FTR #505 Misc Articles & Updates

Recorded April 3, 2005
REALAUDIO
NB: This stream contains both FTR #s 504 and 505 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.

As the title indicates, this program updates a number of stories covered in past For The Record broadcasts, as well as introducing new material. Beginning with discussion of the powerful Bertelsmann Corporation (the publishing house for the SS during World War II and an apparent major component of the Underground Reich), the program documents a new joint technology venture between the firm and chipmaker Intel. In addition, the show highlights the merger between BMG (Bertelsmann’s music subsidiary) and SONY. This merger created one of the largest music firms in the world. The program also updates the Oklahoma City bombing and proposed and apparent mergers between American neo-Nazi groups and Islamists. Concluding with discussion of a political controversy within the groves of academe, the program sets forth information that Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado at Boulder might not be what he seems. Much of Churchill’s behavior suggests the possibility that he might be an agent provocateur of sorts.
Program Highlights Include: Review of the destruction of FBI agent Mike German’s career by the Bureau when he tried to infiltrate White Supremacist groups that were apparently allying with Islamist terrorists; discovery by the FBI of explosives at convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols’ home; Ward Churchill’s work for Soldier of Fortune magazine in the 1970’s.

1. Beginning with an update on Mr. Emory’s series on German corporate control of the American media, the program notes a deal between Intel and Bertelsmann—the SS publishing house during the war. The deal will see the two companies developing file-sharing technology for downloading and sharing various forms of entertainment online. (For more about German corporate control over the American media and Bertelsmann, see: FTR #’s 122, 123, 152 [side a], 177, 189, 194, 218, 224, 226, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 245, 250, 251, 261, 263, 274, 275, 298, 299, 300, 303.) “Chip Maker Intel Corp. and media conglomerate Bertelsmann plan to cooperate in developing technology for downloading and sharing film clips and games from the Internet. Intel will make chips for PC’s, notebooks and mobile phones that are compatible with a new online media file-sharing platform from Bertelsmann’s services and technology arm, Arvato, capitalizing on growing public appetite for accessing music and other media online....”
(“Intel and Bertelsmann to Develop Technology” [Reuters]; 3/30/2005; p. 1.)

2. Bertelsmann’s music division—BMG—merged with SONY music to form a giant super-corporation. The formation of this music giant further increases Bertelsmann’s influence in the media world. “Impala, the body representing 2,500 indie labels, is appealing to prevent what it calls a ‘market imbalance’. Permission for them to merge meant that 80% of the world’s music is owned by just four record companies. The EU gave its backing to the merger in July, and the US Federal Trade Commission also did not oppose it. But Impala believes the EU was wrong to allow the merger to go unchallenged, saying it went against the principles of a competitive marketplace. . . .”
(“Indies Challenge Sony BMG Merger” [BBC]; BBC News; 11/03/2004)

3. Next, the program notes that the FBI recently discovered additional explosives stored by convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols at his residence. A number of broadcasts highlight the connections between the Oklahoma City bombing, the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and the 9/11 attacks—FTR#’s 330, 443, 456, 457.) “Pursuing a tip that they missed evidence a decade ago, F.B.I. agents searched the former home of the Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry L. Nichols and found explosive materials apparently related to the 1995 attack, officials said on Friday. Officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the materials, which included blasting caps, were found buried in a crawl space of the Herington, Kansas, home on Thursday. Agents conducted numerous searches of the house during the original investigation of Mr. Nichols and his co-conspirator, Timothy J. McVeigh....”
(“New Evidence Found in Oklahoma City Bombing” [AP]; The New York Times; 4/2/2005; p. 1.)

4. Recently, the National Alliance (arguably the most important domestic Nazi group) gave voice to a desire to cooperate with Al Qaeda in attacking American targets. Although the people quoted in the article dismiss the prospect as merely a possibility, the evidence suggests that domestic Nazi groups have indeed formed a working relationship with Al Qaeda. (For more about this subject, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 330, 352, 443, 456, 457, 474.) “A couple of hours up the road from where some September 11 hijackers learned to fly, the new head of Aryan Nation is praising them -- and trying to create an unholy alliance between his white supremacist group and al Qaeda. ‘You say they're terrorists, I say they're freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah.’”
(“An Unholy Alliance: Aryan Nation Leader Reaches Out to Al Qaeda” by Henry Schuster; CNN.)

5. “With his long beard and potbelly, August Kreis looks more like a washed up member of ZZ Top than an aspiring revolutionary. Don't let appearances fool you: his resume includes stops at some of America's nastiest extremist groups – Posse Comitatus, the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation. “I don't believe that they were the ones that attacked us,” Kreis said. “And even if they did, even if you say they did, I don't care!” Kreis wants to make common cause with al Qaeda because, he says, they share the same enemies: Jews and the American government. The terms they use may be different: White supremacists call them ZOG, the Zionist Occupation Government, while al Qaeda calls them the Jews and Crusaders. But the hatred is the same. And Kreis wants to exploit that. . . .” (Idem.)

6. Next, the program reviews an expose of the FBI’s suppression of a veteran agent’s revelations about developing cooperation between Islamist terrorists and homegrown white supremacist/militia types. This article was first presented in FTR#474. (For more about Islamist/neo-Nazi cooperation in the execution of terrorist acts, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 330, 443, 456, 457. For more about the FBI’s suppression of information that could lead to the apprehension of terrorists and/or the interdiction of their operations, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 349, 424, 454, 462, 464, 467.) Note that, in FTR#’s 310, 348, 462, 464, Mr. Emory states his opinion that Robert Mueller is a “ringer”—someone put in to deliver the FBI to the Bush administration and its governing entity—the Underground Reich.) Why is the bureau suppressing this type of investigation?! Will the next major terrorist attack feature White Supremacists or neo-Nazis at the operational level? Is Mike German the next John O’Neill? “As a veteran agent chasing home-grown terrorist suspects for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mike German always had a knack for worming his way into places few other agents could go. In the early 1990’s, he infiltrated a group of white supremacist skinheads plotting to blow up a black church in Los Angeles. A few years later, he joined a militia in Washington State that talked of attacking government buildings. Known to his fellow militia members as Rock, he tricked them into handcuffing themselves in a supposed training exercise so the authorities could arrest them.”
(“Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency” by Eric Lichtblau; The New York Times; 8/2/2004; p.1.)

7. “So in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group, he proposed to his bosses what he thought was an obvious plan: go undercover and infiltrate the group. But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a ‘pariah.’ He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the first time—the latest in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks.” (Idem.)

8. “ ‘What’s so frustrating for me,’ Mr. German said in an interview, a copy of the Sept. 11 commission report at his side,’ is that what I hear the F.B.I. saying every day on TV when I get home, about how it’s remaking itself to fight terrorism, is not the reality of what I saw every day in the field.’ Mr. German refused to discuss details of the 2002 terrorism investigation, saying the information was classified.” (Idem.)

9. Among the groups seen by officials as probable collaborators of al-Qaeda or other Islamist groups are white supremacist groups within the correctional system. “But officials with knowledge of the case said the investigation took place in the Tampa, Fla. area, where a domestic militia-type group and a major but unidentified Islamic terrorist organization, were considering joining forces. A tape recording of the meeting appeared to lend credence to the report, one official said. Law enforcement officials have become increasingly concerned that militant domestic groups could seek to collaborate with foreign-based terrorist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the American government. This has become a particular concern in prisons.” (Idem.)

10. “The Tampa case is not known to have produced any arrests. But Mr. German, in an April 29 letter to several members of Congress, warned that ‘the investigations involved in my complaint concern very active terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national security.’” (Idem.)

11. “He also wrote ‘Opportunities to initiate proactive investigations involved in my complaint concern very active terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national security.’ He also wrote, ‘Opportunities to initiate proactive investigations that might prevent terrorist acts before they occur, which is purported to be the F.B.I.’s number one priority, continue to be lost, yet no one is held accountable.’” (Idem.)

12. “ . . . Mr. German, in his letter to lawmakers, cited ‘a continuing failure in the F.B.I’s counterterrorism program,’ which he said was ‘not the result of a lack of intelligence, but a lack of action.’ Officials said Mr. German also complained internally about a second case in the Portland, Ore., area in 2002 in which he said he was blocked from going undercover to pursue a domestic terrorism lead. That case was also thought to center on a militia group suspected of plotting violence.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

13. “In the Tampa case, officials said Mr. German complained that F.B.I. officials had mishandled evidence concerning a suspected domestic terrorist group and failed to act for months on his request in early 2002 to conduct an undercover operation. That failure, he said, allowed the investigation to ‘die on the vine.’ While Mr. German would not confirm the location of the investigation, he said in an interview at the office of his Washington lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, that his problems intensified after he complained about the management of the case in September 2002. He said F.B.I. officials whom he would not name backdated documents in the case, falsified evidence and falsely discredited witnesses in an apparent effort to justify their approach to the investigation. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] He cited institutional inertia, even after Sept. 11.” (Ibid.; pp. 2-3.)

14. “ ‘Trying to get approval for an operation like this is a bureaucratic nightmare at the F.B.I.,’ he said. Mr. German said that beginning in late 2002, he took his concerns to his supervisors at the F.B.I. and to officials at headquarters in Washington, including Mr. Mueller himself in an e-mail message that he said went unanswered. He also went to the Justice Department’s inspector general and, frustrated by what he saw as a languishing investigation, brought his concerns this spring to several members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

15. “In the meantime, Mr. German said, his career at the F.B.I. stalled, despite what he said was an ‘unblemished’ record and an award for his work in the Los Angeles skinhead case. Soon after raising his complaints about the 2002 terrorism investigation, he was removed from the case. And, he said, F.B.I. officials wrongly accused him of conducting unauthorized travel, stopped using him to train agents in ‘proactive techniques’ and shut him out of important domestic terrorism assignments.” (Idem.)

16. “ ‘The phone just stopped ringing, and I became a persona non grata,’ he said. ‘Because I wouldn’t let this go away, I became the problem.’ For now he has no job and is uncertain of his future. ‘My entire career has been ruined, all because I thought I was doing the right thing here,’ he said.” (Idem.)

17. The program closes with a look at the controversy surrounding Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado who characterized the victims of the 9/11 as “little Eichmanns”—a reference to the Nazi officer in charge of the liquidation of European Jewry. Churchill has a track record that raises questions about the possibility that he might be an agent provocateur. “ . . . Fringe speculations aside, Churchill’s closet does contain a redoubtable collection of verifiable peccadilloes. While employed at CU, Churchill ran a side business in which he reproduced other artists’ images—some of them still under copyright—and then sold them as his own original artwork. Like historian Joseph Ellis, Churchill appears to have exaggerated his military service. Churchill claims to have served in Vietnam as a paratrooper in an elite long-range reconnaissance unit, and walked point on patrol. Yet Churchill’s service record shows that he was trained as a projectionist and Jeep driver. In an early resume, Churchill reports as his military service the dangerous task of preparing his battalion newsletter. They also, serve, who only stand behind the lines and publish.”
(“Is Ward Churchill the New Michael Bellesiles?” by Thomas Brown; History News Network; 3/14/2005; p. 2.)

18. “Churchill carried this tradition of epistolary valor over into his civilian career. He apprenticed at Soldier of Fortune magazine in the 1970’s, before moving into the academy. In 1998, Churchill published Pacifism as Pathology, justifying the use of political violence. Churchill claims to have taught bomb-making to the Weather Underground. Churchill called for breaking the kneecaps of tourists headed for Hawaii, as a political statement in support of Hawaiian nationalism. He repeatedly called for the destruction of the United States. Churchill gave speeches in which he offered justifications and explicit strategies for successful terrorist actions against the U.S. . . .” (Idem.)

19. “Churchill’s personal life echoed this theme of violence. Churchill claims to vandalize or destroy state property as revenge for every traffic ticket he receives. A number of people had accused Churchill of assault or threats of assault. Joanne Arnold, an administrator on Churchill’s home campus, reported that Churchill had threatened in a phone call that she would ‘get hurt’ if she didn’t back off her position in a dispute over naming a dormitory. Carole Standing Elk, an Indian activist, complained that Churchill had spit on her during an argument. David Bradley, a New Mexico artist, complained to his local police that Churchill had threatened to kill him.” (Idem.)

20. “The Colorado media also reported that Churchill’s genealogical claims to Indian ancestry are most likely spectral. This became significant when the media uncovered additional evidence showing that Churchill’s Indian identity claims had been a major factor in CU administrators creating a tenured position for him. Officials of the Keetowah Cherokee tribe—including John Ross, the former chief who had arranged an ‘associate membership’ for Churchill in 1994—also repudiate Churchill’s claim to Cherokee identity and to tribal enrollment with the Keetowahs.” (Idem.)

FTR #504 The Vatican Rag, Part I: Reflections on the Death of the Pope

Recorded April 3, 2005
REAL AUDIO
NB: This stream contains both FTR #s 504 and 505 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.

Contrasting sharply with the hagiographies of the late Pope John Paul II that have flooded the media in recent days, this program examines the deep politics surrounding the Vatican’s relationship to fascism and how that determined the character of John Paul II’s reign. Far from being the beneficent creature he has been portrayed as being, John Paul II appears to have assumed the mantle of St. Peter following the murder of his predecessor and namesake. John Paul I’s probable assassination was performed to ensure continuity in the Vatican’s inner sanctum, long dominated by a fascist and criminal cabal dating to the pre-World War II period. (For a more complete understanding of the Vatican power politics that propelled John Paul II to power, see RFA#’s 17-21, available from Spitfire.) Whereas John Paul I was moving to eliminate the P-2 Lodge criminals (Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi) and their patron Archbishop Paul Marcinkus from power following the death of the fascist collaborator Pope Paul VI, John Paul II nourished these same elements, right up until the exposure of the P-2 Lodge in the spring of 1981. (The P-2 Lodge was a crypto-fascist government that ran Italy for much of the postwar period.) This program traces the evolution of the Vatican banking imbroglio, through the genesis of the fascist/Vatican financial accord in the late 1920’s, through the Vatican’s investment in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, up to Cardinal Montini’s collaboration with the CIA and the P-2 criminals. Particular emphasis is on the Vatican’s collaboration with Allen Dulles, the fledgling CIA and the Bormann group in spiriting Nazi monies abroad after World War II. The program concludes with a look at the association between John Paul II and a Polish-born doctor named Wolf Szmuness, whose experimental Hepatitis B vaccine appears to have been the vector for spreading AIDS. With both Szmuness and Carol Wojtyla (later John Paul II), one finds the fingerprints of intelligence agencies at every turn in their careers.

Program Highlights: John Paul II’s selection of key Nazi banker Hermann Abs to straighten out the Vatican banking scandals of the early 1980’s; Abs’ role in the Nazi flight capital program; the Vatican’s role in the Nazi flight capital program; the role of the World Commerce Corporation in the Nazi flight capital program; review of information indicating that AIDS was deliberately created.

1. The show begins by chronicling the deep political history of the development of the relationships that spawned the Vatican banking scandals that emerged into public view in the early 1980’s. (For more about these scandals and the P-2 Lodge that was at the center of the banking scandals and many other imbroglios, see RFA#’s 17-21—available from Spitfire, as well as FTR#’s 3, 42, 43, 49, 58, 59, 98, 103, 183, 235, 265, 289, 307, 313, 360, 387, 458.) “Hugh Angleton’s rise to power was, in part, an accident of geography. He lived in Milan for many years and made more than a few friends there before the war. It was Hugh Angleton who allegedly introduced Giovanni Battista Montini to Michele Sindona, a prewar banker in Milan. Sindona was the corrupt financier who later became the adviser to the Vatican Bank. Montini, who was Vatican Undersecretary of State during the war, later became Pope Paul VI.”
(The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People; John Loftus and Mark Aarons; Copyright 1994 [HC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0-312-11057-X; pp. 83-84.)

2. At the core of the genesis of the Vatican banking scandals is a fascist nexus that saw Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI) develop a relationship with Mafioso Michele Sindona who, along with fellow P-2 member Roberto Calvi, became a financial adviser to the Vatican. The relationship between Montini and Sindona came after an introduction by Hugh Angleton—an American fascist and father of CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. Both Montini and Sindona were introduced to OSS and CIA chief Allen Dulles by Angleton. (Dulles was the attorney who masked the Bush family’s investments in Nazi Germany.) “There is some circumstantial evidence that Hugh Angleton also introduced both of these friends to Dulles. Both Sindona and Montini allegedly became sources for the CIA after the war, with Hugh’s son, James Jesus Angleton, as their case handler. Several historians agree with our sources on this point, although, as we shall see, the Vatican has gone to considerable lengths to deny the allegations.” (Ibid.; p. 84.)

3. Reviewing some of the history of the Vatican’s association with fascism, the show notes the Vatican’s financial investments in Nazi Germany and highlights the financial support that the Church gave to Hitler in the immediate aftermath of World War II. “One of James Angleton’s enemies, of whom he had many, insists that his father served as a minor point of contact and occasional courier for secret financial transactions between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. That the Vatican encouraged such investments and even donated money to Hitler himself cannot be denied. A German nun, Sister Pascalina, was present at the creation. In the early 1920’s, she was the housekeeper for Archbishop of the Vatican-Nazi connection. Eugenio Pacelli, then the papal nuncio in Munich. Sister Pascalina vividly recalls receiving Adolf Hitler late one night and watching the archbishop give Hitler a large amount of Church money.” (Idem.)

4. Having received Church money after the first World War, Pacelli convinced the Vatican to invest large sums of money in Nazi Germany. (For more about Pacelli and the Vatican/fascist political and economic connections, see RFA#17, available from Spitfire.) “Sister Pascalina had absolutely no motive to discredit Archbishop Pacelli. She was his greatest admirer and remained his faithful servant all her life, even after he became Pope Pius XII. Her story has the ring of truth, all the more powerful because it admits the worst blunder of Pacelli’s career. It was Pacelli who later convinced the Vatican to invest millions of dollars in the rising German economy, money from the Vatican’s land settlement with Mussolini that ended the Pope’s claim of sovereignty over territory outside the walls of Vatican City. It was Pacelli who negotiated the Concordat with Hitler’s Germany and then had to deal with the consequences of his own mistakes when he became Pope on the eve of World War II. . . .” (Idem.)

5. Next, the broadcast reviews the combined efforts of Allen Dulles and the Vatican to move Nazi money (and Nazi war criminals) to Argentina after the war. (Operation Safehaven is the code-name of the Treasury Department operation to interdict the Nazi flight capital program. That program, of course, was the Bormann flight capital program. For more about the neutralization of Safehaven, see—among other programs—FTR#353.) “ . . . Soon after the Safehaven inquiry into his own Nazi money smuggling was buried, Allen Dulles resigned from the OSS and returned to New York to do what he did best: move money illegally for his clients. One of the first names on his client list was a ‘personal matter’ for Thomas McKittrick, the head of the previously Nazi-dominated Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland. The BIS had overseen the transfer of Nazi assets to Switzerland. After the war, the Nazis moved the money via the Vatican to Argentina.” (Ibid.; pp. 109-110.)

6. “Dulles represented a staggering array of Argentine corporate and political entities before and after the war. President Juan Peron and his family were ardent Catholics and violently anti-Communist, as were many Argentines. In fact, Peron was decidedly pro-Fascist and Argentina was the only South American country that continued relations with the Third Reich well into the war. The Argentine economy boomed with the massive postwar transfer of Nazi flight capital. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 110.)

