most ruthless gangsters in the city. It was expected that the mere appearance of these men on the piers would serve as a deterrent, a warning to cooperate with the United States war effort or face the consequences.”
When Haffenden sent Cockeye Dunn to investigate two suspected German agents, the Irish hoodlum took the men for a gangland one-way ride. Wiretaps recorded Dunn’s chilling report, “They’ll never bother us again.” The Navy frowned upon unauthorized killings, but it was impossible to keep a mad dog like Dunn in check.
Haffenden formed the F-Target Section, a group dedicated to gathering data on the planned invasion zone.
Luciano ordered his lieutenant, Joe Adonis to hauled hundreds of Italians into Naval Intelligence headquarters. Throughout 1943, mob heavies came and went from the New York City ONI office in a hotel, relaying orders and carrying out missions. Target Section crafted a map of Sicily with a clear plastic overlay that detailed strategic points for the invasion.
Charlie Luciano applied for executive clemency on the grounds of his cooperation with the Navy. His request was granted, and on January 9, 1945, after sending some six years of his 30 to 50 year prison sentence, he was deported to Italy.
Lucky Luciano: The Real and the Fake Gangster by Tim Newark and Project Underworld: The U.S. Navy’s Secret Pact with the Mafia by Rodney Campbell, (1977)
http://www.thehistoryreader.com/modern-history/lucky-luciano-wwiis-operation-husky/
Lucky Luciano was dispatched to Sicily to reconstitute old networks that had been dispersed or expatriated during the Mussolini period. Major Bloomfield came into active collusion with Meyer Lansky's narcotics syndicate by no later than the close of World War Two. In the 1940s James J. Angleton was the OSS station chief for Italy, and he was in charge of (case officer for) Luciano. (Source: Ogonyok (Soviet youth magazine) by Julian Semyonov, October 1978)
In pre-war Italy, Angleton crew up in Milan, Italy, where his family moved after his father bought a NCR's Italian subsidiary. During the First World War, NCR (originally National Cash Register) manufactured fuses and aircraft instrumentation, and during World War Two built aero-engines, bomb sights and code-breaking machines. Angleton joined the US Army in March 1943. By February 1944, he became the chief of OSS’s Italy desk for X-2 in London. In November Angleton was transferred to Italy as commander of SCI [Secret Counterintelligence] Unit Z, which handled Ultra intelligence based on the British intercepts of German radio communications. By the end of the war, he was head of X-2 for all of Italy. ULTRA dealt with decoding intercepted enemy electronic communications and making sure only the Commanding General with a need to know saw selected important intelligence about the Nazis or Soviets.
As head of counterintelligence for the CIA for nearly 30 years, Angleton was the official in charge of all activities relating to terrorism, assassinations, and international narcotics traffic. As the head of the Israeli Desk, he was also the liaison chief to the Mossad. Among his other responsibilities at the CIA, Angleton ran the Vatican desk, a position that placed him equally in touch with the Italian Royal Family.
In October, 1962, Enrico Mattei took off in his plane from a business trip in Sicily. The plane exploded in mid-air. Rumors began to circulate that it was a mafia/CIA/Texas Oil Industry combined operation. During the Second World War, Mattei was one of Italy’s leading anti-fascist political figures. He was the head of two Italian partisan groups fighting the Nazis in Europe. Unlike most Italian politicians he decided to fight fascism rather than embrace it.
After the war Mattei was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Most of the partisan leaders in Europe were elected into official positions after the war. This caused great concern for the OSS and later the CIA. As a result funds meant for rebuilding the European economy (the Marshall Plan) was redirected into a covert operation against left-wing politicians in Europe. This included bribing political leaders in Europe to move to the right. Many succumbed to this policy. However, Mattei was not corruptible. (Source: The Frank Church Select Committee investigation into the CIA)
Enrico Mattei was placed in charge of an agency administrating the Italian oil resources. He was a great success and Italian nationalized oil industry, (ENI) which was very profitable. ENI had been organized by Mussolini, to some private group of oil producers. Mattei was so successful that the Italian government allowed it to remain nationalized. He signed a pact with Iran which gave Iran 75 percent of the profits for oil wells drilled and followed this with similar concessions in India, Egypt, Tunisia, Morrocco, Somalia and the Sudan. The oil companies of the world were immediately up in arms against him.
Foreign oil companies were outraged because the profits of oil exploration in the Middle East were divided on a 50-50 with the governments. Mattei brought the price of petrol down and accordingly, rival oil producers who were forced to meet his prices.
The following appeared in Harper’s Magazine (March, 1961): “Mattei has become the symbol of a vigorous new state socialism of the type which has longed appealed to the logical Latin mind. He carries the banner for a large, perhaps a majority, group of Italians who think that by a judicious use of public monies some of the grave short-comings of capitalism can be corrected.”
Mattei’s success posed a serious threat to the CIA’s policy of halting the growth of socialism in Europe. He also posed a serious threat to the American oil industry. This became an even more serious problem when Mattei began negotiating deals with the Soviet Union, Iran, India, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia and the Sudan.
The oil companies of the world were immediately up in arms against him. They were especially concerned by the deal with the Soviet Union. This would allow the Italian oil company ENI to undercut the oil prices being charged by the Texas oil industry.
The Bloomfield-Luciano collaboration was still operational in 1962 when Luciano was the CIA case officer on the scene in Sicily for the Mattei assassination. The decision to go with a plane crash was made by Luciano. In 1970, the prestigious Italian newsweekly Panorama published an account of the mysterious death of Italian Oil Minister Enrico Mattei in an October 1962 plane crash on his to a historic economic summit in Africa. Mattel's plane was sabotaged during a contrived unscheduled stopover at an obscure airport in Sicily. Forty-eight hours before the crash, New Orleans crime family boss Carlos Marcello had been identified by local police in Sicily as the mysterious American who showed up at the airport while a four-man team was tampering with Mattel's plane.
Sicilian-American mafioso Carlos Marcello owned a private fleet of chartered jets called the United Air Taxi Service, which shared its staff of pilots and mechanics with company called Permindex. One such "shared employee," David Ferrie, was also a pilot for Marcello and Clay Shaw.
During a 1991 investigation the killing of Enrico Mattei it was learned that his bodyguard had planted the explosives on the plane and this bodyguard was a Gladio Officer. Gladio was the code-name for US/NATO’s stay behind operation in the event the USSR invaded Western Europe and which was led by the CIA. This secret stay behind guerrilla force was armed and trained to act like the French Resistance of World War Two. Therefore it was not linked to the mafia directly. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/4495-enrico-mattei/
Louis Bloomfield was the founder and president of the Permindex Corporation and he was a 50 percent shareholder since its incorporation in Montreal in 1958-1959. In 1968 his name was removed from Permindex’s letterhead after the de Gaulle assassination attempts were linked to Permindex. Bloomfield is a man of many hats. He was a founding partner of the prestigious law firm that represents and controls the Bronfman family holdings of Montreal, Canada (aka on legal Seagram brand alcohol).
Bloomfield was a big Zionist philanthropist. A Canadian group collected charitable contributions and passes them on to the Israeli labor movement. Curiously, these funds have been discovered on several occasions to have found their way back to Permindex after recycling through the Bank Hapoalim.
Bloomfield's charitable activities extend into his chairmanship of the Canadian Red Cross ambulance service. He controlled the Israeli Continental Corporation, the Canadian subsidiary of the Dutch Heinekens Breweries, and Credit Suisse of Canada, a correspondent bank to the Credit Suisse of Geneva. All these corporations are listed among the investors in Permindex.
George Mantello, a Romanian Jew, was a board member of a Permindex subsidiary, Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC). An immigrant to Italy, George Mantello’s Swiss holding company, Capocetto, was the conduit for the Israeli labor movement’s funds into Permindex.
Max Hagerman was the administrative officer of Permindex and the editor of the West German right-wing newspaper National-Zeitung allegedly a neo-Nazi publication.
Giuseppe Zigiotto, on the board of CMC was the head of the Italian Royal Family’s neo-fascist movement called the Fascist National Association for the Militia Arms.
Carlo D'Amelio, another Permindex-CMC board member. During the Mussolini period, d'Amelio was the attorney representing the grouping of oligarchic families that imposed the fascist dictator in collaboration with Sir Winston Churchill. This grouping was known as Circo Rex ("Royal Circle") and is believed to exist today as the control point for the Red Brigades, the neo-fascist cells.
One of the principal channels of laundered money for Permindex-CMC was the Seligman Bank of Zurich. Hans Seligman was the director of this bank (or the Hans Seligman-Schurch & Co investment banking house located in Basel) Seligman and Ferenc Nagy, a notorious anti-Communist, were among the initiators of the first attempt to found Permindex on Switzerland soil in 1956. It is worth keeping in mind that CIA boss Frank Wisner was Ferenc Nagy’s CIA case officer.
Documents of the Bloomfield Archives is that Dr. Nagy was the initiator of contacts with David Rockefeller at the beginning of year 1960, and that Rockefeller did collaborate with Permindex and CMC in order to speed up the development of his New York City World Trade Center.
Although not an officially cited as a board member of any of the Permindex fronts, John De Menil bears special note as an indispensable business partner of Bloomfield. DeMenil was the president of the Schlumberger Corporation of Houston and southern Florida. The firm was implicated by Jim Garrison along with Permindex in smuggling guns and explosives to anti-Castro Cuban exiles. DeMenil worked with a CIA Miami-based front called "Double-Chek," which in turn was a contact point for Bloomfield's FBI Division Five.
DeMenil was a White Russian émigré who fled to France, married into the wealthy Schlumberger family, and eventually settled in Houston to open a US branch of the family's heavy machinery firm. Nagy relocated to the United States during the 1950s and he became the titular head of a number of White Russians who performed covert operations for Division Five of the FBI.
One of DeMenil's closest associates was Clay Shaw. Shaw was one of Bloomfield's directors on the board. Shaw ran a subsidiary of Permindex in New Orleans called the International Trade Mart. A former Shaw associate alleged Permindex was a front for mafia drug-running and organized crime activity centered in the Caribbean. Shaw was the financial backer and primary case officer of Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald’s lived in New Orleans. David Ferrie was a former employee at the International Trade Mart and an airplane pilot for Shaw. Another associate of Shaw’s was Guy Bannister, the southeast regional chief of Bloomfield's Division Five of the FBI. Shaw was the business partner of Carlos Marcello.
After an estimated 30 to 40 aborted assassination attempts against French President General Charles de Gaulle during the 1960s, the French intelligence bureau, (External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service/ SDECE) gathered reams of evidence showing that Permindex had been the recipient of funds laundered into Geneva and Basel through Zionist charitable organizations and Israeli intelligence front such as the Bank Hapoalim. These funds had been channeled into the neo-Nazi terrorist groups in West Germany and Italy.
De Gaulle issued vociferous personal protests to the Swiss and Italian governments. As a result, Permindex was forced to shut down its offices in those countries and move to a more friendly location, Johannesburg, South Africa. The Paris-based Western European branch headquarters of Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, was kicked out of France and reestablished its operations in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Far from being a small international trading company, Permindex is revealed to be a subsidiary branch of the most powerful, well-financed, and well-protected intelligence agency in the world responsible for carrying out the most important political assassinations of the century. Permindex puzzle was a complex web of holding companies, dummy corporations, and offshore sealed bank accounts through which the Permindex acted as Britain’s Assassination outfit. Sixteen years passed since Permindex conducted its first known assassinations and despite all the accumulated evidence, none of the principals has been brought to justice.
The Bloomfield, Lansky, and Rosenbaum
Sufficient evidence has surfaced in the public record to show that Permindex was a courier channel through which profits of drug trafficking were shuttled into designated secret bank accounts in Geneva, Basel, Liechtenstein, and the Caribbean. Permindex cites among its investors the regional crime czars of North America and the Caribbean, the lieutenants of Meyer Lansky.
Back in 1928 Lansky inherited the bootleg booze and narcotics trafficking from the deceased Arnold Rothstein. Lansky's biographer, Hank Messick describes the weekly ritual in which the regional syndicate couriers (bag men) went to the Singapore Hotel in Miami to deliver 60 percent of their take to Lansky’s mafia money laundering banks.
Messick wrote: “The scope of Lansky's interests is illustrated by a trip his international courier, John Pullman, made in 1965. His first stop was Bogota, Colombia. The Eden Roc in Miami was his next destination. In February he went to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, where Lansky's old bootlegging chum from Boston, Hy Abrams, was boss. In March he was conferring in Los Angeles with Mike Singer, an ex-Teamster official who had helped put together the Bank of World Commerce (one of Permindex offshore banks) with Alvin Malnik. In April he was at the Peninsular Hotel in Hong Kong, where the syndicate had casinos and obtained much of its narcotics. Lebanon and its casinos were visited next. By June, Pullman was back in Switzerland where he conferred with Lansky in person. Together they visited the French Riviera to study plans for the ultimate takeover of the casinos there.”
“The money is placed in initial deposits in any one of a number of Geneva, Basel, Liechtenstein, or Caribbean banks affiliated with Major Bloomfield's (Centro Mondiale Commerciale). Several of these banks, like the Astaldo Vaduz of Miami, De Famaco Vaduz of Liechtenstein, and De Famaco Astaldo Vaduz of Geneva, are post office box fronts. These three, for example, are all listed as wholly owned subsidiaries of Permindex. As noted above, Credit Suisse, one of the more formidable laundering holes, maintains a Canadian subsidiary, also run by Major Bloomfield. The Bank of World Commerce Ltd. of Nassau, Grand Bahamas, was a personal creation of Lansky's. The largest and most important banking entity in the Permindex-Lansky family was the Banque de Credit Internationale (BCI) of Basel,
The October 8, 1967, issue of Life magazine detailed the following interesting triangular business relationship. US law enforcement officials in turn identified a BCI officer Sylvain Ferdman as a Swiss citizen as also the chief bagman for the Lansky money laundering outfit. Ferdman and John Pullman, carried money from the Caribbean to Lansky, and then on to the BCI and Bloomfield's Credit Suisse. Pullman, in addition to his global travels, was the president and director of the Bank of World Commerce Ltd. of Nassau.
Rabbi Tibor Rosenbaum’s Banque de Credit Internationale (BCI) was the Swiss side of a triangle composed of a professional hit bureau and Meyer Lansky's retail drug business in North America and the Caribbean. Bloomfield's trading company in Montreal, through its subsidiary Centro Mondiale Commerciale ran the protection side of the courier operation and was on the receiving end of those funds earmarked for terrorism and political assassinations. Centro Mondiale Commerciale had branch offices in Geneva and Rome. Bloomfield founded Permindex as an intelligence and financial front for the Israeli Mossad.
Rosenbaum was a close associate of Bloomfield from at least the end of World War two when both smuggled weapons, money, and mercenaries into the Haganah. Haganah was the name of the Zoinist paramilitary organization in the British Mandate of Palestine (1921–1948). Rosenbaum was subsequently served as the first Director-General for Finance and Supply for the Mossad. In addition he was a cofounder of the World Zionist Congress and a director of the Jewish Agency.
The Banque de Credit Internationale (BCI) in Switzerland was falsely alleged it move there to be a vehicle for financing illegal Israeli trade with Africa and the Third World. It real purpose was its relationship to the Mossad. With the exception of Bloomfield, Rosenbaum was the only foreign representative of the African smugglers' in Liberia.
Another member of BCI’s board of directors was Ernst Israel Japhet. He was on the board of the bank that Meyer Lansky' used to launder the mafia profits. Japhet was also the chairman of the Bank Leumi, the largest bank in Israel. Bank Leumi was the link in the diamonds-for-dope trade into Hong Kong. The Japhet family’s roots go back to Hong Kong's opium trade for 150 years ago and they never left.
Joining Japhet on the board of Leumi Bank was Baron Stormont Bancroft, a former Lord-in-Waiting to the Queen and a director and deputy chairman of Cunard Lines, a shipping company heavily involved in the drug traffic over Middle East, India, and Far East routes. The Samuel family also retains interests in Bank Leumi and Cunard Shipping Lines. The Jewish Agency created the Bank Hapoalim as the official agent for the Israeli labor movement, Histadrut. Samuel also presided as head of the Israeli Red Cross. The founder and a board member of Bank Hapoalim was the British High Commissioner Viscount Erwin H. Samuel.
Bank Leumi keeps its hand in the drug trade through its 100 percent owned subsidiary, Union Bank, of which Japhet is also chairman. Union Bank deals over one-third of the world's diamonds.
Bank Leumi was not the only Israeli bank to heavily invest in the Banque de Credit Internationale (BCI). Even more heavily involved was the Bank Hapoalim. As chairman of Permindex, Bloomfield maintained direct cash flow relations to Bank Hapoalim. It is the third largest bank in Israel founded by the Jewish Agency, which runs the bank today.
Bank Hapoalim has been widely exposed in the Western European press as a dirty-money channel into Swiss and Liechtenstein banks. The charge is corroborated by the presence of Zwi Recheter a member of the board of directors of Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel's largest banks.
Another channel of Bank Hapoalim's complicity is the Permindex family of dope traders and assassins is the Israeli Continental Bank Ltd., a 50-50 joint venture between Bank Hapoalim and its West German Socialist International counterpart, Bank fur Gemeinwirtschaft. The German bank is chaired by Walter Hesselbach, a member of the West German branch of the Jerusalem Foundation, the Zionist group.
During the 1960s, Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr. engaged in a joint development in Florida with Lou Chesler and his General Development Corporation. According to their contract, Chesler and General Development were responsible for building houses in Port Malabar, Port Charlotte, Port St. Lucie, and other locations on both Florida coasts, while DeBartolo handled all commercial construction such as shopping centers.
By 1965, DeBartolo had begun building shopping malls, beginning with the Summit Mall in Fairlawn, Ohio, near Akron. A 1978 classified report for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement described him as "a very wealthy, powerful, influential person with organized-crime connections in Ohio. Subject deals in land purchases, construction and development of large shopping centers through the United States."
The US Customs Service had received information from one of its special agents, William F. Burda, in January 1981 that the DeBartolo organization 'through its control of particular state banks in the state of Florida is operating money-laundering schemes, realizing huge profits from narcotics, guns, skimming operations, and other organized-crime-related activities. This organization is reported to have ties to mafia bosses Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante, and Meyer Lansky and because of its enormous wealth it had high-ranking political influence and affiliations.
Years later, Meyer Lansky’s daughter Sandi stated that President Nixon’s had threaten to withhold the sale of Phantom fighter jets to Israel because Lansky refused to cut Nixon in on a casino deal in the Bahamas. Nixon was already angry that Lansky had supported JFK for president years earlier. (Source: Sandi Lansky Lombardo (Meyer Lansky’s daughter) http://www.fivefamiliesnyc.com/2010/05/meyer-lanskys-mafia-secrets-exposed-by.html
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During the Watergate investigation it was suggested that Resorts International had been linked to Bebe Rebozo, that Resorts and Robert Vesco had been laundering Nixon campaign money, Vesco was investigated because of a secret $200,000 contribution made to the 1972 campaign to re-elect Nixon.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Vesco of diverting more than $224 million from a Geneva-based mutual Fund, Investors Overseas Services to his own pockets. Vesco's actual amount of this theft was never been pinned down. Vesco had wanted Attorney General John N. Mitchell to intercede on his behalf with SEC chairman William J. Casey.
(Mahon, 1980; Cook and Carmichael).
In 1960, Commonwealth Bank Bahamas, a subsidiary of Laurentide Financial Corporation Limited (a Canada-based company) was a CIA front bank, according to Jim Houghan in his book Spooks: The Haunting of America: The Private Use of Secret Agents. Vescos’s Investors Overseas Services scam was linked to this CIA front bank.
Teamster Pension fund had been superseded by a giant Texas insurance company as a major source of finance for Las Vegas casinos. The company is the American National Insurance Company (ANICO) of Galveston, Texas, the biggest insurance company west of the Mississippi River. As well as floating more than $40,000,000 to Las Vegas casinos and $13,000,000 to premier mob attorney Morris Shanker. In 1966 American National Insurance Company made a loan of $1,750,000 to the Resorts International Incorporated (or #13.3 million in 2018 dollars).
Shenker was a Russian Jewish immigrant who first came to the attention of the Kefauver Hearings in the early 1950s, wherein he represented a number of underworld figures. From 1962 Shenker represented Jimmy Hoffa in the funding of Las Vegas and San Diego and in 1966 became Hoffa's chief counsel. Shenker himself assumed part ownership of the Dunes Hotel and Casino from the 1970s to 1985. In February 1989, Shenker was indicted by a grand jury, but was not tried because of his health.
Starting in the 1940s, Mary Elizabeth Northen (nee: Moody) was president of the American National Insurance Corporation. She was the daughter of William L. Moody Jr. founded the National Hotel Company. His holdings at one time included the Galvez Hotel in Galveston and the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, Texas. In 1931, the company took control of a financially troubled Conrad Hilton's hotels. After her father died in 1954, she oversaw more than 50 national corporations
When the old trustees relinquished their control of the Central States Teamster’s Pension Fund in 1976, the chief recipients were familiar faces as follows:
Allen Glick -- $140 million
Morris Shenker -- $135 million
Moe Dalitz -- $93 million
Alvin Malnik -- $20 million.
(Sources: Cook and Carmichael and organized crime expert professor Gary W. Potter. Eastern Kentucky University)
https://www.scribd.com/document/3893328/Lansky
Richard Danner was a good friend of Nixon and the city manager of Miami Beach. Danner was an ex-FBI agent who had fallen under mafia control and was he had very close ties to Rebozo and Santos Trafficante Jr. Danner eventually became a top aide to Nixon's financial supporter, Howard Hughes. During Nixon’s presidency, Danner was the payoff man for bribes from Hughes through Rebozo to Nixon. Rebozo came under investigation during Watergate for accepting a $100,000 bribe from Hughes for Nixon. The Watergate Special Prosecution Force went out of business before completing its Rebozo investigation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Cities/ABC_Inc.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.php#axzz4iVDlc416
The link between the Hollywood Las Angeles movie industry and the American mafia
James Crosby and his family control about 60 percent of the voting stock of Resorts International casino-hotels in the Bahamas, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars worth of undeveloped real estate. Crosby also was the owner of a Capital Cities Communications (Cap Cities). Future CIA Director William J. Casey was Capital Cities/ABC Inc., chief counsel and a member of its board of directors until 1981. Casey owned $7.5 million worth of the stock in this company.
The CIA bought many US media companies during Operation Mockingbird which did propaganda directed at US voters. A prime example is Capital Cities Communications created in 1954. The CIA got its foot in the door to the money laundering side of the Bahamas money laundering banks. At their New Jersey casino license hearing, Resorts International officials also admitted paying a $431,000 bribe to the prime minister of the Bahaman Islands for legal permission to do gambling at their casinos.
Nixon and Rebozo were friends of James Crosby. Crosby donated $100,000 to Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. Cap Cities is also a longstanding active player in the Republican establishment. (Source: Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, by Don Fulsom (2012)
Lou Chester’s $12 million investment in Resorts International was the result of his ownership of a small Canadian television production company called Seven Arts. In 1967 Seven Arts bought Jack L. Warner's stock in Warner Brothers for $32 million and then merged with Warner Brothers. Maxwell M. “Max” Rabb serviced on the board of Warner Brothers/ Warner Communications and Meyer Lansky’s front-man Ed Levinson also was one of Rabb’s business associates.
One of the principle investors was Allen & Company, LLC owned by Charles Robert Allen, Jr., and his brothers, Herbert A. Allen, Sr. and Harold Allen. Charles Allen also figures heavily in the development of Columbia Pictures and owned 6.2 percent of its stock. A scandal broke out when actor Cliff Robertson accused the Columbia Pictures' president, David Begelman, of embezzlement. The whole case threatened to expose the well-known methods by which Columbia Pictures' management was involved in laundering drug funds as the New York Times hinted as much in its article calling Charlie Allen "The Godfather of the New Hollywood." Five percent of Columbia's stock was owned by Carl H. Lindner, another well known associate of Meyer Lansky. http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1982/eirv09n43-19821109/eirv09n43-19821109_058-how_the_us_film_industry_was_sub.pdf
Harry "King" Cohn, the owner of Columbia film studio and film producer, was born to a working-class Jewish family in the slums of New York City. He once, after visiting Italy in 1933 and befriending Mussolini, he would keep a signed photo of the dictator on his desk until the war started, when Cohn returned to Hollywood and had his office remodeled after Il Duce's.
John “Johnny” Roselli and Harry Cohn were good friends and the core of the friendship was gambling. Cohn was a gambler and Roselli was his bookie, in fact Cohn was so obsessed with horse racing, he even had Roselli arrange to have a transmitter for the horse racing results brought directly into his office at the studio. He and Roselli shared a betting pool of over $15,000, an enormous amount of money in the 1930s, and Roselli, under orders from Chicago mafia, made sure that Cohn got all the right information on which races were winners and which ones were losers.
Roselli helped Cohn on the business front, like the time in 1932 when Cohn decided that he wanted to take control of Columbia Studios from his brother, Jack, who controlled the company finances from the corporate office in New York. The problem was that each brother owned a third of the company with the difference being held by a businessman named Joe Brandt, one of Jack Cohn's early partners. The Cohn brothers would meet occasionally in New York, but relations between them were strained. The stress became too much for Joe Brandt, who said he would sell out to the first brother to give him $500,000 for his share of the business.
Both brothers tried to raise the cash. However, it was in the midst of the Great Depression and the banks weren't lending, so Harry Cohn turned to Johnny Roselli for help. Roselli put Cohn in touch with Jewish mafia boss Longy Zwillman, who was worth millions in cold, hard cash. Zwillman, who had deep interests in Hollywood, loaned Cohn the money to buy out Brandt.
In 1943 Roselli and several Chicago mobsters were convicted of racketeering charges, and sentenced to ten years in prison. However, in 1947 they were paroled after serving only about three and a half years. It was widely assumed that a political fixer of the Chicago outfit used his influence with President Harry Truman's Attorney General, Tom C. Clark, to obtain these pardons. After his release, Roselli returned to Hollywood.
Movie starlets who worked for Harry Cohn had to endure at least one "hell week" of sleeping with Cohn if they intended to make it. In 1948, it was Marilyn Monroe's turn. Cohn said that the only reason he hired her was that Chicago mafia boss Tony Accardo, owned Monroe's career and had told Johnny Roselli to force Cohn into signing Monroe on with Columbia Studios.
Cohn had his way with Monroe of course, giving her bit parts in exchange for the favors, but one day when she was summoned to his office for sex, the fickle and moody actress simply refused to go. She told Cohn that she was madly in love with Frank Sinatra, a man Cohn never liked anyway. Word about Monroe's defiance got around the studios, and Cohn fired her. As for Sinatra, who was at the bottom of his career and he was blacklisted off the Cohn’s studio lot.
At about this same time, Cohn was producing the film "From Here to Eternity" and Sinatra wanted to play the big role in the movie, but Cohn refused give it to him. Sinatra called Frank Entratta, who fronted at the Sands Casino for Frank Costello and his partners. Entratta was a close, personnel friend of Harry Cohn, they were regular fishing partners on weekends, but even the phone calls from Entratta didn't budge Cohn to hand the part to Sinatra. Allegedly Entratta went directly to Frank Costello on Sinatra's behalf, and, working with Chicago's permission, Costello contacted Johnny Roselli out in Las Vegas and asked him to look into "this Cohn problem." Johnny Roselli knew Cohn, they had first met back in the early 1930s right after both arrived in Hollywood and Roselli was still running numbers, and selling the occasional shipment of heroin around the studio lots.
In a tense meeting in Cohn's office, Roselli reportedly ordered Cohn to give Sinatra the big part in the film. Cohn not only refused, he told Roselli, "John, if we have a problem here, I'm going to have to make some phone calls," referring to Cohn's own considerable contact in the underworld. Roselli replied, "Harry, if we have a problem here, you're a fucking dead man,” and Sinatra got the part for which he won an Academy Award. (Source: King Cohn and the Horse's Head, by John William Tuohy) http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_214.html
In the 1950s, Sammy Davis Jr. and movie star Kim Novak were in a romantic relationship. But, the problems with this relationship were that Kim was contracted to Harry Cohn, Cohn agonized that the controversy of Davis and Novak’s marriage would hurt Novak’s future prospects, and so he hired a mobster to threaten Davis’s father, this mobster warned Davis’s father that Cohn had given him a murder contract to harm Sammy. Sammy was asked to protect his life, he had only one option and that was to leave Novak and marry another woman. He did, and the contract was called off.
Kim Novak said she was summoned to Cohn’s office where he was "surrounded by all these men, including people in the Mob.” And he told her that her movie career was in jeopardy if I continued to see Sammy. http://www.nationalcrimesyndicate.com/10-famous-celebrities-who-nearly-got-killed-by-the-mafia/
https://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/sammy-davis-jr-lost-eye-kim-novak-harry-cohn/
FBI released on its web site 1,275 pages of Sinatra's FBI file. His FBI files definitively show that Sinatra was up to his ears in mob-related schemes and activities throughout his entire adult life. Sinatra had a life-long relationship with the Fischetti brothers of Chicago. Charles, Joseph and Rocco Fischetti were cousins of Al Capone. Charles Fischetti was the mob's political fixer in Chicago. He and Sinatra were known to be close friends as early as the 1940s.
Joseph Fischetti was better known for his activities in Miami, especially in connection with the Fontainbleu Hotel. Sinatra performed many times at the Fontainbleu Hotel in Miami. Fischetti worked as a sort of agent for Sinatra in Miami and Chicago and got him several bookings in the early 1950s when Sinatra's career was nearly dead.
It was generally agreed by most organized crime experts that Sinatra was probably fronting ownership for the Chicago mafia. Frank Sinatra and Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo went way back. Alo was the mafia muscle behind Meyer Lansky and a made-member of the Genovese Organized Crime Family, going back as far as the days of crime boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
In 1952 Alo help Sinatra when his career was sagging. In 1954, Sinatra applied for a casino gambling license from the state of Nevada, yet it was widely rumored that he was dead broke. A hearing was held in Reno and it was learned that Sinatra had already bought two percent of the Sands with $54,000. One of the hearing administrators objected to since he felt that the singer should have used the money to pay off the $109,000 federal tax bill that he owed.
It is disclosed in the declassified FBI that Dean Martin time and again had been an informant to Sinatra dealings with the mafia.
On more than one occasion people who had angered Sinatra received threatening phone calls saying that Giancana would ''teach them a lesson.'' The most blatant example of this came in 1966 when comedian Jackie Mason angered Sinatra by making jokes about his marriage to Mia Farrow. Mason received phone calls threatening his life, but refused to change his routine. Six days later three bullets were fired through the glass door of Mason's hotel room in Las Vegas. The Clark County Sheriff's Department investigated, but dropped the case because it said there was no motive for the shooting.
On February 13, 1967, while Mason was sitting in a car in front of an apartment building in Miami, a man wearing brass knuckles yanked open his door and smashed Mason in the face, breaking his nose and crushing his cheekbone. ''We warned you to stop using the Sinatra material in your act,'' the attacker said before leaving. Mason finally got the message and stopped using jokes about Sinatra.
In March 1970, Angelo ''Gyp'' DeCarlo was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. He was a capo and a methodical gangland executioner' for the Genovese crime family,. He was sentenced to 12 years in a federal penitentiary. According to the FBI files, Sinatra made a $100,000 cash contribution to Maurice Stans. Peter Malatesta, a member of Agnew's staff contacted John Dean and asked for a presidential pardon for DeCarlo. Sinatra was a close friend of Peter Malatesta.
Sinatra made another payment of $50,000 in December 1972, and two days later DeCarlo was pardoned. Sinatra had become very close to both President Nixon and Vice-President Agnew about this time. President Nixon was in need of money for his re-election campaign. US Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, chair of the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, charged that the pardon ''bypassed normal procedures and safeguards.''
Jackson's investigation led to serious charges against President Nixon, the US Marshall Service and the IRS, but action was pre-empted by Agnew's resignation and the Watergate scandal. No charges were ever brought against Sinatra.
The grounds for the pardon were stated that DeCarlo was terminally ill, but according to Newsweek and the FBI file, he was soon ''back at his old rackets, boasting that his connections with Sinatra freed him.'' Those campaign contributions bought this mafia hit-man a year of freedom way before he died of cancer.
In 1963 Sinatra invested $55,000 in the Berkshire Downs Racetrack in western Massachusetts, but the FBI suspected he was just fronting for the mafia. In 1972 the House Select Committee on Crime prepared a subpoena for Sinatra to question him about the Berkshire Downs Racetrack purchase. US Senator John Tunney of California, for whom Sinatra had raised $160,000 during his re-election campaign, stopped the subpoena.
The House committee obligingly invited Sinatra to appear in June 1972. Instead Sinatra flew to England. Incensed the committee prepared a second subpoena and ordered US marshals to stand by at all ports of entry to issue the subpoena as soon as Sinatra re-entered the United States. Sinatra called in some favors and after telephone calls from Vice President Spiro Agnew, a close friend of Sinatra, the second subpoena was cancelled and a new invitation was issued for July 1972. In addition the committee agreed to limit their questions to the Berkshire Downs Racetrack. At the end of the hearing, the committee dropped their investigation and no further action in the Berkshire Downs case was taken.
Happy over that the fact that the congressional committee was embarrassed, President Nixon made a personal phone call to Sinatra congratulating him.
In 1980 Sinatra forced Caesar's Palace to list him as a key employee so he could apply for a new Gaming License. Sinatra paid $500,000 for an investigation of his past and used all of his connections and power (including the support of President Ronald Reagan) to influence the outcome of the Nevada State Gaming Commission hearings. Sinatra lied repeatedly about his activities and relationships with criminals and mobsters. In the end he was granted a Nevada State Gaming License. Nevada State Gaming Bureau had pulled his license in 1963.
http://www.crimemagazine.com/frank-sinatra-and-mob
Ronald Reagan owed his acting and political career to Hollywood mogul Louis R. “Lew” Wasserman, chief of entertainment behemoth the Music Corporation of America (MCA). Wasserman was born in Cleveland, OH to parents of Jewish Russian immigrant. After law school he became a lawyer for the North American Jewish super mafia. Charlton Heston once described Wasserman as the “Godfather of the film industry.”
MCA backed every political campaign Ronald Reagan ran. After Reagan was elected governor of California in 1966, MCA benefited from some of his executive decisions. Reagan’s whole career was guided by MCA -- by Wasserman and (MCA founder) Jules Stein. Stein bragged that Reagan was malleable, that they could do what they wanted with him. In the Roaring 1920s Stein had founded the Music Corporation of America, he booked bands in the mid-west, and he had close ties to shady figures, reputedly members of the Chicago Mob.
Hollywood was a union town by the time Wasserman got there, in 1939, and far from struggling against the organized labor, as most of the early tycoons had done, he exploited his connections with union leadership. The Teamsters, for example, acting alone, could bring film production to a halt. Wasserman staved off such threats with the help of a lawyer and fixer for the mafia, Sidney Korshak. Wasserman also took an interest in politics - or, rather, in political contributions. Money spent in Washington was money spent on protection.
Wasserman was instrumental in helping Reagan to become president of the Screen Actors Guild, which kicked off Reagan's rise to power. Reagan allowed MCA to work both as a producer as well as an agent, which enabled the Mafia to earn a huge income. Wasserman purchased Universal Studios and Decca Records in 1962 and merged them with MCA.
Wasserman was also an influential player and fundraiser in the Democratic Party, as evidenced by his 1968 support for Hubert Humphrey. From Johnson to Clinton, his cause was making sure that the film industry had a pipeline to a Democratic White House.
In 1966, Wasserman singlehandedly installed Jack Valenti as head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Valenti was a native Texan who ran an advertising agency in Houston before joining Johnson’s staff in the 1950s. In 1962 Valenti married Mary Margaret Wiley, who had also joined Johnson's staff in the 1950s. Jack Valenti was an aide to Vice President Johnson and in charge of press coverage during the Dallas trip when JFK was killed.
Valenti wanted to have Wasserman appointed to special advisory capacity to President Johnson in the Whitehouse. Johnson offered him a job in his cabinet as secretary of commerce, but was not surprised when he turned it down.
Richard Stavin, a former federal Assistant District Attorney who was assigned to the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force in Los Angeles and was an integral member of its investigation of Wasserman and MCA. Stavin said publically: “It's my belief that MCA and its' involvement with mafia individuals, mafia-dominated companies and our inability to pursue those was not happenstance. I believe it was an organized, orchestrated effort on the part of certain individuals within Washington, DC, to keep a hands-off policy towards MCA.”At the time, Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States and Edwin Meese was the Attorney General of the United States. “I would like to think that the people in the highest levels of this government were not protective of MCA...But I'm not so sure about that.” Stavin left his Organized Crime Strike Force to which he was dedicated because he said, “'I was unable to fulfill the duties for which I took my sworn oath.”
Another veteran of the Organized Crime Strike Force prosecutor involved in the probe of MCA was Marvin Rudnick. He was fired by the Justice Department and considered rogue because he wanted to continue to pursue the suspected MCA bad guys. But the investigation was mysteriously ordered closed. He was later reinstated.
Rudnick stated publically: “For the Justice Department to kill the case was a little extraordinary. You wonder where it starts and where it ends. We did not get the investigation done because of interference from high up. Nobody at the highest levels of the Justice Department seemed to care or wanted to stop it. It went all the way to the top.”
Special Agent Thomas G. Gates, who was heading up the FBI end of the investigation, publically stated: “The powers trumped what we were trying to do. The players within MCA tried to stay as low-key as they could. I don't know how much influence Wasserman was able to put on President Reagan when he was in office because he [Wasserman] was always a backdoor participant, but we knew who he was associating with. Information about his FBI investigation “was leaking out that shouldn't have happened” (from the Justice Department in Washington.)
The Justice Department-FBI investigation into MCA started by chance when Marvin Rudnick came across intelligence that a man by the name of Salvatore Pisello (Big Sal) was in the hierarchy of MCA, a high-ranking soldier in the Gambino crime family of New York. Pisello had just been sentenced to four years in prison on tax evasion charges, and Rudnick at a hearing in US District Court in L.A. stated that evidence had been uncovered linking him to criminal activity in the record industry. His connections and dealings became the target of several federal grand jury probes. According to investigative reporter William K. Knoedelseder, Jr., Pisello wound up in high-level meetings with MCA officers' negotiating lucrative record deals “that would place him among the best-paid executives in the industry.” Knoedelseder is the book, Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business and the Mafia, (1993). Prior to this he had worked for a dozen years covering organized crime and other corruption in the entertainment industry for The Los Angeles Times. He was ordered by editors to stop writing about MCA, and so he quit his job there.
During the course of the investigation another mafia connection at MCA was discovered. - Eugene Giaquinto. Via wiretaps he was heard talking to La Cosa Nostra people on the East Coast. Agent Gates stated that Wasserman was Giaquinto's mentor and promoted in the MCA's to head their Home Entertainment Group (home videos). Giaquinto, who was an executive at MCA for some two decades and he had ties to Mob boss John Gotti.
Reagan’s Attorney General Ed Meese was really good friends with the board of directors at MCA. Reagan being tough on organized crime -- that's a fallacy.
In 1952, the Screen Actors’ Guild president Ronald Reagan was recruited by the CIA for an operation Mockingbird front organization, the Crusade for Freedom to raise funds for the resettlement of some 300 Byelorussian Nazis and an even larger number of Ukrainian Nazis into the US, according to author John Loftus. Reagan signed a secret waiver of the conflict-of-interest rule with the mob-controlled studio, in effect granting it a labor monopoly on early television programming. In exchange, MCA made Reagan a part owner. In 1987, historian C. Vann Woodward, writing in the New York Times, reported that in the 1940s Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, had secretly and regularly fed the FBI the names of Actor’s guild members who they suspected were communist sympathizers. Reagan’s confidential informant number was T-10. His FBI file indicates intense collaboration with producers to purge the industry of subversives. The FBI documents indicated that Reagan was one of at least 18 confidential informants used by the agency in its investigation of suspected communist infiltration of the film industry. The others were not identified. In November 1947 with Reagan in support, the Screen Actors Guild passed a resolution asking members to sign an affidavit saying that they were not Communists before they could be eligible for any guild office.
Wasserman control of MCA ended soon after MCA was sold to the Japanese for $6.5 billion in 1990. In 1995 MCA was again sold for $5.7 billion to the Canadian crime family that owns Seagram Company.
All the FBI and DoJ sealed files and wiretap documents were said to have mysteriously disappeared from a supposedly secure federal government warehouse in Maryland.
President Bill Clinton awarded Wasserman the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor.
(Sources: The documentary film: Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, film's director, Shawn Swords http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2635094/EXCLUSIVE-Revealed-MAFIA-helped-Ronald-Reagan-White-House-Shocking-documentary-reveals-Mob-connections-catapulted-presidency-probe-thwarted-highest-levels.html
Wasserman and MCA were under an anti-trust investigation for by Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department. MCA owned both the movie studio and a talent agency and that enabling the mafia to earn a huge income. So in order to acquire Universal and not violate antitrust laws, MCA was forced to dissolve its talent agency.
In 2000 alone, the Wasserman Foundation gave away $10.7 million for Jewish causes such as the Los Angeles Jewish federation, the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee. Before he died, Wasserman gave $1 million toward the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA, which is still under construction.
“He was a man who was not an intensely involved Jew,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, the director of UCLA’s Hillel. “However, he was dedicated to sustaining the Jewish future and the State of Israel.
MCA mogul Lew Wasserman was linked to the mafia attorney Sidney Korshak. Retired FBI Agent William R. Roemer, who tracked Korshak for three decades, described him as "the primary link between big business and organized crime." Korshak was called in to settle problems that seemed intractable--particularly labor relations disputes between unions and large corporations. (He played an instrumental role in settling a major dispute between the fledgling United Farm Workers Union and Schenley Industries in the mid-1960s.)
The first bug in FBI history was planted in July 29, 1959 via a black bag job at Jimmy Celano’s Custom Tailors. It was the downtown Chicago headquarters of the Chicago Mob. “Jimmy Celano had a private office was the meeting place, mornings and afternoons, of the Chicago mob. The listening device was an old World War Two microphone. Today the FBI have microphones the size of your fingernail that don’t have to be wired. This one was the size of a pineapple, and it was hard to conceal behind the radiator and the wire extended out of the building into telephone lines. This bug worked for nearly six years, including the summer of 1965.
In 1957, the FBI opened a file on Korshak. Back in 1957 the FBI “just never investigated lawyers in those days.” Jerry Gladden, the chief investigator for the Chicago Crime Commission, had been a sergeant in the intelligence unit of the Chicago police department. He stated that Bobby Kennedy’s policy was Chicago’s policy. “We didn’t look at any political guys if we wanted to stay in the unit.”
The hundreds of millions lent by the Teamster’s Pension Fund to Vegas casinos and other mafia enterprises were arranged largely by Sidney Korshak, who collected a generous fee for every deal made.
