THE SECRET NESTS: Flushing out some birds from deep cover!

THE SECRET NESTS

PART I - THE CIA

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August 20, 2009

AP source: CIA hired
contractor to kill al-Qaida

Associated Press Writer Pamela Hess

WASHINGTON – The CIA hired private contractors from Blackwater USA in 2004 as part of a secret program to kill top-level members of al-Qaida, but a spokesman says it never resulted in the capture or killing of any terrorist suspects.

Former Rep. Porter Goss was CIA director at the time, and the contract ended during his time in office, according to a former senior intelligence official and another person familiar with the program. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday the CIA broke the law by failing to notify Congress about the program earlier, her strongest statement yet condemning the agency's actions.

The CIA began the hit squad program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but it never became fully operational.

CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated the program in June upon learning of it, then informed the congressional intelligence committees in an emergency briefing the next day. CIA spokesman George Little said the program yielded no successes.

The New York Times, citing unidentified current and former government officials, said Blackwater executives helped with planning, training and surveillance for the program.

The officials told the Times that the CIA's use of an outside company for a potentially lethal program was a major reason Panetta called the emergency congressional briefing. The Times first reported Blackwater's involvement late Wednesday on its Web site.

Blackwater, a North Carolina company now known as Xe Services, has come under heavy criticism for its alleged role in a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

It was unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill al-Qaida operatives or just to help with training and surveillance. Government officials said bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations, the Times reported.

The Times reported that the CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including founder Erik D. Prince.

The revelation of the program created a small political firestorm on Capitol Hill. The House Intelligence Committee in June launched an investigation to determine whether the CIA broke the law by not informing Congress about the secret program as soon as it was begun.

The program had several lives under four successive CIA directors: George Tenet canceled it during his tenure because it never produced results. His successor, Goss, restarted it and inked the Blackwater contracts. Michael Hayden, Goss' successor, downgraded the program from a planned covert action to an intelligence gathering activity. Panetta drove the final stake into the program in June.

Hayden, speaking Thursday at a panel discussion at the National Press Club, said he was initially puzzled by the urgency and excitement surrounding Panetta's briefing to Congress, knowing what he did already about the program. He said he believes Panetta called the emergency meeting because of the political sensitivity of the program rather than concerns about its legality. Hayden would not discuss details of the still-classified effort.

Jack Devine, a 32-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations office, said Thursday that the government should be extremely cautious about outsourcing lethal and sensitive CIA operations, in part because those are important capabilities the spy agency should be developing in-house, but also because it looks bad if the operation becomes public.

"If it won't pass the giggle test, you don't want to be involved in it," Devine said.

Feinstein said Thursday she believes the intelligence agencies are using too many contractors for duties that are inherently the responsibility of the government.

The CIA regularly uses contractors for intelligence analysis and operations, Hayden told Congress last year. Contractors participated in the secret harsh interrogations of terrorist suspects, he said. Contractors are no longer allowed to conduct interrogations, Panetta told Congress in April.

More than a quarter of the U.S. intelligence agencies' employees are outside contractors, hired to fill in gaps in the military and civilian work force. About a quarter of them conduct intelligence collection and operations, according to data released last year by the office of the director of national intelligence.

The CIA lost about 25 percent of its manpower and budget in the post-Cold War years, so when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks happened the agency was forced to hire a large number of contractors to plug gaps while it recruited more personnel. About half the CIA is made up of officers hired since the attacks.

Calls to Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke were not immediately returned.

Yahoo News

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SECRETS FROM THE CATBIRD’S NEST!

(S-h-h-h ... don’t tell anybody)

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July 20, 2009

Judge: CIA committed fraud
in eavesdropping case

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A federal judge has ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against an eavesdropping lawsuit and is considering sanctioning as many as six who have worked at the agency, including former CIA Director George Tenet.

According to court documents unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth referred a CIA attorney, Jeffrey Yeates, for disciplinary action. Lamberth also denied the CIA's renewed efforts under the Obama administration to keep the case secret because of what he calls the agency's "diminished credibility" and the "twisted history" in the case.

The judge also criticized CIA Director Leon Panetta, saying he's given conflicting accounts about what should be revealed in the case. The ruling led to the unsealing Monday of more than 200 unclassified versions of classified filings in the 13-year-old case.

"The court does not give the government a high degree of deference because of its prior misrepresentations regarding the state secrets privilege in this case," Lamberth ruled.

The court case comes amid increased scrutiny and allegations of lying against the spy agency.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in May that she believes the CIA lied to her about its harsh interrogation program in 2002. Panetta said in June that the CIA had not notified Congress about a secret program to develop hit squads for al-Qaida terrorists. And Congress is investigating whether the agency broke the law by not informing lawmakers about that and other secret activities.

The eavesdropping lawsuit was brought by a former agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency, Richard Horn, who says his home in Rangoon, Burma, was illegally wiretapped by the CIA in 1993. He says Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him relocated because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country's drug trade.

The agency has not said in court filings whether or not it monitored Horn, but Horn claims he was monitored without lawful authority and in violation of his constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Horn says he became suspicious when he came back from a trip out of town to find his government-issued rectangular coffee table replaced with a round one.

Lamberth criticized Panetta for claiming at one point that the CIA's methods for conducting electronic surveillance are state secrets, even though the type of transmitter that Horn claims was used on his coffee table is unclassified and on display at Washington's Spy Museum.

Horn also points to a cable that Huddle sent to Washington quoting his private telephone conversation, which Lamberth labeled "highly suspicious."

Horn sued Brown and Huddle in 1994, seeking monetary damages for violations of his civil rights because of the alleged wiretapping.

Tenet filed an affidavit in 2000 asking that the case against Brown be dismissed because he was a covert agent whose identity was a state secret that must not be revealed in open court. Lamberth granted the CIA's request and threw out the case against Brown in 2004.

But Lamberth found out last year that Brown's cover had been lifted in 2002, even though the CIA continued to file legal documents saying his status was covert. The judge found that the CIA intentionally misled the court and reinstated the case against Brown....

Yahoo News - AP

July 10, 2009

Report: Bush surveillance
program was massive

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.

The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be "carefully monitored."

The report says too few relevant officials knew of the size and depth of the program, let alone signed off on it. They particularly criticize John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos undergirding the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the "President's Surveillance Program" did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the "mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile."

The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government, but five former Bush administration officials refused to be questioned.

They were Ashcroft, Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and David Addington, an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to the report, Addington could personally decide who in the administration was "read into" — allowed access to — the classified program.

The only piece of the intelligence-gathering operation acknowledged by the Bush White House was the wiretapping-without-warrants effort. The administration admitted in 2005 that it had allowed the National Security Agency to intercept international communications that passed through U.S. cables without seeking court orders.

Although the report documents Bush administration policies, its fallout could be a problem for the Obama administration if it inherited any or all of the still-classified operations.

Bush started the warrantless wiretapping program under the authority of a secret court in 2006, and Congress authorized most of the intercepts in a 2008 electronic surveillance law. The fate of the remaining and still classified aspects of the wider surveillance program is not clear from the report.

The report's revelations came the same day that House Democrats said that CIA Director Leon Panetta had ordered one eight-year-old classified program shut down after learning lawmakers had never been apprised of its existence.

The IG report said that President Bush signed off on both the warrantless wiretapping and other top-secret operations shortly after Sept. 11 in a single presidential authorization. All the programs were periodically reauthorized, but except for the acknowledged wiretapping, they "remain highly classified."

The report says it's unclear how much valuable intelligence the program has yielded.

The report, mandated by Congress last year, was delivered to lawmakers Friday.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Ca., told The Associated Press she was shocked to learn of the existence of other classified programs beyond the warrantless wiretapping.

Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a terse reference to other classified programs during an August 2007 letter to Congress. But Harman said that when she had asked Gonzales two years earlier if the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities, he denied it.

"He looked me in the eye and said 'no,'" she said Friday.

Robert Bork Jr., Gonzales' spokesman, said, "It has clearly been determined that he did not intend to mislead anyone."

In the wake of the new report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, renewed his call Friday for a formal nonpartisan inquiry into the government's information-gathering programs.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden — the primary architect of the program_ told the report's authors that the surveillance was "extremely valuable" in preventing further al-Qaida attacks. Hayden said the operations amounted to an "early warning system" allowing top officials to make critical judgments and carefully allocate national security resources to counter threats.

Information gathered by the secret program played a limited role in the FBI's overall counterterrorism efforts, according to the report. Very few CIA analysts even knew about the program and therefore were unable to fully exploit it in their counterrorism work, the report said.

The report questioned the legal advice used by Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo, in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The Justice Department withdrew the memos years ago.

The report says Yoo's analysis approving the program ignored a law designed to restrict the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime, and did so without fully notifying Congress. And it said flaws in Yoo's memos later presented "a serious impediment" to recertifying the program.

Yoo insisted that the president's wiretapping program had only to comply with Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure — but the report said Yoo ignored the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which had previously overseen federal national security surveillance.

"The notion that basically one person at the Justice Department, John Yoo, and Hayden and the vice president's office were running a program around the laws that Congress passed, including a reinterpretation of the Fourth Amendment, is mind boggling," Harman said.

House Democrats are pressing for legislation that would expand congressional access to secret intelligence briefings, but the White House has threatened to veto it.