7. Dulles was assisted in his money-laundering efforts by William Donovan, who collaborated with British intelligence ace William Stephenson in a Nazi front group called the World Commerce Corporation. This organization helped to cycle Nazi money back into Germany in order to pump up the postwar German economy. “ . . . The ‘old spies’ say that Dulles did not have to try very hard to convince Donovan that Truman was an idiot and that the only hope for the revival of an American intelligence service was to end the Democratic party’s stranglehold on the White House in the 1948 election.” (Idem.)

8. “In the meantime, Dulles and Donovan agreed that every effort must be made to sabotage the Truman liberals and quietly prepare for the Cold War. To this end, Dulles convinced Donovan to serve on the board of a company that would help rebuild the German economy as a bulwark against communism. Dulles assured his old boss that there were a large number of wealthy South American investors, especially in Argentina, who were willing to help rebuild Germany.” (Idem.)

9. It was the recycled Nazi war plunder that fueled the economic “miracle” of postwar Germany. “Although Donovan did not know it, Dulles had conned him into serving as the front man for the Nazi money launderers. He and Sir William Stephenson from British intelligence joined the board of directors of the World Commerce Corporation, with Allen Dulles, naturally, as their lawyer. The Nazi money flowed in a great circle—out of the Third Reich, through the Vatican, to Argentina, and back to ‘democratic’ West Germany. The source of the miraculous West German economic revival in the 1950’s was the same money that had been stolen in the 1940’s.” (Idem.)

10. More about the Nazi money laundering: “One of our sources, Daniel Harkins, stumbled across part of the money laundering in 1945. Harkins had volunteered to work as a double agent for Naval Intelligence before World War II. He posed as a Nazi ring leader in Detroit and even had his picture published in a newspaper giving the Nazi salute. He was promptly invited to Berlin to meet the leading members of Hitler’s cabinet. Hitler did not know it, but Harkins’s work helped close down the Nazi Bund operation in the United States.” (Ibid.; pp. 110-111.)

11. “After wartime service as a naval officer, Harkins was posted to the Allied occupation government in Germany. Although he was genuinely anti-Nazi, Harkins loved and the respected the German people who had to survive in the ashes of the bombed-out Third Reich. To Harkins’s horror, his German sources revealed that the big Nazis had gotten their money out before the war was over.” (Ibid.; p. 111.)

12. “Through Switzerland, the SS had purchased stock in American corporations and laundered their money through the unknowing Chase and Corn Exchange Bank. Even worse, the W.R. Grace Corporation was using its Pan Am clippers to fly Nazi gems, currency, and bonds to South America. Harkins had discovered a small part of the Dulles money-laundering machine. Before he could find out any more, however, he was suddenly transferred to the State Department, where the Dulles clique could keep an eye on him. To his surprise, he was then reassigned to the outposts of Southeast Asia.” (Idem.)

13. Next, the program highlights the Vatican role in the Bormann money-go-round. “State Department records for South America confirm that the Ustashi Minister for Finance and the French Under Secretary of State of the Vichy Government, went to Argentina via the Vatican Ratline. According to Paul Manning, there were rumors of others. He cites the FBI’s copy of a surveillance file forwarded by the Central de Intelligencia of Argentina’s Ministry of the Interior: ‘In 1948, Martin Bormann received the bulk of the treasure that had made up the financial reserve of the Deutsche Bank. . . Like other fugitives, he entered Argentina in 1948, coming from Genoa on a second-class ticket, with forged Vatican documentation.’”
(Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks; by John Loftus and Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press [SC]; Copyright 1991, 1998 by Mark Aarons and John Loftus; ISBN 0-312-18199; p. 277.)

14. One of Dulles’s collaborators in his Nazi money-laundering efforts was Hans Bernd Gisevius, a former Gestapo agent and an early Dulles intelligence contact. In FTR#445, we looked at Gisevius’ close association with Prescott Bush, Jr. (the current President’s grandfather.) “ . . . In 1945, the US Treasury Department accused Allen Dulles of laundering funds from the Nazi bank of Hungary into Switzerland. Similar charges were made against Dulles’s agent, Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had worked for Dulles as an OSS agent while serving at the Reichsbank. The State Department quickly took over the Treasury Department’s money laundering allegations, and the Dulles-Gisevius investigation was quietly dropped.” (Idem.)

15. Gisevius worked for the front group for the American portal of the Vatican escape networks that operated on behalf of Nazi war criminals. Many of those war criminals wound up working for U.S. intelligence. (For more about this, see—among other programs—RFA#17, available from Spitfire.) “Gisevius may have had some involvement with the Ratlines. He was a senior member of the Black Orchestra during World War II and was considered to be ‘Allen Dulles’s pipeline to Admiral Canaris.’ After the war, Gisevius personally briefed the Australian government on American efforts to resettle the surplus population of Europe in other countries, citing the support of the ‘Committee for a Free Europe’, later acknowledged as a clandestine front for Dulles’s Cold War programs. This was also the organization which served as the American end of the Vatican Ratlines.” (Ibid.; pp. 277-278.)

16. More about the World Commerce Corporation: “The most important front group was an entity called the World Commerce Corporation established after World War II to rebuild German—South American trade networks. The directors of this corporation were Sir William Stephenson, formerly of British intelligence and General William Donovan, formerly of the OSS. One of the attorneys for World Commerce was Allen Dulles, whose assistant, Frank Wisner, was the State Department’s deputy for currency and economic reform in the American zone of West Germany. Many of the staff members for the economic reconstruction of occupied Germany came from the same international financial firms which had invested heavily in the pre-war German economy.” (Ibid.; p. 278.)

17. One of the major players in the Dulles/Bormann money-go-round was Hermann Abs of the Deutschebank—one of the most important Nazi bankers before, during and after World War II. “According to sworn testimony before the US Senate by a representative of the German banking industry, an organization did exist in 1950 which was ‘formed by Lord Shawcross of England and Mr. Hermann Abs of Germany to bring about a Magna Carta for the protection of foreign investments of World War II.’ This is the same Lord Shawcross who led the recent campaign in the British House of Lords to prevent the re-opening of war crimes investigations in Britain. Despite allegations by Manning, it is difficult to believe that Shawcross would have lent his good name to Abs’s organization if he had known its real purpose. In a 1966 hearing before the Select Committee on Standards and Conduct of the US Senate, Abs was identified as the common denominator of a group seeking return of vested enemy properties of World War II.” (Idem.)

18. “When the United States entered the war in 1941, all of the branches of American banks in France under German control were closed, except two which had ties to Abs: Morgan et Cie and Chase of New York: ‘both received this special treatment through the intercession of Dr. Hermann Josef Abs of Deutsche Bank, financial adviser to the German government. According to US Treasury agent reports, the favorable treatment was due to . . . an ‘old school tie,’ an unspoken understanding among international bankers that wars may come and may go but the flux of wealth goes on forever.’” (Ibid.; pp. 278-279.)

19. Abs was very close to Martin Bormann, with whom he worked. Abs became a financial adviser to the Vatican. In RFA#’s 17, 21, we examined Abs’ close collaboration with the late John Paul II after the breaking of the Vatican banking scanedals. “According to Nuremberg records, Abs’s Deutsche Bank was the principal conduit for laundering Nazi money into Argentina during the war under the supervision of Martin Bormann. The American war crimes investigation of Abs, former head of the Deutsche Bank, was quietly dropped and Abs was appointed economic adviser for the British zone of Germany. It should also be noted that Abs became a financial adviser to the Vatican.” (Ibid.; p. 279.)

20. The passages that follow set forth the Dulles/Abs/Bormann financial network’s connections to the principals in the Vatican banking scandals. Again, these scandals broke in the early 1980’s, and the Pope (John Paul II) brought in Herman Abs to straighten things out. In RFA#18, we examined the untimely death of Pope John Paul I, who appears to have been murdered for moving to neutralize the Montini/Sindona/Calvi networks inside of the Vatican. That show is available from Spitfire. “According to Penny Lernoux, the financial collapse of Vatican-supported banks during the 1970’s involved the same group of people connected to Dulles’s and Angleton’s network of money launderers. Prior to World War II, Angleton’s father had financial interests in Milan, and may have met both Montini and a Sicilian banker named Michele Sindona at this earlier time.” (Idem.)

21. “According to Lernoux, Sindona ‘wangled an introduction to the powerful Giovanni Montini in Milan, who would later become Pope Paul VI.’ Montini introduced Sindona to the leader of the Christian Democrats. Sindona served the younger Angleton for many years as a CIA ‘funnel for supporting funds’ to friendly Italian politicians. In 1969, Sindona became the financial adviser to the Vatican while Montini was the Pope. Sindona and his cohort, Roberto Calvi, created a financial scandal that cost the Vatican Bank hundreds of millions of dollars.” (Idem.)

22. Next, the show examines the Pope’s relationship to Dr. Wolf Szmuness, the developer of the experimental Hepatitis B vaccine that appears to have been a major vector for the deliberate spreading of the AIDS virus. (For more about the subject of AIDS as a bio-warfare weapon, see—among other programs—RFA#16, available from Spitfire, as well as FTR#’s 16, 19, 24, 25, 35, 56, 73, 102, 132, 140, 148, 156, 212, 220, 225, 228, 269, 282, 317, 324, 411, 472.) “Szmuness, a Jew born in Poland in 1919, was a young medical student in Lublin in eastern Poland when the Nazis attacked that country in the summer of 1939. When Poland was quickly partitioned by Germany and Russia, Szmuness was sent to Siberia as a prisoner. His family in western Poland were all murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. Szmuness’ years in exile in Siberia were ‘a long, dark period that he was most reluctant to talk about.’”
(AIDS and the Doctors of Death; by Dr. Alan Cantwell; Aries Rising Press [HC]; Copyright by Alan Cantwell; ISBN 0-917211-00-6; p. 102.)

23. A careful examination of Szmuness’ curriculum vitae suggests very strongly that he was a creature of the intelligence agencies. Such is the case with the Pope as well. “After release from detention in 1946, he was somehow allowed to finish his medical education in Tomsk in central Russia. While a student, he married a Russian woman. He specialized in epidemiology, and when his wife contracted a nearly fatal case of hepatitis, Szmuness decided that the study of that disease would be his life’s work. In 1959, the Soviets allowed him and his family to return to Poland ‘where he held a series of minor positions as an epidemiologist in municipal and regional health departments.’” (Idem.)

24. “During this time, he told Kellner ‘an interesting story.’ Due to exhaustion and stress from work, he applied to the authorities for a vacation at a rest home. Szmuness was allowed to share a room with a Catholic priest. A remarkable friendship developed and the two men corresponded ‘for a long time thereafter.’ The Polish priest eventually became the first Polish Pope in Catholic history: the current, anti-communist and anti-gay Pope John Paul II.” (Ibid.; pp. 102-103.)

25. “In 1969, in another strange twist of fate, the communists allowed Szmuness and his wife and daughter to attend a scientific meeting in Italy. While there, he and his family defected to the West. . . . He arrived in Manhattan with $15 in his pocket. Through the intervention of Walsh McDermott, Professor of Public Health at New York Hospital—Cornell Medical Center, Szmuness miraculously secured a position as a ‘lab tech’ at the New York City Blood Center.” (Ibid.; p. 103.)

26. “Within a few years, Szmuness was given his own lab, and a separate department of epidemiology at the Center was created for him. ‘In what must be record time, he was leap-frogged to full Professorship at the Columbia School of Public Health.’” (Idem.)

27. “By the mid-70’s, he was a world authority on hepatitis and ‘transfusion medicine.’ In another unbelievable occurrence, he was invited back to Moscow in 1975 to give a scientific presentation. As a defector he was terrified to set foot in the Soviet Union, but his colleagues assured him he would have the full protection of the State Department. He finally agreed to go, and his return to Russian was a scientific triumph.” (Idem.)

28. Szmuness’ hepatitis B vaccine was administered in South Africa, one of the areas most severely ravaged by AIDS. “By the late 1970’s, he had been awarded millions of dollars in grant money and was ‘phenomenally successful’ in his hepatitis work which had tremendous ‘global implications.’ Szmuness’ meteoric and unprecedented rise to world prominence was halted by his death from cancer in 1982. (A 1983 paper published after his death detailed a new experimental hepatitis B vaccine program in Kangwane that would use Black South African infants as experimental subjects.)” (Ibid.; pp. 103-104.)

29. “As a defector, could Szmuness have been a Russian agent? Or could he have been playing both sides of the field by working as a ‘double-agent’ for American and the Soviet Union? His life story was proof that he was honored by both countries. Although the scientific world would undoubtedly laugh at these questions, Szmuness’ professional life in the communist and the free-world was filled with the oddest of circumstances and coincidences.” (Ibid.; p. 104.)

30. “As a precaution against escape, it is my understanding that potential defectors from communist countries are never allowed the opportunity to travel outside the country with their entire family. Yet, Szmuness defected with his family in tow. After defecting, how was it possible to arrange his safe return to Russia ‘to present a scientific paper.’ Undoubtedly, cooperation at the highest levels of both governments was necessary to accomplish this feat.” (Idem.)

31. The program concludes with a look at an excerpt from testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee that was drawing up the defense budget for the following year. (The hearings were in 1969.) The testimony discusses the possibility of using genetic engineering to produce a disease that would be “refractory” to the immune system. This is virtually the clinical definition of AIDS. It is worth noting that the project was funded, and just such a disease—AIDS—appeared in just the time frame posited. It is also worth noting that, in the 2002 edition of A Higher Form of Killing, this passage is omitted!! “As long ago as 1962, forty scientists were employed at the U.S. Army biological warfare laboratories on full-time genetics research. ‘Many others,’ it was said, ‘appreciate the implications of genetics for their own work.’ The implications were made more specific that genetic engineering could solve one of the major disadvantages of biological warfare, that it is limited to diseases which occur naturally somewhere in the world.”
(A Higher Form of Killing; Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman; Hill and Wang [SC]; ISBN 0-8090-5471-X; p. 241.)

32. “ ‘Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important respects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.’” (Idem.)

33. “The possibility that such a ‘super germ’ may have been successfully produced in a laboratory somewhere in the world in the years since that assessment was made is one which should not be too readily cast aside. . .” (Idem.)

FTR #502 Curve Ball

Recorded March 13, 2005
REALAUDIO

Taking its title from the intelligence code-name of an Iraqi defector who provided the US with bogus intelligence about Iraq’s WMD’s, this show examines the Iraq war and the “War on Terror” in the context of proxy war waged against the US by the Underground Reich. It turned out that the centerpiece of US intelligence on Iraqi WMD’s was a defector from Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. Purporting to have first hand knowledge of the mobile biowarfare labs that Saddam allegedly possessed, the defector (code-named “Curveball”) was at all times in the hands of German intelligence. The BND (German intelligence and the successor to the Gehlen spy outfit) rebuffed US attempts at interviewing Curveball in person. The US went to war over intelligence provided by a source to which they never had direct access! It is unclear whether German intelligence told the US about the doubts they allegedly had about the source. This program asks whether the US may have been duped into an invasion that will pit it against the Muslim populations of the world in a long, costly war that will ultimately result in this country’s demise. It is worth noting that such a gambit would not have required a great deal of skill. Luring the Bush administration into such an act would have been no more difficult than setting out a pot of honey in front of a hungry bear. It is also worth noting that Ahmed Chalabi (whose organization provided Curveball to the Germans) is a reputed Iranian spy. The Iranians may have helped the Germans lure the US into deposing their enemy Saddam. In addition, the program examines the possibility that the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring may also be an example of the Underground Reich’s use of the Muslim population of the world as proxy warriors. Much of the program focuses on Osama bin Laden’s address just before the US elections of 2004, in which he compared Bush’s policies with his own goals and concluded that Bush was furthering his (bin Laden’s) aims.

Program Highlights Include: Examination of bin Laden’s goal of bankrupting the US economy and Bush’s actions that are accomplishing that goal; more information about the presence of Germans in the A.Q. Khan smuggling ring; a stunning proposal by US diplomatic officials that would provide for an alliance between the US and the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood (the parent organization of Al Qaeda); review of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Bank Al Taqwa and its links to the events of 9/11.

1. The broadcast begins with discussion of the individual from whom the program derives its title—the Iraqi turncoat code-named “Curveball.” Curveball provided some of the key “information” which the U.S. used to justify the invasion of Iraq—the now thoroughly discredited story about Iraq’s mobile germ warfare labs. As it turns out, the CIA never had access to this individual. “The Bush administration’s prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named ‘Curveball,’ according to current and former intelligence officials.”
("Iraqi Defector’s Tales Bolstered U.S. for War” by Bob Drogin and Greg Miller; Los Angeles Times; 3/28/2004; p. 1.)

2. As it turns out, Curveball was at all times in the hands of the BND—the German federal intelligence service and successor to the Gehlen spy outfit. Throughout the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Emory voiced his opinion that the Underground Reich was leading the U.S. into a trap, in which America would find itself in a long, draining war against the Muslim peoples of the “Earth Island.” The information presented here about Curveball dovetails nicely with Mr. Emory’s prewar analysis. “U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn’t even know his real name until after the war. Instead, his story was provided by German agents, and his file was so thick with details that American officials thought it confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Iraqis had developed mobile germ factories to evade arms inspections.” (Ibid.; pp. 1-2.)

3. “Curveball” turned out to be an appropriate moniker for this individual. His story was not only disinformation, but also disinformation that may have been deliberately fed to the U.S. by Ahmed Chalabi’s group. In light of allegations that Chalabi was connected to Iranian intelligence, one must wonder if Iran may also have been deliberately feeding Curveball’s b.s. to the U.S. This would not have required a great deal of guile on the part of the Germans and/or Iranians: it would have been like setting out a pot of honey in the path of a marauding, hungry bear. “Curveball’s story has since crumbled under doubts raised by the Germans and the scrutiny of U.S. weapons hunters, who have come to see his code name as particularly apt, given the problems that beset much of the prewar intelligence collection and analysis. U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist, officials said. They then asked former exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Hussein, to help search for intelligence supporting their theory.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

4. Curveball appeared right on time, providing the U.S. (through his German handlers) with just what they wanted to hear. “Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army. Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed ‘Winnebagos of Death’ or ‘Hell on Wheels’ in news accounts, and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war.” (Idem.)

5. As it turned out, Curveball was the brother of one of Chalabi’s top aides. Again, Chalabi has been alleged to be a cat’s paw for Iranian intelligence. “Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi’s top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information. Partly because of that, some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators fear that the CIA may have inadvertently conjured up and then chased a phantom weapons system. David Kay, who resigned in January as head of the CIA-led group created to find illicit weapons in Iraq, said that of all the intelligence failures in Iraq, the case of Curveball was particularly troubling. ‘This is the one that’s damning,’ he said. ‘This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward.’’ (Idem.)

6. “Kay said in an interview that the defector ‘was absolutely at the heart of a matter of intense interest to us.’ But Curveball turned out to be an ‘out-and-out fabricator,’ he added. . . .” (Idem.)

7. “. . . U.S. and British intelligence officials have acknowledged since major combat ended in Iraq that lies or distortions by Iraqi opposition groups in exile contributed to numerous misjudgments about Iraq’s suspected weapons programs. Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress is blamed most often, but the rival Iraqi National Accord and various Kurdish groups also were responsible for sending dubious defectors to Western intelligence, officials say. . .” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

8. As noted here, the BND refused CIA requests to interview Curveball in person. Why?! “ . . . In this case, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as the BND, repeatedly rejected CIA requests to meet Curveball, saying it needed to protect its source. But U.S. and German officials said the BND furnished its file on the defector to U.S. authorities and at times had him answer specific questions from U.S. intelligence. . . .” (Idem.)

