Power of Truth in an Age of Spin

by Trowbridge H. Ford

In our most disbelieving, cynical age, it is heartening, if also disturbing, to see an event which recalls the power of truth - what is often now denied the very existence of, if not the importance of. For most of us, most of the time, one spin is about as good as another, as nothing much matters anyway.

The event I have in mind is the unexplained death of KGB defector and archivist Vasili Mitrokhin on or before January 23, 2004. Mitrokhin, it seems, sneaked vital bits of information about Soviet spying and covert operations from its files for years - until 1985 - filling out the picture that Western counterintelligence had constructed about the USSR's espionage. By doing so, Miktrokhin provided Cambridge's Professor Christopher Andrew with such a treasure-trove of information that he not only wrote, it seems, the KGB's official history, The Sword and The Shield, but also became the historian of British Security Service, MI5, commissioned to write the official history of its operations.

Mitrokhin's archive allegedly cleared up all kinds uncertainties about KGB operations. For example, Stalin died a natural death, neither the Doctors' Plot nor the KGB having anything to do with his demise. Real defectors like GRU cipher clerk in Ottawa Igor Gouzenko (p. 137ff.), NKGB officer in Turkey Konstantin Volkov (pp. 138-9), and Polish intelligence officer Michal Goleniewski (p. 400ff.), though handled crudely while defecting to the West, had nothing more to add about Soviet operations and spying in the West than was already known.

The only big mistake the Agency made in handling them was with Major Anatoli Golitsyn (p. 177ff.), thanks to CI chief James Angleton's and Soviet Division CI chief Pete Bagley's believing his tale that Moscow was engaged in a gigantic deception to take over the world. Still, Golitsyn provided a gold-mine of useful information, explaining why the KGB was most interested in eliminating him. "It did not occur to the Centre that Golitsyn's defection, by infecting a small but troublesome minority of CIA officers with his paranoid tendencies," Andrew added reassuringly, "would ultimately do the Agency more harm than good." (p. 185)

As for who the other Agency's officers were, and the possibility that "his paranoid tendencies" had infected those in other services, except for the then totally discredited Peter Wright of MI5 (p. 405), Mitrokhin's Archive made no mention, and Andrew, of course, was not so impolitic to raise the possibility. He was satisfied to record how the Agency, thanks to Angleton's paranoid tendencies, tortured poor Yuri Nosenko for claiming that Moscow had had nothing to do with the JFK assassination, and for denying that he had defected to discredit Golitsyn. (p. 368)

Andrew still claimed that the Centre tried to implicate CIA in the Dallas assassination by forging a letter from Oswald to E. Howard Hunt, the Watergate Plumber, asking for clarification of his position, and instructions about what he should be doing right before the assassination.(pp. 228-9) The forgery was incredibly authenticated by three American conspiracy buffs, and the Bureau and Agency diverted attention away from Oswald's alleged CIA connections by claiming that the letter was directed to Dallas oilman H. L. Hunt.

"By their initial cover-ups," Andrew concluded. "the CIA and the FBI had unwittingly probably done more than the KGB to encourage the sometimes obsessional conspiracy theorists who swarmed around the complex and confusing evidence on the assassination." Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin even alluded to assassin Oswald's alleged connections with the Texas oilmen in his memoirs, but obviously is not willing to provide the evidence to American investigators to back up the claim.

According to the Mitrokhin Archive, Soviet illegals like Edith Tudor Hart (p.58), Colonel Rudoph Abel aka Vilyam Firsher (p. 148ff.), and Gordon Lonsdale aka Konon Trofimovich Molody (p. 407ff.) - unlike Arnold Deutsch (p. 43ff.) and Teodore Maly (p.48ff.) before them - were hardly what they were cracked up to be when it came to recruiting agents, and stealing intelligence. It was apparently all those subversive communists in Britain whose identities remain yet to be determined, apparently by more Venona decrypts, and who willingly supplied Moscow with so much information that it was swamped with ideas about what to do.

The really important Soviet spies, as we already suspected all too well, were "The Magnificent Five" (p. 56ff.) - Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross - who supplied with Soviets with all the information they needed to make the atomic bomb, to infiltrate the "bourgeois apparatus," to frustrate Ultra efforts to decipher its messages, and the like. Thanks to Mitrokhin, though, the West learned that Melita Norwood aka HOLA (p. 116ff.) greatly assisted their atomic spying from Britain, proving so important, in fact, that she was given a more reliable handler than the womanizing Lonsdale.

Of course, in all this spying, the Soviets never got the West to pull any of its chestnuts out of the fire - assassinating troublesome leaders like Fidel Castro, President Kennedy, RFK, MLK, John Lennon, Sweden's Olof Palme and the like - though Moscow said some nasty things about specific individuals, especially Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover (pp. 234-6) and Martin Luther "Uncle Tom" King, and the Agency in general, thanks to disinformation supplied by various mentioned and unmentioned people - like Anthony Summers, Mark Lane, and Philip Agee. Summers, author of The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, was the author Andrew had in mind when he said the KGB was out to prove, apparently falsely, that the Director was a transvestite who wanted to convert the Bureau into "a den of faggots."

The Soviets were responsible for the appearance of Mark Lane's conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination, and Agee, author, with KGB and Cuban help (pp. 230-1), of Inside the Company: CIA Diary, actually defected to the USSR, and started outing the names of individual agents with the help of fellow left wingers, especially former Labour Minister of Overseas Development, Judith Hart.

As for the performance of KGB Chiefs Yuri Andropov, Viktor Chebrikov, and Vladimir Kryuchkov when the USSR entered its death throes, the Mitrokhin Archive poured out nothing but scorn, confirming what Andrew had claimed in two volumes of documents: Instructions from the Centre, and More 'Instructions from the Centre'. It was Andropov's obsession in destroying all dissent which forced Mitrokhin to become a spy (p.6ff.); Chebrikov's sycophantical reporting of KGB reports from home and abroad about NATO's routine operations, especially Able Archer 83, which convinced Mitrokhin and others that a reading of either the New York Times or the Washington Post made much more sense(pp. 214-5); and Kryuchkov's paranoia about a first strike from the West became so acute that he even suspected domestic reformers, especially Gorbachev, of undermining the USSR - what everyone but the thick-headed KGB chief in the end realized was the end. (p. 394)

To draw a line under the whole Soviet experience, and its KGB efforts, Andrew connected the spying by the Agency's Aldrich "Rick" Ames with that of previous mercenary walk-ins Robert Lipka and Chief Warrant Officer John Walker's family spy ring. (p.205ff.) All Andrew could talk about was the agents Ames had apparently betrayed, and all the money, nearly five million dollars, it had paid and promised him for it.

No sooner had the Andrew and Mitrokhin tome appeared than the CIA's Paul J. Redmond, chief of its CI Group when Rodney Carlson resigned in September 1985, jumped at the chance to review it for the Counterintelligence Centre. Redmond had nothing but the highest praise for it, indicating that it was being provided free to students in a upper level course.

Of course, Redmond, who had been leading Operation Courtship when defector Vitaly Yurchenko was being debriefed, could not pass up the opportunity to fill in a few gaps in Mitrokhin's story after he retired from the KGB - i. e., Courtship's double agent Sergey Bokhan worked for the GRU rather than his agency, and its plans to blow up restaurants in West Germany to disrupt Bonn's relation with Washington were not shelved in 1985, merely postponed. Redmond dismissed claims by Nightline's Ted Koppel, and the TLS's Amy Knight, author of well-received Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant, that Mitrokhin's Archive must be a Russian intelligence service plant as pure "ivory tower" irrelevance.

With the Archive used by Professor Andrew in this way, and Redmond reviewing the finished product in this manner, the articles I had published on this site, starting two weeks before Mitrokhin's demise, must have completely destroyed him, making him die of a broken heart, if not from something more deliberately induced.

The articles about why Ames and the Bureau's Robert Hanssen felt obliged to spy for the Soviets, how Prime Minister Thatcher's secret government had collapsed because its covert operations, especially the assassination of Sweden's statsminister Olof Palme, started leaking out, how MI5's Peter Wright functioned as the leading spy of the Cold War, if not for all time, how Lonsdale, thanks particularly to Wright, put Soviet spying in the West on such an efficient basis that it ran itself, and how Golitsyn contributed feedback which enlisted Western intelligence services into doing much of the KGB's dirty work for it must have been a shocked to Mitrokhin - far from what he bargained for when he made his files available to Britain's SIS.

Instead of the information being used to bolster Western claims about its achievements during the Cold War - what Mitrokhin and his wife thought would be worthwhile in defecting to the West - it was used, and added to by Andrew to cover up its worst covert operations, and intelligence failures. While the defector apparently thought that he knew everything important about spying and covert operations during the Cold War, the spying, disinformation, and reckless feedback supplied by Wright, Lonsdale, and Golitsyn caught him completely by surprise, and he was entirely unprepared for the wild recklessness of the effort to end the Bolshevik experience by a non-nuclear showdown with the Soviets at sea - what Palme's murder was intended to trigger.

The things which disturbed Mitrokhin the most, it seems, were the dismissal of Wright's spying for the Soviets as talent spotter SCOTT and Oxford scientist 'K' in one short paragraph (pp. 114-5), and without any mention of Mitrokhin contributing anything to our understanding about what was going on. Of course, Andrew had long attributed this spying to Cambridge's John Cairncross. In fact, Mitrokhin had no information about Wright's role - what Andrew reduced to just his effort to convince everyone, with Golitsyn's help, that politician Harold Wilson was so in Moscow's pocket that it killed Hugh Gaitskell to make him Labour's Leader, though there are still unnamed conspiracy theories he promoted. (p. 405) To be reminded of how Lonsdale most effective recruitment of spies by bedding officialdom's secretaries, and transmitting their information was reduced to pictures of him with one of them, and a cistern in the Classics Cinema Gentleman's lavatory in which he allegedly put condoms filled notes and radio parts must have also proved painful. Golitsyn's deceptions about who he was, and what he was up to - what allegedly made the KGB most desirous of assassinating him - could only have been most galling.

And KGB Chiefs were hardly unaware of what was in the offing during the Reagan administration - what could allegedly be remedied by reading government-controlled papers in the USA. There were most valid reasons for fearing a first-strike from the West - what Washington and London hoped to achieve with Task Force Eagle and NATO's Anchor Express Exercise in the wake of Palme's assassination. Kryuchkov's concern about countering NATO's threat with Operation RYAN was most justified, as KGB Chief Chebrikov noted on the morning of the Stockholm shooting by announcing that all the double agents that the West had positioned in the USSR to cause an international crisis had been rounded up - a view Gorbachev totally supported. (See Chistropher Walker's front-page story in The Times, March 1, 1986.)

As for Andrew's use of Oswald's letter to E. Howard Hunt, claiming that Mitrokhin's files proved it a KGB forgery, is just another example of his using the defector for Western intelligence purposes. Just because there was a copy of the letter in the KGB files - I had a copy of it in my files until my former employer destroyed them - proves nothing about its origin. (p. 616, note 34) And Redmond just added to the defector's pain by clearing up mistakes about the double agent operations which he knew nothing about.

In sum, the treatment of the Mitrokhin file by SIS and CIA is another cautionary tale for anyone thinking of defecting. For those who either misuse them, or enlighten them, it should be a most sobering experience.

Mossad and Moving Companies: Masterminds of Global Terrorism?

I'm really not sure al Qaeda actually exists, and here's why...

The other day I was scanning the news reports and came across a rather mundane item that really got me to thinking. It simply read:

Cloudcroft chief stops Israelis with suspicious cargo
By Michael Shinabery Staff Writer, Alamogordo Daily News

CLOUDCROFT, NM -- That they were speeding through the school zone first got his attention.

That they had Israeli driver's licenses and expired passports made him suspicious.

Cloudcroft Police Chief Gene Green stopped the 2-ton van on Thursday, for speeding. Initially, Green thought the truck was commercial because of exterior markings. But when he found it was out of Chicago, he asked for documentation such as logs books and manifests.

"They said this is a U-Haul truck and handed me a rental agreement (for) in-town delivery only in Illinois, (which) had expired two days before," Green said. He called for backup, and Otero County Sheriff's Deputy Billy Anders, who patrols the Sacramento Mountains, arrived, along with Capt. Norbert Sanchez and Det. Eddie Medrano.

"We got them out and started digging a little deeper," Green said, "got permission to search the truck. They claimed they were hauling furniture from Austin to Chicago." When officers advised the men they were not exactly en route from one town to another, Green said the two men claimed they were Deming bound. "But they couldn't give us an address in Deming they were going to," he said. "Once we got into the truck, they had some junk furniture I wouldn't have given to Goodwill."

Also inside the vehicle were, Green said, "50 boxes" they claimed was a "private" delivery, but the men insisted they had no "idea what was in them."

At that point, the officers called for drug-sniffing and bomb-sniffing dogs. The men were turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and U- Haul recovered the truck.

Contents of the boxes remain unknown, pending investigation.

Well, don't that just beat all? Another "moving company" with Israeli drivers with bad papers, and nobody even noticed...

Well, I noticed.

Not only did I notice, I remembered a strange story about a similar event:

On May 7, 2002, local police authorities pulled over a Budget rental truck in Oak Harbour, Washington near the Whitney Island Naval Air Station. The driver and his passenger were Israeli nationals, one of which had entered the country illegally. The other had an expired visa. Tests performed on the vehicle revealed that there were traces of TNT on the gearshift and RDX plastic explosives on the steering wheel. But no actual explosives were reported to have been found in the truck. [Fox News, 5/13/02]

A report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the following day reported that the FBI performed follow-up tests on the truck which turned-up negative. One source speculated that perhaps the original tests had actually detected just cigarette residue, and not explosives. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/14/02, Jerusalem Post, 5/14/02].

Critics argued that it would make no sense for U.S. authorities to use a method of testing that could be skewed by cigarette residue. The website whatreallyhappened.com remarked:

“The specific claim is made that residue from a cigarette lighter confused the tests for TNT and RDX. That doesn't explain why the trained bomb-sniffing dog, who surely knows the difference between explosives and cigarettes [else he would false-positive every smoker, ashtray, and convenience store he came across] gave the first indications of explosives in the truck that led to the tests in the first place. Likewise, were the chemical tests unable to discriminate between tobacco and TNT/RDX, which are chemically quite different from tobacco combustion products, they would give false positive results for every vehicle ever tested in which smokers had ever ridden. Given the likelihood of finding tobacco residues in any car, such tests would have to be designed to tell the difference. The same is true for other products from non- electric cigarette lighters, the vast majority of which are butane.”

The same website also provided references to three documents with detailed information on the tests used to detect TNT and RDX. None of the documents indicated that the presence of cigarette residue might induce inaccurate test results. [International Society for Optical Engineering 1984; Cold Regions and Research Engineering Laboratory 5-1996; Security Management n.d.]

I also remembered another peculiar item: the so-called Urban Moving Company that some researchers suggest was a cover for Mossad.

Many observers have suggested that Israel had foreknowledge of the 9/11 terrorists attacks. Some have even argued that they may have been behind the attacks, and it seems that the funny stories about Israelis with trucks and bad papers just keep popping up here and there.

On September 11, five employees of Jewish owned Urban Moving Company were detained as a result of witness accounts that they were taking pictures of the flaming ruins of the World Trade Center and celebrating!

Full story...

Smoking Gun

Here's a great example why I don't believe one single thing that anyone in government ever says, anyone who exposes their lies gets arrested or suicided. I suppose Ms. Gun should consider herself lucky but in the end we're all loosers if courageous and honest people are locked up for going with their conscience, and what does this tell you about the conscience (or lack thereof) of Phony Tony and his Cronies? The examples made of her and Dr Kelly should serve to show you how this government really operates!

Katherine you are a shining example of humanity and an example to the rest of us!

British whistleblower Katharine Gun faces two years in jail – for speaking truth to power

In the run-up to war, as the British were going through the motions of getting a second resolution through the UN Security Council, there was much speculation as to how the 6 non-permanent members of that body would vote. So high was the interest in this question on the part of the U.S. and British governments that a covert operation was launched to discover what the so-called Middle Six delegations were up to – and to head off any compromise proposal.

The details of the U.S./UK espionage operation were exposed last March by the brave (and beautiful!) Katharine Gun, a former employee of the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, Tony Blair's eavesdropping center. She faces up to two years in jail for leaking this memo from National Security Agency honcho Frank Koza to NSA personnel and "a friendly foreign intelligence agency," (i.e. British spooks). The memo describes a "surge" in surveillance efforts "against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters."

Mexican and Chilean officials are now revealing that a secret meeting, held at the United Nations, where such a proposal was discussed, was bugged, along with the phones used by diplomats. The Guardian reports:

"A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The Observer can reveal. …The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told The Observer that US officials intervened last March, just days before the war against Saddam was launched, to halt secret negotiations for a compromise resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work. Aguilar Zinser claimed that the intervention could only have come as a result of surveillance of a closed diplomatic meeting where the compromise was being hammered out. He said it was clear the Americans knew about the confidential discussions in advance."

"… We had yet to get our capitals to go along with it, it was at a very early stage. Only the people in the room knew what the document said. The surprising thing was the very rapid flow of information to [US] quarters. The meeting was in the evening and they call us in the morning before the meeting of the Security Council and they say, 'We appreciate you trying to find ideas, but this is not a good idea." I say, 'Thanks, that's good to know.' We were looking for a compromise and they [the US] say, 'Do not attempt it.'"


You'll remember that, in order to make the war more palatable to his clearly reluctant countrymen, and his own balking Labor Party, Blair made quite a show of trying to intercede on behalf of those UN Security Council members who wanted to give the invasion the stamp of legality, vowing to craft an acceptable resolution. But that was a lie….

Now we find out that Blair and his ministers were actually trying to undercut efforts at a compromise, because it would have given UN weapons inspectors more time to find out the truth: that Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. The rush to war would have been aborted – if the War Party hadn't moved quickly to quash the last hope of peace.

Ms. Gun's arraignment in the Old Bailey today means more trouble for the already beleaguered Tony Blair. As the Liberal Democrats' Foreign Affairs point man, Menzies Campbell, put it:

"If the allegations that these operations had ministerial authority are well-founded, then it could hardly be more serious for the Government. There will be understandable uproar at the UN. On the other hand, if the eavesdropping took place without Ministers knowing, then the question is, who was in charge?'"

Charged with violation of the Official Secrets Act – the British version of the U.S. "Patriot" Act – Ms. Gun, a 29-year-old Chinese language specialist, will have her trial in the fall. Her defense will be to put this illegal war on trial.

Full story...

Why John Hinckley, Jr. Almost Assassinated Reagan

by Trowbridge H. Ford

The contrast behind the myth and reality regarding the health of American democracy when President Jimmy Carter sought re-election in 1980 could not have been greater. While liberals, and responsible conservatives, especially those who had brought about the resignation of the rampaging Nixon, thought that constitutional government had been restored, or at least secret government had been significantly reined in, actually conditions, despite appearances, had become worse, thanks to leaders of covert rule finding new ways to perform old operations. The slimming down of CIA, particularly the Operations Directorate, the adoption of more technical means for the collection of intelligence, and the retirement and death for some of the worst offenders - especially former DCI Richard Helms, CI chief James Angleton, and "Executive Action's" William King Harvey - had been more than compensated by old troublemakers finding new homes in other agencies, current ones finding ways to operate behind the backs of their nominal superiors, and old agent capability, especially in the production of mind-control, obtaining new technology and candidates for covert operations.

The Secret Team's, to use Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty's terminology, hopes that Theodore Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) had the makings of a perfect Manchurian Candidate for killing President Carter's re-election chances, despite promising testing, proved unfounded. Kaczynski, though connected to all the right people while at Berkeley at the end of the 1960s through Colston Westbrook's Black Cultural Association, was not politically motivated enough to become a predictable robot. The loner mathematician, while he was finally recruited from Montana where no sceptics would suspect CIA involvement, was not willing to go after targets it had in mind, no matter how hard his co-conspirator brother David drove him, or how much drugs he was given. Ted Kaczynski had it in for unversity colleagues, especially those who supported the build-up of technology the Agency was interested in, and air lines which permitted them to experiment all around the world, as his FBI code name prefix indicated.

The Unabomber showed his unreliable character in the wake of the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran (Operation Eagle Claw) by following up his attack on an American Airline flight to Washington with a crude bomb sent to United Air Line president Percy Wood on June 9, 1980. Kaczynski set Wood up by writing first in the name of Enoch W. Fischer, recommending that he, and other leaders of the capitalist world read Sloan Wilson's new book, Ice Brothers, which would be arriving in a separate wrapper. This nostalgic account by Wilson - the author also of best-selling The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit - of his service during WWII in the Greenland Patrol was a telling reminder of just how far the author and Kaczynski had fallen out with their wartime buddies, especially Ted's most ambitious brother David, in the post-war grab for personal glory. (For those interested in pursuing red-herrings on the internet about the book, see Ross Getman's website where he claims that Kaczynski, a neo-Nazi, found inspiration for his anti-Semitism in its pages.) Characteristically, the Bureau questioned Sloan rather than David Kaczynski about the book's significance, once the Unabomber was finally caught.

Ronald Reagan's biggest contribution to the covert campaign against Carter's re-election then became the expertise that Dr. Earl Brian, his former Secretary of Health, supplied for mind-control operations, now that the CIA, especially Dr. George White, had been obliged officially to close down experiments in California, and former head of the Technical Services Staff Dr. Sidney Gottlieb was driven to convenient suicide because of legal questions arising in 1979 about painter Stanley Milton Glickman's incapacity, another unwitting CIA guinea pig from a quarter century before in Paris. While Brian, like George Bush, Theodore Shackley, and William Casey, would ultimately be linked to the "October Surprise", and the Reagan Justice Department's theft of PROMIS software from Bill Hamilton's INSLAW company to keep track of foreign counterintelligence (Jonathan Vankin and John Whelan, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, p. 119ff.), actually Dr. Brian, like White and Gottlieb, was most closely connected to "LSD surprises", what had led to tennis professional Harold Blauer's death from forced injections, and Olson's suicide in 1953. Brian even tried to establish in 1975, with Governor Reagan's support, a center for the study of violent behavior in the Santa Monica Mountains, what would permit all kinds of mind-control operations with complete secrecy under UCLA professor Dr. Louis "Jolly" West's leadership, but the fallout from Watergate prevented the California legislature from authorizing such a reckless initiative.

West, as Henry Martin and David Caul indicated in a long 1991 series about the state's continuing mind-control program for the Napa Sentinel, was a product of the University of Minnesota's Morse Allen, the leading expert on making Manchurian Candidates, and had worked at Oklahoma for 15 years with John Gittinger, the developer of the crucial Personal Assessment System for finding potential ones. ( For more, see obituary, "Louis Jolyon 'Jolly' West," The Los Angeles Times, Jan. 7, 1999.) At Oklahoma, West, as John Marks indicated in The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate', became the leading recipient of secret funding for LSD experimentation (p. 63), what ultimately led to certain people being programmed with sufficient doses of the drug not only to betray their countries but also their families, even their spouses. LSD, in an operational setting, could make the patient into a paranoid madman, set on destroying his marriage and memory.

Coming to UCLA in 1968, just after the assassinations of MLK and RFK, West was so successful in securing grants, over $5 million for himself from the National Institutes of Mental Health, and as much as $14 million in a single year for his Neuropsychiatric Institute from a wide range of sources for conducting experiments on controlling allegedly violent individuals, what gave all kinds of opportunities for creating them through the assistance of cooperating, professional informants. Though West feigned to be a great civil libertarian, and made a point of providing free expert opinion in public interest cases (See his letter in the June 24, 1976 issue of The New York Review of Books about Patty Hearst's unsuccessful defense.), he, and side kick Dr. "Oz" Janiger, were such pavlovians when it came to drugs that Aldous Huxley, the greatest proponent of LSD's liberating qualities, could not abide their obsessions. (See Huxley's June 6, 1961 letter to Timothy Leary.)

In 1966, LSD was prohibited by the Drug Abuse Control Amendment from being used in experiments, causing the FDA to raid Janiger's office in Beverly Hills, and to confiscate all his drugs, and records of clinical research. "When the panic subsided, only five government-approved scientists were allowed to continue LSD resarch...," Todd Brendan Fahey wrote in the Las Vegas Weekly, the leading one being West. Until then, Janiger had gotten LSD from people like the CIA's Captain Al Hubbard for his experiments on those who wanted to improve their performance, especially among Hollywood's actors, notably Cary Grant. Now Janiger would get it from West, and, in return, he would be given access to his most promising subjects. This came in most handy in 1977 when The Washington Post reported that the scientific assistant to Carter's Navy Secretary, Dr. Sam Koslov, had ended the program that West was running out of Stanford's Research Institute at Fort Meade to create Manchurian Candiates by electronic means ("The Constantine Report No1,"), leaving apparently only the old means of deprivation, drugs, psychic driving, and hypnosis for making people with multiple personalities.

West's greatest asset was that he was now interested in cults, the ideal cover for anyone who wanted to continue practicing "brain-washing" by CIA's more traditional methods. In the wake of Charles Manson's murders, Patty Hearst's kidnapping and brain-washing by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the massacre/suicide of 913 cultists at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, the public was prepared to believe that such brain-washing was only the result of thought reform, what CIA had apparently helped sponsor with drugs in order to make sure that student radicalism spun out of control in utter confusion.

To legitimize the idea of coercive persuasion, West's associate Dr. Margaret Singer wrote a ground-breaking paper the following year on the new phenomenon ("Dr. Margaret Singer's 6 Conditions for Thought Reform," csj.org/studyindex), and she and Yale's Dr. Robert Jay Lifton started propagating the claims as advisory board psychologists to the new American Family Foundation. Singer and Lifton had studied the brain-washing techniques on Amercian POWs by the North Koreans for Washington back in the 'fifties, ruling out wrongly their drug, and hypnosis-based techniques - what West used heavy doses of LSD-25, and hypnotism to replicate. (Jeffrey Steinberg, "Who Are the American Family Foundation Mind-Controllers Targeting LaRouche?," Executive Intelligence Review, April 19, 2002, and larouche pub.com/other/2002)

During August 1980, Reagan's campaign managers, especially pollster Richard Werthlin, Georgetown professor Richard Allen, and former CIA agent Richard Beal, organized a special operations group to counter any Carter "October Surprise" - the only thing they thought would secure his re-election. At the same time, John Hinckley, Jr. was programmed to assassinate President Carter just in case he was able to secure the release of the hostages by negotiation - what these people, along with Marine Captain Oliver North and Colonel Robert MacFarlane - had been able to prevent by force. The operation's attraction lay in the fact that despite the publication of John Marks's book on Manchurian Candidates the previous year, only Milton Kline, onetime President of the American Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, and sometime CIA consultant in actual operations, believed that patsies and assassins could be, and had been created on occasion. (p. 199ff., esp. 204, note.)

Hinckley, one of the Beat Generation, was the offspring of an upward-mobile, disassociated family, growing up in Dallas during the years before the JFK assassination and during its aftermath. While his older brother Scott was following in his father's footsteps at the Agency-connected Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, John was having trouble even getting started, spending seven years, on and off, at Texas Tech but without success. About the only thing he picked up was how to play the guitar, and an inclination for acting. During a trip to Hollywood in 1976, he came across Dr. Janiger, it seems, and was soon taking LSD again, and watching incessantly Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver, based on the life of George Wallace assassin Arthur Bremer, in the hope of becoming a successful actor.

Before it was over, he imagined that he had become Robert Di Niro's alter ego. ("John W. Hinckley, Jr.: A Biography," law.unkc.edu/faculty/proje...) Hinckley was so convinced that he was a carbon copy of the alienated, drugged cabbie that he even fantasized, it seems, that he too had a girl friend, like Betsy in the film, working in a campaign for a politician he ultimately plotted to kill in order to impress her, calling her Lynn Collins. The only trouble with this propensity was that there was no need for it now in Agency operations as critics like Church were finished off early by the electorate because of their attacks on America's covert government.

Hardly had the unknown Carter gotten established in the White House than Hinckley was back in Hollywood a year later for more. The trouble with Hinckley's potential was that the new President was proving much more supportive of the plans by secret government than any one had imagined (See, e. g., Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man's Bluff, p. 294ff.), and making Walter Mondale, the most experienced politician in keeping the intelligence community in check, President would only compound problems with its critics. Consequently, Hinckley's handler, and it seems to have been either Dr. Singer or one of her female associates, directed him towards more beneficial activity, leading apparently to his gaining a role in a play, and becoming romantically attached to an actress, a daughter of the mother of all conspiracy theorists, Mae Brussell, of all people.

"Brussell," Vankin and Whelan have written, thought that this well-heeled individual without any visible means of support "...might be an 'agent provocateur' directed against her by the FBI via her daughter." (p. 66) Then, as when Jules Ricco Kimble aka Raoul thought that Harvey was pursuing him in New Orleans in 1967, and called the Domestic Contact agent to protest, she called the Bureau's Monterey Resident Agent to complain, making herself likewise a possible suspect in future developments. Ms. Brusell, thanks to financial support from the John Lennons, and publication support from The Realist's Paul Krassner, was becoming increasingly convinced that Governor Reagan was to be the beneficiary of all the ongoing 'dirty tricks'. (Paul Krassner, Confessions of a raving, unconformed nut, pp. 213-5)

Once the summer season was over, Hinckley returned to Texas Tech with a new lease on life for the stage, changing his major from business administration to English to suit his new career goals, only to see his relationship with Mae's daughter ended, apparently because the mother opposed it, possibly resulting in the daughter's death in an automobile accident. In a tailspin, Hinckley helped young George W. Bush in his unsuccessful 1978 run, directed by brother Neil, for the House seat in Lubbock, a campaign which Hinckley's parents contributed money to. When it too proved unsuccessful, Hinckley went completely off the rails. He played Russian roulette with a .38 pistol he bought in August 1979, as he began to experience all kinds of aliments, requiring him to seek professional help, and to take both anti-depressants and tranquilizers, talltail signs of a manic depressive in a stretched out state. Hinckley even anticipated his role as Carter's assassin in March 1980, before his handlers had even decided upon it, by stalking him on his own during his early campaigning.

Once the Reagan campaign against Carter moved into gear, and his assassintation was now a distinct possibility, Hinckley spent three weeks during September enrolled at Yale, stalking actress Jodi Foster who played the teenage prostitute, Iris, in the movie. It was a classic case of negative psychic driving where the candidate would have experiences, and emotional reactions which would spur him on to more threatening actions - what James Earl Ray experienced after he attended dancing classes, graduated from bartending school, underwent a nose job, joined a Swinger's Club, and advertized his sexual prowess in the Los Angeles Free Press but to no avail. (Gerald Posner, Killing the Dream, p. 208ff., though n.b. that he did not see hypnosis as the cause.) As Hinckley wrote Foster, perhaps a bit too self-consciously, just before he set off on his final mission to shoot Reagan: "And by hanging around your dormitory, I've come to realize that I'm the topic of more than a little conversation, however full of ridicule it may be." (evidence in U.S. v. John W. Hinckley, Jr.)

"In a three-day period, Hinckley visited three cities where Carter rallies were held: Washington, D. C., Columbus, and Dayton." (Doug Linders, "The Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr.") Though he once got within 20 feet of the President, he wasn't able to draw his pistol, and shoot, claiming cryptically that he wasn't in the proper frame of mind. Actually, the President hadn't made a surprise annoucement about the hostages which would have triggered the shooting, like what RFK's announcement caused when he won the California primary. Then trips by Hinckley to Lincoln, Nashville, Dallas, Washington, and Denver proved no more effacacious, thanks to the apparent failure of a leading Nazi to stiffen his nerve, to a tipoff to airport authorities about a pistol in his luggage, and the like. Hinckley's defense, if he had been pushed to shoot Carter, would have been that he was such a rabid supporter of the Reagan-Bush ticket, thanks particularly to all his connections with the Vice President's family, that he could not restrain himself when the President stole the election by completely underhanded means because of Mae Brussell's hatred of Reagan and his supporters.

Just when all Hinckley's stalking had apparently proven unnecessary - Reagan's campaign officials having concluded that Teheran's consultations with Carter's Iranian Core Group had ended in failure - Bush received a report from former Texas Governor John Connally, now Reagan's campaign finance director who had helped box the President in the White House during the crisis, that Carter had worked out a "October Surprise" with Teheran afterall, causing him to activate Allen. Robert Parry has explained in "The Consortium: Bush & a CIA Power Play":

'George Bush,' Allen's notes began, 'JBC (Connally) - already made deal. Israelis delivered last wk. spare pts. via Amsterdam. Hostages out this wk. Moderate Arabs upset. French have given spares to Iraq and know of J. C. (Carter) deal w/Iran. JBC (Connally) unsure what to do. RVA (Allen) to act if true or not.' (consortiumnews.com)

In another column, Parry added about Bush's role: "Whenever Allen knew more, he was to relay information to 'Shacklee (sic) via Jennifer' (Fitzgerald, Bush's infamous secretary)." ("Clouds over George Bush," Dec. 29, 1998, ibid.) When Allen's queries failed to resolve the confusion, he activated Shackley.

The Agency's former DDO was just the man to activate a programmed assassination at the drop of a hat - what the emergency required as there was no time to indoctrinate another Candidate. Shackley's successor, John McMahon, supervised the work of the Stanford Research Institute which was still developing "remote viewing" - the projection of words and images right into patient's brains by machines and psychics - despite Koslov's attempts to kill it off. In 1995, McMahon admitted that the Agency had spent $20,000,000 on remote viewing research. "McMahon has, according to Philip Agee, the whistle-blowing exile, an affinity for 'technological exotics' for CIA covert operations," Alex Constantine wrote in Virtual Government. Most of the program's "empaths" - victims - came from Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientolgy, and Dr. West provided medical oversight for the psi experiments. West conducted his own on the "phenomenology of disassociate states" - the creation of people with multiple personalities. Thanks to research by Yale's Jose Delgado, California's Dr. Ross Adey, Walter Reed Hospital's Joseph Sharp, and DOD-funded J. F. Scapita, Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher, of San Leandro's Technic Research Laboratory in the Bay area, was prepared to produce any kind of human behavior by directing extremely low frequency (ELF), electromagnetic waves of words and images into victim's brains.

This technique permitted handlers to quickly create robot killers, provided they had willing victims, and were able to move them around at will. Ideally, they would want to find someone who had a love-hate relationship with the proposed target. One just had to find a candidate who could be easily persuaded to do the evil deed with the appropriate psychic driving without any calculation or reservation. Then It was just a question of getting the controlled killer into position for killing the target on cue - what could be managed nearby with the proper electronic equipment. It was like having a home-deliverty assassination service.

The same day, October 27th, that Shackley was alerted to take action, Mark David Chapman, a Hinckley lookalike - who had quit his job when Hinckley's mission had ended, and signed out in Lennon's name as if he were the target, only to cross it out before adding his own - started preparing to assassinate the famous Beatle, buying a .38-caliber Charter Arms Special in a Honolulu gun shop. (Fred McGunagle, Mark David Chapman, Chapter Six - "To the Brink and Back," p. 2) Hinckley was no longer available to go after anyone, back in Denver under the care his parents had arranged with psychologist Dr. John Hopper after he had taken an overdose of antidepressants. Chapman, who long had been of two minds about the former Beatle, had been ready for a similar assignment for a month, having been put through the psychological wringer the previous two months.

Chapman, the same age as Hinckley, and born in nearby Fort Worth, was another product of a disfunctional family, though it took longer for him to descend to Hinckley's state. Then, just when he had miraculously gotten married, and worked himself out of debt, Chapman fell into a similar mental frenzy, believing increasingly that he was becoming Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, even writing Hawaii's Attorney General about the necessary procedure for changing his name. (McGunagle, p. 1) At the time, Chapman was working as a maintenance man at the Castle Memorial Hospital, under the supervision of psychologist Leilani Siegfried, after its therapists had nursed him back to health from a suicide attempt.

While Chapman, a Hinckley copycat, could have been positioned to shoot Carter too, it would have been extremely difficult, and the shooting of Lennon would be more efficacious at the polls. (Chapman indicated that he had a few other high profile targets, one added as recently as October 1980 when Carter captured the public's fancy, on his assassination list when he went before the NY State parole board after 20 years incarceration, the names of whom were so sensitive that it redacted them from the published report.) Lennon's murder, it was assumed, would send liberal elements and the beat generation in the American electorate into a tailspin, and any violence, like burning down Harlem, would rally conservative American voters flocking to the voting booth for Reagan, as had happened for Nixon after the MLK and RFK shootings.

While Lennon had drawn the ire and interest of MI5, and the FBI because of his songs of peace, and support of radical causes, especially the IRA's, while taking drugs since the Nixon years (Fenton Bressler, Who Killed John Lennon?, excerpts, Part 2, pp. 2-3, www. shout.net/-bigred/lennon), John and Yoko unwisely considered themselves like comedians Laurel and Hardy when it came to serious political business until it was far too late. Lennon discounted the idea that CIA could have gotten rid of artists like Jimmi Hendrix, and James Morrison to quell radical ardor until his last days, only to concede to Krassner: "Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident. (Krassner, p. 215, emphasis Lennon's) The Agency had far more reason for wanting to fix the unexpected permanent residents in America for underestimating the consequences of taking drugs, especially LSD, and of MK-ULTRA operations than the British and American security services, and few would suspect it having done so.

While the surprisingly well-heeled Chapman, whose source has never been adequately identified, set off for New York, like Holden Caulfield in the Salinger novel, on October 30th, splurging like Arthur Bremer at the Waldorf while stalking Nixon and Wallace, he allegedly failed to procure ammunition for his revolver when he bought it, requiring a trip to Atlanta to make up for the deficiency. Actually, it would have been most easy for anyone to purchase ammunition in New York. In the meantine, Carter's last-minute effort to free the hostages through negotiation had been trumped by Bush and Allen bribing the Iranian Hostage Policy Committee's Mohammad Behesti, thanks to a tipoff by the NSC's Donald Gregg, who accompanied them, about the state of the President's efforts. This was apparently the cause of the delay, and by the time Chapman returned, shooting Lennon had become meaningless with Reagan's election, his handler persuading him to return to his wife Gloria in Hawaii in the hope of regaining a normal life.

There were the strongest operational reasons, though, for this not being allowed to continue. A cured Chapman, his CIA handlers in the "remote viewing" program soon feared, might well recall how he had been maneuvered to kill Lennon, eager to tell all about the regime the Agency had put him through. More sinister elements in the program rued the loss of an actual operation which would determine if a patient could really be driven directly to shoot a target wherever it appeared. As typical scientists, they were obsessed with seeing if their push button approach to assassination really worked. Most important, Reagan's people wanted a diversion to direct the people's attention away from his "October Surprise," the return of all the hostages being postponed until after his inauguration to prevent further speculation.

No sooner, though, did Reagan hint that he might have pulled off an "October Surprise" of his own than Chapman's Castle Memorial therapist started winding him up again, resulting in his having such a shouting match with supervisor Siegfried that he was obliged to resign, resulting in threatening phone calls, and bomb threats to various parties - reminiscent of when Kaczyinski went off the rails. The apparent loner "... spent his days harrassing a group of Hare Krishnas who dailly appeared in downtown Honolulu." (McGunagle, "Is That All You Want?," p. 1) Arriving back in New York on December 6th, Chapman planned to kill Lennon the next day, the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a fitting reminder to Yoko Ono of the betrayals.

After a spate of psychic driving during which Chapman acted as if he were a close associate of Lennon's while living as if he were a nobody without a friend in the world, he bought a poster intended to screw up his courage, spotted a photograph of the former Beatle on a newsstand advertising an interview with the Lennons to focus his attention, purchased a copy of Lennon's latest albumn to remind himself of his words, and finally bought a new copy of The Catctcher in the Rye to renew his hatred of the world's biggest phony - the image, sound, and words which were to trigger the shooting by impulses into his brain when he was in position. In doing this programming, though, Chapman was so engrossed that he missed a few opportunities to kill Lennon. When Lennon finally came into the picture, Chapman couldn't bring himself to shoot him because he was so friendly, open, and generous.

Instead of allowing Chapman to go back to Hawaii with the signed Lennon albumn, and possibly a photograph of the friendly Beatle handing over the prized possession to this apparent nobody, his handler so bombarded him with negative impulses during the night at the Sheraton that he was back the next night at the Lennons' Dakota residence to finish the job. There was no way that Chapman could escape now, as any remission from what he had been through would be more dangerous than ever, given the ever increasing conspiratorial activities by Reagan's people. The negative driving finally won, as Chapman later explained: "He walked past me, and then a voice in my head said, 'Do it, do it, do.' over and over again, saying 'Do it, do it, do it, do,' like that." (McGunagle, ch. 8, p. 1) And Chapman, after getting Lennon to turn, and show his face, did it, and then, after preparing himself for the arrival of the police, resumed reading Salinger's novel.

While Lennon's assasination had the expected effect upon the American electorate, it served no useful purpose. In fact, it brought Hinckley out of his drug-related fantasies with a vengeance. He was so upset by Lennon's assassination, the Beatle being the one person he truly loved, that he went to New York, and attended a service in Central Park to honor his contributions to music and art. As the debate about who was behind it, and the release of the prisoners in Iran grew, Hinckley increasingly sided with, of all people, Mae Brussell who explained Lennon's assassintion thus: "It was a conspiracy. Reagan had just won the election. They knew what kind of president he was going to be. There was only one man who could bring out a million people on demonstration in protest at his policies -- and that was Lennon." (Bresler, p. 1)

Under the circumstances, questions about Hinckley's stability, and allegiances started growing in official circles. On January 13, 1981, Mae Brussell noticed a white sedan, with a man and woman sitting inside, parked across the street from her house. The conspiracy theorist, as she explained in a 14-page letter to FBI Director Clarence Kelly, thought that the pair were conducting a surveillance on her, and she characteristically confronted them about it. While the woman in the car explained that they weren't, the man hardly said anything. "When Reagan was shot, Mae recognized photographs of the accused assailant as the same quiet young man she had seen parked in front of her home." (Vankin and Whlean, p. 64) After the Bureau checked out this claim, and others by the noted conspiracy theorist, it concluded conveniently in a memo that she was "mentally unstable", whose theories were not to be taken seriously.

Of course, the FBI might have concluded differently if it had realized that the person, probably his former handler, in the while sedan with Hinckley was trying to rekindle his hatred of Brussell for having stopped his romance with her daughter a few years before rather than conducting a surveillance on her. Obviously, it didn't work as Hinckley increasingly had the President or the Vice President in his sights. Then there were stories in the Washington press that someone was stalking the Vice President, causing the city's police and the Secret Service all kinds of concerns which Bush was denying as quietly but as angrily as he could. Then there was the dinner date that his son Neil had scheduled with Hinckley's older brother Scott on the night after John's assassination attempt on Reagan. (ibid., pp. 332-3) People in the know about John's state of mind, and intentions were obviously most concerned about what he was up to.

Despite further attempts by John's handler to prevent him from doing anything drastic, though she did not report the risk to law-enforcement officials for fear of disclosing the whole covert operation, he was among the small group awaiting Reagan's exit from Washington's Hilton early on the afternoon of March 30, 1981, and then started firing his .22 caliber pistol, armed with "devastator" bullets, at the rather loosely protected President, the last of which ricocheted off the limosine's fender, and deeply penetrated the President's thorax, narrowly missing his aorta. The Secret Service had apparently not followed its usual formation in protecting Reagan, apparently not to highlight its increased concerns about his safety in apparently such a risk-free area, and was slow to react to his wound, thinking it still impossible for any assassin to actually have hit him. These miscalculations almost cost Reagan his life, and a new batch of data for conspiracy theorists to work with.

The Agency, though, did not need any new revelations to mend its ways somewhat. Its trials and tribulations with Hinckley taught it to avoid the use of any kind of Manchurian Candidate in future, though it was willing to lend out its expertise to allied services, particularly Israel's Mossad, if necessary, as we shall see.