Yahoo News

From: Global Exchange - Global Justice <globaljustice@globalexchange.org>

Subject: Urgent Action in Solidarity With Honduran Democracy

Date: Sunday, June 28, 2009, 9:35 PM

Global Justice - International

Early Sunday morning, a military coup took place in Honduras.

Sunday was to scheduled to be the day of a national poll on a proposal for a Constitutional Assembly. School of the Americas graduate, General Romeo Vasquez opposed the poll and led a coup which deposed the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya was removed to Costa Rica by the military.

Congressman Cesar Ham, a Zelaya ally and organizer of the national poll was assassinated this morning by a military squad.

Communications have been disrupted, opposition media have been silenced and the military has occupied the entire country.

U.S. Secretary of State Clinton made the following statement:

The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all. We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue. Honduras must embrace the very principles of democracy we reaffirmed at the OAS meeting it hosted less than one month ago.

That's not good enough. The U.S. has a special responsibility to repudiate this coup since we trained General Vasquez to take this sort of action.

Call the State Department and the White House

Tell them we demand that the United States call for the immediate reinstatement of President Zelaya.

State Department: 202-647-4000 or 1-800-877-8339
White House: Comments: 202-456-1111, Switchboard: 202-456-1414

Global Exchange is considering an Emergency International Delegation to Honduras. We will notify you of details as they become available.

In Solidarity,

Global Exchange

Global Exchange is an international human rights group that relies on its members - tens of thousands of people like you - to work with us to create social, political and environmental justice.

www.globalexchange.org

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OUSTED PRESIDENT, REPLACEMENT DUEL FOR HONDURAS

Associated Press

March 3, 2009

CIA destroyed 92
interrogation tapes

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer - 27 mins ago

WASHINGTON – New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations.

The figure is far higher than the handful of recordings the agency has previously admitted destroying, and the revelation comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.

The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of terror interrogation programs.

The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.

Yahoo News

February 11, 2009

Obama under fire for adopting
Bush's stance on 'state secrets'

By Inter Press Service

William Fisher, Inter Press Service

NEW YORK: President Barack Obama has cast doubt on his promise to put an end to secret government by allowing his Justice Department to follow a path frequently taken by his predecessor.

Before a federal appeals court in San Francisco Monday, lawyers from the Obama Department of Justice invoked the same "state secrets privilege" used by the administration of ex-President George W. Bush to argue that a lawsuit brought on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyan Mohammad and four other alleged victims of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program should not go forward because revealing the evidence would harm national security.

If the appeals court agrees, it will mean that the alleged victims will not have their day in court. The court has not yet ruled on the case.

The defendant in the civil lawsuit is known as Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of aerospace giant Boeing, which is alleged to have knowingly provided the CIA with the chartered aircraft used to "render" terror suspects to countries where they were tortured.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Ben Wizner, who argued Monday on behalf of Mohammad and the other appellants, told IPS: "To date, not a single alleged torture victim has had his day in court. In this case, most of the evidence is already public. There are no 'state secrets' here."

"And if there were, our federal courts are well prepared to handle this issue," he added.

"This is a betrayal of the rule of law," the attorney said. "It is not the standard we expected from the Obama administration."

The ACLU was encouraged to believe that the Obama Justice Department would break from the practices of the Bush administration. Eric Holder, recently confirmed as the new attorney general, said at his confirmation hearing: "I will review significant pending cases in which DOJ [Department of Justice] has invoked the state secrets privilege, and will work with leaders in other agencies and professionals at the Department of Justice to ensure that the United States invokes the state secrets privilege only in legally appropriate situations."

This appeared to be at odds with testimony by Obama's nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who told senators at his confirmation hearing that the practice of rendition would be continued, but that "extraordinary rendition" - sending terror suspects to countries where they are likely to be tortured - would end.

In a statement, Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director, said: "Eric Holder's Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same."

He added: "Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama's Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again."

The Mohammad case stems from a federal lawsuit filed in 2007 by the ACLU against Jeppesen on behalf of five victims of the United States government's "extraordinary rendition" program.

The suit charged that Jeppesen knowingly participated by providing critical flight planning and logistical support services to aircraft and crews used by the CIA to forcibly "disappear" the five men to detention and interrogation.

According to the ACLU, shortly after the suit was filed, "The government intervened and inappropriately asserted the 'state secrets privilege,' claiming further litigation would undermine national security interests, even though much of the evidence needed to try the case was already available to the public."

The case was dismissed in February 2008, and the ACLU then appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the San Francisco Bay area.

According to published reports, Jeppesen had actual knowledge of the consequences of its activities. A former Jeppesen employee informed Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine that, at an internal corporate meeting, a senior Jeppesen official stated: "We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights - you know, the torture flights. Let's face it, some of these flights end up that way."

The case has also caused a furor in Britain and a problem for the US State Department.

In a separate case brought on behalf of Mohammad, who is a legal British resident, Britain's High Court refused to release seven paragraphs that the court had redacted in an earlier opinion. The High Court said that the redacted material lent credence to the torture allegations by Mohammad.

The court said that it reached its decision because of what it called a threat from the United States to reconsider sharing intelligence with the British.

But, in a highly unusual criticism, the High Court expressed dismay that a democracy "governed by the rule of law" would seek to suppress evidence "relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be."

The court said the Bush administration had made the threat in a letter to the Foreign Office last September. It called on the Obama administration to reverse that position.

The British foreign secretary, David Milliband, denied that there was any threat from the US. But, in a statement last week, the State Department said that the United States "thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information" and that "the United States investigates allegations and claims of torture, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment such as those raised by Binyam Mohammad."

After Mohammad was captured, then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft said that he had been complicit with Jose Padilla in a plan to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. Padilla was never charged with this plot, but was convicted on other terrorism-related charges by a federal court in 2007. Last year, the Justice Department said it was dropping the dirty-bomb charges against Mohammad, and last October all charges against him were dropped.

The ACLU last week sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to clarify the Obama administration's position on the Mohammad case and to reject what it described as the Bush administration's policy of using false claims of national security to avoid judicial review of controversial programs.

The ACLU's Romero said: "The latest revelation is completely at odds with President Obama's executive orders that ban torture and end rendition, as well as his promise to restore the rule of law."

It has been 50 years since the United States Supreme Court last reviewed the use of the "state secrets" privilege. During the Bush administration, government lawyers invoked the "state secrets" privilege more often than any prior administration to stop cases from proceeding.

Among such cases was that of whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds, who was fired from her position as a language specialist at the FBI's Washington Field Office in March 2002, after she accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleging serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence which, she contended, presented a danger to US security.

Her case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear it. And in 2007, the Supreme Court refused to review the "state secrets" privilege in a lawsuit brought by ACLU client Khaled al-Masri, an innocent German citizen who was kidnapped and rendered to detention, interrogation and torture in a CIA "black site" prison in Afghanistan.

www.dailystar.com

See also: Uncle Sam’s Torture Chambers

July 16, 2008

Bush claims executive privilege on CIA leak

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush has asserted executive privilege to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to comply with a House panel subpoena for material on the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

A House committee chairman, meanwhile, held off on a contempt citation of Mukasey — who had requested the privilege claim — but only as a courtesy to lawmakers not present.

Among the documents sought by House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman are FBI interviews of Vice President Dick Cheney.

They also include notes about the 2003 State of the Union address, during which President Bush made the case for invading Iraq in part by saying Saddam Hussein was pursuing uranium ore to make a nuclear weapon. That information turned out to be wrong.

Waxman rejected Mukasey's suggestion that Cheney's FBI interview on the CIA leak should be protected by the privilege claim — and therefore not turned over to the panel.

"We'll act in the reasonable and appropriate period of time," Waxman, D-Calif., said. But he made clear that he thinks Mukasey has earned a contempt citation and that he'd schedule a vote on the matter soon.

"This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person," Waxman said. "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"

The assertion of the privilege is not about hiding anything but rather protecting the separation of powers as well as the integrity of future Justice Department investigations of the White House, Mukasey wrote to Bush in a letter dated Tuesday. Several of the subpoenaed reports, he wrote, summarize conversations between Bush and advisers — are direct presidential communications protected by the privilege.

"I am greatly concerned about the chilling effect that compliance with the committee's subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations," Mukasey wrote to Bush. "I believe it is legally permissible for you to assert executive privilege with respect to the subpoenaed documents, and I respectfully request that you do so."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush invoked the privilege on Tuesday.

Waxman said he would wait to hold a vote on Mukasey's contempt citation until all members of the panel had a chance to read up on the matter.

The Bush administration had plenty of warning. Waxman warned last week that he would cite Mukasey with contempt unless the attorney general complied with the subpoena. The House Judiciary Committee also has subpoenaed some of the same documents from Mukasey, as well as information on the leak from other current and former administration officials.

Congressional Democrats want to shed light on the precise roles, if any, that Bush, Cheney and their aides may have played in the leak.

State Department official Richard Armitage first revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak, who used former presidential counselor Karl Rove as a confirming source for a 2003 article. Around that time Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was criticizing Bush's march to war in Iraq.

Cheney's then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, also was involved in the leak and was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI. Last July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing him from serving any prison time.

Libby told the FBI in 2003 that it was possible that Cheney ordered him to reveal Plame's identity to reporters.

FORMER CIA DOCTOR SAYS CIA USES SEX SLAVES TO BLACKMAIL POLITICIANS

Sue Arrigo, who worked closely with George Tenet and worked for 40 years at the highest levels of the CIA, says that 'Monarch' children are used to set up Congressmen and other politicians for blackmail purposes. Now you know why many of them never vote according to what their voters want....