9. One of the key questions concerns whether the BND communicated their doubts about Curveball before the March 20th invasion date. “ . . . One focus of the ongoing investigations is whether the CIA should have known Curveball was not credible. A former U.S. official who has reviewed the classified file said the BND warned the CIA last spring [2003] that it had ‘various problems with the source.’ Die Zeit, a German newsweekly, first reported the warning last August. The official said the BND sent the warning after Powell first described the biowarfare trucks in detail to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 5003. It’s unclear whether the German warning arrived before the war began on March 20 last year.” (Idem.)

10. Read the next paragraph carefully: it appears that the Germans were passing disinformation to a U.S. intelligence establishment that very much wanted to hear just what the Germans were telling them. “ ‘You can imagine the consternation it kicked off,’ the official said. ‘It suggested that what [the Germans had] been passing to us was false. They were backing away.’ Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, declined to comment Friday on that charge or questions about the case. An official at BND headquarters in Berlin, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also declined to answer questions. ‘We believed that Iraq had these mobile biological facilities,’ the official said.. . .” (Idem.)

11. Others from the Chalabi camp were providing disinformation on the mobile biowarfare labs. “ . . . Kay said the debriefing files on the pair [of Iraqi defectors supporting Curveball’s allegations] showed that they never had direct contact with the biowarfare trucks. ‘None of them claimed to have seen them,’ he said. ‘They said they were aware of the mobile program. They had heard there was a mobile program.’ CIA files showed that another Iraqi defector, an engineer who had worked with Curveball, specifically denied that they had worked on such facilities, Kay said. Powell did not cite that defector.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

12. Others in Chalabi’s camp buttressed Curveball’s claims. “The CIA acknowledged last month that a fourth defector whom Powell cited at the U.N., a former major in Iraq’s intelligence service, had lied when he said that Baghdad had built mobile research laboratories to test biological agents. The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency twice debriefed that defector in early 2002 and reported his claims. But it then concluded that he did not have firsthand information and probably was coached by Chalabi’s exile group. . . .” (Idem.)

13. It appears that Curveball was thrown in the CIA’s direction by a Chalabi outfit that had long been pitching batting practice to the weapons inspectors. “ . . . The inspectors long had relied on intelligence from sympathetic governments and dissident groups. Chalabi had lobbied Washington for years to overthrow Hussein and claimed that he had spies inside the Baghdad regime. In December 1997, Ritter said, he and his deputy, a former British army major attached to the U.N. team, flew to London to ask Chalabi for help. They met for three hours over dinner at Chalabi’s Mayfair residence with the influential Iraqi exile and Ahmed Allawi, who headed intelligence operations for the Iraqi National Congress.” (Ibid.; p. 7.)

14. “ ‘Chalabi outlined what he could do for us,’ Ritter recalled. ‘His intelligence guy outlined their sources and said he had people inside the government. They told us they had the run of Iraq. Just tell them what we needed. So we outlined the gaps in our understanding of the Iraqi program, including the mobile bioweapons labs. Basically, we gave them a shopping list.’ ‘They began feeding us information,’ Ritter said. ‘We got hand-drawn maps, handwritten statements and other stuff flowing in. At first blush, it looked good. But nothing panned out. Most of it just regurgitated what we’d given them. And the data that was new never checked out.’” (Ibid.; pp. 7-8.)

15. The precise circumstances surrounding Curveball’s appearance in Germany in 1998 remain mysterious. “Haider Musawi, an INC media liaison in Baghdad, said in a telephone interview Saturday that he could not confirm the meetings had occurred. Asked about INC ties to Curveball, he replied, ‘I really can’t think of such a defector.’ U.S. officials say Curveball apparently showed up in Germany in 1998, but it is unclear how he got there. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] [The Times] was unable to ascertain Curveball’s real name or his current location. What is clear is that by 2000, Curveball had provided a vast array of convincing detail about the illicit program he claimed to manage. . . . ‘We didn’t find anything.’” (Ibid.; p. 8.)

16. “ . . . During the summer, Kay’s investigators visited Curveball’s parents and brother in Baghdad, as well as his former work sites. They determined that he was last in his class at the University of Baghdad, not first as he had claimed. They learned he had been fired from his job and jailed for embezzlement before he fled Iraq. ‘He was wrong about so much,’ Kay recalled. ‘Physical descriptions he gave for buildings and sites simply didn’t match reality. Things started to fall apart.’ Chalabi now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, retains strong support in the White House. He was a guest of First Lady Laura Bush at the president’s State of the Union address last January, and his organization still receives several hundred thousand dollars a month from the Pentagon to help collect intelligence in Iraq. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 9.)

17. Next, the broadcast sets forth the allegations about Chalabi’s having ties to Iranian intelligence. With a Shiite majority that was actively suppressed by Saddam Hussein, Iraq would have made a tempting target to the Iranians. They might well have decided to do what they could to precipitate a U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s old enemy. “Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader accused by the CIA of passing US secrets to Tehran, claimed to have close links with Iranian intelligence seven years ago, according to a former UN weapons inspector. Scott Ritter, who before the war insisted that Saddam Hussein did not have significant weapons stocks, made the claim to Andrew Cockburn, a Washington-based journalist and the author of a biography of the ousted Iraqi dictator.”
(“Iraqi Accused by CIA Made Claim in 1997, Says Former Inspector” by Julian Borger; The Guardian; 5/26/2004; p. 1.)

18. “ ‘When I met [Mr. Chalabi] in December 1997 he said he had tremendous connections with Iranian intelligence,’ Mr. Ritter said, according to an article by Mr. Cockburn published today in the Guardian. ‘He said that some of his best intelligence came from the Iranians and offered to set up a meeting for me with the head of Iranian intelligence.’ Mr. Chalabi has repeatedly denied passing secrets to the Iranians and has denounced the allegations made by US intelligence officials as a CIA ‘smear.’ He also denied providing false information about weapons of mass destruction to the US. . . .” (Idem.)

19. In FTR#412, Mr. Emory presented information suggesting that the Bush administration was deliberately working to subvert the U.S. economy. Osama bin Laden has been working in a similar direction. Recall that it has long been Mr. Emory’s view that the Underground Reich is pulling the strings of the Bush administration, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda. In that context, it is interesting to examine a speech Osama bin Laden released [via videotape] just before the U.S. presidential election. In this speech, bin Laden hints fairly directly that Bush is following his agenda. Again, it is Mr. Emory’s view that both the Bush administration and Al Qaeda are serving as puppets of the Underground Reich. “Osama bin Laden boasted that the invasion of Iraq has bogged down the United States in a hopeless war that advances al Qaeda’s recruitment goals and bin Laden’s aim of bankrupting the U.S. economy, according to a translation of the full text of the terrorist leader’s remarks on a videotape that surfaced last week. ‘The thinkers and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the war’ about the dangers of invading Iraq, bin Laden said on the tape, according to a U.S. government transcript released yesterday. ‘But the darkness of the black gold [oil] blurred his vision. . . . The war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threatened his future. . . .’”
(“Bin Laden Lauds Costs of War to U.S.” by John Mintz; Washington Post; 11/1/2004; p. 1.)

20. “ . . . On the tape, the Saudi millionaire brags that he is succeeding beyond his dreams in destabilizing the U.S. economy and bankrupting the U.S. government, asserting that President Bush is easily manipulated into taking military and security steps that harm American interests. The results of the U.S. war in Iraq, he said, ‘have been by the grace of Allah, positive and enormous, and have by all standards exceeded all expectations. The policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations—whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction—has helped al Qaeda to achieve these enormous results,’ bin Laden said. ‘And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and we are playing as one team toward the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ.’ [Italics are Mr. Emory’s].” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

21. It is essential to note that bin Laden’s boasts would be empty, but for the insane tax cuts that the Bush administration has implemented. Bin Laden’s forces would not have succeeded in the ongoing bankrupting of the U.S., were it not for the Bush administration’s fiscal policies. “ . . . Bin Laden also suggested that the huge sums of money Washington spends on homeland security and the military serve his agenda of weakening the U.S. economy. All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration,’ bin Laden said. ‘All that we have to do is to send two mujaheddin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written ‘al Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses, without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.’ He added: ‘We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.’” (Ibid.; pp. 2-3.)

22. Again, note that it is Bush’s insane economic policies, in combination with bin Laden’s tactics that are bankrupting the United Staes. “He noted remarks by counterterrorism experts that al Qaeda’s expenses in attacking America are a tiny fraction of the cost of Washington’s counterterrorism efforts. ‘Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million [U.S.] dollars . . . besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. ‘As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record, astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. Even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujaheddin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan.’” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

23. During the run-up to the Iraq war, Mr. Emory produced a number of programs advancing his working hypothesis that the Underground Reich was manipulating the Muslim populations of the “Earth Island” (the Arabs in particular) in order to serve as proxy warriors against the U.S., Britain and Israel. (For more about this, see FTR#’s 394, 395, 396, 404, 413, 450.) In this context, the program presents more information about the German links to (and origins of) the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring that provided Pakistan, Libya, Iran and North Korea with much of their nuclear capability. This should be viewed against the recent saber-rattling between the U.S. and Iran. Is this another example of the U.S. being lured into a proxy war situation? “Recent advances in an international investigation into the nuclear smuggling network centered on Abdul-Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist, have boosted hopes of uncovering the truth about Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Khan has admitted helping the nuclear programs of Iran, Libya and North Korea over more than 15 years—but there are big gaps in investigators’ understanding of what was supplied and to whom. . . .”
(“Fresh Clues on Smuggling Network Could Help Lift Lid on Tehran’s Secret Nuclear Programme” by Stephen Fidler; The Financial Times; 3/12/2005; p. 1.)

24. “Investigators have known for more than a year that early contacts were made between Iran and the network in 1987. But the significance of the document was that it showed the network offered to provide Iran with the wherewithal to manufacture and cast uranium metal, an ability Iran would need only if building a nuclear weapon. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

25. For more about the German link to the nuclear smuggling ring, see FTR#’s 336, 395, 450.) “Nuclear analysts said the document might have encouraged Pakistan’s first public admission this week that the network supplied Iran with centrifuges, ruling out that it supplied other, even more incriminating, technologies. The document emerged out of a 1987 meeting in Dubai, attended by three Iranian officials, Mr. Tahir and his uncle, a man named Mohamed Farouq, western diplomats said. As many as three Europeans may have attended, including possibly a German engineer, now dead, called Heinz Mebus. . . .” (Idem.)

26. Just as the U.S. was lured into the Iraqi invasion under the auspices of bad intelligence and some fundamental illusions about the nature of the Middle East, so, too it may be in the process of being lured into a friendly relationship with the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood. An ally of the Third Reich, the Brotherhood is explicitly fascist. Like a number of neo-fascist movements (including the Italian Alleanza Nationale and the German NPD) the Brotherhood is attempting to use democratic means to achieve power, where it is deemed feasible. This should not lure the U.S. into a false sense of security, however. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was quite explicit about the Nazis’ willingness to use democratic means to achieve power, as well as their unwillingness to allow others to use democratic means to remove them from power. It would be prudent to view the Brotherhood’s democratic pretensions in light of Goebbels’ remarks. Bearing in mind Mr. Emory’s views on Underground Reich manipulation of the Bush administration and the Muslim Brotherhood, it is interesting to consider the article that follows. It may be that the Bush administration’s attempts at fostering democracy in the Middle East may result in the ascension of Islamofascist governments in those countries.

27. “ . . . Some federal agents worry that the Muslim Brotherhood has dangerous links to terrorism. But some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials believe its influence offers an opportunity for political engagement that could help isolate violent jihadists. ‘It is the preeminent movement in the Muslim world,’ said Graham E. Fuller, a former CIA official specializing in the Middle East. ‘It’s something we can work with.’ Demonizing the Brotherhood ‘would be foolhardy in the extreme,’ he warned.”
(“In Search of Friends Among the Foes: U.S. Hopes to Work with Diverse Group” by John Mintz and Douglas Farah; The Washington Post; 9/11/2004; p. A01.)

28. “The Brotherhood’s history and the challenges it poses to U.S. officials illustrate the complexity of the political front in the campaign against terrorism three years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. FBI agents and financial investigators probe the group for terrorist ties and legal violations, while diplomats simultaneously discuss strategies for co-opting at least its moderate wings. In both sectors of the U.S. government, the Brotherhood often remains a mystery. The Brotherhood—of al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, as it is know in Arabic—is a sprawling and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries. It is dedicated to creating an Islamic civilization that harks back to the caliphates of the 7th and 7th centuries, one that would segregate women from public life and scorn nonbelievers.” (Idem.)

29. “In some nations—Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Sudan—the Brotherhood has fomented Islamic revolution. In the Palestinian territories, the Brotherhood created the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which has become known for its suicide bombings of Israelis. Yet is also a sophisticated and diverse organization that appeals to many Muslims worldwide and sometimes advocates peaceful persuasion, not violent revolt. Some of its supporters went on to help found al Qaeda, while others launched one of the largest college student groups in the United States. For decades the Brotherhood enjoyed the support of the government of Saudi Arabia and its oil billions, which helped the group expand in the United States.” (Ibid.; pp. 1-2.)

30. It is disturbing to note that the Brotherhood is a dominant force in the American Islamic community: “Past and present Muslim Brotherhood supporters make up the U.S. Islamic community’s most organized force. They run hundreds of mosques and dozens of businesses engaging in ventures such as real estate development and banking. They also helped set up some of the leading American Islamic organizations that defend the rights of Muslims, promote Muslim civic activism and seek to spread Islam. For years, federal agents paid little heed to the Brotherhood, but after Sept. 11, they noticed that many leads went back to the Brotherhood. ‘We see some sort of nexus, direct or indirect, to the Brotherhood, in ongoing cases,’ said Dennis Lormel, until recently a top FBI counterterrorism official. The architect of the Sept. 11 strikes, Khalid Sheik Mohamed, told U.S. interrogators that he was drawn to violent jihad after joining the Brotherhood in Kuwait at age 16 and attending its desert youth camps, according to the report released in July by the national commission that investigated the attacks.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

31. The article refers to Bank Al Taqwa: “Brotherhood radicals in Germany and Spain are suspected of organizing logistical support for the al Qaeda cell that carried out the attacks. Western governments subsequently shut down a huge banking network in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Bahamas that was set up by a leading Brotherhood figure, citing its numerous financial ties to al Qaeda and other terrorists. The founder, Youssef Nada, denies wrongdoing.” (Idem.)

32. The story also touches on the March 20, 2002 Operation Green Quest raids. Note that there are significant evidentiary tributaries running between the Brotherhood, Bank Al Taqwa, the GOP and the targets of the Operation Green Quest raids. “In March 2002, federal agents in Northern Virginia raided a cluster of Muslim think tanks, companies and foundations run mostly by men who sympathized with the Brotherhood in Iraq and elsewhere in the 1960’s. No charges have resulted, but U.S. officials stated in court earlier this year that they are pursuing terrorist financing allegations. Members of the group, known for their relative political moderation, say they ended Brotherhood ties years ago and deny wrongdoing. In a 42-count indictment in July, the government alleged that an Islamic charity, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, funneled $12.4 million to a designated terrorist group, Hamas. The indictment said the Holy Land Foundation was ‘deeply involved with a network of Muslim Brotherhood organizations dedicated to furthering the Islamic fundamentalist agenda espoused by Hamas.’ The Holy Land Foundation denies wrongdoing. . . .” (Idem.)

33. For more about the Muslim Brotherhood, Bank Al Taqwa, and the Operation Green Quest raids, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 343, 377, 378, 454, 455, 456, 462, 464, 467, 473.

FTR #503 The Death of Barry Seal

Recorded March 20, 2005
REAL AUDIO

The death of drug smuggler and CIA operative Barry Seal encapsulates much of the secret and unsavory history of American covert operations in the second half of the 20th century. A primary operator in the Contra-related cocaine smuggling of the 1980’s, Seal was gunned down in February of 1986 because he was threatening to “roll-over”—to squeal on his handlers. Had Seal done this, it might have led to the downfall of the Reagan/Bush administration and the curtailment of the Contra-support operation. The material in this program is from the remarkable book Barry and the Boys by Daniel Hopsicker. (Be sure to visit his website and order the book.) Beginning with the account of Seal’s murder being broadcast over the police radio in the Baton Rouge area, the program relates the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the arrest and “prosecution” of the Colombian assassins who killed Seal. Even more extraordinary was the behavior of the FBI, which (contrary to legal procedure) confiscated evidence that had been kept by Seal in the trunk of his Cadillac. That evidence consisted of tapes of Seal talking with his handlers, who apparently included elements of the CIA and then Vice-President George Bush. When one of Seal’s attorneys prodded Seal for more information about whom he was working for, Seal handed him the phone and told him to call a number that he gave to his counsel. When Unglesby (the lawyer) called the number, he got Vice-President Bush’s office. When Seal attempted to prevail on Bush to intervene on his behalf with the IRS, Seal was murdered. Much of the program deals with Seal’s history in the world of covert operations—especially his involvement with the New Orleans milieu involved in the assassination of JFK.

Program Highlights Include: The possibility that Seal may have flown a getaway plane out of Dallas on 11/22/1963; Seal’s involvement with CIA covert operations when he was still in high school; Seal’s participation in a Civil Air Patrol unit commanded by JFK assassination conspirator David Ferrie and including among its members Lee Harvey Oswald; the brutal warning sent to Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Robert Thommasson (his dog was decapitated and left floating in his backyard pool as a deterrent to Thommasson’s talking about Seal; an overview of Seal’s career in the Special Forces; Seal’s involvement with a unit that may have been involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King; allegations that Seal’s murder had been contracted by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North; indications that a number of other people familiar with the details of Seal’s drug-smuggling career may have been murdered to insure their silence; the special negotiations that moved the base of Seal’s smuggling operations from Louisiana to Mena, Arkansas.

1. The show begins with an account of a Louisiana State Police lieutenant’s hearing of Barry Seal’s death. This lieutenant—Robert Thomasson—had long tracked Seal, in a vain attempt to bring the CIA agent extraordinaire to justice. “The white unmarked police car carrying Louisiana State Police Lt. Robert Thommasson, head of a special 21-man narcotics unit tasked solely with stopping Barry Seal, rolled slowly out of New Orleans in the hazy twilight. . . After another long day Thommasson was going home; his car inched through long day Thommasson was going home; his car inched through traffic onto the 24-mile long Causeway across Lake Pontchartrain which connects New Orleans with its leafy northern suburbs.” (Barry and the Boys; by Daniel Hopsicker; Mad Cow Press [HC]; Copyright 2001 by Daniel Hopsicker; ISBN 0-9706-5911-0-5; p. 425.)

2. “Though Thommasson was tired, fatigue has not dulled his vivid recollections of what happened next. . . . A call crackled over his police radio. ‘1018. Repeat: 1018. Immediately call headquarters,’ ordered a grim dispatcher’s voice. A cop who had learned a grudging respect for his elusive quarry, Thommasson heard the news in disbelief. . . ‘What’s white-and-brown-and-red and rolling around in Baton Rouge?’ asked the dispatcher in the mirthless tone cops use to distance themselves from bloody events. ‘Barry Seal. They just gutted him.’” (Idem.)