Sidney Korshak, who moved among these men, who knew the secrets that they knew—not only the secrets of the forbidden anatomies of Vegas and Hollywood, of politics and the Mob, but also the vaster secrets, that Sam Giancana knew, Hoffa knew and Rosselli knew—and more. In summer of 1979, the Justice Department began an investigation of the Riviera casino reportedly focusing on Korshak.
In 1982 the New Jersey Casino Control Commission denied Playboy Enterprises a casino license after raising questions about Korshak’s involvement with the company. In 1985 the same commission rejected the Hilton (hotel) Corporation’s application primarily because Hilton had kept Korshak on the payroll for thirteen years.
Korshak died of heart disease on January 20, 1996, at his home in Beverly Hills, without ever having a criminal conviction against him (or even an indictment, according to his New York Times obituary).
(Sources: A History of the Jews in America by Howard M. Sachar and (The Jewish) Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers by Gus Russo (2006) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1997/04/The-Man-Who-Kept-The-Secrets
CIA money laundering of the Golden Lily fund or the Yamashita's Gold for its covert operations
I need to now return to the history of the end of World War Two when the CIA secretly funding their covert war against People’s Republic of China by trafficking in opium.
In an official report on the occupation prepared by General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters and published in 1950. One task of the US occupation of Japan dealt with collecting and putting under guard the great hoards of gold, silver, precious stones, foreign postage stamps, engraving plates, and all currency not legal in Japan. (aka Golden Lily fund or the Yamashita's Gold) that the Japanese had hidden in the Philippines.
Emperor Hirohito’s brother, Prince Chichibu was tasked to colleting this loot. It was assumed Chichibu had spent the war on medical leave from the army, recuperating from tuberculosis at a country estate beneath Mount Fuji, nursed by his wife. In fact, he traveled all over occupied China and Southeast Asia supervising the collection of plunder, using hospital ships to carry much of it to manila for planned future shipment to Japan. From early 1943 until mid-1945, he was in the Philippines overseeing the hiding of this loot in bunkers, in vaults beneath old Spanish churches and in vast underground tunnel complex. MacArthur’s forces with the help of Philippine Army forces discovered this loot, most likely thru the use of torture. (Source: The Yamato Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave, pp. 18-19)
General MacArthur, President Truman, John Foster Dulles, and others, knew all about the stolen loot and the continuing extraordinary wealth of the Japanese elite, despite losing the war. The bulk of this wealth was collected and placed under United States military custody.
Some $2 billion in gold bullion that had been sunk in Tokyo Bay and it was later recovered. By who, I don’t know for sure. Another great fortune discovered by the OSS in 1946 was $13 billion in war loot amassed by Japanese mafia boss Yoshio Kodama when was a rear admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy in charge of plundering the Asian nation’s mafias and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan’s wartime drug trafficking throughout Asia. After the war to avoid prosecution for war crimes and to get out of Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, Kodama gave over $100 million in US currency to the CIA. He was also, amazingly, put on Major General Charles A. Willoughby’s payroll, and remained on the CIA payroll for the rest of his life. Willoughby was the head of US military intelligence under MacArthur. This Japanese prison was used by the US military forces from December 1945 through May 1952 and housed some 2000 Japanese war criminals.
Late in 1945 President Truman was briefed by Colonel Edward Lansdale in Washington. Robert B. Anderson flew back to Tokyo with Lansdale, for discussions with General MacArthur. After some days of meetings, MacArthur and Anderson flew secretly to Manila, where they were taken by Lansdale to some of the sites in the mountains and to six other sites around Aparri at the northern tip of Luzon. MacArthur and Anderson were able to stroll down row after row of gold bars of the Golden Lilly fund.
Since McCloy and Lovett retired from their government jobs in 1945, they became private advisers to Anderson, who was later appointed by Eisenhower to serve as Secretary of the Navy and as Secretary of the Treasury.
It is interesting to know about the wealthy elite family backgrounds of Lovett and McCloy. Lovett’s father was the President and chairman of the board of the Union Pacific Railroad and a Director of both The National City Bank of New York and Western Union. Lovett married a daughter of banking family of the Brown Brothers Harriman & Company. In 1926 Lovett became a partner of this bank. It was one of the largest banks in the US. In addition to flying to the Philippines to see the Golden Lilly loot, in December 1945 Lovett returned to working at Brown Brothers Harriman.
From July 1947 to January 1949 Lobett became the Deputy Secretary of State for President Truman. For the next two years Lovett went back to working at this bank. From October 1950 to September 1951 he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Defense, following that he was Secretary of Defense until Eisenhower became president in January 1953.
John McCloy was born to a poor family. In April 1941, he was made Assistant Secretary of War but held only civilian responsibilities, especially the purchase of war materials for the Army, Lend Lease, the draft, and issues of intelligence and sabotage. After the war he was invited by Nelson Rockefeller to join the law firm used by Rockefeller family, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The law firm's most important client was the Rockefeller family's bank, Chase Manhattan. In 1947 McCloy was appointed president of the World Bank. In 1949, he replaced Lucius Clay, as High Commissioner for Germany.
According to CIA Officer Ray Cline and others, between 1945 and 1947 the gold bullion was recovered with the aid of Colonel Lansdale. It was trucked to warehouses at the US Navy base in Subic Bay, or the US Air Force base at Clark Field and then secretly moved by ship to 176 accounts at banks in 42 countries. If this recovery of a huge mass of stolen gold became known, the market price of gold would plummet, and thousands of people would come forward to claim it, and Washington would be bogged down resolving ownership.
Robert B. Anderson and OSS Officer Paul Helliwell traveled all over the planet, setting up these black gold accounts. In 1953, to reward Anderson, President Eisenhower nominated him to a Cabinet post as Secretary of the Navy and in 1954, to Deputy Secretary of Defense. In 1957 during second Eisenhower’s second term, he appointed Anderson his Secretary of the Treasury and he served until 1961. After that, Anderson resumed private life, but remained intimately involved with the CIA’s worldwide network of front banks, set up by Paul Helliwell.
Anderson had had a relationship with the CIA’s assassination operation targeting Fidel Castro, but I have no addition details other than to say that Helliwell used Castle Bank so the CIA could fund the Bay of Pigs invasion and afterwards to pay for the covert operations against Castro’s economy (aka operation Mongoose). The way this was done is by laundering US government funds into a front corporation and then the front corporation name is all that noted when money is deposited into a bank. Doing this the CIA could withdrawal money out of a bank to pay for it secret operations.
CIA officer William Colby was the lawyer for Helliwell's CIA covert banks. Colby was also the lawyer for former Brigadier General Earle Cocke. Cocke controlled the loot captured Golden Lily fund and the captured Nazi loot (Black Eagle fund) by the US at the end of World War Two. This gold was not placed into the US Treasury or returned to the nations from which the Japanese Army or the Nazis had stolen it.
BG Cocke’s ten paged deposition in US District Court, Southern District of New York, April 13, 2000, is a critical starting point for understanding the fund. Cocke testifies he has reported on the gold to every President since Truman and that the Secretary of War proposed the idea of a trust to President Roosevelt. (Sources: Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold, by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave,” Verso, 2005, pp 96-99, and Guyatt’s Project Hammer Files),
Former Brigadier General Earle Cocke was a financial advisor to every President since Truman until Cocke's death in 2000.
I assume Deck & Company had a lot to do with turning this gold into cash given this company’s business was selling gold and also laundering money for the CIA.
Nicholas L. “Nick” Deak was born to a family of bankers and lawyers in a part of Transylvania that now part of Rumania, was the son of a Hungarian a prominent banking family, who in 1939 they immigrated to the US. He joined the US Army in 1942 and because of he knew languages and had knowledge of Europe, he was quickly given a job in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He parachuted into Romania. He was assigned to our Middle East Headquarters at Cairo and was given responsibility in the Eastern Mediterranean with particular emphasis on the Turkish border, Cyprus and Crete. After the US Army’s landed in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, Army Captain Deak was assigned to intelligence work in Burma, Thailand and Malaya.
In August, 1945, Deak was in charge of an OSS unit, at the airport in Rangoon, Burma, accepted on behalf of the United States, the sword of surrender of the Commanding General of the Japanese forces in Burma. He wound up commanding an OSS unit in Indochina and was sent, at the end of his military duties, to Shanghai in China, being discharged with the rank of Major. For another year, he continued his intelligence and political duties in Asia with the Department of State to Vietnam to assess the situation, line up support for the French colonial forces, and observe French counter-insurgency operations, when Vietnam’s communist guerrillas started to rise up against the French.
Returning to New York in 1946, the CIA helped him found Deak-Perera as a CIA front company tracking foreign currency transactions so it could keep an eye on who was moving money around countries. Deak and Company laundered CIA money funding armed coups and friendly regimes, thereby hiding the US government’s political warfare operations. With a PhD in economics Deak resumed his business he had started in 1939, specializing in foreign currency trading, gold coins and bullion Deak & Company became his holding company as he started two subsidiaries, Deak-Perera Wall Street, and the Deak-Perera International Banking Corporation.
Deak handled CIA funds in 1953 when they overthrew Iran’s Premier Mohammed Mossadeq and restored the Shah to the throne. In that instance, the money went through Zurich and a Deak correspondent office in Beirut. During the Vietnam War, Deak & Company allegedly moved CIA funds through its Hong Kong office for conversion into French Indochinese money (piastres) in Saigon on the black market. Deak officials in Hong Kong and Macao helped the CIA investigate Far East gold smuggling in the mid-1950s. It has also been suggested that Deak’s Hong Kong office may have laundered, with the CIA’s knowledge, illegal contributions to the Nixon reelection campaign in 1972, although it is unknown whether Deak & Company was aware of the precise nature of that operation.
From 1969 to 1975, Deak & Company was the conduit used by the Lockheed Corporation to transfer money intended by Lockheed to bribe Japanese officials. That bribery resulted in a criminal conviction of a former Prime Minister, Kakuei Tanaka. In 15 deliveries, Deak & Company moved $8.3 million to Hong Kong, where a Spanish-born priest representing Lockheed took the cash and carried it to Japan in a flight bag or in cardboard boxes labeled ''oranges.'' Lockheed Corporation came in and asked Deak to make a payment. The Lockheed Bribery Scandal, with Deak and the CIA at its center, led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the first ever law criminalizing bribery of foreign officials.
The New Republic (magazine) reported in its April 10, 1976 issue, leaks from the Church Committee on Deak-Perera’s role as the CIA’s money mover. The most serious charges involve the laundering of tens of millions of dollars garnered by cocaine traffickers who deposited $7.6 million. The money was later transferred to Miami, Panama and Colombia.
In 1978 Deak & Company and one of its vice presidents were convicted on criminal charges of willfully failing to file reports on about $11 million deposited by two Philippine businessmen. The company was fined a total of $60,000.
By the early 1980s, the company was the largest retailer of gold bullion and the oldest and largest retail foreign exchange dealer in the United States. The company was the country's leading seller of South Africa's Krugerrand. Between November 1980 and March 1982, $97 million largely from cocaine profits was deposited in Deak-Perera accounts. Millions of dollars often was brought to the company's downtown office, in cash packed in cardboard boxes, according to the commission.
In 1983, a federal informant accused the company of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in Colombian cartel money.
In 1984, the Reagan Commission on Organized Crime spent most of the year trying to compel Nick Deak to testify before the committee. The commission report stated that an Internal Revenue Service investigation showed that Deak-Perera failed to file 1,266 transaction reports that are required for deposits of $10,000 or more. In addition, the report said, the Customs Service found that Deak-Perera had failed to file 556 reports relating to $47.5 million in cash that it had physically transported into or out of the country.
Nicholas Deak's son, R. Leslie Deak, after graduating from college joined the family firm. He rose to the position of Senior Vice President, when in 1984 the firm was caught in its money-laundering of tens or hundreds of millions of Columbian drug money in exchange for gold.
Because of such failures to make proper reports, the Treasury Department December 10, 1984 levied Deak & Company a $572,000 civil penalty, whereupon he declared bankruptcy in 1984.
Documents filed in the bankruptcy proceedings show that most of the large depositors were South Americans, especially Argentineans. Deck and Company’s the most valued asset was its Swiss bank. (Source: The CIA’s Global Drug Connection and Deep Events, by Peter Dale Scott, October 12, 2008)
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/10/business/collapse-of-deak-company.html
Helliwell, former OSS chief William Donovan, and other CIA officers with almost $5 million of CIA covert operations funds set up Mercantile Bank and Trust and later, a banked named Castle Bank and Trust in the Bahamas. The bank was used by the CIA to launder and funnel money for covert military operations, including those at Andros Island (Bahamas), a staging area for anti-Castro activities. CIA used the law firm of Helliwell, Melrose, and DeWolf.
(Source: The Crimes of the Patriots by Johathan Kwitny (1987) and The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy (1972, 1991)
Also large amounts of drug trafficking profits from the Thai, Taiwanese, and South Vietnamese generals went through Castle Bank & Trust and the Florida real estate company General Development Company and the gambling casino Resorts International in the Bahamas owned by Louis A. “Lou” Chesler. http://911truth.org/cia-global-drug-connection-deep-events/
(The Strength of the Wolf, by Douglas Valentine, pgs. 260- 261)
Burton W. Kanter, a Chicago tax lawyer, worked with Helliwell to establish Castle Bank and Trust. The bank had only 300 depositors, including Richard Nixon. The financial backbone of the bank was the Chicago Jewish billionaire A. N. Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain. Castle Bank was a Bahamian bank thru which Kanter conducted off a shore tax evasion business for the Pritzker’s.
Kanter seems to have specialized in hiding mafia profits from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to evade paying higher income taxes. Kanter was also busy working in California on the La Costa real estate development. This company was also in partnership with Moe Dalitz, a mafia king-pin from the Cleveland syndicate/crime family. Dalitz was one of the several mafia guys who owned share of Desert Inn and the Stardust gambling casinos in Las Vegas.
With a Harvard law degree A.N. Pritzler took his family’s fortune from $250,000 in the 1920s to an estimated $2 billion at his death in 1986. The Pritzkers are among the ten riches families in the United State and owners of the Hyatt hotel chain worth an estimated $29 billion in 2014. Pritzler was a tax attorney for a lot of people in Chicago mafia, beginning under Al Capone. He controlled Frontier Finance, a loan company in Chicago. The president of Frontier Finance was Frank Buccieri. And Buccieri's brother was the feared loan shark Fiore "Fifi" Buccieri, who in May 1969 Life magazine reported that he was the leader of Sam Giancana's assassination squads. Buccieri would send his men to stake out employment offices. These thugs would pass out business cards to the unemployed that listed Buccieri as a loan officer. The mob generally viewed unemployed workers as poor loan prospects; however, Buccieri was so effective at intimidating his victims that they would steal or rob to pay him off.
In 1972 the IRS became suspicious of the Pritzkers after checks of a San Francisco drug trafficker were traced to Castle Bank and Trust. The IRS looked into the bank and discovered that two of the boards of directors were not real people. An informant at Castle Bank confirmed that the bank customers kept Chicago accounts set up in Castle's name, withdrawing cash while avoiding US income taxes. (Source: Professor Alan A. Block, of crime, law and justice, and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University)
https://forward.com/culture/208841/where-the-pritzker-money-goes/
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/1124/142a.html#150d3e7b4cf2
Paul Helliwell was fronting for the CIA in its ownership of Florida Bank Shares with his partner Edward P. “EP” Barry. Florida Bank Shares was a bank holding company that owned the Bank of Perrine in Key West, Florida, and Bank of Cutler Ridge, in Cutler Ridge, FL (a suburb south of Miami). The Bank of Perrine was the preferred depository of Meyer Lansky’s money moving it back into the US after being cleaned up thru Bank of World Commerce in the Bahamas, established by Lansky’s front man John Pullman.
It is hard to tell if Helliwell was using the CIA’s money or his own. At the end of World War Two Barry had supervised an OSS team that captured Nazi gold and jewels, the Black Eagle Fund loot.
EP Barry was simultaneously a key shareholder in Florida Bank Shares and in the Bank of New York-Inter Maritime on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Barry represents the continuity between the Helliwell intelligence-CIA drug connection which flourished until 1972.
In 1973 agents of the IRS were able to photograph the Castle Bank's customer list and found the names of 308 the Bank’s customers who had moved $250 million to foreign numbered accounts (Operation Tradewinds). Depositors included Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, Penthouse magazine publisher Robert Guccione, and some major organized crime figures---Morris Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, and Samuel A. Tucker. Also IRS learned that Kleinman and Paul Helliwell had numerous real estate investments in common with the Pritzker were owners of the Hyatt hotel chain.
This was the single biggest tax-evasion arrest in IRS history, according to the Wall Street Journal, pressure from the CIA alleging national security reasons resulted in the Justice Department dropping the case. By the time Helliwell died from emphysema in 1976, Castle Bank had been liquidated and the CIA moved their money laundering operations to Nugan Hand Bank in Australia (which I discuss below). (Source: Wall Street Journal by Jim Drinkhall)
Donald C. Alexander was appointed as IRS commissioner in May 1973 for the last full year of the Nixon administration. On Aug. 9, 1973, about ten weeks into his job as commissioner, Alexander announced that he had shut down the Special Service Staff of the IRS, which had been investigating critics of Nixon and his Vietnam policies. Hoover died in May 1972 and never really used the FBI to fight the mafia.
In May 1973 Alexander shut down Operation Tradewinds in the Bahamas, resulting in failing to prosecute 488 pending tax-evasion cases. Alexander also stopped the practice of using a question on the IRS form 1040 which asked tax payers if they had any foreign bank accounts and he stopped prosecuting under the 1971 Narcotics Trafficking Tax Program, just as cocaine trafficking was flooding into the US. The prompted many veteran IRS agents to resign in protest.
(Source: Mr. Mob, The Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz, pages 239-242)
In the 1960s and especially the 1970s America began to import more and more oil from the Middle East. But the negative effect on the US balance of payments was offset by increasing arms and aviation sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia. A team composed of CIA officer Miles Copeland and CIA contract agent Edward K. Moss to distribute bribes not just in Saudi Arabians, but around the world, including cash to US congressmen and President Nixon.
In 1971 the FBI had advised the CIA that reportedly “the Cellini brothers are in contact with Tony Varona through Edward Moss and have offered to contribute as high as two million dollars to finance anti-Castro operations.” Tony Varona was an anti-Castro Cuban was took part in the Bay of Pigs Operation. In November 1962 the Cellini brothers made an offered of two million dollars through Edward Moss with the understanding that they would receive privileged treatment ‘in the Cuba of the future.
According to a CIA memo, Edward Moss was a past president of the Public Relations Society of America. At the same time, according to a verbal report from Dun and Bradstreet to then CIA agent Edwin P. Wilson, “Moss’ operation seems to be government contracts for the underworld and possibly surfaces mafia money in legitimate business activities.” In November 1962, the CIA’s Office of Security, decided to secure a Covert Security Approval (CSAS) for the CIA’s political warfare staff to use Moss as a contract agent.
Moss’s mistress was Julia Cellini. Her brother Dino Cellini was had a long been associated with the narcotics and white slavery rackets in Cuba. In 1972, Meyer Lansky was indicted in Miami, along with Dino Cellini (Eddie’s brother). One of the charges in the indictment was that “in 1968 Lansky maintained at least some control over the Paradise Island Casino in the Bahamas. Funds from the Paradise Island casino were being secretly carried to Nixon and Bebe Rebozo, by a casino employee, Seymour (Sy) Alter. Alter was an associate on the one hand of Lansky and his man Eddie Cellini, and since 1962, he was a friend of Nixon and Rebozo The funds came from the Paradise Island Bridge Company, a company partly owned by an officer of Benguet International, a firm represented by Paul Helliwell. The bridge had to be build to connect the small Paradise Island with Nassau in the Bahamas. http://911truth.org/cia-global-drug-connection-deep-events/
According to the FBI, Dino Cellini was associated with Joseph F. “Joe” Nesline a mafia boss who ran a gambling on football games in Washington DC. He and Meyer Lansky systematically used sexual blackmail to compromise a number of people in Washington who were politically influential.
Cathy Dieter (alias Heidi Rikin) ended up working for the notorious DC mafia boss Joe Nesline as a stripper and prostitute at a clubs just a few blocks from the White House. Nixon’s White House aide John Dean knew Cathy Dieter and her girlfriend and future wife, Maureen, (nee: Maureen “Mo” Biner). Maureen was friends with Dieter when they both lived/grew up in Texas. When Maureen moved to Washington DC, she became roommates with Dieter. In Maureen Dean’s book Mo: A Woman's View of Watergate, she describes her good friendship with Dieter. A confidential source confirmed that Dean and Cathy Dieter were great friends. Maureen and John Dean were married in October 1972 at the height of the Watergate cover-up.
Dean knew about Joe Nesline’s prostitution ring and he wanted to get sexual dirt on Democrats to feather his own nest at the White House. Dieter's kept a black book (address book) and/or diaries that contained the names of her customers (Johns) and who were famous athletes, mobsters, movie stars, bookies, playboy millionaires, politicians and government officials of every stripe from the 1960s and 1970s. And noted were the phone numbers of Fred Black, LBJ’s neighbor and close friend of Bobby Baker, Morris Jaffe, LBJ’s financial adviser, Deputy Attorney General Jeb Magruder, and the names of two key members of the Senate Watergate Investigation Committee, US Senator Lowell Weicker (R-CT) and law professor Sam Dash. http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/14719
Nixon biographer Anthony Summers quotes Nixon’s Deputy Chief of the Office of Protocol Nick Ruwe. Ruwe said he, “was always using those call girls at the place next to the DNC.” This meant Cathy Dieter’s sixth floor apartment (brothel) in the Columbia Plaza next door to the Watergate building. The Office of Protocol makes arrangements for White House social events and for the visits of foreign dignitaries to the nation's capital. Nixon’s top advance man, Ron Walker, said he knew of the brothel next to the DNC because “I had colleagues that used call girl rings.” (Source: The Arrogance of Power, by Anthony Summers, (Viking, 2000), p. 422) http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/02nd_Issue/dhunt.html
James McCord of Watergate fame was an allegedly retired top official of the CIA Office of Security. One of the secret operations of the Office of Security utilized male and female prostitutes and other sex operatives for purposes of compromising and blackmailing public figures, information gathering, and control. McCord was anxious to cover the CIA's role in this and at one point he wrote to his superior, General Gaynor, urging him to "flood the newspapers with leaks or anonymous letters" to discredit those who wanted to establish the responsibility of "the company" (aka the CIA).
According to an engineer, Michael Stevens, highly-sophisticated eavesdropping devices were put in various hotel rooms setup by E. Howard Hunt and James McCord as combination "dens of compromise" and psychological data-gathering field laboratories. High-priced prostitutes helped stage episodes with political figures that were worthy of blackmail. Stevens was the proprietor of the Chicago-based Stevens Research Laboratories and he said he was visited in early May, 1972 by James McCord and he placed an order for ten eavesdropping devices (bugs).
Miriam Furbershaw claims that she rented her basement apartment to James McCord two or three years before the Watergate scandal. She also told the FBI that McCord had several male visitors, including E. Howard Hunt. Intriguingly, Hunt claims to have never met McCord until introduced to him in 1972 by G. Gordon Liddy. There is ample evidence that Hunt and McCord knew each other in 1963 if not earlier, having worked extensively in the CIA's Bay of Pigs operation. [Secret Agenda, by James Hougan (1991) p.19)
Furbershaw said she ultimately evicted McCord because on more than one occasion he had young girls visiting during the night. When she saw a young woman crying hysterically on the bed, she ordered McCord to leave. Author Hougan claims that McCord's blackmailing activities were illegal CIA-sanctioned operations the purposes of which were to collect personality information for use in personality predicting-models by CIA psychiatrists. He further claims that McCord was engaging in similar if not identical operations at the Watergate; that McCord compromised the DNC "cover" operation to protect the CIA-sponsored call girl operations or other operations known only to McCord and or Hunt.
The CIA’s Office of Security maintained a "fag file" of some 300,000 US citizens, with heavy stress on homosexuals. This was the office of CIA that spied on CIA officers. (Source: Secret Agenda, by James Hougan (1991) http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/02nd_Issue/dhunt.html
In the 1970s, Adnan Khashoggi “the richest man in the world,” hired Edward Moss as his public relations agent. Khashoggi is alleged to have given $1 million to Nixon covertly in 1972, in a briefcase left behind in Nixon’s San Clemente residence.
In addition, Khashoggi is known to have deposited several million dollars in Bebe Rebozo’s the bank. He then withdrew all but $200,000 of it in the form of checks written to “cash” and signed over to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. It was as if Khashoggi was using the Sands casino as his personal laundromat. He was known as “the biggest high roller ever to hit Las Vegas,” and would lose as much as $250,000 on one bet. Las Vegas casinos were the preferred sites for the laundering of money (disguised as gambling losses). In the 1970s the Sands was now owned by Howard Hughes; but two veterans of the Lansky era, Carl Cohen and Jack Entratter, continued to work in the casino.
The Sands was one of the Las Vegas casinos originally part-owned by Meyer Lansky, and from which proceeds were skimmed to be deposited in the Miami National Bank.
Khashoggi replicated the politics of corrupt influence through money and sex. His contributions to Nixon.s election campaigns, some legal and some illicit, were investigated by the Senate Watergate Committee.
Las Vegas casinos continued to be preferred sites for the laundering of money, disguised as gambling losses. This practice was so well established that eventually, in US Customs Operation Casablanca. This was a sting operation wherein Customs created a fake casino near Las Vegas at which top-level Mexican bank officials congregated and "avidly discussed how to handle the latest half-billion dollars in drug proceeds already on hand." In one important case, thousands of dollars in money wrappers from the Stardust casino were found on a suspected drug-smuggling plane in Florida.
There are also reports that in addition to money, Khashoggi "used sex to win over US executives." The bill for the madam who supplied girls en masse to his yacht in the Mediterranean ran to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
CIA officers Miles Copeland and James Critchfield became part of Khashoggi's milieu. They advised Khashoggi on diplomatic initiatives. James Critchfield was the chief of its Near East and South Asia division and he also served as the CIA's national intelligence officer for energy in the 1970s.
Lockheed, for one, was conspicuously absent from the list of military contractors who contributed illicitly to Nixon's 1972 election campaign. But there was no law prohibiting Lockheed’s official representative, Khashoggi, from cycling $200 million through the bank of Nixon's friend, Bebe Rebozo.
Dave Beck, Hoffa's predecessor as Teamster president, had served some prison time as a result of the McClellan Committee investigation of him. He still owed the government $1.3 million in taxes, penalties and interest which in 1972 was immediately collectible or the IRS would seize his properties. But in an unprecedented written agreement, Treasury Secretary John B. Connally Jr. granted Beck a five-year moratorium on his debt.
Teamster boss Frank Fitzsimmons' son Richard, a Detroit Teamster official who had been charged with misappropriating union funds. The Justice Department told the U.S. attorney in charge of the case in Detroit to drop the charges because the evidence was thin.
The big payoff came on July 17, 1972, when Fitzsimmons and the Teamsters Executive Board met at La Costa Country Club near San Diego. For the first time in its history, the Teamsters pledged that its huge membership would support a Republican Presidential campaign. It was estimated that more than $250,000 would be collected for the campaign from Teamster officials alone.
On February 8, 1973, Frank Fitzsimmons met in Palm Springs with people the FBI identified as members of the California Mafia. On the morning of February 13th, Fitzsimmons drove to El Toro Marine Air Station and joined Nixon on board Air Force One for the flight to Washington. And a few days later, the Justice Department shut down the FBI's wiretaps which let them know
of the new plans of Fitzsimmons and organized crime to use the Teamster pension funds.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the Committee to Re-Elect the President gave $10,000 to finance a surreptitious campaign to remove George Wallace's American Independent Party from the 1972 California ballot. And also that "$1,200 of the fund found its way to Joe Tomassi, head of the Nazi Party in California."
Richard J. Brenneke was a CIA pilot, computer programmer who had received a master’s degree from the University of Toronto in 1966. He testified to handling financial transfers worldwide for the CIA, commencing in 1968 and continuing until 1985. Brenneke testified that he was not laundering money when he was first was recruited into the CIA, but as he was selling mutual funds stock offshore in association with a company named United Financial Group until 1971. This was an overseas investment fund. In 1972 this firm's subsequent collapsed. It appears this was a CIA front company or a company that allowed under cover CIA officer to pretend they were working for this company.
Brenneke provided documentary information to the Securities and Exchange Commission during the trial at a civil fraud suit.
Brenneke testified that he had worked in Southeast Asia for Air America as a pilot, and in 1969 or 1970 his job with the CIA involved setting up a bank account for the International Fund for Mergers and Acquisitions (IFMA) in Panama. As a result he could ultimately control how the money transfers were handled. IFMA was connected to Ramon D'Onofrio, a Las Vegas financier. He said that IFMA was used to launder organized crime funds after CIA officer Robert “Bob” Kerritt recruited IFMA for its work in Central America operations until late 1972 or early 1973. Kerritt was Brenneke’s case officer (the guy he worked for).
Brenneke said his job involved opening bank accounts for the CIA, like the Banquo De Mexico in Panama City, Citibank in Mexico, more than one account in Madrid, an account in Brussels at Bank Lambert that was regularly used, accounts at Credit Suisse in Switzerland, the Bank of Credit & Commerce (BCCI), and Bank Hoffman. The money would be subsequently and almost immediately transferred to Spain or Liechtenstein. From there it went to Monte Carlo, and the ultimate destination was Zurich or Geneva, Switzerland. Brenneke said he established a bank account at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York City to bring money back into the US after it was laundered. Brenneke move $50 million in cash, he said.
”Back as 1968 and early 1969, we (CIA) had begun to launder money from organized crime families in New York. At that time, mafia boss John Gotti was an up and coming member of (the Gambino crime family in New York City)…I met him for the first time in 1969 to 1970 and the subject of the discussion was the financing of his organization…We used to wash their money overseas and put it in Switzerland in nice, safe places for them.” “Actually the CIA told me to do that on his behalf.” And that that Gotti had sent Salvatore “Sal” Reale his mafia associate to pay the CIA and receive the drugs. Reale was the head of Security at Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
He said the mafia needed drugs brought into the country on a reliable, safe basis. They also needed people taken out of the country or people brought into the country without alerting Customs or INS to the fact that they were being brought into the country. And the CIA performed these kinds of functions for them.#
On September 23, 1988, Brenneke voluntarily testified at the sentencing hearing of Heinrich “Harry” Rupp, a close friend who had been convicted of bank fraud. Brenneke testified that Rupp believed he was acting on behalf of the CIA in carrying out the fraud, which Brenneke said was part of a much wider CIA scheme to gain funding for covert operations by defrauding savings and loan associations. Brenneke said that he and Rupp had been involved in such covert matters since Brenneke's days at the CIA's Air America, beginning in 1967.
Brenneke testified that he had complained to CIA director William Casey about these activities on a number of occasions. and Casey‘s telephone logs should reflect phone calls made to him. Brenneke provided investigators with copies of bank records, corporation papers, and detailed testimony, wherein there could be little doubt that his testimony was true. Brenneke said since the mid-1970s he worked over the years with the US Customs Service sharing his information about narco-trafficking.
A CIA personnel specialist testified that Rupp had been trained by the CIA's Intermountain Aviation, and that the CIA had files on both Rupp and Brenneke. Two other intelligence operatives from Texas testified to collaborating Brenneke’s testimony.
Brenneke testified that in the 1980s, weapon shipments were met by members of the Panamanian Defense Forces and by Michael Harari. He identified Harari in congressional testimony as a Mossad agent and “Manuel Noriega‘s partner in a number of business deals in Panama.” He said he know this first hand because I had to deal with him.”
Brenneke testified of flying weapons from Mena, AR to Panama along with military personnel that were trained in Arkansas. Contra pilots were trained in Arkansas for Reagan’s secret war in Honduras and El Salvador and that weapons frequently came either from Army National Guard stores or through the Tamiami Gun Shop in Miami, Florida. His co-pilot on many of these flights was Harry Rupp. He went on to described drug-trafficking flights from Medellin, Columbia to Mena,AR or to Iron Mountain Ranch in Texas. He identified Rich Mountain Aviation at Mena Airport (Inter-Mountain Regional Airport) owned and operated by Fred Hampton. It was a CIA front airport and aircraft maintenance company, he said.
CIA boss William E. Colby returned to CIA headquarters in 1971 and became executive director of CIA to DCI Richard Helms. His prior assignment he had been in charge of the Phoenix Operation in South Vietnam. Colby replaced Helms on September 4, 1973.
http://www.pbsblog.com/pdf/EDrugging_America_part.pdf
(Source Drugging America—A Trojan Horse by Rodney Stich, pages 135 to 139)
"West Linn man linked to fraud inquiries," The Oregonian (Portland), Dec. 10, 1986: The Brenneke Report by James Long,.
"Burning Bush," Willamnette Week (Portland), July 14-20,1988, by Jim Redden,
http://www.pbsblog.com/pdf/EDrugging_America_part.pdf
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/hayes2.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3800.htm
https://nacla.org/article/renaissance-man
(Source: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed and John Cummings, pgs. 28, 61 -62 and 64)
Aki Sawahata was Terry Reed's CIA case officer. Sawahata's CIA front company Overseas International (OSI) was incorporated in 1984 and specialized in exporting bulky commodities to Japan. (Ibid. p.68-69)
Adler Berriman “Berry” Seal was a Medellín cartel pilot who also operated out of Mena, Arkansas, between 1976 and 1984, transporting marijuana, cocaine and later quaaludes from South America into the US. A CIA’s inspector general report stated, “the CIA had conducted a training exercise at Mena airport in partnership with another federal agency and that companies located at the airport had performed “routine aviation-related services on equipment owned by the CIA”. https://michaelruark.wordpress.com/2016/11/06/90-heroin/
The Vietnam War and laundering opium profits to fund CIA operations
In March 1973 Olmsted’s bank holding company, International Bank of Washington DC, bought 66 percent of the capital stock of the failing (Helliwell and CIA’s) Mercantile Bank in the Bahamas (Castle Bank’s predecessor), even though the officers of International Bank knew the actual financial health of Mercantile Bank was very bad. International Bank “had a reputation as a CIA bank.”
In 1955, retired Major General George Olmsted purchased control of International Bank. Olmsted was the former head of OSS China during World War Two. His US Navy record only shows him assigned as the Assistant Chief of Staff (G-5), China Theater from November 1944 to December 1945. This put in the line of need-to-know about the Golden Lilly fund.
Olmsted expanded his father’s insurance business (Travelers Mutual Casualty Company of Des Moines) and got rich. In 1959, Olmsted purchased Financial General Corporation, the 7th largest bank holding company in the US. Financial General Corporation was a bank holding company which held controlling interests in 26 banks located in seven states and the District of Columbia. He was the most experienced person to hid the Golden Lilly and Black Eagle loot for the CIA’s use.
By 1976, the year that both Castle and Mercantile were collapsing, simultaneous with the closure of Castle Bank's Nassau office, Nugan Hand Bank launched its formal banking operations in the nearby Cayman Islands. The opening of Caribbean branches, a new area for Nugan Hand, and recruitment of retired CIA officers gave it a corporate structure similar to the collapsed Castle Bank. A former CIA agent named Kevin Mulcahy gave details to the National Times of Sydney about the CIA's use of Nugan Hand for shifting money for various covert operations around the globe. http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/6-27-03/discussion.cgi.24.html
Mercantile and Castle Bank interlocked closely with another bank in the Bahamas called Underwriters Bank, Limited. Here the majority holder with 95 percent of the stock was owned by the American International Underwriters Corporation (AIUC), which began as part of the insurance empire headed by former OSS contract agent Cornelius V. “CV“ Starr. AIUC is now part of the giant multinational American International Group Inc. (AIG). AIG is the biggest foreign insurance company in Japan. Helliwell’s CIA front Pacific Corporation was insured by AIG.
Starr founded his insurance company in Shanghai prior to World War Two. In 2018, more than a third of its $40 billion in revenue now comes from the Far East. (Source: The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA by Bradley F. Smith, p.133, (1983)
By the 1960s and 1970s, mafia boss of Tampa, FL Santos Trafficante, Jr. was doing business with Laotian warlords and also with Ngo Dinh Nhu, the brother of Ngo Dinh Diem (President of South Vietnam). Ngo Dinh Nhu collected protection money for allowing the Hmong and Montagnard tribesmen in the highlands of Vietnam to farm opium poppies. One of the secrets of the Vietnam War was the both brothers were at the Vietnamese end of the Corsican heroin trail. These tribesmen were rewarded for fighting for South Vietnam with free CIA airplane transportation for their opium crop via the CIA front company Air America. In addition, from 1968 on anti-Castro Cubans associated with Trafficante Jr’s were in effective control of the traffic in heroin and cocaine throughout the United States. The Florida capo's only gangland partner of significance was the Cotroni family in Montreal. (Ibid. p. 345)
According to Alfred W. McCoy (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade) in 1968 CIA officers Ted Shackley and Thomas G. Clines arranged a meeting in Saigon between Santo Trafficante and Laotian, war lord Vang Pao to establish a heroin-smuggling operation from Southeast Asia to the United States. According to journalist Joel Bainerman it was at this point that Shackley and his "Secret Team" became involved in the drug trade. (Source: The Crimes of a President, Joel Bainermann, (1989)
According to political activist and educator Daniel Sheehan: “From late 1973 until April of 1975, Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage disbursed, from the secret, Laotian-based, Vang Pao opium fund, vastly more money than was required to finance even the highly intensified Phoenix Project in Vietnam. The money in excess of that used in Vietnam was secretly smuggled out of Vietnam in large suitcases, by Richard Secord and Thomas Clines and carried into Australia, where it was deposited in a secret, personal bank account (privately accessible to Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Secord). During this same period of time between 1973 and 1975, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines caused thousands of tons of US weapons, ammunition, and explosives to be secretly taken from Vietnam and stored at a secret "cache" hidden inside Thailand." This money, with the help of Raphael Quintero, found its way into the Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney. The bank was founded by Michael Hand, a CIA operative in Laos and Frank Nugan an Australian businessman. http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsecordR.htm
In 1968 Trafficante himself went on an extended business trip to the Far East, beginning in Hong Kong, where he had located his emissary Frank C. Furci , a young mafioso from Tampa, Florida.. After a slow 1965-1966 start, Furci through his business, Maradem, Ltd., cornered the market on Saigon's night spots catering to GIs. He even ran officer and soldier mess halls, and he had set up a chain of heroin labs in Hong Kong to serve the addicted GIs. Furci used his control over NCO clubs and base mess halls to force legitimate wholesalers to pay a fixed percentage of their profits in order to get work. With the profits from heroin, Maradem's competitors were gradually squeezed out of business.
From Hong Kong, Trafficante journeyed to Saigon, registering at the Continental Palace hotel owned by the Corsican Franchini family. His last stop was in Singapore, where he contacted a branch of the splintered ethnically Chinese/Taiwanese mafia. Traffiicante opened that door with the help of Frank Furci giving him access to Southeast Asia's overseas Chinese. There was no way around the Nationalist Chinese suppliers and middle men.
By early 1970, Meyer Lansky, facing charges of business illegalities, turned over control to Trafficante and fled to Israel. (Source: The Great Heroin Coup - Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism by Henrik Kruger, pps. 141-152
M. Bernie Houghton was discharged from the US military in 1946 and went into business selling surplus US military equipment in Southeast Asia and opened a restaurant and bar. He appears to have been a CIA contract agent who moved in and out of doing missions for the CIA. Houghton allegedly took the place of Helliwell operating Sea Supply, Inc. in Bangkok. Regular visitors to the Bourbon and Beefsteak Bar included two of the CIA chiefs of station at Canberra, Australia, Milton Corley Wonus (1975–1980) and John D. Walker. Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Boyd went to work for Houghton. Boyd was a former US embassy military attaché in Latin America.
In the 1970s, he was involved with the CIA front bank, Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney, Australia. It was involved in CIA money laundering and their political warfare operation that overthrew the democratically elected government of Australia. That is, making sure only fascist leaning candidates got elected especially ones do did not support the US’s war in South Vietnam.
US Air Force Colonel Allan Parks claims that Houghton was active in the drug trade in the 1970s. "There's no doubt about it, he'd fly anything. The Golden Triangle, that's where he got his opium from. There was one flight, he flew in slot machines. He did some deals over in India." In 1971 Col. Parks was the senior military advisor to the US Ambassador to Loas and he directed a secret operation training Laotian pilots.
The CIA had develop a large secret air force using front companies like Air America, Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, and Air Asia which were self-sustaining, profit-making business shipping opium to South Vietnam. According to Daniel Hopsicker (Barry and the Boys).
Nixon’s Foreign Policy
In January 1969, a North Korean MiG-21 fighter shot down a U.S. Navy EC-121 SIGINT aircraft, killing all 31 crewmembers, including nine military cryptologists.
How the China Lobby Shaped America
The China Lobby was the first of the big foreign lobbies to blossom after passage of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. More accurately it should be called the Taiwanese Lobby (aka Republic of China /ROC/ lobby). CIA operation Mockingbird funds were given to them.
The China Lobby demanded and won billions of dollars in US military and economic aid for Chiang’s dictatorship, first on mainland China and then on Taiwan. Exploiting the wave of anti-Communism during the McCarthy era, it also ruthlessly suppressed any criticism of Nationalist China’s shortcomings like drug trafficking and any moves toward diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China. Republicans who rejected criticism of Chiang’s corrupt regime and attacked the Truman administration for not sending enough financial and military aid to prevent the “fall of China.”
In April 1952 Max Ascoli editor of the Reporter magazine wrote, “While what is left of Chiang’s army is rusting in Formosa (aka Taiwan), the Lobby’s operators are employing all their mental and financial resources in the United States…In the last couple of years, they have had remarkable success. Once more the big lie has proved to be unanswerable and un-debatable.”
The Nationalist Chinese government (aka Taiwan) pumped more than $2,000,000 into the Republican campaign in 1948. In 1949, two members of Congress called for an investigation of the lobby’s “brazen power.” Rep. Mike Mansfield, who later became Senate majority leader, he accused Nationalist Chinese officials of diverting US aid to fund their public relations campaign (propaganda) directed at Americans. They sent $800,000 and as a result, squelched Mansfield’s proposed investigation. And the success of Republicans in the 1952 elections forced the CIA more into line with regard to US relations with Taiwan and the People’s Republic of the China. (Source: CIA officer/Colonel C. B. Hansen, USAF, memo to assistant CIA Director, March 19, 1952 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01731R001300130010-7.pdf
The China Lobby was organized by men close to the CIA, such as Philip Horton of Reporter magazine, who was the CIA station chief in Paris in the late 1940s, and Alfred Friendly of the Washington Post. Friendly was a World War Two OSS veteran who also worked in Paris in the late 1940s with numerous CIA officers, including E. Howard Hunt).