World May Be Headed for Nuclear Destruction, ElBaradei Says

The George and Tony Capitalist Exploitation Brigade (a.k.a. Warmongers 'R' Us) are making the world such a safe place with their "War on Terrorism" (a.k.a. "War on Feedom, Democracy and Human Rights"), instead of less violence we have more violence and this time it could all go nuclear, doesn't that make you feel so super you just want to shag Big Gay Al up the batty? Our corporations are being allowed to exploit a lot of innocent people and one day it's going to turn around and bite us on the arse. It's like one enormous male-ego pissing-competition with intercontinental ballistic missiles, have we all lost our fucking minds people?

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday the world could be headed for destruction if it does not stop the spread of atomic weapons technology, which has become widely accessible.

In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that nuclear technology, once virtually unobtainable, is now obtainable through "a sophisticated worldwide network able to deliver systems for producing material usable in weapons."

Above all ElBaradei echoed President Bush's call in a speech on Wednesday for states to tighten up the control of their companies' nuclear exports to proliferators.

ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general, said the world must act quickly because inaction would a create a proliferation disaster.

"The supply network will grow, making it easier to acquire nuclear weapon expertise and materials. Eventually, inevitably, terrorists will gain access to such materials and technology, if not actual weapons," he wrote.

"If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction," ElBaradei said.

Full story...

You too can go nuclear

by John O'Farrell

Every year there's a different craze; a new gadget on the market that everybody has simply got to have. First it was mobile phones, then it was digital cameras and now this year's big fashion is for nuclear warheads. Suddenly they've become so easy to buy that street traders have them piled up at the covered market on Saturday mornings.

"I don't want a nuclear weapon; I want an iPod," says the teenage boy doing his birthday shopping with Mum. "You can't have an iPod, they're too expensive; what's wrong with some enriched uranium and the technology to develop an atomic bomb? Kevin's got one - he got sent home from school, remember?"

Now George Bush has said that the illegal trade in nuclear technology has to be stopped. The turning point was the confession by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist that he had flogged nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran through the black market. "Oh, spiffing. Anything else?" asked Donald Rumsfeld. "Perhaps he'd like to get Bin Laden some nerve gas for his birthday."

"What's this guy's name?" asked the worried president.

"Abdul Qadeer Khan." Bush processed this information and somehow deduced that he must be one of the bad guys. Apparently, Dubya has some sort of secret code; when he hears a name like Abdul Qadeer Khan he just immediately knows which side of the fence to place him on. Indeed, his first rule for policing the spread of atomic weapons is "no nuclear technology for anyone with the letters Qa in their name".

It is amazing it has taken America this long to wake up to the rapid spread of enriched uranium to regimes less stable than a Russian reactor. A couple of years back Bush clearly stated: "We have to cessate the proliferisation of atomical capacibility" but his advisers just smiled and nodded at him.

Full story...

Insomnia

For those of you who know me and are reading this, this poem is not about the real me, it's about a hypothetical me that probably exists as someone else in a different life.

Couldn't sleep agian last night,
got this feeling that something's not quite right
it's not the bills piling up on the floor
it's not the stranger knocking on the door
it's not the nameless voices on the phone
someone, please, give this dog a bone!

I go to a dead-end job every day
it sucks but my luck just seems to be this way
no matter what I do it all seems to blow back in my face
this life is such a stupid mindless race
sometimes I wonder if my boss even knows who I am!
Maybe it's all just part of the scam!

I sit dreaming of better things, somewhere over there...
I just don't know how I'm gonna make it without going spare
and the clock ticks on by;
as I sit here and wish that time would fly.
But it never does.
It never does.

Medical evidence does not support suicide by Kelly

Phony Tony and His Cronies want this story to go away, they want us to forget that we were lied to in order to justify a war of aggression against a sovereign Nation State - an Act of War according to the Geneva Convention. The fact that almost nobody has ever died from slashing their wrists doesn't seem to matter to anyone in government or the idiot media, but it's true so that should tell you something about their veracity. They lied to us, a lot of people have died and most of the population neither understands the ramifications nor really gives a shit one way or the other. All they want to see is more tits, arse, Johnny Depp and Jordan in the fucking Jungle! The thing that scares me is that the lies are becoming so blatant it's like the System just doesn't care anymore.

Since three of us wrote our letter to the Guardian on January 27, questioning whether Dr Kelly's death was suicide, we have received professional support for our view from vascular surgeon Martin Birnstingl, pathologist Dr Peter Fletcher, and consultant in public health Dr Andrew Rouse. We all agree that it is highly improbable that the primary cause of Dr Kelly's death was haemorrhage from transection of a single ulnar artery, as stated by Brian Hutton in his report.

On February 10, Dr Rouse wrote to the BMJ explaining that he and his colleague, Yaser Adi, had spent 100 hours preparing a report, Hutton, Kelly and the Missing Epidemiology. They concluded that "the identified evidence does not support the view that wrist-slash deaths are common (or indeed possible)". While Professor Chris Milroy, in a letter to the BMJ, responded, "unlikely does not make it impossible", Dr Rouse replied: "Before most of us will be prepared to accept wristslashing ... as a satisfactory and credible explanation for a death, we will also require evidence that such aetiologies are likely; not merely 'possible'. "

Our criticism of the Hutton report is that its verdict of "suicide" is an inappropriate finding. To bleed to death from a transected artery goes against classical medical teaching, which is that a transected artery retracts, narrows, clots and stops bleeding within minutes. Even if a person continues to bleed, the body compensates for the loss of blood through vasoconstriction (closing down of non-essential arteries). This allows a partially exsanguinated individual to live for many hours, even days.

Professor Milroy expands on the finding of Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry - that haemorrhage was the main cause of death (possibly finding it inadequate) - and falls back on the toxicology: "The toxicology showed a significant overdose of co-proxamol. The standard text, Baselt, records deaths with concentrations at 1 mg/l, the concentration found in Kelly." But Dr Allan, the toxicogist in the case, considered this nowhere near toxic. Each of the two components was a third of what is normally considered a fatal level. Professor Milroy then talks of "ischaemic heart disease". But Dr Hunt is explicit that Dr Kelly did not suffer a heart attack. Thus, one must assume that no changes attributable to myocardial ischaemia were actually found at autopsy.

We believe the verdict given is in contradiction to medical teaching; is at variance with documented cases of wrist-slash suicides; and does not align itself with the evidence presented at the inquiry. We call for the reopening of the inquest by the coroner, where a jury may be called and evidence taken on oath.

Andrew Rouse
Public health consultant

Searle Sennett
Specialist in anaesthesiology

David Halpin
Specialist in trauma

Stephen Frost
Specialist in radiology

Dr Peter Fletcher
Specialist in pathology

Martin Birnstingl
Specialist in vascular surgery

Full story...

Blair's claim is simply incredible

This gets better and better with each passing day :-)

A former senior intelligence officer challenges Lord Hutton's account

Imagine you are a retired and very proud guards officer watching trooping the colour. How embarrassed and puzzled you would feel if things started to go wrong. Small things, initially, that others not brought up in the system might not notice. The columns of scarlet-clad troops slightly out of sync with the marching music. Some of the orders being given by men in suits rather than by the sergeant majors on parade. I used to work for the defence intelligence staff (DIS) and the Cabinet Office assessments staff - who draft the papers for the joint intelligence committee (JIC) and intelligence reports for No 10 - and that's how I felt during the Hutton inquiry, and how I feel now.

I left the assessments staff just six months before the dreaded dossier was published. From what came out at the Hutton inquiry I could hardly recognise the organisation I had so recently worked for. Meetings with no minutes, an intelligence analytical group on a highly specialised subject which included unqualified officials in Downing Street but excluded the DIS's lifetime experts (like Dr Brian Jones), vague and unexplained bits of intelligence appearing in the dossier as gospel (notably the 45-minute claim), sloppy use of language, that weird "last call" for intelligence like Henry II raving about Thomas a' Becket - with "who will furnish me with the intelligence I need" substituted for "who will rid me of that turbulent priest".

I looked forward to Lord Hutton making some serious suggestions about how to keep the intelligence process free of political manipulation and analysts free from the preparation of propaganda dossiers. I thought he might help explain, too, why the intelligence community had been taken by surprise by the aftermath of victory in Iraq.

When the report came I was puzzled at first - serious people seemed to be taking it so seriously. And then everyone started to laugh. Some of the passages - particularly "the possibility cannot be completely ruled out that the desire of the prime minister ... may have subconsciously influenced ... members of the JIC ... consistent with the intelligence available to the JIC" are masterpieces of comic writing.

In two years as an intelligence officer, and four-and-a-half years as an analyst at the highest level, I never once heard the phrase "consistent with intelligence". It means nothing. I have often been asked whether I was sure that I had reviewed all the available intelligence or whether I was sure I was on the right track. But no one has ever asked me whether something was consistent with the intelligence. Intelligence is by its nature inconsistent. Very often the right answer, the answer closest to the truth, draws on just a small part of the material available to you because you have discounted the rest. It was consistent with the intelligence for the German high command to expect that the D-day landings were going to take place near Calais. Consistent - except that the intelligence was part of a deception operation.

But it has recently got even more embarrassing. The prime minister told the House of Commons that he was unaware at the time of the war debate that the 45-minute piece of intelligence referred only to battlefield rather than strategic weapons. Let me list just some of the procedures which must have been executed incorrectly to allow him to be kept in such a state of ignorance at such a crucial time on such a crucial matter when other members of his cabinet (Cook and Hoon) appear to have been in the know.

Full story...

Navy Secretary Lehman and the Maritime Strategy: How NATO Almost Triggered Armageddon

by Trowbridge H. Ford

The disappearance of President Reagan's Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, Jr. from the American political scene after he apparently resigned on February 16, 1987, was the greatest mystery until recently. The high-flying, flamboyant youngster, still in his forties, seemed destined to much higher position, hoping even to take over from beleaguered National Security Adviser Vice Admiral John Poindexter when the Iran-Contra scandal broke, and being among the short list of candidates to head the Pentagon when Vice President George Bush set about forming a new administration in January 1989.

Instead Lehman became almost a pariah whom no one was willing to talk about, much less give a position to. Ronald Reagan, for example, though enamored with Lehman's Navy, failed to even mention him in his memoirs, An American Life, as did Lou Cannon in his biography, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. One could only wonder why. When Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh investigated Iran-Contra, Lehman escaped any embarrassment, merely acting as a Reagan loyalist, calling Walsh "a sleazy bounty hunter" (Firewall, p. 440) because of his apparently politically-inspired inquiry.

About the former Navy Secretary's alleged culpability, Gregory Vistica, in Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy, wrote that Lehman fell because he engaged in obscene acts at the gathering of the 1986 Tailhook Association at the Las Vegas Hilton, what triggered disclosure of a whole series of scandals which led the public and Congress to question ultimately his build-up of the Navy to meet the Soviet threat. The question was whether it was worth it, and if not, was it Lehman's fault? (p. 15) Ultimately, Vistica concluded that it wasn't, and that it was Lehman's fault, a most strange conclusion since the father of "the Six Hundred Ship Navy", despite Lehman's claim, was Donald Rumsfeld, SOD in the Ford Administration (p. 64), who recently returned to Washington as George W. Bush's SOD. James Webb, Lehman's successor, particularly favored his naval build-up (Robert Timberg, The Nightingale's Song, p. 399), a claim Vistica feebly discounted. (p. 249)

For good measure, Admiral Frank Kelso, the central partner of Lehman's dream team who went on to became Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), attended the much more controversial 1991 Tailhook Association convention, witnessing a scene of lewd acts by officers with hookers and strippers, and an assault on Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen by an Australian officer during which he bit her on the bottom, and she threatened to kill him if he continued. (pp. 325-8) This was the convention where Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, Admiral Jack Snyder's aide, was forced to run the gauntlet during which male F/A -18 pilots tried to tear her clothes off, and threatened to gang rape her. It was only three years later that Kelso was forced to retire early because of the bitter fallout from it, and other scandals.

Lehman's memoirs, Command of the Seas, did little to clarify matters too, saying nothing about the scandals, and little about his operations, the maritime strategy reduced to a simple flow chart which even political scientists would have been uncomfortable with. (p. 494) Lehman made it seem as if he were just fortunate enough to have been a member of a team whose actions in grand events made such a difference. (p. xi) While he was building up the fleet despite the opposition of "an elephantine bureaucracy and byzantine political arena," others directed its use. "By 1985," he explained regarding his plans to retire, "the navy's confidence and morale had been restored, the maritime strategy was in place, and the management philosophy was established." (p. 417) His somewhat premature departure was caused by a leak of his intentions to quit, by his nemesis, Pentagon staffer and CNO Carlisle Trost, with whom he was having a bitter dispute over unprecedented promotions of submariners - the admirals' revenge, Lehman claimed, for his sacking of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy. (p. 418)

Well, the only Rickover now on the scene is the submarine Hyman G. Rickover, SSN-709, and Trost and his fellow admirals have long since retired. Still, Lehman has not made a reappearance, even with the White House full of Republican hawks like Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney was the first Bush's SOD, and he named the unassuming H. Lawrence Garrett III, undersecretary to Webb, his navy secretary, confident, as Vistica explained, that the admirals would make sure that he did not become another Lehman. (p. 283)

It was only the terrible miscalculations by the Bush White House in the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks - what the stunned American public finally forced an inquiry into - which resulted in Lehman being called back as a member of the commission where he was obviously to help cover up the mess. The appointment seemed like another example of using a politician with a most controversial record to stop further controversy. Even so, it required more to even get Lehman named to the 9/11 Commission as former Republican Senator Majority Leader Trent Lott sneaked his appointment by critics while the country was invovled in disputing his claims about the dubiety of desegregation on the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination - what forced the outspoken Mississippian's replacement.

So what were Lehman's problems?

They seem to have been the result, strangely enough, of his rabid anti-communism, one so virulent that it went far beyond just sacking de´tente with the Soviets. Lehman's anti-communism exceeded that of other Republican hawks like Henry Kissinger, Al Haig, and Robert McFarlane. For Lehman, no other concern was worthy of serious consideration when it came to getting rid of communism, and its apparent supporters, as fast as possible, and without any restrictions. Lehman truly believed that it was better to be dead than run the slightest risk of being red.

Thanks to his upper-middle class, Catholic upbringing in Philadelphia, his ideological antipathy to anything even smacking of socialism was almost pathological. "His aunt was Princess Grace of Monaco." (Vistica, p. 19) Lehman attended parochial schools in the city, and graduated from its Jesuit St. Joseph's College where he worked for the causes that Catholic conservative William Buckley was noted for at Yale Lehman's first act as navy secretary was no accident - to name a new attack submarine the Corpus Christi, "the body of Christ", to indicate the Church's going to war with the hated infidel - touching off a controversay even within the Church which Reagan had to settle by connecting the name to the secular city in Texas.

Thanks to getting to know Georgetown Professor Richard Allen while doing his graduate work, having met him while chairing a conference on arms control, something Lehman loathed, he was appointed to the Nixon National Security Council. While serving on it, Lehman took advantage of the completely politicized environment in which Washington's national security policy-making was conducted, developing more than a healthy disrespect for the efforts by his superior which he compounded by his antics as a pilot while serving in the naval reserve - what George W. Bush took to heart when he became President. Lehman became completely indoctrinated with the new Republican ethos by joining the ultra conservative Catholic organization, the Knights of Malta, which included Haig, Allen, McFarlane, and DCI William Casey among its membership. By the time Reagan appointed him navy secretary, Lehman was more than ready to take command of the seas.

Washington was in greater flux then than at any other time during the Cold War. Bolstered by the release of the American hostages in Teheran - what the new President conveniently arranged for his inauguration by bribes that his Vice Presidential candidate George H. Bush and Allen paid to the Iranians - and yet still bitter about Soviet advances, especially in Afghanistan, during President Carter's watch, Lehman arranged for the President to delegate competely the conduct of the Navy's secret war against the Soviets to the Pentagon, and then managed to establish that its conduct was his responsibility, not that of either the admirals or SOD Caspar Weinberger.

On March 6, 1981, the leaders of the new administration were briefed by the Pentagon leadership with videos and slides that Lehman knew would be most effective with Reagan about the new maritime strategy that Rick Haver's Team Charlie was putting together, the SOD completing the process by getting the President to sign off in advance on all the sensitive espionage operations it would entail - tapping all communication cables Moscow relied upon, completing the sound surveillance system (SOSUS) so Washington would know the whereabouts of all Soviet shipping, provoking responses of all kinds by underwater and surface intrusions of the seas surrounding the Soviet Union to determine its counter strategies, mounting NATO exercises for offensive, defensive, and deceptive purposes, etc. (Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man's Bluff, p. 313ff.)

Back at the Pentagon, Lehman's legal adviser, Captain Ted Gordon, and Rear Admiral John Jenkins, the Navy's Judge Advocate General, prepared a file on the navy secretary's statutory powers, so that their boss could wield power away from CNO Thomas Hayward and the admirals. "The secretary of the Navy," Vistica wrote, not the admirals, or the SOD, "was king of the empire." (p. 94) Furthermore, the secretary, while he no longer had a seat in the Cabinet, was still the President's sole adviser on naval affairs, what Lehman did behind Weinberger's back, and to his increasing annoyance and anger. Lehman's broad, unprecedented interpretation of his powers would have a profound effect not only upon the Navy but also the whole world.

While historians have concentrated upon Lehman's use of the fleet, especially Admiral James "Ace" Lyons' efforts (Vistica, p. 105ff.), to challenge Soviet exercises, strategies, and facilities, and the submarine eavesdropping on Soviet naval communication cables in the Barents and Okhotsk Seas (Sontag and Drew, p. 222ff.), Lehman's direction of activities in the Baltic against the newly-establihed social democratic government of Olof Palme was more to the point - dangerous missions against a long-time neutral country which would cause an international uproar if discovered. Palme had long been a thorn in Washington's side by his denunciation of its war in Vietnman, and his now comparing its operations against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Lehman wanted to find out if Palme was a Soviet stooge, what defectors Anatoli Golitsyn and Arkadi Shevchenko had long been claiming, and seemed to be increasingly likely after the Soviet Whiskey class submarine U-137 ran aground off Karlskrona in 1981.

The scene was set by the departing government of Thorbjorn Falldin inviting a contingent of American ships, the cruiser Belknap, the frigate Elmer Montgomery, and the supply ship Monongahela, to visit Stockholm in late September 1982, as Ola Tunander has comprehensively explained in Hårsfjärden. The Swedish Navy, especially Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral Bror Stefenson, justified the action as a test of whether the Soviets were violating territorial waters, thinking that Moscow might want to take advantage of the visit for operational purposes, what Stockholm organized Operation NOTVARP to determine.

Soon after the American surface ships left, there were all kinds of submarine sightings, involving four to six conventional submarines, perhaps even a Whiskey Class one, and at least one, perhaps three, midget ones. Their origin, though, should not have been a foregone conclusion as Washington had even bought a Whiskey sub from the Indonesian government. During the first three weeks of October, there was a protacted hunt for the underwater vessels which, according to Tunander, resulted in two or three of them, one seriously, being damaged. The sound signatures of the ships did not match Soviet ones either. The results would have been worse if the hunt had not been called off twice, apparently by Stefenson, in NATO's interest.

The submarines directly involved apparently included two of the American Sturgeon Class, most probably the USS Cavalla and USS Puffer, while the USS Guitarro and USS Bergall were standing by to assist further off shore. The deep-diving submersibles engaged were the Turtle, and probably Sea Cliff and NR-1. The reason why we know that most of these submariners were involved is because with the end of the Cold War, all the underwater warriors wanted to be recognized for their feats, leading to the publication of what awards they received, and when. (Sontag and Drew, Appendix C, U.S. Submarine Awards, pp. 415-35) British and West German submariners were also probably involved, though London was not contributing what it wanted because of the demands of the Falklands War.

While by most conventional standards, these intrusions into Swedish waters would be considered a failure, especially since one of the attack subs was seriously damaged, they determined that Stockholm would not take too seriously further intrusions, and whatever sightings were subsequently reported, the public would believe that they were Soviet ones, thanks to Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and James Schlesinger claiming that Palme had showed statesmanship by allowing the damaged "Soviet" one to escape.

Still, the hawks in the West kept pressuring Palme about Soviet intrusions, especially after the Swedish Parliamentary Submarine Commission reported that there were six Soviet ones, obliging the statsminister to protest to Moscow about them. Lynn Hansen, in a paper prepared for the SOD in 1984, claimed that the Hårsfjärden intrusions were part of a Spetsnaz exercise, preparation for an invasion, like the Soviets had done five years before in Afghanistan. Right before Palme was assassinated, Edinburgh's Professor John Erickson, who had been an advisor of the Parliamentary Commission, and was an expert on Soviet inexorable advancement, reminded Swedes on television that Palme had negotiated the release of the "Soviet" submarine back in October 1982.

At the same time, Lehman and his people were perfecting the maritime strategy, what Moscow might do with its expanding naval forces, and what the West had to do to contain them - what gave the Pentagon insights into how to conduct a permissible first strike against the Soviets. While there were four scenarios about what might happen, only the last one is important for our purposes, a US offensive which stopped the Soviets before they even got started. Once US-led forces had knocked out Soviet submarine and air defenses in the Far North, asTunander had explained in Cold Water Politics, "one carrier battle group may seek shelter in Vestfjord in order to attack the Kola bases in concert with two carriers further north. The fourth carrier battle group is assumed to have sailed down into the North Sea to participate, should the conflict escalate to the Central Front." (p. 101)

While CNO James Watkins, a Lehman man when it came to strategies, thought that the Navy would have the outright capability to do this by the early 1990s ("Carrying the Fight to the Enemy" in "The Maritime Strategy," US Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1986 (Supplement), pp. 9-13), he overlooked, perhaps intentionally, how the time frame could be moved up by some surprises. The most important was the discovery that the Soviets could be devastatingly degraded as a nuclear power if their nuclear submarines, the boomers, were suddenly sunk on station by conventional means, what Joseph Nye elaborated upon in Nuclear Ethics, particularly to quiet Watkins' concerns about the conflict going nuclear almost immediately. This way there would be no innocent lives lost, helping induce Moscow to see that capitulation did not constitute a catastrophic defeat. This would permit the achievement of what Reagan always envisioned too - the triumph of good over evil without nuclear oblivion, Armageddon - the prospect of which induced him to scale down his rhetoric against the USSR. (Cannon, p. 247ff.)

In late August 1985, Lehman gained approval of his promotion slate, the so-called "twenty-four-star switch", which put his admirals in all the important operational slots. While the secretary's favorite, Lyons, became commander in chief Pacific, the immediately relevant advancements were of Admiral William Crowe to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and submariner Admiral Carlisle Trost to head the newly created Atlantic command, what Lehman had originally wanted to give Lyons. (Vistica, pp. 189-90) These changes gave Lehman a red-tape free chain of command to effect dramatic actions at the drop of a hat, as was demonstrated two months later by the apprehension of the Leon Klinghofer's killers by F-14s from the USS Saratoga of Vice Admiral Frank Kelso's Sixth Fleet.

The last surprise, the most unexpected one, was Palme's refusal to let 80 HAWK missiles to be transshipped through Sweden by Lt. Colonel Oliver North's Enterprise on November 17th. The group that the NSC's point man had put together expected it to be agreed to as a matter of course, failing even to attempt to get the necessary clearance from Stockholm. In doing so, they ignored this election pledge of Palme:

Swedish territory is to be protected against incursions by all available means. Confidence in our will to protect our neutrality must be maintained. Neither fears, nor hopes should be created that Sweden should abandon its neutrality policy as a result of strong external pressure....We are determined to repel by all available means, all those who violate our territory, our air space or waters. (Quoted from Cold Water Politics, p. 118. N. b. that when Pentagon hawk Milton Leitenberg quoted this passage in his Soviet Submarine Operations in Swedish Waters 1980-1986, pp. 101-2, he interjected this passage into the statsminister's conculsion in case anyone thought the West could have been culpable: " ' Since the sharp diplomatic note sent to the Soviet Union in 1983, the underwater activity has still been carried out but' despite all our efforts it has been impossible to identify the nation or nations involved. Thus the prerequisites necessary for diplomatic actions to be taken against a particular state have not existed.")

To foreclose any possibility of such diplomatic action, North decided to have Palme killed, thanks to his increasing connections with London through SAS Major David Walker's KMS private security firm. North had been introduced to Walker by Lehman.

No sooner had the HAWK missile shipment ended in fiasco than Lehman was seeking congressional approval for an aggressive use of American attack submarines in the hope that it could provoke a final showdown with the Red Banner Fleet, resulting in the destruction of its crucial boomers on station, and ending the Cold War in a Warsaw Pact whimper. The Navy Secretary was especially wanting such a senario since he had had to accept the plea-bargain for John Walker's spy ring, preferring instead to have the ringleader literally drawn and quartered. For 17 years, this submarine Warrant Officer had supplied Moscow with key intelligence about American underwater operations. (Sontag and Drew, pp. 351-3) Thanks to Vitali Yurchenko's 'defection', Washington was not only able to make the case against Walker's people but also against National Security Agency (NSA) agent Ronald Pelton who told Moscow that Washington was also tapping its communication cable to the Sea of Okhotsk (code name Ivy Bells). (David Wise, Nightmover, p. 132ff.)

The day after Pelton was arrested, the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to Lehman's request despite Maine Republican Senator William Cohen's reservations after it was revealed that the Chairman of Team Charlie, Rick Haver, had reported three years before that the program had probably been betrayed to the Soviets: "Cohen pressed on. Was it prudent, he wanted to know, to continue to operate the cable-tapping program, push it full tilt ahead, when there may have been a spy?" (Sontag and Drew, p. 355) While the Senators concluded that it probably wasn't, it was okay now since Pelton did not know about the tap on the cable in the Barents, and, consequently, the Soviets did not know either.

The result was the Navy sending a pack of at least a dozen gung-ho attack submarines, headed apparently by the USS Hyman Rickover, and including the all important USS Parche on its sixth trip back to the Barents (See ibid., Appendix C, pp. 426-7, and n. b. that there is no accounting for this trip in the book.), in the hope that it would provoke a crucial confrontation with their Soviet counterparts, leading to a fatal degrading of Moscow's deterrence.

While Lehman's submarines were moving into the Norwegian Sea - what NATO Admiral Wesley McDonald had obtained permission for in 1985 - London did everything it could to promote, and protect the operation. The biggest need was for Prime Minister Thatcher to get rid of maverick Secretary of Defence Michael Heseltine. While he had set up Defence Secretariat 19 in March 1983 to counter the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's support for Labour's unilateralist nuclear policy - what Palme wanted too - a task which got MI5 involved, and F Branch's Cathy Massiter complained about on Channel 4's 20/20 Vision program, MI5's Official Secrets, in March 1985 (Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger, pp. 67-8), Heseltine still seemed like a most risky heir apparent at the MOD if its operations with the Security Service's help became even more questionable legally, and controversial politically.

In December 1985, when the government seemed teetering on collapse, opening the door apparently for Neil Kinnock's unilateralists,Thatcher forced Heseltine's resignation, and that of Leon Brittan, who had acknowledged while Home Secretary that MI5's pursuit of subversives was getting out of hand, by suddenly chosing Sikorsky, the American helicopter producer, to rescue Westland Helicopters rather than a European consortium of Swedish, German, and British suppliers that Heseltine had put together. (Private Eye, Jan. 24, 1986, p. 7) Brittan, who favored Sikorsky, had been obliged to resign as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry because it was his department which had leaked the Attorney General's letter of rebuke to Heseltine for resigning without first informing the Commons. (Alan Clark, Diaries, p. 132)

While it may have seemed much ado about nothing, it did have far-reaching consequences. For one thing, it put more pressure on Thatcher to act because of failing to sanction an American attack on Libya after Abu Nidal's massacres, thanks to weapons supplied by Manzer al-Kassar, at the Rome and Athens airports. Heseltine got his revenge by leading the unseating of the Prime Minister in 1990. In the interim, Thatcher was obliged to take advantage on the new lease on life, the European arms merchants going 'ape' over the growing tilt in America's favor.

The YGGRASIL arms cartel, including a Swedish delegation headed by Pieter Wallenberg, apparently topped the agenda for its January meeting in its Wiltshire country house with consideration of Palme's assassination (Operation Tree) because of his alleged agenda for his April meeting with CPSU General Secretary Michael Gorbachev - removal of signal intelligence devices to the Skagerack, and the closing down of the naval bases at Musko and Karlskrona (alleged minutes of NATO's Special Operations Planning Staff (SOPS), January 1986, supplied by Oswald Le Winter, former Chief of NATO's Intelligence Tactical Assessment Centre) - what MI6 claimed to have stolen from his office in Rosenbad, and CIA station chief in Stockholm, Jenonne Walker, had conveniently discussed with most disgruntled Swedish naval officers at a Christmas cocktail party at the Embassy.

While many doubt the authenticity of the SOPS minutes, especially because of Le Winter's most questionable reliability, they seem accurate, particularly since Le Winter has claimed that they show that SOPS gave the go-ahead for the assassination. Actually, they only show American and British representatives attempting to hijack the meeting for this purpose:

Current status of above makes it imperative that operation Tree be carried out successfully. SOPS has been assured that arms length will be maintained to ensure deniability. Project management is local, technicians imported. SOPS requires details to be kept fully compartmented on need to know basis.

The Dutch representative then protested what the American and British representatives were attempting, claiming that the relation between NATO's secret structure to coordinate action by Stay-Behind forces in case of a Soviet attack, and the YGGDRASIL group was completely informal, and not recognized in any way by the member countries. The chairman then polled all the representatives, unanimously confirming what the Dutch representative had claimed.

The American, and British representatives persisted in making the case that SOPS assume joint responsibility for the operation. Le Winter claimed in an editorial note that the bivalent position that it adopted on the possible assassination represented a hierarchical one. If bivalent means anything, it is a completely horizontal one where parity and independence of the parts is maintained. Then the British representative claimed that Palme had his own Contragate, shipping weapons grade uranium-235 to India by means of false country of origin certificates, what Christer Larsson had asserted in Ny Teknik, and Palme had long denied. (Chris Mosey, "Secret nuclear weapons row breaks in Sweden," The Observer, April 28, 1985, p. 17)

When the US representative got a chance, he not only supported what the British representative was claiming but also added that Palme's role in trying to settle the Iran-Iraq war was dubious too, apparently a reference to his stopping the weapons shipments to Teheran. Soon the complaints against the statsminister for allegedly helping the PKK, IRA, and Nelson Mandela's ANC became so vociferous that the British representative expressed concern about Britian's ability to maintain its sphere of influence in Scandinavia. The American member then said he would prepare a report for the meeting in February to detail Palme's alleged assistance of Moscow's interests in Angola and Namibia, inducing the Swedish delegation to assert, to the chairman's amazement, that Palme was a Soviet agent of influence, as defectors had universally claimed. (Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old, p. 55ff.)

The purpose of the whole exercise was to give an aura of NATO approval for all that London and Washington had planned for the statsminister in Stockholm, and the Soviets at sea. To complement the thrust that American attack submarines were carrying out in the Barents, Washington, it seems, had the USS Seawolf lead a contingent of submarines, including the deep-diving submersible NR-1, and the missile submarine USS Sam Houston converted to carry Navy SEALS into the Baltic (Sontag and Drew, pp. 427-35), to give the impression that Moscow planned to follow up Palme's murder what an invasion of Sweden, what these same subs would exploit with devastating results once the Russian ruse, it seems, was exposed. To give the ruse greater credibility, British Oberon class subs, outfitted with Special Boat Service forces, went around the Baltic, and down Sweden's east coast (Hårsfjärden, p. 305ff.), to give Stockholm the impression that they were Soviet attacks submarines, moving into position for an assault on Swedish installations.

While the submarines were moving into place, Washington concentrated upon preparing the public for the showdown, something more than simply a bolt from the blue. The centerpiece of this propaganda was the January 1986 Supplement of US Naval Institute Proceedings which amounted to a White Paper for degrading the Soviet nuclear deterrent. For Lehman, scenario four pinpointed Soviet weakness, calling for a first strike no matter what they did. ("The 600-Ship Navy," vol. 112, no.1, pp. 30-40) CNO Watkins provided the most authoritative source on the maritime strategy (Cold War Politics, pp. 70-1), concluding that American attack submarines would start sinking Soviet boomers within five minustes, anytime Moscow carried out another suprise attack, as it had in Afghanistan. Marine Commandant P. X. Kelley promised Normandy-type assaults from the North Cape to the eastern Baltic if the Soviets started something.

The fact that dangerous operations were afoot did not escape everyone's notice. For example, no sooner did the Boston Globe read Watkins' article than it compared him to the swashbucking Admiral John Dewey at Manila in 1898. For the benefit of Lehman's attack submarine captains, it added: "Yet since the skipper in the underwater combat cannot tell whether the sub he is chasing carries anti-ship torpedoes or nuclear missiles, he might sink both." ("A plan to win a war," Jan. 11, 1986, 18-1-E) Seth Cropsey, Lehman's deputy undersecretary, was not dissuaded by such wimpish drivel: "Do the military experts at the Globe have another idea - besides victory - of what we should aim for if we find ourselves in a war at sea? Would the Globe be happy with a tie, for instance?" (Feb. 6, 1986, 14-5) Nor was Watkins, as he explained to readers of The Times two days before the statsminister's shooting:

But if they (the sub skippers) can do this within three minutes during a conventional war, they can also do it out of the blue in peacefime. Keeping your opponent in your sights, being able to knock the weapon from his hand the moment he moves, may in some circumstances feel good. But what will be the Soviet reaction to this new explicit state of affairs? (Wayland Kennet, "Crisis under the Ice," Feb. 26, 1986, p. 14) The CNO was confident that the Soviets would throw in the sponge as a result.

In fact, the ruse about Russian offensive ambitions was so successful that the West had Stockholm eating out of its hands by the time the assassination actually took place. Washington believed that it would have comprehensive, mole-free intelligence of Soviet readiness on land, sea, and in the air, and how it reacted to any showdown, starting with photgraphs from the spy satellite, KH-11, explaining why DCI Casey was so paranoid about its existence just before the assassination that Pentagon employee Samuel Morrison was successfully prosecuted for publishing its picture of a Soviet aircraft carrier being built in a Black Sea shipyard in Jane's Defence Weekly (Angus Mackenzie, Secrets, pp. 135-41), and why Thatcher was similarly inclined towards Duncan Campbell after the Stockholm shooting. (Mark Urban, UK Eyes Alpha, pp. 56-61) Besides its double agents, especially Valeri Marytov, Sergei Motorin, and Boris Yuzhin, in the USSR, the CIA had a miniaturized version of the sea cable tap placed on an important communication cable in Moscow (Sontag and Drew, note, p. 309), and had a cargo container, filled with electronic sensors to monitor the slightest sound, travelling westward across the USSR from Vladivostock on the Trans-Siberian railroad. (Operation ABSORB). (Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy, p. 197)

When the Challenger disaster prevented NSA from putting up a new MAGNUM satellite "...to intercept Soviet missile test signals (telemetry), and data-links as well as microwaves" (Urban p. 59), and the British super spy ship HMS Challenger threatened to break down again (ibid., p. 247), the Swedish Navy came to the rescue, supplying its new spy ship, Orion, which could monitor Soviet military activites in the eastern Baltic. More important, it came with US intelligence personnel on board, and Swedish intelligence officers putting a priority on reconnaissance against Soviet low-level air defence systems, its SA-10s intended to be used against US air-launched cruise missiles, and low-flying B-1 bombers, what its previous captain, Commander Björn Eklind, a veteran of the 1982 sub-hunt, had refused. (Hårsfjärden, pp. 227-9) Navy Chief of Staff Bror Stefenson apparently cooked up a case against Eklind for having behaved provocatively with a Soviet destroyer while following a Kilo class submarine, forcing his early retirement a month before the assassination.

With the scene set for the Stockholm shooting to trigger a showdown with the Soviets in Scandinavia's surrounding seas, we must not overlook that Moscow was completely prepared for the crisis, thanks particularly to the spying by the Agency's Aldrich "Rick" Ames, and the Bureau's Robert Hanssen. Now Oleg Gordievsky briefed the former about the timing of the statsminister's shooting, and the latter had allowed the former to rush without proper authorization to his Soviet handler, Viktor Cherkashin, in the Embassy in Washington on February 14th with the message. In fact, when the crisis passed without mishap, Cherkashin, and six other leading KGB counterintelligence officials were awarded in an unprecedented ceremony at Yasnevo the Order of Lenin by the head of its FCD, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was well on his way to becoming its first KGB Chief. (Wise, note, p. 327)

London and Washington still thought that they were on top of everything, arranging the arrest of a Soviet arms supplier, US Navy Commander John Bothwell, a week later in Bath, and the defection in Athens of KGB Colonel Viktor Gundarev, a Courtship agent, who worked with not only him but also the vastly undervalued 'defector' Yurchenko. (Ronald Ostrow and Tyler Marshall, "Defection of KGB official linked to arrest of American in Britain," Boston Globe, Feb. 22, 1986, p. 3) Bothwell apparently knew about SOPS and YGGDRASIL deliberations about killing Palme, but he was arrested before he could pass on the latest details to his Soviet contact.

By this time, Moscow had completely absorbed Operation ABSORB, and Ames had even tipped off the Soviets about the tap on the Moscow telephone cable. (Sontag and Drew, op cit.) Unknown to the West, the Soviets also had 82 nuclear-armed SS-23 missiles in East Germany, and the USSR (Urban, p. 290) under the command of Marshal Nicholai Ogarkov, eager to make amends for shooting down KAL 007. The over-confident contingent to Brixmis in East Germany, the 200 British personnel to insure compliance with the Four-Power Agreement, had overlooked their existence (Ken Connor Ghost Force, p. 430ff., and Urban, pp. 79-80), and their surpirse contribution to an escalating East-West showdown would have been devastating. In sum, KGB Chief Victor Chebrikov knew what he was talking about when he unprecedentedly warned the West to back off from what it had planned on the morning to Palme's assassination. (Christopher Walker, "KGB reveals big swoop on state spies," The Times, March 1, 1986, p. 1)

Unfortunately, the warning went for naught, as the West was so eager for the showdown that it could hardly wait for the shots to ring out on Stockholm's Sveavägen. Chris Mosey, MI5's journalist on the scene, and a continuous source of stories about the statsminister being a Soviet stooge, was so eager to break the news to the world that he called up, it seems, the Rikskriminalpolisen to see if Palme had been shot before the police even knew it had happened (Kari & Pertti Poutianen, Inuti labyrinten - Om mordet på Olof Palme, pp. 152-4), claiming that he had heard about the assassination from Washington Post reporter Karen de Young, who allegedly said that she had already heard an ABC flash about the assassination. (See the incredible forward to Mosey's Servige och mordet på Olof Palme.) The reason for the hurry in getting out the news was, of course, so that the Soviets would then react in the anticipated ways.

Moscow did nothing to further the West's purposes, though, even closing down its KBG residency to prevent any bugged conversations or calls taking place, especially with convicted Soviet spy Stig Bergling. Nor did the CIA or the FBI receive any calls from its double agents, especially Motorin (Wise, pp. 256-7), indicating that the Soviets were behind the shooting, the Red Banner Fleet was caught completely off guard, and was rushing to fill the gap - what Marytnov and Yuzhin were expected to add. It was to be a replay of the Cuban Missile Crisis, arranged again by the CIA's Rodney Carlson, only this time the Soviet deterrent would be fatally degraded, and the double agents, followers of Oleg Penkovsky, would live to tell the tale, and take the credit.

With the Soviet boomers completely in position, either under the Arctic icepack, or in bastions protected by killer submarines, Lehman's attack subs were completely at a loss as to what to do, as the Globe's military experts had envisioned. Still, the Navy Secretary's timetable moved ahead, with a 10-man Marine team, led by Captain Steve Little, landing southwest of Tromsö in northern Norway (Task Force Eagle), to prepare the ground for American carrier groups, loaded with other Marines, moving in from the Atlantic. Further south at Narvik, 20,000 NATO troops were gathering as part of Anchor Express Exercise, waiting for another American carrier group to come up Vestfjorden. Without having eliminated the threat from Soviet submarines and airforces, NATO was gathering up its forces for a thrust across Finnmark to attack the Kola Peninsula (Operation Armageddeon). ("Avalanche kills 11 NATO soldiers on exercises above Arctic Circle," Boston Globe, March 6, 1986, p. 9)

Fortunately, the three American batttle groups never arrived. During the interim, the tent Little's men were in caught fire, burning three of the Marines. Anchor Express Exercise turned out to be a complete fiasco too, at least 16 Norwegian engineers being killed by an avlanache when its forces, despite warnings from the locals, moved into the dangerous Vassdalen Valley 16 miles northeast of Narvik. "As the death toll mounted and conditions worsened Nato's senior allied commanders met through the night in emergency session." (Tony Samstag, "Avalanche disaster stops Nato Exercise," The Times, March 7, 1986, p. 8) While Commander-in-Chief Frederick Bull-Hansen, who had been doing all he could to arrange a showdown with the Soviets, acted as if the dangerous conditions were unexpected; exercise leader Major General Martin Vadset ordered its go-ahead despite warnings that the conditions were more dangerous than enemy soldiers; and what the emergency was, no one explained, obliging the government to appoint an unprecedented comission under assize court judge Mrs. Agnes Haug to investigate the disaster. (Tony Samstag, "Norway angered by snow tragedy," The Times, March 10, 1986, p. 4) In the end, Heseltine's replacement at the MOD, George Younger, who had specially come over to help direct Anchor Express, had to settle for simply seeing a series of safer, smaller demonstrations.

Lehman's was not dissuaded by such setbacks, though, calling for Admiral Frank Kelso's intelligence-gathering ship Caron and the Aegis cruiser Yorktown to challenge the Soviet base at Sevastopol (Vistica, p. 214), and for yet another wave of attack submarines, led by Lehman's favorite, City of Corpus Christi, and including the USS Dace, Dallas, Jack, and Tullibee (Sontag and Drew, p. 427) into the Barents itself towards the Gremikha naval base in the hope of triggering a Moscow response. The Soviets kept their cool throughout, though, obliging former CNO Watkins ultimately to confess about the maritime strategy:

Their intelligence sources were good, and we wanted them to know how self-confident we were. That's the role it plays. It's not a matter of charging up there and shooting up a lot of ballistic missile submarines as being the goal to prevent them from even launching first strike. No. That's not the way they would deploy their submarine force, and not the way that we would deploy ours. (Quoted from Sontag and Drew, p. 480.)

The best corroboration of all this occurred when Lehman set about finding a replacement for Watkins as CNO. Once the Soviets had finally diverted Washington and London to attack Libya after its People's Bureau had been persuaded to blow up La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin on April 5th, what double agent Gennady Varenik had long claimed Moscow had contingency plans for (Earley, p. 194ff.), the Navy Secretary was adamant about Kelso, a very junior Vice Admiral, becoming the next CNO. (Vistica, p. 223) Trost didn't even express an interest in the position though he was most qualified, and the Atlantic Fleet commander. Lehman explained his opposition to the previously favored submariner thus: "You're insufficiently compliant." "You're just another fucking Boy Scout." (Quoted from Vistica, p. 224.) Lehman even threatened to resign if he didn't get his way on the appointment. Trost, thanks to his relation with NSA Vice Admiral John Poindexter, who was finally getting the message about what Lehman, North, and Major David Walker had been up to, ended up getting the position, but the Navy Secretary decided to stay on.

While Lehman wanted to act as if Trost's mutiny over the handling to Task Force Eagle had never occurred, treating promotions in the conventional way when they were due, Trost would have none of it. According to Lehman, the NCO wanted an unprecedented 80% of the submariners promoted from commander to captain, while only 55% for the favored commanders in the surface fleet, and in the air. (p. 418) Of course, Trost wanted to reward the commanders undersea who had had such a difficult time in the build-up of Operation Armageddon, and who could not be recognized in an other way. When Trost again got his way with Weinberger, Lehman again threatened to retire, and this time it was accepted. (pp. 247-8)

Once Lehman finally left the Pentagon,Trost gave an unprecedented interview with a reporter from the Cox News Service, introducing his complaints of the autocratic, cocksure Secretary thus: "John Lehman was not a balanced human being." (Quoted from Vistica, p. 252.)