She says that she was tortured in Ireland by CIA and British intelligence officers and raped orally and rectally in order to terrorise her so that she would not speak out. Her family were also threatened. She was forced to sign documents that effectively declared her insane and confined to mental hospital. She was given a drug which interfered with REM sleep so that she would become crazy after this torture and brutal treatment.

Arrigo says that DCI Gates told her that the CIA's new policy is to kill the children they kidnap after two years of service as sex slaves....

Arrigo sounds a very credible person. Only the naive and those ignorant about the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind-control program and Monarch sex slave industry will dismiss her claims as fantasy.

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message400379/pg1

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June 15, 2007

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry

By Sue Arrigo, MD

This is the story of how the CIA uses "war zones" to garner kids for the sex slave business. You may have heard how the two companies, DynCorp and Halliburton, were caught trafficking in women during the war in Yugoslavia....

In these cases,they were importing and trafficking in Russian and East bloc women as sex slaves.

I want to talk about the children that are native to any war zone. The CIA did this across Africa, and anywhere they went as a standard part of their operations.

The names of the front companies will change over time. I am writing this down from memory after being inside the CIA for decades. Some of the details may be off, but the gist of the material will be correct.

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry - Part 1

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry - Part 2

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry - Part 3

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http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=54794

See also: Ronald Rewald

x x x

INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1999
(House of Representatives - May 07, 1998)

A Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in Drug International Trafficking

Institute for Policy Studies

WORLD WAR II

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the CIA's parent and sister organizations, cultivate relations with the leaders of the Italian Mafia, recruiting heavily from the New York and Chicago underworlds, whose members, including Charles `Lucky' Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello, help the agencies keep in touch with Sicilian Mafia leaders exiled by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Domestically, the aim is to prevent sabotage on East Coast ports, while in Italy the goal is to gain intelligence on Sicily prior to the allied invasions and to suppress the burgeoning Italian Communist Party.

Imprisoned in New York, Luciano earns a pardon for his wartime service and is deported to Italy, where he proceeds to build his heroin empire, first by diverting supplies from the legal market, before developing connections in Lebanon and Turkey that supply morphine base to labs in Sicily.

The OSS and ONI also work closely with Chinese gangsters who control vast supplies of opium, morphine and heroin, helping to establish the third pillar of the post-world War II heroin trade in the Golden Triangle, the border region of Thailand, Burma, Laos and China's Yunnan Province.

1947

In its first year of existence, the CIA continues U.S. intelligence community's anti-communist drive. Agency operatives help the Mafia seize total power in Sicily and it sends money to heroin-smuggling Corsican mobsters in Marseille to assist in their battle with Communist unions for control of the city's docks.

By 1951, Luciano and the Corsicans have pooled their resources, giving rise to the notorious `French Connection' which would dominate the world heroin trade until the early 1970s.

The CIA also recruits members of organized crime gangs in Japan to help ensure that the country stays in the non-communist world. Several years later, the Japanese Yakuza emerges as a major source of methamphetamine in Hawaii.

(For more on Hawaii’s crystal meth problems, GO TO > > > The Puna Connection)

1949

Chinese Communist revolution causes collapse of drug empire allied with U.S. intelligence community, but a new one quickly emerges under the command of Nationalist (KMT) General Li Mi, who flees Yunnan into eastern Burma. Seeking to rekindle anticommunist resistance in China, the CIA provides arms, ammunition and other supplies to the KMT. After being repelled from China with heavy losses, the KMT settles down with local population and organizes and expands the opium trade from Burma and Northern Thailand. By 1972, the KMT controls 80 percent of the Golden Triangle's opium trade.

1950

The CIA launches Project Bluebird to determine whether certain drugs might improve its interrogation methods. This eventually leads CIA head Allen Dulles, in April 1953, to institute a program for `covert use of biological and chemical materials' as part of the agency's continuing efforts to control behavior.

With benign names such as Project Artichoke and Project Chatter, these projects continue through the 1960s, with hundreds of unwitting test subjects given various drugs, including LSD.

1960

In support of the U.S. war in Vietnam, the CIA renews old and cultivates new relations with Laotian, Burmese and Thai drug merchants, as well as corrupt military and political leaders in Southeast Asia. Despite the dramatic rise of heroin production, the agency's relations with these figures attracts little attention until the early 1970s.

1967

Manuel Antonio Noriega goes on the CIA payroll. First recruited by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959, Noriega becomes an invaluable asset for the CIA when he takes charge of Panama's intelligence service after the 1968 military coup, providing services for U.S. covert operations and facilitating the use of Panama as the center of U.S. intelligence gathering in Latin America.

In 1976, CIA Director George Bush pays Noriega $110,000 for his services, even though as early as 1971 U.S. officials agents had evidence that he was deeply involved in drug trafficking. Although the Carter administration suspends payments to Noriega, he returns to the U.S. payroll when President Reagan takes office in 1981. The general is rewarded handsomely for his services in support of Contras forces in Nicaragua during the 1980s, collecting $200,000 from the CIA in 1986 alone.

MAY 1970

A Christian Science Monitor correspondent reports that the CIA `is cognizant of, if not party to, the extensive movement of opium out of Laos,' quoting one charter pilot who claims that `opium shipments get special CIA clearance and monitoring on their flights southward out of the country.' At the time, some 30,000 U.S. service men in Vietnam are addicted to heroin.

1972

The full story of how Cold War politics and U.S. covert operations fueled a heroin boom in the Golden Triangle breaks when Yale University doctoral student Alfred McCoy publishes his ground-breaking study, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. The CIA attempts to quash the book.

1973

Thai national Puttapron Khramkhruan is arrested in connection with the seizure of 59 pounds of opium in Chicago. A CIA informant on narcotics trafficking in northern Thailand, he claims that agency had full knowledge of his actions. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the CIA quashed the case because it may `prove embarrassing because of Mr. Khramkhruans's involvement with CIA activities in Thailand, Burma, and elsewhere.'

JUNE 1975

Mexican police, assisted by U.S. drug agents, arrest Alberto Sicilia Falcon, whose Tijuana-based operation was reportedly generating $3.6 million a week from the sale of cocaine and marijuana in the United States. The Cuban exile claims he was a CIA protege, trained as part of the agency's anti-Castro efforts, and in exchange for his help in moving weapons to certain groups in Central America, the CIA facilitated his movement of drugs. In 1974, Sicilia's top aide, Jose Egozi, a CIA-trained intelligence officer and Bay of Pigs veteran, reportedly lined up agency support for a right-wing plot to overthrow the Portuguese government.

Among the top Mexican politicians, law enforcement and intelligence officials from whom Sicilia enjoyed support was Miguel Nazar Haro, head of the Direccion Federal de Seguridad (DFS), who the CIA admits was its `most important source in Mexico and Central America.' When Nazar was linked to a multi-million-dollar stolen car ring several years later, the CIA intervenes to prevent his indictment in the United States.

APRIL 1978

Soviet-backed coup in Afghanistan sets stage for explosive growth in Southwest Asian heroin trade. New Marxist regime undertakes vigorous anti-narcotics campaign aimed at suppressing poppy production, triggering a revolt by semi-autonomous tribal groups that traditionally raised opium for export. The CIA-supported rebel Mujahedeen begins expanding production to finance their insurgency.

Between 1982 and 1989, during which time the CIA ships billions of dollars in weapons and other aid to guerrilla forces, annual opium production in Afghanistan increases to about 800 tons from 250 tons.

By 1986, the State Department admits that Afghanistan is `probably the world's largest producer of opium for export' and `the poppy source for a majority of the Southwest Asian heroin found in the United States.' U.S. officials, however, fail to take action to curb production. Their silence not only serves to maintain public support for the Mujahedeen, it also smooths relations with Pakistan, whose leaders, deeply implicated in the heroin trade, help channel CIA support to the Afghan rebels. [Page: H2956]

JUNE 1980

Despite advance knowledge, the CIA fails to halt members of the Bolivian militaries, aide by the Argentine counterparts, from staging the so-called `Cocaine Coup,' according to former DEA agent Michael Levine. In fact, the 25-year DEA veteran maintains the agency actively abetted cocaine trafficking in Bolivia, where government official who sought to combat traffickers faced `torture and death at the hands of CIA-sponsored paramilitary terrorists under the command of fugitive Nazi war criminal (also protected by the CIA) Klaus Barbie.

FEBRUARY 1985

DEA agent Enrique `Kiki' Camerena is kidnapped and murdered in Mexico. DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs Service investigators accuse the CIA of stonewalling during their investigation. U.S. authorities claim the CIA is more interested in protecting its assets, including top drug trafficker and kidnapping principal Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. (In 1982, the DEA learned that Felix Gallardo was moving $20 million a month through a single Bank of America account, but it could not get the CIA to cooperate with its investigation.)

Felix Gallardo's main partner is Honduran drug lord Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, who began amassing his $2-billion fortune as a cocaine supplier to Alberto Sicilia Falcon. (see June 1985) Matta's air transport firm, SETCO, receives $186,000 from the U.S. State Department to fly `humanitarian supplies' to the Nicaraguan Contras from 1983 to 1985. Accusations that the CIA protected some of Mexico's leading drug traffickers in exchange for their financial support of the Contras are leveled by government witnesses at the trials of Camarena's accused killers.