3. “As he heard the news, in the distance he was still listening to his cruiser’s tires rolling over the causeway’s grating. Thump . . .Thump. . . Thump. . . A $500,000 Medellin cartel murder contract had hung over Seal’s head, upped to a cool $1 million if he was brought alive to Colombia. Still, the chilling brutal and clinical efficiency with which the ‘renegade’ agent had been dispatched was breath-taking. . . especially given that Seal himself, a man with the most impeccable intelligence sources, had not felt threatened. He certainly hadn’t availed himself of the Federal Witness Protection program when it was offered to him.” (Ibid.; p. 426.)

4. There was apparently concern on the part of law officers who had pursued Seal that they might be blamed for his death. “The dispatcher asked, ‘Hey, bud, where you at?’ Thump. . . ‘Middle of the causeway,’ Thommasson replied numbly. ‘Good,’ came the curt rejoinder. ‘Get a bridge ticket on your way back into town, stamped with date and time.’ ‘See, how volatile the whole Seal thing was,’ says Thommasson today, ‘is that they wanted me to have proof of exactly where I had been when Seal was killed, to remove any suspicion that we had played any role in it. It felt very much like ‘where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ It was that big—at least in Louisiana it was—especially since tensions had been running so high since Barry was convicted.’” (Idem.)

5. “In retrospect, Thommasson says, the murder was a shock, but no surprise; Seal had seemingly fallen from favor with whoever had been protecting him. He’d been on a well-documented downward spiral for over a year, losing status, possessions, and immunity from prosecution he had once taken for granted as a member of a ‘protected’ class.” (Idem.)

6. “Most who knew Barry Seal were saddened at his execution, but not surprised. His secretary Dandra Seale (no relation) was typical. . . ‘The day Barry was killed, when he came back from lunch. . .’ she began, then stopped, her throat catching. ‘See, he knew that day that they were killing him. Yes he did. Good lord. And he took it calmly, and continued with what he’d been doing, which was trying to get the Playboy Channel into the Salvation Army, so that he and the rest of the men could watch it while he was locked up there at night.’” (Ibid.; pp. 433-434.)

7. Although the official story of Seal’s murder holds that he was executed by the Medellin cartel, few who knew him believed it. His personal secretary was among the skeptics. “Not surprisingly, Dandra blames the ‘government’ for Seal’s murder, and not the Medellin Cartel ‘tar baby’ of the official version of events. . . ‘The CIA people here allowed it to happen. He had a chart, he had dirt on anybody and everybody.’” (Ibid.; p. 434.)

8. “Bob Thomasson, now a federal drug enforcement official teaching interdiction techniques to state and local police officers, recalled what happened when the state Police learned that Barry Seal had been murdered. . . ‘I immediately put out troops in Baton Rouge. Now, keep in mind, we are the State Police. The murder jurisdiction was in the city/parish. State police go in only when they’re called in, all right? Then I put the crime lab on standby. The city cops took one look at Seal’s bloody body, realized what they had, and requested the state police at the scene. So I immediately put the New Orleans office on standby,’ he continued.” (Idem.)

9. “ ‘At that time we had no idea yet that these guys—the shooters—were like rabbits spreading out in a wildfire. None whatsoever. Thirty-five minutes after the shooting, I had dispatch call the Baton Rouge office of the FBI, and the New Orleans office of the FBI, to give a notification, just because it’s the right thing to do. . . You know, we’ve got a major smuggler murdered, da-da-da-da-da.’” (Idem.)

10. Hopsicker relates that when one of Seal’s executioners was arrested at the airport, the arresting FBI agent accidentally exposed the film the killer had taken of Seal’s murder. “We discovered that one of the killers actually took pictures of the murder-in-progress, but that the FBI agent who nabbed this guy at New Orleans International Airport as he was trying to flee the country that night exposed the film, rendering it useless as evidence.’ Thommasson chooses his words carefully. ‘What you get, when you call the FBI at night,’ he explains, ‘is a duty agent, okay?’ He’s just a kid, usually, just out of the FBI Academy, his standing orders are, ‘Make No Decisions Under Any Circumstances.”” (Ibid.; pp. 434-435.)

11. “ ‘What you don’t get at that time of night is a seasoned agent or a SAC (Special Agent in Charge). You don’t get anybody important. So the apprehension at the airport was made by a kid. It went like this: my headquarters called the New Orleans FBI office. As soon as that phone call was received, the two ‘baby’ agents that had watch that night—they’re called ‘watch supes’—went out to cover the airport.’” (Ibid.; p. 435.)

12. “ ‘Now, never in a thousand years would this ever happen again, but these two lucky guys park their car at the airport, and head into the terminal at the exact same time as this shooter, and they’ve got a physical description over their radio that exactly matches the guy they’re seeing. That’s the only way that guy got caught. So. . . if you’re asking me, did they deliberately expose that film at the airport? I gotta say: look at who these two FBI guys were. Rookies. These are not the Men in Black.’” (Idem.)

13. After Hopsicker braced Thommasson about the involvement of the CIA in Seal’s murder, Thommasson’s demeanor darkened. “ ‘Why was there so much suspicion of the CIA?’ we asked. From his grimace we surmise he feels we’re pushing. He pauses, straightens in his chair, then fixes us with a state felt before, no doubt, by innumerable Southern miscreants. ‘Tell me why you’re doing this,’ Thommasson demands. From the way he says ‘this,’ we know exactly what he means. . . And after we tell him he sits, thinking hard. And then without another word of comment, while staring fixedly out a 12th story window of a hotel room in Daytona Beach, Florida at the blue-green Atlantic, turning now a deeper blue as the sun slowly sets somewhere a million miles away, he starts to talk. . . And the words at first come slowly, but soon enough are pouring out in torrents.” (Idem.)

14. “ ‘This gets really black, okay, and it gets black for a lot of people. . . But I’ll give you a sequence of events: The FBI appears, shows up, on site, at the shooting, okay? And I go, hmmm. . . . it happens. . . .it’s not too fucking extraordinary, but still. . . And then the contents of the car, the trunk, were seized.’” (Ibid.; pp. 435-436.)

15. Apparently, the FBI violated standard operating procedure by confiscating evidence from the trunk of Seal’s car. “ ‘But they can’t just seize material evidence in a capital crime!’ we protested. ‘Isn’t it illegal for anyone but the investigating officers to remove evidence from a crime scene?’ ‘I told you,’ he continued, ‘this gets really black. But some of the contents of the trunk, anyway, made it to my lab. . . our Louisiana State Police lab, which is definitely not a mom and pop shop—they’ve got 60-80 highly-trained employees. . . Here’s the police procedural: if it’s my case and I call the lab, I own the lab, okay? They take orders only from me. It would be the same procedure if a sheriff from Podunk called—they would then own the lab, the lab would work only for them. Understand?’” (Ibid.; p. 436.)

16. “ ‘Now, it would be beyond a breach of ethics, it would be criminal. . . . if, say, I called the lab and said, hey, I hear the city police submitted a report on Joe Schmo, I’m coming by to pick it up. Its called ‘tampering with evidence.’ We’re into criminal acts here. The evidence that went into that lab on Barry Seal went to a guy that won’t talk to you, so don’t ask me for his name or phone number. This has caused a lot of stress in his life. He’s a long-time friend, and a top gun in forensics. And he gets the contents of Barry Seal’s briefcase, and some other contents of the car as lab exhibits. And he brings it into the lab. Our lab had worked the scene, and so had then brought the trunk’s contents back to the lab,’ he continued.” (Idem.)

17. When Daniel inquired about the nature of the contents of the trunk of Seal’s Cadillac (confiscated by the FBI), it became apparent that he was treading on very sensitive turf. Apparently, Seal had taped all his phone calls—including those made to his intelligence handlers—and kept them with him at all times. Lieutenant Thommasson received a pointed warning about the sensitivity of the Seal case—his family’s dog was decapitated and found floating in their backyard pool. “We can’t help ourselves, and blurt out the ‘Big Question.’ ‘What was in the trunk of the Cadillac?’ ‘I’m not trying to be evasive. . . ‘ Thommasson answers somberly. ‘But, I want to make it very clear. . .I only have third-hand reports. Okay?’ ‘Seal’s trunk contained compelling and–again, from 3rd hand data—very very compelling documents and tapes. Several briefcases, boxes—wherever Seal’s Cadillac was, that was where Barry’s instant records were.’ From the way he stressed ‘3rd hand’ we knew he was speaking for the record. Later, we discovered that this man’s family dog was decapitated and left floating in their backyard pool as a warning. . . .fully three months after Seal’s assassination. . .” (Ibid.; pp. 436-437.)

18. “ ‘See, Barry taped his calls. Barry taped all of his calls, including all his calls to his controllers. I suspect that were you to have seen the contents of the trunk, it would certainly validate for whom he was employed, and what his mission was.’ ‘Okay, who has heard those tapes that I could talk to?’ The tension in the room rises. When he speaks his voice is soft, barely above a whisper. ‘That’s living?’ he asks. ‘No one. I told you: this gets really black.’” (Ibid.; p. 437.)

19. Hopsicker’s fascinating narrative gets into the subject of who had Barry Seal killed, and why: “ . . . If Seal was right in being unafraid of Medellin cartel retaliation, then who then was responsible for his murder? There is no better source for this critical information than the three Colombians convicted of the killing, sentenced to life in prison without parole. We interviewed Richard Sharpstein, a prominent Miami criminal defense attorney, and the lawyer for one of the three convicted assassins, who casually revealed the explosive truth about who ordered Barry Seal killed—and why.” (Ibid.; pp. 437-438.)

20. Seal’s killers were under the distinct impression that the US military officer who directed their actions was Oliver North. “ ‘I represented Miguel Velez for the Barry Seal homicide, which was one of the most incredible experiences I have ever been through,’ Sharpstein began. ‘It was an amazing experience. Nobody wanted to think about what any of this meant back in 1986. The implications were just too big. And I’m only speaking with you now because some of this has leaked out. All three of the Colombians who went on trial always told us—their lawyers—that they were being directed, after they got into this country, on what to do and where to go by an ‘anonymous gringo,’ a United States Military officer, who they quickly figured out was Oliver North,’ Sharpstein says.” (Ibid.; p. 438.)

21. “ ‘Say that again?’ we asked. We were sure we’d heard it right the first time; we just needed confirmation. . . ‘Once they rendezvoused together in the States,’ explained Sharpstein, ‘they, the Colombians, were being directed, by phone, by a man who insisted on remaining anonymous, but who did identify himself as being an officer in the American military. . . They were put in touch with this officer through Rafa (a Colombian smuggler) who was the guy my client worked for. And they all believed that it was Oliver North.’” (Idem.)

22. The program broaches the subject of the martial law contingency plans drawn up by Oliver North when he worked for the White House. (For more about this subject, see RFA#32—available from Spitfire.) “What corroborative indications are there to justify the charge of murder against Lt. Col. Oliver North? North, numerous sources stated without prompting, had been running an assassination squad right out of his White House office. So the extra-judicial execution of Barry Seal wouldn’t have made him blink an eye. There are even allegations that he had been tasked with drawing up plans to suspend the US Constitution and declare martial law, in the event the massive drug smuggling taking place ever came to public light.” (Ibid.; pp. 438-439.)

23. “In Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North, author Ben Bradlee, Jr., writes. . . ‘North’s work for FEMA from 1982 to the spring of 1984 was highly classified, and some would say bizarre. He was involved in helping to draft a sweeping contingency plan to impose martial law in the event of a nuclear war or less serious national crises such as widespread internal dissent or opposition to an American military invasion abroad.’” (Ibid.; p. 439.)

24. Moving beyond the Medellin cartel disinformation, the program delves into what actually happened. “But the popular mythology of Seal’s assassination is—not just wrong—but active disinformation. When we began to examine Seal’s assassination more closely, we saw then even basic facts, like how many killers there were, was stated wrong to slant the story. In the official version of events recounted in newspapers, the killers were always described as a ‘three-man hit team of Colombian nationals.’ Even a cursory reading of the headlines revealed, to our amazement, there weren’t, hadn’t been, three men involved. . .there had been eight. Three men may be a hit ‘team. Eight is a hit ‘squad.’ So this is clearly active disinformation; even newspaper reporters can count to ten. . .unaided.” (Idem.)

25. In addition to the Colombian execution team, Jose Coutin was implicated in the murder. (For more about Coutin, see RFA#’s 29, 30—available from Spitfire.) “Six men had been arrested at various stages of attempting to flee the scene. A seventh, Rafa Cardona, who had dispatched the team, was safely ensconced in Colombia. . . at least for a while. He was charged in absentia for planning the hit, but was himself mowed down, in a spray of automatic gunfire inside his antique car dealership, in Colombia later that year. Then there was the ‘eighth man,’ Miami CIA ‘asset’ Jose Coutin, who had supplied the machine gun. More on him in a moment. . .” (Idem.)

26. “Richard Sharpstein’s client, Miguel Velez, aka ‘Cumbabamba,’ has been described as a ‘CIA hit man’ in the New York press, where he was wanted for murder. It was a total fluke that he was caught. He was done in by a deer. Earlier, Velez had been spotted, questioned, and then released at the airport, by those sharp dressers at the FBI. After escaping the feeble clutches of the FBI at the airport, Velez had hired a cab to drive him from New Orleans to Miami.” (Ibid.; p. 440.)

27. “In the middle of the night, in Meridian Mississippi, the cab hit a deer at a lonely gas station on the interstate. While waiting for repairs, a highway patrolman happened by, and noticed that the surgical outfit worn by the cab’s passenger fit the description released by Baton Rouge police of one of the triggermen. Officers immediately put Velez in handcuffs. The cabbie, irate at losing such a big fare, professed to the cops that he couldn’t understand why the police were making such a fuss over a dead deer. . . .” (Idem.)

28. “Police then raided two ‘safe’ houses in Algiers, a seamy suburb of New Orleans, and nabbed Bernardo Vasquez and Louis Quintero-Cruz, the other two men later convicted, as well as John Cardona, brother of the man fingered at the trial, Rafa Cardona Salazar. Eliberto Sanchez was caught trying to flee at the New Orleans International Airport. Jose Renteria was nabbed the next day while waiting to board a plane in Miami. The ‘eighth man’ in the assassination is Jose Coutin, who had supplied the weapons for the hit. He is thus, by law, guilty of murder; or, at the very least, of conspiracy to murder. But being connected means never having to say you’re sorry. . .” (Idem.)

29. “Coutin was never even charged with a crime. He went on to testify before the Kerry Committee, saying, no doubt, anything his ‘benefactors’ wanted him to say. Coutin was the proprietor of the Broadway Boutique, a Miami fashion shop with a unique inventory: ladies clothing in the front, and military gear in the back. According to Lesley Cockburn in ‘Out of Control,’ he was a well-known CIA asset, FBI informant, and Contra weapons supplier. Why Sanchez and Cardona were simply deported and never charged with murder has never, unsurprisingly, been satisfactorily explained. . .” (Idem.)

30. “But what happened to Jose Renteria is revealing. Testimony at the trial of the three accused of killing Seal revealed that Renteria had been the cut-out between Coutin, known to be linked to Oliver North, and the shooters, to whom he delivered the weapons from Coutin. . . So Jose Renteria’s case was severed from the trial of the other three.” (Ibid.; p. 441.)

31. “It was the strangest thing,’ says attorney Sharpstein. ‘He was severed on some odd theory that he wasn’t at the murder scene. What really happened is he had indicated that he might, in exchange for a deal, be willing to talk. . . . Someone on the government side was clearly not very eager for that to happen. According to trial testimony, it was Renteria who took pictures of the murder. When his camera was confiscated by an FBI agent at the New Orleans airport, it was opened and the film inside exposed. Renteria was sent to Miami to face (minor) pending charges. His bosses must have felt that his was a job well-done.” (Idem.)

32. “ ‘They cut him a deal, they made a fast plea and he was in and out, serving a bit of time and then being deported,’ states Sharpstein. ‘The result was we never got to hear the story he was ready to sing at the trial.’ And Coutin? ‘Same thing,’ Sharpstein said. ‘They made a deal with him; he testified at the trial, and then later before the Kerry hearings in Washington. I was the lawyer who brought up his CIA and Contra connections in the trial, because I felt that there were lots of reasons why the CIA might want to murder Barry. . . .’” (Idem.)

33. “ ‘And Coutin went crazy on the stand when I did. You’d have thought he’d been zapped with a ray gun.’ Had the Colombians discussed motive with their lawyers? ‘They were just soldiers,’ Sharpstein stated. ‘They did what they were told. But in testimony at the trial given by one of Seal’s attorneys, Lewis Unglesby, we did finally hear about motive. . .’” (Idem.)

34. “Lewis Unglesby is today a prominent and very well-connected Louisiana lawyer. At the time his name was daily on the front page of the state’s newspapers, defending his long-time client and associate, Governor Edwin Edwards. Unglesby had told us about a confrontation he had with Barry over the fact that Seal was keeping him in the dark about matters Unglesby considered crucial to defending him. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 441-442.)

35. One of the most dramatic of the disclosures in Barry and the Boys concerns what Seal’s lawyer Lewis Unglesby revealed about who was controlling Barry Seal’s operations—then Vice-President George Bush! “ ‘Barry pushed the phone across the desk to me and said, ‘You wanna know what’s going on? Here. Dial this number. Tell ‘em you’re me,’ Unglesby related. ‘When I did what he requested,’ he continued, ‘A female voice answered the phone, saying, ‘Vice President Bush’s office, may I help you?’ ‘I said, ‘This is Barry Seal.’ She asked me to wait while she transferred the call, which was immediately picked up by a man who identified himself as Admiral somebody or other, who said to me, ‘Barry! Where you been?’” (Ibid.; p. 442.)

36. Seal was trying to get George H.W. Bush to get the IRS off his back. He allegedly threatened to blow the whistle on the whole Contra scheme, including the complicity of the US government and the Reagan administration in the massive cocaine influx that bedeviled the US in the 1980’s. “ ‘That’s when I told him that I wasn’t Barry Seal, I was his lawyer,’ said Unglesby. ‘Immediately he slammed down the phone.’ ‘So why was Barry Seal murdered?’ we asked Sharpstein. ‘Unglesby said he had been with Seal when the IRS came and seized all his property,’ Sharpstein related. ‘The IRS man said, ‘You owe us $30 million for the money you made in drug dealing.’ ‘Hey, I work for you,’ was Seal’s reply. ‘We work for the same people.’ ‘You don’t work for us,’ the IRS agent stated. ‘We’re the IRS.’” (Idem.)

37. “ ‘Unglesby was with Seal when he retired to a back room,’ Sharpstein. ‘He watched as Seal placed a call to George Bush. He heard Barry Seal tell Bush: ‘If you don’t get these IRS assholes off my back I’m going to blow the whistle on the Contra scheme.’ Sharpstein spoke solemnly, aware of the gravity of his words. . . ‘That’s why he’s dead,’ is what Unglesby said.’” (Idem.)

38. “One week after the phone conversation between Barry Seal and George Bush, Seal was sentenced to a half-way house. Two weeks later he was dead. ‘Barry Seal, you mean that agent that went ‘bad?’ Gordon Novel had casually inquired, when we’d posed the question of his associations with Seal. An agent that ‘goes bad,’ as we understand intelligence industry trade jargon, is one who contemplates talking. ‘Seal was gunned down, supposedly by those Colombians,’ says Sharpstein. ‘But they were fed information by the assholes in our government who wanted him dead.’” (Ibid.; pp. 442-443.)