The denouement of the whole process occurred when Trost finally met his Soviet opponents, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, and Admiral K. A. Makarov, during the showdown in another meeting at the Pentagon in December 1987. The NCO had already tried to reassure them by issuing "Looking Beyond the Maritime Strategy" in the January 1987 issue of Proceedings, explaining that it really was just a strategy, and not a secret operational plan to catch the Soviets off guard in some showdown. No sooner did Akhromeyev spot Trost than he exclaimed: "You, you're the problem." (Quoted from Sontag and Drew, p. 367.)

While Trost tried to calm the Soviet Chief of Staff down, explaining that he was not the problem, Rick Haver of Team Charlie, and Admiral Kinnaird McKee, a former captain of the USS Dace, tried to make small talk with Makarov, but he would have none of it. Haver heard Makarov's translator identify him with the CIA, and the Commander of the Red Banner Fleet had something to add when McKee referred to the Dace's high-jinks in 1968 at his expense. Makarov could not pass up reference to another patrol, apparently the one in March 1986, when he was following the Dace, and "...that he had known it was the Dace even then." (Ibid.) When Haver tried to discuss the matter further, Makarov cut him off coldly, and when he persisted, Makarov blurted out: "Tell this young man that when veterans get together, it doesn't matter who won or lost. It's enough that both survived."

Without the spying of Ames and Hanssen, Trost's insubordination, and a predictable assist from the Norwegian winter, though, no one might have. As it was, only Palme, and about 40 Norwegian soldiers, Soviet double agents, and Northern Ireland scapegoats were murdered. No wonder that even the hawks in Washington have had it with Lehman.

More bums and deceit

by AL Kennedy

Well, I've been having a Dyke of a time - oral surgery, stitches, swelling, antibiotics - all the fun a Calvinist could wish for. And when you look like Barbra Streisand after three weeks under water and your pain relief is preventing you from tying, or even recognising, your own shoes, then you're in the perfect condition to stay at someone else's house and watch cable TV.

So now I finally have a proper grasp of what's important in modern life. And mainly it's tits - big tits, cheap tits, posh tits, Germans pan-frying tits with their consent, plastic tits, real tits, squint tits, famous tits and the unfortunate tits of strangers. If I'd known how fascinating tits were I'd have spent quality time with mine much more often. But if tits don't do it for you, I've seen more arses in these last weeks than I would have if I worked on an arse farm. Why do arses matter? Well, I'm still unsure, but I think it's because you can siphon the fat up out of them, then inject it back into your face.

Never mind the rollingshite news channels and their inability to notice when EVIL IRAQI DEATH DRONES WILL RAIN HORROR ON AMERICA IN MINUTES turns seamlessly into "WMD-related programme activities". They're just really happy that Mr Bliar - in all good faith, with an open and Christian heart and not a naughty thought in his head - accepted and promoted "intelligence" that professionals were loudly finding laughable long before the first coalition cluster bomb liberated the first Iraqi child's fingers.

No, let's get into some proper journalism about Hitler - Hitler's arse, Nazi arses, Hitler's plans to inject Aryan arse fat into plucky British lips, Hitler manipulating the media, creating a climate of fear, claiming draconian emergency powers and pre-emptively invading well-endowed countries in order to strip them of their wealth. Or maybe not that last one - a bit irrelevant.

Because I am now completely up to speed on the vital issues of the day. Is your sofa new enough? Are your teeth white enough? Is there enough fat in your arse to inflate your head in case of emergency? And are you spending enough? Because if you're only spending what you've got, that's not enough - you need to be IN DEBT. Not just a little bit overdrawn, I mean proper, wake up screaming, selling your underwear, Russian roulette in Soho basements to win back your kidneys debt.

Because we're going all out to reproduce the US economic miracle and you must play your part. Bush lowered interest rates, cut taxes for the super rich, slashed social programmes and solved his nation's problems. Cataclysmic borrowing, soaring unemployment and homelessness, soup kitchens, bankruptcy, increased racial segregation and collapsing access to medical care and education are all signs of a healthy economy; and Gordon Brown is so confident that Britain will thrive just as spiffingly under a Bush-style regime that he nobly helped keep the PM in place, ensuring Tony will be in charge when the arse fat hits the fan.

But because many important people's money is slightly theoretical and much of the profit Operation Iraq Rip-off was to make hasn't quite materialised, it's important for you little people to support the economy by paying to borrow more money than you can manage. And if your loans are out of control, take out more loans to cover your loans. Above all, don't save - and don't wonder why you'd only get 0.04% interest and a free tea towel if you did save, when you pay out 25% for borrowing.

And the best thing to spend your money on? A car. A large car. A 23 yards to the gallon, 12ft wide, 40ft long unparkable multisportsperson luxury carrier turbosystem. Leave the engine running while you nip into the house for a bath, stoke on those revs at the lights, drive for fun, drive for friendship, drive as a hobby and, instead of sex, climb into your surrogate orgasm, your sad excuse for a life, and burn petrol, no matter what.

Full story...

The NSC 's Lt. Colonel Oliver North: From Key Operative to Iran-Contra Scapegoat

by Trowbridge H. Ford

When a C-123K supply plane loaded with lethal weapons, allegedly belonging to a Pennsylvania company, Corporate Air Services, was shot down over Nicaragua on October 6, 1986, killing pilots William Cooper and Wallace Sawyer, and the CIA's cargo-kicker Eugene Hasenfus was taken prisoner by the Sandinistas, the Reagan administration's, and the Thatcher government's crucial covert operations threatened to be exposed, a record which risked the President and the Prime Minister being removed from office, and many of their most important subordinates going to prison.

Actually, the plane was part of the fleet that retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord had put together for Lt. Colonel Oliver North's effort in the National Security Council (NSC) to supply support for the Contras against the regime in Managua, and the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan from the illicit profits of prohibited weapon sales to Teheran in the hope gaining release of hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Enterprise consortium was composed of arms dealers, intelligence agents, mercenaries, and the like - what the CIA, Mossad, and others had helped put together to make up for congressional cutoff of funds, culminating in the Boland Amendments, which required North to take over its management because of prohibitions of Agency participation.

Any serious investigation of it would have led to international arms dealers like Syria's Manzer al-Kassar, Saudi petrobillionaire Adnan Khashoggi, Iranian wheeler-dealer Albert Hakim, former SAVAK (the Shah's intelligence service) informant, and go-between with its successor Manucher Ghorbanifar, Britain's private security expert, and entrepreneur Major David Walker, and a wide collection of Israelis, especially arms dealer Al Schwimmer, Aman's (Israeli military intelligence) Yaccov Nimrodi, Mossad fixer Rafi Eitan, and false record keeper Ari Ben-Menashe. "According to North," Tony Geraghty has written in The Bullet Catchers, "some of the resultant military action in Nicaragua - attacks on military aircraft - were farmed out to David Walker of KMS. If true, it was an interesting example of the 'seamless robe' of Anglo-American policy outside the Nato area." (p. 245)

Unfortunately, the claim was more than true, as the seamless web of cooperation between Washington and London within the NATO area included farming out operations to their respective navies, and to Walker's KMS too, backed up by assistance, and disinformation from CIA, MI6, and MI5. If these operations, especially the assassination of Olof Palme (Operation Tree), had been investigated, the trail of culpability would have gone right up through the Agency's Directorate of Operations to DCI William Casey, and to the Oval Office, while in London the Security Service's Director General Anthony Duff and the leading counterterrorist officials of MI5, especially DD Patrick Walker, and MI6, particularly Director of Requirements and Production Colin McColl, would have been in similar difficulty, thanks to Downing Street's direction by Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong. The investigation would have heated up further when it was learned that Shimon Peres's counterterrorist expert Amiram Nir, along with assassination arrangers Felipe Vidal, Craig Williamson, and Michael Townley, were also involved.

Hasenfus was no simple crew member either. He worked for the Agency's Felix Rodriguez aka Max Gomez, friend and former subordinate in Vietnam of Vice President George Bush's national security adviser, Donald Gregg. Rodriguez, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, helped track down, and murder Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 (Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara, pp. 718-50), and was now working surreptitiously with the Agency's Central American task force chief Alan Fiers, and his subordinate Joseph Fernandez, station chief in Costa Rica, to assist Secord's supply efforts from El Salvador's Ilopango base. (Lawrence E. Walsh, Firewall, p. 79ff.) Gregg was providing backdoor, deniable oversight for operations.

Fiers had taken over the project after the congressional cutoff from Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, who became head of CIA's West European division of the operations directorate which was involved in all kinds of double-agent efforts (Operation Courtship) to prove that the Soviets were promoting and assisting terrorism from Central America across the North Altantic to Scandinavia, and down to Afghanistan. This ruse would ultimately justify North's countermeasures to go after targets from Castro's Cuba to the sources of growing neutralism in Europe, particularly on NATO's periphery, especially in Sweden. Fernandez's office in San Jose served as the communication link, thanks to NSA-supplied KL-43 encryption devices, between the Contra forces in the field, North's people in Washington, and arms shipments arranged by The Enterprise from Europe and the Middle East.

The whole operation had become even more complicated, and conspiratorial after a shipment of HAWK missiles in November 1985 from Israel to Iran had been prevented from being transshipped through a still officially unidentified European country, where it was to pick up more weapons, because of opposition by its government, leading to a fiasco invovling Portugal which ultimately obliged Clarridge, and CIA to officially supply the needed transport, what required President Reagan to sign an ex post facto presidential finding two weeks later to authorize the action which was then compounded by the White House's failure to inform Congress of its existence.

A month later, on January 6th, Reagan was persuaded by North alone to expand the arms sale operation by getting the CIA, and unspecified "third countries" directly involved so the hardliners in Teheran could be overthrown (Walsh, p. 45) while radically changing the strategic balance with the USSR (Operation Armageddon), what resulted in signing National Secuirty Decision Directive NSDD-207 which strenghtened the operational capability of the Restricted Interagency Group's Operations Sub-Group (OSG), now composed of counterterrorism hardliners Charles Allen from CIA, Oliver "Buck" Revell from FBI, the Pentagon's Noel Koch, Lt. Gen. John Moellering from the Joint Chiefs, and the State Department's Robert Oakley, to include 'neutralizing' terrorists which had been been denied when it was created in April 1984. (Robert Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, pp. 361-2) To run this secret network which even had its own "FLASH" communication system which bypassed all normal ones, North was given the Office to Combat Terrorism, assisted by fellow Annapolis graduate Robert Earl and Craig Coy from Bush's Task Force on Combating Terrorism.

North seemed like a most unlikely candidate for the position, but he had just the right qualifications, qualities, and connections that the situation called for. He had joined the staff of National Security Adviser (NSA) Richard Allen, working in the Latin American section, because he had caught the eye of the new Navy Secretary, John Lehman, Jr., by recommending in an article the use of battleships in the new Maritime Strategy against the Soviets while serving as a instructor at the Naval War College. (Gregory L. Vistica, Fall from Glory: Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy, p. 116) While North was serving well in Vietnam, starting in 1968, as a flamboyant, can-do platoon leader in a dying cause, winning the Silver Star for valor, he developed briefing skills (Robert Timberg, The Nightingale's Song, pp. 149-50), the sine qua non for uniformed officers seeking policy-making positions, as General Alexander M. Haig, Jr.'s career had demonstrated. North's field of operations vastly expanded when fellow Annapolis graduates Robert McFarlane followed Haig's lead to become NSA after William Clark, Allen's replacement, left, and John Poindexter worked up its ranks from military aide, as Haig had, to become his assistant.

McFarlane put together an aggressive foreign policy, scuttling de´tente, from what Haig had been attempting in the Caribbean and South America over the protests of Britain, Lehman was seeking around the northern periphery of the Soviet Union despite the reluctance of Europe and NATO, and the CIA was promoting in the Middle East and Afghanistan inspite of opposition by terrorists and Arab states.

In the wake of the Falklands War, McFarlane, taking advantage of the contacts he had made while working at State, wanted to put the struggle with the USSR, as Downing Street desired, back on an East-West plane where NATO worked together in a coherent way, challenging the Soviets and their supporters on every front whether there was movement or not. The policy required putting together a Maritime Strategy which would take advantage of the West's growing naval superiority, thanks to Lehman's pursuit of a 600-ship navy, by responding to any presumed Soviet land threats with naval surface and underwater actions on the periphery, particularly in the Barents and Baltic Seas.

The new troublespots were Olof Palme's Sweden, Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran, and Muammar Qaddafi's Libya. Sweden's new statsminister was particularly troubling because of his claims that he could act as mediator across the board while holding the Soviets at bay in the Baltic, a position apparently belied by his equating American intervention in Nicaragua with that of the Soviets in Afghanistan. Chris Mosey, in Cruel Awakening: Sweden and the Killing of Olof Palme, compared his efforts for the Sandinistas, the first European head of government to visit Managua, with what he had done against the Americans in Vietnam (pp. 142-3), the ultimate red flag for the new team in the White House. Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn claimed in New Lies for Old that Palme was working hand in glove with KGB terrorists to promote Eurocommunism. (p. 349ff.) According to Robert Timberg, even the slightest suggestion of such a nightingale's song would revive all the bitter Vietnam memories of the veterans now running the White House's Situation Room. (p. 16ff.)

When Clarridge left Central America for Europe in 1984, the plight of the Contras was desperate. Cut off from weapon assistance by Washington officialdom, and reduced to meager humanitarian aid, North felt obliged because of his experience in Vietnam to do whatever was necessary to see that they had the necessary funds, means, and expertise to defeat the Sandinistas. While much has been said about his operations to sell arms for illegally obtained profits to help the Contras (See, e. g., Walsh, p. 197ff.), little could be expected from them if they were not made into an effective fighting force, what required real leadership and training in guerrilla warfare. This had been explicitly denied by the allegedly timid Agency DD John McMahon the previous April when North sought passage of National Security Decision Directive 138, a prohibition still cast in doubt when the Associated Press, and The New York Times announced in October that the Contras had been receiving a CIA primer on how to kill Sandinistas. (Woodward, Veil, p. 388)

To get around this continuing difficulty, North enlisted the services of Major David Walker who he was introduced to by the Navy Secretary, probably at one of Lehman's famous parties on his barge in the Potomac. Lehman and Walker had attended Cambridge University together, and the former Special Air Service (SAS) officer was now running KMS aka Kini Mini Services, and Saladin companies which provided skills any gamekeeper or poacher could require. In 1975, KMS had been contracted by the Foreign Office to protect vulnerable diplomats, thanks to MI5's advice, especially in Dublin after the IRA assassination of the British Ambassador, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, where use of the SAS was excluded. KMS's role was replaced by the new Thatcher Government in reaction to the assassination of Airey Neave by the Royal Military Police.

KMS revived its gamekeeping function, though, even with the help to regular serving officers, for the Foreign Office during the Falklands War, as was graphically demostrated in Washington in 1984 when an arriving Saudi Prince saw a KMS officer come quickly to his aid after the leader of the State Department's protection team lost his ability to do so when his belt supporting all his equipment embarrassingly broke as the minister was descending the ramp. (Geraghty, p. 8) KMS bogyguards came armed, and fully prepared to use their weapons. The marriage of Anglo-Amereican counterterrorist forces was made even closer by the IRA's Patrick Magee's near successful attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Thatcher, what Reagan had experienced three years earlier at the hands of John Hinckley, Jr., by blowing up Brighton's Grand Hotel on October 16th. (Peter Taylor, Brits: The War Against the IRA, pp. 265-6)

To employ Walker's companies, North called upon McFarlane to see that FBI Director William Webster approved their use without the usual checks about their reliability and accountability. (North's Top Secret memo, "Assistance for the Nicaragua Resistance," Dec. 4, 1984) Dr. David Owen, when he was Foreign Secretary for Harold Wilson's Labour Government, was so dissatisfied by the KMS role in Yemen that he attempted to prevent it from getting the FCO contract. (Geraghty, p. 210) According to SAS veteran Ken Connor, KMS got started in Aden during Operation Nina in which SAS Fijians and British Arabists, who could pass for natives, went undercover in its warren of streets and back alleys to search out targets of opportunity in a guerrilla war, the precursor of what the 14 Intelligence Company did later in Northern Ireland. (Ghost Force, pp. 195-6)

In this context, KMS fitted its Swahili meaning - an unseen movement by a snake in the grass. James Callaghan, when he replaced the beleaguered Wilson, was so convinced that MI5 was behind his downfall because of its role in contracting KMS that he saw any so-called improvement in security as a potential threat, mistaking, Geraghty explained,"...the politically loyal Special Branch protection team with the maverick spirits of military counter espionage." (pp. 157-8) About who these spirits might be, Geraghty discussed the so-called 'shoot-to-kill' murders in South Armagh in the fall of 1982 as a "...policy of counter-assassination, instead of operating within the law." (p. 167)

Geraghty added, thanks to the insights by a counterterrorist officer who knew KMS operations well, the plight its trained bodyguards had caused the Presidents of North Yemen during the 1970s when they allowed him and his brother to run off with two beautiful French whores without protection, leading to their assassinations on the way back to Sana'a, and his successor's bodyguards failing prey to the "double bluff" ploy when the President of South Yemen sent two briefcases of presents, one stashed with American money which was embarrassingly opened in public, and the next one somewhat later with 5 pounds of plastic explosive which exploded in private with devastating results. (p. 277)

Walker's companies, given their leadership, expertise, and contacts, were instrumental in turning around the Contras' efforts during 1985. On March 6th, right after Saudia Arabia doubled its monthly cash contribution to the Contras, Walker's people blew up the main Sandinista military depot in downtown Managua for a $50,000 fee, and followed up by clearing the mines protecting the port facilities at Puerto Cabezas, where Soviet and Cuban assistance was arriving, so that it could be attacked. While Walker's Saladin firm was helping train the Contras into an expanded, effective guerrrilla force, his specal teams attacked Sandino airport, as Walker had recommended, destroying the recently received Soviet HIND-D helicopters on the ground, and its maintenance facilities. In fact, the demands on Walker's companies were so great that his mercenaries Peter Glibbery and John Davies were openly recruiting 40 ex-British Army volunteers in London during May to expand the Contras' war. (Nick Davies and Jonathan Foster, "British dogs of war recruited to fight in Nicaragua," The Observer, May 26, 1985, p. 1)

This permitted North to carry his war with Marxism further afield. When 234 Marines were blown up in Lebanon on October 23, 1983, recalling the defeats in Vietnam, North had helped organize with McFarlane and Lehman two days later the invasion of the Commonwealth's Grenada by 6,000 Marines to rescue it, especially its 1,000 Americans, from the grip of Maurice Bishop's 600 allegedly rampaging communists. A year later, when Abu Abbas's Palestinian terrorists seized the Achille Lauro cruise liner in the Mediterranean, murdering an invalid Jew, Leon Kilinghofer, with al-Kassar provided weapons in the process (Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, p. 16), North pushed successfully the idea of the Navy hijacking them as they made their escape to Tunisia on EgyptAir flight 2843, a plan calling for the use of F-14s from the USS Saratoga of Admiral Frank Kelso's Sixth Fleet, reminiscent of how the Navy had disposed of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto over Truk during WWII. (Vistica, pp. 219-20) It was the success of this red-tape free operation which led Reagan to utter his now famous one-liner: "You can run, but you can't hide."

North moved immediately to put this capability on a worldwide basis at Palme's expense, the statsminister having retained power, with the help of the Swedish communists, in the fall general election despite all the negative predictions and propaganda. The Enterprise, whose manager David Kimche, the former director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, had provided Iran with tons of US tanks, Katysha rockets, air-to-air missiles, artillery shells, rifle rounds, and the like from six countries, including Sweden, thanks to the false end user certificates Ben-Menashe had supplied, had its management expanded to include Major Walker, and former CIA operative Miles Copeland (Gordon Thomas, Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, p. 141), upsetting the "sweet operation" in the NSC that Kimche had been carrying on with Eitan since 1981.

Walker's KMS had carried out all kinds of "wet affairs" for the Israelis - e. g., the assassination of Arafat's moderate negotiator Said Hammami in his London office in January 1978. In 1987, Englishman Ian Davidson, a member of Arafat's Force 17 bodyguards who, it seems, had penetrated them for the Mossad, would apparently double as a poacher to kill cartoonist Ali-Adhami in a street in Chelsea for having the temerity to publish one of the PLO leader's latest mistress. (Geraghty, pp. 389-90) Both Walker and Copeland, because of their involvement in protecting the Shah, were similarly worried over their own safety because of their known role by the Khomeini regime (Connor, pp. 225-6), and were most eager to please the new leadership in Teheran.

To kills two birds with one stone, Secord arranged for 80 HAWK missiles to be shipped through Sweden on November 17th for the now desperate Iranians in their war with Iraq. Schwimmer and Nimrodi purchased weapons from Bofors for Teheran, contrary to Palme's pre-election commitments to stop them, and had leased three planes to fly all the weapons from Arlanda without authority from Inspector of War Materiel, Admiral Carl-Fredrik Algernon. (Richard Reeves, "The Palme Obsession," The New York Times Magazine, March 1, 1987, esp. p. 56) The Enterprise hoped to force the statsminister's hand, as Washington and London had done with their submarines in the Baltic about alleged Soviet intrusions when he was returning to power in October 1982. (Ola Tunander, Harsfjarden, p. 13ff.)

The passage of the weapons through Sweden would show, if ever the NSA tapes of the conversations during transit were revealed, that Palme was being completely hypocritical when he claimed that he was adhering to official US policy of not assisting militarily this sponsor of state terrorism (Operation Staunch), and that he was a honest broker in trying to settle its war with Saddam Hussein. The Swedish communists would only conclude too that Palme was taking the coalition for a ride when he denied being anti-Soviet. By stopping the shipment, as Richard Reeves described in an article in The New York Times Magazine, the statsminister threw everyone into unanticipated confusion.

For North's network, this meant somehow terminating Palme's apparent efforts to assist the Soviet expansion, what works like Arkady Shevckenko's Breaking with Moscow, Viktor Suvorov's Soviet Military Intelligence and Spetsnaz, and Henry Denham's Inside the Nazi Ring, sponsored by the CIA, MI5, and MI6 respectively, were increasingly calling for. The problem was that Moscow was doing little to promote the claim, while rolling up double agents in Clarridge's Operation Courtship, especially Gennady Varenik in Bonn, Gennady and Svetlana Smetanin in Lisbon, and Valeri Martynov and Boris Yuzhin in Moscow, trying to maintain it, thanks to the spying by the Agency's Aldrich "Rick" Ames and the Bureau's Robert Hanssen.

In this context, Britain and America did things to make it seem that Soviet expansion was in the works. Operation Brave Defender was carried out, a rehearsal apparently of WWIII where Spetsnaz forces overwhelmed everything NATO was capable of, giving the myth of Soviet invincibility a boost. (Connor, p. 441) Then Palestinian Abu Nidal, who Geraghty would later be persuaded by British military intelligence killed Palme (The Bullet Catchers, p. 247ff.), carried out attacks with al-Kassar provided weapons on the airports in Rome and Vienna right after Christmas, killing five Americans, and fifteen others. To make the case that Qaddafi was another Soviet client promoting IRA terrorism, a convenient cover for what was planned in Scandinavia, the 14 Intelligence Company joined the Irish Gardai a month later, thanks to American signit intelligence, in seizing prematurely tonnes of Libyan weapons, including machine guns to shoot down army helicopters, that Adam Hopkins' Kula, formerly the Casmara, provided (Tony Geraghty, The Irish War, p. 182), resulting in the retribution execution of IRA quartermaster Frank Hegarty despite British assurances for the tipoff. (Raymond Murray, The SAS in Ireland, pp. 374-6)

Then Anglo-American intelligence, especially MI5's F and G Branches, raised public anxiety about terrorism to a fever pitch by over-the-top stories about the GRU's Spetsnaz forces, claiming that 25,000 of them under civilian cover had infiltrated Western Europe, even Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) protesters of the stationing of cruise missiles at Greenham Common. While Connor saw this disinformation as the result of intelligence analysts overselling efforts to discredit CND with compliant journalists (Connor, pp. 439-41), actually it was to prepare the public for a showdown with the Soviets. The Times and Jane's Defence Weekly considered the threat so real that they discussed the matter in late January issues. The Times reporter Michael Binyon in Washington started a regular column, "Terrorism and America," explaining the effort that Robert Oakley, who North had enlisted to get the HAWK missile shipment transported through Portugal (Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, p. 550), was mounting in NATO to contain the 'low intensity warfare' threatening Europe.

When Palme seemed to be, as Golitsyn had long claimed, a Soviet stooge afterall, all kinds of unexpected fallout from the HAWK fiasco had to be fixed. No sooner had Reagan signed the illegal finding on December 5th than Kimche resigned from The Enterprise, explaining that "the wrong men now had too much power in the consortium." (Thomas, p. 142) Kimche, the Mossad's former deputy director general, was replaced by the reckless Nir. The Agency's DD McMahon also had to go because of his having forced the President to sign the first finding (Cannon, p. 552), and was replaced by the gung-ho Robert Gates. McFarlane, who objected to the overthrow of Chile's democratically-elected President Allende while serving in Nixon's NSC, was so distressed by the turn of events that he too resigned, restricting his activities to gaining the release of the remaining hostages while Poindexter took over as NSA.

North concentrated on stifling blowback from operations in Central America, especially by Jack Terrell, Peter Glibbery, and Steven Carr of Tom Posey's Civilian Military Assistance which had been seeking mercenaries in Britain. They had become so disaffected by CMA's attempts to assassinate Contra Southern Front leader Eden Pastora (Operation Pegasus), the brainchild of CIA's Frank Camper which forced their explusion from Hondurus when its President learned about it, and North inviting Walker's people to take their place (Cocaine Politics, note 19, p. 235), that they were willing to testify to the FBI about them, particularly those by Felipe Vidal aka Charles Morgan. On February 16, 1987, the day this public advocate of international terrorism against pro-Castro targets was finally brought to heel, The Miami Herald reported that he had been arrested seven times on narcotics and weapons charges. Thanks to feedback from the Bureau's George Kiszynski and Revell, though, North was able to make it look as if Terrell was the terrorist, threatening ultimately to kill Reagan. (Cocaine Politics, p. 132ff.)

Why North was so concerned about Terrell's whistle-blowing efforts was because Morgan was already in Stockholm, looking for an assassin of the statsminister. In November, Morgan aka Peter Brown met Jovan von Birchan for a beer at the Continental Bistro during which Morgan asked him if he would be willing to carry out an assassination. Later, Morgan said that he was willing to pay him $2,000,000 to kill Palme. While von Birchan did not take the offer seriously, he changed his mind during a January meeting in which Morgan explained emphatically: "it was decided that Olof Palme was going to be assassinated and you don't have to worry about any police protection. I stand by my offer of 2 million dollars." (Swedish military intelligence's (SSI's) agent Joel Haukka's report, "Samtal med von Birchan 4 april 1986") Palme, in the interim, had stopped a Bofors deal with India, worth 15 billion Swedish crowns, that London's AE Services weapons dealer Bob Wilson, an aquaintance of Morgan's, had arranged. Around New Year's Day, CIA agent "Milan" asked, it seems, Kenneth Neilberg also in Stockholm if he were willing to do the hit with the same assurances for 1,000,000 SEK.

When neither took up the offers, Morgan apparently went to London, seeking out an assassin, as Duncan Campbell belatedly explained in a Frontlines article, "MI6, Whistleblowers in Baltic Battle," in the New Statesman:

Shortly after Palme was killed, I was told by three independent sources that recruiters for the killing -variously described as a group of Swedish businessman, with Finns and Germans also involved, possibly financed by a South African group, had approached mercenaries and arms dealers in London in order to find a suitable 'hitman'. All the sources agreed that the former SAS (Special Air Service) and other possible killers approached had turned down the contract, and had then passed details of the approaches to Special Branch or to MI6 contacts. In turn, MI6 passed a warning to Sapo (SAK), the Swedish secret police. One source said that the purpose of the killing was to destabilise Sweden and its powerful liberal stance on such matters as apartheid. A senior Special Branch, Detective Chief Inspector David Palmer-Hall, liases directly with the Secret Intelligence Service. (MI6) A former Special Branch commander, Rollo Watts, also works for Saldin (sic) Security, the cover company for the private British mercenary service KMS Ltd. KMS which is registered in Jersey was most recently and controversially used by Colonel Oliver North to assist in guerrilla missions with Contra forces in Nicaragua. (June 17, 1988, p. 7)

Whatever Morgan, and Campbell's sources were attempting, the failure to find a mercenary to do the hit provided the perfect deception, it seems, for an officially-connected KMS one, with a built-in alibi.

While North worked out arrangements with CIA and MI6 to connect a suitable scapegoat, apparently Soviet spy Stig Bergling who was being groomed as the disgruntled party policeman, for the killing in Stockholm with Operation Courtship, making it look as if Moscow was behind the murder because of the countermeasures it took so that the US Navy and NATO could mete out a devastating first strike against the Soviets in reprisal, KMS arranged a fatal "double bluff" at Palme's expense the next time it reassessed the performance of his bodyguards in Stockholm. Connor has supplied a discrete history - no names, please - of how British forces got involved in training, and reassessing Swedish bodyguard protection of its leading figures, especially the statsminister, in just the way Walker wanted of complete secrecy. (p. 153ff.)

Sweden's Granskning Kommission has filled in without realizing it many of the details about the reassessment team which started working from its just constructed shed outside Palme's apartment in the Old Town two days before the assassination while the statsminister was on a visit to Hede, Sveg, and Ostersund in the far north. Witnesses testified about seeing two or three professional-looking men with walkie-talkies who spoke a kind of Swiss-German, just what a reassessment would be doing.

Jarl N spoke of seeing a dangerous-looking man down the street at the pharmacy, speaking so to a colleague: "He was 185-190 cm. tall, and had pale colored hair" (Brottsutredningen after mordet pa statsminister Olof Palme, p. 250), testimony that witnesses Mare R and Leif C corroborated. The reason why the commission did not take their testimony more seriously was because of the confusion about who uses walkie-talkies in assassinations, and because the witnesses had been so slow in coming forward with it. They, unlike the reassessment team, did not know the location of where the Palmes lived, and thought, like most people, that assassins needed walkie-talkies. Bodyguards and their reassessors need them.

In this context, it was easy for one of the reassessors to kill the statsminister after he had monitored the performance of the bodyguards for a couple of days. On February 27th, North was so ecstatic about possibilities from Operation Recovery that he sent a Prof message to McFarlane, exclaiming "that we may well be on the verge of a major breakthrough - not only on the hostages/terrorism but on the relationship as a whole." (Quoted from Walsh, p. 121.) The NSA replied: "Roger,Ollie. Well done - if the world only knew how many times you have kept a semblance of integrity and gumption to US policy, they would make you Secretary of State. But they can't know and would complain if they did - such is the state of democracy in the late 20th century." (Quoted from Cannon, p. 572.) Litte wonder that when the scandal broke, North tried to destroy all the Prof messages, and Cannon and Walsh have minimized respectively what he was attempting, and McFarlane's reaction.

The blondish, 185-190 cm. tall reassessor would have a cakewall the following evening after all his stalking the statsminister when the Palmes attended the Grand Cinema on Sveavagen to see the movie Mozart, what Geraghty's military intelligence expert claimed was a "night on the town" (p. 388), the statsminister's alleged illicit pleasure which helped do him in like North Yemen's President. Teheran was so upset by Palme's stopping the November missile shipments, putting the lie to all American claims that only Portugal was involved, as Reeves explained on the anniversary of the assassination, now that the Tower Commission had safely covered it up: "An Iranian military delegation came to Stockholm to protest the stopping of deliveries. That was on Feb. 4, 1986, three weeks before Palme's murder." (p. 56)

This gave the reassessor an absolute alibi for the assassination, explaining also why the statsminister seemed to recognize him before he shot him, and why his wife's first reaction to the shooting was thus: "It emerged at the weekend that Mrs. Palme had noticed two men acting strangely outside their house and watching their door, but she had not reported it to the police." (Martin Linton, "Few clues in the hunt for Palme's killer," The Guardian, March 2, 1986, p. 1) Unfortunately, by then, the police had been primed to look for Khomeneini's Iranians settling scores with the statsminister.

Fortunately, though, the operations North had arranged went no further, thanks particularly to the spying by Ames and Hanssen for the Soviets which tipped them off about the timing of Palme's assassination, thanks to Oleg Gordievsky's briefing of the former in February, and there is no need now to follow the whole shabby story. Its leading items were the diversions at Libya's expense, Reagan's presents for Iranian Speaker Ali Rafsanjani in May, and the President's thanking Gordievsky in the Oval Office for what he had done! (Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only, pp. 476-7)

Things only got interesting again for North when the scandal could be exposed after the shootdown, and Reagan forced North and NSA Poindexter to resign, asking crony Attorney General Edwin Meese to investigate the matter without the help of the Bureau or the Justice Department. While he cautiously did so, North and his people were busily destroying evidence, and creating a false chronology which would protect the President - leaving out the attempt to sneak the HAWK missiles through Stockholm. (Cannon, p. 611ff.) McFarlane intensified the process by attempting suicide in February 1987. (Timberg, pp. 425-9) Then Congress granted immunity to the main principals, starting with North, and Independent Counsel Walsh, when he finally got started, continued the process, especially with his assistant Earl, and secretary Fawn Hall (Walsh, p. 99ff.), making any serious convictions most unlikely. Ultimately, even Poindexter was not convicted of perjury and obstructing justice, the verdict being thrown out on appeal.

During all this confusion, behind the scenes the Senate Intelligence Committee was determining the scope of the conspiracy, the Tower Commission informed the public of a sanitized version of it, and the joint Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran publicized it, what its leading Senators William S. Cohen and George Mitchell legitimized in their book, Men of Zeal: A Candid Inside Story of the Iran-Contra Hearings. Cohen was the connecting link in the whole process, centered around the Senator from Texas, and Vietnam hawk, Tower, who had helped cover up the JFK assassination, and was equally committed to the men of zeal he had collected around him while serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. While Cohen claimed he was involved in a "comprehensive search for the truth" (p. 21), he was actually engaged in legitimizing the false chronology, covering up the attempt to sneak the HAWK missiles through Sweden, and getting Reagan to minimize the problem by admitting that suppying arms for the release of hostages was wrong. (David E. Rosenbaum, "Senator Says Reagan Must Face 'Mistake'," The New York Times, Jan. 13, 1987, A8; and Jan. 15, A12)

Cohen's efforts, though, were seriously undercut by the book's own chronology of events, where there was a gaping hole between the Nov. 17th meeting that McFarlane had with Chief of Staff Donald Regan to inform him of the trouble over the missile shipment, what North recruited Secord to fix the next day, and the actual delivery of 18 HAWK missiles a week later (p. xxii). Then there was a most confusing rigmorole about Portugal being the only country in question, though the White House refused to declassify the names of countries which actually supplied arms to the Contras, causing Cohen and Mitchell to refer to them only by number (p. ix), Sweden apparently being "Country Six", only for them to discuss in detail Dewey Clarridge's role in trying to dragoon Portugal into the process (pp. 255-6).

This use of numbers to hide the truth proved so successful that Walsh even adopted it when Judge Webster, now the new DCI, was smoothly smothering any chance of the truth coming out. Director Webster, of course, knew all about Iran-Contra, thanks to his paving the way for North to use Walker's firms, and by his refusing to allow the FBI to get involved in their operations for fear it would commit illegal acts just when Palme was assassinated. (Mark Riebling, Wedge, pp. 368-9) While Webster, by Washington's standards, had a squeaky-clean reputation, Reagan, once the attempt to simply slip Gates into the deceased Casey's place failed, had moved him to head the troubled Agency to limit the fallout from Iran-Contra, what he had already helped by allowing Meese, of all people, to secure the evidence, and by slowing the process of disclosure of the little left as the cover up was being assembled. (Walsh, pp. 147-8)

Finally, it was a question if Webster's team at CIA would supply Walsh with the last remaining evidence that NSA had about North's operations, buggings, and FLASH messages, especially the NSA tapes about weapons shipments, what McFarlane had put the highest priority on destroying when the scandal broke. (Walsh, p. 8) Walsh needed the tapes to establish the criminality of Fernandez, what the Independent Counsel hoped to achieve at a Sunday, July 23, 1989, meeting with DCI Webster, DDCI Robert Kerr, and DO Richard Stolz, Webster's classmate at Amherst (Riebling, p. 389), who was already involved in collecting money for Fernandez's defence. When the Agency seemed to be wavering on the matter, Stolz exclaimed: "What will they think in Olso?" (Quoted from Walsh, p. 216.)

While Walsh thought the comment irrelevant, it concerned the NSA eavesdropping facility at Vardö on Norway's North Cape. Release of any of its material would be a precedent for a flood which could swamp far more than just the Reagan administration. For starters, it had the crucial tape of the flight of the 80 HAWK missiles which Palme's government stopped in mid-transit on November 17, 1985. Without the tapes, Walsh opted for a system of cards identifying each CIA station and facility being discussed with a number so jurors could keep track of the testimony, a procedure that the judge dismissed as a "kindergarten-like proposal" (Walsh, p. 17), and Attorney General Richard Thornburgh refused by remedy by allowing the necessary classified information to be introduced in court.

While no one had noticed, London had been doing what was necessary to cover up its side of the scandal. As the above long quotation indicated, Duncan Campbell was most knowledgeable about the 'special relationship' between Britain and America, and their joint operations, thanks to his coverage of the counterterrorism Britain was conducting in Northern Ireland. (Mark Urban, UK Eyes Alpha, p. 56) No sooner had Campbell, a thorn in the establishment's side, started questioning Defence officials, and Public Accounts Committee chairman Robert Sheldon, brother of Legal Adviser to DGSS Duff, about an independent satellite system free from NSA's vagaries (ZIRCON), especially in the wake of the Challenger disaster, for his BBC television series, Secret Society, than Prime Minister Thatcher had it banned. When Campbell persisted in his efforts, publishing an article in the New Statesman, she instructed Attorney General Michael Havers to issue an injunction against his writing any more, and to have Special Branch raid the Glasgow offices of the BBC, and the Labour journal in London for tapes and papers about what was in the pipeline "...to protect the intelligence services from journalistic scrutiny, even if the politcal cost was high." (Urban, p. 61)

While this gagging of the press was tightening, British intelligence services arranged the set-up in Sweden of a person resembling the description by the above mentioned witnesses, and the Photo-Fit representation of the killer by the witnesses of the assassination - apparently Captain Simon Hayward aka James Rennie, officially a member of the Household Cavalry but actually the Operations Officer of the 14 Intelligence Company's South Detachment. Hayward left Northern Ireland on February 12, 1987, and five days later he departed England for the fateful 'holiday' with his brother Chris in the Mediterranean. Once Hayward was safely put away in Sweden, Ruth Freeman apparently aka Simon Freeman, who had just written The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt, published Death of a Statesman, thanks, it seems, to MI5 funding (N. b. that he was a roving foreign correspondent, 1986-89, Contemporary Authors, vol. 133, p. 132.), explaining the assassination in such self-serving terms for the beleaguered Captain that anyone would suspect him if the trumped up case against Swedish and PKK scapegoats broke down.

Right after the assassination, a British consultant and MI6 operative, apparently Gordievsky, had gone to Stockholm, and told publisher and owner of a private intelligence company Ebbe Carlsson, and the two Sapo officers, who had bugged the KGB residency on the night of Palme's assassination on the instruction of the CIA Stockholm station chief Jenonne Walker, that the Iranians had arranged for the PKK to kill the statsminister because of his stoppage of weapons shipments, starting in November 1985. (Jesus Alcala, "Polisen ville tro pa PKK-sparet," Dagens Nyheter, Feb. 28, 1996) MI6, knowing now the safety in numbers, had the same operative, it seems, tell his friend Karl-Gunnar Back, the Swedish Chairman of Civil Defence, that mercenary Craig Williamson had arranged the assassination hit-team, Koevoet/COIN, for disgrunted groups within the Swedish and South African security services (Operation Longreach). (Roger Magnegard and Mari Sandstrom, "Sydafrika planlade mordet," Svensk Dagbladet, May 27, 1987, p. 7.)

Needless to say, the Swedish police investigated these leads conscientiously, once they had disposed of the Agency-supplied decoy Victor Gunnarsson as a suspect, but they never got anywhere. Hans Holm´er, who was leading the investigation, was so obsessed with the idea that PKK had done it that he had to be sacked. MI6 was unable or unwilling to suppy any more information. As a result, Swedish Ministers of Justice, particularly Anna-Greta Leijon, and interested citizens, especally Ebbe Carlsson, became increasingly frustrated, the former finally instructing the latter on May 4, 1988, to go to London behind the police's back on a secret mission to see if he could develop more information about the assassination from "the relevant British Authority." (Campbell, op. cit.) No sooner had Carlsson arrived than his letter of introduction was leaked to the press, touching off what Duncan Campbell called Sweden's 'Contragate' - a private network pursuing its own agenda at the expense of established practice, and the public interest. Exploiting Ms. Leijon's belief that the British really knew who killed Palme, and they did, according to Campbell, what her own police were apparently failing to take advantage of, the Brits were able to turn the tables completely on Stockholm, and Campbell was permitted to publish the results.

In the end, Walsh considered prosecuting North again after his first conviction had been thrown out because it was based upon immunized testimony - thanks to the greatest rationalizations by Reagan-appointed Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman, and now a member of the commission looking into alleged intelligence failures about Iraq's WMD - leading to a showdown between the Independent Counsel and the former NSC staffer. By then, the three most dangerous witnesses of his operations, Nir, Major Charles McKee, and the CIA's Matthew Gannon, had been killed in sabotaged airplanes - Ben-Menashe had Gene "Chip" Tatum, who has now disappeared, shoot down the Cessna T-210 Nir was flying in over Morelia, Mexico on Nov. 30,1988, while McKee and Gannon were on board Pan Am Flight103 which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, a few weeks later. Nir's problem was that he had recorded a conversation with Vice President Bush at Jerusalem's King David Hotel on July 29, 1986 about Iran-Contra, which McKee, and Gannon witnessed, and what he threatened to reveal at North's trial.

According to Joel Bainerman, the publisher of an Israeli intelligence report who had questioned another witness, a Navy Commander, of the conversation, "North told him," Thomas repeated, "that Nir was killed because he threatened to go public with the recording of the Jerusalem meeting." (Quoted from p. 316.) McKee, Gannon, and three other CIA agents apparently fell afoul of arms dealer al-Kassar's independent operations in their attempt to set up a new hostage rescue mission. According to Interfor's investigation into the tragedy, al-Kassar's masters blew up the airliner before McKee's team could blow the whistle on them, thanks to the bungling by German police at Frankfurt's airport, and CIA managers at Langley. (Jonathan Vankin and John Whelan, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, p. 280ff.) Gannon, whose father-in-law was CIA's Tom Twetten who had served as the Agency's liaison with North on the NSC (Ted Gup, The Book of Honor, p. 314), was simply trying to clean up the whole Iran-Contra mess as neatly as possible, but only got killed in the process.

The whole question about a retrial concerned what would appear in North's memoir, Under Fire: An American Life, the title and anticipated substance most reminiscent of the British Army's counterterrorist specialist Captain Simon Hayward's Under Fire: My Own Story. While North's manuscript was still being prepared in October 1991, largely being ghost-written by William Novak who wrote Nancy Reagan's memoirs, the text would turn on what North meant by "diversion", and "the secret within a secret". North told reporter George Lardner that Reagan approved the diversion of profits to the Contras, and directed him and Poindexter to take the blame in order to divert attention away from everything else the President and his advisors knew and approved of. ("North: Reagan 'Knew Everything' ," The Washington Post, Oct. 20, 1991, A, 4:1) Their darkest secrets apparently concerned the 1985 arms shipments to Iran, the 'findings' to justify it, the false chronology to cover it up, etc.