JANUARY 1988

Deciding that he has outlived his usefulness to the Contra cause, the Reagan Administration approves an indictment of Noriega on drug charges. By this time, U.S. Senate investigators had found that `the United States had received substantial information about criminal involvement of top Panamanian officials for nearly twenty years and done little to respond.'

APRIL 1989

The Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, headed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, issues its 1,166-page report on drug corruption in Central America and the Caribbean. The subcommittee found that `there was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zone on the part of individuals Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras supporters throughout the region.' U.S. officials, the subcommittee said, `failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua.'

The investigation also reveals that some `senior policy makers' believed that the use of drug money was `a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems.'

JANUARY 1993

Honduran businessman Eugenio Molina Osorio is arrested in Lubbock Texas for supplying $90,000 worth of cocaine to DEA agents. Molina told judge he is working for CIA to whom he provides political intelligence. Shortly after, a letter from CIA headquarters is sent to the judge, and the case is dismissed. `I guess we're all aware that they [the CIA] do business in a different way than everybody else,' the judge notes. Molina later admits his drug involvement was not a CIA operation, explaining that the agency protected him because of his value as a source for political intelligence in Honduras.

NOVEMBER 1996

Former head of the Venezuelan National Guard and CIA operative Gen. Ramon Gullien Davila is indicted in Miami on charges of smuggling as much as 22 tons of cocaine into the United States.

More than a ton of cocaine was shipped into the country with the CIA's approval as part of an undercover program aimed at catching drug smugglers, an operation kept secret from other U.S. agencies....

x x x

From Drugging America , by Rodney Stich:

FBI AGENT EXPOSES
CIA-MAFIA-DRUG TIES

A veteran FBI agent and highly-decorated Vietnam veteran provided still further corroboration to the fact that the CIA has been smuggling drugs for the past 40 years, that the CIA has been engaging in drug trafficking with Mafia segments, and that the CIA has been engaging in drug trafficking with Mafia segments, and that the FBI and other Justice Department divisions have covered up for these interrelated crimes.

Richard M. Taus had been a Special Agent for the FBI from 1978 to 1988, during which time he was assigned to organized crime and foreign counter-intelligence operations....

While he was a helicopter unit commander in Vietnam, Taus discovered and reported to his supervisors widespread drug trafficking by the Central Intelligence Agency. Taus described how the CIA transported drugs that were sold to American GI's in Vietnam and Laos, causing over a third of the armed forces in Vietnam to become drug addicts.

These GI's were often too drugged out to either fight or defend themselves. In addition, in that condition, they often killed their own officers, a practice known as "fragging." ...

I first made contact with Taus in 1997, and he was hesitant about revealing government corruption that he discovered while an FBI agent. I explained to Taus that there was a U.S. Supreme Court decision rendered about 15 years earlier stating that a federal employee had a greater duty to report criminal activities by his superiors than a duty to cover up for such crimes because of any employee secrecy agreement....

Taus said he did all he could to report these criminal activities, but the coverup was too pervasive. The coverup included senior FBI officials such as Oliver "Buck" Revell, who had earlier stalled and stopped legitimate FBI investigations concerning both the Irangate and Iraqgate scandals, similar to his boss, J. Edgar Hoover, protecting organized crime for many years....

He stated in general terms about discovering evidence of major criminal activities involving the CIA, the White House, and other government operations. Over a period of several years, Taus provided me with sufficient data to write a book sole on his disclosures as a military pilot and then an FBI agent....

While Taus was piloting a helicopter in Vietnam he heard over the aircraft radio a distress call from the pilot of an Air America C-46 aircraft about to make a crash landing. Taus proceeded to the crash site and landed, offering to fly the unharmed pilots to their base of operations. But the crew refused to leave the aircraft, saying they would wait for Air America people to arrive. The reason for refusing to leave the aircraft was suggested by the nature of the cargo: it consisted of heroin, estimated at about 4000 pounds.

(Air America and its predecessor airline, Civil Air Transport, among others, was one of many CIA airlines. While I was flying captain for Japan Airlines out of Tokyo, where many of these CIA-associated pilots went for recreation, I learned from them that the CIA was hauling drugs.)

Upon returning to base, Taus made a written report to his military unit commander describing the heroin on the Air America aircraft. He also sent a letter to his New York congressman, reporting the CIA's drug smuggling operation. A congressional "investigation" followed, which covered up for the CIA's drug smuggling - a congressional coverup that has gone on for the past 40 years....

Taus returned to the United States from Vietnam and became part of the New York National Guard, assigned to instructor duties for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College courses. While on military duty with the National Guard, he was sent to Central and South America several times on special missions, during which he learned more about the global drug trafficking business and the involvement of it of the CIA, State Department, and U.S. military....

After leaving the military, Taus joined the FBI as a Special Agent, and continued his ties to the military as a senior officer in the Army Reserve. During his FBI investigations, Taus discovered covert CIA operations in the United States, including looting the savings and loans, and other criminal activities....

Taus explained how the CIA had infiltrated the FBI and discovered the names of FBI agents and informants, and investigations that could expose covert and criminal CIA operations. The CIA knowingly gave false information to FBI agents, seriously jeopardizing FBI missions and misleading top Justice Department and White House personnel....

Taus was very concerned about the CIA drug smuggling that he observed over a 20-year period of time while an Army officer and then while an FBI Special Agent. This concern was increased by his discovery that the CIA was actively involved in drug trafficking with organized crime figures in the New York area. And if this wasn't enough, his concern was further heightened by FBI supervisors ordering him to shut down his investigation.

Taus and other FBI agents discovered CIA drug trafficking as a result of their investigations into other organized crime activities, and aided by the Pennsylvania Crime Commission Report on drug trafficking among pizza outlets and cheese dealers. The Pennsylvania report described extensive interstate and international drug-trafficking involving Mafia figures throughout the United States and Canada....

Taus, while heading an FBI investigative team, discovered CIA involvement with the American Mafia in drug trafficking during the time when Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Freeh was prosecuting the Italian Mafia's drug trafficking activities in the Pizza Connection drug cases. Freeh's prosecution of these cases propelled him to prominence in the FBI and he eventually became the director of the bureau.

It was Taus' belief there was a conflict between the Sicilian Mafia drug activities and those of the American Mafia, and that the CIA's connections were with the American Mafia. He felt the selective crackdown on the Sicilian Mafia was to eliminate competition to the CIA-backed American Mafia....

Also, the Pizza Connection drug charges focused on low level Mafia figures while protecting high-level drug kingpins and their accomplices in government. Taus explained the obstacles blocking prosecution by well-placed political figures, judges, and others.

He explained how AUSA Freeh blocked the issuance of subpoenas for such companies as Cremosa and Drexel-Castle, which had CIA connections....

~ ~ ~

A signed affidavit of Richard M. Taus is reproduced in Rodney Stich's book, Drugging America :

Affidavit of Richard M. Taus

I, Richard M. Taus, declare and state: I am a former Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned to the New York Office and the Brooklyn-Queens Metropolitan Resident Agency from July 1978 to November 1988. I was assigned to both the Foreign Counter-Intelligence Division and the Criminal Division.

During this period of time, my investigations into these matters revealed criminal activities and operations which I reported and documented to my superiors in the FBI, as follows:

The involvement of official, agents and operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with organized crime members and drug-trafficking activities. And the participation by members of the CIA who engaged in the looting of the Savings & Loan (Thrift) Industries, financial scams and fraudulent securities transactions.

The involvement of people from the National Security Agency Staff and Council and the White House in criminal activities associated with funding the acquisition of military supplies and equipment, arms and ammunition which were referred to as the Iran-Contra Arms Initiative, known as Irangate, and the Iraqi Scandal, known as Iraqgate.

The associations between known and suspected members of the Mafia and CIA agents in conducting drug-trafficking activities and financial frauds.

I was ordered by my supervisors in the FBI to halt these investigations, destroy my written reports, terminate my informants and make no reference to these criminal and subversive activities implicating high-ranking government officials, politicians, Mafia and business leaders who controlled and manipulated government agencies and operations.

Without any support from my superiors at the FBI New York Field Office, I then sent a letter describing what I had discovered in my official status as an FBI Special Agent to the FBI Director, William Sessions, and this was ignored. I proceeded to write Congressional officials, among them Senators Arlan Spector, Alfonse D'Amato, John Kerry and Congressmen Norman Lent, Charles Schmur, and many others who were on both the Senate and House Intelligence Oversight Committees. None of the above officials or representatives provided any support or assistance in exposing the CIA-White House corruption and the obstruction of justice tactics by my FBI superiors.

My sole purpose in preparing this affidavit, to be used by the former FBI Special Agent-In-Charge of the Los Angeles Field office, SAC Ted Gunderson, is to bring to justice the criminal and subversive activities that I and other government agents and operatives have discovered during our official and government related duties.

I declare and affirm under penalty of perjury that these statements are true to the best of my knowledge and belief. Executed this 13^th day of August 1997, in the County of Clinton, State of New York.

(s) Richard M. Taus

For more on the CIA and drugs, GO TO > > > Songs of the Drug Vultures

x x x

From ... and the truth shall set you free , by David Icke:

The Hidden Hand

After a period as the United States representative in China while the Chinese and Henry Kissinger were supporting Pol Pot in Cambodia, George H.W. Bush returned home in 1975. He received a telegram from Kissinger saying that he was being nominated by Ford (Kissinger) to be the Director of the CIA.

