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Ted Shackley and the Secret Team


John Simkin

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The connection between Ted Shackley and the Iran-Contra scandal began in 1979. Shackley had expected to become director of the CIA. However, Jimmy Carter’s appointment of Stansfield Turner, had blocked his advance up the ladder. The same was true of all those involved in the illegal covert operations in the 1960s and 70s. The only way back for Shackley (he resigned from the CIA in 1979) was for the removal of Carter. In 1980 he had regular meetings with George Bush where he advised him of his election strategy. Bush did not get the nomination but when he became Reagan’s vice presidential candidate, Shackley continued to advise him.

Shackley told Bush that Carter was attempting to negotiate a deal with Iran to get the American hostages released. This was disastrous news for the Reagan/Bush campaign. If Carter got the hostages out before the election, the public perception of the man might change and he might be elected for a second-term.

According to Barbara Honegger, a researcher and policy analyst with the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign, William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal at two sets of meetings in July and August at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections.

Reagan’s aides promised that they would get a better deal if they waited until Carter was defeated.

On 22nd September, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran. The Iranian government was now in desperate need of spare parts and equipment for its armed forces. Carter now proposed that the US would be willing to hand over supplies in return for the hostages.

Once again, the CIA leaked this information to Reagan/Bush. Shackley now suggested a strategy that would make it impossible to do a deal. One way was to leak the story to the press. On 17th October, The Washington Post reported rumours of a “secret deal that would see the hostages released in exchange for the American made military spare parts Iran needs to continue its fight against Iraq”.

These stories continued to be published throughout the rest of the campaign. One Washington Post report quoted French officials as being shocked by news that Carter was willing to be blackmailed by the Iranians into “providing spare parts for American weapons”. A couple of days before the election Barry Goldwater was reported as saying that he had information that “two air force C-5 transports were being loaded with spare parts for Iran”.

This of course was not true. This publicity had made it impossible for Carter to do a deal. Reagan on the other hand, had promised the Iranian government that he would arrange for them to get all the arms they needed in exchange for the hostages. According to Mansur Rafizadeh, the former U.S. station chief of SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, CIA agents had persuaded Khomeini not to release the American hostages until Reagan was sworn in. In fact, they were released twenty minutes after his inaugural address.

The actions of Reagan and the CIA spent at least an extra 76 days of imprisonment. One of these hostages, Cynthia Dwyer, was kept back until the Iranian negotiators got further assurances on the deal. The arms the Iranians had demanded were delivered via Israel. By the end of 1982 all Regan’s promises to Iran had been made. With the deal completed, Iran was free to resort to acts of terrorism against the United States. In 1983, Iranian-backed terrorists blew up 241 marines in the CIA Middle-East headquarters.

The Iranians also once again began taking American hostages in exchange for arms. On 16th March, 1984, William Francis Buckley, a diplomat attached to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was kidnapped by the Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shiite group with strong links to the Khomeini regime. Buckley was tortured and it was soon discovered that he was the CIA station chief in Beirut.

Shackley was horrified when he discovered that Buckley had been captured. Buckley was a member of Shackley’s Secret Team that had been involved with Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, Carl E. Jenkins, Raphael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, in the secret “assassination” program.

Buckley had also worked closely with William Casey (now the director of the CIA) in the secret negotiations with the Iranians in 1980. Buckley had a lot to tell the Iranians. He eventually signed a 400 page statement detailing his activities in the CIA. He was also videotaped making this confession.

Casey asked Shackley for help in obtaining Buckley’s freedom. Shackley had good reason to want to get Buckley out of Iranian hands. However, he was unhappy about not being rewarded for his help getting Reagan elected in 1980. He had expected to be appointed director of the CIA. That job instead went to Casey, the key figure in the “arms for hostages” negotiations. How was Shackley to be rewarded?

What we know is that just three weeks after Buckley’s disappearance, President Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive 138. This directive was drafted by Oliver North and outlined plans on how to get the American hostages released from Iran and to “neutralize” terrorist threats from countries such as Nicaragua. This new secret counterterrorist task force was to be headed by Shackley’s old friend, General Richard Secord.