Three days later, Walsh dropped all charges against North (Lloyd Grove, "In From Cold," ibid., Oct. 23, 1991, B, 1:4), and he reciprocated in kind with the first installation of his book for Time by claiming that the diversions, the secret within a secret, and the false chronology were merely to protect the diversion of the $12,000,000 in profits to the Contras the following April. "The secret within a secret" turned out to be the Iranians not getting the weapons they bargained for in November 1985, at the fair, market price, and the illicit profits going to the enemies of their allies, the Sandinistas. ( "Reagan Knew Everything," Time, Oct. 28, pp. 47-8) North's most serious offenses, it seems, were to put his hand in the till to help pay for a car (Walsh, pp. 201-2), and to build a security fence around his house to protect his family from the likes of Abu Nidal! ("Notes & Amends," Eye Spy!, Issue Nine, p. 4) North, instead of being the chief plotter, turned out to be, it seems, just another target of the so-called Palestinian hitman.

In sum, Iran-Contra turned out to be a far lesser crisis than Watergate, thanks to the complete separation of the effective counterintelligence and countermeasures that the Soviets had taken to save themselves (Riebling, p. 430ff.) from the comprehensive cover-ups that the Americans and the British had mounted to trivialize North's operations (pp. 367-412), what President Bush completed by pardoning everyone else, except Poindexter, just before he left office.

US attacks nuclear report on Iran

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Washington has dismissed a United Nations report that finds no evidence Iran has been seeking atomic weapons.

John Bolton, the top US arms control official, said the International Atomic Energy Agency assessment was "impossible to believe".

He said Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear capabilities only made sense as part of a weapons programme.

The IAEA report leaked this week said Iran had admitted to producing high-grade plutonium, but not weapons.

It said there was no sign that Tehran had secretly been developing weapons but had nonetheless admonished the Iranian authorities for being secretive.

"To date there is no evidence that [Iran's] previously undeclared nuclear material and activities... were related to a nuclear weapons programme," the agency said.

"However," it added, "given Iran's past pattern of concealment, it will take some time before the agency is able to conclude that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes."

Iran has always claimed its nuclear programme is designed to meet the country's energy needs.

However, Mr Bolton, speaking at a dinner for the US publication The American Spectator, threw scorn on Tehran and the IAEA.

"After extensive documentation of Iran's denials and deceptions over an 18-year period and a long litany of serious violations of Iran's commitments to the IAEA, the report nonetheless concluded that "no evidence" had been found of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme," he said.

But he stopped short of directly criticising the head of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, according to BBC correspondent in Washington David Bamford.

The tone of Mr Bolton's statement, our correspondent adds, indicates the US is prepared to take on the UN's nuclear body and state contrary conclusions.

Mr Bolton had wanted to confront Iran in the UN Security Council, while others, including the Europeans, have sought quiet diplomacy to resolve the issue.

Full story...

Wounded U.S. veterans get a raw deal at home

Ok, I know you probably think that I, and by default this site, are a little bit on the lunatic fringe of society - you're probably right. Be that as it may, the one impression that I don't want you to have is that I hate you; no matter who you are, what religion you follow, what colour your skin is, what job you have, or how much money you have - or don't have. The purpose of this site is to reflect some of the things happening in my mind, or to publish things that I read or people send to me. I don't necessarily believe all (or any) of it, it's just there - a reflection of the world around me and somewhere that I can say what I want to. The world is full of a lot of crazy things, if you're reading this page then you've found one of them! But amongst all the craziness and selfishness and greed, this planet has a heart that beats in tune with ours some of us have really messed up ideas - but that's all they are! IDEAS. I guess that's my point, codshit tries to attack ideas. When I'm attacking Bush I'm not attacking the man, I'm attacking the IDEAS his administration has brought to the world. He (and Phony Tony) are the figureheads for this monstrosity of lies and deception and WAR. We were lied to and the buck stops with them, it's as simple as that. If you still don't believe me then here's a story about how much The System really cares about those who SACRIFICE THEIR LIVES, WHETHER THEY ACTUALLY DIE OR NOT! It took 60 years for them to pay for UK vets to visit the battlefields where they gave their soul for us! "War is a racket." General Smedley Butler USMC (circa 1930, I think, if you care that much look it up I can't be arsed but he did say it)

If you have a good idea about how to save us from ourselves then please email it to me and I'll post it to the site. If it's a good idea it doesn't matter how crazy it is email jumperb at yahoo dot com (codshit email is dead R.I.S. (rest in spam)) :-(

Quote of the day: "War kills all those who participate in it, even the ones who survive." - ewar 100204

There's no emotional sting like the one inflicted by that 500 number. It's larger now, the total of Americans dead from an Iraq war launched on false pretenses, but 500 is getting a lot of usage as the ultimate cost of this mess. It's a cost 500 can't begin to illuminate.

How about at least 9,000 servicemen and women wounded, sickened or injured? How about 6,891 troops medically evacuated for non-combat conditions between March 19 and Oct. 30, 2003?

"There are about 2,500 combat casualties," Dave Autry said on the phone from the Disabled American Veterans offices in Washington. "The rest are attempted suicides, vehicle accidents, other accidents, illness. Something that's becoming a big concern is lesions caused by exposure to sand fleas that carry a particularly virulent bacteria."

All of this could be categorized as the inevitably horrible cost of post-modern war in the desert, but the scandal is what is happening to these survivors once their government brings them home. Tom Keller, the immediate past commander of the DAV in Ohio, wrote to me last month about the secretive nature of the process.

"I can't speak for the DAV's national organization," Tom said, "but I have my own feelings about why the Bush administration is bringing the casualties back to the States in the middle of the night and wants to keep organizations like the DAV away from them. I believe the administration wants to keep the American people in the dark about the number of troops being wounded, the severity of the injuries they are receiving and the types of illnesses that may be surfacing."

There are reasons potentially too disturbing even to ponder as to why the Defense Department, for example, would want to do what Keller is suggesting, but the evident reason appears to be depressingly common: money. It appears that the government does not want these veterans even to be aware of, let alone receive, the benefits due them for donating their limbs and their souls and their innocence to America.

The DAV's executive director, David Gorman, who left both his legs in a stinking Southeast Asian jungle more than 30 years ago, took up the subject early last month in a letter to Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld.

Full story...

Notarantonio Assassinated to Frustrate Captain Hayward's Murderous Plans

by Trowbridge H. Ford

On the night of October 9, 1987, four loyalist gunmen working for the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) broke into the West Belfast flat of Francisco Notarantonio, long time member of the IRA, and retired taxi driver, and killed him as he lay in bed with his wife. According to Peter Harclerode in Secret Soldiers, the incident finally persuaded his Force Research Unit handlers in the British Army that its mole Brian Nelson, the Association's chief intelligence officer, might be passing along information from its Crucible and Vengeful computer systems to facilitate sectarian murders.

Starting in May 1987, Nelson had helped organize the UDA's shooting of bread van driver Dermot Hackett, two other taxi drivers, Edward Campbell and Mickey Power, in July and August, Patrick Hamill in the same fashion as Notarantonio shortly thereafter, and finally young Jim Meighan on Sept. 20th. Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein city councillor for Belfast, only escaped for awhile the murderous efforts of another UDA assassin, posing as a cabbie, because of the quick work by surgeons at the Royal Victoria Hospital. A year later, as Peter Everett discussed in Issue Eleven of Eye Spy!, Nelson called upon FRU free-lancer Ken Barrett, apparently aka 'Geoff', to finish the job, but he arrived too late at the restaurant where Maskey was eating to effect the killing. Nelson, when questioned by his handlers about these incidents, denied, of course, that he had had any knowledge that the information he supplied to the UDA was to be used in the slayings.

According to Nicholas Davies in Ten Thirty Three - The Inside Story of Britain's Killing Machine in Northern Ireland, Nelson, aka Agent 6137, had earned his place in the UDA after he was released from prison in 1980 for helping kill a Catholic by beating him, setting his hair afire, and finally denying him life-sustaining medication. Nelson, codename 10-33, had become a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) after he had been discharged from The Black Watch in 1969. In November 1985, Nelson reportedly offered his services to British military intelligence as an informer so that he could exact revenge upon another UVF member who the UDA refused to discipline for trying to rape his wife.

In April 1986, four months after the fallout from the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement had setted, especially the 14 Intelligence Company's kidnapping, and the IRA's reprisal killing of renegade Derry quartermaster Frank Hegarty for tipping off authorities about the locations of various IRA depots of Libyan-supplied weapons in the Republic, the Nelsons moved suddenly to West Germany where he became a professional roof tiler. Then in October, Nelson was sent to South Africa to procure arms from supplier Armscor for a leaner, meaner UDA whose UVF and UFF murder squads were seeking military-like proficiency. At the same time, Nelson, who had been approached again for disclosure of UDA plans in sectarian struggles by the FRU's Colonel J, aka Gordon Kerr, because of pressure from MI5's Joint Irish Section, informed his FRU handlers of the trip, and they arranged a three-week visit for him to Johannesburg, under the watchful eye of MI6, to complete the deal.

By January 1987, the FRU was so happy with Nelson's performance that two of its agents went to Munich to persuade him, and his family to return to Northern Ireland for more mole work within the UDA. In explaining his new found wealth, the FRU arranged with West German counterintelligence for Nelson to win, it seems, a lottery for £20,000. "Shortly after his return to Belfast," Harclerode added, "he was given a series of conducted tours of republican areas by the FRU, with establishments frequented by the Provisionals being pointed out to him." (p. 561) Nelson was to funnel what he gained from UDA intelligence on republican activities to FRU handlers so that joint plans could be devised about what the IRA was planning, and what was to be done about it. The operation was to contain republican terror in the province.

The relation between Nelson and the FRU apparently proved perfect when the UDA decided to assassinate Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in June 1987, what it had attempted but without success on March 14, 1984. On that occasion, a UFF assassination squad, led by John Gregg and Gerard Welsh, decided to kill the just-elected London MP as he left an adjourned magistrates court session in Belfast, answering charges of obstructing justice. As Joe Keenan, son of long-time IRA volunteer, and fellow passenger Sean Keenan, was driving down Howard Street, Gregg's UFF car, driven by Colin Gray, overtook the one Adams was in, spraying it with at least 12 rounds, three of which hit Adams in the neck, shoulder, and arm, and one of which hit Sean Keenan riding in the backseat.

Fortunately, it seems, another military intelligence informer had told it about the attack, and it had had the 14 Intelligence Company remove powder from the ammunition planned for use in the attack so that it would not be lethal. Since neither the car nor the driver had been incapacitated in the attack, Adams and Sean Keenan were driven directly to the Royal Victoria Hospital for the necessary repairs. Then members of the Intelligence & Security Group appeared on the scene, and arrested the three UFF members. The shooters were subsequently given 18 years in prison for the attempt, and driver Gray received 12 years for his trouble.

In the summer and fall of 1987, the UDA planned three attempts on Adams' life, all using motorcyclists, but none of them materialized because of tipoffs to the FRU by Nelson. In the first case, the 14 Intelligence Company, and the RUC's Special Branch, along with regular policemen, and soldiers, had the site, the Housing Exectuive offices, so well surrounded that not even the craziest of assassins would have tried it. Two weeks later, it was the same arrangement at another site. Some months later, the UDA planned another attack, with motorcyclists pulling up beside Adams' car to put a limpet mine on its roof, set to explode later, but the effort was called off, apparently because it was too reminiscent of the first effort.

Then in 1988, the UDA, finally fully armed, thanks reportedly to the arms shipment from South Africa, went on a sectarian shooting spree, highlighted by Michael Stone shooting up the mourners attending the funerals of the three volunteers killed by the SAS at Gibraltar in May, resulting in the murders of Kevin Brady, John Murray, and Thomas McErlean. It was these killings which resulted three days later in the brutal murders of the two Army corporals, Robert Howes and Derek Wood, when they stumbled across the funeral cortege of one of the above.

The campaign had been kicked off in January with the killing of Catholic Billy Kane, also lying in bed, and was followed the next day by the murder of Ulster Defence Regiment Captain Timothy Armstrong, the assassins thinking that he was another undesirable Catholic. In May, there was a repeat of these killings, with the UDA this time killing Seamus Murray, and Terry McDaid, the FRU finally assuring the shaken Nelson that he had connections with his dangerous brother, Declan. Then the UDA, with FRU approval, had its assassins kill senior PIRA officer Brendan Davison, feigning that they were regular RUC policemen making a security check. The UDA, with full FRU assistance, finished the year by killing suspected PIRA member Gerard Slane, and the McNally brothers, Francis, and Phelim, more cases of mistaken identity.

In 1989, the chief victim of the UDA/FRU shooting spree was solicitor Pat Finucane, who had represented famous hunger-striker Bobby Sands, and was employed by Gervaise McKerr's widow to determine why he was killed by an RUC Headquarters Mobile Service Unit back in the fall of 1982. According to Everett, Finucane was murdered because of his successful defence of Patrick McEwen, who was charged with killing the two corporals. According to Harclerode, the UDA had planned to assassinate Finucane in September 1987, but the FRU saw that he was provided the same protection that Adams had been given three months before. (p. 568) In March 1988, the same process resulted in Finucane being protected from assassination. In February 1989, it was an entirely different matter, though, when three UDA assassins got lucky, marching into his house unnoticed, and gunning him down in front of his wife and children, only to escape without difficultly.

Other significant UDA killings in 1989 were finishing off Catholic Ian Catney in January, what the breakaway Irish National Liberation Army had attempted two years before at Belfast's Smithfield Market. Then there was another mistaken identity shooting, that of Protestant David Dorman, a week later due to faulty intelligence. "The two gunmen," Harclerode added, "had been seen running towards a nearby loyalist housing estate which was quickly sealed off. Shortly afterwards, four men were arrested and taken way for questioning." (p. 567) Nelson's career with the UDA was finally finished in August 1989, according to Harclerode, when two of its assassins used a RUC P-Card plan of his residence, and photograph of Loughlin Maginn, to kill him. When the UDA bragged about its intelligence in murdering the PIRA intelligence officer, producing the expected scepticism about the claim, it published the FRU file on Maginn, obliging the government to appoint Deputy Constable of the Cambridgeshire Police John Stevens to conduct an inquiry of Army collusion in loyalist killings.

The trouble with these sometimes erroneous explanations of FRU/UDA murders is that they are dealt with in a disjointed, episodic fashion, an approach which seems completely unjustified when we are told by Davies that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was continually provided with Military Intelligence Source Reports (MISRs) regarding individual operations. This was no renegade, hit-or-miss campaign. We need to put these killings, and others in the changing counter-terrorist context of Northern Ireland, one which appreciates its evolving causes, objectives, strategies, organizations, operatives, and limitations. After the successful completion of the Falklands War, Britain was prepared to go all out with its own campaign of terror in order to defeat revolutionary Irish nationalism.

The disjointed character of Harclerode's analysis is best captured in his setting the scene, the Hyde Park bombings by the PIRA in the summer of 1982 (p. 134), as far away as possible from the six reprisal killings in the province a few months later (pp. 532-5), what led to the appointment in March 1984 of John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police, to conduct an inquiry similar to Stevens's. With Britain's defence forces stretched to the limit because of the growing confrontation with Argentina, the killing of four soldiers in the Queen's Household Cavalry, two police officers, and six Royal Green Jackets bandmen with nail bombs was the last thing Britain needed.

To settle scores, though, Captain Simon Hayward of the Life Guards volunteered to lead UDA squads, and re-inforced Headquarters Mobile Service Units of the RUC to settle scores with the republicans, resulting in the above killings, and a few others. The killings, though, were completely unfocused, thanks to more faulty intelligence from George Poyntz, and apparently David Burton aka Bertelstein. Hayward teamed up with the UDA's John McMichael and Michael Stone, already notorious for working with now murdered Captain Robert Nairac, to kill Seamus Grew on September 22, 1982, but without success, requiring a similarly led HMSU to do it two and a half months later. Hayward, McMichael, and Stone, it seems, did manage to assassinate ex-internee Peter Corrigan in the meantime.

Once the crisis passed, Hayward decided to join the 14 Intelligence Company, hoping that the new service could find a permanent place for the somewhat disabled but most talented captain. Hayward had lost the middle segments of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand in an accident involving a Ferret vehicle in Cypres in March 1976, and thought that the unconventional force might be able to give him a new identity too, especially in light of the Stalker inquiry. By the time this police officer had put his Interim Report together during the summer of 1985, requiring only the tapes of the controversial killing of Michael Tighe in a Lurgan hayloft on November 24, 1982, to complete his inquiry, Hayward had successfully completed the course for the Company, and had become Operations Officer for its South Detachment in Northern Ireland, adopting the operational identity of James Rennie just to be on the safe side. (For his highly fictionalized account of the transformation, see The Operators: On the streets with Britain's Most Secret Service. The most telltale examples, what government censors should have excised, was his listing the essentials of his Army career in the Fontispiece, and his allegedly changing his shooting hand from his natural left to his actually injured right, what created all kinds of operational surprises, and was responsible for his "cackhandedness" (p. 90), hardly something an aspiring assassin would deliberately choose.)

Rennie now seemed far removed from any trouble Stalker could make, especially given the opposition of RUC Chief Constable Sir John Hermon, and MI5 to handing over the tapes. Stalker was then removed from the inquiry under suspicion that he was connected to the criminal activities of Manchester's Quality Street Gang, especially drug-running, through dealings with businessman Kevin Taylor.

Just when Colonel Gordon Kerr was recruiting Nelson to become a military mole in the UDA, the JIC was altering its focus on what to do with the PIRA, and its supporters, a change which required Hayward aka Rennie from trying to stop IRA Active Service Units (ASUs) in East Tyrone from blowing up undermanned RUC police stations to directing more sectarian killings, as he had done in 1982. Thatcher's JIC was committed to making it seem that the Soviets, through their clients, especially Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, were assisting the republicans in taking over the North by force, a ploy it would punish by helping to destroy the USSR as a Cold War player.

Hayward's assignment was to expose the stockpiling of Libyan weapons in the Republic by means of Hegarty's arrest while leading another series of so-called shoot-to-kill murders to meet the alleged PIRA threat which would give him a believable alibi for triggering the showdown with the Soviets, the shooting to Swedish statsminister Olof Palme in Stockholm at the end of February 1986. Hayward saw to it that McMichael and Stone disposed of joiner Kevin McPolin in Lisburn as the new campaign commenced. Then he apparently led the drawn-out assassination of arms mover Francis Bradley on February 18, 1986, one so outrageous that it was being hotly debated in the press when Palme was murdered. Hayward had been actively sizing up Bradley for the shooting, even having his picture taken in military battlegear outside McVeys' cafe in Magherafelt during the process, ever since unknown parties had shot up the Castledawson Police Station on December 9, 1985.

While the shooting of Palme, apparently by Hayward while reassessing the performance of his bodyguards, went off without a hitch, the problems with the South Detachment's Ops Officer only increased for British officials as the Swedish police failed to find a suspect for the shooting, thanks particularly to SIS's false leads. Jo Thomas of The New York Times published a belated story of the recent killings in the province, especially Bradley's, to keep Hayward's alibi going, and he added to it by helping entice Seamus McElwaine from across the border two months later, in the hope of catching the long sought-after James Lynagh, resulting in McElwaine's execution, and Sean Lynch's wounding.

Still, Group 13, which included Chairman of the Joint Intelillgence Committee Sir Percy Craddock, former SIS Chief Sir Colin Figures, current chief Christopher Curwen, his deputy Colin McColl, Defence Intelligence Staff Chief Derek Boorman, DIS Director General for Management and Support of Intelligence Vice Admiral John Kerr, DGSS Anthony Duff, DDGSS Patrick Walker, G Branch Director John Deverell, Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, and Sovbloc operatives Gordon Barrass, Harry Burke, and Gerry Warner, and who had helped arrange the statsminister's shooting, were increasingly anxious about Hayward's continuing presence, and functioning in Northern Ireland, especially when the Iran-Contra scandal started unraveling in the fall. These officials are responsible for Whitehall's unwritten code of keeping quiet at all costs about current operations. To ease the pressure, Hayward attended the PQS 2 course back in Ashford, successful completion of which would apparently lead to his being promoted to major, and given a top military intelligence post in Whitehall.

Just when Hayward was taking leave of Northern Ireland in early 1987, Nelson was back at work with the UDA over the strongest protests by MI5. Deverell believed that his use in the Hayward case would just compound the problem rather than end it, especially by leading the UDA to suspect that Nelson was working for the PIRA. His first assignment, it seems, was to help IRA volunteer, and longest British mole within the republican movement DOOK (aka DUKE and 'Steak Knife') set Hayward up on a drugs smuggling charge in Sweden. This would lead to his being in the hands of Swedish authorities if investigations of Iran-Contra, now underway, ever revealed his role in the Stockholm assassination. Hayward's brother Christopher, who had purchased the drug-running catamaran True Love from Kevin Taylor, was apparently forced to join the plot under threat from DOOK that he would kill his Army agent brother if he didn't cooperate. As for who DOOK is, he sounds like Padraic Wilson, long-time leader of the PIRA, and its commanding officer in the high security Maze Prison until his release in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Wilson had apparently been turned by the British when the Keenans, Adams, and Martin McGuinness made a mess of the breakaway Provisionals. At first, Wilson tried to make the most of the revolutionary Free Derry movement, going to the greatest trouble despite the security net to attend the funeral of one of Sean's sons killed in the process. Before Bloody Sunday - what might have been sparked by a McGuinness first shot, and was in any case inflamed by his so claimingm - Wilson, according to Harclerode, told members of the Mobile Reconnaisance Force (forerunner of the FRU), who had set up the Gemini Health Studio massage parlour on Belfast's Antrim Road to gather intelligence from talkative clients, who of his colleagues had killed three young Scots of the lst Battalion Royal Highland Fusiliers, based at Girdwood Barracks where internment interrogations would be established later in response. (p. 317) This intelligence gathering operation by the MRF 'ladies' was 'blown', as they say, in October 1972 after double agents Seamus Wright, Kevin McKee, and an unknown third one were forced to disclose to the PIRA leadership its relation to the Four Square Laundry intelligence-gathering operation next door.

What Harclerode, nor anyone else for that matter (See, e.g., Tony Geraghty, The Irish War, p. 89ff.), failed to tell us is how Wilson somehow managed to escape both execution at the hands of the PIRA, and incarceration at those of the British. Wilson would have had all kinds of problems explaining his visits to the massage parlour. Perhaps, he was the third unknown volunteer (n. b. that Harclerode makes no mention of him), suspected of working with the 'Freds', but since he was only 15, he was excused because of expected adolescent impulses. Afterall, the Ardoyne IRA had already murdered enough mere youths. While the PIRA leadership was making Wright and McKee pay for their liberties, and the MRF and its allies in the 'Det' were regrouping elsewhere after the attacks on October 2nd, Wilson, it seems, was able to become an Army informer, at that time not yet an anathema within the nationalist community. (Taylor, pp. 59-60)

Harclerode thought that he had gotten round these difficulties and developments by writing vaguely about Paddy Wilson, a leading figure in the nationalist community, divulging the names of the PIRA killers of Dougald McCaughey, John, and Joseph McCaig one night after drinking beer with the boys, and bonking the girls from the MRF. Harclerode was apparently alluding to the veteran SDLP Senator to the old Stormont upper house, Paddy Wilson, who was assassinated, along with his secretary, by the UFF's John White on June 26, 1973, shortly after the ending of the massage parlour, and laundry collection operations. Wilson and Protestant Irene Andrews were savagely stabbed to death, and their bodies mutilated in a quarry just outside Belfast. She even had her breasts sliced off to indicate, it seems, the sectarian sources of the slayings.

Of course, there was no way that this moderate Catholic politician would have known who killed the soldiers. And if he had, there was no way that he would have been honored, along with hard-line Unionist Senator from Strabane, Jack Barnhill, in the Senate Rotunda with memorials of the new Northern Ireland Assemby, what colleague Gerry Fitt, now Lord Fitt, had been recommending for years, and the cross-party Stormont Commission agreed to. Barnhill was assassinated, and his house destroyed by the Official IRA on December 12, 1971, thirty years to the day before the memorials were commenorated. Innocent victim of the Troubles Senator Paddy Wilson was mentioned, along with Barnhill, and British Conservatives Airey Neave, and Ian Gow, when Irish Taoiseach John Bruton opened the All-Party Negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement. In sum, Senator Paddy Wilson could not have been Harclerode's Paddy Wilson.

If he were Padraic Wilson, this leads to all kinds of ugly conclusions. First, it shows that there was systematic collusion between the Intelligence and Security Group (NI), and the loyalists paramilitaries much longer than previously thought. Wilson provided British authorities with inside information about armed assaults, like the one at Loughgall in 1987, and arms shipments, especially the ones from Libya, starting in 1971. White could only have murdered Senator Wilson, and Ms. Andrews on a tip from the female MRF agents, what they saw as ideal cover for Padraic Wilson not being suspected by the PIRA as being an Army informer. He would have been assured of the safety of his covert role by their assassinations. This assurance would have been strengthened when White was finally brought to trial, and convicted of the murders in 1978 when the military campaign by MI5 and the SAS against the nationalists was in full swing.

As with all clandestine relations, when things change, what was previously accepted or at least tolerated can become a death warrant. 'Steak Knife' seems to have prevented some unnecessary killings while MI6's Michael Oatley was seeking a settlement with the IRA's Billy McKee. Once negotiations broke down, and MI5 and the 'Det' started going after the republicans, however, 'Steak Knife's role became increasingly unacceptable, especially when the UDA's "Shankill Butcher" Lennie Murphy, recruiter of McMichael and Stone, became involved. Then the Active Service Unit, directed apparently by Brian Keenan, in Britain went wild, culminating in the famous Balcombe Street shootout. 'Steak Knife' apparently did help arrange the SAS assassination of John Francis Green, the suspected leader of the shooting of the Scottish soldiers; helped in the 1980 imprisonment of Keenan for 18 years for conspiring to cause the explosions on the British mainland; and arranged for the UDA to kill Murphy when he threatened again to go on the rampage after being released from prison during Hayward's 1982 retribution campaign.

Wilson's long-time association with the Army, for which he was paid £75,000 per year in a secret Gibraltar bank account, suffered a severe setback, though, when the UDA, with 14 Intelligence Company assistance, almost killed Brian Keenan's father, and Gerry Adams, not to forget the risks to brother Joe. Wilson had not bargained for this kind of retribution. While the military intelligence people have cooked up this story about having safely doctored the ammunition, no one in his right mind would believe it, given the extent and seriousness of the wounds. And one doubts that Wilson was ever told of the precautions. As former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Sir Patrick Mayhew explained about such murders: "If you do shoot, then you don't shoot to tickle, you don't shoot to miss, you do shoot to kill." (Quoted from Peter Taylor, Brits: The War Against the IRA, p. 255) This may help explain why subsequent assassination attempts on Adams got nowhere, thanks to Wilson's disclosures to the IRA leadership.

For good measure, MI5 officer Michael Bettaney, while on remand in Brixton jail for spying for the Soviets, had given fellow prisoners in the IRA, particularly Keenan, an earful of what the Security Service, and Army intelligence had been doing against it in Northern Ireland (Mark Urban, Big Boys' Rules, p. 99), what became a red flag for DOOK (or 'Steak Knife') when he saw the Army captain 'holidaying' with his brother Chris on Ibiza in February 1987. DOOK had apparently learned from Martin McGuinness of the 150-ton shipment of Libyan arms on the Eksund for a PIRA 'tet offensive' (Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, p. 1ff.), and had stationed himself on the island to help the FRU intercept it from Malta. What Bettaney had seen in the province while working for MI5 was so bad that he converted to Catholicism, took up drinking, and became a left-winger.

While Simon's brother maneuvered him into driving his Jaguar to Stockholm, on the pretext that it was being sold to an Englishman living there, the luxury car was loaded with 50.5 kilos of cannibis to secure his imprisonment when discovered. (For an explanation of this, see Simon Hayward's rare autobiography, Under Fire: My Own Story; not to be confused with co-conspirator Oliver North's Under Fire: An American Story.) In order to hide the cargo properly, the Jaguar had to be stolen for the time-consuming operation to be performed, necessitating Hayward being drugged by someone calling himself 'Brian' (p. 69), apparently Nelson. Meanwhile, DOOK, the well-heeled, nasty IRA man, in the company of a 35-year-old brunette, apparently calling herself Heather Weissand (whose existence and identity Hayward was most reluctant to recognize), made arrangements with drug dealer Forbes Mitchell to secure his arrest after he arrived in Sweden - what happened outside Linköping on Friday, March 13, 1987.

While Brian Nelson, along with RUC Special Branch's Ian Phoenix, and FRU's Mags, ultimately known as Captain M, and really Captain Margaret Walshaw, were making up as best they could for Hayward's absence from Northern Ireland, he was slowly being prosecuted in the Swedish capital for drug smuggling. Phoenix replaced Hayward during Operation Judy, the Loughgall Massacre of 8 IRA volunteers on May 8th - what 'Mary', according to Peter Taylor, had forced when she was called off at the last moment from protecting UDR officer William Graham from an IRA AUS. (See her description in Taylor, pp. 270-1.) She had been leading Graham's protective surveillance since Hayward's depature 10 weeks before. Expecting the case to be dropped because of Hayward's connections in the UK, given the fact that it depended upon what Britain's National Drugs Intelligence Unit officers could persuade Mitchell to testify to, he was shocked when found guilty in August. Hayward reacted by hiring a private detective to determine facts surrounding the case so that its prosecution could be overturned on appeal.

It was heard in early October, and turned on whether DOOK could persuade the court that Hayward knew what he alone was doing all along, what Weissand was prepared to corroborate. Of course, Hayward wanted DOOK to be forced to appear so that he could be subjected to cross examination about his role, but he persisted in refusing, claiming that he had already testified truthfully. When his lawyer, Dutchman H. K. ter Brake, was obliged to testify, he was asked who his client was. He declined to identify him, explaining to the court: "He is afraid of anything that will reveal his identity. He is afraid of the British Army." (Quoted from Hayward, p. 340.) ter Brake was never asked why. Then the court heard a letter from DOOK, claiming that he was the victim of a plot by the British press to scapegoat him, but he added that "...the truth will come out." DOOK implied that if something happened to him because of UDA/FRU action, his lawyer would have more to tell the court. On this note, it was adjourned on October 7th.

Two nights later, Notarantino instead of 'Steak Knife' was assassinated, thanks to intervention by the FRU's Captain M or Mags who decided that changing targets was essential, given DOOK's obvious threat. (It is interesting to note that Hayward was soon calling his wife of be, Sandra Agar, 'Sands' after meeting her through a personal ad he had placed in Private Eye.) When the court reconvened on October 15th, Hayward began to suspect that his appeal was doomed, once a letter from Ms. Weissand to ter Brake was introduced, confirming a conversation she had had with one of the prosecutors the day after Notarantino's assassination. She stated that she had been present at the meeting of Simon, Chris, and DOOK at Santa Eulalia, and that at no time had Chris and DOOK left the table to conspire against Simon. (For its text, see Hayward, p. 356.)

While the defence tried to make much of the fact that no one knew who Ms. Weissand really was, and that she too was afraid to appear in person, these doubts were cleared up by the time the court rejected the appeal two weeks later, as one of the prosecutors summed up: "...Heather Weissand sounded credible to me on the telephone, HK ter Brake thought the same...Dook is not involved in this affair...that is nothing but a smokescreen put forward by the defence to cloud the issue..." (Quoted from p. 361.) Apparently, London had reassured Stockholm under the strictest secrecy that Weissand was a British military intelligence officer, unavailable for the court because of assignment on a chartered sailing yacht, apparently DOOK's. On October 28th, it had helped secure the capture of the Eksund off the coast of Brittany by French authorities. Clearly, British ones put a higher priority on keeping on good terms with the PIRA man than the Ops Officer.

Once Hayward was safely locked up for a five-year sentence, Britain's 'killing machine in Northern Ireland,' to use Davies' term, saw to the elimination of grounds for further blackmail by either 'Steak Knife' or Rennie, the details of which will have to be left for another time.

Iron Lady's Government Started Collapsing Because of Steak Knife, Hayward, and FRU

by Trowbridge H. Ford

While the British government thought that its troubles, caused primarily by the assassination of statsminister Olof Palme in Stockholm on February 28, 1986, were rendered manageable by the imprisonment of apparent hitman Captain Simon Hayward aka James Rennie in Sweden on trumped-up drug smuggling charges for five years in November 1987, they vastly increased, so much so, in fact, that London ultimately had to start seeking peace with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Once anybody succumbs to blackmailers, it is almost impossible to escape without continuing to give into their demands.

Hayward became such a thorn in Britain's side, first in Malmö's maximun security prison, and then back in London, that it was ultimately obliged to make good on his claim that he had been Rennie all along, finally even giving him a position in Whitehall that it had only deceptively promised originally. The IRA's 'Steak Knife', apparently aka DOOK, was such a blackmailing threat, dead or alive, during the process that the Army's Force Research Unit (FRU) had to work overtime to make sure that nothing happened to him, unless at the hands of fellow Provisionals, what helped result in the threats to, and killing of many others, particularly solicitor Pat Finucane, to make sure that its mole in the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Brian Nelson, was not fatally compromised to the loyalists. Nelson became a such nervous wreck, trying to protect 'Steak Knife' from loyalist assassins, that his minions were ultimately obliged to leak FRU files to justify the chaos, resulting in the UDA's chief intelligence officer finally being tried, and imprisoned by specially appointed investigator, Sir John Stevens.

If 'Steak Knife' had been assassinated on October 9, 1987 while Hayward's appeal hearing in Stockholm was in recess, it, no doubt, would been confronted with an alarming statement from the deceased by his counsel, H. K. ter Brake, when it resumed. The IRA operative would have apparently claimed that he, an innocent, law-abiding subject, had accidentally become embroiled while on holiday in Ibiza in covert British operations, an assassination attempt upon Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, it seemed, by the agent in the dock who had directed so many unfocused killings in Northern Ireland that he had been called upon by the security forces to kill Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, an apparent Soviet stooge. If an FRU/UDA asssassination attempt on 'Steak Knife' had failed, what seemed more likely, given his recognition of the threat, he might well have appeared in person to make the same claims, what undoubtedly would have thrown the hearing, and Swedish relations with Britain into unprecendented turmoil.

While the FRU finally admitted its intervention in UDA plans to kill 'Steak Knife', Nelson's handler Captain M aka Mags, and really Captain Margaret Walshaw, having retired taxidriver, and former IRA activist Francisco Notarantonio targeted instead, the fallout within UDA ranks was immediate. They, especially John 'Flint' Stone, suspected that assassination squad leader, John McMichael, had been turned by the PIRA into killing the wrong target. No sooner had Hayward's appeal of his conviction for drug smuggling failed than the UDA's Second-in-Command became obsessed with the idea that everyone was planning to kill him. "McMichael," Tony Geraghty has written in The Bullet Catchers: Bodyguards and the World of Close Protection,"was fanatically cautious about his security, changing his car every two weeks and usually accompanied by a bodyguard." (p. 391)

To no avail, though, as he was blown up in his booby-trapped car in December. When there was no expected Protestant blacklash, Geraghty added, security sources suggested that McMichael had been killed by his own side for allegedly working with the nationalists in seeking peace! (This was about as likely as the Devil joining forces with the Lord.) It was thought to be a repeat of what the UDA's James Pratt Craig had been able to arrange with a member of the IRA's Belfast Brigade (Number 9 on the RUC Special Branch E4A list) in disposing of Lennie Murphy, the Shankill Butcher, after he kidnapped, tortured, and killed Catholic Joseph Donnegan on October 24, 1982 shortly after having been released from prison. Number 9 seems to have been none other than 'Steak Knife' who consulted with the UDA about matters of mutual interest - i.e., Hayward's retribution campaign against the IRA not being confused by unfocused loyalist killings - until it almost killed Gerry Adams, veteran IRA Derry republican Sean Keenan, and son Joe on March 14, 1984.

The reason why there was no Protestant blacklash to McMichael's murder is because the FRU arranged through Nelson for an across-the-board campaign of terror to keep everyone in the dark about why Notarantonio had been killed, resulting in reprisals by the PIRA. On January 15, 1988, Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) assassins, thanks to FRU files that Nelson had been supplied, assassinated Catholic Billy Kane in the same fashion that Notarantonio had been disposed of. The next day, Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) Captain Timothy Armstrong was murdered, the UDA belatedly explaining that he had been mistaken for an unknown Catholic. The same day, the PIRA killed the UDR's John Stewart in reprisal for Kane's killing, and two days later, it eliminated Catholic Anthony McKiernan, thinking apparently that he had fingered Kane. Then the circle started again six days later with the UDA killing of Catholic businessman Jack Kielty. (See Raymond Murray's The SAS in Ireland, p. 397, for details.)

McMichael's murder threw Hayward into an absolute tailspin, given the upholding of his drugs conviction in Stockholm the previous month. The South Detachment's Ops Officer was already in a most depressed state because of the failure of British officialdom to gain his release despite efforts by London MP John Gorst. Life Guards commanding officer, Colonel James Emson, had taken National Drug Intelligence Unit claims of his drug dealing seriously enough to come to Stockholm to question him about them (Simon Hayward, Under Fire: My Own Story, pp. 100-1), and commiserating colleague Major Simon Falkner was also working behind the scenes to see that the Stalker inquiry into the 1982 killing in South Armagh was provided with a second tape of the controversial killing of Michael Tighe in a Lurgan hayshed on November 24th (John Stalker, The Stalker Affair, pp. 248-9), what Hayward apparently accomplished while leading a re-inforced RUC Special Branch E4A squad. Now London was, it seemed, more interested in protecting nationalists, particularly Gerry Adams, and their defenders, especially solicitor Pat Finucane, than Crown operatives, and their agents who were carrying the fight to the IRA.

To disabuse Hayward of this erroneous misconception, Attorney General Sir Patrick Mayhew announced to the Commons on January 26, 1988 that the Crown was taking no action 'in the public interest' against the RUC officers who were allegedly responsible for the six deaths in South Armagh during the fall of 1982, which Stalker had been appointed to investigate, and what Sir Colin Sampson, his replacement, recommended upon completing the inquiry. Any prosecutions would have resulted in the officers contending that they only covered up for others, particularly Hayward, on instruction by superiors - what would have opened a whole Pandora's Box of secrets. Later, Lord Mayhew explained vaguely: "A lot of intelligence matters would have been brought out that would have been very deleterious to the intelligence operation that was essential in the circumstance of the time." (Quoted from Peter Taylor, Brits: The War Against the IRA, pp. 252-3.)

In the wake of the PIRA bombing of the British cenotaph at Enniskillen on November 8th (Remembrance Sunday), which killed 11 bystanders, and injured another 60 instead of members of the security forces, the British Court of appeal upheld the wrongful conviction of the Birmingham Six, and Parliament made permanent the Prevention of Terrorism Act, what had made possible indiscriminate acts of terror by Hayward, the UDA, and FRU against Northern Irish subjects. For good measure, on February 23rd, Private Ian Thain, sentenced to life in prison for killing a Catholic, was released after having served little over two years, and the only imprisoned soldier during the Troubles was then returned to duty with his regiment, The Light Infantry. Hayward, in sum, could follow the same route though overseas, as his letter of resignation from the Army had not yet been accepted.

The operation Lord Mayhew was referring to was stopping the PIRA's plan to blow up British troops during the changing of the guard outside the Governor's residence in Gibraltar, what its West Fermanagh unit had attempted in Belmore Street in Enniskillen the previous fall, and for which it was obliged to disband when the unfocused atrocity occurred. (Peter Harclerode, Secret Soldiers, p. 148. N. b. that he has discussed this bombing as far away as possible from the murders on The Rock, p. 548ff.) No sooner had the PIRA's Council approved of the attack than an informer, undoubtedly 'Steak Knife', disclosed the plan to British authorities. 'Steak Knife' was most desirous of getting back on good terms with them, especially in light of Enniskillen, and they were most eager to oblige because of the continuing problems with Hayward, highlighted by Notarantonio's murder.

To make 'Steak Knife's participation more likely, the security forces allowed in January 1988 an ASU in Belgium to escape after the massive car bomb it had planted in Brussels was discovered. The bombing was intended, like Patrick Magee's in Brighton in December 1984, to decimate the government's senior ranks attending a European Union summit. While Ed Moloney, in his just-published A Secret History of the IRA, has expressed puzzlement over why the security forces did not move against the terrorists, he then answered his own query by stating that the Prime Minister wanted to give the PIRA a "bloody nose" at Gilbraltar.

While all accounts of the shooting on The Rock (Operation Flavius) have concentrated on what happened to the members of the Active Service Unit on the fatal day, especially because of SAS overkill on the ground, and official disinformation in the press, hardly any attention has been paid to who set them up, apparently 'Steak Knife', Mags aka 'Mary' (Sergeant Margaret Walshaw of the FRU), and, according to some accounts, someone even standing in for Hayward. The whole point of the unexpected shootings by the SAS markmen, what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, and Secretary of Defence George Younger had approved in late February (Quoted in Murray from Colin Brown's Sept. 5, 1988 article in The Independent, pp. 411-2.), was to give 'John Oakes', 'Katherine Smith', and others the chance to make their getaway during the cull.

Howe was the principal target of the car bomb in Brussels, and Younger had had to contain the mess when the Americans did not show up during NATO's Anchor Express Exercise, what Palme's assassination was to trigger against Moscow. The Foreign Secretary was understandably most desirous of getting back at his attempted murderers, and Younger of seeing the end of the Hayward affair. Downing Street intervention completely upstaged what MI6, MI5, and military intelligence had been planning from their operational headquarters in Gibraltar's Rock Hotel.

'Oakes' was clearly the informer from the PIRA's Council, and 'Katherine Smith' was his expert on terrorism, sounding much like the FRU's Captain M. He, apparently aka DOOK, given his connections with Giltraltar, would have been the ideal man to prepare the operation on the ground, and she seems to have been his constant companion, using the aliases of his PIRA associates when appropriate. They constituted the Malaga-based ASU which made regular visits to The Rock, starting on February 23rd, and triggering the Cabinet decision. 'Oakes' and 'Smith', as Father Murray has written, used a red Ford Fiesta to transport the explosive from Valencia to Marbella, and then they loaded it into a white Ford Fiesta that 'Smith' had rented for the mission. (pp. 402-3) The third car, the blocking one for the bomb-laden white Ford Fiesta, was rented, according to Geraldine Mitchell, and Andy Pollack of The Irish Times, by a man missing the middle and ring fingers of his right hand, a telltail sign of Hayward, though his actual presence seems most unlikely, given his imprisonment in Sweden.

About 'Smith', Jack Holland and Susan Phoenix have written in Phoenix: Policing the Shadows, she was observed by the SAS the day before the cull, "...reconnoitring the area around the governor's palace, where, it was thought, the Provisionals were going to target a changing-of-the-guard ceremony. She was followed into a nearby Catholic chapel, where she was observed lighting a candle before leaving. It is unknown whether this was for the bombing team or for the hundreds of potential innocent victims." (p. 199) It turned out that the candle was for the bombing team, as they were the ones blown away as she mysteriously made her escape. Her identity becomes even murkier when we are told that she, allegedly the only member of the ASU to escape, continues to sit on Sinn Fein's Central Committee despite the well-documented case against her for conspiring to commit mass murder.