In 1947, OSS officer Philip C. Horton joined TIME magazine as an associate editor, and two years later, he became executive editor of THE REPORTER, where he remained until the magazine ceased publication in 1969. He then was a professor at the Fletcher School of Public Diplomacy at Tufts until he retired in 1977. After serving in the OSS, Horton most likely continued to work for the CIA’s Mockingbird operation (propaganda directed at Americans). The facts about the money Taiwan spent to shape US foreign policy was deleted from news articles published by these news companies. For a more about Operation Mockingbird read my books entitled, Some Unpopular History of the US.
According to historian Ross Koen, the China Lobby's first and best outfit was the Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations (COM), led by Marvin Liebman. COM’s an inner core consisted of zealots who were often motivated by self interest. A faction of the China Lobby consisted of US Republicans and the World Anti-Communists League. Founded in 1953, COM survived until 1971 (the year that the PRC/China was finally admitted to the UN and Taiwan removed as the representative of China). Taiwan’s (the Republic of China's) most recent request for admission to the UN, was turned down in 2007.
Liebman was a Jewish homosexual and in 1947, he worked with Irgun, a right-wing terrorist organization. He enjoyed a long-time friendship with William F. Buckley, Jr. and his family. Liebman viewed Buckley as an inspiring mentor. Despite being born into the Jewish faith, under Buckley's guidance Liebman had converted to Roman Catholicism.
Author Stanley D. Bachrack in his book The Committee of One Million: "China Lobby" Politics, 1953-1971, provided strong evidence of the covert CIA financing of COM.
In April 1948, William J. Goodwin was a member of the Christian (Catholic) Front and an anti-Semite and a Hitler apologist. He was hired as a $30,000-a-year public relations expert for the Chinese National Resources ...wined and dined Congressmen and Senators. Stanley Bachrack identified William J. Goodwin as a highly paid PR guy in 1949 for the China Lobby.
Henry Luce, the son of a missionary and founder of Time and Life magazines were members of the China lobby, as was Minnesota Congressman Walter Judd who was a former medical missionary in China. They formed a lobby group called “The Friends of China.” It was also connected with right-wing, anti-union organization like the American Fascists and other groups sympathetic to Hitler.
Marvin Liebman, Rep. Judd, and Harold L. Oram were all experts at raising money from CIA friends to finance anti communist activities abroad and at home. Together, for example, they organized in 1952 Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals (ARCI), sponsored by many of the same people who backed COM. Its purpose was to aid and publicize the plight of, Chinese intellectuals who fled the mainland. ARCI was in constant touch with the Psychological Strategy Board, set up under Truman to oversee all CIA psychological warfare operations. And the CIA gave the ARCI its initial funding (as well as more later on). ARCI executive chairman Christopher Emmet admitted in a private letter that "Oram's contact in Washington, who works for the (CIA's) Free Asia Committee . . . got us the first $5,000 from them with which we started our work."
In later years, Walter Judd was in direct touch with Cord Meyer of the CIA, who took a personal interest in funding Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals. It is perhaps also significant that in the first months of its formation, ARCI used the offices of the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), free of rent. CIA contract agent Harold Oram also handled fundraising ACUE and it was wholly controlled and organized by CIA officers, several of whom were top executives sat on its board.
ARCI was more than a foreign CIA operation; it had an important domestic role (propaganda directed at Americans) as well. Christopher Emmet pointed to "the educational importance of
this project in making Americans more aware of the Chinese anti-Communist cause. . . . The reason is that the humanitarian appeal for relief incidentally permits giving all the political facts
about persecution, etc.... It does not invite argument and attack as in the case of direct political propaganda, however right it may be." Thus, through ARCI, the CIA was financing political propaganda directed at Americans.
This question raises, did the CIA back the American Friends of Vietnam (AFV or AFVN), the potent lobby for US intervention in Vietnam? AFV, well-stocked with CIA connected individuals, included Oram as fundraiser. He was at the same time a lobbyist for the Diem regime. Harold Oram and Gilbert Jonas led their PR firm (The Oram Group, Inc.) employing anti communist propaganda experts. So here we have again evidence of the CIA sharing responsibility for initiating America's disastrous policies towards both China and Vietnam. The CIA funneled money to this group in the early 1960’s thru the David, Josephine and Winfield Baird Fund as well to the American Friends of the Middle East lobby group.
The New York Times disclosed that the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which Leo Cherne founded in 1946, was the recipient of funds from the Kaplan Fund. This foundation was a conduit for CIA covert funds. The IRC was only interested in helping a certain type of political refugee—politicians and intellectuals who would be useful in the Cold War fight against communism. These refugees, once spotted and assisted by the IRC, were then—when useful—recruited and trained by various government agencies to form free world "movements" that would oppose the communists.
Joseph Buttinger helped establish the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and for over 40 years served as director of the IRC's Paris office and European division, and as an IRC board member and vice president. He was a native of Austria who fled Nazi Germany prior to World War Two to the US. During and after the war, he helped smuggle thousands of anti-Fascist refugees out of Europe. He was a supporter of Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam with the American Friends of Vietnam. Buttinger later became disillusioned with Diem's dictatorial ways and renounced him.
Wesley Fishel was a executive committee member of American Friends of Vietnam. Fishel was also the head of the Michigan State project in Vietnam. He was one of Diem's top advisers while his subordinate CIA officers in the project took over the Vietnamese secret police and several other agencies. For nine years Leo Cherne, Gilbert Jonas and Wesley Fishel formed an intimate political clique that attempted to mold American public opinion, and it has been amply documented that the Michigan State-Saigon end of the project was a CIA operation. (Source: Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA ..., by Eric Thomas Chester, chapter The Paid Lobbyist)
All this Christian hostility toward Mao Zedong seems paranoid to me, given Mao was raised in Confucianism and Taoist traditions and his writings in his little Red Book reflect these strong religious influences. Communist China also treated religion differently than the Soviet Union. For many years in the PRC there was a sort of cold tolerance of religion, although it was not condoned by the state. (Source: Hard Right Turn: The History and the Assassination of the American Left, by Jerry Carrier, pp. 42 to 26)
This is a welcome call for a serious investigation of how the American public has been and is manipulated, and for an end to government secrecy.
(Source: The Committee of One Million: "China Lobby" Politics, 1953-1971, by Stanley D. Bachrack) http://208.109.186.237/Pub/LibertarianRev-1978jun-00035?View=PDF
http://www.mosquitonet.com/~prewett/gen241250.html
In 1977, over $100 million (up from $30 million a decade ago) was spent each year by foreign governments and corporation on shaping US foreign policy and influencing policymakers. These lobbies represent minority opinions making US Congressional decisions which most Americans opposed.
The Israeli lobby's relationship with Congress commands three quarters of the vote in the Senate, well over half the vote in the House, and two thirds of the whole foreign‐aid bill. (How Lobbyists Mold America's Foreign Policy. By Russell Warren Howe and Sarah Hays Trott, 569 pp.)
South Vietnam
Early in the Nixon administration, CIA officials realized that National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, was now in charge of covert direct actions. The Special National Security Council, Special Group, designed to respond to specific crises during Kennedy’s administration, became the Watch Group, chaired by Kissinger. When some high-level officials left the room, those who remained called themselves the 40 Committee, This 40 Committee was made up of Undersecretary of State U. Alexis Johnson, Director of the CIA, Richard Helms as well as the number two man at the Pentagon, and Kissinger, who led this group.
Helms kept the paramilitary side of covert direct actions under the operational control of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This way the CIA hid the dirtiest and most criminal operations. (The Secret History of the CIA, page 369)
In early March, 1969, Nixon started secret B-52 bombing raids on the neutral country of Cambodia without a declaration of war by Congress. The intensive secret bombing, codenamed Operation Menu lasted for four years, for a final total of 3,630 air raids and expanded to a much larger area of Cambodia and continued until August 1973. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Earle Wheeler had suggested to the president that he authorize the bombing of the Cambodian sanctuaries. He was seconded on 9 February by the U.S. commander in Vietnam, General Creighton W. Abrams.
For four years this bombing remained unknown to the Congress as a whole. Five key members of both political parties had been privy to the information and had neither said nor done anything about it.
The New York Times reported on May 9, 1969, that knowledgeable sources in the Nixon Administration disclosed for the first time that B-52s...attacked Vietnamese Communist base camps and supply depots in Cambodia...the secret bombing continued until the US became openly engaged as a combatant in Cambodia (crossed the South Viet Nam border into Cambodia in about May 1970.
In May 9-10, 1969: New York Times reveals the secret bombings of Cambodia. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was apoplectic with anger. Kissinger believed Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers had leaked the information to the Times in order to discredit him. Nixon accused Laird and by calling Laird a son of a bitch and Laird hung up on the president. Nixon suggests Kissinger’s own staff may be the source of the leaks. He is most suspicious of By lunch, had talked to the FBI about wiretapping suspected leakers. By dinner, Kissinger’s aide Morton Halperin’s phone was tapped. The next day, Kissinger’s military aide Alexander Haig had the FBI tap three more men and warned the FBI not to keep any records of the wiretaps. The three targets are Kissinger’s aides Helmut Sonnenfeldt and Daniel Davidson, and Laird’s military assistant, Robert Pursley. At the same time, White House aide Jack Caulfield arranges for a wiretap on a private citizen, syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft. Caulfield’s wiretap was unquestionably illegal. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 75-76]
In December 1972, after a Major Knight wrote a letter to Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), asking for "clarification" as to US policy on the bombing of Cambodia. Maj. Knight, who had become concerned over the legality of his actions, had complained to his superior officer, Colonel David Patterson. Knight then received several bad efficiency reports, which ruined his career, and he had been discharged from the Air Force.
The Constitutional issue about undeclared war/bombing led to debate in Congress about articles of impeachment against President Nixon. After debate in the House Judiciary Committee they voted (21 to 12) not to impeach.
Jack Caulfield develops a broad plan for launching an intelligence operation against the Democrats for the 1972 re-election campaign, tag as Operation Sandwedge. This political mission had as its goal to ensure that the anti- Vietnam War movement did not destroy Nixon’s public re-election campaign, as had been done to Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Sandwedge also was anticipating that the Democrats would mount their own political espionage efforts, which Caulfield and other Nixon aides believe will use a private investigations firm headed by former Justice Department officials loyal to former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Sandwedge is turned down by senior White House aides in favor of the “Special Investigation Unit” headed by G. Gordon Liddy. Caulfield resigns from the White House shortly thereafter. (John J. “Jack” Caulfield, 2006 and Spartacs Schoolnet, Aug. 2007)
In February 20, 1970, Kissinger met secretly, in Paris, with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam. Answering to no one but himself personally went to the North Vietnamese ambassador and pressed him into holding off peace negotiations until after the 1972 election. For nearly three years, Kissinger made no serious effort to shorten the bloody war, prolonging it purely for political gain.
The official transcripts of the Paris Peace Accords negotiations, were flagrantly falsified by Kissinger to make him appear exactly as he wished to appear to the American public.
(Harpers magazine, The Case Against Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens)
http://www.democratscom/view.cfm?id=1566
According to Terry Reed in mid-May 1970, the US bombed our own American POWs that were held captive in Laos in POW camps. Reed was a US Air Force Sergeant who had worked with a top secret Air Force unit that directed US B-52 bombing raids. The North Vietnamese placed these POW camps next to a gas pipeline leading to South Vietnam in the hope the US wouldn't bomb their own POWs. The US changed its no-bombing policy near these US POW camps because US military leaders believed the North Vietnamese was preparing for a new Tet-type offensive. Reed, Cpt Laurence J Zimmerman, CPT James D. Turinetti, and Col Harold A. Bells witnessed this lifting of the policy not to bomb the location of our own POWs and at the time protested this action by our government. (Source: Compromise, by Terry Reed, page 22)
The bombings themselves failed to stop supply shipments down the Ho Che Minh trail, and killed an estimated half-million Cambodians. In addition, our bombings instigated a period of political disorder and chaos in Cambodia. After the bombings began, Prince Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown in 1970 by the military and General Lon Nol. Unable to hold authority in the country, Cambodia was sent spiraling into anarchy. In the end, it was the Khmer Rouge, a Communist political and military group, who seized power in 1975, naming Pol Pot their leader.
Finally, in 1973, the Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings about this United States bombing of Cambodia; "Allegations were made that the Nixon Administration allowed bombing raids to be carried out during what was supposed to be a time when Cambodia's neutrality was officially recognized. As a result of the hearings, Congress ordered that all bombing in Cambodia cease effective at midnight, August 14, 1973."
http://ns.headroyce.org/~us2001/courtneyj/paper.html
CIA reported Communist strength in South Vietnam
The US Air Force had airdropped acoustic sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail (Project Igloo White) in an attempt to detect and count infiltrators with bombs and artillery fire. And U-2 spy planes would pick up the radio signal from these sensors as they stayed aloft for 12 hours, and two could provide 24-hour coverage. The infiltration rate turned out to be more like a flood. McNamara’s people, with their computerized estimates, would finally accede to the higher CIA numbers of troops and equipment moving southward on the trail in spite of these measures to stop it.
A CIA study (unknown date ) reported by the New York Times October 19, 1970 that more than 30,000 Communist agents had infiltrated various branches of the South Vietnamese government, foreshadowing a possible resurgence of Communist strength in the country. This CIA report had been submitted to President Nixon and other Administration officials in May, but White House officials questioned it. They contended the report exaggerated the extent of the Communist infiltration and termed its analysis "overly pessimistic." Other officials claimed the report was "essentially a one-man product" that "did not represent the formal position of the CIA." They said the study had been carried out on "a narrow basis" and did not involve other branches of the American intelligence services. They later conceded to the Times reporter, Neil Sheehan, that raw data for the CIA study had been drawn from all intelligence agencies and the analysis was coordinated with them. Among the principal finding of the CIA report:
The Communist agents, most of them natives of the southern part of divided Vietnam, had made their way into the South Vietnamese armed forces, the police force and the government intelligence organization charged with ferreting out Viet Cong and North Vietnamese spies. A North Vietnamese spy managed to become an aide to President Nguyen Van Thieu who was a high official of police and military intelligence.
The Communist espionage force was divided into three parts that received its orders from Hanoi through the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), aka the Communist command for the South. One group of 20,000 full-time operatives/spies was under the authority of the Military Proselytizing Section. Its main function was to undermine the morale and effectiveness of the South Vietnamese armed forces and police by attempting to recruit other soldiers to the Communist cause and by fomenting agitation within units. Another group of about 7,000 North Vietnamese spies was run by the Viet Cong Military Intelligence Section. This unit conducted espionage among the police, the armed forces and the civilian administration in an effort to manipulate government policy. The third group, totaling 3,000 were members of the Viet Cong security service, had its chief purpose to keep the Communists informed of how much the government knew of their operations and to prevent any South Vietnamese government infiltration of their espionage ring. This force reportedly had penetrated the intelligence services of the police and the army, the military security service and Saigon's own Central Intelligence Office.
In its analysis, the CIA said the battlefield setbacks suffered by the Communists in 1969 had prompted the North to shift from military attacks to political subversion in anticipation of a reduction in the American troop presence in South Vietnam. Citing the strength of the Communist espionage force, the CIA said it had become virtually impossible to destroy the Communists and the Viet Cong could not exist without the tacit complicity of the majority of South Vietnamese soldiers and police. http://members.aol.com/bear317f/appendix.htm
Noam Chomsky’s in 1967 wrote the following
(Quote) “The Vietnam War lasted for 22 years from about 1954 to 1975. By the end of it the US military had dropped more than seven million tons of bombs. Twenty million bomb craters are all over Vietnam. The US planes dropped anti-personnel bombs (containing thousands of flesh-shredding darts), white phosphorus incendiary bombs, huge "daisy cutter" bombs that turned jungle into flattened football fields, and napalm. The notorious chemical Agent Orange was sprayed over tens of millions of acres-- poisoning crops, forests, and human beings.
In the North, the US unleashed massive air attacks aimed at civilian targets, aiming to break the will of the people to resist. US bombs fell on densely populated areas like Hanoi. Bombers deliberately targeted dikes in the North threatening to flood massive areas of the county. US war planners wrote that a major objective of the US bombing raids on North Vietnam was not to kill its population but to maim them. They argued that serious injury is more disruptive than death as people have to be employed to look after the injured where they only have to bury the dead.
In Trang Bang on the evening of October 24 1969, three flights of B-52s made three sorties, killing 47 people, wounding many others (mostly children, and old folks), completely leveling 450 houses and devastating 650 hectares of fields. On the night of October 25, B-52s flew nine attacks in Quang Tri and Quang Nam provinces, dumping more than 1,000 tons of bombs, killing 300 people, wounding 236 others, setting a fire 564 houses and damaging hundreds of hectares of fields and orchards. In Pleiku, a fertile region, many flights of B-52s came in on the morning of October 17 and released 700 tons of bombs which wrought havoc in hundreds of hectares of fields and orchards ...in January 1968 - for example, in Saigon, where in an effort to dislodge the 1,000 soldiers who had taken the city, “artillery and air strikes were repeatedly used against densely populated areas of the city, causing heavy civilian casualties.
The US moved to reoccupy Hue after Vietnamese forces had liberated it in the Tet Offensive of 1968. Eighty percent of the buildings had been reduced to rubble by artillery and air strikes, resulting in 2,000 dead civilians... Three quarters of the city's people were rendered homeless and looting was widespread, members of the South Vietnamese Army troops being the worst offenders.” (Unquote) (Source: Noam Chomsky's forward to the papers of the 1967 International War Crimes in Vietnam Tribunal)
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Richard A. Falk has written about this matter in an important article. He points out that “Song My stands out as a landmark atrocity in the history of warfare, and its occurrence is a moral challenge to the entire American society.” Nevertheless, it would “be misleading to isolate the awful happenings at Song My from the overall conduct of the war.” Among the war policies that might, he argues, be found illegal, are these: “(1) the Phoenix Program; (2) aerial and naval bombardment of undefended villages; (3) destruction of crops and forests; (4) ‘search-and-destroy’ missions; (5) ‘harassment and interdiction’ fire; (6) forcible removal of civilian population; (7) reliance on a variety of weapons prohibited by treaty.” That these policies have been followed, on a massive scale, is not in question. Falk argues that: “if found to be ‘illegal’, such policies should be discontinued forthwith and those responsible for the policy and its execution should be prosecuted as war criminals by appropriate tribunals. He also notes how broad was the conception of criminal responsibility developed, under American initiative, in the War Crimes Trials. http://www.vietnamese-american.org/1.html
Jonathan Schell described in his classic book The Village of Ben Suc, which had a strong influence upon the young John Kerry (a future US Senator), how US planes would fly over vast inhabited areas declared "free fire zones" by US officials, and bomb villages and villagers alike. Equally devastating bombardment of undefended towns and villages occurred from the millions more tons of ground artillery fired from army bases and navy ships upon undefended towns, villages, dwelling sand buildings. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6105
On February 25, 1969, in the hamlet of Thanh Phong a dozen or more Vietnamese civilians died at the hands of (another future US Senator) Lt. Bob Kerry's seven-man Navy SEAL commando unit. They were on a raid of suspected Vietcong gathering. One of members of Kerry's SEAL team, Gerhard Klann, says that Kerry had ordered and participated in a massacre of more than a dozen men, women, and children (including an infant). 60 Minutes Two and other news outlets quoted Vietnamese villagers who also asserted the killings had been deliberate.
According to Klann, the SEALs stumbled across three children, an old woman, and an old man in an outlying hut and silenced them with knives. He said the old man struggled and Kerry held him down so that Klann could finish him off. Kerry acknowledged that "Standard operating procedure was to dispose of the people we made contact with . . . . Kill the people we made contact with or we have to abort the mission," It is a war crime to kill civilians even if letting them live might jeopardize the mission.
In February 1969, the Phoenix Program was still under CIA control. But because Kien Hoa Province was so important, and because the VCI's District Party Secretary was supposedly in Thanh Phong, the CIA decided to handle this particular assassination and mass murder mission without involving the local Vietnamese. So instead of dispensing the local counter-terror team, the CIA sent former US Senator Bob Kerrey's US Navy Seal Team.
Kerry should be tried as a war criminal. His actions on the night of February 24-25, 1969 when the seven man Navy Seal unit which he headed killed approximately 20 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, eighteen of whom were women and children. As he admits, he went to Vietnam with a knife clenched between his teeth and did what he was trained to do kidnap, assassinate and mass murder civilians. Kerry and crew admittedly went to Thanh Phong to kill the District Party Secretary, and anyone else who got in the way, including his family and all their friends. Like those who murdered at My Lai, he too should be brought into the dock and tried for his war crimes." http://www.csun.edu/~vcspc00g/303/warwounds.html
On the eve of what appeared to be the likely publication of an article in Newsweek on the matter, Kerry met with the other six of the seven members of the SEAL team to corroborate their stories. “The group issued a unanimous statement after the meeting, disputing key elements of a starkly different version of events given by Gerhard Klann.”
http://www.charm.net/~marc/chronicle/media_jun01.html
In March 1969, over 5,000 South Vietnamese, civilians of the town of Kein Hoa were killed by US Army, 9th Infantry Division and US Air force bombing. In the early 1970s, a Pentagon task force investigated into more than 500 alleged war crime atrocities and these investigations remained classified (covered up) until the records were declassified in 1994. US Army investigators substantiated 320 alleged incidents of atrocities and could not prove or discounted the rest. The 1968 My Lai massacre was not part of this total. Seven massacres occurred from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died by US troops in Vietnam. Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.
There were 141 instances where US soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock. Investigators determined that evidence against 203 soldiers accused of harming Vietnamese civilians or prisoners was strong enough to warrant formal charges. These "founded" cases were referred to the soldiers' superiors for action.
Ultimately, 57 of them were court-martialed and just 23 convicted, the records show. Fourteen received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, but most won significant reductions on appeal. In many cases, suspects had left the service. The Army did not attempt to pursue them, despite a written opinion in 1969 by Robert E. Jordan III, then the Army's general counsel, that ex-soldiers could be prosecuted through courts-martial, military commissions or tribunals.
Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.
Among the substantiated cases in the archive:
• Seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died.
• Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.
• One hundred forty-one instances occurred where US soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.
Many substantiated cases were closed with a letter of reprimand, a fine or, in more than half the cases, no action at all. Brigadier General Robert G. Gard who oversaw the war crimes task force at the Pentagon in the early 1970s said, "We could have court-martialed them, but didn't." Top Army brass should have demanded a tougher response, says retired Lt. Gen. Gard, the highest-ranking member of the Pentagon task force in the early 1970s.
The Times examined most of the files at the National Archives in College Park, Md. and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages, about a third of the total, before government officials removed them from the public shelves. The Times reported these files contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. As there is no statute of limitation for war crimes, that could be the reason for the removal these records.
(Source dated 6 August 2006: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080606Y.shtml )
US Army General Colin Powell wrote about the routine practice of murdering unarmed male Vietnamese. He wrote, "I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male…If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. (Source: My American Journey by Colin Powell).
In 1968 South Vietnam’s President Thieu with the help of Robert W. Komer CIA’s deputy for CORDS, drafted a decree that officially sanctioned Phoenix/Phung Hoang on July 1, 1968. In 1969 CIA officer William Colby took over as the head of CORDs
Phoenix Program operation were carried out by the South Vietnam’s National Police, National Police Field Force, Special Police Branch, US and Vietnamese conventional armed forces; and by what became known as Counter Terror teams with the purpose of fighting terror with terror. In later years, US Army intelligence Phoenix advisors were trained at the Ft. Bragg and assigned throughout Vietnam. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had killed 26,369 suspected NLF supporters.
The interrogation centers and Counter Terror teams were developed by the CIA's Saigon station chief Peer DeSilva (Dec. 1963 to Mar. 1965). DeSilva held that terrorism was a legitimate tool to use in unconventional warfare, and that it should be applied strategically to "enemy civilians" in order to reduce civilian support for the Viet Cong. The PRUs were designed with this in mind, and began terrorizing suspected civilian sympathizers in 1964. Originally, the PRUs were known as "Counter Terror" teams, but they were renamed to "Provincial Reconnaissance Units" after CIA officials "became wary of the adverse publicity surrounding the use of the word “terror.”
By 1970 there were 704 US Phoenix CIA and Army Special Forces advisers throughout South Vietnam. Phung Hoang aka Phoenix Program quotas for units set by Robert Komer for all 242 districts. One result indiscriminate killing with everybody labeled VCI. (Source: The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, by Thomas Powers, 181-2)
In Vietnam, in 1975 according to Frank Snepp's Decent Interval up to thirty thousand special police, CIA and Phoenix related Vietnamese employees were left behind. Saigon CIA station managed to pull out only 537 of its 1900 Vietnamese including close to 1000 high-level Vietnamese who had built close relationships with the agency over the years. (Covert Action Information Bulletin (now Covert Action Quarterly) 6-7/79 4).
US military provided approx 600 case officers to supplement 40-50 CIA case officers for Phoenix ops. (Counterspy, spring/summer 75 8).
John Murray and his wife Delores, former CIA ops officer, sending letters of disclosures about CIA case officer Ted Shackley, secretly contacted William Miller, staff director of Church Committee, and told how Shackley and Helms in 1970 arranged to keep CIA from being implicated in My Lai massacres. There is some evidence suggested massacre related to CIA's Phoenix Program. (Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades, by Corn, D. (1994), p. 302)
Phoenix Program torture tactics include rape, electric shock, water boarding, hanging from ceiling, beatings, incarceration and execution. Counterspy, 5/73 16. K. Barton Osborn, a Phoenix CIA officer, testified to Congress "I never knew an individual to be detained as a VC suspect who ever lived through an interrogation in a year and a half. (testimony given before US Congress, Heari. 315-321).
During Nixon's first two and a half years in office, state department officially admitted that the CIA-run Phoenix Program murdered or abducted 35,708 Vietnamese civilians, 4,836 more than the Pentagon claimed the National Liberation Front (aka Vietcong) had assassinated or kidnapped during the same period, and a monthly increase over the 200 killed by the CIA every month under President Johnson. (Senator Gravel edition, (1971), Pentagon Papers v 300)
Australian military teams operated in Vietnam often in CIA Phoenix operation. The “Black team” would go out, usually dressed in enemy's gear and the assassination then blamed on VC. (Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service , by Toohey, B., & Pinwill, W. (1990), pp.87-88.)
All Vietnamese over age 15 jailed if did not carry a card a RAND computer tracked the 15 million suspects also cross-linked to 10 million dossiers and fingerprints. (The Dossier issue 6, 11/83 14-5.)
According to Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, after Phoenix Program abuses began receiving negative publicity, the program was officially shut down. However, another program of a similar nature, code-named "F-6", was initiated as Phoenix was phased out.
Law professor at University of Washington, Seattle, Roy L. Prosterman, designed the land reform program the US Government promoted in the Philippines, Vietnam, and El Salvador. In each place the program was accompanied by a rural terror. In Vietnam the Phoenix Program killed 40,000 civilian between August 1968 and mid-1971; in Philippines, martial law; in El Salvador, a state of siege. (Covert Action Information Bulletin (now Covert Action Quarterly) Winter 90 69) http://www.serendipity.li/cia/operation_phoenix.htm
Other special operations in South Vietnam
Bright Light
The Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observation Group (MAC-SOG took their orders from the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA) at the Pentagon. This arrangement was necessary since SOG needed some listing in the MACV table of organization and the fact that MACV's commander had no authority to conduct operations outside territorial South Vietnam. This command arrangement through SACSA also allowed tight control (up to the presidential level) over the scope and scale over the organization's operations
The forces were active throughout the theater in a variety of air, sea, and land operations. Teams searched enemy base areas, monitored traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and occasionally snatched prisoners or hunted down Viet Cong leaders. The teams could also be used to recover captured or downed friendly personnel. The operative element for these missions was the Recovery Studies Division, which ran numerous programs to locate and recover lost personnel. It constantly monitored intelligence for any information on friendly (US soldiers or civilians) sightings. It ran an active reward program and dropped million of leaflets all over Southeast Asia soliciting such data on lost friendies. It also published a list of escape-and-evasion code letters for aircrews to use if they were shot down and evading enemy capture. If downed and unable to communicate by radio, the crewmembers would craft the evasion letter so that it could be clearly seen from the air. SAR forces would then respond. The letters would be changed monthly or as necessary to prevent being compromised by the enemy.
"When warranted, the Recover Studies Division could order team operations to search for and recover downed or lost personnel. But they were not meant as competitor for the Air Force's rescue forces. They were designed to be used if the more conventional means failed. When MACSOG-80 teams operated, the missions were code-named Bright Light. During the war, MACSOG ran numerous such missions.
Two Bright Light teams were inserted but could not make contact. Enemy forces quickly detected their presence and began to pursue and attack them, and the teams had to be extracted under heavy fire. (The Rescue of BAT-21, Chapter 9 --pgs. 83, 84 & 85, Darrel D. Whitcomb, Naval Institute Press, 1998.) http://members.aol.com/bear317f/appendix.htm
In June 1967, a project called “Mussel Shoals” involved placing sensors (mostly by dropping them from aircraft to electronic (radio transmitters) monitoring enemy movements. Thousands of sensors were connected to a computerized nerve center in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. SOG Recon teams were also used to rescue US personnel for rescue them from known or suspected NVN prisoner of war camps (Bright Light missions) (The Secret War Against Hanoi, Kennedy’s and Johnson’s use of spies, saboteurs, and covert warriors in North Vietnam by Richard H. Shultz, Jr., pp. 225-226).
Cambodia
SOG teams in Cambodia, code-named “Salem House” took place where the NVA presence was not great. During 1969 the US casualty (killed or wounded) rate was 13 percent per mission. In Laos code-named, “Prairie Fire” missions, it was 50 percent. (Ibid, p. 251)
Between 1965 and 1970 the Hmong guerrillas recovered downed U.S. pilots, battled local communists, monitored the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and, most importantly, protected the radar that guided the US Air Force bombing of North Vietnam. The CIA's policy of tolerance towards its Laotian allies did not change even when they began producing heroin to supply U.S. combat forces fighting in South Vietnam. In 1968-1969, CIA assets opened a cluster of heroin laboratories in the Golden Triangle region where Burma, Thailand and Laos converge.
President Johnson shut down SOG into North Vietnam in November 1968 to accept Hanoi’s requirements for beginning the peace negotiations. He took this course of action in the aftermath of the Tet offensive. SOG operations against the Ho Chi Minh trail continued until 1972 according to declassified documents. (Ibid, pp. 172 and 331)
By 1969, SOG had over a thousand Americans; several thousand South Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Thai personnel, and even pilots from Nationalist China. In 1996, President Clinton signed a bill providing $20 million in compensation, about $40,000 a piece for their service in SOG’s South Vietnamese counterpart, the Strategic Technical Directorate. These were to refugee/immigrant South Vietnamese who fled to the US. (Ibid, pp.54 and 348)
Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Australia’s CIA like clandestine and political warfare outfit, played an important role in the CIA’s covert activities against foreign governments in Southeast Asia. For example, after Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk broke off diplomatic relations with the United States in 1965, the CIA used ASIS to secretly carry out its work in the country for the next four years, despite official Australian policy being one of strict neutrality. After Sihanouk was overthrown in a CIA-inspired coup, American forces invaded Cambodia and the US carpet-bombing of the country – a bombing so intense that during one six-month period in 1973, American B52s dropped the equivalent (in tons of bombs) of five Hiroshimas on the civilian population – served as a catalyst for the rise to power of Pol Pot and the genocidal Khmer Rouge). https://digitalseance.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/the-cia-in-australia/
Vietnam Son Tay Raid
Nixon had been looking for an opportunity to rescue POWs and order this raid. From August 8, 1970 to November 21, 1970, Brigadier General Leroy J. Manor, served as Commander of a joint task force whose mission was to search for and rescue United States military personnel held as prisoners of war at Son Tay area of North Vietnam about 20 miles northwest of Hanoi.
On November, 21, 1970, this raid was carried out by 56 US Army Special Forces soldiers to attempt to rescue 61 American POWs believed to be held at Son Tay in North Vietnam. The SF troops found POW camp empty. There is some evidence that the Son Tay mission was a smoke screen for the real mission to kill foreign advisors in the North Vietnamese.
The Son Tay raid was planned and executed at a time when the United States was intent on negotiating a conclusion to American involvement in the war. Substantial ground combat forces had already been withdrawn from the south as the process of “Vietnamization” was moving forward. The sole remaining obstacle to concluding this chapter of history was to gain return of the 1,463 POWs and MIAs from Southeast Asia.
The mission leader, Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons and 22 men, landed the largest part of the strike force——at the “Secondary School” 400 meters south of the main Son Tay compound. The raiders encountered minimal resistance at the Son Tay compound itself, but Simons and the men at the Secondary School found themselves engaged in a firefight with soldiers who were “much taller than Orientals and not wearing normal North Vietnamese Army uniforms. Simons and his men had stumbled on a major force of Chinese or Russian advisors a mere 400 meters from the prison. The Americans killed more than 100 occupants at this Secondary School. (Ibid, p. 90)
The SF Rescue team returned from the mission with the Russian-made fire control equipment. ...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Son+Tay+Russian+advisors&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Beyond the goal of freeing POWs, the US also sought to increase its clout at the ongoing Paris Peace Talks and perhaps force North Vietnamese concessions. The administration saw the raid as a way of indicating that the United States could inflict punishment, even without resuming bombing of the North, if North Vietnam did not become more flexible at the stalemated peace talks. http://www.psywarrior.com/sontay.html
Buffalo Hunter
This was the name given to US reconnaissance drones (Buffalo Hunter) flown over North Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s to collect tactical intelligence and strategic intelligence. These unmanned aircraft were launched from airborne DC-130 Hercules cargo aircraft that remained over friendly territory; after their photo flight, the drones flew back to a location where they could be landed and have their film recovered; drones were reusable.
At the peak of the Buffalo Hunter operations, the drones made 30 to 40 flights per month over North Vietnam and adjacent areas of Indochina controlled by communist forces. Although seven "Buffalo Hunter" unmanned reconnaissance drones were flown at treetop level to take photos of the Son Tay prison between early September and late October 1970, not a single drone actually succeeded in flying over the facility, http://www.psywarrior.com/buffalo.html
Soviet advisors in Vietnam
During the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union provided technical and material assistance to its North Vietnamese ally. The Soviets sent air defense equipment and personnel to equip and train the North Vietnamese. Experienced Soviet Air Force pilots and maintenance personnel were sent to train and repair MIG aircraft flown by the North Vietnamese and to provide advice and assistance to North Vietnamese anti-air defense forces that were used to shoot down American combat aircraft with Soviet missile equipment. Soviet military was directly interrogating American POWs in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
Early in the Vietnam War, a Soviet special group composed of the Main Intelligence Directorate officers (also known as the GRU) and employees from various Soviet military industrial organizations were deployed to North Vietnam to acquire captured American combat equipment and to arrange for shipment of this equipment to the Soviet Union for technical exploitation.
Ninety-five percent of US military combat units were used for infantry search-and-destroy missions. They were tasked was to go out on patrols into the forest/jungle, flush out enemy forces and engage them in battle. The soldiers called this “humping the boonies,” but in fact they were just bait. If the Vietcong or North Vietnamese Army troops fought back, helicopters would fly in to prevent retreat with gun fire. As a result, just hiking thru the country side a soldier could end up dead. One third of the US causalities during the Vietnam War were due to landmines or booby traps.
By 1968, only 14 percent (or 80,000) US troops were in combat in South Vietnam and 18 percent of them were killed and so the total of all US personnel killed was 14,592. Also an additional 35,000 had serious wounds that required hospitalization. High school dropouts were three times more likely to do the fighting and be casualties. Combat infantry soldiers, "the grunts," were entirely working class. They included a disproportionate number of African Americans working-class troops, who formed some 25 percent or more of the combat units and 12 percent of all the US military troops deployed to South Vietnam.
Hostility to search-and-destroy missions took the form of covert combat avoidance, called "sandbagging." A platoon sent out into the country side might look for a safe place but on returning to base camp they would file fabricated after-mission reports.
After the January 31, 1968, Tet Offensive by North Vietnam, there was a massive shift from combat avoidance to mutiny. One Pentagon official stated that, "mutiny became so common that the army was forced to disguise its frequency by talking instead of `combat refusal.'" Combat refusal, one commentator observed, "resembled a strike and occurred when GIs refused, disobeyed, or negotiated an order into combat."
Acts of mutiny took place on a scale previously only encountered in revolutions. The first mutinies in 1968 when a platoon-level unit refused orders. The army recorded 68 such mutinies that year. The combat refusals of individual units expanded to involve whole companies by the next year. The first reported mass mutiny was in the 196th Light Brigade in August 1969. Company A of the 3rd Battalion, down to 60 men from its original 150, had been pushing through Song Chang Valley under heavy fire for five days when it refused an order to advance down a perilous mountain slope. It was an organized strike. The shaken Battalion Commander relieved the company commander, but none of the soldiers charge with anything. The officers lived in fear of its own men.
When the US invaded Cambodia in about May of 1970, soldiers from Fire Base Washington conducted a sit-in. There were two additional mutinies, as men from the 4th and 8th Infantry refused to board helicopters to Cambodia. A new slang term, “fragging” arose to describe the execution of officers buy gunfire or fragmentation (hand) grenades. In every war, troops kill officers whose incompetence or recklessness threatens the lives of their men. But only in Vietnam did this allegedly become pervasive and widespread in base camps. It was the most well-known aspect of the class struggle inside the US Army, directed not just at intolerable officers, but the Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs/”lifers”) as a class.
The army reported 126 fraggings in 1969, 271 in 1970 and 333 in 1971, when the Army stopped keeping count. Some military estimates are that fraggings occurred at five times the official rate, and Judge Advocate General Corps believed that only ten percent of fraggings were reported. These figures do not include officers who were shot in the back by their men and listed as wounded or killed in action.
In October 1971, military police air assaulted a mountain top radio and communications site to protect an officer who had been the target of repeated fragging attempts. The base was occupied for a week before command was restored.
As a soldier at Cu Chi in 1970 told the New York Times, “Many commanders no longer trusted Blacks or radical whites with weapons except on guard duty or in combat." In the American Division, fragmentation grenades were not given to troops. In the 440th Signal Battalion the commander refused to distribute all arms. The American garrisons on the larger bases are virtually disarmed.” These based were not unarmed because soldiers on guard duty were armed when on duty guarding the perimeter of the base camp, but all the rest of the enlisted soldiers were required to return their M-16 rifles which were stored at a nearby weapons storage building.
And when there was an emergency and likelihood of enemy soldiers gaining access to the base camp, the soldier would go and get their rifles.
By 1970, US combat deaths were down by more than 70 percent to 3,946 from the 1968 high of more than 14,000.
In June 1971, Colonel Robert Heinl published a controversial article, The Collapse of the Armed Forces, in which he claimed the US military was on the brink of disaster. Heinl cited examples of fragging, combat refusal, desertion, drug use and racial prejudice. He wrote, “Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious,” (for example, West Germany).
(Quote) “’Search-and-evade' has not gone unnoticed by the enemy is underscored by the Viet Cong delegation's recent statement at the Paris Peace Talks that Communist units in Indochina have been ordered not to engage American units which do not molest them. The same statement boasted–not without foundation in fact–that American defectors are in the VC ranks.
Bounties, raised by common subscription in amounts running anywhere from $50 to $1,000, have been widely reported put on the heads of leaders whom the privates and Sp4s want to rub out. Shortly after the costly assault on Hamburger Hill in mid-1969,the GI underground newspaper in Vietnam, G.I. Says, publicly offered a $10,000 bounty on Lt. Col. Weldon Honeycutt, the officer who ordered the attack. Despite several attempts, however, Honeycutt managed to live out his tour and return State side.
Not unsurprisingly, the end-product of the atmosphere of incitement of unpunished sedition, and of recalcitrant antimilitary malevolence which pervades the world of the draftee (and to an extent the low-ranking men in "volunteer" services, too) is overt action.
One militant West Coast Group, Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM), has specialized in weapons theft from military bases in California. During 1970, large armory thefts were successfully perpetrated against Oakland Army Base and the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton, where a team wearing Marine uniforms got away with nine M-16 rifles and an M-79 grenade launcher.
Operating in the middle West, three soldiers from Ft Carson, Colo., home of the Army’s permissive experimental unite, the 4th Mechanized Division, were recently indicted by a federal grand jury for dynamiting the telephone exchange, power plant and water works of another Army installation, Camp McCoy, Wis., on 26 July 1970.
The Navy, particularly on the West Coast, has also experienced disturbing cases of sabotage in the past two years, mainly directed at ships’ engineering and electrical machinery. “(Unquote) https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/Vietnam/heinl.html
Another US Army colonel stated. “I had influence over an entire province. I put my men to work helping with the harvest. They put up buildings. Once the NVA understood what I was doing, they eased up. I'm talking to you about a de facto truce, you understand. The war stopped in most of the province. It's the kind of history that doesn't get recorded. Few people even know it happened, and no one will ever admit that it happened.”
Army stores (post exchanges or PXs) were importing French perfumes and other luxury goods to sell on the black market for personal gain. But the black market extended far beyond that behavior. The Vietcong received a large percentage of their supplies from the United States via the underground routes of the black market: kerosene, sheet metal, oil, gasoline engines, claymore mines, hand grenades, rifles, bags of cement," which were publicly sold openly at outdoor markets.
As the Vietcong expanded their areas of control, it became increasingly difficult for the South Vietnamese landlords to collect rents. They therefore tasked their army with collecting rent in return for a 30 percent cut, which was to be split three ways between the government, the officers and the South Vietnamese soldiers. Rent collection became more important to the army than fighting. (Source: Soldiers in Revolt, by David Cortright
http://www.citizen-soldier.org/cortright.html)
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
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From beginning of the CIA, they adopted the policy that it would give the four Congressional committees any intelligence reports they might seek and would respond to their requests for briefings, however few requests were received. The committees had no place to store intelligence information, and therefore nothing could be left with them. Members or staff who wanted to read intelligence analysis had to do so by having it brought to them or by visiting the CIA. The committees employed small staffs during this period (typically five to seven professionals to serve a full committee and its subcommittees), and not all of these staffers had the required security clearances were to have access to intelligence.
CIA's formal appearances before "its committees" were relatively infrequent. One of the CIA officials involved in this period recalled, "[In] the early years, we practically had to beg them to hold hearings. Years would go by sometimes without any hearing at all being held on the Agency's budget."
The "CIA committees" would hold occasional oversight hearings as well as receive briefings on world events. For example, each of the four committees held hearings in 1950 on CIA's performance in predicting the outbreak of the Korean War. The amount of sensitive information imparted to the four committees during these briefings was minimal.(8) For example, although DCI Dulles briefed the committees in 1959 on Soviet strategic capabilities, they were not told this information was principally collected by U-2 flights over the Soviet Union. Dulles directed that the CIA subcommittees be advised of the planning for the Bay of Pigs operation several months in advance of its execution in 1961 by CIA-trained Cuban exiles. (9)
From the beginning of the CIA, they provided classified written reports on a semiannual basis to the Joint Atomic Energy Committee on the Soviet atomic program. The committee occasionally held hearings to receive the DCI's testimony on this report. At this time, the Joint Atomic Energy Committee had the only storage facility on Capitol Hill for classified information (located on the fourth floor of the Capitol). This committee was the only regular customer of CIA briefings for many years. This committee received occasional requests from other committees for substantive briefings, but very infrequently.