This was the basis of the Iran-Contra deal. Reagan could not afford to replace Casey with Shackley as director of the CIA. However, there were other ways of rewarding Shackley for his covert actions on behalf of Reagan in Iran.

Talks had already started about exchanging American hostages for arms. On 30th August, 1985, Israel shipped 100 TOW missiles to Iran. On 14th September they received another 408 missiles from Israel. The Israelis made a profit of $3 million on the deal. Why should this money go to the Israelis? It would be a better idea to give this business to Shackley and his mates.

In October, 1985, Congress agreed to vote 27 million dollars in non-lethal aid for the Contras in Nicaragua. It had already been decided to use this money to finance the selling of arms to Iran. Some of the profits could then be used to provide money and arms to the Contras and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

The following month, Shackley traveled to Hamburg where he met General Manucher Hashemi, the former head of SAVAK’s counterintelligence division at the Atlantic Hotel. Also at the meeting on 22nd November was Manuchehr Ghorbanifar. According to the report of this meeting that Shackley sent to the CIA, Ghorbanifar had “fantastic” contacts with Iran.

At the meeting Shackley told Hashemi and Ghorbanifar that the United States was willing to discuss arms shipments in exchange for the four Americans kidnapped in Lebanon. What Shackley did not put in his CIA report was that there were two other men at this meeting at the Atlantic Hotel. They were Oliver North and Leslie Aspin, a British arms dealer.

The problem with the proposed deal was that William Buckley was already dead (he had died of a heart-attack while being tortured). The date is not known but it was sometime between June and October 1985.

The Aspin arms deal with Iran never took place. Instead, Shackley and Secord began organizing these arms deals. Shackley recruited some of the former members of his CIA Secret Team to help him with these arm deals. This included Thomas G. Clines, Raphael Quintero, Ricardo Chavez and Edwin Wilson of API Distributors. Also involved was Carl Jenkins and Gene Wheaton of National Air. The plan was to use National Air to transport these weapons. For some reason, Wheaton and Jenkins fell out with Shackley. In May 1986 Wheaton told William Casey, about what he knew about this illegal operation. Of course Casey already knew what was going on and refused to take any action.

Wheaton now took his story to Daniel Sheehan. He also contacted Newt Royce and Mike Acoca, two journalists based in Washington. The first article on this scandal appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on 27th July, 1986. The Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, was now asked about if it is "true that foreign money, kickback money on programs, was being used to fund foreign covert operations." Weinberger denied all knowledge of the matter.

On 5th October, 1986, a Sandinista patrol in Nicaragua shot down a C-123K cargo plane that was supplying the Contras. Eugene Hasenfus, the only one wearing a parachute, survived the crash (two other Americans, Buz Sawyer and William Cooper died when the plane hit the ground). Hasenfus told his captors that the CIA was behind the operation. He also provided information on two Cuban-Americans running the operation in El Savador. This resulted in journalists being able to identify Raphael Quintero and Felix Rodriguez as the two Cuban-Americans mentioned by Hasenfus.

Shackley was able to keep his name out of the scandal and actually won damages from Daniel Sheehan.

However, there were others who knew the truth about what had been going on. This included William Casey who conveniently died on 6th May, 1986.

Another person who knew the truth was John Tower and John Heinz. In November 1986, Reagan persuaded Tower to chair the President's Special Review Board to study the actions of the National Security Council and its staff during the Iran-Contra affair. Heinz had chaired a three-man presidential review board that probed the Iran-Contra affair. Coincidentally, both John Heinz and John Tower died in plane wrecks on successive days in 1991 – Tower in Georgia, and Heinz in Montgomery County.

********************************************************************

The same was true of all those involved in the illegal covert operations in the 1960s and 70s. The only way back for Shackley (he resigned from the CIA in 1979) was for the removal of Carter. In 1980 he had regular meetings with George Bush where he advised him of his election strategy. Bush did not get the nomination but when he became Reagan’s vice presidential candidate, Shackley continued to advise him.