'Smith', in sum, was definitely not the real 'Mary Parkin', volunteer Mairead Farrell, who had accompanied Daniel McCann and Sean Savage when the site was surveyed in November, though Farrell used the alias on occasion. Farrell was diminutive, with long, dark hair, while 'Smith' was "slightly built with short curly hair." (p. 403) Duncan Campbell, in his article 'Panic in the street" in the June 17,1988 issue of the New Statesman (the same one that had his article about MI6 not approving the use of any British mercenaries, especially from Major David Walker's KMS and Saladin firms, to kill Palme), claimed that it was because British and Spanish intelligence officers lost track of 'Mary Parkin' that the decision was made to kill the three volunteers for fear that 'Parkin' was in the process of setting off the bomb. In sum, there were six people involved in the operation, three of whom were working for British authorities.

While the original plan, among other things, had been to betray 'Oakes' fatally to his PIRA colleagues, the resulting overkill by the Thatcher-led SAS determined an entirely different outcome. Britain's European colleagues, especially Spain, were appalled by their misuse in this clear act of international terrorism. MI5, especially DCI John Deverell, was totally demoralized by the result, what it had planned to break the security forces' links with the sectarian paramilitaries, especially 'Steak Knife'. Instead of 'Oakes' being suspected, exposed, and executed by his republican colleagues for the mission's abject failure, the PIRA made a meal of the new Shoot-to-Kill murders of the unarmed volunteers.

When the nationalist leadership turned out for Farrell's burial, as the Unionists had for McMichael's funeral, the UDA's Michael Stone thought that he had the FRU's green light from Nelson to kill as many of them, particulary Wilson, as possible, resulting in the murders instead of Kevin Brady, John Murray, and Thomas McErlean, and the wounding of some seventy others while the the Army and the RUC were deliberately absent. Consequently, in March 1989, Stone had the book thrown at him, receiving a sentence of 648 years in prison for not only the above killings, but also those of Patrick Brady, Kevin McPolin, and Dermott Hackett. As the obvious fallguy for others, particularly Hayward, at his trial explained in killing van driver Hackett: "I read his file. He was a legitimate target." (Quoted from Murray, p. 430.) If Hackett was a legitimate target, everyone was.

When undercover Corporals Robert Howes and Derek Wood of the Royal Signals Corps interfered inexplicably with Kevin Brady's funeral three days later, they sparked a savage attack by republicans which resulted in their being literally ripped apart. Some mourners had concluded erroneously that the SAS, which often worked with the RSC, was involved in another republican cull, while others thought it was the work of loyalists. Enoch Powell, the independent Unionist, was so angered by the turn of events that he called for a determination of who was responsible for the two military disasters.

As for who 'Mary Parkin' really is, it is interesting to note that Peter Taylor found a 'Mary', the same one who took over the 14 Intelligence Company's protective surveillance of the UDR's William Graham after Hayward was arrested in Sweden, who was most eager to talk about the dangers to the weakest of women in the FRU who recruited informants and agents within paramilitary organizations:

What you must remember is that if ever we were captured by the IRA or any of the splinter groups, or by any terrorist organization, then they would undoubtedly play with us in the form of interrogation before they would kill us. So you had to be equipped for those instances and training was part of it. (Quoted from Taylor, p. 148.)

This same 'Mary' was also most sang froid about killing terrorists Dessie Grew, Seamus's brother whom a Hayward-led RUC E4A squad had apparently disposed of eight years before, and Martin McCaughey when they went to collect weapons from a mushroom shed in the autumn of 1990, reminiscent of Hayward's shootings of Michael Tigue in 1982, and Francis Bradley in 1986:

I didn't feel sad or elated. I didn't feel anything at the terrorists' deaths. The terrorists had a clean 'getaway' car as well as the 'operational' car there. And in the clean car was a bottle of whisky. Now why would you have that? Only to celebrate the death of some innocent person they're just going out to murder in cold blood. (Quoted from p. 304.)

Preemptive strikes to kill potential murderers are no less murders.

When 'Steak Knife's set up of the Gibraltar volunteers went so cruelly wrong, thanks to Prime Minister Thatcher's introduction of SAS marksmen into the operation, and the UDA concluding that it constituted an open season to kill nationalists, the PIRA went on a campaign of increasing violence and efficiency. In May, three RAF servicemen were murdered in Holland in a series of bomb attacks. In July, nine airmen were injured when a bomb exploded inside the barracks' perimeter fence at Duisberg. The following month, three Royal Engineers and a civilian were injured by an explosion at Roy Barracks, outside Dusseldorf. A week later, Welch Regimental Sergeant Major Richard Heakin was assassinated in Ostend. In September and October, there were several more killings and woundings of British forces in West Germany. Failure of other bombs to explode, and sucess by European police rather than the Intelligence and Security Group's usual informants at British facilities in capturing suspects prevented the toll from being higher.


In Britain, while the PIRA bombing campaign was slower in coming, it was more deadly in its results. At the beginning of August, Lance Corporal Michael Robbins was killed, and nine soldiers injured when a bomb exploded at London's Mill Hill Barracks. With 'Steak Knife' cutting off all meaningful contact with British intelligence in Ulster, the carnage was horrific. It was a classic case of the double agent going sour - the worst kind of blowback. Suddenly, 'Steak Knife', while still drawing his £75,000 salary, and making all his meetings with handlers, especial Captain M or 'Mags', just didn't seem to know what the Provisionals were really up to.

In the meatime, on June 15th, the PIRA killed six British soldiers in a booby trapped van in Lisburn after it was left unattended outside British Army Headquarters in Northern Ireland, and two months later, another eight soldiers were killed in a bus on the Ballygawley-Omagh Road in a classic remote-control bombing. Two days later, Navy recruiter Lt. Alan Shields was killed in a car-bombing attack in Belfast. Downing Street was so alarmed by the turn of events that it tried to impose a ban on direct statements to the press by paramilitaries, fearing that those from the PIRA would explain why the attacks were occurring, since Sinn Fein's News Letter promised more until Thatcher responded. (Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, The Origin of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland, pp. 139-40)

In fact, the killing became so confused that the UDA began to suspect that Nelson was working for the IRA. To spread more confusion, the UDA had assassinated Terry McDaid in May, mistaking him for his dangerous brother, Declan, though he had been under surveillance for months. Then, in July, it executed Brendan Davison, a senior officer in the IRA who also happened to be Special Branch's leading informer in the republican movement. Nelson hated Davison so much that he thought of himself 'as if he was waging a war' against the other man. Still, according to Geraghty in The Irish War, he warned the FRU of the threats against Davison, though the Army apparently failed to take the necessary steps to protect him, ultimately concluding conveniently that the IRA had done it. (p. 157)

"In August 1988, Nelson was taken to a house on the outskirts of Lisburn and subjected to a violent interrogation by the UFF in which he was 'assaulted, brutalized', and thrown into 'physical convulsions on the floor' when he was stabbed on the back of the neck with an electric cattle-prod." (Taylor, pp. 294-5) When Nelson survived the ordeal, the UDA turned its suspicions on leading member James Pratt Craig and associate Timothy McCreery who had arranged Lennie Murphy's assassination back in 1982 after consultations with the PIRA's 'Steak Knife' aka Padraic Wilson (Number 9 on the RUC's E4A list). Craig and Number 9 had mysteriously escaped arrest by the RUC soon after the 1984 failed assassination attempt on Adams. (Phoenix, p. 159) Suspecting that something was amiss, and knowing that 'Steak Knife' was off limits with the FRU, the UDA assassinated Craig on October 15, 1988, suspecting that he had been working for the much infiltrated INLA all along.

By 1989, the FRU was frantic over what to do about 'Steak Knife'. To reduce the possibilities of his exploiting the Hayward case at Britain's expense, officials did as much as they could to quiet the Guards officer's fury over having been railroaded in Stockholm. When his brother David was killed in an automobile accident in Scotland, they tried to get him compassionate release from prison to attend the funeral. They even tried to arrange his serving his sentence in a British prison. Hayward had an article published in the Daily Mail, and was allowed numerous press interviews to calm hostile interpretations of his incarceration. Hayward was encouraged to write his side of the story, MPJohn Gorst and others supplying research materials, and officials in London promising to see to its publication upon completion.

Once Hayward was deeply involved in the project, the MoD accepted his letter of resignation in November 1988, believing rightly that he would no longer make a fuss about his predicament, especially since London was seeking his early release - what would result in his serving only half his sentence. Then Downing Street - the same triumvirate which had decided to use the SAS on The Rock - ordered Patrick Finucane's assassination back in Ulster. By this time, Wilson had employed Finucane, the leading republican solicitor in Belfast, to safeguard his interests, and Hayward was increasingly concerned about Finucane's growing involvement in legal redress for the 1982 Shoot-to- Kill victims. Given Finucane's knowledge of 'Steak Knife's activities, and status within the legal profession, he was seen as a bigger threat to British interests than his client.

In March 1988, Nelson had reported to the FRU that the UDA was again plotting Finucane's assassination, and it had made sure that Ian Phoenix's RUC Tasking and Coordination Group, and the Army prevented it. "At the same time, however," Harclerode wrote, "more attention began to paid to Finucane's contacts with senior members of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein activists." (p. 568) Right before the assassination, Home Office Minister Douglas Hogg warned the Commons that some solicitors were being "unduly sympathetic" to republicans, a charge that deputy SDLP leader Seamus Mallon claimed would determine the fate of the Thatcher government if an assassin's bullet made it a reality. On the night of Finucane's murder, William Stobie, a loyalist quartermaster and RUC informer, warned his handler twice that someone was going to be assassinated that night, but nothing was done to prevent the killers from taking murder weapons to the assassination site. After the Davison fiasco, the different security forces were hardly even talking to one another.

Given Nelson's known hatred of anyone working with the PIRA, and its operatives, especially 'Steak Knife', it was easy for him to initiate the targeting of Finucane. On the night of February 12, 1989,
the UFF's Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, the UVF's Brian Robinson, and the FRU's free-lancer Ken Barrett apparently broke into his house, and killed him in a hail of bullets in front of his family while it was having dinner. Nowhere in sight were his bodyguards, or any security forces, thanks to FRU inaction. Adair was most desirous of filling the gap left by 'Flint' Stone's difficulties, and thereby taking over the UFF's 'C' Company on the Shankill Road. Robinson was the UVF's specialist in motorcycle shootings, having apparently been involved in all the recent plans to kill Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. Barrett, as Peter Everett discussed in his article about the FRU in Issue Eleven, was given an FRU photograph of Finucane by Nelson, and was driven by his house by the UDA intelligence chief to make sure that there was no slipup this time. On the appointed night, an RUC policemen called Nelson to inform the team that the area was free of security forces, and an hour later Finucane was murdered.

While London thought that its troubles with 'Steak Knife' would be reduced by Finucane's assassination, they, of course, only increased. Only officials with the greatest secrets, and guilty consciences could have thought of such a ploy in the first place. Only such persons would have given any special credibility to 'Steak Knife's legal representation, and what it might claim whether he lived or died. If 'Steak Knife' had been assassinated, any deathbed confession he might have made through his legal counsel would have been dismissed by the general public as just more PIRA propaganda. London had already tipped its hand that this was no ordinary case, though, by sentencing MI5 officer Michael Bettaney, who the Soviets had declined to have spy for them, to 23 years imprisonment in 1984 for telling IRA prisoners tales about its operations in Northern Ireland while on remand in Brixton prison. (Mark Urban, Big Boys' Rules, p. 99) Fincuane's assassination was the most vivid, and telling confirmation of veteran reporter David McKittrick's claims that such killings showed that London was more interested in protecting members of the security forces who pulled the triggers than in justice. (The Irish War, p. 103)

The PIRA's response to Finucane's murder was immediate, and had the hallmarks of 'Steak Knife' settling scores with the security forces who had betrayed him. While the UDA tried to make out that the Finucane murder was just part of a sectarian murder campaign by killing Sinn Fein councillor John Joseph Davey of Gulladuff, Magherafelt two days later, ten days later 50 paratroopers narrowly escaped death when Tern Hill Barracks, Shropshire were largely destroyed by Semtex bombs. There were frustrated attempts a few days later at Stoke Newington, North London, and then at North Yorkshire again against Prime Minister Thatcher when she was scheduled to address another Conservative Party conference.

The campaign had the hallmarks of the Hayward affair. Dessie Grew, whose brother, the unarmed volunteer Seamus, was the target of two assassination attempts by the Guards officer back in 1982 before he was disposed of, had trained the ASU responsible for the attacks on British servicemen in Germany, and was wanted by the police for questioning regarding the murder of an RAF Corporal, and his six-month-old daughter in October 1989. (Harclerode, pp. 573-4) While Lt. General Sir David Ramsbotham, physically responsible for the SAS training base in Hereford, escaped assassination in November when a bomb was discovered under his car in Kensington, a few days later Staff Sergeant Andrew Mudd lost both his legs, and his wife was injured when their car was blown up in Colchester. Mudd, who had been mentioned in despatches back in 1984 for helping capture the gunmen who had tried to kill Adams (Murray, p. 433), was now considered no better than the rest of them.

The Conservative government cracked under the strain. While Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, Hogg's boss, declared right after the latest attempt against the Prime Minister outside Scarborough that the government would not cease its war with the IRA until it was extirpated, and the 'Iron Lady' persisted in her uncompromising pose, the Thatcher ministry was reorganized to seek peace with the republicans. Instead of getting rid of 'Steak Knife' and Hayward, she settled for getting rid of Howe and Younger, moves she would soon come to regret.

Howe was consigned to the ministerial wasteland of Deputy Prime Minister, Lord President of the Council, and Leader of the Commons, and Younger gave up the MoD for a place in the Lords. Tom King went to Whitehall from Belfast, and the untried John Major became Foreign Secretary. Peter Brooke, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, shocked the country three months later when, after admitting that the IRA could not be defeated, he announced that the government was prepared to make peace with it when it gave up terrorism. (Taylor, pp. 313-4)

The immediate reason for the government's July U-turn was John Gorst's learning what was really in Hayward's manuscript, scheduled for publication right after he was released from a Swedish prison in September. Instead of a prosaic apology for his predicament - what would lead to his rehabilitation, it seems, in the new guise of James Rennie - Hayward was so bitter in his description of his treatment by British officials, so graphic in discussion of who he really was, so detailed in how he related to the controversial killings in Ulster John Stalker had been asked to investigate, and so revealing about
who DOOK, his helpers Brian, Heather Weissand, and his brother Christopher really were that the British MP felt obliged to add a defusing Foreward about alleged Swedish injustice to the manuscript, and forced Hayward to add an accommodating Acknowlegements preface to all the right people - Brigadier James Emson, Major General Sir Desmond Langley, and Colonel Andrew Parker Bowles - before it was published. London obviously hoped that readers would read no further.

For those who did, it was a shocker. Its cover had a photograph of Hayward in civilian clothes while on a mission, one in which he looked much like a Photofit reconstruction, based upon witnesses' evidence, of statsminister Palme's assassin. Hayward made it crystal clear inside that he was Britain's leading uncover agent in Northern Ireland during the times of the most controversial killings. (Under Fire: My Own Story, p. 40) He made much of the loss of the middle joints on the middle and ring fingers of his right hand (pp. 35-9), injuries which restricted his service to gun-slinging for the 'Det'; yet, he was so embarrassed, and ashamed about his eighteen months service in Northern Ireland that he had not told his wife-to-be about it. He spoke so sarcastically of Swedish officials being the source of claims that he was so employed that the reader was disabused of the idea by the time he was tried for drug smuggling, what was made the result of Stalker's dogged pursuit of him. (p. 276)

When Hayward learned the extent of his set up in Sweden - that DOOK instead of being an incidental player in the process was its central figure, with connections right up through the Foreign Office - his rage knew no bounds. When his solicitor's request to Sir Geoffrey Howe on April 13th that it assist in seeing that he was properly represented was turned down, the accused sarcastically explained: "It was not Government policy to interfere in the internal affairs of another state." (p. 162) When it turned out that the PIRA's DOOK had cleverly shifted the physical set up from Hayward's brother to himself, and then apparently gotten National Drugs Intelligence Unit officers to go along with an informant's claim that Hayward was knowingly involved in his brother's drug trafficking, Simon explained: "My arrest could well have been seen as an ideal opportunity to take a swing at any army officer who had supposedly been 'killing our boys'. The planting of such information is well within the capabilities of the IRA." (p. 173)

Once Simon had learned from his brother how DOOK had set him up, and that his brother's wife, Chantal, had apparently been murdered because she could testify about the IRA man's role in the process, Hayward wrote extensively about DOOK's wealth, family, and associates. The terrorist, though with no visible source of income, had at least two homes, and apartments in Santa Eulalia and Gibraltar, possessions one would expect of one who was receiving $£75,000 per annum in a secret bank account there from the FRU. DOOK also had a grand yacht which Hayward had visited on several occasions. The IRA man also had a number of false passports, including an American one. DOOK had also apparently married, and had a child, though he was often in the company of another woman, as Hayward explained when they met again at Santa Eulalia's Royalty Cafe:

Sitting at a table on the pavement outside it was a dark-haired woman of about thirty-five, with an angular face and wearing sunglasses. I can remember nothing else about her except that she seemed vaguely familiar and was holding a small child, or was it a small dog, in her lap. I am almost one hundred per cent certain that she was Duke's wife, a Dane called Gitta or something similar. She appeared to recognize me and I in turn realized why she looked familiar. She had been on Duke's yacht when we had gone to it for a drink on my last visit. (p. 58)

Ultimately, this woman turned out to be not DOOK's wife but Heather Weissand, apparently aka Captain M, and really Captain Margaret Walshaw. It was her testimony which ultimately secured Simon's conviction on appeal.

Ms. Weissand had told DOOK, and his associate Brian all they needed to know about the mission.
The first comment by both men upon meeting Hayward was to ask him about his Army employment (pp. 59 and 69), indicating that she had briefed them about him. Irishman DOOK was described thus: "He was small, about five foot seven, slim and wiry, in his late thirties or early forties. His hair was blond to gingerish, and on this occasion he was clean-shaven, although I remembered a beard from our previous meeting." (p. 59) Brian, while fair-skinned, had a deep tan, and mousey-colored hair. He was making a living on the island, doing odd jobs. Regarding the actions by these conspirators, Richard New, a former British Customs Inspector, and a Director of Veritas Management, concluded in his report for the defence, which was published in the book's Appendix: "...it is my opinion that Simon Hayward should have been acquitted by the Appeal Court, and I consider that that would have been the outcome had he been tried before an English court." (p. 473)

Of course, the reason why the appeal failed was because of the machinations in the UK while it was being heard. Under the circumstances, Hayward's feelings of betrayal went deep. "I have many regrets, but above all my Swedish experience has taught me never to trust. There are very few people to whom I would extend that privilege today. My confidence in a system I have been brought up to believe in and to support has received an almighty dent." (p. 448) Hayward poured scorn on Foreign Office Minister David Mellor's lack of action in his case: "If the government supported such a protest against the Israeli treatment of Palestinian refugees, why could it not take some measure of action over Swedish treatment of a British soldier?" (p. 449)

The failure of the Foreign Office to mute Hayward's bitter criticism of Britain goes a long way in explaining Howe's dismissal. Younger's failure in preventing its publication achieved the same result because he resigned in protest over the Foreign Secretary's sacking. Tom King was brought down from Belfast to contain the damage, what seemed to be a large order with Hayward threatening to become a totally "loose cannon". While the former Guards officer was prevented from appearing on Terry Wogan's talk show because the BBC cancelled it, and the press was making light of his book - The Times reviewer Stuart Teller claiming, for example, that readers would have to wait for its sequel to figure out what the story really was - the FRU decided to reduce its risks from either Hayward or 'Steak Knife' by ending Nelson's career with the UDA by court action. He just knew too many of the secrets for all concerned.

To nail Nelson, the FRU arranged the assassination of the PIRA's Loughlin Maginn by the UVF's Brian Robinson and an associate, apparently Davy McCullough, after a prolonged struggle at his house on the night of August 25, and then a week later, the FRU, led by 'Mags' in two unmarked cars, took out these assassins after they had gunned down Catholic Patrick McKenna in the Ardoyne in a drive-by shooting. "The soldiers crashed a car into the motorbike," Father Murray wrote, "and then shot Robinson dead." (p. 439) The female operator, Harclerode added, killed the flattened Robinson with one shot to the back, one in the wrist, and two to the head (p. 572), reminiscent of Hayward's role in the killing of Francis Bradley. McCullough and an associate, consequently, were the only ones left to take the rap for McKenna's murder.

This unprecedented action by the security forces had the added benefit of getting rid of one of Finucane's killers, who the RUC was apparently pursuing. Robinson had been crowing about the Maginn murder, and once he too was eliminated, the UDA published the Army file on the PIRA's intelligence officer to justify his killing - what led to Stevens' appointment to investigate collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries in murdering republicans.

While Thatcher was being forced to the sidelines, Hayward and 'Steak Knife' were more dangerous than ever, as we shall see.

The Kelly Murder Case

Prescriptions for It and Its Cover Up Simply Didn't Work

by Trowbridge H. Ford

As the media did not tell us what we should have known about Lord Hutton when he was appointed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly, we were not informed of Dr. Keith Hawton's most important research regarding suicide after he delivered his court-appointed verdict to the inquiry on September 2, 2003. As a result, the public was denied seeing how Kelly's murder was planned, and after its was necessarily botched, it was inadequately covered up by a judge who has had long experience in such matters.

When Lord Brian Hutton was appointed hastily by Prime Minister Blair to prevent his government from being consigned to history's dustbin, the media told us what an independent fellow he was, and how his remit guaranteed a full and fair investigation of the matters in question. Not only would we learn how the microbiologist really died but also who in government had 'sexed up' the intelligence about Iraq's WMD. If this proved to be untrue, there would be hell to pay for the BBC, and its reporters, especially Andrew Gilligan.

Of course, we should have been told that Lord Hutton had been more than just Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice, and a leading Law Lord in the kingdom's highest court, as his most terse resume for the inquiry stated.

Sir Brian Hutton was been more responsible than anyone else for the current mess in Northern Ireland - from the adoption in the early 1970s of mass detention of terrorist suspects, particularly of the Irish Republican Army, without trial to the current stalemate of the peace process in the province. Hutton allegedly knew just who to arrest, detain under stressful if not torturous circumstances, imprison with the greatest facility, silence of opposition with threats of prosecution, and the like.

It was only after the use of such abilities during his inquiry, resulting in the most blatant whitewash, that we were finally told about all this. Hutton picked his hearing of witnesses, giving of partial testimony, avoiding all kinds of obvious questions, and the recalling of certain ones to validate the most controversial conclusions. People outside Northern Ireland were not supposed to know how such verdicts have often been reached there.

Little wonder that when the whole fraud started to unravel, Danny Morrison, the Provisionals' former "Lord Chief Justice", was permitted in The Guardian to give his side of the story, provided that he didn't say more than absolutely necessary. After reciting many of Hutton's recorded excesses while at Stormont Castle, he alluded to his trial before its Lord Chief Justice back in 1990 in only the vaguest terms. Hutton sentenced Morrison to eight years in prison for threatening taxidriver Sandy Lynch's life while trying to determine who within the Provisionals was leaking its operations to the British.

I mention this because it is just another piece of dirty linen London has in the province, and what it must wash if it hopes to advance peace there - what I alluded to at the end of my column on the matter. The Provisionals were desperate to catch 'Steak Knife', its mole with the British Army, because of its nearly disastrous raid on the Derryard checkpoint, County Tyrone, reminiscent of the cull at Loughgall back in 1987.

Morrison was hoping that Lynch, an RUC informer, could explain how the December raid had been tipped off, and the bomb set to go off next to the troops' quarters had been sabotaged, reminiscent of the PIRA's failure to sink the Eksund, filled with Libyan arms for a 'tet offensive', when French ships were closing in on it off the coast of Brittany in October 1987. Joe Fenton had been hastily executed for allegedly leaking this, so he could not have been the main mole since the Derryard fiasco had still occurred.

Actually, 'Skeak Knife' had gone completely off the reservation because of the effort by Prime Minister Thatcher, Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe, and Secretary of Defence George Younger to make him the fall guy for the cull of Provisional volunteers at the Rock - what made him go on a rampage of attacks, highlighted by the atrocity at Deal, Kent in September 1989, killing ten Royal Marines. Thatcher's government was hoping to reclaim him, with the help of mole 'Stake Knife' aka Freddie Scappaticci and others, to return to his spying for the Army by merely repelling the attack at Derryard.

In sum, Morrison's arrest and conviction was to keep the Provisionals quessing about who had infiltrated its ranks for the British, and was continuing to tip them off about operations - information that Stormont Castle still thinks too sensitive for any meaningful disclosure of, and the British media slavishly follow. No wonder the peace process is not getting anywhere.

The same censorship by the media is manifest when the public tries to understand who Dr. Keith Hawton is, and how he might have unwittingly supplied the plan for Dr. Kelly's murder, and followed it in the cover up. When Hawton introduced himself as a witness before the inquiry, he was quick to announce all his degrees, positions, and
honours in the study, and prevention of suicides.

Actually, like most scientists in any field, Hawton had first learned how to assist what he later worked to prevent. The most glaring examples of this are scientists investigating mind-control who learned how to create sects, and then designed means to control them, leaving all kinds of violent groups, like the Symbionese Liberation Army, and robot assassins, like John Lennon's killer, along the way.

Keith Hawton did ground breaking-work in promoting assisted suicide, as his article with Joe Catalin, "Attempted Suicide: A Practical Guide to its Nature and Management," clearly demonstrates. Hawton wanted to put self-deliverance from the pain of dying on a modern basis - what had too long been dominated by extreme measures, dangerous means, and terrifying conclusions.

When Michael Marsden decided to create a web site on the subject, he gave prominent exposure to Hawton's solution to the problem: take 30 tablets of propoxyphene (2 grammes), and something to make you quickly unconscious, like alcohol, provided you eat something with it. For good measure, put a plastic bag over your head, and secure it with a band, and you will be dead within an hour or so.

Now it seems most likely that Kelly's killers decided to use this well-known prescription, especially since Hawton at nearby Oxford would undoubtedly be called by any inquest, to secure his apparent suicide. The only change required was the replacement of propoxyphene by coproxamol, the pain killer Janet Kelly used to allievate the pain caused by her arthritis. Coproxamol has allegedly become the tablet of choice for suicide seekers.

The only trouble with Hawton's directions for Kelly's killers was that he was talking about Assisted Suicide, not Resisted Suicide - what an assassination squad apparently attempted after it bushwhacked him while he was on his walk. The microbiologist put up a fierce fight. While his attackers were forcing 29 of 30 coproxamol tablets down his throat after prying open his mouth, he only vomitted them back up, and, of course, nothing happened, as death from such a dosage can only occur after several days. It takes much longer to destroy the liver. The killers had apparently failed to read the fine print about what coproxamol could accomplish.

Of course, the attackers had no better luck in trying to subdue Kelly with a plastic bag over his head, or severing an artery on his left arm with all this thrashing around in the dark - what would make the murder crystal clear if they persisted. They, after moving Kelly to another site to dispose of alarming clues, finally stuffed a pill down his throat to cause a massive heart attack - what a Mossad kidon had tried on the leader of Hamas in Jordan back in DannyYatom's days - placed an ECG monitor on his chest, and withdrew to their nearby boat to check on its effect.

With this, it seems, being the case, it is easy to imagine how Hawton immediately saw the result as one of assisted suicide by an individual - probably explaining why the idea of second parties was brought unnecessarily into the inquiry - and no amount of evidence to the contrary - personal, physical, pharmacological or toxicological - would persuade him otherwise. While Kelly's killers apparently read Hawton properly - another true believer in his own ideas - they misread Kelly, and the fine print about the blister tables in most ham-fisted ways.

Inquest to resolve Kelly 'suicide riddle'

It's nice to know that there are at least some honourable people out there. We can only hope that this inquest might lead to something more than a whitewash...

A coroner is poised to order a full inquest into the death of David Kelly amid mounting medical concern at the quality of the Hutton report.

Oxford Coroner Nicholas Gardiner has received letters from doctors calling for the inquest to end speculation over Dr Kelly's death.

They have warned that the Hutton Inquiry failed to remove any lingering doubts that the method of suicide Dr Kelly apparently used would have killed him.

A number of senior medical figures have gone public to ask whether the evidence presented does enough to show he killed himself.

The inquiry would be able to consider evidence not made public during the Hutton Inquiry, and force reluctant witnesses to give evidence. It would also be able to call independent experts to hold crucial medical evidence up to scrutiny.

In a key sign Mr Gardiner will rule in favour of an inquest, he is to convene a hearing at which "interested parties" will make representations of their views.

These will include the Kelly family, and could also include the Government, police and medical bodies. The hearing would be unprecedented.

Full story...

Another Look at Kelly's Apparent Murder

by Trowbridge H. Ford

Before everyone writes a firm line under Lord Hutton's verdict on Dr. David Kelly's death, they should re-examine the evidence, and determine how the Law Lord arrived at his conclusion.

While supporters of the Labour government can find the verdict most convenient - that this middle-level civil servant overplayed his hand in a tricky game, and when in danger of being caught out, he killed himself to avoid further humiliation - it is a horrible cover up of a terrible crime if totally untrue. People who hate the Prime Minister, and his war on Iraq would then be equally incorrect in claiming that the appointment of the Hutton Inquiry was merely a sideshow to divert attention away from what is happening in the defeated country. Even wild conspiracy theorists could then be exposed for claiming that it was only a single incident of a much wider plot whose composition and aims remain to be determined.

The most blatant commissions of error by Lord Hutton were to delegate his primary task - to determine the circumstances surrounding Kelly's death - to psychiatrist Dr. Keith Hawton, a specialist in suicide, and then completely endorse his finding in a most matter of course way when he delivered his report. This is the making of farce in a most perfunctory way - what veteran members of the press are even making into scripts for the stage!

When a death occurs, particularly a suspicious one, the coroner wants to determine how - was it a natural one, an unnatural one, or a suicide. He certainly wants any helpful evidence that the police can provide as to why and how the death occurred. Witnesses can assist the process, and friends and associates can provide evidence as to any of these possible causes having been the real one. A coroner could even hire other investigators to help determine the cause of a most difficult, controversial death.

Instead of doing anything like this, Lord Hutton simply had the Inquiry's solicitors, Clifford Chance LLP, instruct legman Martin Smith to hire Dr. Hawton to establish the verdict. Of course, in delegating the responsibilty to a student of deviant social psychology with a speciality in suicide, the result was a foregone conclusion. These specialists are noted for finding suicides that no one else even imagines. They are especially desired when survivors of a deceased are allegedly jilted out of their legacy.

For more on the gullibility of such professionals, I would recommend readers consult a recent review in The Guardian about how psychiatrists serving in hospitals for a more general clientele suffering from less severe psychiatrict problems can be conned into adopting a diagonsis and prognosis that the patient conjures up almost at will.

When dealing with the dead, such specialists have a free rein as to where they go, and what they find. Dr. Hawton found the ideal spot Kelly had picked on Harrowdown Hill, though on the spur of the moment, and despite all the ties militating against suicide, where he most deliberately, and carefully killed himself, perhaps in the dark, taking off his wristwatch, and cutting a most unlikely artery, though still a medical doctor, so as to make the process as slow, and painful as possible, psychologically unable to stuff down the necessary drugs to mitigate it.

Leaving the last word in a most controversial, apparently suspicious death to such a person is almost laughable if the demise were not so tragic. If Hutton wanted to determine the truth from a qualified specialist, why didn't he first hire an experienced criminal investigator, especially if he were unhappy with the inquires and information that the Thames Valley Police was providing? As it is, it would hardly have been more ludicrous if he had hired an astrologist to make sure that Kelly had not been killed by occult forces.

For enemies of the Prime Minister, and the Labour government to make light of the matter, though, misses the point. Kelly's apparent murder was not hurriedly investigated by the government to divert the public away from what was really going on in Iraq, but to prevent the public from seeing that he was killed to prevent exposing how contrived, and unnecessary it had all been.

From what Kelly had been told by the Defence Intelligence Staff, MI6, and MI5, and their Israeli and American counterparts, he knew most widely what the Coalition had claimed about Iraq's WMD, especially its bioterrorism capability regarding anthrax - what the Mossad had stoked up to get the war going - and when no WMD were found there after the war, Kelly was increasingly inclined to tell all, apparently because he felt it was just a most convenient cover for the Israelis having mailed the anthrax-filled letters, especially to Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahey, after the 9/11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.

For those who find this probability most unlikely, they should know that Lt. Col. Philip Zack, a former employee at the US Army WMD research center at Fort Detrick, Md., and a rabid supporter of the Israelis on just this issue at the expense of any Muslim, is now the leading suspect in the case. As Jack Dolan and David Altimari wrote in their January 20, 2002 article, "Anthrax Missing from Army Lab," in The Hartford Courant, Zack has no explanation for his unauthorized visit to the facility on January 25, 1992, after which samples of the spores were found missing.

In sum, the pre-emptive war against Iraq made Kelly into the most dangerous whistleblower, and it was hardly surprising, when he was planning to quit his position, and write a book about what he now knew, that some assassination squad, most likely a Mossad kidon, took him out - in what has been described by most people in the field as a most ham-handed covert operation.

In this context, though, it does no good for apparent enemies of the Coalition, especially Israel, to claim that it was part of a much larger operation - e.g., Kelly was merely the last in a line of microbiologists killed by Tel Aviv to prevent disclosure of its wild scheme to wipe out the troublesome Arabs, especially the Palestinians, by DNA sequencing and the like. (This like trying to dispose of all the women so that the gays can have it all their way.)

It is no better to claim that Kelly may have been killed by those, knowledgeable of the process by which 9/11attacks occurred, because of his friendship with Mia Pederson, an apparent American secret agent who, while confident Kelly did not commit suicide, is unwilling to come forward to so testify. This story is that she got Kelly to convert to the Baha'i faith, so that he could be set up after 9/11 because of his connections, like some of the hijackers, especially Mohamed Atta, with US Air Force bases.

In sum, those really interested in why, how, and where Dr. Kelly was apparently murdered should start from scratch at the alleged site, and carefully build their inquiry from there, avoiding all the diverting disinformation along the way, and convenient myths in reaching their conclusions. It should certainly test the abilities of Oxfordshire Coroner Nicholas Gardiner.

The Secret Society That Ties Bush And Kerry

Nothing to see here, no conspiracies at all. Go back to sleep people.

Revelations That Leading Candidates For The US Presidency Were "Skull And Bones" Members Have Provoked Claims Of Elitism

The "tomb" stands dark and hulking at the heart of the Yale University campus, almost windowless, and shuttered and padlocked in the thick snow of winter storms.

Built to mimic a Greco-Egyptian temple, it is the headquarters of the Order of the Skull and Bones, America's most elite and elusive secret society - and it has become the unlikely focus of this year's presidential election. It turns out that four leading contestants for the White House in November's election were 1960s undergraduates at Yale: President Bush and Democratic rivals Governor Howard Dean, Sen John Kerry and Sen Joseph Lieberman.

What is more, two are "Bonesmen". Both Sen Kerry, now the Democrat front runner, and President Bush belong to the 172-year-old society, which aims to get its members into positions of power. This presidential election seems destined to become the first in history to pit one Skull and Bones member against another.

The phenomenon of the "Yalies", as Yale alumni are known, has provoked an intense debate over apparent elitism among Americans amazed that - in a democracy of almost 300 million people - the battle for power should be waged among candidates drawn from the 4,000 who graduated from Yale in four different years of the 1960s.

"To today's Yale undergraduates it seems quite extraordinary," said Jacob Leibenluft, a student and a reporter on the Yale Daily News, the campus newspaper. "For some it's a source of pride, to others it's a source of shame."

In fact Yale, with annual tuition fees of $28,400 (£16,000), has long sent graduates to the top of all professions from the campus in New Haven, Connecticut, where it was founded in 1731.

The Skull and Bones is the most exclusive organisation on campus. Members have ranged from President William Taft to Henry Luce, the founder of the Time-Life magazine empire, and from Averill Harriman, the businessman and diplomat, to the first President George Bush.

Alexandra Robbins, a Yale graduate and author of a book on the Skull and Bones, Secrets of the Tomb, said: "It is staggering that so many of the candidates are from Yale, and even more so that we are looking at a presidential face-off between two members of the Skull and Bones. It is a tiny club with only 800 living members and 15 new members a year.

"But there has always been a sentiment at Yale to push students into public service, an ethos of the elite making their way through the corridors of power - and the sole purpose of the Bones is power."

Full story...

Blair's New Weapon Of Mass Deception

by John Pilger

IN THE wake of the Hutton fiasco, one truth remains unassailed: Tony Blair ordered an unprovoked invasion of another country on a totally false pretext, and that lies and deceptions manufactured in London and Washington caused the deaths of up to 55,000 Iraqis, including 9,600 civilians.

Consider for a moment those who have paid the price for Blair's and Bush's actions, who are rarely mentioned in the current media coverage. Deaths and injury of young children from unexploded British and American cluster bombs are put at 1,000 a month. The effect of uranium weapons used by Anglo-American forces - a weapon of mass destruction - is such that readings taken from Iraqi tanks destroyed by the British are so high that a British Army survey team wore white, full-body radiationsuits, face masks and gloves. Iraqi children play on and around these tanks. British troops, says the Ministry of Defence, "will have access to biological monitoring".

Iraqis have no such access and no expert medical help; and thousands are now suffering from a related catalogue of miscarriages and hair loss, horrific eye, skin and respiratory problems.

Neither Britain nor America counts its Iraqi victims, and the fact, let alone the extent of the human carnage and material devastation is not even acknowledged by a government that says it is "vindicated" by Lord Hutton, whose report most British people clearly regard as a parody worthy of the Prime Minister's resignation.

Blair has now announced an inquiry into the "failure of intelligence" that has mysteriously denied him evidence of weapons of mass destruction, which he repeatedly said were his "aim" in attacking Iraq. Just as the brawl with the BBC and the Hutton inquiry were quite deliberate distractions, so this latest inquiry is another panic measure. It is clear that George W Bush, as one American journalist put it, "is now hanging Tony Blair out to dry".

Blair has, as ever, followed Bush. In announcing at the weekend his own inquiry into an "intelligence failure", Bush hopes to cast himself as an innocent, aggrieved member of the public wanting to know why America's numerous spy agencies did not alert the nation to the fact, now confirmed by Bush's own weapons inspector, David Kay, that there were no weapons of mass destruction and probably weren't any since before the 1991 Gulf War, and that the premise for going to war was "almost all wrong". "It was", Ray McGovern told me, "95 per cent charade". McGovern is a former high-ranking CIA analyst and one of a group of ex-senior intelligence officers, several of whom have described how the Bush administration demanded that intelligence be shaped to comply with political objectives, and the role of Britain in the charade.

"It was intelligence that was crap," a former intelligence officer told the New Yorker, "...but the brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world". He described how "inactionable" (unreliable) intelligence reports were passed on to British intelligence, which then fed them to newspapers.

Former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says this false information was spread systematically by British intelligence. The clue to this secret operation was given by the weapons expert David Kelly the day before his suicide and which Hutton later ignored. Kelly told the Prime Minister's intelligence and security committee: "I liaise with the Rockingham cell."

As Ritter reveals, this referred to the top secret "Operation Rockingham" set up within British intelligence to "cherry pick" information that might be distorted as "proof" of the existence of a weapons arsenal in Iraq. It was an entirely political operation, whose misinformation, says Ritter, led him and his inspectors "to a suspected ballistic missile site. We...found nothing. However, our act of searching allowed the US and the UK to say that the missiles existed."

RITTER says Operation Rockingham's bogus intelligence would have been fed to the Joint Intelligence Committee. The committee was behind the two "dossiers" in which Blair government claimed Saddam Hussein was a threat. Ritter says that Rockingham officers were acting on political orders "from the very highest levels".

Full story...

What the N. I. Peace Process Needs

by Trowbridge H. Ford

With Preacher Tony Blair taking almost daily to the pulpit to spread his gospel, it is hardly surprising that he is sounding more and more like the Ulster Democratic Party's Reverend Ian Paisley when it comes to moving the peace process forward in the beleaguered province. According to the Prime Minister, thanks to spreading the word about Iraq's WMD, the world being a better place without Saddam, and we should all be happy about his Cassandra-like abilities, Britain should now make the Provisionals and Sinn Fein see the light of day when it comes to their disposing of their weapons of mass destruction, and following a course of the redeemed in future.

According to the Labour government, the militant nationalists should have long ago concluded that the only impediment to the establishment of a permanent peace in the province is their refusing to recognize the basic facts on the ground. Six months ago in The Guardian, Lord Hattersley called upon the PIRA's Army Council to wake up to reality, and recognize that its war was finished. In today's Independent, Secretary of State Paul Murphy has expressed mild optimism about prospects of the resumption of local self-government in Northern Ireland if only the Provisionals spread the word among the movement's faithful that the conflict with the Unionists is over.

Of course, the knee-jerk reaction by Blair's vicegerent in the province is part of the concerted effort to draw a line under the conclusions of the Hutton Report, and move on with the domestic agenda. Murphy, actually, had been unable to do anything about the peace process as long as the war process against Iraq was heating up, as the results in November's elections demonstrated, for fear of arousing anxieties within Britain's armed forces, especially among the special forces, and intelligence operatives whose capabilities were considered so essential if the aggression was to be successful.

While the delay played into the hands of the more extreme elements in Ulster's community divide - Sinn Fein and Paisley's Party - Stormont's government felt that time was on its side in resolving, or removing the most pressing issues against forward movement - the PIRA's decommissioning of its weapons caches, and declaring that it was totally committed to a peaceful path in achieving union with the Republic.

In so assuming, Murphy's administration thought that the nationalists would simply forget about the 1982 Shoot-to-Kill murders; the complete frustration of John Stalker's effort to bring the murderers to justice; the complicated dealings of 'Steak Knife', the British Army's most important mole in the PIRA, in stopping the shipment of arms for various offensives by the Provisionals while promoting culls within the armies of both sides; the plea bargain with the UDA's Briain Nelson, another mole that the British had in the loyalist camp, to prevent the investigation, and prosecution of other British-planned and assisted murders; the failure to act on the three investigations conducted by Sir John Stevens into Britain's dirty war in the province, and the investigations by an Irish and Canadian judge into other killings being apparently just more wasted effort.

Britain, in short, has its plate more than full when it comes to doing things to help move the peace process forward, and it should stop lecturing others, and start doing something productive itself. Sinn Fein and the Army Council are not ignorant of the past's legacy, and what needs to be done for progress to occur. Unfortunately, London just believes, in Colonel Blimp fashion, that it can just sit tight about all these scandals, and, yet, somehow muddle through.

Take the Stalker affair, for example. Greater Manchester Police's Deputy Chief Constable had been most reluctantly appointed in March 1984 to investigate six murders in Northern Ireland during the fall of 1982 - the so-called Shoot-to-Kill ones. Despite the most dogged resistance by the Royal Ulster Constabulary's Chief Constable Sir John Hermon, MI5, the Home Office, and the MoD, Stalker no sooner was on the verge of getting the MI5 tape which would facilitate the first prosecutions of the culprits than he was suspended from the inquiry on the ground that he was criminally connected with one of the suspects, Captain Simon Hayward!

Hayward had gone to Ulster in autumn 1982 to carry reprisal killings for the decimation of his Life Guards colleagues, their horses, and other Army personnel by PIRA nail bombs in Hyde Park the previous July, as he acknowledged in correcting mistakes about his Ulster career in his explosive autobiography - for Thatcher's Conservative government -Under Fire: My Own Story: "The first was not until 1982 when I was attached to the Coldstream Guards as a Company Operations Officer during a four-month emergency tour to South Armagh." (p. 40)

By the time of Staker's suspension in May 1986, Hayward's second tour of duty in the province, and apparently a reassessment of the performance of Swedish bodyguards protecting statsminister Olof Palme at the end of February 1986 had become so explosive that Thatcher's government could no longer risk Stalker's handling the cases. In Ulster, Hayward had, it seems, led the South Detachment of the 14 Intelligence Company's shootings of Francis Bradley and Seamus McElwaine. Moreover, he had outed Frank Hegarty, a PIRA quartermaster of weapons caches, so that the plan to make it appear that the Soviets were on the move when Palme was assassinated could be documented - what led to Hegarty being executed by the Provisionals.