This is a major Elite organisation, as is British Intelligence, which is probably above the CIA in the Elite pyramid. It was British Intelligence that helped to set up the CIA after the war. The familiar names step forward again.

A key figure behind the formation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), later the CIA, was General William J. Donovan. He studied law at Columbia University under Professor Harland F. Stone, who would later become US Attorney General and appoint Donovan as his assistant. Another of Stone's protégés was J. Edgar Hoover, who would be head of the FBI, and one of Donovan's classmates was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the future President.

In the First World War and between the wars, Donovan accepted a number of intelligence assignments from the New World Order brigade, including J.P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, and the Rothschilds, and on one occasion he spent an evening with Aldolf Hitler.

In 1941 he was appointed head of the new OSS intelligence agency by his friend from Columbia, Franklin Roosevelt. Donovan was assisted by James Paul Warburg, the son of Paul Warburg. It was James Warburg who said:

"We shall have a world government whether or not you like it - by conquest or consent."

However, it seems Donovan was not actually in charge of the OSS. According to Eustace Mullins in The World Order, Our Secret Rulers, Winston Churchill's military secretary, Colonel E.I. Jacob, was told by Major Desmond Morton Church, the Prime Minister's liaison with British Intelligence, in September 1941.

"Another most secret fact of which the Prime Minister is aware is that to all intents and purposes US Security is being run for them at the President's request by the British. A British officer sits in Washington with Mr. Edgar Hoover and General Bill Donovan for this purpose. It is of course essential that this fact should not be known."

The leading British coordinator of the OSS and its policy was William Stephenson, the head of the Special Intelligence Section of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and he was given a floor of the Rockefeller Center rent free. From there he ran a network of British agents in the United States which, according to Mullins, were involved in the murders of German sailors in New York, acts designed to entice Hitler to declare war on America.

Stephenson and Louis Bloomfield, the head of Permindex, also ran Operation Underworld with the Lansky Syndicate. Mullins suggests that three other members of the British Chiefs of Staff behind the creation of the OSS were: Lord Louis Mountbatten (Committee of 300, Bilderberg), a cousin of the King and related to the Frankfort banking families, Rothschild and Cassel; Charles Hambro, director of Hambros Bank and the Special Operations Executive; and Colonel Stewart Menzies, head of the Secret Intelligence Service. Lord Victor Rothschild was also at the heart of it. . . .

After the war, Donovan was special assistant to the US prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials to ensure that British and American involvement with the Nazis was not revealed. President Truman disbanded the OSS in 1945, but it was reformed as the CIA in 1948 under the control of Allen W. Dulles, a major funder of Adolf Hitler.

Appropriately, Dulles, a director of Hitler's bankers, J. Henry Schroder (Committee of 300), chose them to handle CIA funds. The CIA is an arm of the tax-exempt foundation syndicates controlled by the Rockefellers/Rothschilds, like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie organisation, through which much of the CIA policy is decided.

But although the CIA is extremely important to the New World Order, the real power in American intelligence circles is the National Security Agency (NSA), an organisation that keeps its head down while the CIA does its dirty work.

So while Bush was head of the CIA and even when he was president, he would be answerable to higher masters within the Elite....

Bush was not heading an independent CIA, but an element within the so called 'Inner Fed' of the secret government which consists of the CIA, NSA, FBI, NASA, and the Federal Reserve.

Much of the funding for this cartel of manipulation comes from its involvement in the hard drugs trade....

For more on Henry Kissinger, GO TO >>> The Kissinger of Death

# # #

S-h-h-h, for a peek at some of these
clandestine birds and their secret nests,

SNEAK ON DOWN!

American International Group - The bigger they are, the harder they are to hide.

From the Wilderness

A.I.G.

Michael C. Ruppert

[EDITORIAL NOTE - From The Wilderness is a sole proprietorship and dba. It is written and edited by one person: Me. I do almost all of the research. Therefore, in the following story, for both legal reasons and for better reading I have decided to use the personal pronouns "I" and "me" instead of standard editorial references in the third person.]

----------

This series is dedicated to Mark Swaney of the Ozark Gazette for his intellectual courage and tenacity; to John McGlaughlin, the straightest and toughest man who ever honestly carried a badge; to Celerino Castillo III, with a heart bigger than his beloved Texas; to all the young men and women, mostly minorities, who are serving up to life in prison for crimes that don't remotely compare to those of Carlos Lehder; and to all the innocents in Colombia who stand at the brink of the next Vietnam War.

------------

There are mounting holes in the story of a woman, Coral Talavera Baca (henceforth referred to by her maiden name Talavera), who has claimed to be the wife of Medellin Cartel co-founder, Carlos Lehder, deepening the mystery about relationships between her, Lehder himself, the insurance giant American International Group (AIG), and the Central Intelligence Agency.

These new discrepancies, including her prior confirmation of the authenticity of documents now suspected of being forged, have raised the possibility that the U.S. Government, in partnership with AIG, has been deliberately planting false information in the press to support the woman's claims about Lehder's reported freedom and activities. Talavera has been simultaneously described as either Staff Counsel for AIG's in house San Francisco law firm or as its office manager.

In Part I of this series we reported that other journalists, who have asked not to be identified, had received the same documents we continue to examine here. Some of those documents purport to be official reports from the U.S. Treasury and U.S. Attorney's offices.

As FTW moves deeper into its multi-part investigation - inspired by revelations of possible 1987-92 drug money laundering involving AIG, Goldman Sachs and the Arkansas Development Financial Authority (ADFA) - attention now focuses on Talavera's employer, AIG.

These events increased my interest in the 1987 founding of Coral Reinsurance (Coral Re) by AIG, Goldman Sachs (whose then Vice Chairman Robert Rubin served as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration) and ADFA.

Lehder, arrested in 1987, was allowed to keep almost $3 billion in assets in a move severely criticized by Merkle. Where did that money go? Was it hidden it in a major insurance company with cash flows large enough to conceal it? This question, more than any other, except establishing Lehder's current status, prompted me to begin this investigation. . . .

FTW has also conducted an extensive investigation into AIG and its predecessors, including the C. V. Starr Insurance Companies, revealing deep connections to US intelligence dating back to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II.

These connections include documented CIA operatives connected to drug smuggling from Southeast Asia and a current board member, Frank Wisner, Jr., whose father was a key figure in the creation of the CIA.

History, as well as AIG's current operations, suggest that these relationships continue unabated today.

These connections may go a long way toward explaining the behavior of Talavera, a woman whose education, work experience and history apparently do not qualify her to manage a legal office which, according to AIG spokesman Michael Murphy, specializes in the international operations of a company operating in 130 countries and with year 2000 revenues of $46 billion.

While the mystery deepens about the woman claiming to be his wife, the key question as to whether or not Lehder is free remains unanswered.

~ ~ ~

In Part I of this series I reported that through a number of vehicles including correspondence, e-mails, a telephone listing in the name of Carlos Lehder, tape recorded conversations and in-person statements Coral Talavera had represented to a number of people, including a retired DEA agent, me and others that she was the wife of Medellin Cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder.

In an on-the-record interview and a legally tape recorded conversation she has also vouched for the authenticity of documents that have either been shown to be forged or are now seriously suspected of being forged.

She additionally made it clear that Lehder was out of prison, working for the United States government and directly connected to the CIA and the U.S. Treasury....

All of this begs the question as to why AIG would protect and employ a woman engaged in these and other behaviors and with a history that could only damage the company's reputation.

The one fact of Coral Talavera's life that has not been called into question by any of the sources I have contacted is that Coral knew and had a relationship with Carlos Lehder in the 1980s. The suspicions of many that Lehder is free have not yet been allayed. . . .

So these disturbing developments also drive home the importance of a question that the US government still has not answered.

Where is Carlos Lehder and what motive could the government -- or AIG -- have for wanting some people to believe, or know, that he is free?

If I am so patently wrong in what I have reported in this investigation, including the publication of the tape-recorded conversation wherein Talavera openly talks about Lehder's freedom and says that she is his wife, why doesn't the government just deny it, produce Lehder, discredit Talavera and state that the rest is pure bunk?

Is there a legend -- a cover story -- that the CIA and AIG are trying to protect for the benefit of unknown third parties in other parts of the world?

~ ~ ~

For more, GO TO > > > The Un-American Insurance Group

JIM JONES AND THE PEOPLES TEMPLE

By Jim Hougan

What follows is a work in progress about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple.

In so far as it has a central thesis, it is that Jones initiated the 1978 massacre at Jonestown, Guyana because he feared that Congressman Leo Ryan's investigation would disgrace him. Specifically, Jones was afraid that Ryan and the press would uncover evidence that the leftist founder of the Peoples Temple was for many years an asset of the FBI and the CIA.

This fear was, I believe, mirrored in various precincts of the U.S. intelligence community, which worried that Ryan's investigation would embarrass the CIA by linking Jones to some of the Agency's most volatile programs---including "mind-control studies" and operations such as MK-ULTRA.

This is, I believe, why Jones's 201-file was purged by the CIA immediately after Jones's case-officer, Dan Mitrione, was murdered in Montevideo, Uruguay.

What I believe and what I can prove are, in some instances, two different things. There is no smoking gun in the pages that follow. But I think the reader will agree that there are certainly a great many empty cartridges lying around---enough, perhaps, to stimulate further investigation by others.

Having said that, it should be added that I am hardly the first to suggest that the Jonestown massacre was the outcome of someone's secret machinations. The affair is inherently mysterious, and conspiracy theories abound---the most prominent among them that "Jonestown" was a CIA mind-control experiment.