Shackley told Bush that Carter was attempting to negotiate a deal with Iran to get the American hostages released. This was disastrous news for the Reagan/Bush campaign. If Carter got the hostages out before the election, the public perception of the man might change and he might be elected for a second-term.

Reagan’s aides promised that they would get a better deal if they waited until Carter was defeated.

On 22nd September, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran. The Iranian government was now in desperate need of spare parts and equipment for its armed forces. Carter now proposed that the US would be willing to hand over supplies in return for the hostages.

Once again, the CIA leaked this information to Reagan/Bush. Shackley now suggested a strategy that would make it impossible to do a deal. One way was to leak the story to the press. On 17th October, The Washington Post reported rumours of a “secret deal that would see the hostages released in exchange for the American made military spare parts Iran needs to continue its fight against Iraq”.

This publicity had made it impossible for Carter to do a deal. Reagan on the other hand, had promised the Iranian government that he would arrange for them to get all the arms they needed in exchange for the hostages. According to Mansur Rafizadeh, the former U.S. station chief of SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, CIA agents had persuaded Khomeini not to release the American hostages until Reagan was sworn in. In fact, they were released twenty minutes after his inaugural address.

The actions of Reagan and the CIA [caused the hostages] to spent[d] at least an extra 76 days of imprisonment. One of these hostages, Cynthia Dwyer, was kept back until the Iranian negotiators got further assurances on the deal. The arms the Iranians had demanded were delivered via Israel.

Shackley was horrified when he discovered that Buckley had been captured. Buckley was a member of Shackley’s Secret Team that had been involved with Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, Carl E. Jenkins, Raphael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, in the secret “assassination” program.

Casey asked Shackley for help in obtaining Buckley’s freedom. Shackley had good reason to want to get Buckley out of Iranian hands. However, he was unhappy about not being rewarded for his help getting Reagan elected in 1980. He had expected to be appointed director of the CIA. That job instead went to Casey, the key figure in the “arms for hostages” negotiations. How was Shackley to be rewarded?

What we know is that just three weeks after Buckley’s disappearance, President Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive 138. This directive was drafted by Oliver North and outlined plans on how to get the American hostages released from Iran and to “neutralize” terrorist threats from countries such as Nicaragua. This new secret counterterrorist task force was to be headed by Shackley’s old friend, General Richard Secord.

This was the basis of the Iran-Contra deal. Reagan could not afford to replace Casey with Shackley as director of the CIA. However, there were other ways of rewarding Shackley for his covert actions on behalf of Reagan in Iran.

Talks had already started about exchanging American hostages for arms. On 30th August, 1985, Israel shipped 100 TOW missiles to Iran. On 14th September they received another 408 missiles from Israel. The Israelis made a profit of $3 million on the deal. Why should this money go to the Israelis? It would be a better idea to give this business to Shackley and his mates.

And, this is how our U.S. taxpayers' dollars are put to work. It appears to me, that the fascists who have been running this country behind the backs of whatever political party happens to be in office, regardless of these poor excuses for attempts at demonstrating "the democratic-process-at-work" known as elections, hold little, if any, regard whatsoever, for the citizenry of this country. When they're allowed to proliferate, like vermin, throughout the system, to work it for their sole privateering, pirateering, profiteering benefit, WHEN, may I ask, are the people of this country going to come to terms with the fact that they've been sold down the proverbial river or, to quote a line from the movie, BLAZING SADDLES, "are we just jerking off?"

Thanks John, for putting it in black and white. But, how do we make them want to read about it, let alone grasp the significance?

Edited by Terry Mauro
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Shackley told Bush that Carter was attempting to negotiate a deal with Iran to get the American hostages released. This was disastrous news for the Reagan/Bush campaign. If Carter got the hostages out before the election, the public perception of the man might change and he might be elected for a second-term.

According to Barbara Honegger, a researcher and policy analyst with the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign, William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal at two sets of meetings in July and August at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections.

I wasn't aware of this part of the story. Is there evidence that Shackley told Bush what was up? My understanding was that it was Robert MacFarlane who sold out Carter, much as it was Henry Kissinger who sold out Johnson in 68.