39. More about the alleged role of the CIA in Seal’s death: “The assassination of Barry Seal was very likely not even the first attempt on Seal’s life by North, we were told by CIA electronics expert Red Hall, on the ground in Nicaragua with Seal on the Sandinista drug sting. . . ‘The only thing I knew was the CIA had to do a lot with it (Barry’s murder.) The killers were being directed by Oliver North at the time. It was the same thing Oliver North pulled on us down in Nicaragua. Then, I didn’t know yet that Oliver North had it for Barry Seal, because he was working with Oliver at that particular point. We was undercover, and we were still down there (Nicaragua), when Oliver North blew the whistle on us.’” (Ibid.; p. 443.)

40. “Chip Tatum, another covert operative who had known Seal and shared confidences with him, listened with amusement the first time we breathlessly relayed what we’d discovered: that Oliver North is guilty in the assassination of Barry Seal. . . ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ he replied, laughing. ‘It ain’t exactly the secret of the century, I can tell you.’” (Idem.)

41. The IRS wound up on Barry Seal’s case for reasons similar to the ultimate apprehension of Al Capone: “Barry Seal had threatened George Bush over the IRS trouble he was having. Why couldn’t Bush have ‘taken care’ of the IRS? Perhaps he could have. But there were other Seal ‘problems’ as well, like state police so disgusted they were threatening to go to the media with damning evidence of official corruption in Seal’s case, should the biggest drug smuggler any of them had ever seen receive no ‘time’ at all. ‘Al Capone killed over five hundred people. What did he go to prison for?’ asked one former state police official. We remembered. ‘Tax evasion?’” (Ibid.; pp. 443-444.)

42. “Exactly. Tax evasion. Get the picture? I beat on desktops in IRS offices all across the United States to find somebody that would take the case, till I found a criminal investigator for the IRS named Earl Buck Holmes, willing to come down and set up a warroom in my office.’ Some ‘wised-up’ local and state cops had figured out that Barry Seal had been too valuable to certain people in the federal government of the United States of America to ever go to prison for his crimes. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 444.)

43. “Knowing this, local law enforcement had done an end-around on them, and taken their case to the IRS, where they hatched a plan to at least strip Seal of some of his ill-gotten goods. Remarkably, in the court proceedings in neither Miami nor Baton Rouge had Seal’s organizational assets—like his fleet of planes—been confiscated, although this is standard operating procedure in drug cases. Why not? Because they were still being used . . .” (Idem.)

44. “Local and state cops, we found, to our amazement, had tracked a shipment of cocaine to one of Seal’s ocean-going vessels, the Captain Wonderful, just weeks before Seals’ murder. There they were met—and dissuaded from boarding—by DEA and CIA agents. State and local cops in the South often appear to know the score. . . When we told one Louisiana law enforcement source what we had learned from Miami attorney Richard Sharpstein, about how the hit team had been getting orders from Oliver North, he said simply, ‘That doesn’t surprise me at all.’” (Idem.)

45. Seal was murdered because he was indeed getting ready to spill the beans about some of the unsavory events with which he had been involved and who was directing these events: “Then we discovered why Seal had been so unconcerned about being killed by the Medellin cartel. . . ‘I asked Barry why he wasn’t worried about the Colombians killing him,’ stated close associate, Mob pilot Rene Martin. ‘He said he had told the Colombians he was going to pull a fast one, and testify for Ochoa against the US government.’ Two weeks before he died, Barry Seal had hired a private investigator in Miami, Steve Dinerstein, to run FAA title searches on 15 different airplanes he had used in his smuggling Enterprise. . .Seal was getting ready to talk about who had owned his smuggling fleet fifteen years ago.” (Ibid.; pp. 444-445.)

46. “Barry Seal was assassinated because he was getting ready to talk. . . He had even contacted a Paramount Studios production vice-president about making a movie. While the killers approached Barry Seal’s Cadillac in the Baton Rouge twilight, Seal had been on his car phone with a CIA aircraft procurement executive in Arizona, Bill Lambeth, who will himself be murdered in Phoenix seven years later. Suddenly cut off, and fearing the worst, Lambeth frantically dialed Barry’s home phone, where his wife Debbie answered. ‘I think something’s wrong with Barry,’ Lambeth said ominously.” (Ibid.; p. 445.)

47. “Debbie, unable to reach her husband, bundled her three small children into the car and frantically headed for the Salvation Army half-way house where he had been sentenced to sleep for six months. On the way she stopped at a pay phone to make another attempt to reach her husband, and learned he was now ‘unreachable.’ ‘He’s not going to the hospital she remembers being told. ‘He’s dead. Don’t come here Debbie. Don’t.’” (Idem.)

48. “As she returned to her car, she could see through her tears, her three small children’s heads barely peeking over the car seats. And though Barry Seal is anything but blameless, his three small children were. . . .they symbolize the millions of lives ruined by a phony drug war whose only purpose is to line-still-more the pockets of a crew of elite deviants who took over our country. ‘All I could think of was my poor little babies. . . .my poor babies,’ Debbie Seal told us, choking back tears. ‘I didn’t know how I was going to tell them that their Daddy was dead.’” (Idem.)

49. We will take a break from the account of Seal’s death in order to review some of his professional history—a history that winds through the CIA’s anti-Castro wars, the assassination of President Kennedy and decades of covert operations work on behalf of the government. After examining some of this, it will be apparent why the powers that be were so alarmed that Seal might begin talking. Daniel Hopsicker had CIA pilot and Seal associate Gary Eitel interpret Seal’s military history. “. . . Nor are these the only gaps in Barry’s early flying history. During two separate four-month stretches in 1962 and early 1963 he leaves no records at all in his log books of where he is flying, and with whom . . . at the exact same time the Agency was training exiles and ‘soldiers of fortune’ for a second invasion in Guatemala, on No-Name Key in Florida, and on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain in Louisiana.” (Ibid.; p. 136.)

50. “His pilot’s logs then begin to drop all pretense to accuracy, and every other day, month in and month out, Barry’s logs state that he is ‘banner-towing,’ always for precisely five hours. For example, on a day for which we have photographic proof that he was in Mexico City, January 22, 1963, his pilot’s logs read ‘banner towing in Baton Rouge. Five hours.’ When we showed his friend and fellow flying instructor Cliff Rice these pilot logs his face showed dismay. ‘His flight logs raise a lot of red flags,’ Rice told us slowly. ‘He made a lot of flights to Dallas, and to Florida, I see. As well as to Waco. Pretty irregular.’” (Idem.)

51. “We asked former CIA pilot Gary Eitel to inspect Barry Seal’s official military records for us. Eitel’s recent career includes a stint as an attorney, where his court testimony helped convict two CIA miscreants in Arizona in the mid-‘90’s, who were selling C-130 military cargo planes to Mexican drug cartels. ‘It says Barry was 1st Special Forces from Baton Rouge, La., assigned to duty that’s been ‘redacted.’ His duty specialty codes are redacted, so that won’t tell us anything. . .’ Eitel started, reading the records aloud.” (Idem.)

52. “ ‘On 31 Aug 61, he joined a reserve Special Forces group,’ he continued. ‘Then on 15 Dec 62, he’s assigned to the 21st Special Forces Group—Airborne, and goes to Fort Benning Jump School. And then in January of 63, he’s transferred to Company ‘B’ of the 21st Special Forces group.’ That would be the same month of the picture we saw in Mexico City. We had questions. Could the people in that nightclub somehow constitute Company B? And why had Seal joined the Special Forces reserve?” (Ibid.; pp. 136-137.)

53. “ ‘You get a little more freedom in the reserves, a little more cowboy style,’ Eitel replied. ‘You can take a leave of absence without losing your service number. See, in the military, once you prove yourself once, the juicy opportunities start to come your way. And once you’re into that club. . . you’re okay. The gravy train rolls in.’” (Ibid.; p. 137.)

54. “Has someone, or some organization, smoothed Seal’s progress? ‘Barry found a little niche in the Special Forces reserves,’ Eitel stated. ‘One reason might be that good pilots often flunk out of flight school, because of the discipline. In 1960, he was 20. In 1962 Seal would have been 22 years old. The draft was big time then. He could have gone to Vietnam.’” (Idem.)

55. Seal’s military career had been deeply involved with covert operations. “Indeed, Seal had flunked out of his one semester of college, at LSU. Could the CIA have smoothed his way into the Special Forces Reserve? ‘It’s highly possible,’ stated Eitel. ‘In 1962, remember, Special Forces wasn’t well-known yet at all. Army Rangers didn’t have the bad-ass reputation they developed later. There wasn’t a ‘Ballad of the Green Berets’ yet . . . What is clear is that Barry was in some kind of unit that had a special ops focus.’” (Idem.)

56. In the spring of 1963, Seal was assigned to the 20th Special Forces Group. “ ‘Here’s something . . . on 1 May 63 he’s assigned to company D Special Ops Detachment of the 20th Special Forces Group Airborne. Now he goes up to the next grade of Special Forces—Special Detachment Special Ops. The CIA could easily have recruited him right out of the service,’ Eitel concluded. ‘If he wasn’t already working for them.’” (Idem.)

57. The 20th Special Forces Group was a rather extraordinary unit. (For more about the unit and its alleged role in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, see FTR#46.) “Was there anything unusual about Barry Seal’s 20th Special Forces Group? Yes . . . When it was discovered that the Birmingham-based 20th had sent a detachment of Green Berets to Memphis to carry out an unknown mission on the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, the local paper, The Memphis Commercial Appeal had investigated. They discovered that the 20th was chockfull of veterans of CIA assassination ops in Southeast Asia. The paper quoted a former army counterintelligence major as stating that the 20th had even had a domestic intelligence network, operated for them by the Ku Klux Klan and ‘Klan Special Forces.’ The major said, ‘The rural South was ‘in-country’ to these guys, and at times things got out of hand.’” (Ibid.; pp. 137-138.)

58. “Barry’s reserve service continues until his release in November of 1966. For the last two years of his 6-year hitch he was assigned to headquarters of 245th Engineer battalion based in Saint Louis. ‘That fits,’ Eitel told us. ‘Engineers and Special Forces just go hand-in-hand. Engineers are the first guys in, they’re road maintainers. They build airstrips where covert ops can go in the dark. Barry was an owner/operator. The CIA contracted him for work. They said, hey Seal . . . we’re gonna pay you.’ Gary Eitel was also a CIA pilot, a lifelong member of the same fraternity of flyers to which Seal belonged. He knew him only slightly, but, living in neighboring Texas, he heard quite a bit about him. . .” (Ibid.; p. 138.)

59. Hopsicker broaches the subject of Seal’s having flown a getaway plane out of Dallas on 11/22/1963. (For more about this subject, see FTR#288.) “ . . . We asked Gary Eitel, ‘Have you heard anything about Seal flying a getaway plane out of Dallas?’ ‘It would have had to be an awful damn big plane,’ he replied slowly. ‘There were so many people involved in that thing, they’d have needed a 747 to get ‘em all out. Its downright embarrassing.’” (Ibid.; p. 139.)

60. In Barry and the Boys, Daniel Hopsicker exposes Seal’s involvement in covert operations in the mid and late 1950’s, when Seal was still a teenager. Seal’s smuggling activities drew the attention of the FBI even in that early time period. “ . . . During exactly this same time period there was also quite a bit of FBI interest in the young Barry Seal as well. According to Jerry Chidgey, who was Barry’s roommate and friend, he became aware—in early 1960—that the FBI was following Barry.” (Ibid.; p. 70.)

61. “ ‘When I met Barry, I owned ‘The Amber Bottle,’ a folk club in Baton Rouge. We were capitalizing on the folk craze,’ Chidgey recalls. ‘And that was where Barry used to hang, and we became good friends and ended up living together. And one day I remember two FBI guys showed up asking questions about him, while Barry was gone on a trip.’” (Idem.)

62. Next, Hopsicker relates Barry Seal’s involvement with the milieu of the assassination of President Kennedy, including David Ferrie—the original target of Jim Garrison’s probe. Like Ferrie, Seal had a photographic memory. (For more about JFK’s assassination, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 19, 47, 54, 62, 63, 76, 108, 120, 158, 168, 188, 190, 253, 288.) “ ‘Another time that same year (1960) I flew to Dallas, and two men in black suits followed me there and back, and the only reason I could ever figure out was because of Barry,’ says Chidgey. ‘Unless, that is, they were making a practice of surveilling folk club owners.’ Barry Seal and Dave Ferrie share yet-another highly unusual trait, we discovered, a trait which is a big plus for any secret agent. Both men had photographic memories.” (Idem.)

63. “When we interviewed Ferrie intimate and CIA ‘asset’ Layton Martens, he had attempted to dispel the belief that Ferrie had been plotting the Kennedy assassination during the two weeks prior, while Ferrie had been staying at Churchill Farms, Marcello’s Louisiana countryside estate. Many have wondered why Marcello would have used a mere pilot on his legal team. ‘Dave Ferrie had a photographic memory,’ Martens told us. ‘That’s why Carlos used him. He was useful because he had sat down and memorized the Louisiana Napoleanic Code in six weeks—in its entirety!’” (Idem.)

64. “Barry Seal went Dave Ferrie one better. ‘Barry not only had a photographic memory,’ his widow Debbie Seal says, ‘but he was also able to read upside down. He could go into an office and sit down in front of somebody’s desk and, while still carrying on a normal conversation, read what they had in front of them and remember it completely later.’” (Ibid.; p. 71.)

65. “A photographic memory . . . the ability to surreptitiously read upside down. . . being as good a pilot as any alive. . . These are all clearly useful traits in the world of clandestine services. But they don’t explain why the FBI was so interested in both David Ferrie and Barry Seal. What were Seal and Ferrie doing which warranted FBI surveillance back in the early ‘60’s? The answer opens what’s been called ‘an endless can of worms.’” (Idem.)

66. Next, the program places Seal’s career and personal and professional acquaintances in the context of the assassination of President Kennedy. In turn, many of the principles in the JFK assassination were involved in the murky underworld of drug and gun smuggling. “ . . . What activity do Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, Barry Seal, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Gordon Novel, Michael McLaney, and Meyer Lansky all share in common? Under normal circumstances, would homosexual and pedophile Dave Ferrie hang out with cigar-chomping commie-hating Guy Banister? What would they find to talk about? And what did violence-loving Jack Ruby—he enjoyed being his own bouncer in his strip clubs—share in common with supposed ‘Marxist intellectual’ Lee Oswald?” (Ibid.; p. 124.)

67. “They worked together. They all saw each other at the office, at the airport, or at the odd Klan cross-burning that functioned as ‘cover’ for some of them. Its not that they’re personally close. . . they’re like people who see each other maybe once a year at some Gift Show Convention.” (Idem.)

68. “As it happens, the industry these men were in was enjoying a major boom at the time. Their business is weapons and narcotics, which together comprise just one industry. . . because who controls the one inevitably controls the other. Jack Ruby, to cite just one example . . . Professor [Peter Dale] Scott shows him to be involved in narcotics trafficking as far back as the late 1940’s. Talk about being ahead of the curve!” (Idem.)

69. “We were amazed to learn that by 1956, Ruby was doing so well in narcotics that he was showing training films to potential recruits into the organization. When a pimp named James Breen met with Ruby to discuss collaborating in running three prostitutes, he found Ruby bursting with ‘loftier’ ambitions. . . Ruby showed Breen an early narco-industry training and recruiting film, exciting enthusiasm in his new recruit in ‘an extremely efficient operation in connection with narcotics traffic.’ Typical loads were valued at over $300,000. In 1956, that was real money.” (Ibid.; pp. 124-125.)

70. “The other big action is in weapons. This perhaps explains why—to a startling degree—the lead characters in our story are almost all involved in smuggling weapons, as if they all worked for a giant superstore called ‘Guns R’ Us.’” (Ibid.; p. 125.)

71. “This is why they all know each other: our US Customs agent friend was right about there not being all that many players. Lee Oswald knows Jack Ruby, based on too many witnesses for even the FBI to ignore. Oswald also knows Dave Ferrie, Oswald knows Barry Seal, Seal knows Ferrie, and, based on flight plans in his pilot logs, may have also known Jack Ruby. And everybody knows Guy Banister.” (Idem.)

72. Hopsicker’s account concludes with discussion of a stunning negotiation between the Attorney General of Louisiana—William J. Guste, Jr. and then Vice President George H.W. Bush. They were arranging for Seal to escape prosecution for drug smuggling in Louisiana and for Seal to move his operation to Mena, Arkansas. “ . . . We were to make one final discovery. After Barry Seal had threatened to roll on Richard Ben-Veniste, and while he was still in possession of those ‘two briefcases’ filled with incriminating information he had ‘liberated’ from Ben-Veniste’s office, Ben-Veniste had interceded for Seal and set up a meeting with the then-Vice President of the United States, George Bush.” (Ibid.; p. 445.)

73. “We learned that Seal had not attended this meeting. Instead, he sent the Attorney General for the state of Louisiana., William J. Guste, Jr., to argue on his behalf. The Vice President of the United States, George Bush, sat down and cut a deal with the Attorney General of the State of Louisiana—in what amounted to state-to-state-negotiations—about the fate of a Louisiana native CIA agent with a ‘little problem,’ Barry Seal.” (Ibid.; p.446.)

74. As it turned out, Guste had been an intimate of the Guy Bannister/David Ferrie milieu in New Orleans. That milieu was deeply involved with the assassination of President Kennedy. “The result, which we already knew, was that Seal had moved his operation to Mena in the Spring of 1982, and went to work for Oliver North. But who was William Guste? Why had seal placed such faith in him? And the answer, when we found it, brought our story of Barry and ‘the boys’ full circle. . . William Guste, Jr., in addition to involvement with Edwin Edwards in shady casino deals—standard Louisiana fare—had been, way back in 1956 and ’57, when our story began, the head of the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission, where he had been instrumental in bringing to town Guy Banister, the agent who had helmed the entire New Orleans operation from its inception. Small World.” (Idem.)

75. Seal’s widow took note of a contingent of federal government agents who attended Barry’s funeral: “At the Baton Rouge funeral home where mourners gathered for Barry Seal’s wake, the newly-widowed Debbie Seal’s oldest childhood friend noticed with curiosity an entire line of men in sleek dark suits hovering at the back of the room. ‘Who are they?’ she asked Debbie. ‘They’re with the government,’ Debbie replied. ‘They’ve come to make sure that he’s dead.’” (Idem.)

76. The program ends with the passage with which Hopsicker concludes his book: “This has been the story of Barry Seal, the biggest drug smuggler in American history, who died in a hail of bullets with George Bush’s private phone number in his wallet.” (Idem.)

FTR #501 Norbert Schlei and the Strange Case of the “57’s”

Recorded March 6, 2005
REALAUDIO

Illustrating just how brutal and unjust “the system” can be, this program documents the legal persecution of Norbert Schlei. An accomplished attorney and former assistant attorney general under President Kennedy, Schlei attempted to redeem some “57’s” on behalf of some of his Asian legal clients. The “57’s” were highly unusual Japanese government bonds issued against the M-Fund, a vast political slush fund created out of Japanese loot from World War II. These bonds were only selectively redeemable—someone who was not part of “the in-crowd” of Japanese power politics could not redeem their bonds and faced severe legal retribution should they try. After an elderly, disabled widow was framed for attempting to redeem a “57,” Schlei was targeted for economic and professional destruction for looking too closely into the origin of the “57’s” and the M-Fund. A stunning array of governmental and private assets were mobilized against Schlei and his conviction was obtained only through collaboration between the US judicial establishment, US intelligence agencies and Japanese governmental officials. Extraordinary legal maneuvering, including a blatant case of witness tampering marked the course of his prosecution. Eventually, Schlei was able to clear his name, but not before he was bankrupted and professionally destroyed. He suffered a major heart attack in 2002 and died a year later. Schlei’s case contrasts markedly with that of a “57” that was successfully redeemed by former Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Haig redeemed a “57” on behalf of the Paraguayan government and did so with the assistance of former President George H.W. Bush, who gave Haig an important letter of introduction.