In late 1959, CIA also established a new and uncharacteristically open relationship with the Joint Economic Committee. DCI Dulles agreed to testify for the first time in public on the Agency's view of the Soviet economy. Beginning in 1960, CIA started contributing unclassified articles on aspects of the Soviet economy to compilations of economic research periodically published by the JEC and known as the "Green Books," a practice that has continued to the present.
In 1962, Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, complained publicly that his committee needed access to intelligence in order to fulfill its responsibility to oversee foreign policy. He suggested that a joint committee on intelligence might help solve the problem. But Senator Russell remained staunchly opposed, even rejecting a compromise. (10) Efforts to resurrect the joint committee proposal were beaten back in the House in 1964 and in the Senate two years later, due to the efforts of the powerful leaders of the CIA committees.
In 1966, Senator Russell invited Senator Fulbright and several other Senators who had co-sponsored the failed legislation to attend the meetings of the CIA subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee.. Senator Fulbright attended one or two such meetings, but he soon found they were not worth his time, complaining, "They (CIA) never reveal anything of significance."(11)
Still, membership on the "CIA sub-committees" carried a certain aura. Members had access to the secrets of the CIA and could, if they chose, cite such access to justify positions they were taking on particular issues--that is, "if you knew what I know, you would understand why I'm taking this position."
The chairmen of the "CIA sub-committees" for the most part kept their colleagues on other committees at bay. As indicated above, efforts in the House and Senate to create joint committees on intelligence were repeatedly and decisively beaten back. Requests by other committees or individual Members for intelligence briefings normally had to be cleared with the House or Senate chairman concerned. CIA was advised, for example, that other Senate committees were not to be briefed unless Senator Russell approved, and all such briefings were to be limited to Members. (12)
In practice, however, CIA was permitted to provide substantive briefings to other committees so long as they did not include information on intelligence operations or funding. For some of these entities, notably the Joint Atomic Energy Committee and the Joint Economic Committee -neither of which had budget, oversight, or legislative authority--CIA's analytical assistance was substantial.
In the late 1960s as Congress grew more assertive in foreign policy and military affairs. Prompted in part by growing public mistrust toward the executive over its handling of the Vietnam War, Congress began to assert itself more forcefully on how the war was being prosecuted as well as on the arms control and defense initiatives of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. As a result, Congressional demands for intelligence increased.
In 1966, to handle an increasing level of involvement with Congress, DCI Richard Helms created a separate Office of Legislative Counsel with a staff of six. It was the first time the head of any US intelligence agency had seen fit to establish a separate office to handle Congressional relations.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings in March 1969 on the Nixon administration's request to fund a new ABM system known as Safeguard. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird disclosed that the Soviet Union was developing a new missile, the SS-9, which, if deployed in sufficient numbers by 1974 it could give Moscow a first-strike capability by wiping out all US land-based missiles. This public testimony was at odds with the conclusions reached in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concerning the SS-9, prepared six months earlier, which had previously been briefed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (15) A few days after Laird's testimony, the conclusions of the NIE were leaked to the New York Times. (16) On August 6, 1969 the Senate agreed by a narrow margin to fund the ABM missile system deploying one site nearby the US ICBMs in North Dakota.
In the following year, Congress became agitated by press leaks, attributed to administration officials, concerning possible expansion of the Soviet submarine base at Cienfuegos, Cuba.
The number of CIA's appearances on the Hill reached a low point in 1971 Relations between CIA and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heated up in 1972 when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as part of its inquiry into the Vietnam war, requested copies of all NIEs and Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIEs) relating to Southeast Asia since 1945. CIA objected to the request but offered to provide briefings to the committee on issues of concern to it.
In reaction to CIA's perceived stonewalling, Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky introduced a bill requiring that intelligence information and analysis be provided to Congress; he argued that Congress could not carry its constitutional responsibilities in the foreign policy area without such intelligence support. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the proposal, and witnesses from the Nixon administration and the Intelligence Community testified in vigorous opposition. The bill died in committee.
Congress grew increasingly restive in the early 1970s concerning the existing oversight arrangements for intelligence. Senator Russell's death in 1971 had removed the personification of the old system from the scene. During the same year, legislation was offered in both houses that would have required CIA to report on its overseas activities to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee. Although both bills were beaten back, they did represent a sense of growing dissatisfaction. CIA's Legislative Counsel advised DCI Helms that the "aging and harassed protectors and benefactors" of the CIA could not be expected to "hold the lines" much longer against increasingly aggressive Congress members with different outlooks and temperaments.(22)
(8) According to the unpublished draft CIA History Staff study, no records could be located at CIA that indicated these committees had been briefed on CIA's involvement in covert actions during the early 1950s.
(9) Unpublished draft CIA History Staff study on relations with Congress.study.
(12) Unpublished draft CIA History Staff study.
(15) For an excellent case study of this episode, see Lundberg, Kirsten, The SS-9 Controversy: Intelligence as a Political Football (Cambridge: John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1989).
(16) Unpublished draft CIA History Staff study.
(22) The Rise and Decline of the CIA by John Ranelagh, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/sharing-secrets-with-lawmakers-congress-as-a-user-of-intelligence/1.htm
In January 1970 the first revelations about the US Army's spying on the civilian population came from Christopher H. Pyle. Pyle learned while in the Army in the 1960s that "Army intelligence had 1,500 plainclothes agents watch every demonstration of 20 people or more throughout the United States.” In the late 1960s, Pyle was an army captain teaching constitutional law at the US Army Intelligence School in Fort Holabird, Maryland. In that capacity, he learned about the US Army’s domestic spying operation, which involved 1,500 plainclothes military personnel spying on antiwar and civil rights protesters across the country.
Pyle’s whistle-blowing did not sit well with the military, which put him on President Nixon’s “enemies list.” His taxes were audited, and efforts were made to defame his reputation and monitor his mail.
Pyle stated, “What killed the Army's spying were the stories of former agents that were leaked to the press, week after week. The Army was so frustrated by our leaks that it established a secret 50-man damage control unit in the Pentagon. The sole task of this rather large plumbing firm was to find out who was behind the leaks and discredit them. Fortunately I had a source in the unit. He was code-named "Yellow Pants," after the mustard-colored corduroys he was wearing the day we first met, and he helped us to discredit the dis-creditors.”http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/news/newsfull.shtml?node=4075534
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is an agency of the United States Government established in 1971 that helps US businesses to invest to "foster economic development in new and emerging markets in support of US foreign policy. The agency provides political risk insurance against the risks of expropriation. OPIC operations cost nothing to American taxpayers. OPIC forbade American companies from interfering in domestic politics of other countries.
The OSIC is an independent agency of the United States government under the President vs. an Executive Department like Defense, State or Justice. OPIC’s Board of Directors consists of fifteen members— eight from the private sector and seven from the federal government (like the Department of State or Commerce). (Source: The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph J. Trento. p. 393)
The Economic Hit Man project
I find it interesting that the Economic Hit Man covert operation got started as Congress was demanding to know what the secret operations the CIA was doing. It is possible that the economic hit-man operations discussed in his book, The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins was started by the shadow CIA to continue illegal covert operations in such a way as to avoid Congressional oversight and to work around the OPIC law.
John Perkins was recruited in a similar secret manner very similar way a CIA officer, vets a human source (a contract agent or spy or direct action operative) and people who apply to become a CIA officer. Perkins stated he was recruited in 1970 for his mission allegedly by the NSA. Perkins claims his job was to convince countries that were strategically important to US corporations, to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development projects and to make sure US corporations were contracted to build them. The goal was to saddle these countries with huge debt so these countries came under the control of the US government and the World Bank.
Indonesia
John Perkins was allegedly an employee of Chas. T. Main, Inc. It was an elite consultant group specializing in large scale engineering projects. I say allegedly because the way he was recruited, vetted and hired followed methods typical of the CIA or maybe Mossad as Perkins discribed in hid 2005 book, Confesssions of an Economic Hit Man. I gave as an example the Israeli mossad, because they also set up front companies inside the US in order to steal plutonium.
Perkins’ first assignment took him took to Indonesia allegedly in 1971. Indonesia was an oil-rich country and had been described as “the most heavily populated piece of real estate on the planet.” Perkins’ job was to produce very optimistic economic forecasts for the country, showing that by building new power plants and distribution lines, the country’s economy would explode. These projections would allow USAID and international banks to justify huge loans for the country, which would then be paid to US corporations to build the projects.
In 1971, Indonesia had become even more important to the US in its battle against Communism. Potential withdrawal from Vietnam had the U.S. worried about a domino effect of one country after another falling under Communist rule. Indonesia was viewed as the key. If the US could gain control of Indonesia (with the debts that would incur thanks to the loans for these huge projects), they believed it would help ensure American dominance in Southeast Asia.
In 1974 the Caetano dictatorship in Portugal collapse due to the toll loss of Portuguese troops in the late 1960s in battles to hang on to their African colonies; Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé. By 1970, Lisbon’s wars in Africa consumed as much as 40 percent of the country’s budget. These events helped spread discontent at home, forcing weighty sections of the ruling class to decide they had to get rid of the dictatorship and continue capitalist rule through “democratic institutions.”
Previously secret documents published by the National Security Archive at George Washington University prove that the United States government gave the green light for the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor. As early as July 1975, Ford had given Suharto a clear enough signal that if the Indonesian regime annexed the territory, Washington would stand by him.
A former US embassy official in Jakarta disclosed that starting in 1973, he had spent two years drawing up the black list of alleged Timorese communists which was “a big help to the army”, he said. The black list had been approved by the US Ambassador. As people on the list were murdered, their names were crossed off by American officials. The CIA and other American intelligence agencies intercepted much of Indonesia's military and intelligence communications at a secret base run by the Australian Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) near Darwin. The information gathered was shared under treaty arrangements with Canberra and London and summarized in the National Intelligence Daily, published by the CIA. Thus, Western governments knew well in advance Indonesia's intentions and the day-by-day detail of its covert operations.
Declassified American documents have since revealed that the United States not only supported the slaughter but helped the generals to plan and execute it. The CIA gave them a black list of 5,000 Communist Party (PKI) supporters including party leaders, regional committee members and heads of trade unions and women's and youth groups, who were hunted down and killed.
Indonesa’s military invaded on December 7, 1975. The US government in denied that President Ford and Henry Kissinger had had any involvement with the military dictatorship of General Suharto, however declassified documents expose this lie. In two summit meetings with Suharto in 1974 and 1975, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam made it crystal clear that his government would turn a blind eye to any invasion of East Timor.
An estimated 20,000 Indonesian troops were deployed in East Timor in the first month of the invasion alone. Casualty estimates vary, but 60,000 to 100,000 Timorese were probably killed within 12 months. By 1980, some estimates put the number who died from military action, starvation or disease as high as 230,000. Before the invasion East Timor had a population of some 688,000 people.
CIA officer Philip Liechty who was in Jakarta at that time said, “There were people being herded into school buildings by Indonesian soldiers and the buildings set on fire; anyone trying to get out was shot. There were people herded into fields and machine-gunned, and hunted in the mountains simply because they were there. We knew the place was a free fire zone.” Peasants starved to death in concentration camps where Indonesian troops herded them after their villages were razed.
Five Australian-based journalists in Balibo had been killed by the Indonesian military in an effort to prevent wide reportage of the attack. One foreign reporter, Roger East, to witness the invasion. He became the sixth journalist to die there.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/12/kiss-d19.html
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB174/
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pilger_John/Born_Tears_DV.html
At the time of the invasion, the US supplied 90% of the weapons used. With the slaughter under way, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk cabled the Jakarta embassy that the “campaign against (the) PKI” must continue and that the military “are (the) only force capable of creating order in Indonesia.” The United States was prepared to back a “major military campaign against [the] PKI”. When the military replied that they needed more American weapons to sustain the genocide, they were told that “carefully placed assistance” - covert aid - would “help the army cope...”
Five days after the invasion, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that strongly deplored Indonesia's aggression and called on it to withdraw its troops without delay. The governments of the US, Britain, Australia, Germany and France abstained. Japan, the biggest investor in Indonesia, voted against the resolution. Ten days later, as Western intelligence agencies informed their governments of the scale of the massacres in East Timor and the Security Council unanimously called on “all States to respect the territorial integrity of East Timor,” and order Indonesia to withdraw its troops This time the US, Britain and France voted in favor of the resolution.
In a secret cable to Kissinger on January 23, 1976, the United States Ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, boasted about the considerable progress he had made in blocking UN action on a number of issues related to the developing world, and he mentioned East Timor. Canada, one of the leading Western investors in Indonesia, broke its own laws barring the export of weapons to areas of conflict simply by pretending that there was no fighting in East Timor.
The Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in September 1999 found overwhelming evidence that East Timor has seen a deliberate, vicious and systematic campaign of gross violations of human rights (meaning, but not said, genocide). Such violations included:
• wanton killings;
• deliberate and long-planned’ forcible expulsions of between 120 000 and 200 000 people (although later estimates were as high as 500 000 displaced people, or almost 60 per cent of the population, 250 000 of whom became refugees);
• violence against, and the intimidation and torture of, students, intellectuals and activists;
• rape of and sexual violence against women;
• forced and involuntary disappearances, and separation of family members;
• intimidation of and violence against displaced persons in displacement camps;
• forced recruitment of young East Timorese men into the militias;
• destruction and looting of property (Human Rights Watch later estimated that 70 percent of buildings in East Timor were destroyed).
The civilian human rights commission established by the Indonesian Parliament investigated the human rights abuses in East Timor. In January 2000 report, it revealed that the Indonesian military conspired to form and arm the militias, and funded them from East Timor’s civilian administration budget. It accused 33 leaders of crimes against humanity and demanded prosecutions, including findings of command responsibility against General Wiranto, five other generals, other senior military officers, militia commanders, and the former civilian Governor of East Timor, Abilio Soares.
From 1965, when General Suharto came to power, he slaughtered some 700,000 people, yet the New York Times and other journals described him as “the leader of the Indonesian moderates.” http://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1680222/Saul.pdf
Cuba
The Bay of Pigs fascist never gave up their hope of returning Cuba to a dictatorship.
The group continued its violent efforts against the Cuban communist government. In 1976, Miami Police's Lieutenant Thomas Lyons and Detective Raul J. Diaz testified that groups including Alpha 66 had international terrorist ties and had sold $100 "bonds" in Miami to help finance their causes. The group was linked to a spate of bombings and assassinations in Miami during the 1970s, directed at Pro-Castro speakers. No Alpha 66 member was convicted of these crimes, however; and other terrorist groups, such as Omega 7 and CORU, were active in Miami at the same time. A week before Lyons and Diaz's testimony, broadcaster Emilio Milian's legs were blown off by a car bomb outside his workplace.
Alpha 66 continues to be an organized entity. The current leader of this paramilitary group is Ferdinand de Montejo, who currently resides in Hollywood, Florida. According to a verifiable source, a member of Alpha 66 for over 20 years, there was always a suspicion that the movement's leadership was in reality guided by the communist government of Cuba since every single person that went to infiltrate Cuba was always expected already and executed within the first four hours of arriving the island, this claim is also supported by the fact that Nasario Sargent (its leader), would always call the radio stations and newspapers two days before the infiltration even giving specific details such as the number of people that was being sent at the particular time, that would usually be composed of a team of five ill prepared young boys between the ages of 17 and 21. Ex-member Julio Camacho also corroborated this version.
“Throughout most of the 1960s, rolling back the Cuban revolution through violent exile surrogates remained a top US priority,” says Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive and a specialist on US policy toward Cuba. With exile involvement, the US government made numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro between 1961 and 1975, though the number cited in the title of the British documentary 638 Ways to Kill Castro may be an exaggeration. Many anti-Castro Cubans went to work for US intelligence and compiled long résumés of covert activity. In the 1980s, some assisted with the Reagan administration’s covert effort to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s and into the 1980s, exiles carried out dozens of bombings and assassinations in Miami and other American cities, targeting people they deemed too accommodating to the Castro government.
The Bay of Pigs fascist never gave up their hope of returning Cuba to a dictatorship. Other than an occasional federal gun charge, nothing much seems to happen to most of these would-be revolutionaries. They are allowed to train nearly unimpeded despite making explicit plans to violate the US Neutrality Act and overthrow a sovereign country’s government. Though separate anti-terror laws passed in 1994 and 1996 would seem to apply directly to their activities, no one has ever been charged for anti-Cuban terrorism under those laws.
In the past few years in South Florida, a newly created local terrorism task force has investigated Jose Padilla and the hapless Seas of David cult, and juries have delivered mixed reviews, but no terrorism charges have been brought against anti-Castro militants. The federal government has even failed to extradite to other countries militants who are credibly accused of acts of murder.
In Greater Miami, home to the majority of the nation’s 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the presence of what could credibly be described as a terrorist training camp has become an accepted norm during the half-century of the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora. Alpha 66 and numerous other paramilitary groups — Comandos F4, Brigade 2506, Accion Cubana — are so common they’ve taken on the benign patina of Rotary Clubs with weapons.
In 1971 the CIA supplied anti-Castro Cuban with a virus that causes African swine fever. Six weeks later, an outbreak of the disease in Cuba forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nation-wide animal epidemic. CIA agents delivered a sealed container that contained the virus. (Source: Body of Secrets by James Bamford )
To reach Alpha 66′s South Florida camp you have to drive to the farmlands west of Miami’s sprawl, then wait for a guide. Alpha members may have a fluid definition of what a civilian is. Raking the coast with .50-caliber machine-gun fire certainly does not exclude civilian casualties, nor does attacking tourist spots. By his own admission, Bacallao, who joined Alpha 66 23 years ago, has gone on several missions to Cuba. In 1993 U.S. authorities arrested him and a boatload of other men setting out for the island.
By his own admission, Al Bacallao, had been a member of Alpha 66 for 23 years and had gone on several missions to Cuba. In 1993 US authorities arrested him and a boatload of other men setting out for the island. Federal prosecutors charged Al Bacallao and his companions with illegal weapons possession, but a judge dismissed the case against most of the men, and a jury found the rest not guilty. Like other anti-Castro exiles before him, despite violent acts he is free to continue reporting to the training camp, and free to continue preparing for counter-revolution.
By the 1980s, says Kornbluh, support for militancy “shifted from official funding to private backing from wealthy Cuban-Americans.” Much of the anti-Castro activism among Cuban-Americans was directed by a Miami businessman named Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the Cuban American National Foundation. Cuban intelligence, and even anti-Castro militants, had linked CANF to violent plots targeting Cuba.
Still, however, the militants continued to train within the borders of the US, and to amass weaponry. Retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson remembers attending briefings during Caribbean war game exercises from 1992 to 1997 where he learned of the exiles’ capabilities. “We would always be fed this intelligence and I was astounded at how many suspected caches of arms they had access to not just in Florida, but in California, New Jersey and other places; light machine guns, grenades, C4, dynamite, all manner of side arms and long arms,” recalls Wilkerson, who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. “It was a veritable terrorist haven. This is Hezbollah in Florida, if you’re looking at it through Havana’s eyes.”
Even outside South Florida, juries can balk at convicting anti-Castro exiles. In 1997, the US Attorney in Puerto Rico charged seven Cuban exiles with attempted murder of a foreign official after authorities searched a boat in Puerto Rico and found sniper rifles and night vision goggles, and interviewed a defendant who revealed a plan to whack Castro in Venezuela. The defendants tried to get a change of venue to South Florida and failed, but still succeeded in finding a sympathetic panel. A Puerto Rican jury acquitted the men of the attempted murder charges.
In 1997, Cuban intelligence agents discovered an exile plot to blow up airplanes carrying tourists to and from Cuba.
All three Bushes have relied on Cuban-American money and support to carry Florida in their elections. In 2004, President George W. Bush placed new restrictions on US citizens and Cuban residents in the US who want to visit relatives on the island, and increased enforcement of the embargo against Cuba. To date, his administration has not invoked the 1994 and 1996 anti-terror laws against any anti-Castro militants. http://www.salon.com/2008/01/14/cuba_2/
In late 1970, Bay of Pigs, anti-Castro veteran Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya set up the World Finance Corporation (WFC), a large company alleged to be a conduit for Traffiicante investments and for the income from his narcotics activities. Duney PerezAlamo, a CIA-trained explosives expert involved with several Cuban exile terrorist groups, was a building manager for the WFC. Juan Romanach, a close Trafficante associate, was a WFC bank director. American investigative journalist and author Hank Messick said, "Escandar, of course, was a friend of Hernandez-Cartaya, who was a friend of Dick Fincher, who was a friend of Bebe Rebozo.
CIA supporting drug traffickers: “let the S.O.B. go” he is a CIA contract agent
An important role in the CIA's Central American drug smuggling network was played by the Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban exiles (Alpha 66) that had been trained by the CIA for the invasion of Cuba. They greatly expanded the narcotics distribution and money laundering in Miami and also helped train Contras under John Hull's command.
In 1964, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), whose name was changed to Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and finally to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), it learned that anti-Castro Cubans were smuggling cocaine to secret bases in the Florida Keys and were selling it on the streets of Miami. They were using the profits from drugs to fund a war between rival political factions. The chief of security for the CIA’s Miami Station knew about the anti-Castro Cuban‘s cocaine smuggling. Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza’s ranch was identified as a transit point for Columbian Cocaine. (The Strength of the Wolf, pgs. 353 - 354)
In the Watergate summer of 1972, President Richard Nixon's adviser for law enforcement, Egil Krogh, and his Plumbers were dreaming up new ways to merge the war on drugs with the political war against “campus bums” and Democrats. One of their more bizarre plots wed the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and the CIA in a program called BUNCIN — the Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network.
The anti-Castro Cuban drug network had been set up In October 1972, when CIA Director Richard Helms sent several former CIA contract agents to the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) to "obtain strategic and operational intelligence on Cuban drug smuggling in the Caribbean."
The CIA assistance was channeled to a new BNDD intelligence office established under Lucien Conein, a veteran CIA covert operations officer who boasted of the trust he enjoyed in the Corsican underworld. By the end of 1974, Conein's Miami operation, had not contributed to the bust of a single drug ring. But an official review of his operation indicated that it had sanctioned drug smuggling by its own agents.
In September 1972, at the instigation of the White House, DCI Richard Helms and John Ingersoll, the director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), began a program called the Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network (BUNCIN). Lucien Conein was appointed the chief of BUNCIN.
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger formed the Ad Hoc Committee on Narcotics (the Heroin Committee), to coordinate drug policy and prevent further diplomatic disasters. The Heroin Committee was composed representatives of the SEC/DEF, SEC/State and CIA officer James Ludlum who represented CIA Director Richard Helms. A member of the CIA’s Counter-Intelligence staff, James Ludlum had been the CIA’s liaison officer to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) since 1962.
“When Kissinger set up the Heroin Committee,” Ludlum recalled, “the CIA certainly didn’t take it seriously, because drug control wasn’t part of their mission.”
To protect CIA’s spies (human sources) who were drug trafficker, CIA began infiltrating the BNDD. This massive reorganization required the placement of CIA officers in influential positions in every federal agency concerned with drug law enforcement.
By 1943, the nations of the free world were relying on America for their opium derivatives, under the guardianship of Harry Anslinger, the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). Narcotic drugs are a strategic resource, and when Anslinger learned that Peru had built a cocaine factory, he and the Board of Economic Warfare confiscated its product before it could be sold to Germany or Japan. In another instance, Anslinger and his counterpart at the State Department prevented a drug manufacturer in Argentina from selling drugs to Germany.
Cocaine’s addictive properties were discovered and its increased availability fueled racial fears: cocaine made Negroes insane and murderous; Jewish doctors were identified as its peddlers.
The United States began prohibition of coca leaf, along with the cocaine it produces, with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Just eleven years earlier, The Coca-Cola Company had begun working with a German cocaine maker, Dr. Louis Schaefer, importing Peruvian coca leaf to his chemical plant in Maywood, New Jersey.
Schaefer Alkaloid Works became Maywood Chemical Works and supplied ingredients to Coca-Cola, including caffeine from coffee beans and tea dust, and a mixture of kola and a non-narcotic coca “flavoring extract.” This secret formula was dubbed “Merchandise No. 5.”
Maywood Chemical was acquired by the Stepan Chemical Company in 1959. Over the past century, as coca leaf became illegal around the world, sparking one of the longest, most expensive and violent wars in history, thousands of tons of coca shipped to this secure, discreet facility.
In 1930, Harry J. Anslinger became commissioner of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). He led the ban against coca leaf, while simultaneously helping secure The Coca-Cola Company’s special access to it, through the administrations of seven presidents, until his retirement from government in 1970.
FBN Commissioner Anslinger was a notorious anti-drug zealot, best known for his relentless crusade against the marijuana, but he was an integral supporter to the coca plant business of Coca-Cola and Maywood Chemical Works, forwarding them relevant State Department reports, prying media inquires, and intelligence on South American coca farmers along with maps of their cocaine factories.
By 1949, Anslinger had begun decade-long relationships with Maywood Chemical Works executives and The Coca-Cola Company, primarily through its Vice President, Ralph Hayes. The team worked together on business, strategy, and legal issues regarding coca leaf and processing it for Coca-Cola’s purposes.
At the same time, Anslinger permitted “an American company to ship drugs to Southeast Asia despite receiving intelligence reports that French authorities were permitting opiate smuggling into China and collaborating with Japanese drug traffickers,” according to Douglas Clark Kinder and William O. Walker III in their article, Stable Force In a Storm: Harry J. Anslinger and United States Narcotic Policy, 1930-1962.
Prior to World War Two, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FNB) was the government agency most adept at conducting covert operations at home and abroad. OSS chief William Donovan went to Anslinger asking for experienced FBN agents to help organize the OSS and train them to work undercover, avoid security forces in hostile nations, manage agent networks, and engage in sabotage and subversion.
The relationship expanded during the war, when FBN executives and agents worked with OSS scientists in domestic truth drug experiments involving marijuana. And the FBN worked with the CIA in San Francisco testing LSD on unsuspecting American citizens.
The relationship was formalized overseas in 1951, when FBN agent Charlie Siragusa opened an office in Rome and began to develop the FBN’s foreign operations. In the 1950s, FBN agents posted overseas spent half their time working with the CIA, such as investigating diversions of strategic materials behind the Iron Curtain. A handful of FBN agents were actually recruited into the CIA while maintaining their FBN credentials as cover.
Officially, FBN agents set limits. Siragusa, for example, claimed to object when the CIA asked him to mount a “controlled delivery” into the US as a way of identifying the American members of a smuggling ring with Communist affiliations.
As Siragusa said, “The FBN could never knowingly allow two pounds of heroin to be delivered into the United States and be pushed to Mafia customers in the New York City area, even if in the long run we could seize a bigger haul.”
As the dominant partner in the relationship, the CIA exploited FBN. FBN agent Robert DeFauw explained, “Like the CIA, narcotic agents mount covert operations. We pose as members of the narcotics trade. The big difference is that we were in foreign countries legally, and through our police and intelligence sources, we could check out just about anyone or anything. Not only that, we were operational. So the CIA jumped in our stirrups.”
Institutionalized corruption began at headquarters, where FBN executives provided cover for CIA assets engaged in drug trafficking. In 1966, Agent John Evans was assigned as an assistant to enforcement chief John Enright.
Agent John Evans said, “Other things came to my attention,” Evans added, “that proved that the CIA contributed to drug use in America. We were in constant conflict with the CIA because it was hiding its budget in ours, and because CIA people were smuggling drugs into the US. We weren’t allowed to tell, and that fostered corruption in the (FBN) Bureau.”
Heroin smuggled by CIA contract agents into the US was channeled by mafia distributors primarily to African-American communities. Not until 1968, when Civil Rights reforms were imposed upon government bureaucracies, and when African American FBN agents allowed to become supervisors and manage white agents.
FBN agents, for example, routinely did breaking and entering, planting evidence, using illegal wiretaps, and falsified reports. They tampered with heroin, transferred it to informants for sale, and even murdered other agents who threatened to expose them.
All of this was secretly known at the highest level of government, and in 1965 the Treasury Department launched a corruption investigation of the FBN. Headed by Andrew Tartaglino, the investigation ended in 1968 with the resignation of 32 agents and the indictment of five. That same year the FBN was reconstructed in the Department of Justice as the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD).
Tartaglino said “The job was only half done.”
Richard Nixon was elected president based on a vow to restore law and order to America. To prove that it intended to keep that promise, the White House in 1969 launched Operation Intercept along the Mexican border. This massive stop and search operation so badly damaged relations with Mexico, however, that National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger formed the Ad Hoc Committee on Narcotics (the Heroin Committee), to coordinate drug policy and prevent further diplomatic disasters.
The Heroin Committee was composed of cabinet members represented by their deputies. James Ludlum represented CIA Director Richard Helms. A member of the CIA’s Counter-Intelligence staff, Ludlum had been the CIA’s liaison officer to the FBN since 1962.
Ludlum said. “When Kissinger set up the Heroin Committee, the CIA certainly didn’t take it seriously, because drug control wasn’t part of their mission.”
The CIA for years had sanctioned the heroin traffic from the Golden Triangle region of Burma, Thailand and Laos into South Vietnam as a way of rewarding top foreign officials for advancing US anti-USSR policies. This reality presented the Nixon White House with a dilemma, given that addiction among US troops in Vietnam some 15 to 30 percent and heroin bought from South Vietnamese Generals and being smuggled into the US by North American, mafia boss Santos Trafficante Jr.’s outfit.
Nixon’s response was to make drug law enforcement part of the CIA’s mission. Fred Dick, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) agent assigned to Saigon, passed the names of the complicit military officers and politicians to the White House. But, as Dick recalled, “Ambassador [Ellsworth] Bunker called a meeting in Saigon at which CIA Station Chief Ted Shackley appeared and explained that there was ‘a delicate balance.’ What he said, in effect, was that no one was willing to do anything.” BNDD was established in 1968 by adding the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control of the Food and Drug Administration. In 1971, the BNDD was composed of 1,500 agents and its budget became more than fourteen times larger than the former FBN. The FBN never had more than 16 agents stationed overseas, but Nixon dramatically increased funding for the BNDD and hundreds of agents were posted abroad.
To protect its global network of drug trafficking assets, the CIA began infiltrating the BNDD and commandeering its internal security, intelligence, and foreign operations branches. This massive reorganization required the placement of CIA officers in influential positions in every federal agency concerned with drug law enforcement.
CIA Officer Paul Van Marx, for example, was assigned as the US Ambassador to France’s assistant on narcotics. From this vantage point, Van Marx ensured that BNDD conspiracy cases against European traffickers did not compromise CIA operations and assets. Van Marx also vetted potential BNDD assets to make sure they were not enemy spies.
The success of these overseas agents soon came to depend on CIA intelligence. BNDD agents immediately felt the impact of the CIA’s involvement in drug law enforcement operations within the United States. In 1970, Operation Eagle was started targeting anti-Castro Cubans smuggling cocaine from Latin America to the Trafficante Jr.’s outfit in Tampa, Florida. Some 120 plus drug smuggling anti-Castro Cubans were arrested in June, many were found to be former CIA contract agents who worked in CIA’s covert operations in the US, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico.
The revelation that CIA drug smuggling assets were operating within the US led to the assignment of CIA officers as counterparts to mid-level BNDD enforcement officials, including Latin American division chief Jerry Strickler. Like Van Marks in France, these CIA officers served to protect CIA assets from exposure, while facilitating their recruitment as informants for the BNDD.
Many anti-Castro Cubans arrested in Operation Eagle were indeed hired by the BNDD and sent throughout Latin America. Strickler noted many were secretly serving the CIA and playing a double game.
By 1970, BNDD Director Ingersoll’s inspections staff had gathered enough evidence to warrant the investigation of dozens of corrupt FBN agents who had risen to management positions in the BNDD. But Ingersoll could not investigate his top managers while simultaneously investigating drug traffickers. So he asked CIA Director Helms for help building a counter-intelligence capacity within the BNDD. Usually the term counterintelligence means counterespionage when dealing with turn coats.
The result was Operation Twofold, in which 19 CIA officers were infiltrated into the BNDD, ostensibly to spy on corrupt BNDD officials. As the CIA was downsizing as the US pulled out of South Vietnam, most of these 19 officers would have been out of a job or without a chance to get promoted within the CIA. According to the BNDD’s Chief Inspector Patrick Fuller, “A corporation engaged in law enforcement hired three CIA officers posing as private businessmen to do the contact and interview work.”
Those hired were put through the BNDD’s training course and assigned to spy on a particular regional director. Twofold, which existed at least until 1974, was deemed by the Rockefeller Commission to have “violated the 1947 Act which prohibits the CIA’s participation in law enforcement activities.” It also served as a cover for clandestine CIA operations.
As BNDD’s Director of Office of Strategic Intelligence (SI0) John Warner explained, “We needed (in late 1970) to understand the political climate in Thailand in order to address the problem. We needed to know what kind of protection the Thai police were affording traffickers. We were looking for an intelligence office that could deal with those sorts of issues, on the ground, overseas.”
Organizing BNDD’s Office of Strategic Intelligence fell to CIA officers Adrian Swain and Thomas C. “Tom” Tripodi both of whom were recruited into the BNDD. As an FBN agent Tripodi began working in New York in the 1960s. He later was posted to Washington, Baltimore and Miami.
Tripodi moved from FBN to the CIA and had spent the previous six years in the CIA’s Security Research Services where his duties included the penetration of peace groups (aka MH/CHAOS), as well as setting up CIA front companies to conduct black bag jobs until 1971. His unit included E. Howard Hunt several of the Watergate burglars. When Tripodi moved into this job at the BNDD Office of Special Operation, White House, Plumber, E. Howard Hunt lead Tripodi’s unit spying on US anti-Vietnam War groups. Tripodi later volunteered for a job back into the DEA and was assigned to Italy and Sicily in the 1970s.
Howard Hunt allegedly retired on April 30, 1970 from the CIA at the rank of GS-15, Step 8. But as noted above he was still working for the CIA MH/CHAOS operation with Tripodi. Hunts now retired got a job working at the Robert R. Mullen Company a public affairs company. H. R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff to President Nixon, wrote in 1978 that the Mullen Company was in fact a CIA front company. Through CIA's Project QK/ENCHANT, Hunt obtained a Covert Security Approval from CIA to handle the firm's affairs during Mullen's absence from Washington.
Open sources describe QK/ENCHANT was a code word for Provisional Covert Security Approvals (PCSA) and Covert Security Approvals (CSA). These were actual documents denoting that some individual or covert mission was approved by the case control department within the CIA. That is a CIA officer cannot hire or recruit an agent (spy) without approval from CIA headquarters and time headquarters gives the spy a secret number or codeword or name to be used on all cables back and forth with CIA headquarters. I am not sure what it is called or what Directorate within the CIA it is located. This office insures it know whether any other US Government agency is also using the potential agent/spy or confidential informant.
According to CIA researchers QK/ENCHANT was a codeword for Robert R. Mullen Company a public affairs company. Now I know that the CIA was broadcasting propaganda directed at Americans for years (forever) using US main stream news companies and reporters and because Howard Hunt had an office at the Mullen Company in Washington DC, I can assume he continuing to spy on and do dirty tricks against left wing anti-Vietnam War student group.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/11903-new-foia-release-on-qkenchant/
The MH/CHAOS was publically exposed by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in a 1974 article in the New York Times and allegedly shut down after Watergate burglars were associated with it after being arrested for burglary. However, I suspect it was shut down after an anti-Vietnam war group, called the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI had broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania in April 1971. This is around the time CIA officer Tom Tripodi moved out of the work and back into the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
This Citizen’s Commission group stole FBI files detailed the targeting of civil rights leaders, labor rights organizations, and left wing groups in general, and included documentation of acts of intimidation and disinformation and attempts to erode public support for those popular movements. By the end of April, the FBI offices were order to terminate all files dealing with leftist groups and shut down its spying on citizen, CONINTPRO operation.
Let me add just one more thing about the Mullen public affairs company. Given that “public affairs” means a lobbying business, therefore we can guess it was a CIA secret operation that was lobbying Congress people. And yet the US is the only location where the FBI can legally operate.
Back to the BNDD story;
In April 1971 they accompanied BNDD Chief Ingersoll to Saigon, where Station Chief Ted Shackley briefed them. Through his CIA contacts, Swain obtained maps of drug-smuggling routes in Southeast Asia.
Upon their return to the US, Swain and Tom Tripodi expressed frustration that the CIA had access to people capable of providing the BNDD with counter drug intelligence, but these people “were involved in narcotics trafficking and the CIA did not want to identify them.” Seeking a way to circumvent the CIA, they recommended the creation of a special operations or strategic operations staff.
The White House approved the plan and in May 1971, Kissinger presented a $120 million drug control proposal, of which $50 million was earmarked for special operations. Three weeks later Nixon declared war on drugs, at which point Congress responded with funding for BNDD’s Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI) and authorization for the extra-legal operations.
John Warner, BNDD’s Director of Office of Strategic Intelligence, was given a seat on the US Intelligence Board so his OSI could obtain raw intelligence from the CIA. But in return, the BNDD OSI was compelled to adopt CIA security procedures. A CIA officer established its file room and computer system; safes and steel doors were installed; and witting officers had to obtain CIA clearances. Active-duty CIA officers were assigned to the OSI as desk officers for Europe and the Middle East, the Far East, and Latin America.
Tripodi liaised with the CIA on matters of mutual interest and the covert collection of narcotics intelligence outside of routine BNDD channels. As part of his operational plan, code-named Medusa, Tripodi, as chief of OSI’s operations, proposed hiring foreign nationals to blow up contrabandista planes while they were refueling at clandestine air strips. Another proposal called for ambushing traffickers in America, and taking their drugs and money.
So we all know about Watergate, but here is the untold story about what Nixon did to try and stop the growing drug addiction problem. At the same time stopping the spread of communism in Chile and the rest of Latin America was the mission of CIA. Nixon and Henry Kissinger saw Soviet influence in Latin America as a threat because of Latin America’s proximity to the US and because Latin America had always been under US influence. Neither of them trusted the CIA and they believed that the State Department was weak. So there was a greater mission than stopping the flow of drugs into the US just like was the case in South Vietnam.
Nixon stated that he felt the Catholic Church in Latin America had failed Catholics. Starting in the 1950s, the Latin American Catholic Church shifted its views towards liberation theology, which focused on aided the poor over the rich. Nixon, like many people including those in the Vatican, saw the Latin American Catholic Church’s behavior as a form of Marxism. Nixon also spoke on how Latin countries, both in Europe and Latin America, required an authoritarian government.
CIA officer Seymour Bolten from 1972 until 1974 was assigned as the Special Assistant to the Director for the Coordination of Narcotics under the CIA’s Operations Directorate (aka Chief of Narcotic Control Group. Bolten directed CIA station chiefs in unilateral drug control operations. In doing this, Bolten worked closely with CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, Ted Shackley. This was a period of time when increased drug addiction in the US was becoming a political problem for Nixon’s re-election. In September 1971, the Heroin Committee (that included Henry Kissinger) was reorganized as the Cabinet Committee for International Narcotics Control under Secretary of State William Rogers. Its mandate was to “set policies which relate international considerations to domestic considerations.” By 1975, the war on drugs had become a most profitable industry.
I find it interesting that I could not find out where Bolten worked within the CIA before he was promoted to such a high ranking position in the CIA.
Seymour Bolten’s staff hired dozens of former or present CIA officers and slipped them into the BNDD. Several went to Lou Conein at the OSI for clandestine, highly illegal operations. Factions within the CIA and military were opposed to Bolten’s parallel mechanism, but CIA Executive Director William Colby supported Bolten’s plan to preempt the BNDD and use its agents and informants for unilateral CIA purposes. The White House also supported the plan for political purposes related to Watergate. Top BNDD officials who resisted were expunged; those who cooperated were rewarded.
In the Watergate summer of 1972, President Nixon's adviser Egil "Bud" Krogh Jr. and his band, the Plumbers, were dreaming up new ways to merge the war on drugs with the political war against “campus bums” and Democrats. CIA established an operation called the Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network (BUNCIN).
In September 1972, CIA Director Richard Helms (already knee-deep in the Watergate cover-up) met with BNDD Director Ingersoll. Helms said the CIA had files on several drug traffickers in Miami, the Florida Keys, and the Caribbean. He gave Ingersoll it CIA assets (contract agents) most of whom were anti-Castro Cubans and agreed to that CIA would provide operational, technical, and financial support to BUNCIN.
Egil "Bud" Krogh Jr. was in charge of BUNCIN’s political targeting. In 1968, Nixon rewarded Krogh by appointing him as liaison to the FBI and BNDD. He had prior to this worked as a lawyer for the Seattle law firm of family friend Nixon aide John Ehrlichman. Krogh was appointed as head of the "Special Investigation Unit" (the Plumbers) in the White House. Soon afterwards Krogh recruited G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt.
In July 1971, the White House hired former CIA officer Lt Col. Lou Conein and he was assigned a consultant to the Far East Asia desk for BNDD’s Office of Strategic Intelligence. However, Conein was basically in charge of the Latin American side of BUNCIN.
Historian Alfred McCoy has alleged that, in 1965, Conein arranged a truce between the CIA and drug trafficking Corsicans in Saigon. The truce, according to McCoy, allowed the Corsicans to traffic, as long as they served as contact men for the CIA. The truce also endowed the Corsicans with free passage at a time when Marseilles’ heroin labs were turning from Turkish to Southeast Asian morphine base. And of course, help South Vietnamese general to get rich selling heroin to US GI’s. Some 15 to 30 percent of them were addicted in 1971.
Conein’s plan was to use paramilitary officer breaks into a trafficker’s house, takes his drugs, and slits his throat. The Narcotics Intelligence Officers were tasked to operate overseas where they would target traffickers the police couldn’t reach. If they couldn’t assassinate the target, they would bomb his labs or use psychological warfare to make him look like he was a DEA informant, so his own people would kill him. However how come so many of these former CIA officers were sent to US cities (which I discuss below). I suspect they were acting as a shadow CIA inside the USA. You will recall that the CIA’s MH/CHAOS and the FBI’s CONINTELPRO operations that were spying on and disrupt anti-Vietnam war protests, they had been shut down on or about this time.
Egil Krogh’s political spying and dirty tricks chain of command in BUNCIN was exile Cuban terrorist Manuel Artime, as well as Rolando Cubelas Secades. Under cover of BUNCIN, CIA officers Lou Conein, Howard Hunt, and Sanchez used their exile Cuban assets to assassinate and kidnap people in Colombia and Mexico for the CIA. To whom Krogh passed his mantle is unknown, but BUNCIN’s White House sponsors sent BUNCIN assets to gather dirt on Democratic Party politicians in Key West.