When information about the Iran-Contra scandal first emerged in 1986, both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were in serious trouble. The fact that it happened could not be denied. The issue then became very similar to Watergate: “What did he know, and when did he know it.” Reagan’s story was that he was kept in the dark about the whole event. The American public went along with this story. Some commentators believe this was psychological. Democracy would have been completely undermined if it had been confirmed that two presidents in a short period of time had been involved in illegal activities and had lied about it.

Bush was another matter. He was only the vice president and it would not be traumatic for the country to see him impeached. For example, remember the response when Spiro Agnew was forced to resign? Bush was also more likely candidate than Regan to have come up with this idea. Bush had been a former director of the CIA, an organization that had been heavily involved in the scandal. Questions were asked about whether Bush was the man who had organized the Iran-Contra deal. If so, he would have had to have worked very closely with the CIA. Journalists therefore investigated Bush’s relationship with the CIA. They discovered that throughout 1980 he had been having regular meetings with Ted Shackley.

A former senior CIA officer, John Murray, suggested that Shackley had some sort of control over Bush. He suspected it was something to do with illegal covert activities that had been carried out when Bush was director of the CIA. (pages 317-318, David Corn, Blind Ghost)

Shackley also had a deep hatred for Jimmy Carter. He told friends that if Ford defeated Carter in 1976, he would be appointed as director of the CIA. Instead of that, Carter won and blocked him from further promotion and he was forced to retire from the service in 1979.

Journalist discovered that Shackley and Bush continued to have a close relationship after he left the agency in 1979. They met on a regular basis during Bush’s attempts to become the Republican presidential candidate. (His wife, Hazel Shackley, even worked for Bush during this period).

In March, 1980, a CIA asset, Michael Ledeen, wrote an article suggesting that Stansfield Turner had been mismanaging the CIA and that if Bush won in November, Shackley would become the new head of the agency (New York Magazine, 3rd March, 1980).

In August, 1980, Reagan selected Bush as his running-mate. Shackley’s meetings with Bush now became more frequent. In an interview with David Corn, Chi Chi Quintero told him that during the campaign, Bush was meeting Shackley “every week” (page 358, David Corn, Blind Ghost).

In October, 1980, Shackley joined the company owned by Albert Hakim (he was paid $5,000 a month as a part-time “risk analyst”). It seems that Hakim was keen to use Shackley’s contacts to make money out of the Iran-Iraq War that had started the previous month. This just happens to be the same time that William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign are having meetings with the Iranians in order to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections.

Is it also a coincidence that later Hakim joined forces with Richard Secord and Thomas Clines (Shackley’s former deputy in the CIA) to provide Iran with the weapons as a result of Reagan winning the 1980 presidential election?

Just before the election Michael Ledeen wrote an article claiming that Billy Carter, the President’s brother, had visited Libya in 1979 and accepted from the Qaddafi government a $50,000 payment and a $220,000 loan related to an oil deal (New Republic, 1st November, 1980). It was later revealed that at this time Shackley and Ledeen had become business partners. The story also appears to have come from one of Shackley’s old contacts, Giuseppe Santovito, head of SISMI, the military intelligence service of Italy. It is also at this time that Ledeen arranges for $20,000 to be placed in Shackley’s bank account in Bermuda (page 359, David Corn, Blind Ghost)

It was clear that if Bush was going to survive he had to try to disguise his relationship with Shackley. In fact, to really protect himself, he had to make sure that Shackley was not identified as one of the main organizers of the Iran-Contra deal.

Both the House and Senate set up select committees to investigate the Iran-Contra affair. At first Shackley was seen as a prime suspect. He was a colleague and business partner to the main operators. He had been closely linked to Edwin Wilson (the main reason why Stansfield Turner had brought his career in the CIA to an end). Also, along with Secord, Clines and Quintero, Shackley had been involved in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal (Alfred McCord, The Politics of Heroin: pages 461-478 and Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control, pages 103-104).