Accodring to Establishment disinformation agents, Stalker's replacement, West Yorkshire's Chief Constable Colin Sampson, resolved the matter by concluding the inquiry, and calling for the prosecution of many RUC officers. In doing so, they overlooked, though, that Hayward's role had been completely forgotten in the process, and the officers were not prosecuted for reasons of national security about the MI5 tape when Michael Tighe was murdered, as Lord Mayhew explained to Peter Taylor, author of Brits: The War Against the IRA: "A lot of intelligence matters would have been brought out that would have been very deleterious to the intelligence operation that was essential in the circumstances of the time." (pp. 252-3)

The operation that the former Attorney General was referring to was the cull of the unarmed Provisionals on the Rock the following March - what was planned to get rid of 'Steak Knife' whose role in stopping the arms shipment on the Eksund the previous October was considered so vital that London redirected, through Nelson, Hayward's attempt to assassinate him - for setting him up in Sweden a year earler on a drug-smuggling charge - at harmless Francisco Notarantonio's expense on October 9, 1987.

And so it goes, and when will Britain get relevant?

How Britain & America Stage Cover-ups

by Trowbridge H. Ford

Britain and America, despite appearances to the contrary, have learned to stage managed cover-ups of scandals and crises to a tee. They have learned the adage that despotic government can continue, even thrive, just so long that each step in the process is only taken ever so slowly, and nothing new is done until all the other pieces in the puzzle are firmly in place.

After a scandal or crisis occurs, the government only succumbs to press demands for an inquiry after it has exposed choice bits of apparent criminality or gross incompetence, though its remit is too small to get anywhere near the bottom of the problem - the government explaining that something like national security concerns prevent wider investigations. Once the reports of the first inquiries are revealed or leaked, invariably indicating some flagrant omission, the authorities agree to an independent, secret inquiry - headed by apparently eminent figures who have time for such matters - to investigate the omission with judicious patience.

Washington had learned the process as far back as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the priorities of fighting a world war taking precedence over finding a fair explanation of the tragedy - what has not even been achieved yet. The famous Warren Commission, appointed after the assassination of President Kennedy, was the only recent exception, but it was hurriedly appointed to prevent tragedy from developing into a world war. Still, its findings have promoted the usual process in reverse, with inadequate inquiries, and prosecutions coming later rather than sooner.

The latest investigation - the one about the 9/11 attacks - has become the paradigm for how Washington and London cover up failures of monumental proportions. Though the Bush administration compared the attacks to the one by the Japanese back in 1941, there were not even any sackings like that of Admiral Kimmel and General Short back then. Washington was too busy gearing up to fight rag-tag rebels half way round the world to mete out any censure or punishment.

Only a year later did it agree to a joint-intelligence committee inquiry in the Congress conducting a limited, secret investigation of the tragedy which the White House, CIA, the Pentagon, and the Bureau continued to keep in the dark by releasing only limited, partial information; yet, after a year of looking, the committee issued a somewhat damning report - what the White House made worse at the Saudis' expense by refusing to declassify a merely descriptive part of its introduction where the background of Al-Qaeda hijackers was discussed.

In the end, the Bush administration was obliged to appoint a national commission to investigate the attacks, but its composition was so compromised that there is no way that it will ever come up with an adequate explanation of how the attacks occurred, and who should be punished in what way.

Headed by Staff Director Philip Zelikow - co-author of a book with friend NSA Condi Rice, and author of an article in Foreign Affairs about the impossibility of preventing such attacks unless America adopts its own MI5 - he has even given testimony to the Commission about the validity of his conclusion.

For those who have any confidence in the Commissioners, just look at who they are. Three of the Republicans, headed by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, have only experience in state government, so their knowledge of how Washington works is most limited. Those Republicans who do know, former Reagan Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr., and Fred Fielding, aide to Nixon's private lawyer John Dean, are so weighed down with scandal that there is no way they can right matters.

Lehman led a cabal which almost got us all annihilated in a secret showdown with the Soviets after Swedish statsminister was assassinated. Fielding had the responsibility of making sure The Plumbers, especially Secretary Kathleen Chenow, didn't spill the beans about all the horrors they had committed for the President.

On the Democratic side of the 9/11 Commission, there is a bigger component of who will coopt the lesser fry in order to keep hidden other horrors. Richard Ben-Veniste was instrumental in seeing that Richard Nixon was not indicted as a co-conspirator in the Watergate break-in, former Congressman Lee Hamilton was deeply involved in covering up wide claims of an "October Surprise" to secure Reagan's election, of the President's deep involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, and others. And former Senator Robert Kerrey, replacement for disgruntled former Senator Max Clelland - the only member of the panel qualified, and seriously interested in a proper inquiry - who recently resigned in disgust, has all kinds of claims of war crimes in Vietnam to be expected to do an adequate job.

With this history having unfolded before our very eyes, it was easy for Prime Minister Blair to appoint a similar commission - one which will undoubtely arrive at a similar inadequate conclusion about Britain having gone to war with Iraq - once the Commons committees, and the Hutton Inquiry had issued their reports. There is no way that a body made up of Lord Butler, Michael Mattes, Ann Taylor, Lord Inge, and Sir John Chilcott can come up with an adequate answer to the complaints. Its like having an older brother try his younger brother - what every criminal desires.

While the popular press has told us everything that we don't need to know about them - their previous blunders, unsavory connections, and incidental pastimes - we should know that they all are spin doctors of various kinds who, like their American counterparts, should be the last persons investigating anything controversial about governance.

While we are told something about Lord Butler of Brockwell's dealing with sleaze, and the Scott Inquiry, we are told nothing about his "secret intelligence feed" to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from 1982 to 1985 as her Principal Private Secretary. This, of course, was when Britain was fighting the Falklands War, and the dirty war in Northern Ireland was at its dirtiest. Without going into the handling of intelligence regarding the former, we know that it was 'sexed up' regarding the latter to suit the needs of the 'Iron Lady'.

No sooner did the PIRA set off nail bombs in Hyde Park in July1982 than the Prime Minister sent Captain Simon Hayward of the Life Guards off to the province to settle scores with the Provisionals. The result was the infamous Shoot-to-Kill murders in which six unarmed IRA members were murdered by the Hayward-re-inforced headquarters mobile support units of the RUC.

It is impossible to believe that Butler was not deeply involved in this - a matter so controversial that another inquiry was required - that by John Stalker - which became so controversial than another police officer was required to finish it, with the whole matter ending up in the European Court of Human Rights with Britain having egg all over its face, and money missing from its pocket.

Of course, defenders of the Establishment will argue that this is just some more conspiracy theory but John Stalker' s The Stalker Affair, and Simon Hayward's Under Fire: My Own Story indicate otherwise. Stalker was suspended from the inquiry when he was on the verge of getting the tape which implicated Hayward in the shooting of Michael Tighe in the Hayshed shooting, and he made it crystal clear that his suspension was because he was allegedly connected to Simon's brother Christopher in drug dealing through Manchester businessman Kevin Taylor - an utter red-herring to sideline this determined police officer.

When Hayward was set up in Sweden by a similar red-herring - alleged drug-smuggling - he offered this explanation of his unexpected conviction: "I dozed fitfully until it was time for the evening's TV News...Everything, needless to say, was in Swedish. I could not understand a word. Then a new face appeared, an elderly man being interviewed outside the police station at Uppsala. He was obviously a senior police officer(.) I caught my own name being mentioned and then the letters 'SAS' several times." (p. 276)

This series of incidents shows that Butler was deeply involved in bending intelligence to suit the interests of another out-of-control Prime Minister. Mrs.Thatcher went on to institutionalize the process in a small, selected cabal of ministers and key civil servants after Butler left. Ultimately, he became so powerful as Cabinet Secretary that he could personally arrange the "secret vote" with the Treasury over what funds the intelligence services would be provided.

Similar, though, less damning criticisms can be made of the rest of the panel. Ann Taylor doesn't deserve to be there just because she would not go along with an official, public outling of Dr. Kelly to the frenzied press, and she thinks that more intelligence must be found to this illegal war. Mattes was running Northern Ireland when Johnny Adair's UDA and associates in the PIRA, especially 'Steak Knife', were culling the Provisionals so that their depleted ranks would make peace through Sir John Chillcott, the new permanent secretary. Mattes went on to agree to the controversial prison release of all the killers, republican and loyalist alíke, which has now even become an obstacle in the peace process.

Given the sorry state of the peace process in the province, one does not have to be too suspicious to think that Downing Street is now expecting these gentlemen to help get it out of the Iraqi mess because of all the false promises they made about the Good Friday Agreement.

In sum, Blair is gathering all the wagons - filled with all the politicians and civil servants who helped get his administration into a dangerous corner - in the hope that they will see the need of working totally together in order to avoid annihilation.

'Lying Is Good Government'

Blair' New WMD Inquiry Chief

In following President Bush in his usual poodle-like fashion, the war criminal Tony Blair has approved the launch of an inquiry into Iraq's mysterious absence of weapons of mass destruction. And in so doing, he has appointed another notorious proponent of deceit, Lord Butler, to head up his planned "limited hangout".

Following in a long procession of cronies awarded peerages by the British Labour government, the Lord, in a previous incarnation as Sir Robin Butler, will always be remembered as the dutiful senior civil servant who proclaimed that governments have a right to lie where it is "convenient" to do so and that government ministers are not responsible for decisions made by their aides.

Oddly enough, he candidly made these admissions in the course of another Iraq-related controversy.

In November 1992, the trial of the directors of Matrix Churchill, a company thought to have breached a military export ban on the supply of "dual purpose" technologies to Iraq, collapsed in a spectacular fashion following revelations that the British government had played a duplicitous role in the affair and was prepared to see innocent men go to prison rather than admit its illegal practices. The "Inquiry into Exports of Defence Equipment and Dual Use Goods to Iraq" was established and
presided over by an icon of the establishment Lord 'Justice' Scott.

The Scott inquiry (which ended, predictably, as a whitewash) heard that the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, had eyed Saddam's regime as one providing "major opportunities for British industry" yet feared public reaction should his plans for the increased export of armaments be uncovered. "It could look very cynical if so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales," a spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office confessed to the Scott inquiry.

When questioned by Lord Scott about the culpability of government ministers in the outlawed dealings of their respective departments, Butler, in his capacity as Cabinet Secretary, replied: "Ministers should not have to resign for civil servants' mistakes of which they were unaware". Furthermore, he denied that ministerial accountability had anything to do with taking responsibility for mistakes or even outright lies. More shocking still, the man Blair has chosen to examine the government's handling of intelligence information in regard to Iraq, actually thinks that lying and excessive secrecy is "good government":

Lord Justice Scott: "In your experience of government . . . do you think there is anything in the proposition that the convenience of secrecy emphasis about what the Government is doing, because it allows government to proceed more smoothly without the focus of attack that might otherwise be levelled, does in practice inhibit the giving of information about what [the] government is doing?"

Sir Robin [now Lord] Butler: "You can call that a matter of convenience, if you like. I would call it a matter of being in the interests of good government".

Lies 'R' us, straight from the elegantly groomed horse's mouth.

Full story...

How CIA Operatives Managed to Salvage Deadliest Operations despite Watergate's Wake

by Trowbridge H. Ford

While it would have been nice if CIA's independent operations, especially programmed killings by Manchurian Candidates, had ceased with the disappearance of Agency operatives William King Harvey, Richard M. Helms, and E. Howard Hunt, they, unfortunately, resumed as part of its effort to revitalize covert operations, once the fallout from Watergate had been overcome. By then, the Agency had managed to find ways to salvage the capability to create them. It was then just a question of whether conditions would become bad enough, yet safe enough, for it, especially former DCI George Bush, DDO Theodore Shackley, DDI Ray Cline, director of the Office of Security Robert Gambino, veteran agent Thomas Clines, and others to resort to using them again.

During the interim, Hunt was confined for a term in the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut for managing the break-in, 'Executive Action' man Harvey went into a deadly tailspin pursuing his increasingly talkative, former Mafia colleagues, and DCI Helms was appointed American Ambassador to Teheran, the furthest place Nixon could find to exile him to in the hope of saving his Presidency but to no avail. By October 1978, with the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it was thought naively that the possibilities of creating their replacements had been foreclosed. In fact, by the time Reagan was in the White House, Helms and Hunt even were in the process of making something of a comeback despite appearances to the contrary.

The real problems for the Agency started when William Colby, who had replaced DCI James Schlesinger, began cooperating unprecedentedly with congressional committees investigating Watergate. Schlesinger had immedilately fired 1,500 agents, 1,000 of them from the Operations Directorate, and had ordered DD Colby to prepare a report on CIA's illegal activities, what became known as the "Family Jewels" (Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only, p. 388), hardly what Nixon had envisioned when he appointed him DCI. Nixon then turned to veteran Colby in the hope that he would stop the rot, but he hardly proved more satisfactory, making public during congressional interrogations covert assassination plots, and domestic operations. "He insisted he was trying to save the CIA by showing it to operate under the law and the authority of elected politicians." (Martin Walker, "CIA chief who 'came clean' is presumed drowned," The Guardian, April 30, 1996, p. 1)

Actually, it took a bit of doing by Gerald Ford, America's only non-elected President, to reduce the damage to this level. As soon as Colby leaked information to Seymour Hersh of The New York Times that CI Chief James Angleton had been conducting domestic counterintelligence operations for years, leading to his dismissal, Ford was forced to appoint a commission under Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to investigate CIA activities within the United States. (Mark Riebling, Wedge, p. 323ff.) To counter any unexpected blowback from an examination of the illegal surveillance program MH-CHAOS - what could lead to Operation MK-ULTRA, and Harvey's assassination program - Ford called Helms back from Iran, in the hope that he could save the Agency. Ford had long been in the Agency's pocket because of his sexual excesses, especially his paedophilia. (For more, see Cathy O'Brien's often reprinted TRANCE, p. 82ff.) The President had been softened up for drastic action by a feeble assassination attempt by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a most unrepentant disciple of CIA-connected Charles Manson's - what would have made Rockefeller President if successful.

The former DCI had done everything he could think of to help before he had gone - e.g., had Sidney Gottlieb of the Technical Services Staff destroy the main records of the mind-control programs, canceled Dr. Stephen Aldrich's Project OFTEN to find just the right substance to "...simulate a heart attack or stroke in the targeted individual" (Quoted from John Marks, The Search for the 'Manchurain Candidate', p. 227), transferred what needed to be preserved of CHAOS to Richard Ober's International Terrorism Group in the wake of the court injunction against contract agents, especially Victor Marchetti, publishing their complaints about it without Agency approval (Angus Mackenzie, Secret: The CIA's War at Home, p. 41ff.), and briefed Schlesinger, albeit unsuccessfully, about how to limit the fallout. In fact, Schlesinger was so remiss that he failed to inform Ford of Colby's report on the "Family Jewels", what his successor hurriedly tried to amend on January 3, 1975.

The next morning at a meeting in the White House, Helms similarly advised Ford, calling for bringing the FBI within the scope of the commission's inquiry, a focus which would expose its illegal COINTELPRO Operation, and thereby blunt potential criticism: "They overlap," Helms explained deceptively, "and you may as well get to the bottom of it." ("Memorandum of Conversation," Ford papers) Helms had laid the groundwork for making the most of the meeting by having had breakfast with NSA Henry Kissinger, and his deputy General Brent Scowcroft beforehand, as Max Holland explained in a Sept. 18, 1998 article, "Getting Closer to the Truth about the Death of JFK," in The Boston Globe: "Helms said all these stories were just the tip of the iceberg. If they come out, blood will flow. For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro." (A27) Little wonder that Ford responded with every assurance to Helms about containing the scandal's consequences: "I have only the most admiration for you and for your work. Frankly, we are in a mess. I want you to tell me whatever you want. I believe the CIA is essential to the country. It has to exist and perform its functions." (op. cit.)

Of course, in so advising the President, the former DCI overlooked MK-ULTRA, and cleaned up the origin of the assassination plots. The former had been carried on without the knowledge, or approval of any President before possibly Nixon, and the latter had been instituted behind the backs of Eisenhower and the Kennedys, and had been continued in 1963 against Castro despite the express orders of Attorney General Kennedy to the contrary. (Jonathan Vankin and John Whelan, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, p. 3ff.) Moreover, Helms had lied about Agency domestic spying before the National Press Club in 1971, explaining reassuringly, but most dishonestly: "We do not target American citizens. The nation must to a degree take it on faith that we who lead the CIA are honorable men, devoted to the nation's service." (www. levity.com/aciddreams) Ford was so impressed by such lies that he had greater confidence in Helms, and the Agency serving the national interest than he had in his proposed Blue Ribbon Panel.

In saying this, one must appreciate that CIA has always been more willing to keep Ford informed, and gain his approval than any elected President. While the former Congressman's inside account of the Warren Commission for the October 4, 1964 issue of Life magazine, and his co-authoring of Protrait of the Assassin, the polemic against Lee Harvey Oswald as JFK's assassin, come most readily to mind, the Agency had just gotten him to approve of Project Jennifer, the dangerous, $300 million effort to raise a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the Pacific Ocean seabed by the Hughes Tool Company-built Glomar Explorer, what could have resulted in another eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Moscow, or just disastrous nuclear explosions in the middle of the ocean. No sooner had Ford been confirmed as Vice President than Colby briefed him on the status of the seven-year project (Andrew, p. 399), reminiscent of how CIA had gotten JFK on board for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Nixon apparently had not approved of the former, nor Eisenhower of the latter. The favorite ploy by the Agency to get Presidents behind its projects is to brief successors about what their predecessors are said to have been informed of, and approved.

On January 16, 1975, to reduce the chances of the commission wandering from the straight, and narrow laid out by the former DCI, the President blurted out at a White House luncheon for the NYT's editorial leadership that the Agency had been carrying out assassinations, and that they had been ordered by previous Presidents - what would "blacken the reputation of every President since Truman" (Quoted from Andrew, p. 405.) - though there is no evidence that he talked to anyone but Helms and Colby about the matter. Since the Commission's charter concerned domestic operations, the President was engaging in just the kind of rumor-mongering he said he feared, and abhored. Little wonder that the claim soon leaked out, leading CBS's Daniel Shorr to question ultimately Colby about the targets involved. The CIA had not assassinated anyone within the country, he answered, though he declined to say whether the Agency may have seen to the assassination the Congo's Patrice Lumumba. In sum, the purpose of this Machiavellian ploy by the President, Colby's disclaimer notwithstanding, was to change the whole focus of the inquiry from what the Agency independently had done domestically to what Presidents, particularly JFK, allegedly ordered it to do overseas.

The ploy's success was dramatically demonstrated when DCI Colby testified before the Senate's Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities about its assassination attempts, highlighted by showing the poison dart gun the Agency had developed for Lumumba's execution - what some critics of the Warren Report were now claiming was used by the so-called 'Umbrella Man' in Dealey Plaza to finish off JFK. No one, it seems, had been killed by this means. The Rockefeller Commission, according to its remit only to investigate CIA's minor transgressions, had dumped the whole question of its "Family Jewels" in Congress's lap after Colby had acknowledged that the Agency had tested the effect of LSD on unwitting subjects, resulting in the suicide of Dr. Frank Olson, a CIA researcher in biological warfare. (Andrew, p. 404ff.) Then there were revelations about MH-CHAOS, the Agency's domestic spying operation on anti-war dissidents, and its assistance to the White House Plumbers. The Committee chairman, Senator Frank Church, was soon proclaiming, like Helms, that Olson's death was only "the tip of the iceberg", and that the Agency "may have been behaving like a rogue elephant on the rampage." (Quoted from p. 411.)

Actually, its prospects were not as bad as they seemed, though, as previous Presidents, and prospective ones were now more on trial than the Agency. Advisers to Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy were hard pressed about what their deceased bosses had ordered, though Harvey, Helms, and former DDP Richard Bissell were obliged to give perfunctory explanations of what they had attempted. Truman, the most outspoken critic of the Agency, had recently conveniently died, and former DCI Allen Dulles had made sure that his outburst against it after the JFK assassination was rendered as benign as possible for posterity by placing, behind his back, reassuring material about operations during his watch in his papers. (See Andrew, p. 171, esp. notes 89, 91 and 92, p. 572.) DCI John McCone testified that he had never heard of any officially sanctioned efforts to assassinate Castro ("Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders": 94th Congress, lst Session, Report No. 94-465, p. 100), but Agency veterans contended that he had been outside the loop in such matters. All the while, the press was clamoring about Church's presidential ambitions in making such claims. Needless to say, by the time it was over, people were more apt to suspect that JFK had been killed by the Cuban dictator in retaliation for his alleged efforts against him rather than the Agency had removed him, and others from the political scene.

Since Colby had set the cover up in place, he was dismissed as DCI, once the Church Committee publicly released its report despite Ford's objections, and was replaced by George H. W. Bush. For cosmetic purposes, he had Ford sign presidential orders prohibiting Agency involvement in unwitting drug experiments, and assassinations, though the President was free to change the policy in any individual case. Shortly afterwards, American mercenary, and former CIA agent Michael Townley of Chile's secret service (DINA) assassinated former Allende cabinet minister Orlando Letelier, and his American coworker Ronni Moffitt in downtown Washington. (Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land, p. 125ff.) Instead of agreeing to a statute to prevent the subversion of democratically-elected governments, and clandestine support of dictatorial ones by CIA - what the Pike Committee in the House had also supported in its report on Agency institutional excesses - Bush, put on notice by Nixon not to become another Colby (Mackenzie, p. 63), saw to the implementation of secrecy contracts throughout the intelligence community which would guarantee no more devastating leaks - what the Agency conveniently claimed CounterSpy was responsible for by listing Richard Welch's name in an issue after the Athens station chief had been assassinated.

Actually, Bush was much more concerned about US Navy psychologist Lt. Com. Thomas Narut, while working in a naval hospital in Naples, having informed a NATO conference in Oslo that his work involved training service personnel, even convicted murderers in the stockade, to become "assassins" (Sunday Times, July 6, 1975, p. 1), an allusion too close for comfort, given the career of former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. The process called for dehumanizing the "enemy", and subjecting candidates to images of people being injured and killed in violent ways.

Narut's revelation gave credence to conspiracy theorist Mae Brussel's recent article, "Why Was Patricia Hearst Kidnapped?", indicating that the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), from its leader Donald "General Field Marshal Cinque" DeFreeze on down, was just a secret government creation, thanks to contributions by the Vacaville Medical Facility, its Black Cuture Association, the Stanford Research Institute, the US Navy, and others. The SLA, according to Brussell, was not truly Black, revolutionary, or an army. Because of her claims, though, she was subjected to such threats that she was obliged to close down her 11-year talk show on Carmel station KLRB. Her final thoughts about how American covert government had used drugs, especially LSD, to highjack the Beat Generation's radicalism, and its leadership musicians, especially John Lennon, were reserved for a November 1976, unpublished manuscript, "Operation Chaos".

With the possibility of such operations having gone wrong, it was only a matter of time before the House of Representatives appointed a select committee to investigate the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., though Helms still tried to stop them, according to federal prosecutor Richard Sprague, by claiming that they would embarrass the Kennedys, an obvious allusion to their alleged efforts against Castro, and for the suspect civil rights leader. The former DCI still helped prevent inquiries into the conspiracies against RFK, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. Of course, by this time, almost all the principals in these conspiracies were beyond the recall, thanks to death, retirement, or amnesia, of any congressional body, though its investigations led to the premature deaths of a few more - e. g., JFK's leading killer Mafioso Chuckie Nicoletti, Oswald handler George de Mohrenschildt (Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, p. 492), and former Cuban President Carlos Prio.

The committee seemed more interested in investigating every diversion, especially when it came to Helms, and every red-herring, particularly about who murdered MLK, instead of determining who probably conspired to kill them. Rather than question Helms about his relations with Harvey, and what they were attempting at home, and in the Caribbean, the committee was more interested in how the Agency endlessly interrogated defector Yuri Nosenko in the hope of showing that the KGB had still somehow assassinated JFK in retaliation for his alleged efforts against Castro, and in the process avoided questions about MK-ULTRA operations, what Marchetti claimed were still going on. (Marks' files, National Security Archives, Washington)

In the King case, the committee studiously avoided Harvey's (aka Bill Boxley and William Wood) infilltration of Jim Garrison's investigation of the Dallas assassination in order to pursue the wrong people, and to discredit Jules Ricco Kimble aka Raoul (CIA Memorandum, September 7, 1967, "Memorandum #6: Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination"), an operation so sensitive that the District Attorney's assistant Thomas Bethell stopped keeping his diary of the investigation in order to avoid having to make mention of it. Of course, the committee was unconcerned about more Domestic Contact Service activity when it came time to discredit, and disavow Harvey himself at the end of April 1968 - just before 'the Fat Man' went to Toronto to pay off James Earl Ray, and send him on his way to Southern Africa to join white mercenaries, what DCI Helms felt important enough to write Senator Richard Russell, and Representative Mendel Rivers about. ("Garrison Investigator 'Bill Boxley'," http:mcadams.posc.mu.edu)

Despite, or perhaps also because of the cover ups, morale at the Agency continued to plummet. Helms was finally convicted of lying when he denied to Senator Stuart Symington of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Febuary 1973 that the Agency had played a role in Allende's overthrow in Chile, but the chastened Senate settled for a suspended sentence, and a fine which the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers paid. Of course, by this time DCI Bush had long been replaced by Admiral Stansfield Turner of the Carter administration who sought an Agency which ran on a stricter, more scientific basis, typified by passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, much to the horror of Operations Directorate veterans. According to them, Agency propagandist Edward Jay Epstein wrote in a 1985 article for Commentary, "Who Killed the CIA? The Confessions of Stansfield Turner," the former Navy admiral had done it. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Ayatollah Khomeini's takeover of the American Embassy in Teheran so demoralized the Agency that its veterans were openly insulting Carter's DCI. (Riebling, p. 342)

Little wonder that Agency insider Bush then decided to run for the Presidency, and CIA veterans quit its ranks in droves to join his race for the White House. During 1978, Bush set aside time from his oil business in Houston to visit secretly former DCIs (Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unofficial Biography, David Icke E - Magazine, Chapter 16), the leading one being Helms who had just come back from Teheran, and would soon become a leading contact in the resumption of mind-control operations. The former DCI was the only one who knew how to revive the capability with possible candidates. DDO Shackley became a Bush "speech writer", obviously the cover for covert operations. The "Blond Ghost", Miami station chief when Harvey was running 'Executive Action' operations against Castro (ZR/RIFLE), was his ideal replacement in any mind-control operations. Former DDI Cline justified the use of MK-ULTRA operations to meet the allegedly growing Soviet threat. Cline's son-in-law, Stefan Halper, became Bush's "muck-raking" staff director, which included former director of the Office of Security, Robert Gambino. He knew everything about security precautions against various individuals as the President travelled around the country. "According to one estimate," Tarpley and Chaitkin have written, "at least 25 former intelligence officials worked directly for the Bush campaign."

In case any "dirty" covert action was needed, Shackley had an ideal candidate, Theodore Kaczynski aka The Unabomber. The maths genuis had been tested by Dr. Henry Murray for the Agency while attending Harvard back in the early '60s - when Shackley was running the Operation 40 leadership from Miami to topple Castro. Murray used a battery of tests to see if the candidate could stand up to pressure, handle drugs, lie convincingly, read a person's character by the nature of his clothing, and the like. (Marks, pp. 18-9) No sooner did Kaczynski fail his test than Shackley failed his when JFK was assassinated, moving on to Laos. By June 1969 Kaczynski had deteriorated so psychologically at the University of California at Berkeley because of its cults, drugs, and violent politics that he retired, ultimately to the wilds of Lincoln, Montana in the solitary pursuit of his "social causes".

While at Berkeley, though, a contact for the Agency, James William Kilgore, had apparently tried to recruit Kaczynski to the SLA cause (Vankin & Whelan, pp. 472-4) while working with CIA-connected Colston Westbrook's Black Cultural Association. No one would suspect that this now twice-tested CIA potential psychopath, once as an agent, and then as an agent provocateur, had been plugged back into The Company, not even conspiracy theorist Brussell - and she never did. (For the growing red-herring that Dr. Murray may have made Kaczynski into a Manchurian Candidate, see the controversy that Alston Chase caused by his article, "Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber," in the June 2000 issue of The Atlantic.) Once Kaczynski allegedly started his bombing campaign, he and Kilgore eluded all law-enforcement efforts to find them for the next 18 years - until after the Oklahoma City bombing which finally forced the FBI's hand. Recently, Kilgore was found in South Africa, and was extradited to America after a plea-bargain was arranged for commiting forgery, and weapons violations - what prevents a wider examination of his nefarious activities.

On June 23, 1978, after living most of seven years alone, and without bothering anyone except his family back in Illinois, Kaczynski was persuaded by his brother David, who ultimately tipped off the Bureau about his capabilities, to return to civilized life by becoming a press operator at Foam Cutting Engineers outside Chicago. (Court chronology at his trial - the almost totally ignored or distorted period of his life.) David became his supervisor, and had apparently convinced Ted, as he had done after living an anchorite's life in Texas, that he could finally find a satisfactory female relationship with the plant supervisor, Ellen Tarmichael. In doing so, David became a co-conspirator in the project, as Vankin and Whelan have suggested. (p. 470) No sooner did Ted take up with her than the relationship started falling apart, thanks apparently to too much ingestion of LSD. Ted responded to Ellen's refusal of his advances by circulating a lewd limerick around the plant about her. On August 23, 1978, David fired Ted, with Tarmichael's approval. Kaczynski then went into a deadly tailspin, one in which he was apparently stuffed with more LSD.

Others seem to have anticipated this eventuality because even before Kaczynski suffered this most unexpected humiliation, a bomb having all his ultimate hallmarks exploded at Northwestern University, injuring campus security officer Terry Marker when he was obliged to open it. On May 26th, while Kaczynski was still trying to find a university audience for his anti-technology manifesto in the Chicago area, a woman found a package addressed to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Professor E. J. Smith from Northwestern's Buckley Crist in a parking lot of the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, and made an arrangement to have it returned to the apparent sender. Who she is, and what the arrangement was were never clarified. Crist was suspicious of the unknown package, though, resulting in the explosion which seriously injured Marker. Professor Smith later declared that he had never seen the package. It seems that the incident was a set up, probably even including Tarmichael, to help create a false legend about Kaczynski.

Little wonder that when Kaczynski was finally arrested on April 3, 1996, Tarmichael was quick off the mark to exploit prosecution leaks about her relationship with the Unabomber to improve her alibi of not being responsible for anything he did. Two weeks later, an "exasperated" Tarmichael came forward to deny any significant link, especially a romantic one, with the accused. ("Woman downplays any ties to Kaczynski," Minneapolis Star Tribune,April 19, 1996) As for Ted's alleged reaction to her rejection, she responded disingenuously: "I have never seen these poems, nor have I been informed about their content." With a complete lack of law enforcement interest in how Kaczynski started becoming a mad bomber, it was to be expected that Tarmichael concluded thus: "It should be noted that the first mail bomb attributed to the Unabomber exploded a month before I ever met Ted Kaczynski." ("To attribute" means "to regard as caused by." Whether this was true was never tested in court, as Kaczynski was only charged in the incidents which resulted in death.)

With such hutzpa by apparently another conspirator, it was hardly surprising that the Bureau, which had always thought that the Unabomber originated in the Chicago area, but somehow could not get a line on the controversial Kaczynski for 18 years, took similar liberties with its inquiries, especially the questioning of university colleagues, particularly Northwestern's Donald Saari. In the spring of 1978, Kaczynski visited his office on several occasions, trying to convince him of his anti-technology views. ("Prisoner of Rage," New York Times, May 26, 1996) Saari urged him to try people at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois for a more receptive audience. Kaczynski did so, but without success, exclaiming later to Saari: "I'll get even."

Though this apparently happened on May 26th, neither Saari nor the FBI did anything about his threat despite the fact that he had advertised the need for them in the Saturday Review in 1970. Ted's threat occurred after the first bomb had already exploded. Moreover, the Unabomber couldn't bomb straight, as Kaczynski's threat was against the people who ran the parking lot where the first bomb was found, not at Northwestern. (And how often in the history of the Post Office has a returned package ended up unopened in a parking lot which has no connection with either the sender or receiver? Apparently, some unknown party wanted to make as wide criminal connections as possible with Kaczynski's alleged threatening behavior.)

When Carter went ahead with plans to sign the SALT-II treaty with the Soviets despite the loss of SIGINT listening stations in Khomeini's Iran, the Unabomber allegedly placed another bomb on May 9, 1979 at Northwestern, injuring civil engineering student John Harris when he opened the Phillies cigar box containing the crude bomb in a lounge. The following November, right after the American Embassy had been overrun, and the staff taken hostage (Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only, p. 449), another Unabomber bomb was found, it seems, and destroyed by the postal system before it could explode. By the middle of the month, when the President's hopes of a quick release of the hostages, as had occurred the previous February, proved unfounded, Kaczynski apparently put his act together, exploding a bomb on an American Airlines flight bound for Washington from Chicago which caused a fire in the baggage compartment, and 18 passengers suffering smoke inhalation. The Unabomber's testing as a psychopath had proven most promising.

The reason for these attacks was to convince the White House that terrorism, especially from Teheran, was becoming pervasive, what resulted in Carter overreacting to the threat. He had just set himself up for such overreaction by pardoning the Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Collazo who had tried to assassinate Truman in 1950, and four others who had shot up the Congress five years later - what intelligence agencies had considered isolated attacks. Instead of the President taking the hostage crisis in stride, he set up a "command post" in the White House to make sure that the hostages were released before election day. As Jeffrey Simon has convincingly shown in The Terrorist Trap, the President handed the election initiative to Reagan by so concentrating on their plight. (p. xff, esp. 128-39.) Carter was boxed into a 'Rose Garden strategy' for his re-election, one which almost guaranteed his defeat.

While Bush had hopes of replacing Carter, his campaign seems more like a 'stalking horse' to make sure that Reagan, the popular California governor, succeeded the former peanut farmer from Georgia. Reagan was a great defender of America's national security state, having refused to permit Harvey's absurd extradition of E. E. Bradley, suspected of being one of the "tramps" in the railway yard beside Dealey Plaza, during Jim Garrison's investigation; to suspect that Sirhan Sirhan, RFK's alleged assassin, was anything more than a foreign-born loner; or to participate, though a member, on the Rockefeller Commission to make sure that it got nowhere.

Despite some support among Republican faithfuls, Bush dropped out of the campaign on May 26, 1980, only to be selected as Reagan's running mate after former President Ford had refused, as expected, at the party convention in July, thanks to his good relationship with Reagan campaign manager, and former OSS officer William Casey. From that moment on, the Republican campaign became obsessed with the possibility that Carter, who was about 10 percentage points behind in the polls, would somehow pull off an "Ocober Surprise" - the release of the 52 American hostages held in Teheran - and steal the election. To make this most unlikely, Bush now had a spy on Carter's NSC, Donald Gregg, who had worked under Shackley in Saigon, thereby insuring knowing beforehand every possible action by the President. Gregg, as CIA's liaison with the Pike Committee, had helped discredit its findings, and was thick as flies with its discharged covert operatives, especially Che Guevara's killers Felix Rodriguez and Gustavo Villoldo.

Why It Took So Long to Catch Spies Rick Ames and Robert Hanssen

by Trowbridge H. Ford

Despite what prosecutors, and publicists have stressed about the spying by the Agency's Aldrich "Rick" Ames, and the FBI's Robert Hanssen for the Soviets - its alleged causes, and obvious consequences - the most interesting aspect of the cases is why it took so long for them to be exposed, and punished, not what happened to them, and their victims along the way. Ames worked in place for nearly nine years before he was flushed out, and Hanssen had been retired as a Soviet spy for nearly a decade before authorities seriously began looking for him, catching him a year and a half later. CIA and the Bureau seemed most unconcerned about what was happening to their double agents, and operations in the USSR while, like Nero, they happily fiddled on, apparently oblivious of what Ames and Hanssen were doing.

When American intelligence agencies belatedly try to explain the delay, they stress the caution, callousness, and care that Ames and Hanssen allegedly displayed in carrying out their spying. Ames integrated his recruitment by the KGB with the CIA's efforts by Rodney Carlson to enlist another double agent from the Soviet embassy in Washington which was under constant FBI surveillance, allowing him all kinds of excuses if threatened with exposure. During Ames's long career of spying for Moscow, only seven Soviets knew his real name. Hanssen, we are told, never told the KGB his real name, never agreed to meet its handlers in person (James Risen, "Spy Handler Bedeviled U.S. in Earlier Case," The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2001, A1); and continually took advantage of Bureau laxness in security to troll its databases to escape exposure.

The simple facts of the matter are, however, that Hanssen used mail services to contact known KGB officers at the Embassy ("Excerpts From the F.B.I. Affidavit in the Case Against Robert Hanssen," ibid., A14); called one by telephone on Aug. 18, 1986 when he had something most important to contribute, and wanted to make sure it resumed contact with him; and was never given a lie detector test despite the fact that he was one of the Bureau's leading counterintelligence analysts. (David Johnston, "F.B.I. Never Gave Lie Test To Agent Charged as Spy," ibid., A15) Actually, the only reason the Americans exposed Hanssen is because the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service handed over his case file to Washington for $7 million when he, finally suspected of spying, was openly causing it trouble in order to improve his alibi.

Ames's license in contacting the Soviets is legion. Take, for example, his rushing off with no official excuse to inform KGB CI chief in the Embassy Viktor Cherkashin on Feb. 14, 1986, after he had debriefed defector Oleg Gordievsky about double agent Operation Courtship's current status (Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only, p. 499), contrary to operating procedure, and with the apparent connivance of Hanssen - what the British and Americans had planned for Olof Palme, and the Soviets at the end of the month. Four days later, Ames deposited $13,500 - an amount which would have to be reported to the authorites - in a Vienna, Va. bank account (James Adams, Sellout, p. 179), the same bank he had deposited $15,660 in exactly four months before, after he and his new wife Rosario had had even an unscheduled lunch with Vitali Yurchenko one Sunday during which he had explained to the "defector", it seems, the value, and ease of his "redefecting".

Actually, the Agency was willing to let Ames remain in place for fear of unprecedented blowback until the Soviet Union collapsed, and if and when the KGB's successor was willing to identify him. When this didn't materialize, author Pete Earley was given unprecedented access to Ames after he was finally arrested in the hope that he would be able to publicize the scope of his spying for the Soviets, but to no avail. (Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy, p.1ff.) Hanssen might well have never been exposed if the Bureau had not been so aggressive in taking advantage of Ames's spying after it was finally exposed, what resulted in the FBI vastly expanding its counterterrorist operations at the expense of the allegedly mole-ridden Agency.

When Swedish statsminister Palme was murdered on the night of Feb. 28, 1986 in Stockholm by a professional assassin, assisted locally (Operation Tree), American and British intelligence agencies were confident that it would be exposed at Soviet expense, leading to such degrading of its underwater nuclear deterrent that it would soon be obliged to throw in the towel in its long anticipated slugfest with the West. While the apparent hitman, Captain Simon Hayward, Operations Officer of the 14 Intelligence Company's South Detachment in Northern Ireland, had a nearly iron-clad alibi for the shooting (as his operations in Ulster were so controversial, and reported so often that no one would even suspect his being in Stockholm to reassess the performance of Palme's bodyguards, security firm KMS's responsbility), and the double agents in the USSR (Operation Courtship) were to confirm was the result of Soviet complicity, there was no one much else to blame if plans did not work out at Moscow's expense - what Ames and Hanssen most effectively prevented.

The Soviets were on the highest state of alert without the West knowing it, their boomers under the Arctic icepack or protected by killer subs when Palme was assassinated, leaving no chance for US Navy Secretary John Lehman's attack submarines to start sinking Soviet nuclear ones going on station or already there but in a state of unreadiness. There were no expected communications either from double agents Sergei Motorin, Valery Martynov, Boris Yuzhin, and others (David Wise, Nighmover, p. 254ff.) about Moscow's lack of readiness, hasty moves, and apparent responsibility.

Moreover, NATO's Anchor Express Exercise, comprised of 20,000 soldiers - what was to kick off a large-scale assault across Norway's Finnmark onto the Kola Peninsula to degrade Soviet air and land forces - was a complete fiasco, called off after an all-night-long emergency session by its organizers, including British SOD George Younger, when 16 Norwegian engineers were killed in avalanches while advancing through the dangerous Vassdalen Valley. (Tony Samstag, "Avalanche disaster stops Nato Exercise," The Times, March 7, 1986, p. 8) Also, Admiral Carlisle Trost's Task Force Eagle, made up of three carrier battle groups, never arrived on the coast nearby, the Atlantic Fleet Commander having decided that the showdown planned by his most unbalanced boss (Gregory Vistica, Fall from Glory, p. 252) was not worth the risk, though three Marines in Captain Steve Little's 10-man advance party suffered burns in a tent southwest of Tromsö while waiting for it to arrive. (op. cit)

The secret government in Washington was prepared to explain the lack of the showdown with Moscow to spying which had already been discovered, to failures of routine tradecraft or to just plain good luck. The Agency assumed that the naval disclosures by John Walker's spy ring, and Ronald Pelton, though limited in scope, had tipped the Soviets off, thanks to feedback that the 'redefecting' Vitali Yurchenko, CIA defector Edward Lee Howard, and the Mossad's Jonathan Pollard had somehow provided. At worst, the Soviets had determined by a most long-drawn out process of what has happening elsewhere, particular in the Sea of Okhotsk, that Washington and London were planning a showdown in the Barents and on the Kola Peninsula. At best, Moscow just happened to be in a full state of readiness when the showdown commenced. In any case, the West had gotten rid of the difficult Olof Palme, so all had not been lost.

During all of March, until American planes, with most reluctant British assistance from SOD Younger, attacked Libya after it had apparently blown up a disco in West Berlin, killing two US servicemen, and injuring 50 others (Robin Renwick, Fighting with Allies, pp. 249-51), Washington, London, and Stockholm were in the greatest disarray because of the statsminister's shooting: the failure of the Swedish police to find any real suspect, the continued division within the US Navy, and NATO about how to proceed, the embarrassment caused by the Palme funeral to Washington and London, Norwegian fury over the deaths of its engineers (Tony Samstag, "Norway angered by snow tragedy," The Times, March 10, 1986, p. 4), and the uncertainty, if not a lack of interest, within the intelligence community on both sides of the Atlantic about what had gone wrong, and why.

The biggest confusions occurred at sea when the intelligence-gathering ship Caron, and the Aegis cruiser Yorktown of gung-ho Vice Admiral Frank Kelso's Sixth Fleet, to make up for no spark having been struck in the Barents, sailed provocatively but without incident within a few miles of the Crimean coast, and the Black Sea Fleet headquarters at Sevastopol. (Vistica, p. 214.) Lehman achieved no better result by having another half dozen attack submarines, headed by the City of Corpus Christi, and including the famous intruder sub Dace, probe deeper into the Barents for Soviet "boomers" (Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man's Bluff, Appendix C, U.S. Submarine Awards, p. 427), though keeping on top of events caused Red Banner Fleet Admiral K. A. Markarov, responsible for containing the intrusions, considerable anxiety. Markarov, unlike his boss, Red Army Chief of Staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, was still in no state to joke about it with American maritime strategists, and operatives, particularly Team Charlie's Rich Haver, when he visited the Pentagon nearly two years later. (ibid., pp. 365-8)

The KGB's problems were still demanding, though, thanks to the failure of Swedish prosecutor Hans Holm´er to hold Victor Gunnarsson for the shooting (Chris Mosey, Cruel Awakening, pp. 171-3); of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan to show up for Palme's funeral because of the apparent security threat, a possibility made more real by a contrived American threat against the least deserving Secretary of State George Shultz, who appeared in The Gipper's stead; and of the Agency and the Bureau to keep track of what was happening to their double agents, and operations in the Soviet bloc. Gunnarsson's arrest was a feeble attempt to make a friend of Jovan von Birchan's (officer Joel Haukka's report to Swedish Military Intelligence (SSI), "Samtal med Jovan von Birchan, 4 april 1986") - who Felipe Vidal Santiago aka Charles Morgan had attempted to recruit as the assassin - and who was running around Stockholm with like-minded Nazis with walkie-talkies on the night of the shooting as decoys, it seems, for Captain Simon Hayward, the apparent assassin.