CIA officers Robert “Bob” Medell and William “Bill” Logay worked for Lou Conein. Many of the CIA officers who were hired into the BUNCIN had done these kinds of murders, kidnappings, and tortures in South Vietnam. Several anti-Castro Cubans/CIA contract agents served in South Vietnam. As part of Opeation Phoenix these CIA officers recruited South Vietnamese death squads who would dressed up like Viet Cong, go into a village and rape and kill and pretend to be Viet Cong. The goal was to cause the villager to hate the Viet Cong. In Latin America, it was called the Medusa Plan, included provocations, inducement to desertion, creating confusion and apprehension (kidnapping).
CIA officers intercepted telephone calls from drug traffickers inside the US from their accomplices around the world. CIA established a International Narcotics Information Network (INIS) with a computerized register of international drug traffickers. This was illegal because only the FBI or Justice Department was authorized to do wiretaps inside the US for the NSA.
CIA officer Lawrence Sternfeld had also worked as a case officer to many anti-Castro Cuban contract agents who had been hired for the Bay of Pigs invasion and Operation 40. These Cuban refugees were hired as BUNCIN agents. The anti-Casto Cubans refugees grew rich in the cocaine traffic when Havana was a wide‐open city. In a Pulitzer prize‐winning series on the flow of heroin, Newsday reported that Cubans had largely replaced Italian Mafia members as controllers of the huge heroin traffic through Miami.
Bob Medell hired CIA Special Forces officer Grayston Lynch to work directly with him in BUNCIN. Lynch's primary task was to identify offshore suppliers of illegal drugs. Lynch admitted that "a lot of drug smugglers learned their skills" at JM/WAVE under CIA chief of station, Theodore Shackley. Working for BUNCIN he penetrated an exile Cuban smuggling ring belonging to Francisco Chanes Rodriguez (of Iran-Contra infamy), owner of the CIA front companies Ocean Hunter and Mr. Shrimp. Chanes’ fisher men had contact with Cuba’s fishing fleet and exchanged all sorts of information and items.
In 1970, a BNDD Operation Eagle targeted anti-Castro Cubans smuggling cocaine from Latin America to mafia boss Trafficante Jr.’s outfit in Tampa, Florida. But the CIA refused to allow the BNDD to pursue the investigation because Trafficante’s mafia guys (anti-Castro Cubans) were performing similar functions for the CIA around the world. In fact, BUNCIN hired many of the anti-Castro Cubans arrested by the BNDD sending them throughout Latin America.
According to CIA officer Lou Conein’s administrative officer, Rich Kobakoff, “BUNCIN was an experiment in how to finesse the law. The end product was intelligence, not seizures or arrests.”
Former CIA officer Robert Medell started running agents in March 1973 with the stated goal of penetrating the Trafficante Jr.’s outfit.
One of Medell’s principal agent was anti-Castro Cuban Guillermo Tabraue. Tabraue participated in the Alvarez-Cruz drug smuggling ring. Medell also recruited agents from Manuel Artime’s anti-Castro Cuban organization. Artime’s three principle deputies – Felix Rodriquez, Chi Chi Quintero, and Ricardo Chavez. Also Rafael Villaverde and his brother Jorge Villaverde were other former members of Operation 40. These bad boys financed death squad largely by themselves smuggling drugs throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and Mexico .
The CIA supplied BUNCIN’s assets with forged IDs that enabled them to work for foreign governments, including Panama, Venezuela and Costa Rica.
BUNCIN had two agendas. One, according to Chief Inspector Fuller, “was told” and had a narcotics mission. The other was to provided cover for the Plumbers. Orders for the US domestic political facet emanated from the White House and passed through Conein to Gordon Liddy’s for he and E Howard Hunt’s Plumbers unit.
When Nixon’s White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman sent over three anti-Castro Cubans, Frias interviewed them and realized they were plants (aka CIA contract agents tasked to spy on BNDD. Those three were not hired, but, Frias lamented, many others were successfully infiltrated inside the BNDD and other federal agencies.
Under BUNCIN cover, CIA anti-Castro contract agents reportedly kidnapped and assassinated people in Colombia and Mexico. Jerry Strickler, the Chief of the BNDD’s Latin American Division said BUNCIN agent Carlos Hernandez Rumbault formed a vigilante squad with the President of Costa Rica’s son and an assistant attorney general of Costa Rica. Together they murdered narcotics gangs. Rumbault liked to use a machine gun.
BUNCIN officer Bob Medell was assigned to Panama as a principal agent for CIA officer Lawrence Sternfeld, the chief of station and Manuel Noriega’s case officer. Sternfeld was a case officer to many Cuban exiles, some of whom were BUNCIN agents. Sternfeld was also close to the Israelis and, according to Medell, gave them privileged CIA information. BUNCIA reports were hand delivered to BNDD headquarters via the Defense Department’s classified courier service. The Defense Department was in charge of emergency planning and provided BUNCIN agents with special communications equipment. By emergency planning is likely meant for things like when a BUNCIN officer needed emergency medial treatment and evacuation, or an airplane flight to somewhere.
BUNCIN’s White House sponsors also sent CIA anti-Castro Cuban assets to gather dirt on Democratic politicians in Key West. With BUNCIN, federal drug law enforcement sank to new lows of political repression and corruption. Some BUNCIN intelligence activities were directed against “senior foreign government officials” and were “blamed on other foreign governments or even on the intelligence services of other nations.” Other BUNCIN activities were directed against American civic and political groups.
For example, at their introductory meeting in Mexico City in 1972, Ted Shackley told Latin American division chief Strickler to hand over all BNDD files, informant lists, and cable traffic.
According to Strickler, “Bad things happened.” The worst abuse was that the CIA allowed drug shipments into the US without telling the BNDD. John Warner the Director BNDD’s Office of Strategic Intelligence confirmed this saying, “Individual stations allowed this.”
Strickler knew which CIA people were guilty of sabotaging cases in Latin America and wanted to indict them. And so, at Bolten’s insistence, Strickler was reassigned. Meanwhile, CIA assets from Bolten’s unilateral drug unit were kidnapping and assassinating traffickers.
BNDD Director Ingersoll confirmed the existence of this covert facet of Operation Twofold. Its purpose, he said, was to put people in deep cover in the US to develop intelligence on drug trafficking, particularly from South America.
Twofold was an operation aimed at spying on the BNDD’s top managers. The BNDD’s regional directors weren’t aware of it. BNDD inspector (internal affairs) was Pat Fuller and he targeted Regional BNDD Director Ben Theisen and Group Supervisor Pete Scrocca in Miami. Terry Burke was one of the Twofold agents assigned to investigate Theisen and Scrocca.
The secret facet of CIA’s Operation Twofold unilateral drug unit was to identify drug-dealers worldwide, and selectively kidnap and/or assassinate them.
John Ingersoll said he got approval from Attorney General John Mitchell and passed the operation on to John R. Bartels, Jr. (1973 to 1975) the first administrator of the DEA. He said the unit did not operate inside the US, which is why he thought it was legal.
Barry Seal in 1972 was charged with smuggling explosives into Mexico for anti-Castro Cubans trained by the CIA. On 1st July, 1972, Barry Seal was arrested in New Orleans and accused of sending C4 explosives to anti-Castro Cubans in Mexico. A DC-4 was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport loaded with almost seven tons of plastic C-4 explosives, The DC-4 was owned by James Boy, a known associate of the CIA. Boy's aircraft were later used to fly Oliver North's mercenaries in and out of Honduras. . A mistrial was declared and Seal were released. According to Pete Brewton (The Mafia, CIA & George Bush), as soon as Seal was freed he "began working full-time for the CIA, travelling back and forth from the United States to Latin America." Seal worked under Lucien Conein, Seal went on to traffic-in/fly in drugs thru Mena, AR in the 1980s.
The CIA Twofold unit numbered about 40 men, including experts in printing, forgery, maritime operations, and telecommunications. The job was tracking down, kidnapping, and, if they resisted, killing drug traffickers. Kidnapped targets were incapacitated by drugs and dumped in the US. As DEA Agent Gerry Carey recalled, “We’d get a call that there was ‘a present’ waiting for us on the corner of 116th Street and Sixth Avenue. We’d go there and find some guy, who’d been indicted in the Eastern District of New York, handcuffed to a telephone pole. We’d take him to a safe house for questioning and, if possible, turn him into an informer. Sometimes we’d have him in custody for months.”
In so far as evidence acquired by CIA electronic surveillance is inadmissible in court, the CIA was able to protect its controlled deliveries into the US merely by monitoring them. Numerous BNDD investigations had to be terminated as a result. Likewise, dozens of prosecutions were dismissed on national security grounds due to the participation of CIA assets operating around the world.
In July 1973, with the formation of the Drug Enforcement Administration and adding US Customs agents to the former BNCC), BUNCIN was renamed the Clandestine Operations Network (DEACON 1).
As chief of the Intelligence Group/Operations (IGO), Conein administered the DEA Special Operations Group (DEASOG) and National Intelligence Officers (NIO) programs. The chain of command, however, was “unclear” and while Medell reported administratively to Smith, Conein managed operations through a separate chain of command reaching to William Colby, who had risen to the rank of CIA Director concurrent with the formation of the DEA.
As chief of the Intelligence Group/Operations (IGO), Conein administered the DEA Special Operations Group (DEASOG), and National Intelligence Officers (NIO) programs. The chain of command, however, was “unclear” and while Medell reported administratively to Smith, Conein managed operations through a separate chain of command reaching to William Colby, who had risen to the rank of CIA Director concurrent with the formation of the DEA.
Lou Conein had worked for William Colby for many years in Vietnam, for through Colby he hired a “dirty dozen” CIA officers to staff DEASOG. As NIOs (not regular gun-toting DEA agents), the DEASOG officers did not buy narcotics or appear in court, but instead used standard CIA operating procedures to recruit assets and set up agent networks for the long-range collection of intelligence on trafficking groups. They had no connection to the DEA and were housed in a safe house outside headquarters in downtown Washington, DC.
The first DEASOG recruits were CIA officers Elias P. Chavez and Nicholas Zapata. Both had paramilitary and drug control experience in Laos. Colby’s personnel assistant Jack Mathews had been Chavez’s case officer at the Long Thien base under Ted Shackley’s auspices from 1966-1968. Conein’s Latin American desk officer Barry Carew managed Eli Chavez and Nick Zapata (aka “the Mexican Assassin”) in Mexico.
Additional CIA officers:
Wesley Dyckman, a Chinese linguist with service in Vietnam, was assigned to San Francisco.
Louis J. Davis, a veteran of Vietnam and Laos, was assigned to the Chicago Regional Intelligence Unit.
Christopher Thompson from the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam went to San Antonio.
Hugh E. Murray, veteran of Pakse, Laos and Bolivia, was sent to Tucson.
Thomas D. McPhaul had worked with Conein in Vietnam, and was sent to Dallas.
Thomas L. Briggs, a veteran of Laos went to Mexico.
Vernon J. Goertz, who had participated in the Allende coup, went to Venezuela.
David A. Scherman, the former manager of the CIA’s interrogation center in Da Nang, was sent to sunny San Diego.
As the Rockefeller Commission reported Operation Twofold violated the 1947 Act which prohibits the CIA’s participation in law enforcement activities inside the US. CIA got a clean bill of health, falsely stating that the Twofold inspections project was terminated in 1973. The Commission completely covered-up the existence of the operation unit hidden within the inspections program.
Source: author Douglas Valentine
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/09/10/cia-and-the-drug-business/
Panama
President Theodore Roosevelt used the Monroe Doctrine to justify interventions in The Dominican Republic and Venezuela, and in 1903 invaded Panama – then a part of Colombia. He declared it an independent nation, installed a puppet government, and signed the first Panama Canal Treaty. The US then assured our domination of the Canal Zone by maintaining a succession of right-wing dictators connected with Washington, the CIA, and American corporations such as Standard Oil and United Fruit. The US military intervened on some dozen occasions in Panama to protect these dictators from leftist (socialist) uprisings between 1903 and 1968 when a popular and populist leader independent of Washington finally emerged, Omar Torrijos. (Source: Moral Politics, by George Lakoff, Univ. of Chicago Press, 200)
In 1972, John Perkins (aka Economic Hit-man) was sent to Panama to close the deal on Main company’s master development plan with the country. “This plan would create a justification for World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and USAID investment of billions of dollars in the energy, transportation, and agricultural sectors of this tiny and very crucial country. It was, of course, a subterfuge, a means of making Panama forever indebted and thereby returning to its puppet status.”
On his trip, Perkins met with Panama’s president and charismatic leader, Omar Torrijos. Perkins was very impressed with Torrijos and became friends with the leader. Torrijos was well aware of the Economic Hit-man practices and knew fully how the game was played. He knew that he could become a very wealthy man by cooperating with the US companies that wanted to build their projects in his country, but he worried about Panama losing its independence and not taking care of its many citizens living in poverty.
Torrijos made a peculiar deal with Perkins and Main Inc. He wanted Panama to take back control of the Panama Canal and in doing so he wanted to build a more efficient canal, a sea-level one without locks that would allow for bigger ships. The Japanese, the Canal’s biggest clients, would be interested in financing this construction, which would anger Bechtel Group, Inc. Bechtel was a company closely connected to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
Omar Torrijos was concerned that these actions might send the wrong signals internationally. He wanted to make sure that Panama was recognized as an independent country and was not dictated by Russia, China or Cuba. He did not want Panama to be perceived as against the United States. Instead, he wanted it known that they were simply protecting the rights of the poor.
Torrijos did want to invest in huge advancement projects in electricity, transportation and communications for Panama, but he wanted to make certain that these projects benefited his entire country, including those living in extreme poverty. To do so would require huge amounts of money from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Torrijos worried that his commitment to taking back the Canal would anger the top people at Bechtel so much that it would make it nearly impossible to achieve his plans for these projects.
So, Torrijos made a deal with Perkins and MAIN. He told Perkins that if he could secure the financing for these projects, MAIN could have all the work they wanted on this master development plan. Perkins agreed to the deal and would do Torrijos’ bidding.
In 1981, Perkins became deeply disturbed by the death of his friend and the leader of Panama, Omar Torrijos. Perkins believes that his friend Torrijos’ death in a plane crash was a CIA assassination because of his positions on the Panama Canal (Torrijos had achieved his goal of taking back the Canal) and his unwillingness to cooperate with American corporations.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/johnperkinseconomichitman
I find it interesting that Kennedy’s CIA Director, was John A. McCone may have been involved with this Economic Hit-man operation to support his and Steve Bechtel’s businesses. In 1937, the Steve Bechtel, Henry J. Kaiser and John McCone formed a corporation. Over the next few years the three men formed several companies with them taking it in turn to become the front man. In some cases, they remained silent partners. This was especially true after the World War Two when McCone sought a career in politics and was responsible for giving government contracts to Kaiser and Bechtel.
The first major customer of Bechtel-McCone Corp. was Standard Oil of California (Socal). The company obtained a contract to build Socal’s new refinery in Richmond. It was the first of many refineries built by Bechtel-McCone. By 1939 the company had more than 10,000 employees and was building refineries, chemical plants and pipelines all over the world.
In the summer of 1940 Steve Bechtel and John McCone had a meeting with Admiral L. Vickery of the US Maritime Commission. Vickery told the men he “had received a telegram from the British Purchasing Commission (BPC) urgently requesting that the Maritime Commission arrange the building of 60 tankers to replace the ships the British had lost to German torpedoes”. At another meeting a few weeks later, Maritime Commission chairman, Admiral Emory S. Land, told Bechtel and McCone that: “Besides building ships for the British, they would have to build them for the Americans as well. Not merely tankers, but Liberty and Victory cargo ships, troop transports, the whole makings of a merchant navy.” Admiral Land confidently added that thousands of vessels would be needed as “America was headed into war.”
In 1937 he established the McCone Engineering Company. The company built and designed oil refineries and industrial plants. On the outbreak of the Second World War McCone established the California Shipbuilding Company. This was a successful move and in 1946 it was recorded that the company made $44 million in wartime profits on an investment of $100,000.
After the war McCone was Deputy to the Secretary of Defense (1948) and Under Secretary of the Air Force (1950-1951). While in these posts McCone gave contracts to Standard Oil and Kaiser Aluminum, two companies in which he had financial connections.
After leaving the CIA, Richard Helms played an important role in Bechtel’s business. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4582
The US had tolerated General Manuel Antonio Noriega drug trafficking activities which they had known about since the 1960s (another source, the New York Times said since the 1950s). In 1971, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had "hard evidence" of his heavy involvement in drug trafficking "sufficient for indictment,” but the CIA prevented them from doing so. In the late 1950’s Noriega had spied on colleagues in his socialist party and on leftist students at his Peruvian military academy for the CIA. (New York Times, 9/28/88)
In the 1960s, it was believed that at least half of the crimes in the US were drug related, and this number grew to at least 90 percent in 1970s. According to DEA agent James Bramble, Noriega cooperated with DEA against small-time drug dealers in Panama while protecting close associates who were major drug traffickers. Bramble, who served as DEA station chief in Panama from 1982 to 1984, said he realized Panamanian officials were offering only limited cooperation when he began to develop independent sources of information.
By the 1970s, Noriega had parlayed that ability into a burgeoning relationship with US intelligence services and with various gun and drug running cartels, including infamous Colombian cocaine trafficker Pablo Escobar boss of the Medellín Cartel.
The US Senate released a report claiming “it is clear that each US government agency which had a relationship with Noriega turned a blind eye to his corruption and drug dealing.” Between 1960 and 1980 Noriega was paid a $100,000 annual salary by the CIA and after 1980, it was increased to $200,000 a year.
Australia
In 1964, the CIA planned for the establishment of the UKUSA Agreement to operate the ECHELON network Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) intercept satellites and ground based sites with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom. These nations had been working together since World War Two when they shared SIGINT and breaking codes. INTELSAT, an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites was founded in 1964. In 1966, the first Intelsat satellite was launched into orbit. I assume one of the first satellites code-named “Rhyolite” was launched up to 22,300 miles above the earth and its orbit was synchronized with the earth’s rotation so it would be geostationary over the Horn of Africa.
The signals intelligence agencies in the group of nations were;
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the Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom,
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the National Security Agency of the United States,
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the Communications Security Establishment of Canada,
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the Australian Signals Directorate of Australia, and
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the Government Communications Security Bureau of New Zealand.
The CIA of course was also greatly involved doing SIGINT and the National Reconnecance Organization (NRO) photos from space and U2 type airplanes (IMINT), notwithstanding all of the media’s disclosures about NSA. In the late 1960s the CIA built Pine Gap where Information collected by the Rhyolite satellite(s) was beamed down by radio from the satellite. Pine Gap was located near town of Alice Springs, Australia. There was a seven-square-mile secured zone around the base, and airplanes are prohibited from flying over it. There are more than 200 CIA and other American workers employed at Pine Gap, and although the spy base is officially a joint U S-Australian facility, in actuality, the most sensitive tasks are controlled tightly by Americans. CIA officer Richard Lee Stallings was incharge of the site. The agreement that governed Pine Gap said that the US must supply the Australian Defense Department all material collected through the facility as well as all the intelligence collected by the other ECHELON nations.
The Rhyolite satellite intercepted/monitored the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union, China/PRC, and the Soviet’s Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War. Radio and microwave signals continue to travel off into space in almost a straight line, so the CIA had to put the satellite into space where it could catch/intercept private and commercial communications. Prior to 1975 the code word was ECHELON was SHAMROCK.
In 1972, a former NSA analyst Perry Fellwock (akaWinslow Peck), first blew the whistle on ECHELON to Ramparts in 1972.
There were other US sites in Austrilia kept secret from most of the high ranking members of the Austrilian Parliament. These include the US Naval Communication Station, North West Cape, on the northern coast of Western Australia, which transmits orders for the nuclear missile-carrying Polaris submarines. At Nurrungar, Austrilia was another site like Pine Gap. The most secretive Australian intelligence organisation was/is the Melbourne-based Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) which is modelled on the NSA. The DSD spies for the ECHELON group in the Indian Ocean, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. There was/is also the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO), established in 1970 under the supervision of the CIA's analyst division, and the Office of National Assessments (ONA), whose job is to coordinate and analyse Australia's extensive spying networks in the region.
William Corson, a former Colonel in US Marine/Navy intelligence, revealed that the CIA ran between ten and fifteen secret airfields in Australia during the Vietnam War, flying CIA contract agents from South Vietnam for debriefing. In 1975, as the North Vietnamese captured control of South Vietnam, massive supplies of drugs that had been stashed by the CIA in Vietnam were flown into the secret US airfields in Australia.
The trade union movement of Australia was infiltrated by CIA/USAID International Organization Division (IOD) and the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, which was exposed in Congress in 1967 as being "founded, funded and generally run by the CIA. As John Grenville, assistant secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall, revealed, "It was generally accepted that the US (Embassy’s) labour attaché was the station agent for the CIA." Robert Walkinshaw was the labour attaché from 1962 to 1964. During his time in Melbourne, a trade-union publication, Spotlight, was set up, funded and run by the CIA. The CIA later admitted giving money to the General Secretary of the powerful Australian Worker's Union, Tom Dougherty, to "fight Communism in the AWU."
The three CIA officers Emil Lindahl, Gerry O'Keefe and Ed McHale were involved in supporting Bob Hawke's campaign for the Presidency of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Ed McHale was US labour attaché in the early 1970s and maintained a "close personal relationship" with Hawke when the ACTU President was one of the most powerful union bosses Australia had ever known.
Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti confirmed that the CIA had funded both of the major opposition parties (apposed to the party of the working class) and that the right wing (conservative) parties had been receiving CIA funds since the late 1960s.
Rupert Murdoch was running a failed national newspaper in Australia, The Australian, was facing the likely bankruptcy. The CIA gave Murdoch money that saved his newspaper to push his agenda of extreme right wing politics. Murdoch would help destroy Australia's fragile democratic structure by illegally taking control of 80 percent of all the country's metropolitan and suburban newspapers.
E. Gough Whitlam had been the Leader of the Australia’s Labor Party from 1967 to 1977.
On December 2, 1972 in spite of CIA propaganda against him, Whitlam was elected as the Australia's first Labor Government for 23years. Henry Kissinger and the CIA were extremely worried and feared Prime Minister Whitlam would throw the US out of Australia and close down Pine Gap. They also did not trust the “socialist” government of Whitlam and started stopped sending some intelligence collected by the ECHELON network.
CIA officer Frank Snepp said, “We were told that the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.” Snapp was stationed in Saigon at the time of the CIA was covertly working against the Whitlam government.
This was disclosed in 1977 when American Christopher J. Boyce disclosed details of CIA activities in Australia, specifically the manipulation of unions. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated Australian labor unions, had manipulated their leadership and suppressed strikes. Boyce learned the US was not sharing "certain information," and it regularly concealed from the Australian government.He revealed that the CIA was using Pine Gap to eavesdrop on telephone and telex messages to and from Australia of a political leaders, and that the CIA had funded the Australian opposition political parties. Boyce was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in a Federal Penitentiary. Most of the time was for robbing banks running from the law and just three years for espionage. Boyce was released from prison on parole I September 2002 after serving a little over 25 years.
In 1974 Boyce was hired at TRW, a Southern California aerospace firm in Redondo Beach, California. The CIA teletyped the ECHELON intelligence reports to Australia thru this company’s top secret, Senstive Compartment Intelligence Facilitry.
In its first 100 days in office the new Labor government recognized the People’s Republic of China; abolished racial criteria from immigration policy ending the “White Australia Policy”; he banned all-white South African sporting teams; conceded land rights to the Aboriginals; and instructed the Australian delegation at the United Nations to vote in favour of sanctions on apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. The French were condemned by Australia for testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, and refugees fleeing the CIA-backed coup in Chile were welcomed into Australia. Whitlam promoted equal pay for women; added contraceptives to the list of federally subsidized drugs; outlawed the killing of endangered species; announced plans for a free national health service; posted a government reward for the best national anthem to replace “God Save the Queen”; and withdrew all Australian forces from Vietnam. Australian pulled its 50,000 troops completely out of South Vietnam by July 1973.
The bombing of Hanoi during Christmas 1972 was denounced as the work of "maniacs" and "mass murderers. Deputy Prime Minister of Australia Dr Jim Cairns, called for public rallies to condemn the bombing and for boycotts on American goods. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships. Whitlam himself warned the Nixon administration (Kissinger) that hemight draw Indonesia and Japan into protests against the bombing.
In early 1973 Nixon tasked Marshall Green as the new American Ambassador to Australia. He was widely known as “the coup-master”. Green was a senior US policy planner for Southeast Asia and had the distinction of being involved in several countries where the CIA had masterminded coups, such as Indonesia and Chile. By the time of Green's departure, in September 1975, many in the Labour party felt similarly unease over his role played in destabilising the Whitlam government.
Clyde R. Cameron was an Australian politician, was a member of the Australian House of Representatives (1949 to 1980), a Cabinet minister in the Whitlam government and a leading figure in the Australian labor. He stated that Ambassador Green was for many many years a top CIA or State Department officer who orchestrated the overthrow of the Sukarno government which led to the installation of President Suharto. He was involved in the CIA intrigue in Vietnam and in the overthrow of the government of Greece.
The CIA set about an operation to slander/discredit Jim Cairns, who was a leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement. ASIO timed the leak of a defamatory “Cairns file” to The Bulletin magazine (of Sidney) to coincide with Cairns’ election to Deputy Prime Minister in 1974. This file claimed that Cairns “echoed Communist views… and his activities could lead to the fascist cult of the personality… and to the destruction of the democratic system of government.” A few weeks later, ASIO leaked a second file to journalist Peter Samuels, a regular publisher of CIA propaganda. Under the headline The Pathway to Terrorism, Samuels wrote that ASIO’s prime concern about Cairns was the “terrorist” potential of his part in the anti-war movement.
Prime Minister Whitlam discovered that Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) agents were working for the CIA in Chile, destabilizing the government of Salvador Allende, who was supported by the Australian Labor Government. Whitlam promptly ordered the ASIS officers home. However, some remained in Chile under Australian Embassy cover and without Whitlam’s knowledge. When Whitlam discovered they had not yet left Chile he was furious and, as Cameron says “put the knife through a lot of these people responsible for ignoring his directions.” (CIA in Australia, Part 3, Melbourne, Australia Public Radio News Service, 1986).
I assume ASIA is like the clandestine directorate of the CIA in that it operates outside Austrilia. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) is like CIA, US State Department and/or the FBI in doing national security intelligence analysis and threat accessment. ASIA (code-named MO9), and its existence was only acknowledged after the Labor Government came to power in 1972.
ASIS played an important role in the CIA’s covert activities against foreign governments in Southeast Asia. For example, after Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk broke off diplomatic relations with the United States in 1965, the CIA used ASIS to secretly carry out its work in the country for the next four years, despite official Australian policy being one of strict neutrality. After Sihanouk was overthrown in a CIA-inspired coup, American forces invaded Cambodia and the US carpet-bombing of the country – a bombing so intense that during one six-month period in 1973, American B52s dropped the equivalent (in tons of bombs) of five Hiroshimas on the civilian population – served as a catalyst for the rise to power of Pol Pot and the genocidal Khmer Rouge).
ASIO had made a secret pact with the CIA and helped to set up and maintain keep files on all Australian Labor Party members, prominent politicians, government officials, union leaders, members of the Council of Civil Liberties and anyone considered the slightest left-of centre. Even prayer meetings for peace were watched and recorded. Members of ASIO handed over to the CIA slanderous information against Australian politicians and senior officials who CIA regarded unfavourably. This material ranged from accusations of subversive tendencies to concern about their personal lives. ASIO allowed the CIA to work against these people in ways that ranged from blackmail to efforts to block their careers.
In late 1975, the opposition Senators refused to allow a vote on the government's appropriation bills, returning them to the House of Representatives with a demand that the government go to an election. Whitlam refused to back down, arguing that his government, which held a clear majority in the House of Representatives, was being held to ransom by the Senate.
In late 1975, CIA boss Richad Stallings prematurely retired and complained that other CIA officers were being too pushy in manipulating Australian politics. Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti says. “Dick was a straight shooter. Pine Gap was being put at risk by the (CIA) station chief’s men, who were interfering in Australia’s political parties and labor unions.
The CIA Station Chief in London, Dr John Proctor, contacted British MI6 and asked for their help with "the Whitlam problem." William Colby directly approached his opposite number, head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, to emphasise to British intelligence that Australia was "traditionally Britain's domain" and that if Pine Gap was closed down, "the Alliance would be blinded strategically." The CIA also sought assistance from MI6 and MI5 liaison officers based in Washington.
MI6 operates its own base at Kowandi, south of Darwin and their secret activities are concealed from the Australian government and people. MI6 SIGINT site also intercepted communications and did covert operations in Asia. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS, also operates from this base and is highly integrated with British intelligence.
An election was called for December 13, 1975. During the campaign, three letter bombs were posted to Kerr, Fraser and the ultra-right-wing Queensland Premier, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. Most of the press, led by Rupert Murdoch's papers, concluded that the bombs were sent by left-wing extremists within the Labor Party. There was not a shred of evidence to support this and no culprits were ever found, but the charge of terrorism was used to great effect against the Labor Party.
In November of 1975, Australia faced one of the most uncertain periods in its political history. The Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, was unexpectedly dismissed (fired) by a man named John Kerr, the Governor-General of Australia and Malcolm Fraser, the newly elected leader of a coalition of conservative parties was made Prime Minister. The Queen of England knew that Prime Minister Whitlam was going to be removed from office long before it happen.
Based on the stupid British law giving the Austrialian Governor General appointed by the Queen of England, the conservative political party removed Whitlam and than ran the government.
Five years after the overthrow of Whitlam, in April 1981, senior executives of nineteen Australian corporations met at Melbourne's Noah's Hotel for a "forecasting round table" organised by Business International. Business International is a worldwide American organisation of "consultants" which represents the top multi-national companies in Australia. In December 1977, the New York Times exposed Business International's clandestine links with the CIA. https://www.alternet.org/world/was-us-involved-bringing-down-australias-government
http://jaraparilla.blogspot.com/2012/08/lessons-of-history-cia-in-australia.html
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_oz/cia_oz2.htm
https://digitalseance.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/the-cia-in-australia/
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Next is the story of other funny CIA business on-going in Australia during these years.
In September, 1967, US Army Special Forces (aka CIA) soldier Michael J. Hand moved to Australia. At first Hand went to work selling development lots along the Australian coast. The company, Ocean Shores Development, was run by lawyer Fred Miller, a senior executive for the shipping empire owned by Australian mafia boss, Sir Peter Abeles, the longtime business partner, Rupert Murdoch.
In 1969, Hand formed his own company called Australian and Pacific Holdings. In May 1970 a list of Australian and Pacific's shareholders was filed with the government. Of the 37 listed shareholders, four had the address c/o Air America whereas another had the address c/o Continental Air Service, both CIA front companies. Five shareholders were reachable through the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It was a cover for CIA covert operatives and part of the US foreign policy working against any nation whose democratically elected government was authorizing too much socialism.
Former CIA officer Paul Helliwell founded the Nugan Hand bank in 1973 using Australian lawyer Francis J. “Frank” Nugan as his front man. Another front man was Brigadier General Earle “Erie” Cooke a previous associate of OSS boss William Donovan. BG Cooke would be advisor to every President from Truman and he was coordinator for the Black Eagle Trust Fund. The Black Eagle Trust Fund got its name from the Black Eagle stamped on Nazi gold bars the US captured at the end of World War Two. This gold bullion confiscated from the Third Reich was not returned to the nations from which the German Army stole it or to their rightful heirs. Major General George Olmsted a World War Two veteran, became president of the Washington DC based bank holding-company International Bank, which took over Mercantile Bank and Trust in the Bahamas (which I wrote about above regarding CIA and mafia money laundering). International Bank was later sold Financial General Bankshares (than known as First American) to BCCI.
In June 1976 incorporation of a bank branch in the Cayman Islands, Hand moved to Hong Kong in October 1976 to develop the international side of the bank, developing a network of twelve branches across three continents. Returning to Sydney in March 1976, Hand developed a close business and social relationship with Murray S. Riley, a corrupt Sydney police officer from 1943 until 1962 and then embarked on a criminal career that included convictions for drug trafficking and fraud. Harry Sayvanus Wainwright, a fugitive American lawyer, both of whom had settled in Australia in the late 1960s. Wainwright subsequently introduced Riley to Michael Hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
During the mid-1970s, Riley made regular trips to San Francisco to meet with known American Mafia figures including Jimmy Fratianno of the Los Angeles crime family and to gain entrée to the American underworld. Riley was photographed with Sal Amarena of the Santos Trafficante Jr.’s mafia family. Riley also formed links with the Teamsters and Mafia through associations with corrupt Teamsters official Michael Rudy Tham.
By 1975, Riley, now known as a criminal heavy who could offer protection from other criminals, had become associated with two emerging Sydney drug traffickers, Michael and Patricia Moylan. Their enterprise used female croupiers employed at Sydney's illegal casino, the “Double Bay Bridge Club”, to courier drugs concealed in their corsets. Riley’s Hong Kong partner was John Doyle, who had connections with senior Triad members linked to the drug markets in Manila, Singapore and Thailand.
The Woodward Royal Commission into Drug Trafficking (1977–1979) accused Riley of being involved in importing heroin from Bangkok in 1977. A 1982 Joint Taskforce on Drug Trafficking found that he had carried out five successful heroin importations in 1976.
Nugan Hand Ltd. was founded in Sydney, Australia in 1973, by Australian lawyer Frank Nugan. Nugan’s family ran the primary supply shipping operation between the US Navy base in the Philippines and Australia. Nugan’s business partner was Peter Abeles, a reputed to be a member of the Australian mafia known as the Hungarian mafia. Abeles’ business partner was Henry Keswick. The Keswick family also had a controlling interest in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation which was the largest holder of Santa Romana’s known gold accounts. The Hand Nugan bank was allegedly established as a cover for US Navy Task Force 157, commanded by Don Nielsen (unknown rank or anything else about his background). However, it appears Henry Kissinger turned TF 157 into a mini-CIA.
Don Nielsen’s boss was the Director of Naval Intelligence Admiral Bobby R. Inman. In 1966, the US Navy established a covert unit, designated the Naval Field Operations Support Group (NFOSG) – also known as Task Force 157 per orders of Admiral Paul H. Nitze. It conducted operations spying on the Leningrad area, Black Sea Ports, Kola Inlet and Soviet involved in the Far East. Members of Task Force 157 worked on secret missions to sneak into and out of China/PRC and North Korea "nearly 100 times". The purpose of these missions was to collect information, pictures, and any other products of collection of Communist China and North Korean ship construction and naval order of battle. A new Chinese missile-equipped patrol boat was discovered, photographed, and confirmed. Task Force 157 agents were also able to confirm the first North Korean guided missile boat constructed entirely in North Korea. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/
In July 1975 the Australian media reported that the Mercantile Bank and Trust Company, based in the Bahamas, had issued a letter seeking some $4.3 billion "for and on behalf of the Government of Australia." Years later an ASIO officer publicly stated: "some of the documents which helped discredit the Labor Government in its last year in office were forgeries planted by the CIA." Mercantile Bank and Trust was set up and owned by the CIA's Colonel Paul Helliwell, who built up a network of banks. A company called Commerce International was set up as a front for Task Force 157. I find the name of this outfit similar with the corrupt bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was founded in 1972.
In 1981 a CIA contract agent Joseph Flynn, revealed that he had forged some of the loans affair documents and had bugged a hotel room where Gough Whitlam was staying. He had been paid by Michael Hand, co-founder of the CIA's Nugan Hand Bank.
Former Nugan Hand bank employee/official Karl Schuller provided evidence to Australian Corporate Affairs investigating officers that in March 1973, the CIA “transferred” this fake document alleging a $4.3 billion "slush fund", four months after Whitlam's election. I assume Schuller meant “sent the document regarding or record of a wire transfer of money.”
According to the former Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA, Dr Ray Cline, the CIA passed information to opposition politicians not only to discredit the Whitlam Government but also to put pressure on Australian civil servants who in turn would pressure the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr. Kerr was the guy thru which the Queen of England removed Whitland from power due to some old colonial law granting Australia somewhat independence from Britain. Kerr was always well to the right politically. He was chief legal adviser to the Industrial Groups, an extreme, Australian anti-Communist organization which sought to dominate trade unionism. He also was an active member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, which was exposed in the US Congress in 1967 as being "founded, funded and generally run by the CIA." In the 1960s Kerr travelled to the United States to arrange funding from the Asia Foundation; that too, was exposed in Congress as a CIA conduit for money and influence.
I assume Kissinger and the National Security Council were behind this US Navy Task Force 157 secret outfit to undermine the pro-labor Government of Australia. The Australian government had quietly threatened to nationalize subsidiaries of American corporations. Also the task force was using Australia as a base for clandestine US operations such as drug smuggling to pay for weapons.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/
After retiring from the CIA, Colonel Paul Helliwell opened a law office in Miami and formed Castle Bank and Trust Company offshore in nearby Nassau. Castle Bank operated as a laundry for both CIA and organized mafia profits, hiding them from the IRS. Meyer Lansky’s mob associate from Las Vega, Moe Dalitz, opened an account at Castle Bank. (The Strength of the Wolf, p. 373)
In 1976, Castle Bank had been liquidated. Simultaneously with the closure of Castle Bank, came the sudden rise of Nugan Hand's formal banking operations in the nearby Cayman Islands. Retired CIA officers associated with Castle Bank were recruited to work for Nugan Hand, which took over the role of shifting money for various CIA covert operations around the globe.
In 1973 Michael Hand (a former US Army Special Forces soldier, and possibly a CIA contract agent) and Frank Nugan, an Australian lawyer, established the Nugan Hand Bank. Another key figure in this venture was Bernie Houghton, who was closely connected to CIA officials, Ted Shackley and Thomas G. Clines.
Houghton clearly had important contacts in Australia. When he applied for a new Australian visa in 1972, he gave the immigration officers the name of Leo Carter, director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) in New South Wales, to support his application. Carter also arranged for him to get permission for unlimited re-entries to Australia in the future.
Allan Parks claims that Houghton was active in the drug trade in the 1970s. "There's no doubt about it, he'd fly anything. The Golden Triangle, that's where he got his opium.”
In 1973 Michael Hand was closely connected to CIA officials, Ted Shackley, Thomas G. Clines, and CIA contract agent Bernie Houghton. He founded and ran a restaurant in Australia.
In June 1976 incorporation of a bank branch in the Cayman Islands, Hand moved to Hong Kong in October 1976 to develop the international side of the bank, developing a network of twelve branches across three continents. Returning to Sydney in March 1976, Hand developed a close business and social relationship with Murray S. Riley, a corrupt Sydney police officer from 1943 until 1962 and then embarked on a criminal career that included convictions for drug trafficking and fraud. Harry Sayvanus Wainwright, a fugitive American lawyer, both of whom had settled in Australia in the late 1960s. Wainwright subsequently introduced Riley to Michael Hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
During the mid-1970s, Riley made regular trips to San Francisco to meet with known American Mafia figures including Jimmy Fratianno of the Los Angeles crime family and to gain entrée to the American underworld. Riley was photographed with Sal Amarena of the Santos Trafficante Jr.’s mafia family. Riley also formed links with the Teamsters and Mafia through associations with corrupt Teamsters official Michael Rudy Tham.
By 1975, Riley, now known as a criminal heavy who could offer protection from other criminals, had become associated with two emerging Sydney drug traffickers, Michael and Patricia Moylan. Their enterprise used female croupiers employed at Sydney's illegal casino, the “Double Bay Bridge Club”, to courier drugs concealed in their corsets. Riley’s Hong Kong partner was John Doyle, who had connections with senior Triad members linked to the drug markets in Manila, Singapore and Thailand.
The Woodward Royal Commission into Drug Trafficking (1977–1979) accused Riley of being involved in importing heroin from Bangkok in 1977. A 1982 Joint Taskforce on Drug Trafficking found that he had carried out five successful heroin importations in 1976.
Nugan ran operations in Sydney whereas Hand established a branch in Hong Kong. This enabled Australian depositors to access a money-laundering facility for illegal transfers of Australian money to Hong Kong. According to author Alfred W. McCoy, the "Hand-Houghton partnership led the bank's international division into new fields - drug finance, arms trading, and support work for CIA covert operations." Hand told friends "it was his ambition that Nugan Hand became banker for the CIA."http://educationforum.
Nugan Hand Bank was the conduit through which the shadow CIA (aka the secret team) formed by Ted Shackley, Edward Wilson, Tom Clines, and Richard Secord, funneled the massive fortune generated by heroin pipeline. Ted Shackley was the CIA’s chief of Station in South Vietnam from 1968 to 1972.
Former naval officer Richard L. Armitage was a central figure in the handling of Laotian General Vang Pao's drug profits per his official duty in Thailand as special consultant to the Pentagon. However Armitage actually functioned as a bursar, overseeing the transfer of Vang Pao's heroin profits to Shackley's Nugan Hand account in Tehran. From late 1973 until the ultimate withdrawal of US forces from Indochina in April 1975, money was smuggled out of Vietnam in large suitcases by Secord and Clines, and deposited in a secret Nugan Hand account in Australia. Armitage later became Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
US Justice Department covered-up and failed to investigate or prosecute the drug trafficking case of a US Customs Attaché to Thailand, Joe Jenkins and an unknown named CIA Officer, US v Liang Sae Tiew, et al. This case was filed in July 1971 by DEA agent Michael Levine who was also the witness. Levine told me he saw heroin being shipped in bodies by the CIA while working undercover in Thailand at the time. (Sources: Deep Cover (1990) and The Big White Lie, (1993) by Michael Levine)
Lt. Col. James "Bo"Gritz returned from Southeast Asia with a videotape of opium warlord Khun Sa implicating Shackley, Armitage, Clines and other CIA personnel in the drug trade.
Basil "Bo" Abbot, a former CIA/Air America pilot openly admitted to having flown drugs for the CIA and on CIA aircraft. http://www.drugwar.com/cv13.
The CIA's Senior Liaison Office, under the command of Edward Lansdale, worked closely with South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky's administration during the war, and Ky was heavily involved in narcotics trafficking (thru 1975 and moving all their drug profits into Swiss bank accounts). Despite knowing that the Corsicans were heavily involved in the drugs traffic, Lansdale took no action against them but instead arranged a "truce" in which he agreed to turn a blind eye to their drug trafficking.
Even when the US Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) gathered detailed information on the South Vietnamese government's involvement in trafficking heroin to American GIs, rather than acting on the information, the Nixon administration and the US military command did their best to deny both the charges and the scale of the GI heroin epidemic, and to shield the South Vietnamese government from criticism.