Bush was also identified as someone who must have known about the Iran-Contra deal. There was documentary evidence that Bush attended the meeting on 6th August, 1985, when National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane outlined the deal to trade U.S. arms for American hostages held by the Iranians.

Bush also attended the meeting on 7th January, 1986, where George Shultz and Casper Weinberger expressed their opposition to the deal signed the previous day by Reagan to sell TOW missiles in order to win the release of the American hostages.

When asked how he did not know about the Iran deal, Bush claimed: “I may have been out of the room at the time” (page 14, Joel Bainerman, The Crimes of a President).

There was also documentary evidence that Bush attended a meeting with Amiram Nir, Israel’s advisor on terrorism at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 29th July, 1986. Also at the meeting was Bush’s aide, Craig Fuller. He kept notes of the meeting. He reported that Nir told Bush that he had been active throughout the past year “to gain the release of the hostages, and that a decision still had to be made whether the arms desired by the Iranians would be delivered in separate shipments or for each hostage as they are released.” Bush and Reagan did what they could to stop this document being sent to the John Tower investigation. Bush’s first defence was that he could not remember the meeting at King David Hotel. Later, he admitted he did remember it but did not understand what Nir was saying. Amazingly, the Tower Commission believed him.

In a PBS Frontline documentary, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a convicted financier for the Meddellin drug cartel, talked about Felix Rodriguez’s role in the CIA involvement in the drug trade: “If Felix had come to me and said I’m reporting to… Oliver North, I might have been more sceptical. I didn’t know who Oliver North was and I didn’t know his background. But if you have a CIA, or what you consider to be a CIA-man, coming to you saying, ‘I want to fight the war, we’re out of funds, can you help us out? I’m reporting directly to Bush on it,’ I mean it’s very real, very believable, have you have a CIA guy reporting to his old boss.”

According to one report, the first telephone call that Eugene Hasenfus made after his plane was shot down was to Bush’s staff (The Progressive, May, 1987).

Then there was the handwritten note from November from George Bush to Oliver North that thanked him for his “dedication and tireless work with the hostage thing with Central America”. When asked about this note, Bush said “he didn’t recall why he sent it”. As Joel Bainerman pointed: “Why can a doctor be sued for malpractice of his profession but a national leader can just say he forgot, and no further investigation is required” (page 22, The Crimes of a President).

One person whose name appeared on several documents concerning the Iran-Contra affair was Donald Gregg, Bush’s National Security Adviser. Gregg had also been the CIA liaison to the Otis Pike committee. He was a man who Bush believed could keep secrets.

In 1985, Gregg sent Felix Rodriguez (a member of Shackley’s Secret Team) to El Salvador to aid the Contra re-supply effort. General Paul Gorman, the head of U.S. military forces in Central America, wrote a memo to the U.S. ambassador in El Salvador. In it he said: “”Rodriquez is operating as a private citizen but his acquaintanceship to the VP (Bush) is real enough, going back to the latter days of DCI (Director of the CIA)” (The Progressive, March, 1989).

The problem for Bush is that too many people knew about his relationship with Felix Rodriquez (Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control, page 224). Bush was eventually forced to admit that along with Gregg he had met with Felix Rodriguez three times. However, he argued that he had not discussed Nicaragua with him (CBS 60 Minutes, March, 1987). He also defended Gregg’s decision to deny these meetings with Rodriguez. According to Bush, Gregg had not lied, he merely “forgot” about these meetings.

At the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, headed by John Kerry, Richard Brenneke, a CIA operative, claimed that Donald Gregg was the Washington contact for a complicated arms/drugs deal that was part of the Iran-Contra operation. This story was leaked to Newsweek magazine. Bush responded to the story by claiming that it was Kerry who had leaked these “slanderous allegations” to the magazine. Bush added that “this guy whom they are quoting is the guy who is trying to save his own neck” (The Washington Post, 17th May, 1988). This is indeed ridiculous because Brenneke had not been charged with any offence.

Bush’s story eventually became that Gregg was working on his own initiative and that he was unaware of his role in the Iran-Contra affair.