This is a view that has been put forward in a number of venues. Congressman Ryan's close friend and chief-of-staff, Joe Holsinger, is persuaded of it. The respectable Edwin Mellen Press has gone so far as to publish a book on the subject. And professional conspiracists such as John Judge have embraced the thesis wholeheartedly.

In my view, they're probably mistaken. The truth is darker, the evil more banal...

Read the full story at...

http://jimhougan.com/JimJones.html

For more, GO TO > > > Of Vampires and Daisies

Asa Hutchinson - Congressman from Arkansas.

From The Wilderness

[The man appointed by President Bush to head the Drug Enforcement Administration has been an ally of the CIA and drug smugglers in the past. His true job may be to manage the drug trade so that the profits remain in the pockets of the CIA and Wall Street. Here, veteran Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt tells you the hidden history of Asa Hutchinson. - Special Presentation from the May 31, 2001 issue of FTW]

$ $ $

May 25, 2001

Asa and Me

I've wondered for years: What does Hutchinson know
about Arkansas's biggest drug smuggler?
And when did he know it?

By Mara Leveritt, Arkansas Times

Asa Hutchinson and I share a passion for the subject of drugs. As a crusading member of Congress, he talks a lot about them. As a reporter focused on crime, my writing centers on them. Hutchinson wants to intensify this country''s war on drugs. I think three decades of failure have proven the war a disaster.

Now President George W. Bush has nominated Hutchinson to head the DEA, the biggest drug-fighting squad in the world. But before Hutchinson assumes that post, there are some questions about high-level cocaine trafficking in Arkansas while he was a U.S. attorney here that he should be required to answer. The questions have hung about for years, but so far he has managed to dodge them.

They relate to the period from 1982 to 1985, when Hutchinson served as the federal prosecuting attorney for western Arkansas. He speaks often of that time.

"During the 1980s, our nation declared a war against drugs," he proclaimed in a 1997 speech to the House. "I was in that battle as a federal prosecutor. It was during that time that our families, our communities, and our law-enforcement officials mobilized in a united effort to fight this war."

In another speech he observed, "I have seen the drug war from all sides - as a member of Congress, as a federal prosecutor, and as a parent - and I know the importance of fighting this battle on all fronts."

But some strange things happened in Hutchinson's district while he was federal prosecutor that he doesn't mention in his speeches. Specifically, a man identified by federal agents as "a documented, major narcotics trafficker" was using facilities at an airport in Hutchinson''s district for "storage, maintenance, and modification" of his drug-running aircraft, throughout most of Hutchinson's tenure.

The man was Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal. For the last four years of his life - and throughout Hutchinson's term as U.S. attorney - his base of operations was Mena, Arkansas.

In 1982, the year that Hutchinson took office as U.S. attorney and Seal moved to Mena, federal officials were already aware that he controlled "an international smuggling organization" that was "extremely well organized and extensive." Agents for the DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs, and IRS were watching him. They brought Hutchinson evidence that Seal was "involved in narcotics trafficking and the laundering of funds derived from such trafficking."

I knew none of this in the early 1980s. At the time, this was highly secret information, known only to a handful of state and federal investigators and a few politicians, including U.S. Attorney Asa Hutchinson.

My interest in the relationship between Seal and Hutchinson was piqued as I became aware of how heavily drug prosecutions fell on street - and mid-level dealers, while smugglers like Seal, who imported drugs by the ton, rarely ended up in prison. So when rumors surfaced about Seal and his organization, and how they had managed for years to avoid prison, even though the extent of their activities was well known to drug authorities, I wanted to know more.

But getting the story has not been easy. In the early 1990s, I asked Hutchinson about Barry Seal and his associates at Mena. Hutchinson provided no information, and politely dismissed the complaints that had arisen by then about his failure to prosecute Seal. He said he had already resigned as U.S. attorney by the time the matter arose.

Even then I knew better than that. Ignoring sidelong glances from some of my peers, who already equated drug smuggling at Mena with reports of life on Mars, I began collecting official accounts of what had happened there. My main thrust was an attempt to acquire, through the federal Freedom of Information laws, all the documents relating to Seal that were generated by the FBI.

I wish now that I had gone after the DEA's records on Seal, but I was working in the dark. I knew that the FBI had been involved in Seal's case, so I began with what I knew.

The battle to obtain even those documents has now taken longer than the length of time that Seal was based at Mena. At first the FBI denied that it had any records on Seal. When I produced photocopies of FBI memos relating to the Seal investigation, the agency acknowledged that a file existed. But, I was told, it probably would take years to review it, and besides, thousands of applicants for other files were already ahead of me.

That's when I wrote to two members of Congress, asking for their help. Even though Hutchinson is not from my district, I contacted him in hopes that, having been close to the events, he would want to help clear the record. Again, he responded politely.

He told me that it was always good to hear from me, that he had contacted the FBI in my behalf, and that he would be back in touch with me when the agency responded. He included a copy of a federal guide to using the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, in the hope that it would help in my "research efforts." He thanked me for my patience.

That was the last I heard from Asa Hutchinson until a couple of years later, when I mentioned the incident in a column. At that point, an aide to Hutchinson hastened to apologize for the lack of follow up. But still, there was no help on the Mena front coming from the Hutchinson camp.

Fortunately, Rep. Vic Snyder was more responsive. In fact, Snyder and his staff made repeated attempts to persuade the FBI to release the records I had requested. Finally, after a personal visit from Snyder, the agency agreed to start releasing some of its files on Mena. As a result, during the past two years, I have received several hundred pages of reports relating to Barry Seal. I have posted many of these pages on my website, www.maraleveritt.com, and a new batch will be posted soon. The pages reflect the intensity of activity surrounding Seal, even if, in true wartime fashion, most of the details have been blacked out.

Many of the documents have been so heavily censored that they have been rendered worthless. And hundreds more were withheld altogether. Some of the redactions were made, according to agency notations, to protect the privacy of named individuals. Many others, however, are said to have been made to protect "national security."

In an effort that my children predict I'll still be waging from beyond the grave, I am appealing the national security exclusions. What, I ask, is the connection between Seal and national security?

I have seen the rug of "national security" grow larger by the year, and it concerns me that so many aspects of this war on drugs are piously being swept under it.

Too often "national security" means "don't tell the American people."

I believe that if this country is going to fight a long and costly war, the war's leaders have an obligation to report faithfully on its battles. The incidents that surrounded Seal constituted a major battle. But the faithful report has been missing. For more than 15 years, U.S. government officials, including Hutchinson, who were close to the events have maintained a stony silence.

Yet, despite the former prosecutor's unhelpfulness, chunks of the story have emerged. And scoffs about Mena aside, it is a remarkable one. The stakes with Seal were about as high as they can get in a war. The story is replete with intrigue and layers of betrayal. The losses it reflects were enormous.

Here's a gram of what happened:

Early in 1984, after years of painstaking investigation, law enforcement agencies, including the DEA, were ready to prosecute Seal. But Seal called upon political connections, and they let him become an informant rather than go to prison. The price of Seal''s last-minute deal with the U.S. government was that he was to betray his Colombian allies, toppling the leadership of the Medellin cartel.

But the government lost on the deal. The plan to use Seal to rout the cartel ended in murder and failure. Not only was Seal exposed, and then assassinated, but members of his "extensive" organized crime operation evaded prosecution.

The fiasco left many law enforcement officers who'd worked on the Seal case feeling that they'd been betrayed. I''ve interviewed some of them, and their disillusionment is heartbreaking.

In 1992, I spoke with Jack Crittendon, a sergeant with the Louisiana State Police. He told me that 10 years earlier, in early 1982, he and his partner were building a case against Seal when they were notified that DEA officials in Miami were on the verge of indicting Seal. Armed with that information, Crittendon and his partner confronted Seal at a steak house in Baton Rouge.

"We told him we'd like for him to turn around and cooperate with us and with the DEA and with the U.S. attorney in Baton Rouge," Crittendon recalled. "We were looking across the table at him. Now, the man had a mind for business. With his mind, he could have been the head of a Fortune 500 company. It just so happened that his business was smuggling. We told him we wanted the cartel. He said he'd have to give it some thought."

Ultimately, Seal rejected the Louisiana proposal. Crittendon recalled, "We said, 'That's fine with us, but wherever you go, they're going to be after you.' And, in fact, it was shortly after that, he turned up in Mena, Arkansas."

Seal was being watched so closely that state and federal officials in Arkansas, including Asa Hutchinson, knew of his move to Arkansas, almost from the moment his first aircraft arrived. They also knew that Seal had formed a business relationship with Rich Mountain Aviation, an aircraft modification company headquartered at the Mena airport.

Soon after Seal's move to Mena, U.S. Attorney Hutchinson called a meeting at his Fort Smith office to coordinate local surveillance. Among those attending were an Arkansas DEA agent, a U.S. Customs official, and U.S. Treasury agent William C. Duncan.

Duncan's job was to investigate money laundering by the Seal organization. By the end of 1982, he had gathered what he believed to be substantial evidence of the crime.

Duncan and an Arkansas State Police investigator, who was also monitoring Seal's enterprise, took their evidence to Hutchinson. They asked that the U.S. attorney subpoena 20 witnesses they'd identified to testify before a federal grand jury. To Duncan's surprise, however, Hutchinson seemed reluctant. Ultimately, Hutchinson called only three of the 20 witnesses the investigators had requested.