Program Highlights Include: Review of the history of the genesis of the M-Fund in the immediate aftermath of World War II; a description of the origin of the “57’s” (issued to cover the lack of liquidity in the original M-Fund); review of the contributions of Japanese war criminal Yoshio Kodama to the M-Fund; review of Kodama’s connections to the CIA; a detailed presentation of the extraordinary resources devoted by the US government to the persecution of Schlei and Barbara Jean Bravender Ah Loo; indications that the persecution of Schlei was part of a Japanese effort to curtail “Japan-bashing” in the United States; an account of some of the suspicious deaths of Japanese political figures who had become involved with some of the machinations surrounding the M-Fund.

1. The “57’s”—the subject of the broadcast—are special Japanese government bonds, issued selectively to both opponents and allies of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Allies were able to redeem them; opponents were not. This gambit was implemented in order to cover the debt incurred by the corrupt LDP infrastructure, and its manipulation of the M-Fund—generated from “Golden Lily,” illegally confiscated wealth from World War II. The origin of the M-Fund is discussed at length and detail at the end of this description. (For more about Operation Golden Lily, see FTR#’s 426, 427, 428, 446, 451.) “Rather than cover this exposure by dipping into the M-Fund, or into his own ‘private Bank of Japan’, Tanaka and his clever associates at the Ministry of Finance came up with an ingenious dodge. They would roll over the original Japanese government bonds by exchanging them for new financial instruments called Certificates of Redemption. These were not the Ministry’s usual bonds but a form of debt instrument or IOU specially designed, printed and issued by the Ministry of Finance in the fifty-seventh year of Hirohito’s reign, so they often are called ‘57’s’ to distinguish them from regular government bonds. We will use that label in this book.”
(Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave; Verso [HC]; Copyright 2003 by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave; ISBN 1-85984-542-8; p. 127.)

2. “Bondholders who already were owed outstanding interest would be given specially designed and printed cashier’s checks from the Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, serving as the Ministry’s conduit for interest payments. Because many of the bond-holders were considered politically untrustworthy, they were given no choice in the matter, and simply were told by the Ministry that the exchange of bonds for ‘57’s’ and cashier’s checks would take place. While this might seem unusual in Europe or America, intimidation has been developed to such a high art in Japan that to defy the exchange would mean social ostracism or even assisted suicide.” (Idem.)

3. Struggles over the M-Fund have apparently cost the lives of a number of the participants. “Already the M-Fund appeared to have led to the death of Kishi’s brother, Prime Minister Sato. Many Japanese believe Sato was poisoned in 1975 at the height of a contest with Tanaka for control of the M-Fund. A number of others associated with Sato in M-Fund financing of Fuji Steel also died mysteriously in the early 1970’s. A major scandal over Sato’s death was avoided when Tanaka paid Sato’s 300-billion from the M-Fund. In 1984, Harvey Fukuda, Kodama’s publisher and business partner, who knew where all the skeletons were hidden, died of ‘heart failure’ while in the hospital being dried out and treated for cirrhosis of the liver. He had expressed fear of being poisoned, and members of his family did not believe his death was from natural causes. In Japan, if you are afraid of being murdered, it is considered good advice to avoid hospitals, where the job can be done unobtrusively. The next assisted suicide was Prime Minister Takeshita’s personal assistant Aoki Ihei, who knew too much about the ‘57’s’. According to The Wall Street Journal, Aoki ‘slashed his wrists, legs, and neck and, when that failed, hanged himself with a necktie from a curtain rod.’” (Idem.)

4. The physical makeup of the “57’s” was an important element in the scam. “Physically, the ‘57’s’ were unlike anything previously issued by the government of Japan. They were not offered to the public at large, nor were they to be traded on the international bond-market like normal government bonds, so only the holders actually saw them. The magic of this scheme is that by their very difference it was possible for the Ministry of Finance later to declare all ‘57’s’ to be forgeries. Only certain ones were then selectively and very secretly renegotiated at a discount. Those who paid for their original government bonds, and then were forced to exchange them for’57’s’, were thus swindled twice. Washington has backed Tokyo’s assertion that the ‘57’s’ are counterfeit. But, as we will see, there is evidence both are lying. Because they were jointly involved in setting up the M-Fund with Golden Lily war loot, they both have reason to deny its existence.” (Ibid.; pp. 127-128.)

5. The strange case of the “57’s” illustrates “the system” at its most cynical and brutal. Before focusing on Norbert Schlei, the government crushed an elderly, invalided widow, Barbara Jean Bravender Ah Loo: “Until Washington turned the full force of its ire on Schlei in 1992, the target of the U.S. Government sting was an elderly invalid named Barbara Jean Bravender Ah Loo, living in Los Angeles on Social Security benefits of less then $1,000 a month. A U.S. citizen of Caucasian origin, she had married a Hawaiian Chinese businessman named Ah Loo and spent long periods with him in Hong Kong, running a company called Transfield Investments. In 1987, Transfield was approached by Japanese clients, including Takahishi [Toshio, a former Japanese student leader], looking for help in redeeming their ‘57’s’. Initial efforts by Transfield failed when the Bank of Japan took the position that all ‘57’s’ were fraudulent. During this period, Mrs. Ah Loo met Craig Ivester, a bounty hunter employed by Bancorp International as a finder of commodity transactions. They discussed the ‘57’s’ and Ivester sent a photocopy of one to Union Banque Suisse, which replied automatically that it was fraudulent, without bothering to examine the original.” (Ibid.; p. 132.)

6. Again, note the lengths to which the authorities went in persecuting an innocent, aging, widowed invalid! “Aging and seriously ill, Mrs. Ah Loo then returned by herself to Los Angeles, and was living in a single room borrowed from a terminally-ill friend, in a house facing foreclosure, when she again encountered the bounty hunter. At this point, Craig Ivester was making his living as a U.S. Customs Service informer, looking for targets. Reminded of their previous discussions of the ‘57’s’ in Hong Kong, Ivester decided to persuade Mrs. Ah Loo to offer some ‘57’s’ for sale inside the United States, which he knew was illegal, earning him a finder’s fee from the Customs Service.” (Idem.)

7. “Sick as she was, Mrs. Ah Loo still had gumption. She told Ivester she would never negotiate a ‘57’ in the United States. Ivester approached the Customs Service, and offered to help entrap Mrs. Ah Loo by baiting her with the offer of a very large commission.” (Idem.)

8. Your tax dollars at work: “According to Schlei’s investigators, the sting operation was mounted by U.S. Secret Service agent Jack Fox, and Customs Service agents Michael Sankey and Michael Noonan, acting on the tip from Ivester. Their plan was to offer Mrs. Ah Loo a big commission to coax her into obtaining a ‘57’ to sell in America, and then to arrest her for ‘intent’, or merely contemplating a crime. Because she was so reluctant, Fox got credentials showing he was a vice president of First National Bank of Chicago. Sankey would pretend to be a rich businessman. They rented a room in Reno that they wired, and asked her to come for a meeting. If they could get her to cross a state line, it could be construed as a federal offense, rather than a state offense. Mrs. Ah Loo could not come because she could not afford the airline ticket. The Secret Service sent her a free round trip ticket, the first concrete step in their entrapment. When she got to Reno, Mrs. Ah Loo said she was sorry, but she could not obtain any ‘57’s’. Anyway, she said, the Japanese government claimed they were fraudulent, and ‘People have gone to jail for selling these bonds. . .’.” (Ibid.; pp. 132-133.)

9. “Fox, Sankey and Noonan persisted, browbeating Mrs. Ah Loo until finally she said she would try again to get a ‘57’, but only if they could arrange a proper and legitimate transaction through a leading American securities firm—a firm that would make sure all laws were observed so nobody got in trouble. Secret Service agent Fox promised to bring Smith Barney into the deal. He faxed Mrs. Ah Loo a letter purporting to be from A. George Saks, Executive Vice President and General Council of Smith Barney, offering to purchase three ‘57’s’.” (Ibid.; p. 133.)

10. It would be difficult to imagine anything more cynical than the enormous resources committed to destroying Mrs. Ah Loo. “For the sting to work, it had to happen in a jurisdiction where there was a Smith Barney office, and a compliant judge. They decided to lure Mrs. Ah Loo to Tampa, Florida, where Smith Barney had an office, and where the U.S. attorney expected Federal district court judge Elizabeth Kovachevich to be cooperative, allowing him to go for the jugular.” (Idem.)

11. “Eventually, Mrs. Ah Loo heard about Roger Hill, a broker who had some of Takahashi’s ‘57’s’ in his possession, hoping to find a potential buyer. But on the eve of the trip to Tampa, Mrs. Ah Loo suffered a heart attack, and asked her son—Bruce Hansberry—to go with Roger Hill in her place, to conclude the deal at Smith Barney. When they arrived in Tampa, on January 18, 1992, they were arrested.” (Idem.)

12. “Because she was not present, they had to rope in Mrs. Ah Loo by getting her on the telephone to discuss the fictitious closing, so she could be arrested in Los Angeles. This was done, and when was taken into custody. On the pretext that her earlier residence in Hong Kong meant she might try to flee the country, she was put in prison to await trial, and ultimately was convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, money-laundering and securities fraud. Bewildered, Mr. Ah Loo began to lose her mind, and was moved to a prison psychiatric ward. There, she was found to have cancer of the throat, and died.” (Idem.)

13. “By January 1992, sixteen offices of the Secret Service were said to be involved in the Ah Loo sting. Mrs. Ah Loo was too insignificant to justify such an expenditure of taxpayers’ money, so the vigilantes looked for someone else to lynch. One possibility was Takahashi, to whom the ‘57’s’ belonged, but when they broke into his Los Angeles apartment, it was empty and he was out of the country in hiding. Trophy hunting has become a feature of the American criminal justice system. Takahashi was not famous, so he was not a proper trophy for an ambitious U.S. attorney.” (Idem.)

14. Because Schlei was investigating some of the secrets of World War II Japanese Loot, he was targeted for the sting. “Norbert Schlei, on the other hand, was sticking his nose into Deep Black secrets, and alarming Tokyo. His high profile made him a perfect target. One year earlier, Schlei had written a memo about the M-Fund. It was not meant for general circulation but a copy was passed to U.S. Government officials, who became alarmed and angry. If they could snare Schlei, all branches of the U.S. Government would cooperate to stop his digging into the M-Fund, and the LDP leadership in Tokyo would be indebted.” (Ibid.; pp. 133-134.)

15. “How to snare him was the problem. Schlei had never tried to negotiate a ‘57’ in America, only in Japan, on behalf of clients legally entitled to have an attorney make inquiries. Furthermore, Schlei had never accepted a penny from these clients. But Takahashi was so impatient to sell one of his ‘57’s’ that he had taken several of them back from Schlei and, without telling him, turned them over to Roger Hill to market. It was quite a stretch to argue that Schlei had anything to do with the independent marketing of the ‘57’s’ by Roger Hill. The government could try to get Schlei indicted as a party to the conspiracy of Ah Loo, Hansberry, and Hill, because he happened to be Takahashi’s attorney and was admittedly trying to negotiate other ‘57’s’ in Japan. It would be absurd to assert that Schlei was involved in the Tampa transaction, but that could be covered by a little sleight of hand, misdirecting the jury so it did not notice. Finally, since Schlei freely acknowledged that the Japanese government regarded the ‘57’s’ as counterfeit, it could be argued that he was admittedly marketing certificates he knew to be false. This dodged the crucial point, which Schlei stated again and again, that he was convinced the Japanese government was lying to avoid payment.” (Ibid.; p. 134.)

16. “In sum, the case against Schlei would depend on a trophy-hunting prosecutor, a compliant judge, a misdirected jury, a coordinated effort by Washington to block all Schlei’s efforts at discovery, denial by the court of leave for Schlei to take depositions in Japan, intimidation of defense witnesses, and ‘expert’ prosecution witnesses brought in from Japan’s Ministry of Finance and Dai-Ichi Bank, who seemed to have been coached to be evasive and to give false testimony.” (Idem.)

17. A measure of the extreme nature of the case against Schlei is the fact that he wasn’t even aware of the case in connection with which he was to be indicted! “Astonished to be named a party to the Ah Loo deal, of which he was not even aware, Schlei found himself the subject of Grand Jury proceedings in Tampa and was indicted. Immediately, clients holding ‘57’s’ scattered to avoid being drawn in, or—if cornered—became so frightened that they offered to testify against Schlei in return for immunity from prosecution.” (Idem.)

18. “In court, the prosecution ‘proved’ the certificates were fakes by bringing in two minor officials of Japan’s Ministry of Finance and Dai-Ichi Bank, who had a vested interest in sticking to this story. Schlei’s defense countered, ‘Corrupt Japanese officials were now falsely claiming that these financial instruments were not genuine.’ However, Professor Lausier insisted they were genuine (as quoted earlier): ‘The documents . . . are so precisely in agreement in innumerable respects with the official published records of the government of Japan . . . that, in my opinion, it is quite impossible for them, or the Certificates that resulted from them, to have been the work of any counterfeiter.’” (Idem.)

19. Various agencies of the United States government, including the CIA, collaborated to block Schlei’s defense from being able to prove the truth. “To demonstrate collusion between Tokyo and Washington, the defense attempted to locate any reports or documents showing covert payments by the U.S. Government to the government of Japan or any political party in Japan, from 1945 to the present. As we have seen, this has been confirmed by a number of sources including former CIA officials and U.S. diplomats. But, fighting for his life, Schlei needed all the documentary evidence available. As a former assistant attorney general of the United States, he was certain he would find these documents.” (Ibid.; pp. 134-135.)

20. “It was Schlei’s legal right to make such discoveries, but federal agencies flatly refused to comply. News stories about the M-Fund and ‘57’s’ obliged the court to order the CIA, the Secret Service, National Archives, and State Department to conduct a search of their databases. Given the intense secrecy surrounding the Black Eagle Trust, the 1951 Peace Treaty, the M-Fund, and the disappearance of millions of documents concerning Japan, it would have been a great surprise if anything turned up. The jury was told that ‘search of the records of the CIA, the Secret Service, and the National Archives did not disclose any relevant or material documents or information that substantiated . . . that the CIA gave money to employees or officials of the Japanese government, or any political party in Japan’. The court record says, ‘The government searched hundreds of files of CIA paper records dating back to 1948 for any documents that might indicate that payments were made by the CIA to either the Japanese government, the Liberal Democratic Party, or individual party members. They also conducted computer searches for Marquat Fund. . .[and] the search . . . did not discover any relevant or material documents or information.’” (Ibid.; p. 135.)

21. “The jury was not told that Acting CIA Director Admiral William O. Studeman had informed The New York Times in March 1995, that CIA was not about to divulge information on the subject of payola to foreign governments and politicos. Studeman said the Agency had an obligation to ‘keep faith’ with politicians who ‘received legally authorized covert support from the United States.’ This statement actually confirms that such payments were made, and merely refuses to give details. Japanese politicians bribed with huge sums of money had to be protected, which was more important than justice in American courts. Schlei told the court, ‘I figured that if the Iran Contra case people like Ollie North and Admiral Poindexter and Mr. MacFarlane could be doing things and lying about, then maybe people in the Japanese Government could be lying about some things, too.’” (Idem.)

22. In order to bolster its case, the government sanctioned witness tampering by the prosecution: “Judge Kovachevich refused Schlei the right to take depositions in Japan, and brushed aside Schlei’s protests that a key defense witness had been intimidated by the U.S. attorney. His attorneys alleged that the prosecution tampered with the witness, S.M. Han who had an immunity agreement with U.S. attorney Mark Krum. Han swore that Krum told him if he testified for the defense, his immunity agreement would be nullified. Han also said Krum told him he had ‘better not give him any basis to withdraw the immunity because he would not hesitate to do so’. Witness tampering is one of the most serious crimes in the U.S. judicial system and is grounds for disbarment. Judge Kovachevich denied a motion for a new trial based on the charge of witness tampering, and even refused to hold an evidentiary haring to determine whether Han’s allegations were true.” (Idem.)

23. “After six years of persecution, Schlei was convicted on one felony count of securities fraud, and one misdemeanor. Before the trial began, he had assets in the neighborhood of $10-million. During his trial, he was unable to practice law, and had enormous legal costs. He was professionally and financially ruined, left virtually bankrupt. He estimated that the U.S. Government spent over $45-million of taxpayers’ money on the sting and the lawsuit.” (Ibid.; pp. 135-136.)

24. Finally, Schlei was able to clear his name: “Schlei appealed, and in September 1997, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and vacated the conviction on the felony count and the misdemeanor, remanding the misdemeanor to the district court for a hearing on Schlei’s motion for a new trial, based on government intimidation of witnesses. The three appeals court judges paid special attention to the way Kovachevich had handled the witness-tampering issue. In their decision they wrote that the transactions leading to the Schlei indictment were ‘unusual, if not bizarre’. They found Kovachevich’s handling of the witness tampering ‘enigmatic’. They said, ‘ We cannot determine whether Schlei was deprived of his right to due process. . . because the [Kovachevich] court did not conduct an evidentiary hearing. . . .Where defendants present evidence to the district court that the government intimidated a defense witness a trial court must grant a hearing to determine whether the allegations of intimidation are true.’ (Our italics.)” (Ibid.; p. 136.)

25. “So a case that was contrived to start with and dragged on for six years, resulting in Schlei’s complete ruin, was overturned. Still insisting on his innocence, Schlei asked for a retrial, but the government knew he was broke. Nearly 70, and in no position to fight indefinitely to clear his name, he finally agreed not to press his charges of witness tampering, leaving the minor misdemeanor charge unresolved. In Washington to this day he is slandered. An eminent libel lawyer, who should know better, recently insisted that Schlei’s evidence was ‘untrustworthy’ because he was a ‘convicted felon’. Others declared Schlei’s unresolved misdemeanor conviction amounted to ‘moral turpitude’.” (Idem.)

26. Although he was eventually exonerated, Schlei was destroyed financially and professionally—finally suffering a debilitating heart attack in the spring of 2002. He died a year later. “It took further wrangling with the California bar to have this smear removed from the official record. In January 2001, the California Bar Journal announced that Schlei was once again ‘an attorney in good standing’. But the harm had been done. In the Spring of 2002, while jogging on a California beach, Schlei suffered a major heart attack, collapsed and hit his head. A homeless man nearby called for help, but Schlei remained in a coma for many months. The last time we saw Schlei, he told us, ‘I now know how and why the jury convicted me. Until I figured that out, I was a very troubled man.’” (Idem.)

27. “Other events unfolding in January 1992 may have led directly to Schlei’s persecution. He was not the only target of M-Fund stings. Also arrested was James P. Sena, a 17-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency that also investigates counterfeiting for the Treasury Department. Sena had examined M-Fund financial instruments in America and Japan, where he became convinced of the legitimacy of the ‘57’s’. He decided to sell some himself. He and Ian Yorkshire of Great Britain and Francis Cheung of Hong Kong were all arrested for attempting to market ‘57’s’ with a total face value of $50-billion. Abruptly, and for no apparent reason, in November 1995, the case against them was suddenly dismissed ‘with prejudice’, meaning the charges cannot be re-filed. Nevertheless, prosecutors refused to return the ‘57’s’ they had confiscated as evidence, calling them ‘contraband’. If counterfeit, why were they contraband? We were told by a Wall Street source that Treasury is eager to get its hands on ‘57’s’ and other supposedly counterfeit derivatives, to negotiate them secretly.” (Idem.)
CORRECTION: JAMES P. SENA HAS NEVER BEEN ARRESTED.