The links between Bush and Shackley failed to go away. The role of Felix Rodriguez was particularly embarrassing as it provided another association with Shackley. The same was true of Chi Chi Quintero, Thomas Clines and Luis Posada. All four men had worked for Shackley since the early 1960s. They had also been active covert operators when Shackley was taking orders from George Bush during the period when he had been director of the CIA. (Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control, pages 121-122, 181-83)

It was reported in the Miami Herald that two men, one an arms dealer and the other a security consultant, had been working for Dr. Mario Castejon, a politician from Guatemala. They told the reporters that Shackley was used as a channel to the Agency regarding the Contra-Iran deals (The Miami Herald, 26th March, 1987).

Shackley denied the story. Congressional investigators did not believe him and sent him a subpoena requesting all documents he had related to various companies and individuals. It was during this period that evidence emerged that Shackley had met General Manucher Hashemi, the former head of SAVAK’s counterintelligence division, and Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, at the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg, on 22nd November, 1985. Shackley had no option to admit to this meeting.

Cameron Holmes, the lead investigator, was convinced that Shackley was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. As he explained when he was interviewed by David Corn: “How could Shackley be the one person in this mob unaware of what was going on? Why was he so insistent he had not picked up a single whiff of the Contra operation or the Iran initiative? There was no crime in knowing. Shackley proclaimed his ignorance too much.” (page 390, David Corn, Blind Ghost).

Holmes was shocked when special counsel Lawrence Walsh decided not to pursue Shackley. He was not even called as a witness. Walsh did not even take Shackley’s deposition until after Congress had finished its hearings on the affair.

However, Thomas Clines told David Corn in 1992 that in 1985 he was purchasing arms for the Contras in Lisbon when he had a call from Richard Secord. He told him that Shackley had suggested that he knew a better arms dealer in Lisbon than the one Clines was using (page 391, David Corn, Blind Ghost). This confirms that Shackley played a role in the Iran-Contra affair. As did Bush. I suspect that it was a leading role but they knew that as long as they stuck together, they would survive. The only possible problem was that their underlings would give evidence against them if they were brought to trial. Thanks to Lawrence Walsh and the George Bush pardons, this never happened.

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Another unexplored area is Ted Shackley's involvement with the Nugan Hand Bank scandal.

In 1971, Edwin Wilson left the CIA to run shipping companies for a secret Navy intelligence organization called Task Force 157. This included World Marine Incorporated in Washington. Wilson also ran this company for his own benefit. In 1973 he earned a $500,000 fee by delivering a spy ship to Iran under the cover of World Marine.

In 1973 Frank Nugan, an Australian lawyer, and Michael Hand, a former CIA contract operative, established the Nugan Hand Bank. Another key figure in this venture was Bernie Houghton, who was closely connected to Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines.

Nugan ran operations in Sydney whereas Hand established a branch in Hong Kong. This enabled Australian depositors to have access to a money-laundering facility for illegal transfers of Australian money to Hong Kong. According to Alfred W. McCoy, the "Hand-Houghton partnership led the bank's international division into new fields - drug finance, arms trading, and support work for CIA covert operations." Hand told friends "it was his ambition that Nugan Hand became banker for the CIA."

In 1974 the Nugan-Hand Bank got involved in helping the CIA to take part in covert arms deals with contacts within Angola. It was at this time that Edwin Wilson became involved with the bank. Two CIA agents based in Indonesia, James Hawes and Robert Moore, called on Wilson at his World Marine offices to discuss "an African arms deal". Later, Bernie Houghton arrived from Sydney to place an order for 10 million rounds of ammunition and 3,000 weapons including machine guns. The following year Houghton asked Wilson to arrange for World Marine to purchase a high-technology spy ship. This ship was then sold to Iran.

By 1976 the Nugan-Hand Bank appeared to have become a CIA-fronted company. This is reflected in the type of people recruited to hold senior positions in the bank. This included Admiral Earl Yates, retired chief strategist of the U.S. Pacific Command, as president. Other appointments included William Colby, retired director of the CIA, General Leroy J. Manor, the former chief of staff of the U.S. Pacific Command, General Edwin F. Black, former commander of U.S. forces in Thailand, Walter McDonald, retired CIA deputy director for economic research and Dale Holmgren, former chairman of the CIA's Civil Air Transport.