The three appeared before the grand jury, but afterwards, two of them also expressed surprise at how their questioning was handled. One, a secretary at Rich Mountain Aviation, had given Duncan sworn statements about money laundering at the company, transcripts of which Duncan had provided to Hutchinson. But when the woman left the jury room, she complained that Hutchinson had asked her nothing about the crime or the sworn statements she'd given to Duncan. As Duncan later testified, "She basically said that she was allowed to give her name, address, position, and not much else."

The other angry witness was a banker who had, in Duncan's words, "provided a significant amount of evidence relating to the money-laundering operation." According to Duncan, he, too, emerged from the jury room complaining "that he was not allowed to provide the evidence that he wanted to provide to the grand jury."

Hutchinson left the U.S. attorney's office in October 1985, to make what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. His successor, J. Michael Fitzhugh, appeared no more zealous than Hutchinson to pursue information regarding Seal. As a result, neither Seal nor his associates in Arkansas were indicted.

(As late as 1989, according to records I've received, FBI agents in Little Rock were still expecting that some of Seal's associates would be indicted. Only after Sen. Dale Bumpers inquired into the status of the case, and calls were made to Fitzhugh's office, did the agents learn that the grand jury had disbanded the previous summer without issuing the expected indictments.)

In 1991, Treasury agent Duncan was questioned under oath about the Seal investigation. Asked what conclusions he and his superiors at the IRS had drawn, Duncan answered matter-of-factly, "There was a cover-up."

"I had found Asa Hutchinson to be a very aggressive U.S. attorney in connection with my cases," Duncan said. "Then, all of a sudden, with respect to Mena, it was just like the information was going in, but nothing was happening, over a long period of time. But, just like with the 20 witnesses and the complaints, I didn't know what to make of that. Alarms were going off...

"We were astonished that we couldn't get subpoenas. We were astonished that Barry Seal was never brought to the grand jury, because he was on the subpoena list for a long time. And there were just a lot of investigative developments that made no sense to us."

Asked to elaborate, Duncan explained, "One of the most revealing things was that we had discussed specifically with Asa Hutchinson the rumors about National Security [Administration] involvement in the Mena operation. And Mr. Hutchinson told me personally that he had checked with a variety of law enforcement agencies and people in Miami, and that Barry Seal would be prosecuted for any crimes in Arkansas. So we were comfortable that there was not going to be National Security interference."

Duncan also said he found it "very strange" that he saw so few signs of the DEA at Mena while Seal was headquartered there. "We were dealing with allegations of narcotics smuggling [and] massive amounts of money laundering," Duncan said in his deposition. "And it was my perception that the Drug Enforcement Administration would have been very actively involved at that stage, along with the Arkansas State Police. But DEA was conspicuously absent during most of that time."

Duncan did not know while he was investigating Seal that, about a year and a half after Seal's move to Arkansas - and about midway through Hutchinson''s term as U.S. attorney - the smuggler had changed his mind about becoming a federal informant. In March 1984, with charges filed against him in Florida and others pending in Louisiana, Seal was desperate to make a deal. But the U.S. attorney in Fort Lauderdale was more inclined to prosecute than to let Seal roll and become an informant. The talks had reached an impasse.

Not everyone charged with drug crimes can bargain effectively with the U.S. government. But Seal had some advantages. For one, he had financial resources. According to his own account, by 1984 he had already earned between $60 and $100 million smuggling cocaine into the U.S. He could hire his own lawyers.

Perhaps more important, it appears, he had cultivated some important connections. Stymied in his negotiations in Florida, Seal flew his personal Lear jet to Washington, D.C., where he met with members of a White House task force on crime headed by the elder George Bush. At the time, the current president's father was vice president under President Ronald Reagan.

There is no indication that then Vice President George Bush was present at the meeting with Seal. But the meeting was important, nonetheless. Where Seal had failed in Florida, he now succeeded in Washington, as members of the task force backed his offer to become a federal informant.

Days later, in the presence of Justice Department officials, Seal signed an agreement to cooperate with the DEA. The problem for Duncan and other investigators working in Louisiana and Arkansas was that the deal was kept a secret. Contrary to law enforcement protocols, they were not informed of the change in Seal's status.

Seal lived for 23 months after he cut that deal. They are months shrouded in mystery. Questions that have festered for years remain to this day unanswered.

Why were Duncan and other investigators assigned to follow Seal not notified that he was now a confidential government informant? And what was the DEA''s role with regard to Seal? How close was the supervision of this high-level criminal turned critically-important informant? After Seal became an informant, did he continue to smuggle drugs - and keep the money he made from them - as he later testified in court that he did?

By Seal's own account, his gross income in the year and a half after he became an informant - while he was based at Mena and while Asa Hutchinson was the federal prosecutor in Fort Smith, 82 miles away - was three-quarters of a million dollars. Seal reported that $575,000 of that income had been derived from a single cocaine shipment, which the DEA had allowed him to keep. Pressed further, he testified that, since going to work for the DEA, he had imported 1,500 pounds of cocaine into the U.S.

Of course, Duncan and other investigators knew nothing of all this. They had no idea in 1984, as they monitored Seal's occasional appearances at Mena, that the smuggler was also flying between meetings with high-level U.S. officials and the cocaine lords of Central America.

Between March 1984 and February 1986, records indicate that Seal flew repeatedly to Colombia, Guatemala, and Panama, where he met with Jorge Ochoa, Fabio Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and Carlos Lehder - leaders of the cartel that at the time controlled an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United States.

Compounding the mystery around Seal are questions that arose during this period about his relationship with the CIA. Were the connections extensive, permeating his career? Or were they limited to one event, as the CIA maintains? I know that some of the records in Seal's FBI file - ones I've been denied on grounds of national security - originated with the CIA. So the questions remain.

What we do know is that, in June 1984, CIA technicians installed hidden cameras in Seal's C-123K at Florida's Homestead Air Force Base. The next day, Seal flew to Nicaragua, where the CIA-installed cameras captured images of cocaine being loaded onboard the plane. Two months later, at the height of the Reagan administration's effort to get congressional funding for the Nicaraguan Contras, those photos were leaked to the media. Administration sources identified the blurry figures as leaders of the Sandinista government, who were opposed by the Contra rebels.

The leak exploded Seal's cover, revealing to his associates in the Medellin cartel that he was now cooperating with the U.S. government. It ruined Seal as an informant just three months after he'd made the deal. And it set him up for retaliation.

How much of this Hutchinson knew at the time, he has never said. What is known is that at the end of 1984, Seal was indicted in Louisiana, and in January 1985, he pled guilty to drug charges there. His usefulness now limited to courtrooms, for most of 1985, Seal made appearances at federal drug trials, where he testified as a government witness against others in his trade. He helped in several prosecutions, though none in Arkansas.

Seal's most important court appearance was to come in 1986, when he was scheduled to testify at the trial of Jorge Ochoa Vasques. But in February of that year, shortly before the trial was to begin, Seal was ambushed in Baton Rouge and killed in a hail of bullets. Upon hearing of Seal's murder, one stunned DEA agent lamented, "There was a contract out on him, and everyone knew it. He was to have been a crucial witness in the biggest case in DEA history."

Why was Seal not protected? There are no good explanations. Seal's status as an informant was destroyed by the decision to leak his photos. And he was gunned down, ending his ability to testify, when he showed up for an appointment that a federal judge had ordered him to keep.

After Seal's murder, the attorney general of Louisiana wrote to U.S. Attorney Edwin Meese, requesting answers to some of the bigger questions about the government's relationship with Barry Seal. William J. Guste Jr. asked Meese why "such an important witness" had not been given protection. Guste also wanted to know how Seal had been "supervised, regulated and controlled" after agreeing to work with the DEA.

The Louisiana attorney general asked, "Was Seal allowed to work in an undercover capacity in Arkansas and Louisiana without notification to Louisiana and Arkansas officials?" And, "How were the contraband drugs he brought into the United States while cooperating with the DEA regulated and controlled?

"Was Seal's drug smuggling organization allowed to remain intact during and after the time of his cooperation with the government? If so, why?

"Was he permitted to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars which he made while working for the DEA by actually smuggling drugs into he United States? How was such money accounted for?"

Guste wrote, "All of these questions and others that will undoubtedly develop cry for investigation. And law enforcement agencies and the public have a right to know the answers."

In 1994, Guste told me that Meese never responded to the letter. If Asa Hutchinson, who worked under Meese, made any similar inquiries, they have never come to light.

Fifteen years have now passed since Barry Seal's murder, and the still unanswered questions remain as haunting as ever. Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas during Seal's tenure here, dismissed the questions during his campaign for the presidency as entirely a federal matter. Once he gained the White House, a spokesman ridiculed questions about Seal and Mena, calling them "the darkest backwater of conspiracy theories."

But these questions do not deserve such a brush-off. They deserve answers. Yet, even at this late date, instead of providing them, President Bush plans to install Hutchinson, the tight-lipped and loyal drug warrior, as head of the DEA.

While Hutchinson (and others) have remained mum about the deals and questions, politics and bungles that surrounded Barry Seal, the peculiarities that marked Seal's case have not escaped mention entirely. In 1988, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations issued a report prepared by its Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations that exposed the seriousness of the Seal disaster. That report read in part:

"Law enforcement officials were furious that their undercover operation was revealed and agents' lives jeopardized because one individual in the U.S. government - Lt. Col. Oliver North - decided to play politics with the issue."