Since Haukka had not gotten round to reporting on their activities until April, Holm´er's attempt was deserving of more understanding than it received. In meantime, MI6 sent an agent - apparently Oleg Gordievsky - an acquaintance of a friend of Swedish Chairman of Civil Defence Karl-Gunnar Bäck, to tell him, and other officials that the group Vidal was recruiting an assassin for had done it, with the help of the Swedish Security Service(Säpo) (Lars Borgnäs and Tomas Bresky, Striptease, Swedish TV, 1994), but when pressed about the claim, SIS proved unable to provide any convincing evidence to back it up. The Swedish Justice Minister ultimately even sent a private emissary to London to determine what MI5 knew about the assassination, but Expressen, a Stockholm afternoon daily, leaked her letter to the press before the Security Service had to provide any help, resulting in her resignation, and MI5 breathing a great sigh of relief. (Duncan Campbell, "MI6, Whistleblowers in Baltic Battle," New Statesman, June 17, 1988, p. 7)

Gunnarsson's deceptions were less appreciated as time passed. When it was finally safe to arrest Ames, and the Swedes still had not convicted anyone for the assassination, Börje Wingren wrote a book, Han som sköt Olof Palme, reviving suspicions about Gunnarsson having been the gunman. In January 1994, he went to the States, apparently expecting official approval for what he had done. Instead he was gunned down by an assassin, and his naked body dumped on a highway, as if he were the victim of some kind of reprisal killing. (Leif Åke Josefsson, "Här hitttades han mördad," Aftonbladet, Jan. 15, 1994) The fact that he was only wearing his gold watch, and gold ring, apparently gifts from the Agency, was most telling. It apparently never takes back its presents to agents no matter what it does to their bodies. A month later, Ames was arrested by the FBI as he made his way to work in his Jaguar.

The fact that the Agency and the Bureau were not more aware, much less concerned, about double agents in the Soviet bloc not showing up for work, rendezous, and dead letter drops can only be explained in terms of their basic satisfaction with having gotten rid of Palme, no matter what the so-called risks, betrayals, and collateral damage to other operations. The American intelligence agencies somehow convinced themselves that his murder led to a peaceful conclusion to the Cold War, when, in fact, without the spying by Ames and Hanssen it might well have resulted in nuclear annihilation. With their spying, the USSR could have achieved a short-term pyrrhic victory in the struggle which it wisely chose to avoid.

The new Swedish government under Ingvar Carlsson, though, made no signficant changes in its policies, especially about neutralism, a nuclear-free Scandinavia, and NATO - what had justified the assassination in the first place. In fact, Washington and London were soon doing business with CPSU General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, what Palme was only proposing to attempt with him if he had lived.

This was the same Gorbachev who had introduced KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov to the Party Congress on the day of the assassination, when he announced that all the double agent operations by the West had been rounded up, on this note: "...the activities of the KGB would be expanded to counter what he described as growing subversion in the Soviet Union by Western intelligence agencies." (Christopher Walker, "KGB reveals big swoop on state spies," The Times, March 1, 1986, p. 1) Instead of making any assessment of the losses, and why, London and Washington were now obsessed with achieving an intermediate-range missile reduction agreement rather than the "zero option" with the new Soviet leader, who was promising to reform the USSR into a more effective rival. During all this, the Agency was only interested in solving leading defector Gordievsky's family problems rather than those of all the other double agents involved.

Actually, the KGB gave Washington and London another avenue out of their cul-de-sac while providing cover for the spying by Ames and Hanssen despite the former's claims to the contrary. (Sellout, pp. 110-1) Towards the end of March, one of its agents - who CIA thought was Gennady Smetanin, who had been dragged off a train with his wife the previous December for spying soon after returning to Moscow from Lisbon (Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy, p. 196) - called the Agency's station in Bonn, claiming that he was a friend of the missing Gennady Varenik aka FITNESS. Courtship's CI chief Paul Redmond was not interested in any claims about Soviet moles because as head of the task force which had debriefed Vitaly Yurchenko (Wise, p. 131 passim), he expected double agents like Adolf Tolkachev to go down the tubes due to the defection of the Agency's Edward Lee Howard (Earley, p.193), who CIA had deliberately let defect in order to trick Moscow into thinking that it knew everything about operations. (Mark Reibling, Wedge, pp. 356-8)

The new "defector", "Mr. X", did not disappoint, claiming that the unexpected losses were due primarily to the KGB having tapped cables of its own, the CIA's secret communications center in Warrenton, Virginia. Other losses were due to poor tradecraft, and the like. In a takeoff of Konstantin Volkov's betrayal by Kim Philby at the end of WWII, he wrote that under no circumstances should his offer be communicated to Langley, an obvious allusion to the spying by Ames and Hanssen, or "by electronic means."

Immediately, Redmond and colleagues at headquarters (so much for any security for "Mr. X"!) paid him $50,000 (the same amount Ames was paid for his original disclosure) for any information, and he did not disappoint - Moscow, that is. Smetanin, while reviving all the disinformation from Varenik about the KGB contingency plans for blowing up West German restaurants to upset Washington's relations with Bonn (Earley, p. 194), claimed that his handler, Charles Leven, had pocketed some of the money Varenik was to be paid to pay off his KGB debts. While Redmond was checking out similar wild-goose tales in six subsequent letters from Smetanin, involving a six-month experiment to establish whether the Warrenton facility had been compromised, Washington took the bait about bombing restaurants in West Germany, what the KGB, it seems, so dressed up at Tripoli's expense in West Berlin, that Lehman's Navy jumped at another opportunity for action in Libya. Redmond even jumped at the disinformation "Mr. X" supplied about Sergei Fedorenko being Moscow's double agent (Wise, p. 264), leading ultimately to his being given a lie detector test in November 1990, and released by the Agency when he apparently failed it. (Wise, pp. 262-5)

This made rubbish of Redmond's claims that "Mr. X's" deceptions only confused the Agency for six months. Actually, it was more like five years. During the interim, Ames even discovered that Smetanin, code-name PROLOGUE, was working for CIA, so informing his handler Yuri Karetkin at their meeting in Bogota in December 1990. When Karetkin returned to Moscow, and excitedly recited the information to the new chief of the FCD, General Leonid Shebarshin, he was crestfallen to learn that PROLOGUE was simply a KGB fraud. "All the KGB documents that Vladimir Smetanin (PROLOGUE) had provided to the CIA about the 1985 losses were KGB disinformation." (Earley, p. 287) Little wonder that Langley only then stopped talking about PROLOGUE, though it seems that it could have been more original now than calling him Vladimir Smetanin, apparently in recognition of what former FCD head Vladimir Kryuchkov, and now unprecedented KGB chief had achieved.

In fact, Redmond's pursuit of red herrings was so intense that Hanssen had gone underground after the assassination. One of the deceptions planned by Langley in the lead-up to the shooting was to make it look as if a Swedish, West German, Israeli, British, and South African arms consortium, YGGDRASIL - connected to Lt. Col. Oliver North's Enterprise, and concerned about Palme's clamp down on their activities - had killed the statsminister, what had led to Gunnarsson's arrest. The Swedes involved included, it seems, Peter Wallenberg, Erik Penser, Pehr Gyllenhammar, and several others. (See the alleged minutes of the January meeting of NATO's Special Operations Planning Staff (SOPS), provided by, it seems, the former chief of its Intelligence Tactical Assessment Center, Oswald Le Winter, who was also apparently Duane "Dewey" Clarridge's deputy for European operations.)

While Le Winter - the Agency's leading disinformer whose efforts include denying there was an October Surprise by candidate Ronald Reagan after having so claimed, contending that SIS was behind Princess Diana's murder, and alleging that President Bush conspired to make Sept. 11th happen for political advantage (Dismantling America) - has claimed that the notes of its meetings, and those of the industrialists' meeting in Wiltshire in January 1986 show that they were planning Palme's assassination, actually they show no such thing, only that they were being set up to appear so by the American and British representatives by apparently providing decoys with walkie-talkies for the actual assassin.

Redmond's concern about it all was demonstrated when he was directing the debriefing of Yurchenko. DCI Casey, to help pay off some of Reagan's re-election debts, wanted Redmond to ask Yurchenko whatever happened to Raoul Wallenberg (made an honorary citizen by act of Congress on Sept. 22, 1981 - the only other one being Sir Winston Churchill), Peter's second cousin who helped 100,000 Hungarian Jews escape the Nazi death camps. (Nationalencykopedin, vol. 19, p. 212) It is a question which has plagued the Swedish conscience ever since. Redmond refused to ask the "defector" for fear that he would say something which could affect Peter's role in the current murder. It showed that the Agency had the gravest doubts about Yurchenko's bona fides all along. When Casey persisted in his request, Redmond ultimately obliged, but he put the question in such a ridiculous way that Yurchenko would hardly be expected to think anything suspicious, as Redmond reported to his boss, Burton Gerber, for Casey's benefit: "Yurchenko says he doesn't know anything about Raoul Wallenberg. He also doesn't know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried." (Quoted from Earley, p. 215.)

On or about Feb. 16, 1986 at Bath, England, Special Branch arrested double agent US Navy Commander John Bothwell, another consortium member who was involved in arms trading between South Africa and the USSR, under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly preparing "...to pass sensitive information to an unidentified contact 'likely to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy'." (Ronald Ostrow and Tyler Marshall, "Defection of KGB official linked to arrest of American in Britain," The Boston Globe, Feb. 22, 1986, p. 3) Apparently, the information was confirmation to the KGB that the consortium was, in fact, going to killl Palme.

Bothwell's arrest was to indicate that the plan was no longer on, especially since Colonel Viktor Gundarev, who worked for the KGB in Athens where Bothwell also had a residence, was forced to defect to the West as a result. Gundarev worked with Yurchenko, who was still usefully employed by the Soviets, and it was felt that the Gundarevs' safety was at risk if he remained. In sum, Redmond's people were trying to fool the Soviets into thinking that the plan to assassinate the statsminister had been foiled, unaware of the spying by Ames and Hanssen. Three years later, Gundarev was so upset by the cyncial use of his family in this set-up that he was threatening to redefect. (Gene Johnson, "Filings Contradict CIA's Statements," AP, Oct. 5, 2000)

No sooner did Hanssen hear about the Bureau's debriefers of Gundarev asking him if he knew Viktor Cherkashin (letter, dated June 30, 1986 to Viktor Degtyar, "Excerpts..., op. cit.), his handler, than he went into a tailspin over possible exposure, fearing that Yurchenko had told Gundarev that he was a spy. While the Agency was so confident that it had no moles among its ranks that CI chief Gus Hathaway had so testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in November 1985 (Wise, p. 195), the Bureau was equally sure of the security of its operations. The FBI had no such confidence, though, in CIA, as its Executive Assistant Director Oliver "Buck" Revell's pursuit of potential whistleblowers, especially the Agency's Jack Terrell, of North's Contras (Peter Dale Scott, and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, p. 125 passim), and of Cherkashin's possible agents attest. Now Hanssen suspected that the Bureau was monitoring Cherkashin's money transfers, what could lead to his payments. After three months of checking, however, Hanssen decided that Gundarev's debriefers had found nothing, leading him to reveal more about how the KGB could frustrate US technical surveillance of the USSR.

About this time, CIA finally brought the Pentagon's Samuel Loring Morrison to trial for spying for the Soviets, what was another covert operation to fool Moscow about what the West was up to when Palme was assassinated. (What it did in London by having former agent, and ambassador to Helsinki Mark Austad sue Private Eye successfully in January 1986 for claiming he said all Scandinavians, not just Palme, were Soviet stooges.) Actually, the difficult Morrison worked at the Naval Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland (Angus Mackenzie, Secrets, p. 135), the same facility from where Jonathan Pollard, and Ronald Pelton had carried on their spying about the navy taps on the Soviet communication cable in the Sea of Okhotsk (Operation Ivy Bells), the latter being another spent source Yurchenko had fingered. (Wise, p. 134)

After Morrison published a KH-11 photograph of a gigantic aircraft carrier the Soviets were building in a Black Sea shipyard in Jane's Defence Weekly ("The Samuel Loring Morrison Incident," Eye Spy!, Issue Nine, p. 27), part of his assignment, Redmond got Casey to have the Justice Department prosecute him a year later, just when Yurchenko was beginning to think of "redefecting". The real purpose of the prosecution was to reassure Moscow about what it already knew - this was as good discovery of targets as US satellites possessed, a fact which was only potentially harmful.

Actually, the US thought that it had far better satellites, MAGNUMs, "...designed to intercept Soviet missile test signals (telemetry) and data-links as well as microwaves." (Mark Urban, UK Eyes Alpha, p. 59) For good measure, CIA persuaded a Japanese company to ship a cargo container filled with electronic sensors by the Trans-Siberian railroad across the USSR to monitor all kinds of communications, and activities while in transit.(Operation ABSORB) Moreover, to keep track of the container's progress and potential, CIA had recruited an agent, codename EASTBOUND, on the scene. (Earley, p. 200) In sum, the Agency thought it could monitor even the slightest sighs by the Soviets.

Unfortunately, for it, the first MAGNUM that the space shuttle Discovery put in orbit apparently stopped functioning, and the second one exploded with the Challenger in January 1986, explaining the unprecedented outpouring of grief by Reagan's people over the losses. For good measure, Ames and Hanssen had tipped off the KGB about Operation ABSORB, leaving the Agency without a clue about what was going on in the USSR right after the Palme assassination. When Langley finally learned in May 1986 that EASTBOUND's handler, Erik Sites, had been declared a persona non grata, and expelled from the USSR - the diplomatic language for spying - it threw the book at Morrison, thinking that he might really be another spy, explaining most unconvincingly that it only discovered years later that EASTBOUND had been a KGB "dangle".

Then the fallout from Iran-Contra started descending on the Agency, and the Bureau, leaving them little time to worry about spies (much less prosecute them for fear of adding to their woes), and the fate of double agents. Hanssen was so excited by the prospect that he openly telephoned Degtyar's replacement, Aleksandr Fefelov, despite prior arrangements for meeting months later, and on Feb. 13, 1987, he started apparently telling Moscow from the inside the cover up of the scandal by the congressional intelligence committees, the Tower Commission, and the Joint Select Committee on Iran Contra. ("Excerpts...) Nearly 15 years later, the CIA-FBI team which finally caught Ames had two Bureau analysts who had worked with Hanssen for five years listen to the tape of the conversation, and they said "without reservation" that he was the caller. (Johanna McGeary, "The FBI Spy," Time, March 5, 2001, p. 35) September 11th obviously was not the first occasion of the intelligence "community" having failed to connect the dots.

By this time, Downing Street, Whitehall, and the British intelligence services were becoming increasingly anxious as the Iran-Contra scandal started to unravel in Congress while the solution of the statsminister's shooting was as far away as ever. While Britain did not have to worry about parliamentary inquiries into covert actions, unlike America (Ken Connor, Ghost Force, pp. 413-4), she did have to worry about prying by the press, especially by Duncan Campbell. He knew too much about special operations in Ulster, the setting up of the Swedes for the shooting, and the struggling satellite program. Using the pretext that he was going to report on the government plan to build its own satellite to eavesdrop on the Soviets (ZIRCON) on his BBC television series, Secret Society, Prime Minister Thatcher managed to have the series banned. (Urban, p. 56) When Campbell went ahead, and published an article on ZIRCON in the New Statesman, she had Special Branch detectives raid offices of the BBC in Glasgow, and the Labour weekly to see what else might be in the works - what silenced the press (ibid., p. 61).

For good measure, the MoD, Downing Street, and MI5 arranged for Captain Hayward to go on a mission in the Mediteranean which would end up with him in prison in Sweden on drugs charges, thanks to the leadership provided by the PIRA's 'Steak Knife', the British Army's leading informer in its Army Council, whose intelligence was essential in capturing Libyan arms shipments, particularly on the Eksund, intended for the Provisionals' 'Tet offense'. (Simon Hayward, Under Fire: My Own Story, p. 40ff., esp. p. 59) Whatever Hayward was intending to do, 'Steak Knife' would have none of it when he discovered who he really was. (This was also when American authorities finally locked up assassin recruiter Vidal for repeated drugs offenses, and put the unbalanced Navy Secretary Lehman out to pasture in a manner reminiscent of how the White House had disposed of Secretary of State Al Haig.) This essentially ended all prospect of the unraveling of the Iran-Contra scandal leading to the Stockholm shooting.

Anglo-American intelligence relations were still on the verge of imploding, not because of possible moles in their midst, or double agents disappearing (though Redmond had finally issued a watered-down memo on the double agent losses), but because it now seemed that false defectors Golitsyn, Gordievski, and Yurchenko - agents officials still officially denied the KGB ever used - had taken over their operations for Moscow's benefit. Washington and London were increasingly suspecting that the KGB knew about everything from the beginning because they had really driven the agenda. In order to stop accusations of betrayal, and finger-pointing about failure on both sides of the Atlantic, far worse than had occurred after the JFK assassination, the Agency employed analyst Richards J. Heuer, Jr., to write an article about the bona fides of defector Yuri Nosenko in the wake of the Dallas assassination. ("Nosenko: Five Paths to Judgment," Studies in Intelligence, vol. 31, no. 3 (Fall 1987), pp. 71-101)

It said, on a cost accounting basis, Moscow would not have sacrificed what the defectors contributed for any ulterior ends, like the assassination of JFK, though the names of the other defectors were avoided for reasons already indicated. For good measure, when the article was declassified, and published by H. Bradford Westerfield in Inside CIA's Private World, the Agency editor's note introducing it fuzzed up the matter further by contending that Ames's spying might never have flourished if the Agency had not destroyed the work of Angleton and his trusted Golitsyn! Ames had become a spy solely to stop Golitsyn's latest handiwork in New Lies for Old against the Soviets - what would be triggered by Palme's assassination.

Protecting secrets, and avoiding jail became the order of the day back in 1987. While a book could, and should be written on the subject, we shall just have to settle for what was revealed about DCI William Webster, DDO Claire George, Clarridge, Redmond, Revell, and others. Given the liberties Attorney General Ed Meese, the congressional intelligence committees, the Tower Commission, the joint Select Committee on Iran-Contra, other congressional committees, and Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh allowed them to destroy evidence, and concoct stories which would prevent any prosecution, there was little more they needed to do to obstruct justice, and avoid committing perjury.

Britain amplified the cacophony of deception to prevent discovery by putting the kingdom through the wringer by only trying to prevent publication of Peter Wright's Spycatcher, the former Assistant Director of M15 conveniently claiming that Britain was not only no longer carrying out assassinations, though MI6 might approve the use of retired SAS personnel by others (p. 161), but also the Security Service had never allowed Golitsyn the license CIA had. (p. 315) While this charade was being played out in the courts in London, Hayward was having the book thrown at him in Stockholm, the cases often being covered in adjoining columns in the daily press. (See, e.g., Peter Murtagh's articles about the drugs trial in The Guardian.) For good measure, MI5 subsidized books, particlarly "Ruth Freeman's" (aka Simon Freeman) Death of a Statesman, which implied that people like Hayward and his girl friend were the last ones to suspect of the shooting.

The most unexpected American performance was by Judge Webster, who had come over from the Bureau to replace the dying Casey. Before even firing North's immediate CIA underlings in Central America, forcing George and Clarridge to retire, and reprimanding a few others, Webster appointed fellow Amherst graduate Richard Stolz, an Agency veteran, the new DDO. (Wedge, p. 389) Ultimately, the prosecution of any Agency people by the Independent Counsel would depend upon basic facts about their employment, operations, etc., routine classified information whose release was expected as a matter of course.

Stolz, however, absolutely refused, and Webster made no attempt to overrule him. "What will they think in Oslo?," Stolz exclaimed. (Quoted from Lawrence Walsh, Firewall, p. 216) While Walsh considered the exclamation irrelevant, it wasn't, as Stolz was referring to the Norwegian recording facility at Vardö, what had recorded things like the fiasco resulting from the attempt to sneak the 80 HAWK missiles through Sweden, the disaster surrounding Anchor Express Exercise, Lehman's attack submarines confrontations with the Soviets in the Barents, etc. Any release of this information could set a precedent which threatened everyone.

Clarridge was treated as if he were the Agency equivalent of the NSC's North, though he denied having had any role in trying to sneak missiles through Sweden, and the Agency was unable to provide the alleged cable which would prove otherwise. (William S. Cohen and George J.Mitchell, Men of Zeal: A Candid Inside Story of the Iran-Contra Hearings, p. 255) Consequently, his indictment for lying was such a fiasco that he was never tried, and in the end, he was pardoned by Bush. DDO George was CIA's stand-in for NSA Admiral John Poindexter, the guy who would carry the can for the sins of others, and was never convicted of anything, though the Independent Counsel tried twice. Revell, who was also a member of the Restricted Interagency Group for Terrorism (RIG-T), and supported the most pro-active role by the Bureau and CIA in combating it, supplied Webster with such a sanitized version of what RIG-T had been doing when Iran-Contra broke (Wedge, p. 376ff.) that he was never even indicted for anything. Webster only learned from Stolz nearly two years later of the double agent losses. (Wise, p. 197) Redmond's role, it seems, escaped everyone's notice.

While this was going on, CIA tried to prove, using police state tactics, that Marine guards Clayton Lonetree, and Arnold Bracy at the Embassy in Moscow were really responsible for the betrayals of all the double agents. Once Bracy confessed that he had let Soviet agents into the code room to satisfy his lover, though the charge was later dropped, and he was never prosecuted, some analysts still believed that it was part of a larger plot to deceive the U.S. about deeper penetration of its intelligence services. (Wedge, p. 396) Lonetree was sentenced ultimately to 25 years in prison for having fallen into a similar "honey trap" with an attractive translator Violetta for the Embassy who was also working for the KGB.

CI's Gus Hathaway finally used the fury raised over "master spy" Lonetree to have a four-man Special Task Force appointed, including two retired counterintelligence officers, and all without investigative training or financial expertise, to investigate the losses from scratch, obliging the Bureau to do likewise with the six-man "Anlace Task Force." (Adams, p. 147) Up until then, gentlemanly John Stein, Jimmy Carter's Deputy Director for Operations instead of expected, gung-ho Ted "The Blond Ghost" Shackley, had been investigating the losses for DCI William Casey, and Stein concluded predictably and wrongly that they were the result of anything but betrayals.

The operation of the task forces was so ineffective that it recalled the relation between the Agency and the Bureau during the days of DCI Helms and Director Hoover. (Wise, pp. 178-9) The Agency's Jeanne Vertefeuille, once she finally returned from a posting in Africa, was asked by Redmond to find out who or what might have compromised all the double agents by conducting a paper chase of all that was known, and had been done about them throughout the CIA - what made finding a needle in a haystack simple by comparison. According to the Agency's Inspector General, the result after six years of looking was that the task force didn't even have an official list of suspects, though an anonymous source, sounding much like Redmond, was willing to volunteer for Wise that this was far from the case. (pp. 177-8)

The Bureau, instead of casting such a wide net that it came up with nothing, conducted such a narrow investigation that it never got anywhere, as it reported to its benefit in September 1987. Its scope was only the disappearance of its double agents, Motorin and Martynov. The trouble with Tim Caruso's team was that it only included James Holt, Martynov's handler (Wise, p. 178), who knew what was essentially planned at Moscow's expense. Martynov was the deepest sleeper in the whole operation, though - expected to supply unexpected information and confirmation of how the set up of Moscow was going because of his scientific and technological contacts through Operation ABSORB and agent EASTBOUND - what was abruptly terminated when he returned to the USSR under arrest with the 'redefecting' Yurchenko.

Motorin's handlers, James Stassinos and MIke Morton, were somehow not included in the group, though they could have helped provide some answers for the joint disappearances. Motorin was to supply similar confirmation to Martynov's through telephone calls to his girl friend in America, what his handlers were monitoring, that the set up of Moscow for Palme's assassination was working. (Wise, p. 257) Motorin's calls abruptly stopped in February 1986, and after Ames was arrested, the FBI concluded that Motorin had been forced by the KGB to make the calls he did. This demonstrated just how well the KGB had covered Operation Armageddon.

In the interim, the Bureau was not concerned that Stassinos, only 54, died unexpected of a heart attack on May 31, 1990, and Morton, only in his forties, suffered the same fate a year later. The FBI had not considered 1989 suspicions by fellow FBI agent Mark Wauck that his brother-in-law, Hanssen, was a spy serious enough even to investigate. It was only after Judge William Webster had finally quit as DCI that the just created joint-FBI-CIA task force, under Redmond's direction, started looking seriously for a mole. This time, the FBI's James Holt would be assisted by James P. Millburn, the Bureau's leading analyst of KGB operations.

While the seperate task forces had slowly gone about their business, giving higher priority to any other task (Wise, p. 204ff.), the Bureau and the Agency's CIC fumbled chances to prove that Felix Bloch was a mole who had betrayed the double agents (Reibling, 397-9), efforts that Ames and Hanssen helped frustrate. Hathway's people were so discrete in carrying out their surveillance of the State Department officer in Brussels, for fear of angering Belgium counterparts they distrusted, that they came up with nothing. Then the FBI, fearing another fiasco like the Howard one, so confronted Bloch when he declined to meet with his Soviet contact, the KGB illegal Reino Gikman who had been tipped off by Moscow of the danger, that he simply clammed up, and shut down.

When the Bureau hoped to keep the case alive by advertising in German papers for a source to come forward who could apparently nail Bloch, the CIA station chief in Bonn, Ed Pechus, refused, causing the FBI to seek an obstructuion-of-justice indictment against him, but without success. (Adams, p. 181). Bloch was finally fired by the State Department in Nov. 1990, and the case against him simply died.

When the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union collapsed without either the KGB or the Stasi revealing the identity of Ames and Hanssen, the joint task force was obliged to make the obvious case against the former, and there is no need to describe its elementary, well-known details, especially latecomer Dan Payne's pursuit of Ames's money. One can only wonder why it took the Bureau so long to look into Hanssen's equally unexplained, large banks deposits, and to have Holt and Millburn ask his coworkers if they could identify who had called Aleksandr Fefelov, a KGB officer in the Soviet Embassy, on Aug. 18, 1986.

At CIA, the interesting bits occurred when James Woolsey had to deal with the damage caused by Ames's spying. The new DCI, who forced the Agency to give the same recognition to the leading double agent, the recently executed Dimitri Polyakov, that it had afforded beloved Oleg Penkovsky (Adams, p. 98), reprimanded 11 DO officers, even naming the current DDO Ted Price for censure, and involving many who were now retired, including Stolz. At the same time, Woolsey promoted Redmond, the CI official more responsible than anyone for the shooting, and the screwups, "...to the new position of special assistant for counterintelligence in recognition of his role in catching Ames." (Wise, p. 310)

When some DO veterans still wanted to recognize personally the efforts of Milton Bearden, Pechus's successor at Bonn, despite his reprimand, Woolsey forced the retirement of its promoters. While the Agency was looking for a new DCI, Redmond's team decided to celebrate Ames's capture, but acting DCI Admiral William Studeman would not hear of it, cancelling the formal affair without notice. (Earley, pp. 335-6) Studeman had been chief of the Naval Intelligence Service when Lehman's showdown with the Soviets occurred, and he knew that there was nothing to celebrate about Ames's spying - it, more than the Walker ring, had given the Soviets war-winning chances if they had so chosen. ("Meeting the Espionage Challenge: A Report of United States Counterintelligence and Security Programs," September 23, 1986, on file at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California) After Studeman left, Redmond decided to have a private party for the mole hunter team, but its real leaders, Vertefeuille, and Sandy Grimes, refused to attend.

Of course, Ames's exposure, and Al-Qaeda's first attack on the World Trade Center, given the fact that FBI Director William Sessions had cut back drastically on counterintelligence because of the Bloch affair, gave the Bureau, now under Louis Freeh's leadership, a great boost in scope, and operations. Of course, all the agents who had equally screwed up at the Bureau were unduly rewarded. Robert "Bear" Bryant, who demonstrated his nickname by trying to prosecute the Agency's Ed Pechus for obstructing justice in the Bloch case, was named the head of the Bureau's new National Security Division for securing Ames's arrest, Director Freeh explaining a bit disingenuously that he had enjoyed "CIA's unwavering assistance every step of the way." (Quoted from Riebling, p. 444.) Bryant reciprocated the favor by telling the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Stasi files could produce more espionage prosecutions if only the CIA was willing to come clean about its penetration, a sentiment that his prececessor Harry "Skip" Brandon at the Intelligence Division fully endorsed.

While the Bureau chalked up some early successes (Riebling, p. 441), its failures at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City really dragged it down. It was only after the last tragedy that the Bureau finally managed to arrest its 'Unabomber', Ted Kaczynski, who had been on record since 1970 inThe Saturday Review of having a motive for such attacks, but had somehow managed to avoid arrest for a generation. This was after Woolsey's replacement, MIT's John Deutch, had proven even worse by reprimanding the same DO personnel for allowing Soviet double agents, in the wake of Ames's betrayals, to take over completely the Agency's agenda, an affront which led to his ouster for security violations while working on Company business on his home computer. (Deutch's last-minute pardon by Clinton raised the temperature higher at Langley.)

Freeh's Bureau was still so confident of its position vis-a-vis the Agency that when another mole was suspected, thanks to more input from Hanssen, David Szady succeeded in having CIA agent Brian Kelley placed on indefinite leave until the matter was resolved. Kelley's career was, consequently, ruined in the process of finding Hanssen himself, but Szady was still named in March 2001 by President George W. Bush the Bureau's new Counterintelligence Czar for his efforts.

For CIA, though, the most egregious error occurred when former DCIs Webster, and Woolsey joined on the dustrjacket in praising Wise's latest demolition of the Agency, Cassidy's Run: The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas, a work only made possible by Bureau assistance from mole hunters of Ames, especially John Lewis, Bryant's assistant director, who had worked with Redmond to make sure that the spy did not ultimately escape. (Wise, pp. 250-1) The book contended that Air Force sergeant, and double agent Joseph Cassidy, who allegedly deceived the Soviets for 22 years, was the supreme model for how they should work, though he helped make the USSR into a leading chemical warfare power through his "dangles", especially the manufacture of Novichok, and a few Bureau agents were killed while handling him.

FBI Director Webster even publicly acknowledged the achievements by Cassidy and his wife. For CIA, especially Redmond, the Bureau's publicizing its attempt to prosecute it for refusing to do the same to one of Cassidy's Soviet handlers, Univ. of Minnesota professor Gilberto Lopez, was apparently the last straw. Lopez was a Cuban double agent the Agency once had recruited to help prove that Lee Harvey Oswald had killed JFK for Castro. (For part of the story, see Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy, pp. 419-20.)

The last straw for the Russians was when Hanssen revealed in a Nov. 17, 2000 letter that he had just helped Bloch as a financially-rewarding effort by a low-level spy - "Bloch was such a shnook....I almost hated protecting him, but he was your friend, and there was your illegal I wanted to protect...." ("Excerpts..." op. cit.) Hanssen had also protected himself then, and was trying to do so now.

He was obviously feeling the heat, what I had alluded to in my Oct. 29, 2000 letter to Ames, questioning him, along with operational matters, about whether he was being a bit disingenuous in saying that the KGB had done almost nothing to protect him, and that he had done all the spying. Ames, after engaging in an ad hominem attack about my lack of understanding, and experience in counterintelligence, and politics - what my professional careers would certainly deny - claimed that my misconceptions were beyond the recall of anyone. He concluded: "Is it possible that you believe I would expose myself to the risks of writing to you about a raft of highly classified and sensitive matters in an uncertain attempt to put your speculations on a reasonable footing? Or that my censors would permit it? Surely, you joke." (A. H. Ames's letter, Nov. 23, 2000) Surely, Ames protested too loudly, contradictorily, and unnecessarily.

Hanssen's debriefers - especially Redmond and FBI Director Robert Mueller through their demand for the death penalty, but what Judge Webster had to moderate for alleged reasons of national security, thanks to input from former SOD William Cohen about operations against Sweden - made sure that he was no more forthcoming about what he did, and why. In the process, reality had been stood on its head, with those most deserving of understanding, recognition, and reprieves being sent to prison for life while those politicians and operatives most deserving of exposure and punishment for their reckless operations which threatened the world with extinction being acclaimed, promoted, and rewarded after their hamhanded cover ups. Only in America would such exceptionalism be the rule.

Richard Helms: Central Intelligence's Most Dangerous Director

by Trowbridge H. Ford

No Director of Central Intelligence has a better reputation than Richard McGarrah Helms, "the man who kept the secrets," according to his biographer Thomas Powers, the implication being that despite all the known scandals, failures, and disastrous programs of others, there was real substance to what the Agency did, especially under his direction, what Helms valiantly fought to maintain the secrecy of. It was in recognition of Helms's humiliation for services rendered to Presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, that Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom, and George W. Bush permitted him to be buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery on the 39th anniversary of his fateful warning to JFK about going to Texas.

Helms's special position was seen during Watergate when, while its first victim, he, along with "Deep Throat" (though some even thought that he was Helms too), was still credited with being its hero by protecting CIA from the scandal. The usually taciturn Helms had shouted out his refusal to assume responsibility for the break-in, ordered at Nixon's direction to protect alleged Bay of Pigs secrets, insubordination for which he soon paid by becoming the US ambassador to Iran's Shah who he had attended prep school with, but did not know. Called back from Teheran to testify about the Agency's involvement in funding opposition to Salvador Allende, and plotting his overthrow in Chile, Helms lied to Congress about it, but still avoided prison for his perjury, a precedent that subsequent covert operatives, especially in Iran-Contra, followed with near impunity.

The only trouble with this assessment of Helms is that he was most visible during operations, and it seems impossible that he could not have been involved in serious ways. In fact, during Watergate, the Agency's DD General Vernon Walters did persuade Helms finally to go along with Nixon's demand of a cover-up, but by then it was too late to prevent at least a partial exposure of the monumental scandal. (Fred Emery, Watergate, p. 193ff.) The more likely explanation for Helms's reputation appears to be that he was excused when more senior people were being investigated for even greater failures, escaped exposure when overcoming institutional crises took precedence over individual accountability, and was a better manager of men, methods, and memories than his more cowboy-like colleagues when some accounting had to be made of mistakes, especially of independent missions like domestic assassinations.

While no one should consider intelligence services the adult equivalent of the Boys Scouts, or subject their operatives to normal criminal law prosecution when things go askew, there should be some standards, norms about propriety, rationality, and cost effectiveness, for judging their conduct, something more complicated than just concluding that they did what they had to, as Helms has contended. Certainly, managers of a democratic country's intelligence services should not be excused from legislative and judicial review, and, if necessary, punishment for dictating its policies, either directly or by coopting or eliminating its political leaders, especially if it involves criminal processes or elements.

Helms was born in eastern Pennsylvania's coal fields at the beginning of WWI, attended the Swiss prep school Le Rosey with Iran's Shah to-be, graduated from Massachusetts' Williams College in 1935, and started working for United Press in Germany where he interviewed Adolf Hitler. Two years later, Helms returned to the Indianapolis Times as a reporter. When America went to war, Helms joined the Navy, working in the Operations Department which plotted German submarine activity in the North Atlantic. UP Berlin Bureau Chief Oechsner persuaded him to join William Donovan's Office of Strategic Services where Helms was introduced into scientist Stanley Lovell's world of mind-control experiments, and deadly substances to destroy the enemy, starting with the Fuehrer himself.

Working with Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles in Germany at war's end, Helms became convinced that the Americans' can-do attitude about the growing communist menace, not Britain's assumed primacy in the field, was what the situation called for. Helms was convinced that explosive substances like carbamates; natural substances like drugs, bacteria, and poisons; and psychological manipulation of human behavior, especially through hypnosis, were the way forward in the intelligence world. This predisposition was demonstrated by him as Washington struggled to re-establish a central intelligence agency from OSS's remnants, the Army's Strategic Services Unit, over the objections of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The result would be its Technical Services Staff whose Chemical Division head was the secretive, ingenious Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the former City College instructor who was most eager to make up for the alleged betrayals by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Once CIA had been established by passage of the National Security Act, Helms worked with James Angleton's Office of Special Operations while Wisner directed its more cowboy-inclined Office of Policy Coordination. Wisner's OPC concentrated on building up resistance programs against Moscow from Home Army elements in Poland and Czechoslovakia while Britain's SIS undertook similar operations in the Baltic, Ukraine, and Albania. All these efforts ultimately failed because of simplistic assumptions about the nature of communist control, what effective resistance really entailed, and the extent of Soviet spying, especially by MI6's Kim Philby's, what only reinforced Helms's preferences for fighting the Cold War alone.

While covert operatives like Desmond FitzGerald, Richard Bissell, and Tracy Barnes were trying to roll back the Iron Curtain for Wisner, Helms, along with Angleton and Colby, concentrated on containing communism in Italy. To facilitate this, Truman approved NSC documents 1/1 and 4/A in late 1947, enabling OSO to engage in psychological warfare on the Italian political scene. Using unvouchered funds, including Nazi gold, promises of Marshall Fund aid in return for favorable electoral results, the return of Trieste from Yugoslavia, a letter campaign from Italian-Americans back home about meeting the communist threat, and a most interfering American Embassy in Italian affairs, CIA enabled the Christian Democrats under Alcide de Gasperi to gain, and hold onto power.

This was a far cry from how the Agency let the British lead the overthrow of Iran's Mohammed Mossadeq, and replace him by the Shah, as Helms later explained to William Shawcross, author of The Shah's Last Ride. In pulling British chestnuts from the fire after they had apparently left the scene, and the grasping Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to its own devices, CIA's Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy's grandson, behaved as if he worked for Winston Churchill, and the American Ambassador, Loy Henderson, acted as if he were the Prime Minister's emissary to the distracted, increasingly powerless Shah. Henderson even carried Churchill's personal message to him which kicked off Operation Boot, what the Agency came to call Operation Ajax, once the newly-elected President Eisenhower had been briefed by SIS's Monty Woodhouse about the need of preventing another communist coup. Still, it required spirited intervention in Rome by the American Embassy in terms of advice, and the Agency in terms of money for the Shah's coup to succeed since the Army did not immediately rally to his cause, what had forced him to flee to the Italian capital.

While the success in Teheran rekindled CIA confidence in covert operations, leading Wisner and Bissell to organize Guzman Arbenz's overthrow in Guatamala, thanks to dragging in Ike again at the crucial last moment, Helms increasingly doubted their value, especially since their secrecy could not be guaranteed, in Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick's words, "from inception to eternity." It was hardly suprising that Helms called upon DCI Dulles on April 3, 1953, just when the Shah was dithering over what to do about Mossadeq, to set up under Gottlieb's direction a comprehensive program for carrying out offensive operations on a completely scientific basis, MK-ULTRA, and 10 days later, it was approved with a $300,000 budget, and without the usual financial controls. While the program took advantage of what the Clandestine Services were already doing in MK-DELTA operations with CBW substances, and the Army's Special Operations Division was investigating at Fort Detrick in the way of germ warfare research (MK-NAOMI), its scientific, and operational thrust was to find the perfect agent, the Manchurian Candidate who would do the Agency's dirty work on cue, and without recall, as the MK (Manchurian Kandidat) digraph indicated.

While Helms had great plans for operations - e.g., rapidly hypnotizing an unwitting Kim Philby to kill a troublesome leftist, now that Minnesota-trained Morse Allen of the BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE mind-control programs was finally developing the technique - they were overtaken by the paranoid Dr. Frank Olson's suicide in late November 1953, Gottlieb having laced the unsuspecting MK-NAOMI operative's Cointreau with LSD a week before. Once DCI Dulles made sure that Olson's death could not be tied to CIA, he commissioned Cornell's Dr. Harold Wolff and Charles Hinkle to determine just how advanced the communists were in these fields. When they determined that the Reds had no magic bullets for fighting the Cold War, Dulles turned the search for the Manchurian Candidate over to more careful researchers of MK-ULTRA, Oklahoma's John Gittinger, New York psychologist Milton Kline, and Denver's Alden Sears. Also, Dulles had great expectations that the Berlin Tunnel operation (Operation Gold) that William King Harvey was conducting would provide the key for the Soviet rollback, what the Suez Crisis, and the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution proved most unfounded, thanks to Moscow's penetration of the covert operation by no less than three moles - the GRU's Colonel Pyotr Popov, MI6's George Blake, and MI5's Peter Wright.

Helms's hopes of replacing Wisner - OSO and OPC had long since been amalgamated, and the director of planning had gone completely off the rails after the tragedy in Budapest - were dashed by the President, though, Ike preferring the developer of the U-2 spy plane, his deputy Bissell. Helms was left to run secret operations in Central and Eastern Europe, especially the responsibility of finding a safe landing in 1958 for Popov when he was finally threatened with being exposed by the KGB as a spy in Operation Gold.

While MK-ULTRA officials wanted to produce amnesia of his mole work through hypnosis, Helms refused permission because it could well compromise important, new tradecraft in a hopeless case. Alexandr Shelepin, Khrushchev's new KGB chief, was allegedly setting up Department 13, the successor of Pavel Sudoplatov's "special tasks" groups which assassinated Trotsky in 1940. Thanks to the lecture that Wright gave to the Operations Directorate about the need of fighting fire with fire when it came to communist insurgency, Moscow's disinformation at the time, but what Bissell later used to justify going after Castro, Lee Harvey Oswald was to be groomed as CIA's answer to the problem, taking out Soviet leadership. Helms, despite his distrust of the British, and his bitterness over their betrayals, had been completely taken in by Wright's distain, like Angleton, of the English establishment, and its leaky intelligence agencies.

Helms's responsibility for Oswald's mission was demonstrated soon after he entered the USSR. He had Priscilla Johnson McMillan interview Oswald in Moscow, and file her story from there to rekindle his chances of being taken up by the Soviets for a mission in which the programmed "patsy" would act out without recall what was required. When this effort was apparently failing, Helms was responsible for the effort in the summer of 1960 to contact Oswald through people in the Domestic Contacts Division in the hope, it seems, of recruiting him as an agent, or at least giving the Agency subsequently an alibi about his not being one of theirs. A year later, Mrs. Marie Hyde, an apparent American agent, hitched a ride with Rita Naman and Monica Kramer, British subjects, to Minsk, where the KGB had an espionage training school, from Moscow where they had run into the ex-Marine, and Oswald was then photographed showing the tourists the City Square, especially its towering statue of Lenin.

By the time the Oswalds returned to the States in June 1962, Helms had a whole new set of priorities since Bissell's assassination, and invasion programs against Cuba had completely failed at the Bay of Pigs, leading to Dulles's and his ouster from the Agency. This time, the new DDP would compel Presidents to do what the Agency required - what had been lacking when Ike sorted out the shooting down of Gary Powers' U-2 plane on May Day 1960, and CIA negotiated details with JFK before he had been installed as President, and during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Despite Attorney General Robert Kennedy's explicit directive to Harvey to have no more dealings with the Mafia in assassinating Castro, Helms deliberately invited Wright back to Washington in October 1961 to repeat the need, and after they had sorted out their differences over Michael Goleniewski's defection during the Lonsdale case, Harvey, now with defector Anatoli Golitsin's help, was busily occupied infiltrating ZR/RIFLE missions, behind the Kennedys' back, in the Agency's Task Force W contribution to Operation Mongoose. Helms, most importantly, developed spy Oleg Penkovsky, with the help of retiring DCI Dulles, into a credible source about the Soviets' aggressive intentions, and threatening capabilities, especially when it came to Cuba, hoping to force JFK's hand over the need of an invasion when the time came.