The investigative journalist, Jonathan Kwitny, became convinced that the Nugan-Hand Bank had replaced the Castle Bank & Trust of Nassau, as the CIA's covert banker. Former CIA agent, Kevin Mulcahy later told the National Times newspaper "about the Agency's use of Nugan Hand for shifting money for various covert operations around the globe."

Castle Bank had itself been closed down as a result of an IRS investigation. This came to an end as a result of pressure being applied on the IRS. According to the Wall Street Journal, “pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency… caused the Justice Department to drop what could have been the biggest tax evasion case of all time.”

In February 1976, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, the new head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, discovered that Edwin Wilson was involved in some dubious undercover business deals. A few months later Wilson was asked to leave the ONI. Wilson continued to run the CIA-fronted companies he had established. The largest of these was Consultants International and over the next few years amassed a fortune of over $20 million. This enabled him to buy a 2,338-acre farm in Northern Virginia, where he often entertained his close friends, Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines.

Much of his money was made in the arms trade. His most important customer was Moammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya. Wilson claimed that it was Ted Shackley of the CIA who first suggested he should go to Libya. Wilson got contracts to sell Libya army uniforms, ammunition, explosive timers and 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives.

In 1976 Wilson recruited Raphael Quintero to kill a Libyan dissident in Egypt. Quintero selected two brothers, Rafael and Raoul Villaverde, to carry out the killing. However, the killing was later called off.

One of the men Wilson employed was former CIA officer Kevin Mulcahy. He became concerned about Wilson's illegal activities and reported them to the CIA. However, Ted Shackley, Deputy Director of Operations, was initially able to block any internal investigation of Wilson. However, in April, 1977, The Washington Post, published an article on Wilson's activities stating that he may be getting support from "current CIA employees". Admiral Stansfield Turner, Jimmy Carter’s new director of the CIA, ordered an investigation and discovered that both Shackley and Clines had close relationships with Wilson. Turner demoted both men.

In 1978 Clines left the CIA. He now joined with Raphael Quintero and Ricardo Chavez (another former CIA operative) to establish API Distributors. According to David Corn (Blond Ghost) Edwin Wilson provided Clines with "half a million dollars to get his business empire going". In 1979 Clines established International Research and Trade Limited in Bermuda. Later that year he joined forces with Hussein Salem in providing U.S. military hardware to Egypt.

After leaving the CIA in September, 1979, Ted Shackley formed his own company, Research Associates International, which specialized in providing intelligence to business. He was also given consulting work with API Distributors, the company established by Clines, Quintero, and Chavez.

According to Alfred W. McCoy (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade): "Throughout 1979 the Wilson network and the Nugan Hand Bank began to build a close commercial alliance in the netherworld of national security subcontracting". Shackley and Clines were also drawn into a relationship with the Nugan Hand Bank. Michael Hand wrote to Shackley on 27th November, 1979, suggesting a business meeting. Hand's latter also referred to Bernie Houghton, who had worked for Shackley in Vietnam.

Michael Hand probably wanted to talk about Edwin Wilson. In 1979 a Washington grand jury began gathering incriminating evidence about his illegal arms sales. To avoid arrest he moved to London. In the winter of 1979, Wilson had a meeting with Bernie Houghton and Thomas Clines in Switzerland in an attempt to help him out of his difficulties. This included a non-delivery of 5,000 M16 automatic rifles to Libya. The three men discussed ways of using the Nugan Hand Bank to float a $22 million loan to finance the delivery. Hand was obviously concerned that if Wilson was arrested he might begin talking about his dealings with the Nugan Hand Bank.

Michael Hand also had talks with William Colby, the former director of the CIA. It is not known what was discussed at this meeting but Colby submitted a bill to Nugan Hand Bank for $45,684 for his legal advice.