28. Contrasting sharply with the treatment accorded Norbert Schlei was the successful negotiation of a “57” by Alexander Haig. Haig (an intimate of the MacArthur group in the military) negotiated the “57” on behalf of the Paraguayan government. Pivotal to the success of this operation is the fact that Haig had a letter of recommendation written by then President George H.W. Bush “Another prominent American who reportedly became involved in negotiating ‘57’s’ during the same period was the former Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig. Unlike Schlei, Haig was not arrested or persecuted, demonstrating how selective Washington has been in choosing its sting targets.” (Ibid.; p. 137.)

29. “According to a detailed account we have from someone present at all the meetings, Haig was asked to intercede in behalf of Paraguay. The government of Paraguay had bought a single ‘57’ with a face value of $500-million from First Hanover Securities in New York City on November 20, 1991, at the very moment the sting of Mrs. Ah Loo was going down. The same day, Paraguay asked MIC Debt Readjustment Company to arrange for the Japanese government to redeem this ‘57’—not for cash but for credit against 40-billion Yen in foreign aid that Paraguay owed Tokyo. This represented 80 percent of the face value of the ‘57’, and Tokyo could keep the other 20 percent as a discount. (MIC is an organization backed by the Israeli government, which negotiates adjustments of national debt for governments in Eastern Europe and South America.) If successful, MIC was to be given oil exploration and development rights on Paraguayan territory. After considering former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Ambassador Mike Mansfield, MIC chose Haig as their negotiator.” (Idem.)

30. “He was a good choice. Haig knew Japan because in 1947, fresh out of West Point, he had served as an aide to General MacArthur in Tokyo until the general’s recall in 1951. As a MacArthur aide, working in a tight circle with men like Whitney and Willoughby, Haig doubtless heard a lot about black operations and secret funds set up in Tokyo during the occupation. While in Japan, Haig married the daughter of General Alonzo Patrick Fox, MacArthur’s deputy chief of staff. Haig later served President Nixon on the national security staff, was White House chief of staff for both Nixon and Ford, and Secretary of State for President Reagan.” (Idem.)

31. “At a strategy meeting in Miami, attended by our source, MIC and the Paraguayans asked Haig to negotiate personally with former Japanese prime minister Takeshita, a key man in the M-Fund and one of the LDP kingmakers. After being embarrassed by bribery scandals, including the Recruit scandal involving M-Fund kickbacks and war loot, Takeshita had been forced to resign as prime minister two years earlier, in 1989, but he remained powerful. Haig agreed to meet with Takeshita in Tokyo in January 1992. He reportedly told the Miami roundtable that the ‘57’ should be negotiated ‘underground’ as quickly as possible.” (Idem.)

32. “To learn more about the background of the ‘57’s’ our source said Haig had discussions in Washington with the FBI and CIA, much as Schlei had done. One CIA official explained that Japan had a number of secret funds, including what he called ‘the MacArthur Fund’, apparently referring to the Sanwa Bank joint account in the names of MacArthur and Hirohito, which Japanese call the Showa Fund, referring to the reign title of Hirohito. He also explained how the Japanese call the Showa Fund, referring to the reign title of Hirohito. He also explained how the Japanese government bonds had evolved into the ‘57’s’. Our source said Haig also paid a visit to the White House, to tell President Bush of his forthcoming meeting with Takeshita to negotiate the ‘57’ for Paraguay. Explaining the give-and-take involved, he asked Bush for his support. To ease the way, our source said, Bush gave Haig a personal letter to Takeshita.” (Idem.)

33. “President Bush was on his way to Japan himself that January. He was in Tokyo a few days before Haig, a visit made famous when Bush vomited all over Prime Minister Miyazawa.” (Ibid.; p. 138.)

34. “On January 13, 1992, Haig was informed that two weeks later he was to be guest of honor at a lunch in Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel with the LDP Diet committee, after which he and Takeshita were to have a private talk in an adjoining room. MIC said Takeshita would probably start by saying all ‘57’s’ were counterfeit. Haig had to be prepared for this, and ready to say two or three things that would jolt Takeshita. He asked MIC to choose the three most impressive supporting documents to show Takeshita. One of these was an insurance policy issued by Yasuda Fire Insurance Company in Tokyo to cover transporting the certificate from the Ministry of Finance. This alone established the authenticity of the ‘57’. MIC briefed Haig in detail about the significance of these supporting documents, and reviewed the differences between ‘57’s’ and ordinary Japanese government bonds.” (Idem.)

35. “Shortly before the meeting in Tokyo on the 27th, Haig was told that Takeshita had been acutely embarrassed by a recent series of major scandals, so what the LDP leader hoped to get from Haig was a promise to stop Japan-Bashing in America. If Takeshita could come out of their meeting with such an assurance, he might survive the scandals and resume power.” (Idem.)

36. “When the two men sat down privately at 2:40 p.m., our source said Takeshita opened as predicted, asking Haig to get U.S. companies and politicians to stop Japan-Bashing. Haig replied positively, handing Takeshita the personal letter from President Bush. Takeshita then said that any agreement on settling Paraguay’s debt to Japan would have to include Japanese participation in developing oilfields in that country. With that on the table, Haig explained that one of the main reasons for his visit to Tokyo was to get Takeshita’s assurance that Paraguay’s ‘57’ would be credited against its foreign aid debt. He showed Takeshita the ‘57’ that Paraguay had purchased from Hanover.” (Idem.)

37. “Takeshita glanced at the document and said, ‘Mr. Haig, this paper is a forgery printed in Hong Kong.’ ‘Then,’ Haig said, ‘please take a look at these documents.’ He handed Takeshita the Yasuda insurance cover document, and the two others. Reading each document in turn, ‘Takeshita’s face turned pale and his voice faint.’ ‘Mr. Haig,’ he said, ‘it seems to include a very delicate problem for the settlement.’ ‘Yes,’ said Haig. ‘I agree. It’s delicate.’ I cannot give you an immediate reply . . .’” (Idem.)

38. “The meeting ended, and minutes later, Haig reported all this to the MIC group in his suite. He said it was only when he saw Takeshita recoil in shock at sight of the insurance cover that he realized how serious was the secrecy surrounding the ‘57’s’. Our source said Haig turned angrily to the Paraguayans and said, ‘You’re making me blackmail him!’ Then he grinned and said, ‘That first missile hit the target!’ He warned the Paraguayans and Israelis to be very careful about their personal safety while they were in Japan, because Takeshita was not happy, and he would certainly alert Japan’s secret service.” (Idem.)

39. “Next day, our source said Takeshita’s personal secretary came to see Haig. Insisting on talking in the hallway where they could not be monitored, he said: ‘Mr. Haig, the certificate and documents are not formal. So our government cannot repurchase it.’ Haig squinted at him and said, ‘So we can make it public?’ Takeshita’s secretary turned pale. He said he would speak again to Takeshita. The second missile also hit home. The following morning Takeshita’s secretary came again. ‘As for the problem of the certificate, many inquiries are coming to Our Ministry of Finance locally and overseas, and the administration is greatly perplexed.’ He paused. ‘We are ready to take certain measures on the certificate in question. You must treat this negotiation as strictly confidential. If a similar demand is made by another government, our administration would suffer because we are not prepared for it financially.’” (Ibid.; p. 139.)

40. “In short, Haig had succeeded, and the deal went down. But how could Haig negotiate a ‘57’ in Miami, Washington, and Tokyo, with discussions at the FBI, CIA and with President Bush in the White House, without being arrested and prosecuted like Norbert Schlei? Federal agents always insisted it was illegal to negotiate one inside America, or even to contemplate it.” (Idem.)

41. Haig’s successful negotiation of the Paraguayan “57” may have been part of a quid pro quo involving the persecution of Norbert Schlei. Schlei may have been neutralized as part of a deal by the Japanese in order to abate “Japan-Bashing.” “If all ‘57’s’ are counterfeit, why did Haig succeed? If Haig’s ‘57’ was genuine, did he still do something illegal? Does the legitimacy of a Japanese debt instrument depend on your connections to the current occupant of the White House? Norbert Schlei was drawn into the sting soon after Haig’s Tokyo negotiation concluded. One of Takeshita’s conditions about ending Japan-Bashing may have been that Schlei, who was asking so many embarrassing questions, must be silenced and removed from the field of play. If so, Haig certainly would have reported this to President Bush, which could explain why Schlei was then dragged into the Ah Loo case.” (Idem.)

42. “There is a lesson here for investors. Financial instruments growing out of the Black Eagle Trust continue to float around the global market, like magnet mines left over from World War II that can blow up and sink any institution or individual that comes in contact with them. If some certificates are counterfeit while others are legitimate, investors and their attorneys have a right to inquire, without fear of arrest or intimidation, whether the documents they hold are real or fake, and not to be brushed off with falsehoods. Especially when the issuing government has a history of evasiveness, and is strongly suspected of lying. When Washington demonstrates that it has a greater sense of responsibility to corrupt foreign politicians than it does to its own citizens, we may rightly ask whom it really is protecting. Washington’s main concern has been to protect and preserve a system of secret financial collusion with Japan, which has worked to its satisfaction for over half a century. And to protect the careers and reputations of U.S. Government officials involved in that collusion. In the end, how many billions went to Japanese politicians is less important than how much went into to pockets of American officials. As power corrupts, secret power corrupts secretly.” (Idem.)

43. Next, the program reviews the formation of the Marquat or “M-Fund”, used to manipulate and control the postwar Japanese political landscape. (The “57’s” were derivatives of the M-Fund.) In particular, the M-Fund was used to shore up the Japanese oligarchs who had directed and profited from Japan’s brutal war of aggression and to stabilize the postwar Japanese economy. (For more about the return to power of the very Japanese responsible for World War II, see FTR#’s 290, 291, 426, 427, 428.) What made the “57’s” such a sensitive international issue concerns the dark history surrounding the fund. It is because of this dark history that Norbert Schlei was destroyed. “In this context of intense corruption and artful misrepresentation, it was inevitable that the political action funds America set up in Japan would be diverted. But the corruption, dishonesty, and moral turpitude cannot be blamed only on the Japanese. Americans were involved in diverting the funds, benefited from their abuse, and may still be benefiting today in a multitude of ways.” (Ibid.; p. 109.)

44. “Three underground funds were controlled by American officials during the occupation—the M-Fund, the Yotsuya Fund and the Keenan Fund. According to Takano Hajime, the M-Fund was named after General William Frederic Marquat, chief of SCAP’s Economic and Scientific Section. In theory, Marquat headed America’s program to punish and reform Japanese businesses that had gorged on war profiteering. In reality, Marquat’s biggest public relations headache was how to help them conceal these obscene profits, which by custom were shared with the imperial family. Historian John Dower explains that Marquat ‘assumed responsibility for nothing less than supervising all developments in finance, economics, labor, and science, including the dissolution of zaibatsu holding companies and the promotion of economic deconcentration. Every major government financial and economic institution reported to his section, including the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and the Bank of Japan.’” (Idem.)

45. “Little has been written about Marquat, who usually is portrayed as an amiable nincompoop, unfit for the job. This hardly comes as a surprise. Like Willoughby and Whitney, Marquat was one of MacArthur’s inner-circle ‘The Bataan Boys,’ whose chief quality was undying loyalty. John Gunther said Marquat ‘pays little attention to the jargon of his present field; once he . . . turned to his first assistant during a heavy conference on economic affairs, saying ‘What is marginal economy, anyway?’” (Idem.)

46. “Marquat was supposed to dissolve the banks and conglomerates that financed Japan’s war and profited from it. Despite purely cosmetic changes and the break-up and sale of several small conglomerates, the biggest war profiteers were let off without even a slap on the wrist. General Marquat was also in charge of closing down and punishing Japan’s biological and chemical warfare service, Unit 731. Instead, the U.S. Government secretly absorbed Unit 731, moving most of its scientists, personnel, and documents to U.S. military research centers like Fort Dietrick in the Maryland countryside. All information about its activities, including biological warfare atrocities, and horrific experiments on fully conscious victims, was withheld by Washington from the American and Japanese public, and from the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals. All Unit 731’s records held by the U.S. Government are still top secret.” (Ibid.; p. 110.)

47. “So while he was supposed to be making Japan more democratic, Marquat was doing the opposite. The M-Fund was created to buy elections for Japanese politicians so far to the right that they were solidly anti-communist. Japan was the most highly industrialized country in Asia; Washington wanted it to be a capitalist bastion against communism, for its economy to thrive so there would be no need for labor unions, leftist organizers, or revolution. This was the view of American conservatives who thought President Roosevelt was a communist, and believed that Britain should have allied itself with Germany and Japan, and gone to war against the USSR. As a consequence of this thinking, plans to reform Japan were truncated or aborted. (One major exception was land reform, successfully completed before it could be halted.)” (Idem.)

48. Shoring up Japan as an anti-communist bulwark was the overall goal of the application of the M-Fund. Again, in order to do this, the very fascists and oligarchs most responsible for Japan’s war of aggression were returned to power and potential opponents and dissidents neutralized, often violently. “The first big application of the M-Fund was in the late 1940’s when a Socialist government happened to win election in Japan—a development that astonished, panicked, and galvanized SCAP. Immediately, great sums were distributed by SCAP to discredit the Socialist cabinet, and to replace it with a regime more to Washington’s liking. Later, when Tokyo considered establishing relations with the People’s Republic of China, sums again were disbursed to get Japan back on the right track. When Yoshida Shigeru became prime minister, Washington relaxed because Yoshida was trusted, conservative, and personally very rich. During his period as prime minister, the M-Fund was called the Yoshida Fund. (In a conversation in 1987, White House national security advisor Richard Allen said: ‘All my life I’ve heard of a thing called the Yoshida Fund—I think that’s the same thing as the M-Fund.’)” (Idem.)

49. One of the resources combined with the M-Fund was the enormous cache of war loot acquired by Kodama Yoshio (also known as Yoshio Kodama), a Japanese underworld kingpin who became a primary functionary in the Japanese Empire and the postwar Japanese power political stage. Kodama worked very closely with the CIA and became one of the early prime-movers within the Unification Church. (For more about Kodama, see RFA#7—available from Spitfire—as well as FTR#’s 84, 291, 296, 428, 446. Note that the Unification Church has a close connection with George Bush Sr. and Jr. See FTR#’s 84, 291.) “Another great fortune discovered by U.S. intelligence services in 1946 was $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio who, as a ‘rear admiral’ in the Imperial Navy working with Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan’s wartime drug trade throughout Asia. After the war to get out of Sugamo Prison and avoid prosecution for war crimes, Kodama gave $100-million to the CIA, which was added to the M-Fund’s coffers. Kodama then personally financed the creation of the two political parties that merged into Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), strongly backed to this day by Washington.” (Ibid.; p. 8.)

50. Kodama was on excellent terms with Emperor Hirohito, who assisted with the acquisition of the $13-billion fund Kodama eventually combined with the M-Fund. Kodama was the kingpin of the Japanese drug trade during, and after, World War II. The drug trade was one of the primary sources of Kodama’s largesse. The information about Kodama is being reviewed here in order to present the listener/reader with some perspective on the deep politics underlying the M-Fund and the “57’s”. It is the deep politics that make disclosures concerning the M-Fund so sensitive. “Another source of underground funds was Kodama, who was reported to have amassed some $13-billion in war loot for his personal use. This included two truck-loads of diamonds, gold bars, platinum ingots, radium, copper, and other vital materials. In order to curry favor with MacArthur’s men, Skukan Bunshun said at war’s end ‘Kodama had a good portion of [his] valuables transported to the vault of the Imperial Family in the Imperial Palace.’ Despite his lifelong involvement in murder, kidnapping, drugs and extortion, Kodama is said to have been regarded by Emperor Hirohito as a true patriot, possibly because of the great sums he generated for Golden Lily. This may explain why Japan’s top gangster was permitted to hide some of his loot in palace vaults. But it goes deeper to include narcotics.” (Ibid.; p. 108.)

51. “In the spring of 1945, Kodama made a quick trip to Taiwan to see that its many heroin factories were dismantled for return to Japan, along with remaining stocks of heroin and morphine. On his return, Kodama was assigned to be a special advisor to the emperor’s uncle, Prince Higashikuni, who served as Japan’s prime minister briefly at the start of the U.S. occupation. According to Kodama’s own memoir, immediately after the surrender, Higashikuni had ‘two or three of us councilors arrange a meeting and secretly, unknown to his cabinet ministers, [Higashikuni] visited General MacArthur in Yokohama.’ Kodama provides no details of what transpired at this meeting, or whether he accompanied the prince.” (Idem.)

52. Kodama worked very closely with the CIA. “Kodama then spent two years in Sugamo Prison as an indicted war criminal, but was magically released in mid-1948 when he made a deal with General Willoughby to give the CIA $100-million (equal to $1-billion in today’s values.) This payment bought Kodama his freedom from prison and from any prosecution for war crimes. The money was placed in one of the secret slush funds controlled by the CIA station at the U.S. Embassy. Subsequently, Kodama was put directly on the CIA payroll, where he remained for many years, until his death in 1984. Tad Szulc of The New York Times wrote, ‘Kodama had a working relationship with the CIA.’ Chalmers Johnson said Kodama was ‘probably the CIA’s chief asset in Japan.’” (Idem.)

53. “While literally an employee of the U.S. Government, Kodama continued to oversee Japan’s postwar drug trade. Heroin labs were moved back not only from Taiwan, but from North China, Manchuria and Korea. Chinese who had collaborated with Japan in drug processing and distribution, were given sanctuary and began operating from Japanese soil. Two of the three major players in Asian narcotics soon died: Nationalist China’s general Tai Li was assassinated in a 1946 plane crash; Shanghai godfather Tu Yueh-sheng died in Hong Kong of natural causes in 1951. Kodama was left Asia’s top druglord, while on the U.S. payroll. This could have been embarrassing, for Japan’s dominant role in narcotics was widely known and undisputed, but a Cold War hush descended over it like an Arctic whiteout. During the occupation, U.S. propaganda characterized Asia’s drug trade as exclusively the enterprise of leftists and communist agents. In truth it was dominated by Kodama in Japan, and by Generalissimo Chiang through the KMT opium armies based in the Golden Triangle, who were under the direct control of the Generalissimo’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo, the KMT chief of military intelligence at that time. (The two top KMT opium warlords in the Golden Triangle, General Tuan and General Li spoke to us openly of this.)” (Ibid.; pp. 108-109.)

54. This description concludes with an excerpting of the obituary of Norbert Schlei. (Note that this obituary opened the original broadcast itself.) After examining the M-Fund and the sordid history of the “57’s”, we can achieve a greater understanding of the forces that destroyed him and why they did so. “Norbert A. Schlei, a key lawyer in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who found legal underpinning for the 1962 blockade of Cuba, wrote landmark civil rights legislation and once waged a strong bid to replace an entrenched Republican California secretary of state, has died. He was 73. . . . Schlei, a personable Democratic campaigner, was only yards from Robert Kennedy at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel when Kennedy was fatally shot on the night of the California primary in 1968. He largely bowed out of politics after serving as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention that year in Chicago. . .”
(“Norbert Schlei, 73: Principal Author of the Civil Rights Act, Other Landmark Laws” by Myrna Oliver; The Los Angeles Times; 4/21/2003; p. B9.)