Helms, though, like Harvey, the Pentagon's Al Haig, and Vice President Nixon who was running in the California gubernatorial election, was bitterly disappointed by JFK's settlement of the Missile Crisis. Instead of Golitsyn's and Penkovsky's political advice to the President about what to do with Castro being followed, DCI John McCone independently determined what Khrushchev was up to, thanks to Penkovsky's massive intelligence about limited Soviet missile capabilities. While Penkovsky was going down the tubes in Moscow, the President settled the dispute by allowing Castro to stay in place, provided the missiles were removed.

This soon resulted in Helms giving Harvey a free rein to settle scores with the President, as I have already indicated. The DDP's particular contribution was to make sure that Oswald was blamed, one way or another, for JFK's murder, thanks to Angleton's CI staff working with acting station chief E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City. When the "patsy" could not be programmed to do the deed by rapid induction hypnosis that Harvey arranged for Dr. George White to perform, Oswald was directed to do things, and to go places by CIA which made it look as if the alleged double agent had been reclaimed by the KGB, especially its assassination expert in the Mexican capital, Department 13's Valeri Kostikov. Oswald, though, thought that he was part of Operation Little Egypt, Harvey's latest effort to assassinate the Cuban leader, working with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee's Gilberto Lopez, CIA's double agent in Havana, to gain access to the target.

Helms's own contribution to the campaign was to warn JFK himself two days before the President was to go to Texas to kick off his re-election campaign of the Cuban threat, showing him, with the Agency's Latin American expert Hershel Peake, one of the rifles recovered from the alleged Cuban arms caches around the Carribean to spread terror, but JFK was not deterred by the diversion. The culmination of the process was the reactivation, just before the assassination, of AM/LASH, Rolando Cubela, by Desmond FitzGerald, Harvey's replacement in Task Force W, and acting as if he were RFK's personal representative, to kill the Cuban dictator with a TSS-supplied poison pen device, making the Dallas murder look like an act of revenge.

Unfortunately for the plotters, the assassination went wrong because gunman Richard Cain failed to test fire the rifle which had been purchased by an LHO alias, and, consequently, when Sam Giancana's lieutenant was shooting at the President, he was hitting Texas Governor John Connally who thought he had been double-crossed, and still lived to make a fuss about it. All the plans to blame the assassination on Castro, and the communists had to be reversed at Oswald's expense. Helms's major responsibility was to hush up the apparent downing of Captain Joe Hyde's U-2 plane on a flight over Cuba - what was intended to reignite the Missile Crisis. Instead of the spy plane being recovered, and the body of the pilot retrieved, the whole, explosive incident simply disappeared, with only a few bits of the plane being found without comment. The DDP also enlisted Priscilla Johnson to see that her piece about the loonie Lee Oswald in the Soviet capital a few years before was reprinted in The Boston Globe to frame the lone assassin.

Little wonder, once the immediate Agency problems caused by the assassination going askew, especially in Mexico City, were resolved by Angleton, that Helms was its liaison with the Warren Commission. Assured that neither Commissioner Dulles nor Ford would question anything about Agency activities, Helms volunteered nothing, as he had previously done with DCI McCone, about its mind control programs, its use of Oswald and Mafiosos, and Harvey's and FitzGerald's independent efforts to assassinate Castro, much less what he had contributed. Once the cover up was well in place, Helms concentrated on breaking down defector Yuri Nosenko as if he were the KGB's chief, using only Soviets tactics against him in a cell at Camp Peary for years to prove Anatoliy Golitsyn's claims that he was a plant to cover up their involvement with Oswald, and the assassination. The DCI was understandably in no hurry to resolve the issue.

It was a clever ruse which covered up the Agency's mind-control expertise in breaking down suspect defectors, the havoc Golitsyn was causing within its own ranks and beyond, and its total involvement in the Dallas assassination. (When CIA was confronted with another questionable defector, Oleg Gordievsky, locking horns with Golitsyn in 1985-86, it settled for Richards J. Heuer, Jr., writing an article about Nosenko's bona fides, based upon cost-effectiveness, for the in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, rather than sending the former KGB colonel off for an indefinite stay in a Camp Peary cell.)

Golitsyn repaid Wright for contending that the Soviets had taken one step backwards during the Missile Crisis, thanks to Penkovsky disinformation, so that they could take two steps forward when JFK was assassinated, claiming that the Agency had been penetrated by a Soviet mole, and it had - Wright aka 'K'. Of course, Golitsyn was not so coarse as to make the direct connection. He said the mole's name began with the letter 'K', and that he knew about the American-British electronic-surveillance project, code-named Easy Chair. Peter Karlow aka Klibansky was the chairman of the project, and Helms pursued Karlow with such vengeance that he was forced out of the Agency, widening the wedge with the Bureau in the process. In the meantime, Wright, Easy Chair's vice chairman, and the leading Soviet scientific spy 'K', took over running the project. After the JFK assassination, in appreciation for services rendered, Helms provided MI5's Movements Analysis program a 20-man team, and unlimited computer time to track down smaller fish in Britain. By the time the pursuit of Golitsyn's serials, and lesser leads was finished, intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were hardly talking to one another, and future historians had fists full of data to work with.

In this growing intelligence morass, McCone, soon after the Warren Commission reported, resigned, and Helms became, in effect, DCI since LBJ's appointee, Admiral William Raborn, had neither experience nor interest in the position. Helms's chief operations were getting rid of the Dominican Republic's Orlando Bosch in a bloodless coup, and Indonesian President Achmed Sukarno in a bloody one, what CIA had failed to do a decade before by various less lethal means, including a TSS provided pornographic film by a lookalike to undermine public support. Actually, Helms spent most of his time preventing CIA's expanded Vietnam War - what it had caused by the overthrow of Diem, the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, and the Tonkin Gulf incidents, especially through agent Lucien Conein's efforts, and Jim Garrison's investigation of the JFK murder, particularly during alleged leading conspirator Clay Shaw's trial - from getting out of hand.

MH-CHAOS was organized by Helms to prevent effective opposition to the war by collecting and disseminating information about its critics in order to intimidate them, starting with the left-wing magazine Ramparts. When the Tet offensive in Vietnam threatened just this, as RFK's February 8th speech tellingly documented, the DCI turned Harvey loose again, resulting in the assassinations of MLK, and RFK, assuring Nixon's election. Helms had allowed Harvey to make a comeback after gunman Richard Cain's screwup of the Dallas assassination, and while he, now aka William Wood and Bill Boxley, had infiltrated the Garrison investigation for the DCI, Harvey used his former connections with the Mafia and Gottlieb's mind-control people to see that the killings in Memphis and Los Angeles were carried out without any mishap this time. The DCI provided cover for Harvey during the operations by writing to influential Senator and critic of the Warren Report, Georgia's Richard Russell, that he had no connection with the Agency.

Little wonder that Nixon kept Helms on as DCI, and he did not let Nixon down, seeing to the overthrow of Allende, the running of a more efficient MH-CHAOS, and the endorsement of the Tom Huston Plan when more aggressive measures seemed to be called for, as the President requested. The only request that the DCI declined was the Agency's file on the Bay of Pigs, what had obviously grown, like those of Director Hoover's, to include its subsequent horrors, particularly Harvey's, and Nixon's involvement in the whole process. It was only Hoover's opposition which killed Huston's suggested law enforcement changes, helping cause the creation of the Plumbers which Helms gave every assistance to when asked. E. Howard Hunt's famous disguise when he visited Dita Beard, psychological profiles of troublemaker Daniel Ellsberg, and Dr. Edward Gunn's help for neutralizing Jack Anderson all came from the Agency.

As a result, some investigators have claimed that FBI Director Hoover may have been poisoned by The Plumbers because of his opposition to the Huston Plan, and others that it was because of his sexual blackmailing, now even including Nixon - e.g., Peter Dale Scott in Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, p. 227ff. The almost totally ignored scandal is their Harvey-led assassination attempt of former Governor George Wallace. The President had hardly persuaded Wallace to run for the Presidency to insure his re-election than he concluded that it might prevent it. As a result, once Hoover was out of the way, the group moved to Milwaukee, the home of Arthur Bremer where he was programmed to stalk the Democrat politician until he could shoot him. In doing the programming, Harvey apparently used the capability that Louis 'Jolly' West, a student of Amedeo Marrazzi at Minnesota, and John Gittinger at Oklahoma, was developing at UCLA and his Neuropsychiatric Institute in controlling cults through all kinds of mind-control techniques.

The best evidence that Bremer was programmed by the Plumbers to do his dirty work was provided by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in All The President's Men when they discussed the actions, and travels of Ms. Kathleen Chenow, the Plumbers' secretary whose office was room 16 in the Executive Office Building, during their trial in November. Chenow not only indicated that there were several Plumbers whose identity she did even know (p. 216), but also she was linked by telephone, whose bills John Ehrlichman of the Oval Office paid, to E. Howard Hunt's listed operations until March 15, 1972 when the phone, which had not be used for quite awhile, was removed. Most important, she moved her office two weeks later to Milwaukee when the programming of Bremer was becoming operational.

It was just during this time span, as Dan T. Carter has shown in The Politics of Rage, that Bremer started stalking both Wallace and Nixon, planning to kill which one of them he confronted first on the campaign trail - a scheme which would obviously intensify his psychic driving against the Governor as there was no way he was going to get close to the President. (p. 491ff.) Bremer finally shot Wallace three times as he was campainging in a Laurel, Maryland shopping center on May 15, paralyzing him sufficiently to end any political challenges.

While investigators have concentrated on Hunt's actions after the attempted assassination to connect Bremer to left-wing causes (e. g., Bernstein and Woodward, pp. 325-6), they should have concentrated on Chenow's, as they became a main source of loyalist John Dean finally breaking with the President, and threatening to tell enough to bring him down. Dean, who had been trying to prevent the FBI investigation from discovering the Plumbers, panicked when he discovered that it had traced her to the secret number, and was trying to interview her while vacationing in England. (Emery, p. 201) Dean managed to get acting Director L. Patrick Gray to stop the effort in the name of national security, and then Fred Fielding, now a member of the 9/11 Commission, managed to bring her back to Washington where Dean coached her so that she told FBI nothing of value.

Once this crisis passed with the successful conviction of only the five burglars, Dean made the opening salvo of Nixon's undoing by stating to him on March 21 that the cancer surrounding his Presidency was being compounded by the blackmail his supporters were being subjected to - what Nixon suggested repeatedly could be solved by payoffs. From then on, Nixon's tenure of the Oval Office was increasingly limited. Little wonder when it was over, veteran Washington Post reporter Carroll Kilpatrick, who had been most dubious of the Watergate stories by Woodward and Bernstein because of criticism by his White House colleagues, finally admitted about the Chenow story: "There has to be a lot more meaning in that story than meets the eye." (Bernstein & Woodward, p. 220, n.)

It was to make sure that this didn't happen, while Watergate was increasingly being investigated, that Helms and Harvey swung into action. While the DCI was stopping every research program that could be connected to MK-ULTRA and its successors - and destroying all records he could get his hands about its testing and operations - Harvey saw to the assassination, one way or another, of key operatives, starting with Cain, Jack Ruby's henchman Dave Yaras who coordinated threats on JFK with the actual shooting, and Giancana before he himself died. Subsequent notable killings were that of key organizer of the Dallas assassination Johnny Roselli who was garotted and stabbed to death in 1976, had his body sawed up, and stuffed into an oil drum, and then dumped into Miami's Dumfoundling Bay, and of JFK assassin Chuckie Nicoletti whose body was burned in his car the following year after he had been shot three times in the back of the head.

In taking leave of office for Teheran, Helms had the Agency hand over to the Justice Department for action the photos that it had developed of the Plumbers casing Ellsberg's psychiatrist's offices, induced the White House to return the embarrassing memo General Cushman, Helms's deputy, had prepared to justify such domestic action, cancelled Project OFTEN with the Army Chemical Corps to test the effects of various incapacitating drugs like Dr. Gunn had suggested upon humans and animals, and insulated from congressional discovery what he could, particularly Richard Ober's International Terrorism Group, of the covert government apparatus. Helms also came back to Washington to force President Ford to redirect charges of Agency assassinations of domestic targets to those against foreign ones, claiming that it had been ordered to do so by now deceased Presidents.

Helm's last contribution to American democracy was reviving CIA capability to conduct domestic assassinations after this loss of Mafia support, and Agency wherewithall. As the Carter administration tried to limit CIA to the collection of intelligence by technological means, and put its operation on a legal basis, Langley, especially the shrunken Operations Directorate, was increasingly desperate to stop the rot, but lacked the means to do so. Helms resigned his post ultimately in Teheran to fill the need. Back in the States, he informed former DCI George Bush at many secret meetings, and Operations Ted Shackley, who had been in Laos and Vietnam while his former boss Harvey at Berlin and Miami had been doing all the dirty work, during regular visits to Langley where all the mind-control capability, and potential candidates were now to be found in Reagan's California, especially around 'Jolly' West's establishments, and what was going on at Stanford's Research Institute.

The result was - once Bush decided to run for the Presidency, and disgrunted members of the Operations Directorate were joining his campaign staff in droves - the recruitment of Ted Kaczynski to carry out mindless acts which would so terrorize Carter that he could not be re-elected; of John Hinckley, Jr., to do the real thing if he pulled off an "October Surpirse" with the American hostages now being held in Teheran, and of Mark David Chapman to kill Beatle John Lennon after Reagan's election to limit the chances of the dirty operations leaking out. Unfortunately, Hinckley was distraught over Lennon's assassination that he almost succeeded in killing 'The Gipper' despite all the efforts that now Vice President Bush, and the Secret Service had taken to prevent it. An unexpected ricochet from Hickley's pistol almost caused another assassinated President.

Little wonder that when the crisis passed, and Helms could be given the Medal of Freedom for all his contributions to right-wing causes, Thomas Powers provided an introduction to the paperback edition of John Marks's The Search for the'Manchurian Candidate': The CIA and Mind Control, reassuring readers that all the suspicions by conspiracy theorists about alleged operations had proven unfounded as Americ's real enemies - Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Sukarno, Lumumba, Qaddafi, DeGaulle, Nasser, Chou En En Lai, and Khomeini - had died by other means, or were still alive. Helms's official biographer, of course, was ignoring what happened to the Agency's real enemies - JFK, MLF, RFK, Governor Wallace, Lennon, and many lesser lights. Even Carter was only spared at Reagan's expense.

For anyone to receive a medal of freedom from any country, especially the world's foremost democracy, with this record says it all about the state of self-government by the world's strongest power in the emerging post-Cold War world.

The Hutton Report Leaves More Questions Than Answers

by Simon Aronowitz

Considering how fast events have moved recently in the political world, never mind the day-to-day `news' that we are bombarded with, it is necessary to recap what actually happened last May and June. This will help explain why Lord Hutton's apparent clearing the Blair government of any wrongdoing is considered by so many to be a "white-wash."

There was already considerable disquiet about how the country had been led to attack Iraq, with many arguing that intelligence had been fabricated or unreasonably promoted in order to justify an invasion.

Andrew Gilligan's controversial broadcast was made on May 29th 2003, the now infamous 6:07 am dispatch where he said that the source alleged that the government had "sexed up" the September dossier by including the 45 minute claim, knowing that it was probably wrong.

In subsequent broadcasts that morning, Gilligan's reporting was scripted and therefore much tighter, eliminating any reaching statements or veering away from putting words into his source's mouth. Gone was the accusation that the government had "sexed up" the report, now he was quoting his source as saying

"It was transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier. The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within forty five minutes. That information was not in the original draft. It was included in the dossier against our wishes, because it wasn't reliable. Most things in the dossier were double source, but that was single source, and we believed that the source was wrong."

Gilligan's subsequent article in the Mail on Sunday upped the stakes when he quoted his source as blaming Alastair Campbell for the embellishment of the intelligence information to provide an argument for going to war.

Gilligan's apparent revelation provided the ammunition that many had been seeking by way of concrete evidence that the government had sold the war on a lie.

Full story...

Why Mangold Flip-Flopped over Kelly Murder

As always, dear reader, please make your own mind up about anything and everything you find on codshit.com. Comments are always welcome via the "Tell me what you think" link, abusive, uninspiring and violent comments will be deleted and the offending IP address blocked from using the comments board.

by Trowbridge Ford

During the Hutton Inquiry over Dr. David Kelly's death, nothing has been more inexplicable, and yet perhaps more persuasive than BBC reporter Tom Mangold's complete change of heart over the microbiologist's demise. When his body was found on July 18th on Harrowdown Hill, Mangold volunteered that he was confident that Kelly had been murdered. For anyone to think otherwise, Mangold said, just didn't understand the man:"suicide just wasn't Kelly." Yet, hardly a month later, Mangold was claiming just that.

To understand Mangold's complete turnabout - what the Hutton Inquiry did not so much as query him about when he was questioned late in the morning of September 4th - one must go back to the fatal day. Then, Mangold was quite concerned about the safety of the friend and weapons inspector he had known for at least five years, and learned so much from: "---he told me anything I have ever learned about biological warfare."

Under the circumstances, thanks to Mangold's regular unattributable briefings by the UNSCOM chief British biological weapons inspector, Mangold was quite concerned that remmants of the Iraqi regime, or its alleged Al-Qaeda associates, especially Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, might have killed Kelly because of what he knew about Saddam's WMD, especially its alleged anthrax bioterrorism capability. Little wonder that when Mangold heard of Kelly's body being found, he immediately assumed that Saddam's secret service or Zarqawi's terrorists had done it.

During this time, though, MI5 had allowed the Mossad to come to Britain in force - its agents, and if necessary assassination squads, were participating in joint operations to stop Islamic terrorism - and Mangold was apparently completely ignorant of this. The Israeli secret service had been called in after Manchester police, Scotland Yard, and the Security Service had made such a hash of the arrest of three North Africans, suspected of dealing with the poison ricin, and resulting in the stabbling murder of SB officer Stephen Oake, and the wounding of five other officers. Of course, to speak of Kelly being murdered raised the possiblity that the Israeli secret service had done it too, and the BBC presenter of the Ten O'Clock News quickly moved to prevent the suspicion from gaining ground.

No sooner did Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball of Newsweek claim in the mid-August issue that Mangold had ruined an FBI effort for Hemant Lakhani to infiltrate Al-Qaeda than the BBC presenter hired the top law firm of Mishcon de Reya to open a libel action against the magazine. The British national, living in New Jersey, had been set up by a sting operation involving the Bureau, and MI5, assisted by Mossad input, to raise national concern about international terrorism. Lakhani had apparently bought a doctored missile from the Russians at the behest of Bureau agents, posing as Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Of course, there is a decided difference between ruining a sting operation, and recruiting the apparent culprit to do intelligence work in the hope of mitigating his crime, but senior Justice Department officials declined to make the distinction. US Attorney Christopher Christie told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Lakhani's arrest occurred before Mangold's broadcast, so he could not have effected the sting operation, as Christie explained: "This investigation has gone on for 18 months and yesterday we executed the plan in almost exactly the way we laid it out."

The libel action seems not only intended to scare off other reporters about what Mangold may choose to say, but also to give him an excuse to quit his job before the Hutton Inquiry started hearing witnesses. Under the circumstances, he was asked nothing to cause embarrassment, or to raise questions. It was only after the inquiry had issued its complete whitewash of the whole affair that Mangold was allowed to return to the BBC, appearing on Hard Talk earlier this evening. Here he made up for his recent reticence, having apparently polished up his crystal ball, to hypothesize that Kelly had killed himself on the spur of the moment because an unknown party had called him, and told him that a taped interview with Susan Watts would completely expose his lying plots, and that Dr. Keith Hawton had completely explained a few days before he appeared before Lord Hutton why the microbiologist had killed himself. According to Mangold, only the failings of the intelligence services in the leadup to the war with Iraq need to be explored, and explained.

The State of Fascism

Ignore Hutton, listen to vox!

by voxfux

War is peace, slavery is freedom, aggression is compassion, economic devastation is wealth, immorality is piety - The state of fascism has never been stronger.

The clampdown on freedom is in full effect. The un-auditable electronic voting machines are in place in key electoral states, and in each machine in strategic districts will be a "glitch" this glitch (which is legal) will hand surprise victories to key republicans in order to sway the key electoral votes necessary to achieve a total presidential election theft once again for the forces of evil.

And in the event of nationwide calls for a recount, there is in place the very same judicial team which will guarantee that there will be no recount.

But nothing will be left for chance - nothing. And so clandestine teams of military intelligence black-ops have already deployed in key cities terrorist devices of either a radiological dirty bomb or a bio-terror device designed to kill hundreds to tens of thousands of Americans in a strategic pre-election terrorist attack designed to cause waves of fear and confusion throughout the American population.

These terrorist attacks will be accompanied by coordinated media campaigns scripted by the CIA to propagandize, incite, enrage and cause fear and convulsing jolts of hyper-patriotism and thuggish nationalism.

The US military will immediately launch retaliatory wars against any middle east country which has vital oil reserves and lucrative pipeline routes and any other resources that is needed for imperial aggression and profitable rebuilding contracts.

In place and ready to go will be carefully scripted fraudulent "news" stories about how Americans would not feel comfortable with any democrats because after all only the current administration knows best how to deal with the terrorists, (especially with over a 60 year history dealing with terrorists and a thirty year history dealing specifically with the bin laden family.)

In place will be carefully scripted fraudulent polls declaring that 95% of all Americans agree that the present leadership must remain.

Several polls will magically surface out of thin air which claim that nearly 75% of all Americans agree that an election isn't even really necessary considering the threat to the "Homeland."

The CIA has in place carefully scripted fraudulent news stories about how critical the role of the Internet was in Al Queda's latest strategic pre-election attack and there will be carefully orchestrated fraudulent protests of Americans demanding a "clampdown" on the Internet and within days all activist and dissident websites will be purged from ISP's and the Internet will be under limited operation mode. Major corporations will be granted approval to operate websites and anyone else caught operating an Internet website without government approval will be tried under the new Patriot "3" statutes as a terrorist.

Speculation will be rampant among terrorist sympathizers as to the whereabouts of leading leftist personalities and leftist news personalities many of whom will be "vanished" immediatly after the attacks and many who will be detained by military and intelligence and law enforcement personnel and who will remain unaccounted for, however the rumors regarding these missing terrorist sympathizers will not air on any American television news networks and will be overshadowed by further spectacular terrorist strikes on Americans and on further shock and awe campaigns in foreign countries.

Full story...

56% Of British - 'Hutton Report A Whitewash'

"Whitewash" is putting it MILDLY, we here at codshit.com would rather refer to the Hutton "report" as A FUCKING JOKE! Oh yeah, there's no conspiracy here, nothing to see here at all, move along people, move along. Just a load of elitist freemasonic establishment public-school batty-boys abrogating democracy, the rights of the individual, and justice itself. Nothing really important or anything! Go back to bed Britain your government has figured out how it all transpired, go back to bed Britain your government is in control again. Here, here's Jordan's boobs, watch this, shut up! Go back to bed Britain you don't need to think about anything, we'll do your thinking for you!

A majority of voters thinks the Hutton report on events leading to the death of Dr David Kelly is a "whitewash", a YouGov poll for The Telegraph says today.

The public expressed doubts about the report's one-sided verdict, which savaged the BBC while exonerating the Government, as Tony Blair claimed a second scalp with the resignation of Greg Dyke, the BBC's director-general. He also secured an "unreserved" apology from the corporation's governors.

The survey found that 56 per cent of people interviewed said Lord Hutton, as a member of the Establishment, was too ready to sympathise with the Government.

Only 34 per cent thought his report represented a thorough and impartial attempt to discover the truth about Dr Kelly's death.

After the BBC suffered the most traumatic 24 hours in its history, the poll shows that the corporation is still trusted more than the Government.

YouGov found that 67 per cent trust BBC news journalists to tell the truth, compared with 31 per cent who trust the Government.

The finding is a blow to the Prime Minister, who had hoped that the report would enable him to rebuild trust, badly damaged by the controversy over the Iraq conflict.

He called a halt to his eight-month war with the BBC after what amounted to an unconditional surrender by the corporation's board.

Sir Christopher Bland, a former BBC chairman, said Lord Hutton had whitewashed the Government and "tarred and feathered the BBC".

Lord Rees-Mogg, a former vice-chairman of the BBC board, said the report was a "bad bit of work". Clare Short, who resigned from the Cabinet over the war, described it as "completely one-sided".

Full story...

MORE WHITEWASH NEWS:
'Cut the crap, bring Greg back'
Dyke casts doubt on Hutton report
The Evidence That Hutton Ignored
British media warns of a whitewash too far
More questions on Dr Kelly's death as a confidante rejects suicide claim
Hutton Inquiry Whitewashes Blair Government Over Iraq War
Judge Who Cleared Blair, Blamed BBC Accused Of Whitewash
BBC Chairman Resigns After Hutton Report
Hutton Blasts BBC's Kelly Investigation - 'Whitewash' Charged
Whitewash - Dr. Kelly Evidence Not Included In Hutton's Report
Hutton Confirms Kelly Suicide - Many Stunned By Decision

Confessions of an American College Teacher When the Cold War Threatened to go Nuclear

by Trowbridge H. Ford

When I was discharged from the US Army's Counter Intelligence Corps in Orleans, France in July, 1954, I had little idea of who I was, what life was all about, and how I could make my way in the world. All I knew for sure was that I didn't want to follow in my father's footsteps in the Army, as it seemed to be a most parochial existence where secret agendas, selfish fancies, and limited concerns held sway, what I had come to appreciate while growing up on military posts.

During the next generation, I came to find my niche in life, what required an effort to join a large advertising firm but without success, a stint on a daily newspaper in the South as sport editor, and then a news reporter, and finally returning to graduate school to gain a doctorate in political science, and start a career in college teaching. Thanks to knowing a former president of N. W. Ayer, the large Philadelphia advertising firm, I sought a position with it, an effort ultimately derailed, though, by endless questioning about why I wanted a career in advertising, an experience which gave me insights into the benefits of hostile interrogations. In journalism, while learning to write with some skill, and insight, I became increasingly discouraged by the political correctness, and limited agendas which dominated the field. The thing which bothered me the most was the police's bigotry, joking constantly about blacks not even being human beings, and the paper's refusal to expose systematic collusion by the sheriffs with the local bondsmen where blacks were forced under threat of police harrassment into accepting loans at exorbitant rates of interest, and signing bad checks as collateral, what would be used against them in a sure-fire criminal prosecution if they didn't pay up shortly thereafter.

When I returned to Columbia University to start my graduate work in 1956, I was still largely unconcerned about political issues. The fact that alleged Soviet spy Ralph Bowen was no longer around to teach history, apparently the result of McCarthyism, escaped my notice. The fact that New York State law required me, who had held a Top Secret clearance while in the Army, to take a loyalty oath in order to teach undergraduate courses did not phase me. Being a student of European politics, I was most uninvolved during the Cuban Missile Crisis, thinking, like the average citizen, that the President was only doing what he had to under the circumstances. When I did a year's research in London during which JFK was assassinated, I was most unconcerned about who did it, and why, even getting into raucous argument with a Canadian historian, which almost resulted in fisticuffs, when he suggested that the Kennedy brothers were sterling characters, and that LBJ might well have been behind the killing. I didn't have an inkling that America's covert government had conspired to kill the President at the expense of Castro's communist Cuba, a plot which risked world war since it threatened a Soviet takeover of Western Europe in retaliation.

What really politicized me was trying to complete my degree during the Vietnam War. By this time, I had been exiled to a small college in the hinterlands of Ohio for contesting the preferential treatment of the son of a famous Columbia professor for having plagarized a paper in a class I taught, a process which threatened my never getting my degree as the first reader of my Ph.D. dissertation on English lawyer, politician, and judge Henry Brougham was also the head of the course's department. He was on record that he would make sure that I never got my degree for the controversy I caused, an effort I only defeated by obtaining the correspondence about the scandal, and threatening to use it in a court case against Columbia when he tried to make good on his threat at the dissertation's defense. Once I was awarded the degree, I publicized the controversy in the June 1968 issue of Ramparts, the radical magazine which was drawing the ire of America's intelligence community for its opposition to all Establishment efforts, starting in Vietnam (Angus Mackenzie, Secret: The CIA's War at Home, pp.16-24).

I had already become an object of the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO, and the Agency's MHCHAOS operations by writing my first letter to a Washington official, President Johnson, complaining of his massive escalation of the war in Vietnam, on the pretext of the co-called Tonkin Gulf incidents, after he had campaigned as the peace candidate against the super hawk Barry Goldwater in the recent election. In a very short letter, I expressed my dismay over what he was doing, vowing to see that the course was reversed, and that he was rejected in the next election. For my trouble, I became a charter member of the alleged communist conspiracy which was seeking to defeat at home what our troops were achieving on the battlefield in Southeast Asia.

My listing as a traitor had been guaranteed when I and a colleague in the same department, a Vietnam veteran, decided to conduct a teach-in on the merits of the war in the college's main hall. He was a sensible, but troubled participant and witness of what was going on, and was eager to debate the justification of America's involvement just to clear his own mind, and conscience. While the teach-in went well, with my holding my own, I believe, on the need of America's immediate withdrawal, you can imagine our amazement when the local newspaper treated the debate as if my opponent had only given a lecture in defense of America's involvement. While I did force the editor to print a clarification of what had happened, in doing so I earned a one-way ticket out of the cozy college community from its president for the embarrassment caused. While I didn't think of it at the time, a curvaeous coed then dropped by my house one afternoon when my wife was known to be away, offering breathlessly to do anything I wanted in order to improve her grade, the only time such a possibility occurred in 30 years of teaching, a proposition which promised apparently more than a just train ticket out of town if I had accepted. If I had dropped my pants, I might have started serving time in an Ohio penitentiary.

If the country had not been in a such turmoil, and there being such a shortage of qualified college teachers, my career might well have ended there. As it was, I gained a post at the University of Maine, but not for long. No sooner had I arrived than Vice President Hubert Humphrey appeared, justifying in the strongest terms support for LBJ's war against America's most dangerous foe. (George C. Herring, LBJ and Vietnam, p. 136ff.) The liberal Humphrey, in my estimation, was the greatest betrayer of American values by his mythic pursuit of communists. (For more on this, see Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised Land, p. 137ff.) No sooner did I join pickets protesting Humphrey's mission than the department chairman informed me that my contract with the university would not be renewed. With nearly the whole year left to serve my own agenda without worrying about staying on, I let all my opposition to the Vietnam War hang out, attacking the international relations professor's justification of American involvement at a public debate, and writng so strongly in the Bangor paper in defense of Cassius Clay's (aka Mohammed Ali) efforts to keep his crown, and avoid the draft that I earned the sobriquet "nigger-lover" among colleagues, one of whom threatened a fist fight over the matter in an office we shared.

By this time, I considered myself finished in the academic profession. It just so happened, though, that Holy Cross College, a leading Catholic undergraduate college in the country, was looking for a person in my field, and my growing "radical" credentials, given my military service during the Korean War, were an advantage for once, considering the outlook of its president, the composition of its student body, and the fact that it had two reserve officers training units on campus. The all-male student body, including a number of well-qualified black students (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had just graduated.), even some Black Muslims, was in a most excited state because of the war, and the spate of political assassinations, especially Martin Luther King's, causing various walkouts of students, and shutdowns of classes. Students were most worried about having to serve in Vietnam as either draftees, or as a Navy, Marine, or Air Force Officers. With the faculty concerned about only the usual professional matters of promotion, stature, and tenure, my agitational style was just what the situation called for.

The next decade was certainly the most exciting, engaging period of my academic life. While completing my dissertation, and starting to have articles published in scholarly journals, I still poured out letters, especially in The Worcester Telegram, against the war and the White House, participated in teach-ins, scholarly gatherings, and talk shows for the same purpose, and tried to guide and educate students during confrontations on campus. The events which stand out in my memory were complaining in The Columbia Journalism Review about Communication Director Herb Klein's use of the American Political Science Association, a seemingly non-parisan body, to spread Nixon propaganda as a matter of course, a letter in the local paper complaining of the President's unctuous eulogy for deceased FBI Director Hoover, the speech that the State Department's William Bundy gave to the local Council on Foreign Relations on the need of arming everyone around the world to frustrate Soviet ambitions, and encourage national conflict, preventing radical students from being expelled for threatening to burn down the Air ROTC building at the instigation of government agent provocateur Vito Trimarco, and the NROTC editor of the college yearbook calling upon me to give an account of the turmoil on campus during one of those years.

At the same time, I started researching the background of Nixon's troubles, what soon led me to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas. I was particularly interested in Representative Gerald Ford's role on the Warren Commission, complaining particularly about his constantly leaking details of the inquiry to Hoover, promoting the idea of the "magic bullet" to eliminate suspicions of a conspiracy, and preparing a biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, contending that he alone killed JFK. When Nixon selected Ford instead of the expected former Texas Governor John Connally to replace scandal-ridden Vice President Spiro Agnew, I was put in the uncomfortable position of being asked by CIA contact Dana Beal to come to Washintgon on an all-expenses-paid visit to spread my complaints against the Congressman, an effort which would help prevent Nixon's removal, and what I understandably declined. Then J. David Truby, a professor at Indiana University in Pennsylvania, started querying me about my research for an article on the Dallas assassination, what I ultimately suspected he was doing for Chief of Staff General Alexander Haig aka "Deep Throat" to prepare the ground for Nixon's removal from office, and pardon. This was when the President was musing with Kissinger about using nuclear weapons in Vietnam to escape from the trap which was engulfing him.

The most intriguing experience I had was when an assassination conference was scheduled at Boston University. While many famous critics of the Warren Commission would be attending, I was not planning on going as I found such conferences counter productive as its supporters always panned the programs as merely the products of irrational true believers. Then John and Rita Paine called up, and asked if my wife and I would like to spend the weekend with them, attending the conference after a dinner they had arranged with all kinds people interested in the JFK assassination. The Paines had befriended people like the widow of Salvatore Allende, Hortensia, and my father, now retired, and one of the few American generals openly speaking out against the war. He had the honor, for example, to be showered with red paint by Dallas rednecks after he delivered a speech against it.

At the Paines, the guests questioned me so much about my research that we arrived late at the conference, obliged to take back seats in the hall. Of course, I was not concerned because I had not planned to say anything anyway. The next day, Mr. Paine asked if I would like to discuss my research with a stringer from The Boston Globe, an opportunity I readily took advantage of. While I talked with her for the better part of a day, nothing ever appeared in the newspaper, though I ultimately had the impression that the files at Langley had consequently increased.

My research has always concentrated upon what daily newspapers have to say about people and events, sources which are ignored for documents governments see fit to provide, and for diaries and letters provided by participants. In explaining the Dallas assassination, I found newspapers in Dallas, New Orleans, Miami, Tampa, New York, Washington, Chicago, Las Vegas, and La Grange, Ga. most helpful, once I carefully examined their pages. For example, The Dallas Morning News had most revealing stories on the first anniversary of the final week of the Cuban Missile Crisis, stating that the process was beginning again exactly 13 months later, and that Nixon, like Dallas Representative Bruce Alger, was receiving postcards from Dallas, Fort Worth, and Irving, Texas, from a "possibly dangerous social deviant", details which seemed to suit Oswald to a tee. Lawyer Nixon still came to Dallas on Nov. 20th, attending the Bottlers' Convention at Market Hall the next day, and making so much of his lack of security concerns that the newpaper emphasized a "Guard not for Nixon" story on the fatal day. Then there were Hal Hendrix's stories in the Miami News, showing that he preferred to be with Haig's Operation Americas rather than with Oswald in Dallas when the killing occurred. The next day, The Washington Post published AP photographer James Altgens' half-page picture of the assassination, what apparently showed Oswald standing at the Book Depository's entrance, and convinced Director Hoover that there was insufficient evidence to convict him, making his murder necessary.

Instead of developing this material, and much more, other researchers chose either to ignore it, or change it so that the cover-up could continue. For example, Michael Canfield and A. J. Weberman in Coup d'Etat in America, while quoting the story about threatening postcards, left out the word "dangerous", and changed "possibly" into an adjective in order to radically diminish its significance. Truby went wild to establish that I was claiming that Nixon actually knew Jack Ruby, when I only said that he knew about Jacob Rubenstein's communist background from HUAC files when he prepared the Nixon-Mundt Bill for dealing with the alleged red menace, and that E. Howard Hunt was one of the tramps arrested in the marshalling yard shortly after the shooting, something photographic expert Richard Sprague promoted at my expense, and Paul Hoch legitimized, when I asked Sprague if Oswald was the person in the Altgens' photo. Hunt actually had more important coordinating responsibilities in Washington and Mexico City than just being a decoy in Dallas. Then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller's Commission asked me to write a report about now President Ford's performance on the Warren Commission, what was intended to help promote Nixon's pardon rather than clear up JFK's murder.

When Giancana was murdered, I made an appointment with the Worcester FBI agent to discuss its relation to the JFK assassination, and his scheduled testimony before the Church Committee. Momo had been set-up for the Dallas hit because of the trouble he had created for Frank Sinatra at Lake Tahoe's Cal-Neva Lodge, the mobster being in the Nevada State Gaming Commission's Black Book as a persona non grata when he visited lover and singer Phyllis McGuire there, as the five-part series by Wallace Turner in The New York Times surrounding the assassination amply demonstrated, and his killer obviously learned he was going to testify about while talking to him. While the Special Agent wrote up a cryptic report about my leads, he was obviously more concerned about my possibly shooting him than who shot Giancana from behind. I shall never forget when I opened my briefcase to retrieve copies to the Turner articles to refresh my memory than the agent hastily grabbed for something, apparently a revolver, in the middle drawer of his desk. The experience certainly cooled my interest in visiting other federal officials in their cavernous office buildings about similar matters. For my trouble, the IRS successfully contested in Tax Court my claim that an employer-financed fellowship was entitled to the usual deductions for expenses, and subjected my tax return to an audit, what would statistically occur only once in 625 years.

Ultimately, I was obliged to threaten Truby with a court case if he published his distortions of my research, what he got round by seeing that a watered down version was printed in a sensational tabloid, and I settled by explaining my side of the story in a January 1976 article, "Tattling on The National Tattler," in The Writer's Digest. By then, Congressman Henry Gonzalez, who helped induce JFK to take more risks when he visited San Antonio the day before the assassination by joking about his connections with Castro, was pushing for a re-investigation of the murder, and he asked me to write a report about my research. No sooner had I written a 2,000 word synopsis of my findings than Chief Counsel Richard Sprague of the newly appointed committee, the most successful prosecutor threatening to use lie detectors to determine the truth, replied, thanking me for my assistance, and assuring me that he would check out my claims.

After that, the whole inquiry was simply stopped unless Sprague stepped aside for much less threatening inquiries. Chief investigator Gaeton Fonzi assured me, though, my leads were being followed up, and as the inquiry was coming to a close, his subordinate Mickey Goldsmith called me up, assuring me, in such hushed tones as if he were afraid that he would be overheard, that all my concerns were being investigated. In the meantime, I had written a long article on the JFK conspiracy, though it did not note Oswald's experience with the Agency's MK-ULTRA program, William Harvey's direction of the actual killing (Operation Cleopatra), and the independence of Sam Giancana's hitmen in its performance, for the April, May, and June 1978 issues of Tom Valentine's The National Exchange. The falsity of Fonzi's and Goldsmith's assurances was demonstrated when the House Select Committee reported, my articles for Valentine, plus an outline of the assassination published in the U. S. Farm News, not even being cited in the inquiry's volume-long bibliography, one including articles which claimed that the President had even been assassinated by extra-terrestrial beings.

When apparent CIA agent Verne Lyon saw my articles, he wrote, claiming that he had worked for several years in Cuba, and that his experience supported some of my claims. He wondered if I would be interested in colloborating in a work which would deal with both the direct and indirect results of the Dallas assassination. While I replied favorably to his suggestion, I never heard from him again. Since it seems that he was serving time at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas at the time, I can only assume that he was seeking information about the assassination, or my character and mental stability which his prosecutors would look favorably upon for an early release, The Justice Department is always looking for ill-advised remarks critics make about its work, and important politicians.

When L. Fletcher Prouty, a friend of Truby's, and author of The Secret Team, saw this material, he wrote me a most encouraging letter on May 8, 1979, suggesting that I look higher than people like E. Howard Hunt, Allen Dulles, and Nixon for the real conspirators. While this is good advice, provided one looks for people like William Harvey, Richard Helms, and Richard Bissell, Prouty could only suggest the most unlikely characters, like Pepsico lawyer Deluca, Air Force General Godfrey McHugh, and former Treasury Secretary Jim Farley. Prouty could only offer his classic bit of dissembling about who JFK's killers might be:

See what you can learn about (Robert) Maheu at Holy Cross and about a Maheu protege named Ed Nigro who at one time was Pres of Air West. Nigro worked in the same office with the Chairman of the JCS-Twining later Lemnitzer and the man who sat at the desk beside Nigro's was L. Patrick Gray. Gray sat in on the U-2 investigation in Fulbright's office as the sole DOD representative and retired from the Navy that month (May 60) to work in the Nixon campaign against JFK.

My most otherworldly experience occurred when I called a press conference at the college to announce the findings of my research. I invited reporters from newspapers in surrounding towns, the Associated and United Presses, and a reporter from Tass to come. The only one who came, though, was the latter, all the way from New York, along with apparently a KGB colleague to tape record what I had to say, plus, of course, a host of Bureau agents in trailing cars. Given the trouble the two had gone to, I had to go ahead with the press conference, and a continuation of the conversation in my office. The only other person in attendance was a student, apparently an informant for some government agency, who was keeping track of my research. I suspect that this experience had never occurred before, and has not be repeated.

The most predicable event occurred when I sent the piece Valentine published first to Columbia's
Political Science Quarterly, hoping to mend some fences with the university. When the managing editor returned the manuscript, along with two ridiculing rejections, I was so angry that I wrote to my former mentor, who had been caught in the middle of the plagiarism case, and was the beleaguered Dean of the Graduate Faculties when my piece appeared in Ramparts, to complain. He kindly responded, expressing his interest in its content, and his understanding of my irritation, adding that the journal had been hijacked by covert interests:

As far as Columbia is concerned, you may not be aware that about six years ago all ties between the Academy of Political Science (& the PSQ) & the Faculty of Political Science (& the University) were broken by the President on the advice of the faculty, since the Academy for the first time in its history, refused to accept the Faculty's nomination of an Editor for the PSQ & insisted on naming its own candidate as Editor. The Academy & the PSQ no longer occupy space at Columbia & have no official connection with the University. (Professor Herbert Deane's letter, May 18, 1978)

With the coming of the Reagan administration, I decided that it was not only time to leave Holy Cross but also America. Campus life had completely changed with Nixon's disgrace, and the end of the Vietnam War. With the end of the draft, the introduction of co-education at the college, and the installation of a completely conservative administration, headed by the famous defense lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, Holy Cross seemed more interested in training applicants for the Knights of Malta than informed citizens for a democratic society, Washington's agenda too. The growing role of DCI William Casey, NSA Richard Allen, Navy Secretary John Lehman, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, and others, all Knights, in its actions was truly frightening. Williams was noted for representing people like Haig, Giancana, "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio, Bobby Baker, James Hoffa, and Richard Helms before various forums. During a sabbatical leave in England, I hoped to find a publisher for my biography of Oxford professor A. V. Dicey, complete another one of barrister Brougham, and obtain new employment in Britain.

In London, I became acquainted with the political editor of Private Eye, Paul Halloran, who, upon learning of my research into the Dallas assassination, especially Haig's role, asked me to write a "Letter from Washington" about it, which appeared on November 20, 1981. Halloran's interest, though, was in getting rid of Reagan's Secretary of State so th