In 1967 Shackley and Clines helped Vang Pao to obtain financial backing to form his own airline, Zieng Khouang Air Transport Company, to transport opium and heroin between Long Tieng and Vientiane.
In 1968 Shackley and Clines arranged a meeting in Saigon between Florida’s mafia boss Santo Trafficante Jr. and Vang Pao to establish a heroin-smuggling operation from Southeast Asia to the United States (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade by Alfred W. McCoy).
Shackley also used Quintero and Rodriguez to train men to kill rival opium warlords and supporters of the Pathet Lao. Eventually Vang Pao had a monopoly over the heroin trade in Laos. (Inside the Shadow Government by Edith Holleman and Andrew Love).
Anti-Castro Cuban Rafael Quintero (aka Chi Chi Quintero) as a CIA contract agent helped move drug money into the Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney from the profits of drug trafficking in South Vietnam.
http://www.combat-diaries.co.
“From late 1973 until April of 1975, Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage disbursed, from the secret, Laotian-based, Vang Pao opium fund, vastly more money”… “The money …was secretly smuggled out of Vietnam in large suitcases, by General Richard Secord and Thomas Clines and carried into Australia, where it was deposited in a secret, personal bank account (privately accessible to Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Secord). During this same period of time between 1973 and 1975, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines caused (stole) thousands of tons of US (government owned) weapons, ammunition, and explosives to be secretly taken from Vietnam and stored at a secret "cache" hidden inside Thailand. Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese army in April, 1975.
President George HW Bush Pardoned General Secord.
(Source: Daniel P. Sheehan’s affidavit).
http://educationforum.ipbhost.
As the US was losing the war in South Vietnam, I assume the CIA or shadow CIA was unable to secure all the money needed to wage covert wars around the world they turned to trafficking in heroin and money laundering.
Bernie Houghton, an ex-US military guy living in Australia, maintained excellent contacts with the most senior US military and intelligence personnel in the Asia-Pacific region. Houghton remained very close to Michael Hand. Houghton maintained excellent contacts with the most senior US military and intelligence personnel in the Asia-Pacific region. In 1972, his intelligence contacts were such that when he returned to Australia from a business trip without a visa, he telephoned Leon Carter, the state director for the clandestine Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and Houghton was allowed to enter the country anyway.
Injured in an accident, Kermit “Buddy” King's Thai houskeeper met a Sydney lawyer to sue for compensation. Soon after his housekeeper's lawyer made these allegations to the Australian Bureau of Narcotics, in 1973 King fell to his death from the tenth floor of a Sydney apartment building. His Thai housekeeper, accused King of flying heroin to Australia for Michael Hand. King had been a CIA contract pilot working in Laos, where he had flown Michael Hand, then a CIA contract agent, to remote hill tribe villages to organize and train Hmong Guerrillas.
Allan Parks claims that Houghton was active in the drug trade in the 1970s. "There's no doubt about it, he'd fly anything. The Golden Triangle, that's where he got his opium from. There was one flight, he flew in slot machines. He did some deals over in India."
Bernie Houghton also brought on board Admiral Earl F. Yates, a retired chief strategist for the US Pacific Command, who became the president of the bank stationed out of Sydney Australia, where it was founded. Houghton's private guests at his restaurant and club were the CIA's chief of station in Australian John D. Walker (1973 to 1975); the corrupt Premier of the Australian State of New South Wales, Sir Robert Askin, and Abraham Saffron, Sydney's leading gangster and vice lord of Kings Cross.
The allegations of corruption against Robert Askin were in the news in 2008 when Alan Saffron, the son of a dead Sydney crime boss Abe Saffron, published a biography of his father. He wrote that his father had paid bribes to major public officials including Askin, former police commissioner Norman Allan, and other leading figures. Australian libal laws prevent him from name these others until after they were dead. Alan Saffron alleged that his father made payments of between $5000 and $10,000 per week to both men over many years, that Askin and Norman Allan both visited Saffron's office on several occasions, that Allan also visited the Saffron family home. He also alleged that, later in Askin's premiership, Abe Saffron became the "bagman" for Sydney's illegal liquor and prostitution rackets and most illegal gambling activities, collecting payoffs that were then passed to Askin, Allan and others. In return for which his mob boss father was completely protected from arrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The investigative journalist, Jonathan Kwitny, became convinced that the Nugan Hand Bank had replaced the Castle Bank and Trust Company in Nassau, as the CIA's money laundering banker.
Given the number of very high ranking US Generals or from the military intelligence community, one can assume this Nugan Hand Bank operation was very secret and important.
Here is a list of those connected to the bank;
Colonel Paul Helliwell – CIA front company founder and a tax lawyer;
General Leroy J. Manor (manager of the Manila branch) - the former chief of staff of the U.S. Pacific Command and deputy director for counterinsurgency and special activities
General Edwin F. Black (president of Hawaii branch); former commander of U.S. forces in Thailand,
Brigadier General Erle Cocke Jr. (president the Washington D.C. branch of Nugan Hand bank)- he had secret meetings with many of the presidents. Cocke was one of the most powerful and feared men in Washington, D.C. Although he was behind the scenes, he was calling the shots. He did a lot of secret banking all over the world for the government and died a very wealthy man His father was the one who created Bank of America. A lawsuit filed in the late 1980s against Associated Traders Corporation caused CIA Director William Webster to seek a court order placing a secrecy lid on the case. Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, in a series of articles, accused Associated Traders Corporation of various CIA activities, involving military weapon sales and money laundering. Cocke was alleged to be involved in that company. it was believed that Cocke and Phillips International, of which Cocke and Brigadier General Eugene Phillips were the principals, was and is a covert off-the-books CIA company. That company had connections to Nugan Hand Bank and to another covert CIA company, Associated Traders Corporation. President Kennedy appointed him to an alternate executive director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Rear Admiral Earl P. Yates, (became president of the bank in 1976) - the former Chief of Staff for Policy and Plans of the U.S. Pacific Command and a counter-insurgency specialist;
Mitchell WerBell a consultant hired because he had extensive experience in Central America;
Guy Parker, PhD an expert from the RAND Corporation who came on as a bank consultant -
foreign policy adviser to Republican leaders
Major General Richard Secord;
Walter J. McDonald, headed Annapolis branch); retired CIA assistant deputy director for economic research, under CIA directorate of Intelligence analysis;
Dale C. Holmgren, manager Taiwan branch - former chairman of the CIA's front, Civil Air Transport;
Theodore Shackley (former CIA deputy director for clandestine operations);
Richard L. Armitage (was special consultant to the Pentagon in Thailand who oversaw the transfer of heroin profits from Indonesia to Shackley's account in Tehran);
William E. Colby – provided legal advice to Michael Hand and Colby submitted a bill to Nugan Hand Bank for $45,684 for this legal work. Colby had connections to the Wall Street law firm of Reid & Priest, suggesting that this firm was a front company for the CIA.
Patry Loomis (former CIA officer).
CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson - got involved with the bank in 1974 helping the CIA to take part in covert arms deals with contacts within Angola;
Gordon (Billy) Young, CIA asset, represented Nugan Hand in the Golden Triangle drug zone of Southeast Asia;
George Farris -a military intelli gence specialist working in the Hong Kong office of Nugan Hand;
Guy Pauker was an advisor to Henry Kissinger;
Robert Wilson (US House of Representatives on the Armed Services Committee);
Another CIA officer was Donald Beazley, who was president of Nugan Hand International. He later became president of City Bank in Miami. Beazley, according to the Australian Report, played an important part in the purchase of London Capital Securities Ltd. (aka Stonehouse Bank). All were tied to A.P.I. Distributors of Houston, Texas, and helped Wilson sell 20 tons of plastic explosives to Qaddafi. Beazley purchased the London Bank for $300,000 in traveler’s checks bought by Bernard M. Houghton, a Nugan Hand executive in Australia.
In 1973, Kermit "Buddy" King fell from the tenth floor of a Sydney apartment building. His death coincided with allegations made to the Australian Bureau of Narcotics by the lawyer of his disgruntled Thai housekeeper, accusing him of flying heroin to Australia for Michael Hand. King had been a CIA contract pilot working in Laos, where he had flown Michael Hand, then a CIA contract agent, to remote hill tribe villages to organize and train Hmong Guerrillas. During that same year Michael Hand and Frank Nugan formed "Nugan Hand Limited."
Many of these men knew each other from Vietnam and Laos, which for some, was the training ground for developing traits in covert profits, information gathering and shadow communities that relied on companies and banks to remain secure and hidden from the press and congressional oversight.
The CIA office in Chiang Mai, Thailand when the main business of the city was opium trafficking was on the same floor as the local office of the DEA. According to author Jonathan Kwitny, “The DEA receptionist answered Nugan Hand’s phone and took messages when the bank’s representatives were out.” Nugan Hand’s representative there, Neil Evans has said he was present when Michael Hand and Ron Pulger-Frame –the former Deak & Company courier who went to work at Nugan Hand– discussed the shipment of CIA money to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, and Panama. Evans has said Nugan Hand moved $50 to $60 million at a time for the CIA, and also that Nugan Hand was involved in Third World arms deals. Deak & Company is a company that deals in sales, shipment and storage of large quantities of gold.
Neil Evans also told Australian television that the millions he handled were “garnered from the drugs transiting the area. The bank, he put it starkly, was a laundry for Hmong tribesmen and other poppy growers,” (aka CIA drug trafficking in Laos).
http://911truth.org/cia-
http://spartacus-educational.
With bank records destroyed and assets stripped, Hand fled from Australia. As investigators began searching for bank records, Michael Hand went into hiding around Sydney. Hand, using an Australian passport under an assumed name, flew o Fiji and Vancouver, escorted by James Spencer, an ex-Green beret who had served in the CIA's Laos operation with him. Hand crossed the border from Canada into America, where he disappeared. Hand is one of Australia's most wanted fugitives since he vanished in 1980. According to 60 Minutes and author Peter Butt, Hand is living under the name Michael Jon Fuller in Idaho Falls. Fuller's social security number is identical to the one allocated to Michael Hand in 1960.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Trenton Parker said that Hand and Vice President George Bush were in frequent contact after Bush became vice president, and while Australian authorities were searching for Hand. Parker stated that CIA Director William Casey frequently met with Hand in Panama in the early 1980s concerning arms sales and drug trafficking.
Parker stated that he and Hand took over one of the drug trafficking operations for the CIA in Central and South America. He said that Hand’s experience in developing the Golden Triangle drug operations for the CIA made him useful in expanding the drug operations from Central and South America into the United States. https://www.linkedin.com/
I think this was connected to a secret operation established by Nixon. That is, the Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network (BUNCIN). Its mission was to recruit anti-Castro Cuban drug traffickers, let them smuggle drugs while reporting on Latin American civic and political groups. Almost all of BUNCIN’s contract agents were anti-Castro Cubans. It goal was to focus counter narcotics enforcement against the Corisan mafia and let those traffickers associated the Santo Traficante’s cartel to continue to smuggle drugs into the US. Or traffickers from nations in line with Nixon’s foreign policy would be allowed to profit, while those the CIA was working to over throw, their guys would get arrested and their drugs seized.
The Australian Corporate Affairs Commission issued warrants for the arrest of Frank and Ken Nugan on fraud charges in May 1978. The banks funds disappeared from bank branches around the world, until losses reached about $25 million - a substantial sum at the time. Finally, on April 17th 1980, Michael Hand announced that the bank was insolvent and asked the court to appoint liquidators.
Edwin P. Wilson and his former CIA superiors turned business partners, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines, made headlines when it was revealed that amongst the covert operations for which the three had used of the bank to channel funds, was the destabilization of the Australian Labor government in 1975. Wilson founded Consultants International and over the next few years amassed a fortune of over $20 million. Much of his money was made in the arms trade. His most important customer was Moammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya. Wilson later claimed that it was CIA Deputy Director of Operations Ted Shackley who first suggested he should go to Libya. Wilson got contracts to sell Libya army uniforms, ammunition, explosive timers and 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives. Wilson was found guilty of exporting guns and conspiracy to murder and was sentenced to 52 years in prison.
I suspect the CIA went against the will of Congress (1975 to 1979) who were beholden to the American Jewish lobby on behalf of Israel, and was secretly helping Libya. Economically, Libya moved from rags to riches during the 1960s. Its economic growth rate throughout the decade was in excess of 20 percent, the highest in the world. Both the rapid oil exploitation rate and the revenues expanded at a breakneck pace.
After only nine years of production, under extremely tough conditions, Libya became the third largest Middle East producer of oil. In 1960, agriculture still contributed 25 percent of total income; by 1969, it was less than five percent. A burgeoning tertiary sector emerged, catering to the needs of the oil industry and import sector. The government became the biggest employer, providing jobs for 40,000 out of an active population of 165,000 in 1968. Domestic production outside the oil sector leveled off or declined, as the few qualified managers steadily shifted toward the more lucrative tertiary sector. Land use, stagnant since the Italian invasion in 1911, deteriorated further with the steady migration toward the coastal strip. Between 1962 and 1967, Libya’s food import bill increased almost threefold.
Wilson claimed he had been framed and claimed that he was working on behalf of the CIA. I assume CIA leadership could not risk the disclosure about what they had done without Congress or Presidents Ford or Carter’s approval.
Wilson’s lawyer David Adler eventually found evidence that Wilson was indeed working for the CIA after he allegedly retired from the CIA. In October 2003 a Houston federal judge, Lynn Hughes, threw out Wilson's conviction in the C-4 explosives case, ruling that the prosecutors had "deliberately deceived the court" about Wilson's continuing CIA contacts, thus "double-crossing a part-time informal government agent." In September 2004 he was released from jail after serving 22 years.
Former CIA agent, Kevin P. Mulcahy later told the National Times newspaper "about the Agency's use of Nugan Hand for shifting money for various covert operations around the globe."
The investigative journalist, Jonathan Kwitny, became convinced that the Nugan Hand Bank had replaced the Castle Bank and Trust Company in Nassau, as the CIA's covert banker. The bank, run by Paul Helliwell was forced to close after the Internal Revenue Service discovered it was laundering CIA funds and drug profits.
Nugan Hand bank would be one of the many banks used to transfer gold belonging to Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos into the shadow CIA’s covert operations. Nugan Hand bank, than it shifted operations to Household Bank in Chicago, Illinois and than to BCCI bank.
Retired US Army Reserve Major General George Olmsted, (the former head of OSS China during World War Two) was the head and owner of International Bank a Washington DC bank holding. I could not find out where he got the money to buy this bank. It is possible he comes from a rich family. You tell me. This banks holding company has some five or six sub-entities/big businesses.
In 1959, George Olmsted purchased Financial General Corporation, the 7th largest bank holding company in the country. Financial General Corporation was a domestic bank holding company which held controlling interests in 26 banks located in 7 states and the District of Columbia.
Starting in 1977, International Bank started to sell its stock in Financial General Bankshares (later known as First American), to BCCI front men. A billionaire from Arkansas Jackson Stephens Sr. brought BCCI to US shores in 1979 and helped to launder cocaine profits from CIA drug smuggling in Mena, Arkansas and elsewhere.
In 1972 BCCI was founded. BCCI’s systematically relied on relationships with, and as necessary, payments to, prominent political figures in most of the 73 countries in which BCCI operated. …The result was that BCCI had relationships that ranged from the questionable, to the improper, to the fully corrupt with officials from countries all over the world.
Between 1971 to 1972 BCCI became the primarily bank used for the US intelligence community to go around Congress oversight to in fund black operations... (Source: the sworn testimony of US Army Special Forces, Specialist 4th Class William “Bill” Tyree)
"In December 1975 to February-March 1976, Operation Watchtower took place that brought over 100 military-style cargo plane loads of cocaine out of Colombia into Albrook Air Station in Panama.” I’ll get into this drug trafficking more below. US Army Special Forces SP4 Tyree was assigned to this operation. US Army Special Forces Colonel Al Carone (one of Tyree’s commanding officers during operation Watchtower) stated, "He worked as a representative of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International which he stated was a bank founded by the US intelligence community in part to finance covert (black) operations worldwide without the approval of the US Congress. He was authorized to withdraw funds from First American Bankshares (part owned by BCCI) account #2843900, which he stated was a black operation fund unknown to the US Congress at the time." Col. Carone said that he was "the middleman between certain CIA factions and certain Mafia families that operated illegal enterprises in New York City". Carone stated that “the CIA used BCCI, BNL, BCP and Intermaritime Bank to launder money for black operations worldwide and for the Mafia in New York City." Colonel Carone said “the military drug trafficking Operation Watchtower, fitted in the picture in the following fashion. "In December 1975 to February-March 1976, Operation Watchtower took place that brought over 100 military-style cargo plane loads of cocaine out of Colombia into Albrook Air Station in Panama.”
The purpose of Operation Watchtower was to establish a series of three radio beacon towers beginning outside of Bogota, Colombia and running northeast to the border of Panama. Once the Watch Tower teams (Special Action Teams) were in place, the beacon was activated to emit a signal that aircraft could fix on and fly undetected from Bogota into Panama, then land at Albrook Air Station. This was an illegal drug trafficking operation run by the CIA during the President Carter’s years as president, to move tons of cocaine the CIA had stored in Latin America. These radio beacons may have been still in operation and linked to the Mena, AR drug trafficking in the early 1980s in support of the Contras.
SP4 Bill Tyree said that Ted Shackley, CIA’s Deputy Director for Clanesdine Operative, was deeply involved in Operation Watchtower and other CIA-related drug operations. He believed that the Navy’s Task Force 157 participated in Operation Watchtower. He said that “Colonel. Baker, Colonel Rowe and I believe Thomas Clines, with the aid of Edwin Wilson and CIA officer Frank Terpil, orchestrated Operation Watchtower...with full CIA auspices.”
Tyree prepared several detailed affidavits describing what he himself had observed of Operation Watchtower, describing it as a secret Army Special Forces operation. Tyree told how members of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) assisted in unloading the cocaine at Albrook Air Station.
In one of his affidavits (sworn statements) Tyree said, “I personally witnessed members of the Panamanian Defense Force (PDF) helped unload the bales of cocaine from the aircraft onto the tarmac of Albrook Air Station. Among the PDF officers were Colonel Manuel Noriega, Major Roberto Diaz-Herrera, Major Lis del CID, and Major Ramirez. These men were always in the company of an American civilian identified
to me by other personnel involved in the operation as Edwin Wilson of the CIA. Another civilian in the company of Wilson, I have since learned, was Israeli Mossad Agent Michael Harari”. Tyree explained how he gave Secret and Top Secret US documents to Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) and Israeli agents. He assumed these documents gave them the radio frequencies and flight schedules of US Costums drug-interdiction aircraft.
Tyree also stated that he had been part of a team operating in Surinam and French Guiana, and had insider information about Jim Jones and Jonestown in Guayana. Tyree wrote about former personnel from Army Special Forces groups training some of the enforcers at Jonestown. Tyree wrote that Congressman Leo Ryan who had traveled to Jonestown to investigate allegations of wrong doing was to have been protected by an Army Special Forces team.
“[The congressman] was hated by many different factions in the United States...the perfect place to assassinate him would be outside the US,where the law enforcement authorities are not as apt to control the evidence, crime scene, etc. This fact was known to [the state department], and they acted on it as a precaution. The Special Forces team assigned to guard the US Representative didn’t arrive on the ground in Jonestown until minutes after the US Representative was dead.”
On Jan. 30, 1979, Tyree’s wife Elaine Tyree was stabbed to death in their off-post apartment and Tyree was framed for the murder of his wife. Prior to Tyree’s February 1980 trial, he sent a certified letter to the Pentagon detailing the criminal activities involving US personnel in Operations Watchtower and Orwell. He received no response.
Subsequently, Army SP4 Erik Y. Aarhus and Earl Michael Peters were charged with her murder. Additionally Five Special Forces Colonels; Cutolo, Baker, Malvesti, Rowe and Bayard died under mysterious circumstances. Colonel Robert Bayard was murdered in Atlanta, Georgia in 1977 as he went to meet Mossad agent Michael Harari.
Former Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officer, Mike Ruppert in his website From the Wilderness wrote, “In the mid-1970s, while serving in Panama US Army Green Berets (assigned to the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Ft Devens, MA, were led into Colombia under the command of Colonel Cutolo and (Colonel) Baker to plant radio beacons, so that planeloads of cocaine could fly below Colombian and US radar and land undetected in Panama,. ..Orders for these missions came from the former CIA officers Ed Wilson and Tom Clines." These guys were more than likely were still been on the CIA’s payroll conducting covert operation without letting President Carter know about what the CIA was really doing.
Rodney Stich interviewed Dee Ferdinand, the daughter of Colonel Albert Carone. She described the relationships between her father, the Mafia, and the CIA. Carone was associated with Jackson Stephens’ First American Bankshares.
Rodney Stich is the author of the book, Drugging America – the Trogan Horse, wherein he describes his research into the CIA’s drug trafficking. Stich had worked for the FAA as a crash inspector/investigator and in doing so he associated with former CIA contract pilots and others who had information about the CIA drug trafficking, etc.
Colonel Al Carone was a member of the Gambino family and had connections to other crime groups in the eastern United States. He was also a detective on the New York City vice squad, a member of the military, and a CIA operative. Dee Ferdinand stated that her father was assigned to OSS during World War Two as a member of the US Army intelligence (CIC). After the war, he returned to New York, continued his relationship with the Mafia families. She described how mafia boss Vito Genovese sort of adopted her father. As she was growing up in Brooklyn, New York City, that relationship eventually got her father into key positions within the mafia. Her father called Genovese, Uncle Vito.
Carone was a detective and “bag man” in the New York City police department, collecting money that was distributed to captains and inspectors as payoffs for looking the other way.” Dee Ferdinand said her father’s employment with the NYPD ended in 1966, after which he concentrated on mafia related (activities relating to being a CIA paymaster). As a CIA paymaster, he moved money to and from the Mafia families in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. “My father knew Frank Fiorini, (and Frank Sturgis) and Jack Ruby… (and)…. Marita ( Lorenz) (she) had given me information about traveling by car with three Mafia-CIA figures from New Orleans to Dallas, arriving in Dallas the day before the assassination, and facts that strongly implicate this group with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy”. Marita Lorenz was a girl friend to Fidel Castro and bore a son from their romantic relationship. Lorenz also was recruited to work for the CIA in their operation to poison/kill Fidel Castro.
Carone was a good friend of Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, “Uncle Sonny”, as he was called by Dee Ferdinand and he attended her wedding.
Carone started in drug trafficking in the Vietnam days, for the CIA and the Mafia and he had frequent contacts with CIA officer Theodore Shackley relating to drug trafficking. Carone carried cash between Mafia figures and the CIA, and he alleges that the money trail went through a bank in England, to the Bahamas, Bank of Zurich in Switzerland, among others.
Ferdinand said, “Sam Giancana did a lot of drug deals with the Agency.” She added that organized crime and the CIA had regular drug dealings with Noriega and the Mossad, and that former Mossad operative Michael Harari was routinely involved. “A lot of this money was split with the Mossad and the Agency. They had to use the mob; there isn’t too much difference between the CIA and the mob. They worked together.” She said she father told her that the drugs coming from South America went to the Colombo, Genovese, and Gambino families, and that it was a joint CIA-mafia drug operation under the code name Operation Amadeus.
Jackson Stephens had political connections in Panama, which was then becoming the banking center for the Colombian cocaine business. One of these connections was Gabriel Lewis, the Panamanian Ambassador to Washington who had negotiated the Panama Canal Treaty. Another was Manuel Noriega, the head of G-2 (Panamanian military intelligence) who made a deal with the Medellin cocaine cartel.
Stephens was the banker for Gabriel Lewis, who had gotten very rich after he created corrugated banana boxes. Gabriel Lewis' seaside home on Contadora Island, which Lewis then owned, was the site where Canal negotiator Ellsworth Bunker was told in August 1974 that Panama would re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Later the exiled Shah of Iran stayed at Lewis' home from December 1979 to March 1980, while Manuel Noriega provided for the Shah's security. (In his book Crisis, Hamilton Jordan tells how he tried to use Gabriel Lewis to help establish contact with the Iranians in the Iran-hostage crisis.)
"In 1976, Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, Sr. and Indonesian businessman Mochtar Riady formed Stephens Financial Ltd in Hong Kong, which led to a meeting of Stephens and Riady with members of the BCCI.”
Stephens Inc. one of the largest bank-money clearing firms in the US and the nation's largest investment bank off of Wall Street. Stephens Inc. was listed as one of the biggest institutional shareholders in 30 large multinationals including the Arkansas based firms Tyson Food (# 10), Wal-Mart (# 113) and Alltel (# 12).
In 1977, Jackson Stephens invited BCCI into America and helped BCCI bring about the purchase of stock in First American Bankshares. I found another source that says Stephens brought BCCI to US shores in 1979. Years later the US Senate investigated the role former Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms played in the 1978 in takeover attempt of First American Bank on behalf of BCCI Ltd, Georgia.
The chief attorney for BCCI's powerful legal team was Clark Clifford, a former Secretary of Defense. His influence stretched even into the Federal Reserve. When Clifford was tried and convicted for his role in BCCI, and President Clinton pardoned him saying out of concern for the old man's health. Jackson Stephens was a major contributor the Bill Clintons election campaigns.
Jackson Stephens and Mochtar Riady were in business together and paid off politicians from Arkansas to look the other way and ignore the CIA cocaine trafficking at an airport in Mena, Arkansas. The Lippo Group, ( Mochtar Riady), had been involved with Govenor Bill Clinton in Arkansas. Clinton was governor from 1978 to 1988.
Stephens' principal motive in bringing BCCI to America was apparently to connect up his own financial institutions to the global laundry--not only First American Bankshares, but those in Little Rock also. To avoid the type of US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) scrutiny involving the Financial General takeover, Webster Hubbell, who had represented Stephens' software company Systematics, was employed to draw up the charter for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). It was used to launder drug trafficking profits. ADFA was founded to bring jobs to Arkansas, but using ADFA, a state government entity, that thereby eliminated Security and Exchange Commission oversight.
Another thing that came later was the BCCI-financed arming of Iraq. What began as a simple US strategy to maintain a balance of power between Iran and Iraq, turned into a vast money making enterprise involving the sale of US nuclear technology and nuclear secrets to both Iraq and Israel. In particular the participation of Jackson Stephens and Hillary Clinton involved a Pittsburgh-based nuclear network and the Wackenhut Corporation.
Pakistan's finance minister, Sartaj Asis, revealed that local branches of BCCI had laundered drug money for the CIA, channeled covert CIA aid to the Afghan resistance, and also managed a multi-million dollar "slush fund" for CIA covert operations.
http://www.
http://www.orlingrabbe.com/
(Source; Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University.
http://www.sumeria..net/
http://globalresearch.ca/
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.
Between 1970 and 1976, almost $5 million of Intercontinental (mutual) funds was siphoned out for the CIA or shadow CIA's used Intercontinental Diversified Inc. (IDC) as a spinoff from Benguet Mining company. Helliwell’s law firm represented Intercontinental Diversified Inc. Benguet Mining company that was partly owned by the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. An American, Shig Katayama was an owner of IDC and had an account in Castle Bank in the Cayman Islands. In the early 1950s, Katayama’s job was to handle narcotics for the US intelligence operations. Thai, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese drug trafficking profits were allegedly invested (money laundered) thru this bank and Florida real estate deals through Louis A. Chesler‘s General Development Company and Resorts International Inc.
CIA officer Paul L.E. Helliwell, formoer OSS boss William Donovan, and other CIA officers set up Castle Bank, in the Bahamas with almost $5 million of CIA covert operations money. Castle Bank was one of the finance channels for CIA secret operations against Cuba." CIA's laundering black operations funds was also done thru the CIA front company, the holding company, Intercontinental Diversified Corporation (IDC).
As a civilian prior to his service in World War Two, US Army Reserve Major General George Olmsted, owned and ran Illinois Casualty, an insurance company. In 1955, he purchased of the International Bank in Washington, DC, a well known bank with few assets and a reputation as a CIA bank. In 1959, George Olmsted purchased Financial General Corporation (later known as First American Bankshares) . Financial General Corporation was a domestic bank holding company which held controlling interests in 26 banks located in seven states and the District of Columbia.
In March 1973 Olmsted had the International Bank buy 66 percent of the capital stock of the failing Castle Bank in the Bahamas (formerly know as Mercantile Bank), even though "International's officers knew the actual state of Mercantile's (bad) financial health.
E.P. Barry was in OSS during World War Two and that towards the end of the war OSS boss William Donovan appointed him head of OSS Counterintelligence (X-2) in Vienna.
Barry represents the continuity between the Helliwell intelligence-drug connection which flourished until 1972 (the year the IRS’s Operation Tradewinds began to investigate the Bank of Perrine and the BCCI intelligence-drug connection which flourished after 1972. http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Paul Hartmann was vice-chairman of another secretive private bank, the New York - Inter-Maritime Bank of Geneva, Switzerland. It chairman was Bruce Rappaport, a Mossad officer or contract agent/front man for Mossad who was also on the board of N.M. Rothschild and Sons bank.
N.M. Rothschild and Sons is also implicated in drugs-for-weapons secret intelligence operations. Because it is connected to the highest levels of the British intelligence establishment, Rothschilds managed to evade any prominent mention of its complicity in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Rothschilds was at the center of the international web of money-laundering banks used during the 1970s and 1980s by Britain’s MI-6 and the networks of Colonel Oliver North and George Bush sr., to finance such projects as the Nicaraguan Contras.
http://www.mein-parteibuch.
Are you confused yet? I am.
Peru
Unable to quell guerrilla forces in its eastern Amazonian provinces, Peru called on the US for help in the mid-1960s. The CIA responded by establishing a fortified camp in the area and hiring local Peruvians who were trained by Green Beret
Chile
When Nixon took office in 1969, Milten Freidman thought his time had come to lead his US counter-revolution against the legacy of the New Deal. George Shultz and Donald Rumsfeld believed in Freidman’s laissez-faire economics. (The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein (2007) p. 133)
In 1968, US Ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, was overseeing some $2 billion (in 1968 dollars) of aid to Chile. The CIA had set up a biweekly newspaper and had some Frei minister, including the defense minister, on the CIA payroll. Korry said $400,000 had been used to bribe Chilean politicians who supported the church. In 1975, Dungan lied to the Senate Committee set up to investigate CIA plots.
Chile had experienced 160 years of peaceful democratic rule. Winning election in 1970, President Salvador Allende had been pushing socialist economic policies, also known as Keynesian or developmentalism (not Soviet style communism). He had run on a platform promising to put into Chile’s government hands large sections of the economy that were being run by foreign and local corporations. Allende pledged to negotiate fair terms to compensate companies that were losing property or investments.
When Nixon heard about Allende winning the election, he famously ordered CIA director Richard Helms, to “make the (Chile’s) economy scream”. The US government had intelligence reports at the time which stated the Allende posed no threat to democracy. (The Shock Doctrine, (pp. 64 and 97)
Some foreign corporations were active participants in the terror campaign. In Brazil several multi-nationals banded together and financed a non-government, torture squads. In mid-1969 an extra legal police force called Operation Banderantes (OBAN) was launched. Its funding came from multinational corporations, including Ford and General Motors. OBAN gained the reputation for unparalleled sadism. The Ford Foundation played a central role in indoctrinating Chile’s rulers in the Freidman’s laissez-faire (neo-conservative) economics. (Ibid.pp. 108 and 122-123)
Mining companies had invested $1 billion over the past fifty years in Chile’s copper mining industry- but they had sent $7.5 billion in profits home. By 1968, 20 percent of the total U.S. foreign investment was tied up in Latin America, and US firms had 5,436 subsidiaries in the region. International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) owned 70 percent of Chile’s soon-to-be nationalized phone company. (Ibid. pp. 64-65)
Corporate America declared war on the Allende administration. A group of companies like Purina, Bank of America, ITT, and Pfizer Chemical, formed an Ad-Hoc Committee on Chile and had ideas for how to make Allende feel economic pain for his nationalization of their property and investments. According to declassified meeting minutes, the companies planned to block US loans to Chile and “quietly have large US private banks (to) do the same”…”Delay buying from Chile over the next six months. Use copper stockpile instead of buying (it) from Chile. Bring about a scarcity of US dollars in Chile.”
ITT had tried to block Allende from being inaugurated in 1970 by offering $1 million in bribes to Chilean opposition forces and “sought to engage the CIA in a plan covertly to manipulate the outcome of the Chilean presidential election.” Senior ITT executives wrote National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, suggesting all U.S. aid funds to Chile be placed “under review status.” (The Shock Doctrine, pp. 64-65)
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) forbade American companies from interfering in the domestic politics of other countries. The CIA concealed from OPIC the truth about the political activities of ITT and other companies and the Nixon administration pressured OPIC into paying the insurance claims to ITT and big copper companies for assets expropriated without compensation by the Allende government, which eventually cost the US taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars. (The Secret History of the CIA, p. 393)
CIA director Richard Helms wrote he was ordered by President Richard Nixon, to foster a coup in Chile. In the first meeting between Helms and high agency officials on the secret operations Project FUBELT, a special task force under the supervision of CIA Deputy Director for Plans, Thomas Karamessines was established and headed by veteran CIA officer David Atlee Phillips. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA officials sent cables to the CIA station in Santiago, Chile detailing decisions and ordered operations to undermine the election of Salvador Allende in September 1970 and promote a military coup.
Henry Kissinger, Thomas Karamessines and Alexander Haig (military assistant to Henry Kissinger), in a meeting on October 15, 1970, discuss promoting a coup in Chile, known as "Track II" of covert operations. Kissinger orders the CIA to "continue keeping the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight. In a secret cable, Thomas Karamessines conveyed Kissinger's orders to CIA station chief in Santiago, Henry Hecksher: "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup."
CIA officer Robert T. Crowley was deeply involved in the efforts by the US to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. The CIA ran a series of secret operations intended to push President Eduardo Frei Montalva to support "a military coup which would prevent Allende from taking office on 3 November." After Salvador Allende's election, the United States considered trying to get Chile expelled from the Organization of American States.
Embassy officers and the State Department Policy Planning office called for the cutting off of economic and military assistance to Pinochet's government on human rights grounds, but were overruled by the Ambassador and officials of The Pentagon and Treasury Department.
In 1970, Allende had received a great deal of support from Moscow. In return for detente and especially for the promised of a Strategic Arms Limitation treaty, Nixon and Kissinger had gotten the Kremlin’s permission to deal with Allende as they wished. In 1971, Allende asked for half a billion dollars to bail out his country’s economy and Russia refused. China also refused Allende any cash for his fractured economy. (The Secret History of the CIA, p. 392)
The Catholic University became ground zero for the creation of what the CIA called “a coup climate”. Top business leaders in Chile met to develop a regime-change strategy, and “over 75 percent” of the funding for an “opposition research organization” was coming directly from the CIA. The CIA financed a pro-business newspaper, El Mercurio. (The Shock Doctrine, p. 70)
Prior to Chile’s coup the CIA bankrolled a massive propaganda campaign to paint Salvador Allende as a schemer who was on the verge of imposing a Soviet-style police state. U.S. government intelligence reports showed that Allende posed no threat to Chile’s democracy. Even though, the U.S. State Department stated that the military juntas were deserving of economic and military aid. (Ibid, pp. 96-97)
In 1970, during the 60-day waiting period between the election of Salvador Allende in Chile and his assumption of power, Kissinger engineered the murders of General Schneider and Allende. It can now be documented that Kissinger not only directly commissioned the deed, he organized its execution, shipped the weapons to the assassins, and then paid the murders - $35,000 was paid specifically to the murderers of Schneider. This murder of the leader of a country that posed no threat to the U.S. in any way, ended Chile's proud 46-year history of constitutional government.
http://www.democrats.com/view.
From 1970 to 1973, CIA officers compiled lists of persons who would have to be arrested after a coup by military and a roster of civilian and government installations that would need protection. (Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades Corn, D. (1994), p. 251 and Chile, CIA
Big Business, Sergeyev, F.F. , (1981), p.163)
By late 1971 the CIA was in near daily contact with military in Chile. The station collecting the kind of information that would be essential for a military dictatorship after a coup: lists of civilians to be arrested, those to be protected and government installations occupied at once. (Atlantic, 12/82 58)
From late 1971 to 1972, CIA adopted more active stance with the military penetration program including effort to subsidize anti-government news pamphlet directed at armed services, compilation arrest lists and its deception operation. CIA received intelligence reports on coup planning throughout July, August and September 1973. (The US Senator Church Committee Report. (1976) v 7, 39)
Chilean graduates of AIFLD, as well as CIA-created unions, organized CIA-financed strikes which participated in Allende's overthrow. In 1973 AIFLD graduates provided DINA, Chile's secret police, with thousands of names of fellow unionists who were subsequently imprisoned and tortured and executed. (Counterspy 4/1981, p. 13 and The CIA A Forgotten History, Blum, W. (1986). P. 240)
After 1973 coup, US Embassy intelligence types gave their files on the Chilean and foreign left wing people to the junta's military intelligence service (SIM). (NACLA (magazine about Latin America) 8/1974, p. 28)
The Chilean military prepared lists of nearly 20,000 middle-level leaders of people's organizations, scheduled to be assassinated from the morning of the coup on. The list of some 3,000 high-level directors to be arrested. Lists detailed: name, address, age, profession, marital status, and closest personal friends. It alleged US military mission and the CIA involved in their preparation.
From late June on plotters began to finalize lists of extremists, political leaders, allegedly Marxist journalists, agents of international communism, and any and all persons participating with any vigor in neighborhood, communal, union, or national organization. The Pentagon
had been asked to get the CIA to give the Chilean army lists of Chileans linked to socialist countries. Names were sorted into two groups: persons not publicly known, but were important in leftist (aka "subversives") organizations; and, well-known people in important positions. In the first black-list group of 20,000 people and in the second one had 3,000 names on it. The second group were to be jailed and the first to be killed. (The Murder of Allende, Sandford, R.R. (1975), pp.195-196)
On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet launched at coup against Allende and Allende was found with his head blown off in the presidential palace that was attacked with tanks, fighter jets, and rockets. The Pinochet and his generals knew that their hold on power depended on Chileans being truly terrified. In the first days of the coup, roughly 13,500 civilians were arrested loaded onto trucks and imprisoned in two main football stadiums. Locker rooms and skyboxes were transformed into makeshift torture chambers for anti-coup people. The CIA‘s torture manual had been disseminated through extensive CIA training programs for Latin American police and military. Over all more than 3,200 people were disappeared or executed, at least 80,000 people were imprisoned and 200,000 fled the country for political reasons. Probably somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people in South America went through the torture machine, and tens of thousands of them were killed. (The Shock Doctrine, pgs.71, 76-77, and 94)
CIA Officer Ted Shackley used the expatriate Cuban’s in Chile to help overthrow the government. The CIA suggested to Pinochet’s secret police, the DINA, to hire some of Shackley’s Cubans for its murderous operations. In 1976, Michael Vernon Townley an American who had been deeply involved in CIA sponsored activities against Allende, recruited two Cubans emigre Dionesio Suarez and Virgilio Pablo Paz, both who had been affiliated with Omega 7, the anti-Castro terrorist group. Paz became a hit man for DINA. The plan was to kill vocal foes of the Chilean junta living in exile. DINA also provided an assassination capability to the Bureau of State Security in South Africa. (The Secret History of the CIA, pp. 393-394)
For the first year and a half Pinochet followed the advice of the Milton Friedman school of neo-conservative, extreme capitalism. He privatized some state owned companies; he allowed speculative finance; he flung open the barriers to foreign imports, tearing down the borders that had long protected Chilean manufacturers; he cut government spending by ten percent – except for the military. He also eliminated price controls – a radical move in a country that had been regulating the cost of necessities such as bread and cooking oil for decades.
It was 1976 mob-connected anti-Castro Cuban exiles and the Chilean intelligence agency DINA, both were involved in drug trafficking and in a wave of terrorist killings. US Ambassador to Paraguay Robert White, a career State Department official heard from the Paraguayan Armed Forces Commander that "intelligence chiefs from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay used an encrypted system within the US [military] telecommunications network, which covered all of Latin America, to coordinate intelligence information." The information was used by the death squads in operation Condor to kill and torture against their citizens who supported left wing political leaders or union leaders.
As a result of Pinochet’s economic policies unemployment went from 3 percent to 30 percent in 1982, and roughly 74 percent of a Chilean’s family income went simply to buy bread. By 1988, 45 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line, yet the richest 10 percent saw their income increase by 83 percent. (Ibid pp. 83-85 and 86)
Argentina
During the early 1970s, a massive clandestine US government operation that was going, called Operation Condor. Created in the 1970s, members of this death squad group were Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru and Ecuador.
Operation Condor was a covert torture system that enabled the Latin American military states to hunt down, seize, and execute political opponents across borders. Refugees fleeing military coups and repression in their own countries were "disappeared" in combined transnational operations. The militaries defied international law and traditions of political sanctuary to carry out their ferocious anticommunist crusade. http://www.crimesofwar.org/
In 1976, in Argentina a junta seized power from Isabel Peron. Before the Argentine Generals seized power, they contacted Pinochet and the Brazilian junta and “outlined the main steps to be taken by the (their) future regime.” The junta wanted to avoid the international outrage that was unleashed on Chile due to openly killing people. They used low-profile repressive tactics not so visible to the prying international press which sparked activists in Europe and North America aggressively lobbied their governments not to trade with Chile. (The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein (2007) pp. 88 to 89)
Uruguay
The Office of Public Safety (OPS) was a US government agency, established in August 1962 by President Kennedy to train police forces of America's allies. It was officially part of USAID (US Agency for International Development), and was close to the CIA. Police-training teams were sent to South Vietnam, Iran, Taiwan, Brazil, Uruguay and Greece. According to a 1973 document revealed in CIA documents, around 700 police officers were trained a year, including in handling of explosives.
CIA officer William Cantrell was based in Montevideo as an OPS member. He assisted in the creation of the National Directorate of Information and Intelligence - DNII), to which he supplied equipment, including devices that could be used in torture. “One of the pieces of equipment that was found useful,” former New York Times correspondent A. J. Langguth learned, “was a wire so very thin that it could be fitted into the mouth between the teeth and by pressing against the gum increase the electrical charge. And it was through the diplomatic pouch that Dan Mitrione got some of the equipment he needed for interrogations, including these fine wires. He was the head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in Montevideo.
Dan Mitrione did not introduce the practice of torturing political prisoners to Uruguay. It had been perpetrated by the police at times from at least the early 1960s. However, in a surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers, and in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means of inflicting pain, they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and telling the prisoner that it was his family being tortured.