55. “ . . . Joan Schlei said Saturday that Schlei had been completely exonerated after federal prosecutors conceded that there was a ‘possibility the instruments are valid’ and that Schlei had been wrongly prosecuted. Schlei maintained all along that he had done nothing illegal, and that prosecutors who issued charges against the others after a sting operation had added him only because of his high profile in Democratic and government circles to ‘get in the papers’ and make the trial ‘newsworthy.’” (Idem.)

56. “At issue were bonds the Japanese government claimed were counterfeit and created by a forger they imprisoned in 1983. Schlei countered that the securities were legitimate, that they had been issued in 1983. Schlei countered that the securities were legitimate, that they had been issued in 1983 by Japan’s minister of finance, Michio Watanabe, at the request of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka after Tanaka left office in a bribery scandal. Schlei said he had never sold the securities and had simply tried to help about 30 clients purchase them with the understanding that the securities would be redeemable only if they could persuade a current Japanese government to honor them.” (Idem.)

FTR #500 Conversation with Sander Hicks and Allan Duncan

Recorded February 27, 2005
REALAUDIO

This interview highlights the work of investigator, social worker and ex-cop Allan Duncan and publisher/author Sander Hicks. Setting forth the story of counter-terror sting “Operation Diamondback,” the program presents the stunning forecast of the 9/11 attacks recorded by the FBI in 1999. Apparent Pakistani intelligence agent R.G. Abbas (while attempting to procure weaponry for Al Qaeda and the Taliban) disclosed that the World Trade Center towers were “coming down.” Stingman Randy Glass was “wearing a wire” and Abbas’ statement was recorded! Nonetheless, few news media have reported this. After reviewing information about Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff and his connections to Bin Laden collaborator Dr. Magdy El-Amir, the program presents Randy Glass’ assertion that Abbas and his associates Diaa Moshen and Mohamed (Mike) Malik were interested in procuring nuclear weaponry for Al Qaeda. Glass reported his information about the impending attack on the World Trade Center to Florida Senator Robert Graham in July of 2001. When Glass relayed his information to the State Department in the summer of 2001, a top aide to Colin Powell disclosed that it was known that a plan was afoot to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center, but that Glass couldn’t discuss it.

Program Highlights Include: Terrorist weapons-supplier Diaa Moshen’s claim that he possessed a “special passport” that enabled him to come and go with impunity; the unusually light treatment accorded Moshen and Mike Malik after they were apprehended as part of Operation Diamondback.

Sander Hicks can be reached through Vox Pop and
Drench Kiss Media Corporation
1022 Cortelyou Road
Flatbush, Brooklyn 11218

Allan Duncan, who lives in New Hope, PA, can be reached at: ADuncan282@aol.com

1. After discussion of the operational links between Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff and Dr. Magdy El-Amir, guests Sander Hicks and Allan Duncan further developed the story of Operation Diamondback. (For more about the relationship between Chertoff and Dr. El-Amir, see FTR#’s 495, 499.) Operation Diamondback was the sting operation that revealed some of Dr. El-Amir’s links to the milieu of Osama bin Laden. That operation featured Randy Glass as the operative posing as an arms dealer doing business with terrorists. In relating the story of Randy Glass, Allan and Sander set forth a chilling account of a meeting that took place in July of 1999 at the Tribeca Grill in Manhattan. Glass (acting as an undercover sting man for the FBI) was meeting with a Rhulum G. Abbas, an agent of the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. “ . . . At a dinner in June 1999 at the Tribeca Grill, Glass was wining and dining Rhulum G. Abbas, a Pakistani arms dealer and his friends. Glass and ATF agent Dick Stoltz were posing as weapons brokers, as part of a Federal sting operation. The Pakistani had close connections to the Pakistani intelligence elite, the ISI. In fact, Glass later told Dateline he believed Abbas was an ISI agent.” (A chapter of Sander Hicks’ forthcoming book The Big Wedding [e-mailed to Mr. Emory and partially reprinted here with the permission of the author]; pp. 1-2.)

2. At the meeting, Abbas made a chilling disclosure: that the World Trade Center towers were “coming down.” “The tony Tribeca Grill, owned by Robert DeNiro, was just north of the World Trade Center in 1999. Abbas boasted to his dinner companions that he wouldn’t have any problem taking out the entire downtown restaurant. ‘Because it’s full of Americans.’ Towards the end of the meal, he gestured out towards the Twin Towers. ‘Those towers are coming down.’ [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

3. Abbas’s foreshadowing of the WTC attacks was omitted from NBC’s “Dateline” show. Only The Palm Beach Post carried the account: “Although Glass told ‘Dateline’ this story, it wasn’t broadcast. The only media to report it was The Palm Beach Post, on October 17, 2002: ‘In August 2001, just before Glass started to serve a seven-month sentence for a $6 million jewelry scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Graham and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler. He said he told staffers for both lawmakers that a Pakistani operative working for the Taliban known as R.G. Abbas made three references to imminent plans to attack the World Trade Center during the probe, which ended in June 2001. At one meeting at New York’s Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas pointed to the World Trade Center and said, ‘Those towers are coming down,’ Glass said.’” (Idem.)

4. “ ‘Dateline’ used Glass in a follow-up piece five months later, but still failed to mention the crucial details about Abbas. I was eager to get Randy Glass on INN World Report and go where ‘Dateline’ and Sy Hersh feared to tread. R.G. Abbas and the ISI had their paw prints all over 9/11. The Times of India and French News Agency AFP had reported that the head of ISI, General Mahmood, wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, through Saed Sheikh, right before 9/11. But no U.S. media outlet ever reported this. It was common knowledge that the ISI and the CIA have been in bed together since Afghanistan’s Mujahideen/Soviet civil war. (As we’ll see in a subsequent chapter, Pakistani intrigue and intelligence created the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which partnered with the CIA to create a $20 billion empire of corruption and covert ops.)” (Ibid.; pp. 2-3.)

5. One of the operatives “stung” by Randy Glass was Egyptian arms dealer Diaa Moshen, who operated in conjunction with Dr. Magdy El-Amir’s brother. (See FTR#’s 495, 499.) “In preparation for my interview, I had Randy overnight us copies of the ‘Dateline NBC’ shows. I was actually pretty impressed. For a selective network news show, they were pretty gutsy. They played tapes Randy had made of Egyptian arms dealer Diaa Moshen talking like Don Corleone, explaining in nervous barks of laughter that his friends the Pakistanis were in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. On surveillance videotape, Moshen and Abbas walk into a warehouse and look at Stinger missiles. Glass is alongside them, playing the part of the wise guy to a hilt. He later told me, ‘I’m an adrenaline junkie. I love the action.’” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

6. In his discussion with Diaa Moshen, Glass elicited a disclosure that Moshen possessed a special passport that enabled him to come and go as he pleased internationally. “Diaa Moshen, according to Glass, was a ‘lunatic capable of killing anybody anytime anywhere, period. And he has, like, Manson type followers. Believe me, you have no idea. I’ve met them, I know.’ Moshen is kind of an evil celebrity in his native Egypt, being a former member of the Egyptian National Soccer Team. On ‘Dateline’, Glass asks him, ‘How do you travel to all of these places without coming up on the radar screen of the CIA or other intelligence agencies in the world? This doesn’t make sense to me.’ Moshen explained that he enjoyed owning a ‘special passport. . . . I enter any fucking country and be protected.’” (Idem.)

7. Among the frightening disclosures concerning Operation Diamondback is the allegation that Diaa Moshen was seeking materials to fabricate a nuclear weapon. Specifically, Moshen was seeking deuterium oxide (“heavy water”) in order to facilitate the construction of an atomic bomb. “In the August ’02 ‘Dateline’ story, Moshen and the Pakistanis don’t just want anti-aircraft missiles, they want the hard stuff: ‘heavy water’ a.k.a. ‘sweet water.’ That would be an order for Deuterium Oxide, which is water, H2O, but with scrambled hydrogen isotopes. Heavy water can turn natural uranium into plutonium. It’s the garage way to make a thermonuclear bomb. You bypass having to enrich the Uranium. Heavy Water is what Nazi Germany was trying to use during World War II. And it’s the method the Pakistanis wanted to use, with Glass and Moshen’s supply run.” (Idem.)

8. Despite the dire nature of the undertakings in which they were involved, Moshen and his associate Mike Malik received extraordinarily lenient treatment: Moshen got 30 months in prison and Malik was set free. Why?! “Heavy water was ‘the deal breaker.’ Glass promised Moshen they could find some. According to ‘Dateline,’ the deal fell apart when $32 million failed to materialize from the Pakistanis. According to Glass, the $32 million was wired over, but the Feds ‘bounced it back’ in order to not ‘embarrass’ the Pakistani government. After 9/11, Dia Moshen and cohort Mike Malik were arrested. But Mike Malik walked, free on a million dollar bond. Terrorist nuclear weapons broker Diaa Moshen got sentenced to a cool 30 months in prison. ‘The whole thing was a fix.’ Glass says today. . . Although crucial details were left on the cutting room floor by ‘Dateline’, their segment ends with this comment: ‘For his part, Randy Glass says there’s a lot more on those tapes, leads the government could pursue, people still out there only too happy to supply weapons to the network of terror.’” (Ibid.; pp. 3-4.)

9. Operation Diamondback sting man Randy Glass notified Senator Bob Graham about the impending attacks on the World Trade Center in July of 2001. In an online TV program, Sander Hicks interviewed Randy Glass and provided some details about Glass’s attempts at warning the authorities of the impending attack on the World Trade Center.

SANDER HICKS: Which leads me to my next question. I know that you then, in July of 2001, contacted your Senator Bob Graham in Florida, Congressman Wexler, as well as your personal friend, the State Senator there in Florida.

RANDY GLASS: Yes I did.

SANDER HICKS: And what was opened from those contacts? Those faxes that you faxed them?

RANDY GLASS: Well, let me just—we’re skipping way ahead—let me just tell you that this meeting was in July of 1999, okay? So, I think it’s very important to note that Abbas, Malik and Moshen came to Florida and we had shown—when I say ‘we,’ the government had set me up with an arms warehouse.

(Ibid.; p. 10.)

10. Glass opined that the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) was a major force behind both Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks.

SANDER HICKS: Right, because it was a sting operation trying to find out who the terrorists were that wanted to buy weapons.

RANDY GLASS: Correct.

SANDER HICKS: And these terrorists were linked to what groups?

RANDY GLASS: To Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden. But basically if I would have to say that even the Saudis that pulled off the 9/11 attack, if I were to say that there was a state-sponsored organization, I would say that it was Pakistan and their ISI, which is like our equivalent to our CIA.

(Idem.)

11. Apparent ISI operative R.G. Abbas (who forecast the destruction of the WTC towers) brought Pakistani nuclear scientific personnel into the attempt to obtain material for a nuclear device. The Pakistani scientist was described as an associate of Mr. Khan, the focal point of the much-publicized international nuclear smuggling ring.

SANDER HICKS: So, which of these three guys had links to ISI?

RANDY GLASS: Mohamed Malik and Abbas. Abbas was a high-ranking ISI official.

SANDER HICKS: Okay. So this led you to some inside knowledge about 9/11, correct?

RANDY GLASS: Oh, absolutely.

SANDER HICKS: What was your inside knowledge?

RANDY GLASS: Okay, the investigation continued on, okay? And Abbas brought—sent—he went back to Pakistan. He and Mohamed Malik got on a plane and flew back to Pakistan. Malik came back. Abbas sent other operatives from the ISI including one of their nuclear scientists, associate of their main nuclear scientist, Khan. He sent back one of his associates to inspect weapons-grade plutonium to make sure that it was weapons-grade plutonium and nuclear triggers. As well as other sophisticated weapons systems. 9/11 was supposed to be a nuclear attack.

(Ibid.; p. 11.)

12.

SANDER HICKS: July, 2001, you knew enough about 9/11—

RANDY GLASS: Yeah.

SANDER HICKS: That you contacted Senator Bob Graham.
RANDY GLASS: Yes.

SANDER HICKS: I have the fax here on my desk.

RANDY GLASS: Yeah.

SANDER HICKS: We’ll show it on screen.

RANDY GLASS: Okay.

SANDER HICKS: And you knew enough about the World Trade Center being attacked that you wanted to contact the Senator at—who was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and let him know.

RANDY GLASS: Correct. And I did.

SANDER HICKS: What was the result of that?

RANDY GLASS: I was put in touch with one of Senator Graham’s workers in his—on his staff. His name was Charles Yonts. And I spoke to Mr. Yonts about a half a dozen times. I provided him with all of the information and material that I had about airplanes being flown into the World Trade Center.

SANDER HICKS: Right. And then I know Kathleen Walters at WPTV/NBC. Channel 5 in Florida, had a very combative interview with Senator Graham.
RANDY GLASS: Correct.

(Ibid.; pp. 11-12.)

13. After 9/11, Florida TV reporter Kathleen Walters had a testy confrontation with Senator Graham over his foreknowledge of the attacks:

SANDER HICKS: She cornered him at a press conference?

RANDY GLASS: Yes. This was after 9/11.

SANDER HICKS: And we’re about to see a tape of that. What can you tell use about this tape?

RANDY GLASS: Well, I can tell you that Senator Graham admitted to Kathleen Walters on that video that I had in fact given him warning before 9/11 about the attack, about airplanes being flown into the World Trade Center.

SANDER HICKS: Okay, now that’s major. So, on that tape that we’re about to see, he effectively admits that you did, in July of 2001, know about 9/11 and notified him, a U.S. Senator of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

RANDY GLASS: Yes.

(Ibid.; p. 13.)

14.

KATHLEEN WALTERS: A few months before September 11, your office received information from ATF informant Randy Glass who was working with the Terrorism Task Force and he also advised your office that terror contentions to bring down the World Trade Center. And this was before September 11th.

SENATOR GRAHAM: [nods.]

(Idem.)

15.

KATHLEEN WALTERS: Your office tells me it forwarded information from Mr. Glass to the Intelligence Committee and my question is, why did no one from the Committee follow up with Mr. Glass to pursue this?

SENATOR GRAHAM: Well because we in turn gave that information to the appropriate intelligence agency. We are an oversight and legislative agency. The actual operations of collection of information, interviewing possible sources is the responsibility of the FBI if it’s a domestic matter, or the CIA if it’s foreign.

KATHLEEN WALTERS: How serious were, you know, when you heard about Mr. Glass and the information he had, obviously got a lot of exposure on ‘Dateline.’ How big of a concern did you personally have when you heard about this serious information that he had?”

(Ibid.; p. 14.)

16.

SENATOR GRAHAM: Well, I was concerned about that and a dozen other pieces of information, which were emanating in the summer of 2001. All of which we transmitted to the appropriate intelligence agency. In the report that we issued this week, there were four to five pages of incidents where people were [indistinct] credible to use commercial airliners as weapons of mass destruction by flying them into a building. So that was not, or should have not have been a surprise that this was a technique that had the potential of moving from a threat to the reality that it became on September 11th. . . .

(Idem.)

17. “Later that week, I called Randy back to go over some facts so I could write a proper introduction. It was the day of the broadcast, a sunny Friday, and Randy dropped a bomb in my lap. The story he told me then made me wish there had been more time at INN. But now, in book form, the story can be unfolded at the careful pace it deserves. I had questions about the fax that Randy had shown me, the July 2001 letters to Senator Graham’s office, and Representative Wexler. I asked Glass why he told Senator Graham he was gravely concerned, ‘I’ve told you repeatedly about my terrorist case—the sophisticated weapons system—nuclear components—the threats of blowing up the World Trade Center and who knows what else. These people hate Americans. This information I’ve gotten from the State Department about the airplanes being used. . . .’ Wait a minute. We were talking about Pakistani spy-terrorists. Since when are we talking about the ‘State Department?’” (Ibid.; pp. 15-16.)

18. In a stunning development, a State Department official contacted by Randy Glass revealed that elements of the government knew about the plan to fly planes into the World Trade Center. “Glass said, ‘The only information that the terrorists—the guys ever talked about –was just the World Trade Center. They didn’t ever say anything to me or to Dick, to my knowledge, that airplanes were going to be used. The State Department guy told me that. In other words, I called up and I bluffed him. I called up and I don’t know what they knew that I knew. I just knew that America was going to be attacked. I didn’t know if it was going to be the World Trade Center or what it was going to be. These people had talked about purchasing these weapons to use against us.” (Ibid.; p. 16.)

19. Pakistan’s status as an ally in the “war on terror” (!) led to the State Department’s sanitizing of any mention of Pakistan or of the fact that the terrorists Glass had targeted were seeking nukes. “A little later, I interrupted Glass and threw him a curveball to see what he’d say—‘When Dick Stoltz on ‘Dateline’ says stuff like, ‘Well, gee, we really thought that FBI or CIA would take over this case.’ Is it possible that the reason that the CIA didn’t take over this case is because the CIA has been working with Pakistani intelligence?’ Glass replied, ‘Of course. That was the whole thing. . . .the State Department was the vehicle that was used to shut down the case. . . So when I called the State Department—because I knew they were the ones who ordered the case shut down. . .The State Department orders the complaint sanitized, and Barbarini [another ATF agent who worked with Glass] is all pissed off because he’s the guy given the job to rewrite the complaint and if you look—it’s a public record, you can get if off the internet—and if you look, you’ll see there’s no mention of Pakistan. There’s no mention of us showing them plutonium. There’s no mention that incriminates Pakistan. I mean, Pakistan is not in there one time. And these were all Pakistani people who were here.” (Idem.)

20.

HICKS: Was that Chuck or was that the other guy?

GLASS: The other guy.

HICKS: Ahh.

(Ibid.; p. 17.)

21. “Later Glass stated that the State Department contact said, ‘Musharaf just took over and our position is that they’re a nuclear power and they’ve been flexing their nuclear muscles with India and we are trying to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. And we know about the threat, the terrorist threat, from Al Qaeda and Bin Laden flying airplanes into the World Trade Center. And Musharaf has guaranteed us—because it’s his ISI behind it—that he can stop it if we support him publicly.’” (Idem.)

22. “Look Randy, we know you’re a straight guy so we’re going to give you some information. You cannot do two things: You cannot go to the media under any circumstance. This is—we’re playing in a nuclear minefield now. Secondly, you can’t tell the agents that you’re working with now because they’re cut out of the loop. They know nothing.’” (Idem.)

23. Still more indications that elements in the State Department had fairly precise knowledge about the plan to crash planes into the WTC:

GLASS: When I called the State Department, I said to them, ‘Listen, I already know about the World Trade Center.’ So they assumed that I knew more than I did. And I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about airplanes. . . .’

HICKS: So you bluffed and you kind of pretended you knew more than you did and then what did they tell you? GLASS: But I didn’t even have to do that. I just said what I knew. I said ‘Look. Listen, I know the World Trade Center is going to be attacked.’ And then this guy said to me ‘Randy listen, you cannot mention any of these things, especially airplanes being used to fly into the World Trade Center.’ And when he said that I almost fell off of my fucking chair. I mean, you have no idea. I thought I was gonna wear the tape out.”

(Ibid.; p. 18.)

24. “Glass was reticent to talk too specifically about the State Department higher-up. But each time he revealed a little more. Over the course of our talks in December, he revealed that the guy who knew about ‘planes being flown into the World Trade Center’ was one of Colin Powell’s right-hand men. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 19.)

25. One of the final elements of discussion concerned the promotion of Dave Frasca, an FBI counter-terror official. Despite a dubious record, he was promoted upward.