The report continued: "Associates of Seal, who operated aircraft service businesses at the Mena, Arkansas airport, were also targets of grand jury probes into narcotics trafficking. Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges and over the strong protests of state and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped. The apparent reason was that the prosecution might have revealed national security information, even though all of the crimes which were the focus of the investigation occurred before Seal became a federal informant."

When I wrote to Hutchinson in 1995, he might have referred me that report. But he didn't. Now that Hutchinson is in line to head the DEA, I think he should be required to address the long waiting questions about Seal. And a few more questions to boot.

Among them: What are the limits on secrecy when it comes to fighting this war? What should be the DEA's relationship with the CIA? How heavily should narcotics investigators be allowed to rely on drug-criminals-turned-snitches - people like Barry Seal - for activities that are kept from public review and for testimony resulting from deals?

What explanation is owed to law enforcement officers, many of whom risk their lives, only to see their efforts wasted - not purposefully undermined - as they were in the case of Seal?

What about all the inmates who are serving time in prisons for drug law violations that were insignificant compared to Seal's? What does Hutchinson say to them? And to the American people?

Like most drug warriors, Hutchinson speaks often about "messages." He resists changing even marijuana laws, saying that to do so would send the "wrong message." He opposes calling the war on drugs anything but a war, arguing that to change the terminology sends "the wrong message."

I share his respect for messages. So I'd like to hear how he interprets this one:

In 1994, when I asked the head of the DEA's office in Little Rock what had actually transpired with Seal, the agent answered obliquely that "no conclusion was determined."

When I asked what in the world that meant, he explained, "Sometimes that is the conclusion: that there can be no conclusion."

I'd like to know: Would that answer satisfy Hutchinson? It does not satisfy me....

http://arktimes.com/010525coverstoryb.html

~ ~ ~

-- Mara Leveritt has worked at the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette before becoming a weekly columnist and senior editor at the Arkansas Times. In 1996, she left full-time newspaper work to write " The Boys on the Tracks ," published by St. Martin''s Press in 1999. Kirkus called the book "a wrecking-ball tale of tragedy, malfeasance, and machine politics," and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said it " lures you in and holds you hostage until the end." In 2000, "The Boys on the Tracks" was awarded the Booker Worthen Prize by the Central Arkansas Library System.

Michael C. Ruppert
P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413
(818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847
mruppert@copvcia.com

Battelle Memorial Institute - From their website:

What We Do

Battelle serves industry and government in developing new technologies and products. We develop the technology behind the products of some of the most successful companies in the world. Our focus is on developing high-quality solutions and products and reducing time-to-market for our clients.

We insert technology into systems and processes for manufacturers; pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries; trade associations; and government agencies supporting energy, the environment, health, national security, and transportation. . . .

History

Battelle (Memorial Institute), which began operations in 1929, was established in Columbus, Ohio, by Gordon Battelle and serves as a memorial to his family----leaders in America's early steel industry.

Business Statistics

Battelle has a staff of 7,500 scientists, engineers, and support specialists. Each year, thousands of technology projects are in progress at Battelle's various business operations. These projects are performed for nearly 2,000 companies and government agencies. Battelle's business volume is nearly $1 billion a year. Typically, this work results in between 50-100 patented inventions each year.

Legal Structure

Governed by a self-perpetuating Board of Directors, Battelle is a nonprofit (non-stock) Ohio corporation formed in 1925 under chapter 1719 of Ohio law, which provides for the incorporation of charitable trusts. Its nonprofit status notwithstanding, Battelle pays local, state, and federal taxes. . . .

* * *

CIA "Fronts"

From: Harry Sweeney < mailto:Sweenfam@teleport.com >
Newsgroups: alt.politics.org.cia
Subject: Re: Known CIA fronts (200+ listed here)
Date: 20 Sep 1996

The following several hundred firms and persons represent "suspected" or reported fronts as found in various published resources or based on my personal beliefs arrived at through personal experience and research.

Most of these are out of date, out of business (disbanded or evolved to some new operation), but the list serves as example of the marvelous diversity and clever (or not so clever) naming conventions applied. . . .

Keep in mind that there ARE NO FRONTS. CIA was ordered by Congress to divest, and they have. The CIA obeys Congress and the law... by "selling" the fronts to "retired" CIA.

Of course, if they should still do favors for CIA, that would be OK. If CIA gives them business, that would be OK. So it is business as usual, with LESS oversight by Congress, thanks to their "crack down" on errant CIA activities. . . .

~ ~ ~

Here are just a few familiar names from Harry Sweeney's list:

>> Battelle Memorial Institute and other Battelle operations (hires retired spooks in quantity): Jim Hougan, Spooks

>> Bill (Slick Willy) Clinton (President, and CIA operative): The Spotlight.

>> Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong: Johathan Kwitny, The Crimes Of Patriots

>> Price Waterhouse (not a true front, but certified obviously fraudulent books for CIA fronts): Johathan Kwitny, The Crimes Of Patriots

>> Quantum Corp (not the hard drive maker): Jim Hougan, Spooks

>> Resorts International (Parent of Intertel): Jim Hougan, Spooks

>> Wackenhut : Jim Hougan: Jim Hougan, Spooks; Michael Riconosciuto, Wackenhut/CIA operative . . .

* * *

December 16, 2001

ANTHRAX PROBE

Spores identical to Army's stock

by Rick Weis and Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests.

Although many laboratories have the Ames strain of anthrax involved in this fall's bioterrorist attacks, only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters, the scientists said. And all those labs can trace back their samples to a single U.S. military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.

"That means the original source (of the terrorist material) had to have been USAMRIID," said one of the scientists.

Those matching samples are at Fort Detrick; the Dugway Proving Ground military research facility in Utah; a British military lab called Porton Down; and microbial depositories at Louisiana State University (LSU) and Northern Arizona University.

Northern Arizona University received its samples from LSU, which received its sample from Porton Down. Dugway and Porton Down got their samples directly from USAMRIID.

The FBI's investigation into the anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether U.S. government bioweapons research programs, including one conducted by the CIA, may have been the source of deadly anthrax powder sent through the mail, according to sources with knowledge of the probe.

The results of the genetic tests strengthen that possibility. The FBI is focusing on a contractor that worked with the CIA, one source said.

Of the domestic labs, Dugway has attracted the most attention from the FBI. Dugway is also the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdered form that is most easily inhaled.

Scientists have known for some time that bacteria used in the terrorist attacks belong to the Ames strain, a variant of the anthrax bacteriumBacillus anthracis. But the Ames strain comes in various subtypes that can be distinguished from one another by detailed tests on the microbe's genes.

The scientists are still planning to do genetic testing on anthrax bacteria from the Defense Research Establishment Suffield, a Canadian military research facility, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. Those are the only other facilities known to have received samples from USAMRIID.

The CIA's bio-warfare program, which was designed to find ways to defend against bioterrorists, involved the use of small amounts of Ames strain, an agency spokesman said yesterday. The CIA said none of its anthrax was milled into the powder form and none is missing.

Investigators are considering a wide range of possible motives for the anthrax attacks, including vengeance of some sort, profiteering by someone involved in the anthrax cleanup business, or perhaps to cast blame on Iraq.

CIA scientists worked with other government agencies and outside contractors in the defensive biowarfare program, the agency spokesman said. The agency said most of its defensive work involves simulants, not active biological agents.

The agency spokesman said that congressional oversight committees, along with the National Security Council staff, have been kept abreast of the CIA work. . . .

Bob Miller - Ex-Governor of Nevada; Director, Zenith National Insurance Corp.

From The Conspirators : Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider, by Al Martin:

U.S. GOVERNMENT NARCOTICS TRAFFICKING
(Part II)

Another interesting Iran-Contra/CIA narcotics trafficking connection...was the trafficking points in Nevada and Arizona....

In the Nevada connection, Governor Miller was dogged with allegations for years about Iran-Contra profiteering.

Eventually, it got to the point that Miller decided not to run again for Governor of Nevada.

An interesting connection into all this is that Nevada is a place similar to Florida - but on a smaller scale. It's a place where government-sponsored cocaine trafficking and government-sponsored fraud meet because of Nevada corporation laws.

It's where a lot of shell corporations were formed. In order to do this, George Bush had to have control of the Nevada Secretary of State's office. . . .

Before becoming governor of the state, Miller was the Secretary of State of Nevada. He was dogged with allegations about missing corporate documents when Congress tried to subpoena them.

When Miller moved into the Governorship, look who becomes the new Secretary of State of Nevada.

The infamous, sinister, dreaded Frankie Sue DelPapa, a longtime minion of George Bush. One of George's personal secretaries in the past, DelPapa, who was considering running for Governor, was then forced to withdraw from the race under renewed allegations of Iran-Contra involvement vis-a-vis certain fraudulent entities in Nevada - the substitution of corporations.

She personally substituted corporate records and actually substituted officers, principals and directors in the Hellenic Seafood case and the Cosmos Investment Group case.

The fraud was egregious. The problem is that it was regarded as a regional issue. Some of the alternative papers like the Contact newspaper did an extensive expose' of this and documented how Miller linked to DelPapa, and DelPapa's linked to the Republican National Committee and to George Bush.

Also there were the underlying links of the corporations in question to George, Jr., Jeb, and Neil. They did a wonderful expose' of it.

But nobody in the mainstream media would pick it up, since it was considered as a minor regional issue within the greater Iran-Contra picture....