After the 1971 elections during which the left-wing candidate was defeated, the Uruguayan government launched a DNII-led joint military and police force that was tasked with conducting counter-revolutionary operations against the Tupamaros. According to former police officers, death squads were run from the DNII. https://williamblum.org/
With Uruguay’s tax system and commercial policy dictates after the coup in 1973, its previously egalitarian society resulted in real wages dropping by 28 percent and hordes of scavengers appearing on the city streets. (The Shock Doctrine, p. 87)
El Salvador
From 1965 to 1985, the CIA supported death squad activities in El Salvador (Spark, 4/1985, pp. 2-4)
In 1963 the CIA sent ten Special Forces personnel to El Salvador to help General Medrano set up Organizacion Democratica Nacionalist (Orden)--first paramilitary death squad in that country. These US Special Forces assisted in organization and indoctrination of rural death squads which gathered intelligence and carried out political assassinations in coordination with Salvadoran military. (Covert Action Information Bulletin (Quarterly), Summer 1990, p. 51)
In 1969 three CIA instructors from the US embassy conducted a two month cours that included "anti-communism, democracy, detection and identification, and self-defense." Trainees were instructed in the US of 9-millimeter revolvers and such weapons and the M-16 rifle, which was not yet generally available. All the students were paid daily in cash, and some students continued on the CIA payroll after the course.
The CIA recruited General Jose Alberto Medrano. CIA officers supplied Ansesal, the security secret police and the General Staff with electronic, photographic, and personal surveillance of individuals who later assassinated by death squads; and, trained security forces in the use of weapons, explosives, investigative techniques and interrogations (torture). (The Progressive, 5/1984, pp. 20-29)
The United States had helped to establish an extensive paramilitary network in El Salvador in the 1960's headed by Gen. Jose Alberto (Chele) Medrano. The force, known as Orden, (the Spanish word for order) Orden operated as a death squad that killed peasants who tilted to the left.
In 1973 Israel took orders from El Salvador for 18 Dassault Ouragan jet fighter aircraft. Israel had obtained these planes from France for its own use. Refurbished and delivered to El Salvador in 1975, they were the first jet fighters in Central America, representing a significant jump in the level of military sophistication in a region where war had flared between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969.
Other aircraft ordered from Israel by El Salvador in 1973 included six French-made Fouga Magister trainers and 25 Arava short-take-off-and-landing aircraft.
Military links with El Salvador actually began around 1972, when the Israeli Defense Ministry carried out a youth movement development program there. Alongside their arms sales, the Israelis also sent advisers to El Salvador. The Salvadoran military commonly practiced such violence when it was being advised by American officials in the 1960's until to the middle of the 1970's.
The CIA organized Ansesal, the presidential intelligence service that gathered dossiers on dissidents which then passed on to death squads. They kept key security officers with known links to death squads on the CIA payroll and instructed Salvadoran intelligence operatives "in methods of physical and psychological torture." (Progressive , by Briarpatch, 5/1984 and 8/1984)
In 1974 Congress ordered the discontinuation of Office of Public Safety that had the purpose of allegedly training foreign law enforcement officers. The State Department and AID's Public Safety office in El Salvador had administrative responsibility for establishing the ANSESAL network. The substantive day-to-day intelligence work was coordinated by the CIA: "The CIA was already participating in connections with us. The CIA would work with us and give us reports.
Also in the 1960s AIFLD, (the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the AFL-CIO’s foreign operation dedicated to foiling the formation of left wing unions) tried to organize a “tame” network of rural cooperatives in El Salvador. AIFLD creates Salvadoran Communal Union. By 1973 UCS seen as too progressive and AIFLD officially expelled. U.S. funding UCS continued through training programs and private foundations. According to one report the project was budgeted at $1.6 million and had the assistance of the Israeli Histadrut labor federation.
Diego Garcia
Between 1968 and 1973, in a plot carefully hidden from the public, the US and the UK exiled all 1,500-2,000 islanders. The basically the people living on the island of Diego Garcia, a part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, were forced to neighboring Republic of Seychelles – an island nation north of Madagascar. Diego Garcia is the largest of the Chagos Islands. At fourteen miles by four, it is large enough to build a number of full-length runways. The island is also had a natural harbor capable of containing a large US Naval fleet. In exchange the US offered to lease the island, British were given a $11 million secret subsidy on Polaris submarine technology.
“Initially, British government agents told people of Diego Garcia, who were away seeking medical treatment or vacationing, that their islands had been closed and they could not go home. Next, British officials began restricting supplies to the islands and more (indigenous people of Diego Garcia) left as food and medicines dwindled. Finally, on the orders of the US military, UK officials forced the remaining islanders to board overcrowded cargo ships and left them on the docks in Mauritius, (an island and part of the Mascarene Islands, west of Madagascar.) and the Seychelles. Just before the last deportation, British agents and US troops on Diego Garcia herded the (indigenous people’s) pet dogs into sealed sheds and gassed and burned them in front of their traumatized owners awaiting deportation.”
The people of Diego Garcia had an economy was based on the harvesting of locally-cultivated coconuts into copra and oil, the latter being much prized by the cosmetics industry. At long but regular intervals, a trade ship would arrive to collect the harvests for the owners of the plantations. The British government bought all the plantations of the Chagos archipelago – of which Diego Garcia is one island) for £660,000 from a private company located in Seychelles. It has been suggested that the plan was to deprive the people an income and so encourage them to leave the island voluntarily.
On December 7, 1970, Secretary of State William P. Rogers informed British officials that it was time “for the UK to accomplish relocation of the present residents of Diego Garcia to some other location. On March 11, 1971, the US navy began construction of a US Navy base on Diego Garcia.
In 1975, two U.S. Congressional committees that wanted to look into the matter were told that the 'entire subject of Diego Garcia is considered classified.
The first US project on Diego Garcia was to establish a naval Signals Intelligence (SIGNIT) station to monitor radio signals in the Indian Ocean. With British Royal Navy participation, a United States National Security Group monitoring station was set up in 1972. It became a ground control base for the US-Australian-British CLASSIC WIZARD Ocean Surveillance Satellite System network for electronic satellites. Also set up, in 1974, was a major GCHQ/NSA Signals Intelligence station. Of the facilities during the 1970s, it also acquired many functions previously performed by the NSA facility at Kagnew station, at Asmara in Ethiopia, abandoned because of the civil wars raging in that part of Africa. (The Ties That Bind, Sydney, Australia, p.205)
Deportation or forcible transfer of population constitutes a crime against humanity if it is "committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/
Island of shame: the secret history of the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, by David Vine
Zaire (Congo)
When Zaire's first elected President, Patrice Lumumba, appeared to be getting too close to socialism, US companies feared they might lose control of Zaire's precious cobalt, copper, and diamonds. So the CIA stepped in, assassinated Lumumba, and replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko. Since 1965, Mobutu has been the US's main man in Central Africa. Mobutu has amassed an estimated $5 billion personal fortune at his nation's expense. He is perhaps the only world leader who could pay his national debt from his own bank account. In fact, there seems to be no division between his pocket and the national treasury.
In 1974, when the US sent $1.4 million to assist troops fighting a civil war, Mobutu pocketed the entire sum. And no foreign company sets itself up in Zaire without a tribute to Mobutu. Although Zaire has more resources than most other countries in the region, it is the fifth poorest. Malnutrition takes the lives of one-third of Zaire's children, and one child out of two dies before age five. But Mobutu has vowed to keep the world safe for democracy and according to Amnesty International, in the name of anti-communism, he imprisons and tortures, often without trial, anyone who threatens his power base. While some members of Congress grumble about giving assistance to Mobutu, they continue to reward his work against communism and his warm reception of American corporations.
Under CIA operative Irving Brown Brown, the African-American Labor Center (AALC) became a vehicle for funneling US aid to pro capitalist African trade unions. When he met with South African unionists in 1973, for example, he warned them away from political activism against apartheid and urged them to concentrate on ``practical" issues such as collective bargaining. He also offered technical and financial aid to unions with "responsible" Black leadership.
The institute is still known in South Africa as an organization interested primarily in the "creation of a clearly capitalist society where labor is not so radical," says Kenneth Mokoena of the National Security Archive (a research institute). According to Mokoena, whose research has concentrated on US initiatives in South Africa, the AALC's trainings "emphasize pro business unionism" and are more concerned with "working conditions, not general political relationships."
The AALC builds and finances trade union education centers throughout the continent where it trains unionists through courses, seminars, and workshops. It also supports visitor exchanges, conducts development projects, and sponsors job-creation schemes. Recipients of its grants and training have promoted essentially harmonious relationships with management, tend to be politically quiescent, and, until recently, were known as collaborationists with South Africa's apartheid regime.
The activities of the American Institute for Free Labor Development-and, to a lesser extent, the Free Trade Union Institute-have stimulated controversy and a certain amount of scrutiny, but the operations of the AALC have been clouded in obscurity. Like the other institutes, however, the AALC has been accused of fronting for CIA operations in the region. Certainly the key role played by Irving Brown in the institute is a major factor supporting this conclusion.
One former intelligence officer, Paul Sakwa, identified Brown as a funnel for CIA cash to Kenya's Tom Mboya, a rightist politician backed by the United States until his murder in 1969. Brown also helped organize the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, a CIA-sponsored rebel army headed by Holden Roberto. Brown's support for Roberto's activities was a cover for funneling cash to the group. Another important figure whose activities with the AALC drew suspicion was Nelson "Nana" Mahomo. Mahomo-suspended and eventually expelled from the Pan-African Congress due to allegations of financial improprieties and cooperation with the CIA-was selected by the AALC in 1982 to head its Program of Action in Support of Black Trade Unions. This selection occurred in spite of the fact that Mahomo had been absent from Africa for some 20 years and had had no experience as a trade unionist.
The political context surrounding labor activities in Africa contains significant factors which influence the AALC's operations on the continent. Africa's recent colonial past, its history of foreign intervention and domination, extremes of poverty and unemployment, and the importance of East/West divisions in national labor movements are some of these factors. Such factors led to deeply militant and nationalist labor movements, often allied with political parties and movements which pushed for decolonization. Following independence, however, many of these same militant labor organizations became junior partners to the new political elites.
The AFL-CIO and later the AALC was supportive of Africa's decolonization process-which perhaps not incidentally opened the door for US involvement on the continent. While backing the withdrawal of the European powers, these labor groups helped US entry into African affairs.
Institute documents regarding Libya, for instance, counseled that "Libya is developing an increasing presence on the continent as an agent of subversion." In response, according to the documents, "AALC programs seek to offset...these [Libyan and other continent-wide subversive movements] through a combination of institution-building, exchanges, organizational cooperation, and other efforts. In Chad-a target of a Libyan-backed rebel movement-the African institute countered Libya's actions by supporting the government-linked
Chad's union federation, the Workers Confederation was described by the AALC as "Libyan-supported" and was not back by it. More than any of the AFL-CIO's other international institutes, the AALC cooperated with regional labor organizations and supports them with funding, technical assistance, and other services.
Italy
In 1956, General Giovanni De Lorenzo was named to head SIFAR on the recommendation of US Ambassador Claire Boothe Luce, the avidly anticommunist wife of the publisher of Time magazine. A key player in the CIA operation Gladio was now in place. In 1962, the CIA helped place De Lorenzo at the head of the national police (carabinieri), while he retained effective control of the secret service. Operation Gladio was a secret organization set up after World War Two. It was made up of Europeans who were anti-communists and they were trained and planned by NATO nations to conduct a guerrilla style behind enemy lines operations in case the Soviet were to invade Western Europe
The general brought with him 17 lieutenants to begin purging insufficiently right-wing officers. It was the first step to a right-wing coup attempt, with US military attaché Vernon Walters in the vanguard. In a memo to De Lorenzo the same year, Walters suggested types of intervention aimed at provoking a national crisis, including blocking a center-left coalition, creating schisms among the socialists, and funding forces favorable to the status quo.
According to CIA files found in Rome in 1984, CIA Chief of Station William Harvey began to recruit “action teams'' based on a list of 2,000 men capable of throwing bombs, conducting attacks, and accompanying these actions with indispensable propaganda. These teams had a chance to practice their skills in 1963 as part of an anti-union offensive. US trained teams dressed as police and civilians attacked construction workers peacefully demonstrating in Rome, leaving some 200 wounded and a large section of the city in shambles. The link to the NATO stay behind operation, Gladio, was made in later testimony by a former general in the secret service.
Lt. Col. Renzo Rocca (of SIFAR) was also training a civil militia composed of ex-soldiers, parachutists and members of Junio Valerio (aka Black Prince) Borghese's paramilitary organization, Decima MAS (Tenth Torpedo Boat Squadron), for the pending coup. President Antonio Segni reportedly knew of the plan, which was to conclude with the assassination of Prime Minister Aldo Moro, under fire for not being tough enough with the communists.
The long-planned takeover, known later as Plan Solo, fizzled in March 1964, when the key carabinieri involved remained in their barracks. As a subsequent inquiry moved to question Rocca about the coup attempt, he apparently killed himself, possibly to fulfill Gladio's oath of silence. After officials determined that state secrets were involved, three hamstrung inquiries failed to determine the guilty parties.
Despite the failure of Plan Solo, the CIA and the Italian right had largely succeeded in creating the clandestine structures envisioned in Operation Demagnetize. Now the plotters turned their attention to a renewed offensive against the left.
To win intellectual support, the secret services set up a conference in Rome at the luxurious Parco dei Principi hotel in May 1965, for a “study of revolutionary war.'' The choice of words was inadvertently revealing, since the conveners and invited participants were planning a real revolution, not just warning of an imaginary communist takeover. The meeting was essentially a reunion of fascists, right-wing journalists, and military personnel. “The strategy of tension” that emerged was designed to disrupt normality with terror attacks in order to create chaos and provoke a frightened public into accepting still more authoritarian government.
Several graduates of this exercise had long records of anticommunist actions and would later be implicated in some of Italy's worst massacres. One was journalist and secret agent Guido Giannettini. Four years earlier, he had conducted a seminar at the US Naval Academy on “The Techniques and Prospects of a Coup d'Etat in Europe.'' Another was notorious fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie, who had reportedly been recruited as a secret agent in 1960. He had organized his own armed band known as Avanguardia Nationale, whose members had begun training in terror tactics in preparation for Plan Solo.
General De Lorenzo, whose SIFAR had now become intelligence agency SID, soon enlisted these and other confidants in a new Gladio project. They planned to create a secret parallel force alongside sensitive government offices to neutralize subversive elements not yet ``purified.'' Known as the Parallel SID, its tentacles reached into nearly every key institution of the Italian state. General Vito Miceli, who later headed SID, said he set up the separate structure ``at the request of the Americans and NATO.''
Two ancient, mysterious, international fraternities kept the loosely-linked Gladio programs from flying apart. The Knights of Malta played a formative role after the war, but the order of Freemasonry and its most notorious lodge in Italy, known as Propaganda Due or P-2, was far more influential. In the late 1960s, its “Most Venerable Master'' was Licio Gelli, a Knight of Malta who fought for Franco with Mussolini's Black Shirts. At the end of World War Two, Gelli faced execution by Italian partisans for his Nazi collaboration, but escaped by joining the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. In the 1950s, he was recruited by SIFAR.
After some years of self-imposed exile in Argentine fascist circles, Licio Gelli saw his calling in Italy as a Mason. Quickly rising to its top post, he began fraternizing in 1969 with General Alexander Haig, then assistant to Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security chief. Gelli became the main intermediary between the CIA and SID's De Lorenzo, also a Mason and Knight. Gelli's first order from the White House was reportedly to recruit 400 more top Italian and NATO officials.
To help ferret out dissidents, Gelli and De Lorenzo began compiling personal dossiers on thousands of people, including legislators and clerics. Within a few years, scandal erupted when an inquiry found 157,000 such files in SID, all available to the Ministers of Defense and Interior. Parliament ordered 34,000 files burned, but by then the CIA had obtained duplicates for its archives.
Provocateurs on the Right
In 1968, the Americans started formal commando training for the Gladio stay behind guerrilla forces at the clandestine Sardinian NATO base. Within a few years, 4,000 graduates had been placed in strategic posts. At least 139 arms caches, including some at carabinieri barracks, were at their disposal. To induce young men to join such a risky venture, the CIA paid high salaries and promised that if they were killed, their children would be educated at US expense.
Tensions began to reach critical mass that same year. While dissidents took to the streets all over the world, in Italy, takeovers of universities and strikes for higher wages and pensions were overshadowed by a series of bloody political crimes. The number of terrorist acts reached 147 in 1968, rising to 398 the next year, and to an incredible peak of 2,498 in 1978 before tapering off, largely because of a new law encouraging informers. Until 1974, the indiscriminate bombers of the right constituted the main force behind political violence.
The first major explosion occurred in 1969 in Milan's Piazza Fontana; it killed 18 people and injured 90. In this and numerous other massacres, anarchists proved handy scapegoats for fascist provocateurs seeking to blame the left. Responding to a phone tip after the Milan massacre, police arrested 150 alleged anarchists and even put some on trial. But two years later, new evidence led to the indictment of several neo fascists and SID officers. Three innocent anarchists were convicted, but later absolved, while those responsible for the attack emerged unpunished by Italian justice.
Conclusive Gladio links to political violence were found after a plane exploded in flight near Venice in November 1973. Venetian judge Carlo Mastelloni determined that the Argo-16 aircraft was used to shuttle trainees and munitions between the US base in Sardinia and Gladio sites in northeast Italy. The apogee of right-wing terror came in 1974 with two massacres. One, a bombing at an anti-fascist rally in Brescia, killed eight and injured 102. The other was an explosion on the Italicus train near Bologna, killing 12 and wounding 105. At this point, President Giovanni Leone, with little exaggeration, summed up the situation: "With 10,000 armed civilians running around, as usual, I'm president of shit."
At Brescia, the initial call to police also blamed anarchists, but the malefactor later turned out to be a secret agent in the Parallel SID. A similar connection was also alleged in the Italicus case. Two fascists who were eventually convicted were members of a clandestine police group called the Black Dragons, according to the left-wing paper, Lotta Continua. Their sentences were also overturned. Although in these and other cases, many leftists were arrested and tried. Fascists or neo fascists were often the culprits, in league with Gladio groups and the Italian secret services. Reflecting the degree to which these forces controlled the government through the Parallel SID, nearly all the rightists implicated in these atrocities were later freed. By 1974, right-wing terror began to be answered by the armed left, which favored carefully targeted hit-and-run attacks over the right's indiscriminate bombings. For the next six years, leftist militants, especially the Red Brigades, responded with a vengeance, accounting for far more acts of political violence than the right. For several years, Italy plunged into a virtual civil war.
Meanwhile, groups of right-wingers were busy planning more takeovers of the elected government, with the active encouragement of US officials. A seminal document was the 1970 132-page order on “stability operations” in host countries, published as Supplement B of the US Army's Field Manual 30-31. Taking its cue from earlier NSC and CIA papers, the manual explained that if a country is not sufficiently anticommunist, “serious attention must be given to possible modifications of the structure.” If that country does not react with adequate vigor, the document continues, “groups acting under US Army intelligence control should be used to launch violent or nonviolent actions according to the nature of the case.”
With such incendiary suggestions and thousands of US-trained guerrillas ready, the fascists again attempted to take over the government by force in 1970. This time, the instigator was the Black Prince Borghese. Fifty men under the command of Stefano Delle Chiaie seized the Interior Ministry in Rome after being let in at night by an aide to political police head Federico D'Amato. But the operation was aborted when Borghese received a mysterious phone call later attributed to General Vito Miceli, the military intelligence chief. The plotters were not arrested; instead, they left with 180 stolen machine guns.
News of the attack remained secret until an informer tipped the press three months later. By then, the culprits had escaped to Spain. Although the ringleaders were convicted in 1975, the verdict was overturned on appeal. All but one of the machine guns were returned earlier.
It was in this atmosphere that the US decided to make another all-out effort to block the communists from gaining strength in the 1972 elections. According to the Pike Report, the CIA disbursed $10 million to 21 candidates, mostly Christian Democrats. That amount did not include $800,000 that Ambassador Graham Martin, going around the CIA, obtained through Henry Kissinger at the White House for General Miceli. Miceli would later face charges for the Borghese coup attempt but, fitting the pattern, he was cleared.
Police foiled another attempted coup that same year. They found hit lists and other documents exposing some 20 subversive groups forming the Parallel SID structure. Roberto Cavallaro, a fascist trade unionist, was implicated, as were highly placed generals, who said they got approval from NATO and US officials. In later testimony, Cavallaro said the group was set up to restore order after any trouble arose. “When these troubles do not erupt (by themselves),” he said, “they are contrived by the far right.” Gen. Miceli was arrested, but the courts eventually freed him, declaring that there had been no insurrection.
Still another right-wing attempt to overthrow the government was set for 1974, reportedly with the imprimatur of both the CIA and NATO. Its leader was Edgardo Sogno, one of Italy's most decorated resistance fighters, who had formed a Gladio-style group after the war. Sogno, who had gained many influential American friends while working at the Italian embassy in Washington during the 1960s, was later arrested, but he, too, was eventually cleared.
A triple murder at Peteano near Venice in May 1972 turned out to be pivotal in exposing Gladio. The crime occurred when three carabinieri, in response to an anonymous phone call, went to check out a suspicious car. When one of them opened the hood, all three were blown to bits by a booby trap bomb. An anonymous call two days later implicated the Red Brigades, the most active of the left's revolutionary groups. The police immediately rounded up 200 alleged communists, thieves and pimps for questioning, but no charges were brought. Ten years later, a courageous Venetian magistrate, Felice Casson, reopened the long-dormant case only to learn that there had been no police investigation at the scene. Despite receiving a false analysis from a secret service bomb expert and confronting numerous obstructions and delays, the judge traced the explosives to a militant outfit called New Order and to one of its active members, Vincenzo Vinciguerra. He promptly confessed and was sentenced to life, the only right-wing bomber ever locked up.
Vinciguerra refused to implicate others, but stated, “The carabinieri, the Ministry of Interior, the Customs and Excise police, the civilian and military secret services all knew the truth behind the attack, that I was responsible and all this within 20 days. So they decided, for totally political reasons, to cover it up.” As for his motive, Vinciguerra said his misdeed was “an act of revolt against the manipulation” of neo fascism since 1945 by the whole Gladio-based parallel structure.
Casson eventually found enough incriminating evidence to implicate the highest officials of the land. In what was the first such request to an Italian president, Casson demanded explanations from President Francesco Cossiga. But Casson didn't stop there; he also demanded that other officials come clean. In October 1990, under pressure from Casson, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti ended 30 years of denials and described Gladio in detail. He added that all prime ministers had been aware of Gladio, though some later denied it.
Suddenly, Italians saw clues to many mysteries, including the unexplained death of Pope John Paul I in 1978. Author David Yallop lists Gelli as a suspect in that case, saying that he, ``for all practical purposes, ran Italy at the time.''
Perhaps the most shocking political crime of the 1970s was the kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro and five of his aides in 1978. The abduction occurred as Moro was on his way to submit a plan to strengthen Italian political stability by bringing communists into the government.
Earlier versions of the plan had sent US officials into a tizzy. Four years before his death, on a visit to the US as foreign minister, Moro was reportedly read the riot act by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and later by an unnamed intelligence official. In testimony during the inquiry into his murder, Moro's widow summed up their ominous words: “You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration...or you will pay dearly for it.”
Moro was so shaken by the threats, according to an aide, that he became ill the next day and cut short his US visit, saying he was through with politics. But US pressure continued; Senator Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) issued a similar warning two years later in an interview in Italy. Shortly before his kidnapping, Moro wrote an article replying to his US critics, but decided not to publish it.
While being held captive for 55 days, Moro pleaded repeatedly with his fellow Christian Democrats to accept a ransom offer to exchange imprisoned Red Brigade members for his freedom. But they refused, to the delight of Allied officials who wanted the Italians to play hardball. In a letter found later, Moro predicted: “My death will fall like a curse on all Christian Democrats, and it will initiate a disastrous and unstoppable collapse of all the party apparatus.”
During Moro's captivity, police unbelievably claimed to have questioned millions of people and searched thousands of dwellings. But the initial judge investigating the case, Luciano Infelisi, said he had no police at his disposal. “I ran the investigation with a single typist, without even a telephone in the room.” He added that he received no useful information from the secret services during the time. Other investigating magistrates suggested in 1985 that one reason for the inaction was that all the key officers involved were members of P-2 and were therefore acting at the behest of Gelli and the CIA.
Although the government eventually arrested and convicted several Red Brigade members, many in the press and parliament continue to ask whether SID arranged the kidnapping after receiving orders from higher up. Suspicions naturally turned toward the U.S., particularly Henry Kissinger, though he denied any role in the crime. In Gladio and the Mafia, Washington had the perfect apparatus for doing such a deed without leaving a trace. (Sources: Operation Gladio: The Secret US War to Subvert Italian Democracy by Arthur E. Rowse)
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/
Jim Garrison the New Orleans Prosecutor who investigated the JFK assassination, was arrested on June, 30, 1971 by the FBI. He was accused of participating in organized crime. It was not until August, 1973, that he was put on trial. Garrison was due to stand for re-election in November, 1973. The case was based on the testimony of Pershing Gervais, Garrison’s former chief investigator. Gervais had been sacked by Garrison after he was reported for taking bribes. He was finally arrested for corruption and was then persuaded to be wired up in order to trap Garrison into accepting a bribe. The problem was that Gervais had been taped by Rosemary James, a television reporter in Canada, saying that he was part of a plot to “silence Jim Garrison” by the US government. He told James that he had participated in a “total, complete political frame-up”. During the trial Dr. Louis Gerstman testified that the tape used as evidence against Garrison had been doctored. Garrison was found not guilty but as he says in his book, On the Trail of the Assassins, “unfortunately, there was not sufficient time to get a re-election campaign off the ground, and my opponent won by 2,000 votes.” It is true that rumors were also circulated that Garrison was a gay paedophile. No evidence was ever provided for this claim but no doubt the rumors had their desired effect. http://educationforum.ipbhost.
OPEC oil embargo of Oct 1973
Why did the price of oil go up? Well, in August 1971, President Nixon closed the gold window after the British ambassador formally requested $3 billion in gold bullion from the US Treasury. This effectively detached the dollar from anything but an abstract notion of its value. As the price of gold went up to $140 from its historic $35 an ounce, (from the FDR days); foreign oil producers, especially Arabs spooked by the dissociation of money from gold, sought to raise the dollar price of their oil. *(page 218)
The OPEC oil embargo October 17, 1973 Arab oil ministers announced an oil embargo on the United States, while increasing prices by 70 percent to Western Europe. In fact, the embargo never actually achieved a shutoff of OPEC oil imports to the United States. All but about five percent of the need supply found its way to America by a circuitous route as allocations to other nations were surreptitiously redirected. But the base price of a barrel of oil did eventually more than quadruple by the time the embargo was called off in March 1974. *Source: The Long Emergency by James Kunstler) page 46)
Iraq
During the early 1970s the CIA moved into eastern Iraq to organize and supply the Kurds of that area, who were rebelling against the pro-Soviet Iraqi government. The real purpose behind this action was to help the shah of Iran settle a border dispute with Iraq favorably. After an Iranian-Iraq settlement was reached, the CIA withdrew its support from the Kurds, who were then crushed by the Iraqi Army.
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American POWs returned from North Vietnam
On January 27, 1973, Henry Kissinger met with the North Vietnamese leaders in Paris. He asked the North Vietnamese leaders for the list of American prisoners to be returned and they refused, saying they would produce the list only after the treaty was signed. When Hanoi produced its list of 591 prisoners the next day, US intelligence agencies expressed shock at the low number. Their number was hundreds higher.
On February 2, 1973, after Hanoi released its list showing only ten names from Laos, Nixon sent a message to Hanoi's Prime Minister Pham Van Dong saying: “US records show there are 317 American military men unaccounted for in Laos and it is inconceivable that only ten of these men would be held prisoner in Laos.”
Nixon told the public in a nationally televised speech on March 29, 1973, "Tonight, the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come. For the first time in twelve years, no American military forces are in Vietnam. All our American POWs are on their way home." Documents unearthed since then show that aides had already briefed Nixon about the contrary evidence.
Two defense secretaries who served during the Vietnam War testified to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in September 1992 that prisoners were not returned. James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, both speaking under oath at the Senate POW committee said they based their conclusions on strong intelligence data letters, eyewitness reports, and direct radio contacts. Under questioning, Schlesinger said, "I think that as of now that I can come to no other conclusion...some were left behind." Schlesinger was asked by the Senate committee for his explanation of why Nixon would have made such a statement when he knew Hanoi was still holding prisoners. He replied: "One must assume that we had concluded that the bargaining position of the United States...was quite weak. We were anxious to get our troops out and we were not going to roil (muddy) the waters..."
On December 27, 1980, a Thai military radio intercept (SIGINT) team picked up a message in which Laotian military personnel spoke about moving American prisoners from one labor camp to another. These listening posts were manned by Thai communications officers trained by the NSA. Three days later a message was sent from the CIA station in Bangkok to the CIA director's office in Langley. It read, in part: “The prisoners...are now in the valley in permanent location (a prison camp in Central Laos). They were transferred from Attopeu to work in various places...POWs were formerly kept in caves and are very thin, dark and starving.”
A series of what appeared to be distress signals from Vietnam and Laos were captured by the US photographing (imaging - IMINT) satellite system in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The satellite photos showed markings on the ground that are identical to the signals that American pilots had been specifically trained to use in their survival courses—such as certain letters, like X or K, drawn in a special way. Other markings were the secret four-digit authenticator numbers given to individual pilots. On one occasion there was a missing US man's name gouged into a field.
In April 1993, in a Moscow archive, a researcher from Harvard, Stephen Morris, unearthed and made public the transcript of a briefing that General Tran Van Quang gaven to the Hanoi politburo four months before the signing of the Paris peace accords in 1973.
In the transcript, General Quang told the Hanoi politburo that 1,205 US prisoners were being held as EPOWs. Quang said that many of the prisoners would be held back from Washington after the accords as bargaining chips for war reparations.
General Quang's report added: “This is a big number. Officially, until now, we published a list of only 368 prisoners of war. The rest we have not revealed. The government of the USA knows this well, but it does not know the exact number...and can only make guesses based on its losses. That is why we are keeping the number of prisoners of war secret, in accordance with the politburo's instructions.” The report then went on to explain in clear and specific language that a large number would be kept back to ensure reparations.
There is also evidence that in the first months of Ronald Reagan's presidency in 1981, the White House received a ransom proposal for a number of US POWs being held by Hanoi in Indochina. The offer, which was passed to Washington from an official of a third country, was apparently discussed at a meeting in the Roosevelt Room attended by Reagan, Vice-President Bush, CIA director William Casey and National Security Advisor Richard Allen. Allen confirmed the offer in sworn testimony to the Senate POW committee on June 23, 1992.
Allen was allowed to testify behind closed doors and no information was released. But a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter, Robert Caldwell, obtained the portion relating to the ransom offer and reported on it. The ransom request was for $4 billion, Allen testified. He said he told Reagan that "it would be worth the president's going along and let's have the negotiation."
When his testimony appeared in the Union Tribune, Allen quickly wrote a letter to the panel, this time not under oath, recanting the ransom story and claiming his memory had played tricks on him. His new version was that some POW activists had asked him about such an offer in a meeting that took place in 1986, when he was no longer in government. "It appears," he said in the letter, "that there never was a 1981 meeting about the return of POW/MIAs for $4 billion."
A Treasury agent on Secret Service duty in the White House, John Syphrit, came forward to say he had overheard part of the ransom conversation in the Roosevelt Room in 1981, when the offer was discussed by Reagan, Bush, Casey, Allen and other cabinet officials. Syphrit, a veteran of the Vietnam War, told the committee he was willing to testify but they would have to subpoena him. Treasury opposed his appearance, arguing that voluntary testimony would violate the trust between the Secret Service and those it protects. We can assume volunteering to testify could have cost Syphrit his career. The committee voted seven to four not to subpoena him. In the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs's final report, dated January 13, 1993 (on page 284), the panel chastised Syphrit for his failure to testify without a subpoena. The committee also omitted that it had made a decision not to ask the other two surviving witnesses, Bush and Reagan, to give testimony under oath. Casey had died.
In 1990, Colonel Millard Peck was working at the DIA as chief of the Asia Division for Current Intelligence. Peck charged that, at its top echelons, the Pentagon had embraced a "mind-set to debunk" all evidence of prisoners left behind…. I feel strongly that this issue is being manipulated and controlled at a higher level, not with the goal of resolving it, but more to obfuscate the question of live prisoners and give the illusion of progress through hyperactivity." Colonel Peck not only resigned but asked to be retired immediately from active military service.
Sprinkled throughout the POW/MIA Committee’s report was describe hard evidence that directly contradict the summary's conclusions. This documentation established that a significant number of prisoners were left behind and that top government officials knew this from the start. These candid findings were inserted by committee staffers who had unearthed the evidence and were determined not to allow the truth to be sugar-coated. The report gave no figures but estimates from various branches of the intelligence community ranged up to 600. The lowest estimate was 150. The Washington press corps failed to report this fact.
On December 29, 1992, Committee’s Vice-Chairman Bob Smith, said Kissinger said that he had informed President Nixon after the peace agreement was signed that US intelligence officials believed that the list of prisoners captured in Laos was incomplete. According to Kissinger, the Nixon responded by directing that the exchange of prisoners on the lists go forward, but added that a failure to account for the additional prisoners would lead to a resumption of bombing. Kissinger said Nixon was later unwilling to carry through on this threat.
The committee report quotes Kissinger from his memoirs, writing solely in reference to prisoners in Laos: “We knew of at least 80 instances in which an American serviceman had been captured alive and subsequently disappeared. The evidence consisted either of voice communications from the ground in advance of capture or photographs and names published by the Communists. Yet none of these men was on the list of POWs handed over after the Agreement.”
SALT I Treaty
Nixon signed the treaty with the Soviet Union in May 1972. The treaty capped the total number of strategic weapons on both sides and provided a framework to govern future deployments of such weapons. It was ratified by the Senate later in the year by a wide margin. DCI Helms said the Intelligence Community would be able to verify compliance, but Congress was not given (nor did it request) the data to enable it to make its own independent assessment on the verification issue.
Once the SALT I treaty was signed, the administration clamped down on the flow of intelligence on this issue to Congress. A high-level committee was established in the National Security Council to monitor Soviet compliance. At Kissinger's behest, all intelligence reporting on this subject was ordered channeled to NCS without further dissemination within the executive branch or to Congress. The President Ford administration officials later explained to the Pike Committee that Kissinger wanted to preserve the ability to raise troublesome issues with the Soviets directly rather than have them surface in the press or be exposed to Congress, thus limiting the administration's flexibility in dealing with such problems.
In time, however, Congress began to question why it was not receiving CIA assessments of possible treaty violations. In 1975 the Ford administration permitted CIA to give its first closed-session briefing on Soviet compliance with SALT I. (The Rise and Decline of the CIA by John Ranelagh, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.)
COINTELPRO and MH/CHAOS
Vice-President Nelson A. Rockefeller chaired the Rockefeller Commission and issued a single report in 1975, which delineated some CIA abuses including mail opening and surveillance of domestic dissident groups. The US Senate created the Church Committee on January 27, 1975, and the House created the Pike Committee on February 19, 1975, both of which investigated the intelligence agencies.
The Rockefeller Commission however backs the CIA record and stated that no fundamental changes were needed in its basic legislative charter. Ironically the commission suggested to President Ford that the CIA be given more authority over national issues. One example of this is to allow the CIA to gather information on persons suspected of espionage or other illegal activities relating to foreign intelligence, provided that proper coordination with the FBI is accomplished. (Washington Post) Overall though, the Rockefeller commission made 30 recommendations for change in internal controls and guidelines and adoption of CIA’s long sought version of an official secrets act.
President Johnson was not convinced by the FBI reports that there was no Soviet involvement, therefore he ordered CIA to investigate. His main advisers Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow were convinced that Hoover was correct in believing foreign intelligence governments were involved in anti-war protests in the US. Internal White House protests against using the CIA continued, however a White House aide Tom C. Huston, pressed for ever increasing domestic operations.
The CIA launched its own domestic espionage project in 1967 called Operation MH/CHAOS..
A department within the CIA was established in 1967 on orders from Johnson. The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a worldwide area of operations.
On August 15, 1967, CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations Thomas Karamessines ordered the Chief of the Counterintelligence Staff, CI Division to establish an operation for overseas coverage of subversive student activities and related matters. The CIA established a Special Operation Group (CI/SO) which received all data collected on the US anti-Vietnam war/peace movement. They then entered it into a computer, established files and on a regular basis, reported their analysis to the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence. By mid-1969 there were 36 CIA officers on this staff and in the end of MH/CHAOS there were 52 of them. One of the excuses the CIA gave for violating the law was that they allegedly used a “single restricted channel of communication called Eyes Only” with the FBI and in this way they protected the reputations of those US persons spied upon. Yet the CIA leadership tasked in officers with intelligence requirements (IRs) ranking MH/CHAOS the highest category for them to focus on above the CIA’s priority for the Soviet and Chinese. All CIA officers around the world worked only for the CIA station chief, who supervises them. However, secretly some CIA officers give MH/CHAOS targets and the CI/SO communicated using couriers, therein by-passing the Chief of Station who normally controlled all cable messages to and from CIA headquarters. CI/SO cables were also inaccessible to even top CIA administrators. Why? So no CIA officer would leak the illegal spying on Americans.
Operation CHAOS first used CIA stations abroad to report on anti war activities of US person traveling abroad, employing methods such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance.
The files show that CIA-police cooperation related to the protest rallies. For instance, the CIA files reveal that from 1969 to 1971 CIA provided the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department with a communications system to monitor “major anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in the Washington DC area.” The documents note that the “system consisted of a radio receiver and an CIA officer at the police department’s Intelligence Division Headquarters, and several automobiles from the Washington field office equipped with radio receivers and transmitters.”
CIA assistance extended beyond the provision of surveillance technology and support, and included the fielding of undercover agents. One undercover operation detailed in the files ran from February 1967, to November 1971, and involved a CIA proprietary organization that recruited and handled several contract or volunteer agents for the purpose of covertly monitoring dissident groups in the Washington area considered to be potential threats. During this time, the CIA provided various types of material support to local police departments, ranging from “clandestine transmitters and touch-tone dial recorders” to large quantities of riot control equipment, including gas masks, flak vests, stun guns, tear gas, and chemical cartridges.
DCI Helms ordered Richard Ober to stop discussing these activities with his direct boss, Deputy Director of Counterintelligence, James J. Angleton, where Ober had an office. In early 1967, Ramparts magazine disclosed that the CIA had been funding the National Student Association. IT was the leading American organization representing college students, with branches on about 400 campuses. Its ties with the CIA were formed in the early years of both institutions following World War Two. In the 1950s and first half of the 1960s the US main stream media censored the role of the CIA.
CIA officer Ober was assigned to investigate the magazine's staff members, their friends, and possible connections with foreign intelligence agencies. Instead of the CIA discovering the Soviet Union funding, they found that the money to publish Ramparts came from its publisher, Edward Keating, a wealthy philanthropist, who was deducting his magazine's losses from his income taxes. SOG’s CIA officers investigated virtually all of the alternative papers at the time. It even planted at least one agent provocateur, Salvatore John Ferrera, on the staff of the Quicksilver Times to spy on it.
President Johnson ordered a committee to investigate the Ramparts allegations and he appointed Nicholas Katzenbach, John Gardner, and Richard Helms onto this committee. They determined the allegations were true.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark created the Inter-Departmental Intelligence Unit (IDIU) within the Justice Department’s Internal Security Division. Ober became the CIA’s representative in the IDIU. IDIU was managed by senior members on the White House staff.
In January 1969, Nixon moved IDIU under the Civil Rights Division. In June 1969, John Dean and Dean’s assistant, Tom Huston, tasked Ober to collect intelligence. Ober’s assistant and a case officer (both names are classified), worked at CIA Headquarters.
The CIA case officers ran other CIA officers or contract agents who pretended to be US dissidents. It was hoped that a foreign intelligence service agents would attempt to recruit them as spies. CIA jargon for this fishing for spies is “dangles.” It is called offensive counterintelligence and the hope is to run a double agent operation. Not so much to infiltrate the KGB as to find out what US secrets the KGB is seeking. In this case, if the Soviet Union was financing the anti Vietnam War or civil rights movement’s protest marches.
With the approval of Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, the Pentagon joined in the counter-terror effort through a secret committee formed under Tom Huston. The Pentagon was intent on tracking deserters, and gathering information on foreign nationals who were attempting to persuade American soldiers to desert from military bases in Germany. CHAOS dangles were sent to North Vietnam, North Africa and Cuba.
In May 1970, MH/CHAOS chief Richard Ober started entering the information from his index cards and hard files onto IBM cards, and compiling them in a computer data base codenamed HYDRA. HYDRA was developed at the same time as the Phoenix computer system was set up in Vietnam. The mail intercept program codenamed HT/LINGUAL also was part of the CHAOS operation. From 1940 to 1966, at least 130,000 first class letters were opened and photographed in eight US cities by the FBI. CI/SOG gave the FBI names of the citizens whose mail they wanted to opened.
According to journalist and author Angus Mackenzie, Ober was a senior figure in the special operations branch that carried out wiretaps and burglaries as authorized by their superiors. I think this was in connection with CI investigation of suspected CIA officers or moles inside the CIA. There was another CIA unit in charge of wiretaps and burglaries to collect intelligence on other nations. Ober's sixty agents became the Nixon administration's primary source of intelligence about the antiwar leadership. (Secrets: The CIA's War at Home by Angus Mackenzie, (1998)
Ober was also the CIA’s liaison to the National Commission on Civil Disorders and to the Ginsburg Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. He was the CIA’s liaison to the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, and to the Special Services units (Red Squads) of America’s major metropolitan police departments. He reported directly to DCI Richard Helms. Ober sat on the Huston Committee, which was chaired by FBI Counter Intelligence chief William C. Sullivan.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
During the life of operation CHAOS, the CIA had compiled personality files on over 13,000 individuals including more than 7,000 US citizens as well as files on over 1,000 domestic/US groups. Also NSA added some 300,000 names of US citizens into Operation CHAOS computer. CI/SOG’s computer program separated information by least sensitive to most sensitive, each password protected. CHAOS also maintained 201 files and in addition a sensitive 201 file if the agent’s activities could be embarrassing to the CIA or methods of operations the CIA wanted to protect. CIA made about 7,200 201 files on US citizens.
The office of Training was involved in CHAOS agent training. CHAOS was compartmentalized even within CI Division staff. Only the Chief of Staff of CI and his immediate assistant were read-on. Director Helms specifically order the CI Davison’s Chief of Operations to refrain for telling the Counterintelligence Chief. http://www.serendipity.li/
When President Nixon came to office in 1969, existing domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation CHAOS. Operation CHAOS first used CIA stations abroad to report on antiwar activities of United States citizens traveling abroad, employing methods such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance. The operations were later expanded to include 60 officers. In 1969, following the expansion, the operation began developing its own network of informants for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located in foreign countries that might have ties to domestic groups. Eventually, CIA officers expanded the program to include other leftist or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to Vietnam, such as groups operating within the women's liberation movement.
Targets of Operation CHAOS within the antiwar movement included:
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Students for a Democratic Society
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Black Panther Party
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Formerly the Young Lords (aka Puerto Rican Socialist Party)
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Women Strike for Peace
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Ramparts Magazine
At its finality, Operation CHAOS contained files on 7,200 Americans, and a computer index totaling 300,000 civilians and approximately 1,000 groups.
The CIA testified to the Rockefeller said Project RESISTANCE was started in violation of the law separating the functions of the FBI and CIA out of a narrower program designed to provide direct support to CIA recruiters visiting college campuses. In February 1967, the Office of Security had directed its field offices to report on the possibilities of violence or harassment at those schools which CIA recruiters planned to visit. Subsequently, pursuant to this directive, the field offices provided information on expected opposition to government recruiting, or to CIA in particular, and made appropriate security arrangements with campus officials if the recruitment effort took place.
Project MERRIMAC involved the infiltration by CIA agents of Washington-based peace groups and black activist groups. The stated purpose of that program was simply to obtain early warning of demonstrations and other physical threats to the CIA.
Operation MH/CHAOS
It is interesting to read in the Rockefeller Commission Report the following. “Although Congress contemplated that the focus of the CIA would be foreign intelligence, it understood that some of its activities would be conducted within the United States. The CIA necessarily maintains it headquarters (in the US), procures logistical support, recruits and trains employees, tests equipment and conducts other domestic activities in support of its foreign intelligence mission. It makes (does) necessary investigations in the United States to maintain the security of its facilities and personnel.” And then goes on to stress CIA officers do their work inside the US using “overt” means. Using that word clouds the whole issue as to what means does the CIA consider “covert”. That is, the CIA does not discuss what “overt means” they try so very hard to keep secret from Americans. Sure as hell do not drive around your the city with the words “CIA” printed on the outside of their cars or wear jackets with “CIA” printing on them like the FBI does. Why not?
Another bullshit reason that CIA big shots gave for broking the law was they needed to do so in order to help insure the prospective CIA employees never been a member of any left-wing/commie group(s).
Operation CHAOS amassed thousands of files on Americans, indexed hundreds of thousands of Americans into its Computer data base, and disseminated thousands of reports about Americans to the FBI and/or other government agencies without reasonable suspicion to seek a search warrant for evidence of a crime. MH/CHAOS’s mission was simply to spy on groups who disagreed with the Vietnam War or African American groups organizing to civil rights, PERIOD!
The CIA said the law gave them the responsibility to conduct Special Security Investigation to find the source of news leaks, or to determine whether CIA employees were involved in espionage or otherwise constituted security risks. Investigations were made of former CIA employees or other government agencies, newsmen and other private individuals. Physical surveillance, electronic surveillance, mail and tax return inspection, and surreptitious entry have been used on various occasions. Confusing the FBI’s role was that CIA had since the A-bomb development, CIA had the operational security mission over such things as the U-2 Area 51 stealth research and production, satellite research and intelligence collected SIGINT or IMINT collected by them. And research on the best ways to torture people using drugs (aka MK/ULTRA, hypnosis, and etc.)
But another reason the CIA gave for violating the law against running spies (recruiting confidential informants inside the US) was that they need to task CIA officers for its PROJECT 2. But the CIA was very vague about the Project 2 “agents.” Were they CIA trained officers or volunteer or contract agents run by a CIA officer? CIA claimed they needed to do this Project 2 in the United States so their new agents could “participate in the radical milieu to develop or improve their leftist credentials.” This meant allegedly prior to being deployed to work legally in their future overseas assignments, they would be better at playing the role of a crazy commie who wanted to blow up shit. According to the head of MH/CHAOS, CIA boss Richard Ober, “agents” were sometimes expressly brought back from their overseas assignment to cover a target in the United States of particular interest to the FBI. Let me repeat, to “improve the Project 2’s credentials,” is so they could better walk and talk like a commie duck and look and sound like a right-wing, pro-Vietnam War idiot or who hated white people in infiltrating non-violent Black Power groups.
Under this program, the CIA sought active cooperation from college administrators, campus security, and local police to help identify anti-war activists, political dissidents, and radicals.
Of course colleges and University had pro-fascist and crony capitalism professors whose job was to spot students who would make good CIA officers and help point them into getting a job to the anti-communism mission. In addition to professors worked on research funded by the CIA.
The CIA infiltrated operatives into domestic groups of all types and activities. It used its contacts with local police departments and their intelligence units to pick up its "police skills" and began in earnest to pull off burglaries, illegal entries, use of explosives, criminal frame-ups, shared interrogations, and disinformation. What this meant is that CIA officers were training local police.
The CIA purchased expensive equipment for police departments and in return, cops were encouraged to join the anti-commie hunt, give CIA access local arrest records, suspect lists, and encouraged local police to develop intelligence units ostensibly because if a citizen is against the Vietnam War that meant they were a commie terrorist. Many large police departments, in conjunction with the CIA, carried out wiretaps, physical surveillance, and warrantless entry and searches.
I don’t totally believe anything the CIA has disclosed about MH/CHAOS. That is, CIA alleges they had 60 CIA officers with agents of the army intelligence, the local police, and the FBI. In addition they claim to have had 50 CHAOS agents overseas. The CIA had compiled personality files on over 13,000 individuals including more than 7,000 U.S. citizens as well as files on over 1,000 domestic groups.
The overall violation was the receiving information from local patriotic cops or from the FBI about US citizens. Information obtainedin violation of their rights to privacy which was not related to planned crimes or past crimes. And additionally the violation was the storage and analysis of the collected data about people and their associations and political activity. http://www.aarclibrary.org/
https://history-matters.com/
Dubbed COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, this program began in 1956 and continued until 1971. The aimed was to stifle dissent among US domestic political groups. Hoover secretly ordered FBI field offices to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate" the activities of these movements and especially their leaders. Close coordination with local police and prosecutors was encouraged. Final authority rested with top FBI officials in Washington, who demanded assurance that "there is no possibility of embarrassment to the Bureau."
The documents reveal three types of methods: 1. Infiltration: FBI Special Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main function was to discredit and disrupt.
2. Other forms of deception: The FBI and local police waged psychological warfare through bogus publications, forged correspondence, anonymous letters and telephone calls, and similar forms of deceit.
3. Harassment, intimidation and violence: Eviction, job loss, vandalism, grand jury subpoenas, false arrests, frame people, and physical violence were instigated or directly employed, in an effort to frighten activists. FBI agents posed as journalists.
President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his national defense policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
President Truman received inside information from the FBI on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, about labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists. President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas.
During the Kennedy administration, he had the FBI wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of these programs. Under Hoover, the FBI agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan. Kennedy gave written approval for limited wiretapping of Dr. Martin L. King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so," Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.
President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" of his critics and of members of the staff of US Senator Barry Goldwater who he was running against in 1964. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.
http://sfgate.com/cgibin/
Even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed segregation of public facilities, the FBI’s Black Nationalist program, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as Black Nationalist, but which were in fact primarily black," or the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SNCC).
In about August 1967, the FBI began operation COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE, which focused on Rev. King, the first president of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The FBI also targeted SCLC as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), American Humanist Association, and the Nation of Islam. BLACK HATE established the Ghetto Informant Program, allegedly to collect information pertaining to riots and civil unrest. From 1967 to 1973 the FBI used more than 7,000 people to infiltrate poor black communities in the United States. In Richmond, Virginia, the FBI collaborated with the John Birch Society to set up an organization called Truth About Civil Turmoil (TACT). TACT held events featuring a Black woman named Julia Brown who claimed to have infiltrated the civil rights movement and exposed its Communist leadership.
When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately. The Bureau was quite successful stopping people giving contribution to their organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Additional groups targeted were the American Communist Party, the Socialist Workers' Party, and white hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. (Spying on Americans: The FBI's Domestic Counterintelligence Program by James Kirkpatrick Davis.)
To maintain their credentials in violence-prone groups, FBI informants were assumed to have had to involve themselves in violent activity. This phenomenon is well illustrated by an informant in the Klan. He was present at the murder of a civil rights worker in Mississippi and subsequently helped to solve the crime and convict the perpetrators. Earlier, however, while performing duties paid for by the Government, he had previously "beaten people severely, had boarded buses and kicked people, had [gone] into restaurants and beaten them [blacks] with blackjacks, chains, pistols."
Although the FBI requires their special agents to instruct informants that they cannot be involved in violence, it was understood that in the Klan, they “couldn't be an angels and be a good informants."
The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the husband of an activist accusing his wife of infidelity and it "contributed very strongly" to the subsequent breakup of the marriage. Another Field Office reported that a draft counselor deliberately, and falsely, accused of being an FBI informant was "ostracized" by his friends and associates. Two instructors were reportedly put on probation after the FBI sent an anonymous letter to a university administrator about their funding of an anti-administration student newspaper.
The FBI also attempted to influence media reporting which would negatively impact the public image of the FBI. They planted a series of derogatory articles about Rev. Martin King, Jr., and the Poor People's Campaign. The Headquarters ordered Field Offices that: "on a continuing basis …dissemination to the news media . . . to discredit the New Left movement and its adherents…Every avenue of possible embarrassment must be vigorously and enthusiastically explored, specific data should be furnished depicting the scurrilous and depraved nature…”
Field Offices were ordered to gather information which would disprove allegations by the "liberal press, the bleeding hearts, and the forces on the left" that the Chicago police used undue force in dealing with demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention. The FBI "squelched" an "unfavorable article against the Bureau" written by a freelance writer about an FBI investigation; "postponed publication" of an article on another FBI case; "forestalled publication" of an article by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and received information about proposed editing of King's articles.
James Earl Ray was chosen to take the fall for the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. FBI Director Hoover and the FBI, CIA Director Richard Helms and the CIA, the US military, the local Memphis police, and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis were involved. The plan was for a team of US Army Special Forces snipers to kill King, but just as they were taking aim, a backup civilian assassin pulled the trigger. Source: The Plot to Kill King, by William Pepper)
FBI reporting on protests against the Vietnam War provides another example, of the manner in which the information provided to decision-makers was skewed. In acquiescence with a judgment already expressed by President Johnson, the Bureau's reports on demonstrations against the War in Vietnam emphasized Communist efforts to influence the anti-war movement and underplayed the fact that the vast majority of demonstrators were not Communist controlled.
(Sources:
Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld pp. 217 to 231)
Between 1960 and 1974, the FBI conducted over 500,000 separate investigations of persons and groups under the "subversive" category, predicated on the possibility that they might be likely to overthrow the government of the United States. Yet not a single individual or group has been prosecuted since 1957 under the laws which prohibit planning or advocating action to overthrow the government. According to the Church Committee, FBI agents testified that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power.
Millions of private telegrams sent from, to, or through the United States were obtained by the National Security Agency from 1947 to 1975 under a secret arrangement with three United States telegraph companies.
Intelligence files on more than 11,000 individuals and groups were created by the Internal Revenue Service between 1969 and 1973 and tax investigations were started on the basis of political rather than tax criteria.
At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency".
As early as 1962 the NSA had systematically began to include in a watch list the names of persons and organizations who were engaged in dissent against America's Vietnam policy. In 1967 this list of names increased sharply. On October 20th of that year General Yarborough sent a message to NSA Director Marshal Carter requesting that the NSA provide any available information about possible foreign communications to and influence on individuals associated with civil disturbances in the United States. From 1947 until May 1975, NSA received from international cable companies millions of cables which had been sent by American citizens in the reasonable expectation that they would be kept private.
Warrantless break-ins have been conducted by intelligence agencies since World War Two. During the 1960's alone, the FBI and CIA conducted hundreds of break-ins, many against American citizens and domestic organizations. In some cases, these break-ins were to install microphones; in other cases, they were to steal such items as membership lists from organizations considered "subversive" by the Bureau. (Source: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental operations, April 14, 1976)
The program was successfully kept secret until 1971, when a group calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI (five men and three women) broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers of people the FBI had compiled and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies. Many news organizations initially refused to publish the information. One of the documents they found detailed an FBI conference on the New Left, predicting that more FBI interrogations of activists would “enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”
The US Army Spying on Americans
In 1967 the US Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC) based at Fort Holabird, Maryland housed the Investigative Records Repository (IRR). The IRR then contained more than seven million files/dossiers on American citizens and organizations including subversive files on individuals who -- according to army intelligence -- were "persons considered to constitute a threat to the security and defense of the United States." There were files on the entire King family in the IRR.
At that time USAINTC took over control of seven of the eight existing counterintelligence units, called military intelligence groups in the Continental United States (CONUS) and in West German. By 1967 the military intelligence groups employed total of 1,576 officers and enlisted soldiers, and of these intelligence agents, some 260 were civilians. They were directly involved in domestic intelligence gathering activities.
At a June 6th a meeting, General Yarborough formally approved an ambitious plan to plant informers (contact agents – paid or volunteers) inside major, black-nationalist groups. Half an hour later he met with his close ally and confidant USAINTC Commander Major General William H. Blakefield.
Detroit exploded in riots on July 23, 1967 and the 82nd Airborne under Lieutenant General John L. Throckmorton was sent in. The 20th Special Forces Group was sent there as well. The 113th MIG began to interrogate apprehended rioters, preparing extensive transcripts and reports for transmission to Washington.
FBI Director Hoover tasked FBI agent Patrick D. Putnam to serve on Yarborough's staff. Putnam remained as the daily liaison between Hoover and Yarborough. Army Intelligence began to send page after page of the names of protestors from all over the US whom they wanted put under physical surveillance. US government officers were watching and photographing US persons at public places/rallies and their reports went to Yargourough and not to the FBI and CIA. The CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, and the DIA followed suit. The result was that this "watch list" grew enormously.
At the US Army Intelligence Command, Ralph Stein was assigned to the new left’s underground newspapers. He soon learned that these anti-war publications were being financed by the sales collected on the street, not by the KGB or the Chinese intelligence services. When Stein was called from his office to brief CHAOS Chief Richard Ober's team at CIA headquarters, he was shocked to find that the CIA officers had knowledge about the lives of underground newspaper editors that were so intimate that it could only have come from infiltrators. Concerned that Ober's task force was operating in violation of the I947 National Security Act, Stein registered an official objection with his commanders. The next thing he knew, he had been relieved of his liaison duties with the CIA. http://www.
During the Vietnam War, a former Army intelligence officer Christopher Pyle, blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970. The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military from the mid 1960's to 1971 had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens and files were created. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on US citizens — many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the US.
US covert opening of US mail
Between 1940 (or 1953) and 1973, two agencies of the federal government -- the CIA and the FBI -- covertly and illegally opened and photographed first class mail within the United States, called operation HT/LINGUAL. In 1969, a fourth CIA program was established in San Francisco and was conducted intermittently until 1971. The era of warrantless mail opening did not end until 1973. The record indicates that during the 33 years of mail opening, fewer than seven cabinet level officers were briefed about even one of the projects; only one President may have been informed; and there is no conclusive evidence any cabinet officer or any President had contemporaneous knowledge that this coverage involved the actual opening -- as opposed to the exterior examination of mail. The CIA reviewed 28,322,796 pieces of mail entering the US. The external covers of more than 2,000,000 were photographed (thereby recording information about the sender and the recipient), and 215,820 letters were opened and read.
The mail cover program was secret and unauthorized by anyone outside the CIA, but required covert cooperation by Post Office officials. The program began in February 1953, and consisted of four separate components that operated in four cities: New York City, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Honolulu for different periods of time in each site over the 20-year period.
The FBI knew of and levied requirements on the CIA's New York mail intercept project from 1958 until the project was terminated in 1973.
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/
The civil disturbance watch list program became even more compartmentalized in July 1969, when NSA issued a charter to establish Project MINARET.
Between 1967 and 1973, a cumulative total of about 1,200 American names appeared on the civil disturbance watch list. The FBI submitted the largest proportion, approximately 950. The Secret Service's list included about 180 Americans and groups active in civil rights and antiwar activities. The DIA submitted the names of 20 American citizens who traveled to North Vietnam, and the CIA submitted approximately 30 names of alleged American radicals. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Naval Investigative Service, and the Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence all submitted a small number of names to NSA. In addition, NSA contributed about 50 to 75 names to support the watch list activity.
In early 1973 there were 600 American names and 6,000 foreign names on the watch lists. According to NSA, these lists produced about 2,000 reports that were disseminated to other agencies between 1967 and 1973. NSA estimates ten percent of these reports were derived from communications between two American citizens. (Source: Project MINARET: Further Expansion and Increased Secrecy)
In 1981, Seth Rosenfeld, then a reporter for The Daily Californian, (a University of California at Berkeley’s student paper), started reading the FBI’s COINTELPRO files that the FBI turned over. After five lawsuits he had succeeded in retrieving more than 300,000 pages of records, a federal judge ruled that the FBI had no legitimate law enforcement purpose in keeping them secret for 30 years without any legitimate law enforcement purposes, and sequestered from public view for decades.
• Starting in 1961, long before a mass student movement erupted at Berkeley, the campus vice chancellor for student affairs was telling tales to the FBI.
• In 1965, Hoover ordered up a report for his “close and trusted friend” Lewis Powell, so that Powell could give a talk denouncing campus radicals. (This was the same Lewis Powell later appointed by Richard Nixon to the Supreme Court.)
• An FBI informer, who had cut his espionage teeth infiltrating the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party in Berkeley, procured firearms for the budding Black Panther Party.
• The FBI colluded with Ronald Reagan before he was a political candidate, while he was a gubernatorial candidate, while he was governor of California, and thereafter. Sharing a political agenda—to root out Communists–they scratched each others’ backs for decades.
Sheila O'Connor Rees was one half of a duo of freelance spies. In the parlance of FBI coding, she was WF5728-PSI (Potential Security Informant), along with her husband, the British national/journalist/spy, John Herbert Rees, who was WF3796-PSI. Of the two, John Rees was better known, producing a journal called "Information Digest." That journal served as a clearing house for information on the antiwar movement and radicals, and was made available to local police agencies. While Rees was not a paid FBI informant at the time, he was a paid informant for the DC Metro Police and, among other things, was subsidized by them to set up the Red House Bookstore in Washington, DC in 1971. The thinking was that this would bring Rees in touch with activists the police wanted to target.
Sheila Rees adopted her maiden name of O'Connor and used her ties in the DC activist community to become an FBI informant. As one document notes, O'Connor "is knowledgeable about and is in a position to supply information concerning the Revolutionary Union, United States China Friendship [US-China Peoples Friendship Association], National Lawyers Guild, YSA/Socialist Workers Party, Youth International Party and numerous subjects of investigative interest."
The FBI saw the Revolutionary Union (RU) as a threat. It was a coalition of Maoist groups that operated in ten US states. The RU got its start in the Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, through the initiative of political activists and Berkeley Free Speech Movement veterans Steve Hamilton and Robert Avakian. Along with them were Stanford English Professor Bruce Franklin, his wife Jane Franklin, and ex-Communist Party and ex-Progressive Labor Party member Leibel Bergman. The group navigated the 1969 collapse of Students for Democratic Society (SDS) and came out the other end poised to expand. By the early 70s, this grouping of mainly recent college and graduate students was becoming the most influential Maoist organization in the country, and its members were beginning to insert themselves into various working-class communities and industries, as well as into larger social movements.
During 1969 and 1970, the RU was infiltrated by the husband and wife team of Betty Sue and Laurence Goff, two Christian missionaries who posed as a young radical-minded working-class couple. The Goffs had insinuated themselves to such a degree that Laurence Goff had become chair of his collective in San Jose and was able to attend an RU Central Committee meeting.
Prior to joining the RU study group, Sheila O'Connor Rees worked at - and spied on - the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) as a secretary. Her FBI case officer was Special Agent, Robert Golden. Unfortunately for her, and thankfully for the forces of justice, the NLG had in 1977 sued the FBI over just such surveillance. In 2007, after years of legal wrangling, the courts ruled surveillance documents should be turned over to the Guild with a copy housed in New York University's (invaluable) Tamiment Library. Contained in those documents was O'Connor's informant file. Her file ends abruptly in 1976 when the FBI learned the New York State legislature was investigating John Rees's Information Digest.
John Rees, by the early 1980s, he was working with McDonald's private intelligence operation, Western Goals. http://www.truth-out.org/
The CIA contract agents were all volunteers…a collection of unemployed housewives or manual laborers who were paid less than $100 a month. Local police departments gave CIA operation MH/CHAOS information obtained thru their own infiltration operations and from the FBI until 1972. They were allegedly looking for information about plans for violence against government buildings or foreign embassies. (Sources: The Washington Post by Bill Richards, http://jfk.hood.edu/
The CIA was doing SIGINT as well as NSA
One CIA’s intercept station was in northeastern Iran at Kabkan, forty miles east of Mashad and another station 650 miles southwest of Tyuratam. From there they monitored missile tests emanating from Tyuratam and Saryshagan, Kazakhstan. The first site, a telemetry intercept station, was established in the late 1950s in an ancient hunting castle at Beshahr. At their peak, the Iranian stations provided about 85 percent of the hard intelligence the US acquired on the Soviet ICBM program. President Jimmy Carter considered the sites sufficiently important that he told his ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, that intelligence cooperation between the CIA and Iran should continue despite the Shah's poor human rights record. In about January 1979, these sites were seized after they overthrew the Shah. A site called CHESTNUT was established in China to make up for the loss of the Iran sites.
CIA operatives were also able to tap into radio-telephone communications of Communist leaders as they rode in limousines around Moscow, to track Soviet missile launches from two secret stations inside Iran. The Soviet limo bugging ended after a news report disclosed it and may also have led to the execution of the Soviet agent who installed the listening devices. After the Shah fled Iran during the 1979 revolution, the founders of the Islamic Republic quickly seized the two sensitive US monitoring sites, handing a major loss to American intelligence.
U-2 carried COMINT system (LONG SHAFT)
Three Justice Department entities intercept communications for law enforcement and/or intelligence purposes — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (thru its Data Intercept Technology Unit), the Drug Enforcement Administration (via its Office of Investigative Technology), and the U.S. Marshals Service (specifically, its Technical Operations Group).
CIA’s Deputy Directorate for Research in 1962 and the creation of the Office of ELINT there was no central office charged with managing this electronic intelligence effort. Instead, ELINT activities could be found in the CIA’s Office of Communications, and several other CIA Directorates. Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) includes ELINT (radar signals), and communications intelligence (COMINT) or verbal and mores code radio, telephone, or telephone microwave transmissions (to include encrypted messages). Telemetry is an automated radio (wireless) transmission of data collected by instruments (sensors) that measure things. Telemetry is vital in the development of missiles, satellites and aircraft because the system might be destroyed during or after the test. Engineers needed critical system parameters to analyze (and improve) the performance of the system. Direction finding of where a radio or radar transmitter is located. It is another part what is called SIGINT.
One of those components that continued in operation after the creation of the ELINT office was Division D, an element of the Plans directorate's Foreign Intelligence Staff, which had been established to serve as conduit for the transmission of communications intelligence from NSA to the CIA. Other components that would be involved in SIGINT operations included the Office of Special Activities (1962-1974), which was responsible for agency U-2 missions, some of which engaged in ELINT collection.
At Kirkenes and Korpfjell), Norway began operating SIGINT collection sites on behalf of the CIA in 1955.
One CIA ELINT operation flew a U-2 mission in January 1961, over the South China Sea, Laos, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam. Its ELINT receivers gathered signals from four different bands and "verified previous estimates of the number of long range P-band radars" in North Vietnam, and "the South and Southwest Air Defense Districts" of China. In August 1965, intercept equipment was put on a drone, designated LONG ARM.
In June 1960 to 1962 a satellite called GRAD collected Soviet or Chinese radar signals. A similar satellite called Poppy operated until 1977.
The Syncom satellites flew 22,300 miles above various points on the equator — in geostationary orbit. At that altitude and location, the satellites revolved around the earth at the same speed as the earth turned on its axis which allowed continuous coverage of missile telemetry and targets in Eurasia. The CIA program to develop geostationary orbit satellites was called RHYOLITE. This codename was changed to AQUACADE in 1975. During the 1960s-1970s, Syncom satellites intercepted Soviet and Chinese telephone microwave signals used for long distance telephone and data traffic in both the US and Eastern Europe. At least four such satellites were likely launched from June 1970 and April 1978. Signals were related to a remote NSA Earth station in Australia, Pine Gap, out of range of Soviet detection. From there, they would be encrypted and sent via another satellite to the NSA's headquarters at Fort Meade for analysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The first press reports on National Reconnaissance Office NRO started in 1971. The first official acknowledgement of NRO was a Senate committee report in October 1973, which inadvertently exposed the existence of the NRO. In 1985, a New York Times article revealed details on the operations of the NRO. The Corona satellites used (sometimes multiple) film capsules dropped from space that were recovered mid-air by military craft. In September 1961, the NRO was established led by CIA boss Richard Bissell. Starting in December 1976 near real time TV photos were sent back to earth to NRO ground station via relay satellites.
In June 1976, Sayre Stevens, head of the CIA's Intelligence Directorate, that he had visited several CIA analytical offices and heard several complaints. Objections included, but were not limited to, "NSA gists are not complete enough and sometimes miss the important points, to be found in the raw transcript;" "NSA analysis is incomplete, unreferenced and often indiscriminately mixes SIGINT and collateral (intell);" and "NSA quite often refuses to provide transcripts or 'technical data.'" The chairman also reported that "almost everyone agreed" that it would be useful to station an NSA liaison team at CIA.
In January 1977, DCI Stansfield Turner gave the NSA director "review and approval authority of the CIA SIGINT program."
In 1977 the CIA embassy-based eavesdropping efforts (Division D) were merger with the Office of ELINT with those of the NSA. The result was a new joint operation designated the Special Collection Service (SCS), with headquarters separate from either the CIA or NSA. While the existence of the SCS is not classified, all details of its mission are. By 2010 there were 96 SCS sites around the world, including 74 manned locations, and 14 unmanned remote sites.
One eavesdropping operation was designated GAMMA GUPY, and involved, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, intercepting the radio-telephone conversations of Soviet Politburo members - including General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, President Nikolai Podgorny, and Premier Alexei Kosygin - as they drove in their limousine around Moscow. The CIA spy who planted the bug/transmitter was likely given the death penalty in the USSR.
CIA electronic surveillance operations directed against drug trafficking activities in South America by Division D intercept operations carried out at a CIA communications facility and using drones, Project LONG SHAFT. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/
The Fellowship – aka The Family.
The term “Christian” is merely to clearly identify the criminal conspirators who have chosen to misuse their self-avowed devotion to Jesus Christ to advance a very un-Christian agenda. The term “Christian Mafia” is what several Washington politicians have termed the major conspirators and it is not intended to debase Christians or infer that they are criminals. The term Nazi, not for shock value, but to properly tag the political affiliations of the early founders of the so-called Christian power cult called the Fellowship.
The Fellowship stealth existence has been perpetuated by its organization into small cells, a pyramid organization of “correspondents,” “associates,” “friends,” “members,” and “core members,” tax-exempt status for its foundations, and its protection by the highest echelons of the our government and those abroad. Fellowship’s archives were (are) maintained at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois,
Another pro-Nazi Christian fundamentalist group that arose in the pre-Second World War years was the Moral Rearmament Movement. Its Prayer Breakfast Movement spread its anti-left manifesto and agenda throughout the Pacific Northwest.
With total devotion to Jesus and not necessarily His principles at its core, the Fellowship’s purpose has little to do with religion but everything to do with political and economic influence peddling. Fellowship members believe that Jesus will not return until there is a 1000-year pure Christian government established on Earth.
In 1953, the Fellowship made its first entrée into the White House when President Dwight Eisenhower agreed to attend the first Presidential Prayer Breakfast. One Korean Presbyterian preacher, who took an interest in the Moral Rearmament principles of a universal religion was Sun Myung Moon and he established a right-wing sect called the Unification Church.
By 1957, the International Christian Leadership (ICL) had established 125 groups in 100 cities. The International Christian Leadership’s international activities coincided with activities in countries where the CIA was particularly active, a by-product of the close cooperation between this group and the CIA’s Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton.
In 1958, Representative Albert H. Quie (R-MN) became an important core member of the Presidential Prayer Breakfast which became an annual Washington institution. As Billy Graham became a regular attendee prayer breakfast, many attendees figured that the event was officially sponsored by the White House.
One of the Moral Rearmament Movement’s followers was US General Edwin A. Walker, who was fired by President John F. Kennedy for insubordination.
In 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy following his assassination, his seat in the Senate was filled by Charles E. Goodell, appointed by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Goodell was also a core member of the Fellowship.
On January 30, 1969, the Fellowship, Billy Graham, and newly-inaugurated President Richard Nixon gathered for the Presidential Prayer Breakfast.
Nixon shared the Fellowship’s and Graham’s anti-Semitism views as shown in the Nixon audio tapes of a conversation of Nixon, Graham, and H.R. Haldeman in the Oval Office in 1972. Yet, support for Israel is not only something advocated by Graham, but also by Evangelicals called Christian Zionist wing of the Fellowship. Although Nixon would later come to distrust the Fellowship, one of his closest confidants, Charles Colson, would become one of the key figures in the group.
Additional tapes indicate that the Internal Revenue Service had Graham under investigation in September 1971. Since Graham was so close to the various Fellowship front activities and foundations, it is likely that the IRS was looking at the illegal mixing of tax-exempt religious groups with political campaigns. When Graham informed Nixon of the IRS probe, Nixon was not happy as the tapes indicate.
Nixon [speaking to Haldeman] said, “Please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats ... Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?...Here (the) IRS is going after Billy Graham tooth and nail. Are they going after Eugene Carson Blake (president of the liberal National Council of Churches?”
Billy Graham supported the war in Vietnam. On April 15, 1969, just a few months after the National Prayer Breakfast, Graham sent a secret letter to Nixon from Bangkok, where the evangelical preacher was meeting Fellowship missionaries from South Vietnam. Graham and the missionaries urged Nixon to step up the bombing of North Vietnam and include in the campaign the bombing of dikes to “overnight destroy the economy of North Vietnam.”
In 1969, the Unification Church of Moon began to penetrate the United States with his missionaries. In 1972, Moon made his first journey to the United States. His number one priority was to take over control of the US government by getting his followers elected to office. By using the prayer breakfasts hundreds of politicians around the country were duped into extending official welcomes to the enigmatic Korean Moonies.
In August 1974, as Nixon's administration was coming to an end due to Watergate, Moon dispatched his followers/believers to the steps of the US Capitol in defense of Nixon as the House was voting to impeach the president. Moon’s defenders of Nixon were joined on the Capitol steps by members of Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Baruch Korff’s National Citizen’s Committee for Fairness to the Presidency. Korff had been a strong Zionist supporter of Israel.
Fred Lennon, a kingpin in Ohio conservative politics and rich businessman, was a right-wing Catholic. Lennon was a major financial contributor to conservative Christian Republicans, including Ronald Reagan. The influence of wealthy Ohio conservative Christian businessmen like Lennon, Raymond Q. Armington, and Cincinnati’s Carl Lindner of United Fruit (later Chiquita Foods) would have far reaching effects. Ohio would become a haven for the activities of the Fellowship and their affiliated organizations and churches.
On August 8, 1974, the day before Ford was sworn in as President, the Fellowship lurked behind the political maneuverings that led Nixon to decide to quit. After Nixon resigned, some Fellowship members, including Colson, made attempts to try to get Nixon to join their group as a way to salvage his legacy. Nixon would have nothing to do with them.
George H. W. Bush arranged for Bush Jr. to serve at a religious drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in San Diego between May and November 1972. Conservative San Diego was a major center for Fellowship activities.
Bush the first pulled financial strings for Harris County District Attorney Carol Vance for helping to drop the drug charges against Junior and expunging the arrest record. Vance also had links to the organization that would become Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries, an adjunct of the Fellowship. Vance, an evangelical Methodist, ministered to inmates in solitary confinement in Texas prisons. Governor Ann Richards appointed Vance to the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, the entity that oversees the state’s Corrections Department.
Both sides of the political aisle were tapped as members and friends of the Fellowship. Democratic Senator Harold Hughes, a confirmed liberal, was a core Fellowship member as was liberal Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon.
Another suspected Nazi sympathizer with the Nixon campaign was his White House aide Fred Malek. Nixon was also deputy director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Nixon ordered Malek to find out if there was a “Jewish cabal” within the Bureau of Labor Statistics and he ordered him to make a list of Jews in the agency. Later, in 1988, Malek was George H. W. Bush’s liaison to Eastern European right-wing “ethnic community” leaders who were members of the Heritage Groups Council. Many of these ethnic leaders were ex-Nazis.
Paul Weyrich with Jerry Falwell started the Moral Majority. In 1973, Weyrich and Joseph Coors started the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Many of their policy initiatives, including the dismantling of Roosevelt’s New Deal, Truman’s Fair Deal, and Johnson’s Great Society, were to have their genesis in the Heritage Foundation.#
The wealthy head of Vanderbilt Energy Company, John W. Hinckley, Sr. had been involved with World Vision, a Christian evangelical association involved with a number of US covert operations abroad. Like the Fellowship, World Vision acted as a Trojan horse during the Vietnam War and the illegal support for the Nicaraguan contras. A number of World Vision officials were core members of the Fellowship. World Vision continues to involve itself in such hot spots as Iraq and Congo. Expose: The Christian Mafia by Wayne Madsen
http://insider-magazine.org/
WATERGATE
In September 1971, it was recorded on the Nixon tapes of Nixon speaking to HR “Bob” Haldeman saying, "We have the power, but are we using it to investigate contributors to Hubert Humphrey, to Muskie, and the Jews? …Are we looking into Muskie's (income tax) return? Hubert's? Hubert's been in a lot of funny deals. Teddy? (US Senator Edward Kennedy) Who knows about the Kennedys? Shouldn't they be investigated?"
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had Evangelical preacher Billy Graham under investigation. And Nixon said, “Please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats ... Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?...Here IRS is going after Billy Graham tooth and nail. Are they going after Eugene Carson Blake?” (the president of the liberal National Council of Churches). Billy Graham and the fundamentalist, Christian Zionists supported the war in Vietnam. (Source: The Christian Mafia - the Fellowship - aka the Family, by Wayne Madsen)
Haldeman wrote in his diary of Nixon saying, "There was a considerable discussion of the terrible problem arising from the total Jewish domination of the media. Graham has the strong feeling that the Bible says there are Satanic Jews and that's where our problem arises."
In July 2, 1969, Nixon's aides had the IRS set up a secret Ideological Organizations Audit Project within an internal arm of the Compliance Division called the Activist Organization Committee for the purpose of auditing income tax returns of those people on his enemies list. Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy was at the top of that list along with many well-known journalists. The IRS later renamed its political audit squad the Special Services Staff (SSS) to keep its mission secret. They targeted over 1,000 liberal groups for audits and 4,000 individuals.
In the 1930s, the IRS began auditing “subversive organizations” as an extension of the FBI’s efforts to target extremist groups, at the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson also misused the IRS. Documents disclosed one occasion when John Kennedy was on vacation in Cape Cod, he order the IRS to audit the owner of boat. He got angry because of the noise coming from the boat adjoining his boat.
In the early 1960s, the IRS had been used to spy on Americans using an operation called the officials of the Compliance Division of the IRS first met to discuss the creation of a group inside the IRS to examine "ideological organizations" and to collect intelligence on dissident groups through a "strike force" approach. That month, the Special Service Staff was established "to coordinate activities in all Compliance Divisions involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical and similar type organizations; to collect basic intelligence data, and to insure that the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code concerning such organizations have been complied with." The IRS decided very early to keep the existence of SSS a secret from those inside and outside of IRS who had no "need to know".
Thomas “Tom” C. Huston, a former US Army Intelligence officer, took a position within the White House in January 1969. Nixon personally put him in charge of setting up the new IRS "anti-radical squad" to make sure that the laggards in IRS's bureaucracy didn't drop the ball. Huston prepared a 43-page blueprint (the Huston Plan) for Nixon outlining a government agency campaign targeting Nixon's enemies. The scheme included tapping phones without warrants, infiltrating organizations that had been critical of the President and, purging IRS agents who refused to tow the Republican line. Huston told the President, "we won't be in control of the government and in a position of effective leverage until such time or we have complete and total control of the top three slots" at the IRS.
Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent Thomas C. “Tom” Tripodi moved into the CIA and spent six years in the CIA’s Security Research Services where his duties included the penetration of peace groups, as well as setting up firms to conduct black bag jobs until 1971. His unit included E. Howard Hunt several of the Watergate burglars. When Tripodi moved into job with new CIA/ BNDD Office of Special Operation, White House, Plumber, E. Howard Hunt lead Tripodi’s unit spying on US anti-Vietnam War groups. Allegedly Tripodi began working in New York in the 1960s. He later was posted to Washington, Baltimore and Miami.
I suspect Thomas “Tom” C. Huston and was really Thomas C. “Tom” Tripodi.
Houston felt the country was on the brink of mass insurrection and the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was not doing nearly enough to combat the civil rights and antiwar protesters, particularly groups like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground. Huston became increasingly disillusioned with the lack of idealism in the Nixon White House, and left after deciding that Nixon and his top officials were less interested in implementing true conservative reforms and more interested in merely accumulating power. The Nixon team was an apolitical, power-hungry bunch. (HARPER'S, 10/1974)
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Once in operation, the Special Service Staff (SSS) became a political tool of the IRS responsive to the FBI, the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department, and other government agencies monitoring political dissent. The Information Gathering and Retrieval System, which IRS developed between 1963 and 1975, was a system (prior to computers) to increase the collection of intelligence and to index and store this intelligence efficiently. Ultimately, it included information about 465,442 persons or groups and contained information about alcohol use and sexual behavior not related to tax fraud.
On September 27, 1970, Nixon ordered Haldeman to get the IRS to investigate Edward Kennedy who was the presumed frontrunner in the 1972 presidential contest; and Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey who Nixon also ordered audited.
In May 1971, Nixon used an IRS investigation of Alabama Governor George Wallace's brother, Gerald Wallace, to pressure Gov. Wallace to run for President on the Democratic ticket as a spoiler rather than on a third party ticket as he planned. The blackmail scheme succeeded and most of Wallace's white male supporters fled to the Republicans after the Democrats nominated civil rights activist George McGovern. Nixon's tactic of having Wallace run as a Democrat was an indispensable element of the White House's "southern strategy."
Complicating this IRS history was that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax division, (now the ATF) was part of the IRS until 1972. That meant the IRS oversaw a federal law enforcement unit that made it easier for elected officials to enlist the IRS to do all sorts of politically charged probes of taxpayers.
White House aide John Ehrlichman complained to the then IRS Commissioner Randolph Thrower to stop the IRS from probing of Nixon’s brother Donald, due to alleged underreporting involving political donations and kickbacks arising from his connections to the billionaire Howard Hughes and Nixon’s friend Bebe Rebozo. Thrower, a Republican lawyer who headed the IRS under Nixon from 1969 to August 1971, was fired after resisting White House efforts to punish its enemies through tax audits. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/
Nixon appointed Johnnie M. Walters as IRS Commissioner of the IRS in August 1971. John Dean gave Walters a list of about 576 names and 20 “enemies and George McGovern's supporters or staff to his 1972 presidential campaign. In 1972 after Nixon won his race for a second term, Walters stopped/shut-down the IRS’s investigation into illegal campaign contributions by 31 Los Angeles area businesses. http://www.sc.edu/library/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Nixon’s enemies list of 767 taxpayers targeted for IRS audits included Shirley MacLaine, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Lucille Ball, and future President Ronald Reagan. Also audited was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under Martin Luther King, Jr, the Ku Klux Klan, and Howard Hughes. In August 1972, the IRS’s own review of SSS files found that about 37 percent of the 767 taxpayers targeted “were not worthy of staff consideration.” http://www.foxbusiness.com/
In one instance IRS Commissioner Wright pressed the Detroit District Office to reopen an audit case on a group of political activists. He said, "They are notorious campus and anti-draft activists having records under anti-riot laws. They are the principal officers in the Radical Education Project, an offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society, and have been identified as members of certain Communist front organizations….”
The SSS initiated investigations in response to information reports from outside agencies. The FBI was the single largest source of targets for the Special Service Staff. In its four years of operation, the SSS received 11,818 separate reports from the FBI, over 6,000 of them classified, including FBI COINTELPRO reports, and an FBI list of over 2,300 organizations categorized as "Old Left," "New Left," and "Right Wing."
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/
The Inter-divisional Information Unit (IDIU) of the Department of Justice provided leads for SSS investigations, including lists of 10,000 and 16,000 persons and organizations that might potentially engage in civil disturbances. Beyond these sources, the SSS had access to the US Army and Air Forces' Counter-intelligence US units which listed "dissident individuals and organizations.” (Source: The Lawless State, The crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies by Morton Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage, Christine Marwick, 1976)
Operation Leprechaun was an IRS investigation conducted in Jacksonville, Florida, to combat political corruption. The operation led to the collection of details on the personal and sexual lives of certain Florida political figures and illegal acts were committed by confidential informants hired by IRS special agents. IRS improperly controlled these informants who unjustifiably collected personal and sexual information on some targets from 1969 until 1972.
On October 6, 1971, Nixon ordered Haldeman to have the IRS audit Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler who had transformed the Times from a right wing rag into a universally respected paper by recruiting top journalists from across the nation. Nixon told Haldeman, “I want Otis Chandler's income tax," Nixon then called John Mitchell and ordered him to fire the Los Angeles Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Nixon told Mitchell, "The fellow out there in the Immigration Services is a kike by the name of Rosenberg. He is to be out. I want you to direct the most trusted person you have in the Immigration Service to look at all the activities of the Los Angeles Times... let me explain as a Californian, I know everybody in California hires them... I want him (Otis Chandler) checked with regard to his gardener. I understand he is a wetback. Is that clear?"
Donald C. Alexander was appointed as IRS commissioner in May 1973 for the last full year of the Nixon administration. In May 1973 he shut down the IRS’s Operation Tradewind in the Bahamas, resulting in shutting down the prosecution of 488 pending tax-evasion cases. Alexander also stopped the practice of using a question on the IRS form 1040 which asked taxpayers if they had any foreign bank accounts and he stopped prosecuting under the 1971 Narcotics Trafficking Tax Program, just as cocaine trafficking was flooding into the US. This prompted many veteran IRS agents to resign in protest. (Source: Mr. Mob, The Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz, pages 239-242)
IRS documents show that IRS veteran and Democrat William Loeb, then a deputy IRS commissioner, stymied White House aide G. Gordon Liddy’s dreams to have “hundreds of additional agents” working outside normal IRS reporting channels on behalf of the White House.
IRS commissioner Donald Alexander stepped in and stopped the SSS in 1973, and ordered a probe. Congress held no separate hearings on the SSS or these IRS audits.
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