On 27th January, 1980 Frank Nugan was found dead in his car. Bernie Houghton was in Switzerland at the time and he immediately rang his branch office in Saudi Arabia and ordered the staff to leave the country. Houghton also visited Edwin Wilson's office in Switzerland and left a briefcase with bank documents for safekeeping. Soon afterwards, a witness saw Thomas Clines going through the briefcase at Wilson's office and remove papers that referred to him and General Richard Secord.

Two days after Nugan died, Michael Hand held a meeting of Nugan Hand Bank directors. He warned them that unless they did as they were told they could "finish up with concrete shoes" and would be "liable to find their wives being delivered to them in pieces".

According to one witness, Thomas G. Clines helped Bernie Houghton escape from Australia. Michael Hand also left the country accompanied by James O. Spencer, a man who served with Ted Shackley in Laos. The two men travelled to America via Fiji and Vancouver. Hand then disappeared and has never been seen again.

The Australian authorities were forced to investigate the bank. They discovered that Ricardo Chavez, the former CIA operative who was co-owner of API Distributors with Thomas Clines and Raphael Quintero, was attempting to take control of the bank. The Corporate Affairs Commission of New South Wales came to the conclusion that Chavez was working on behalf of Clines, Quintero and Wilson.

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Shackley told Bush that Carter was attempting to negotiate a deal with Iran to get the American hostages released. This was disastrous news for the Reagan/Bush campaign. If Carter got the hostages out before the election, the public perception of the man might change and he might be elected for a second-term.

According to Barbara Honegger, a researcher and policy analyst with the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign, William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal at two sets of meetings in July and August at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections.

I wasn't aware of this part of the story. Is there evidence that Shackley told Bush what was up? My understanding was that it was Robert MacFarlane who sold out Carter, much as it was Henry Kissinger who sold out Johnson in 68.

When information about the Iran-Contra scandal first emerged in 1986, both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were in serious trouble. The fact that it happened could not be denied. The issue then became very similar to Watergate: “What did he know, and when did he know it.” Reagan’s story was that he was kept in the dark about the whole event. The American public went along with this story. Some commentators believe this was psychological. Democracy would have been completely undermined if it had been confirmed that two presidents in a short period of time had been involved in illegal activities and had lied about it.

Bush was another matter. He was only the vice president and it would not be traumatic for the country to see him impeached. For example, remember the response when Spiro Agnew was forced to resign? Bush was also more likely candidate than Regan to have come up with this idea. Bush had been a former director of the CIA, an organization that had been heavily involved in the scandal. Questions were asked about whether Bush was the man who had organized the Iran-Contra deal. If so, he would have had to have worked very closely with the CIA. Journalists therefore investigated Bush’s relationship with the CIA. They discovered that throughout 1980 he had been having regular meetings with Ted Shackley.

A former senior CIA officer, John Murray, suggested that Shackley had some sort of control over Bush. He suspected it was something to do with illegal covert activities that had been carried out when Bush was director of the CIA. (pages 317-318, David Corn, Blind Ghost)

Shackley also had a deep hatred for Jimmy Carter. He told friends that if Ford defeated Carter in 1976, he would be appointed as director of the CIA. Instead of that, Carter won and blocked him from further promotion and he was forced to retire from the service in 1979.

Journalist discovered that Shackley and Bush continued to have a close relationship after he left the agency in 1979. They met on a regular basis during Bush’s attempts to become the Republican presidential candidate. (His wife, Hazel Shackley, even worked for Bush during this period).

In March, 1980, a CIA asset, Michael Ledeen, wrote an article suggesting that Stansfield Turner had been mismanaging the CIA and that if Bush won in November, Shackley would become the new head of the agency (New York Magazine, 3rd March, 1980).

In August, 1980, Reagan selected Bush as his running-mate. Shackley’s meetings with Bush now became more frequent. In an interview with David Corn, Chi Chi Quintero told him that during the campaign, Bush was meeting Shackley “every week” (page 358, David Corn, Blind Ghost).

In October, 1980, Shackley joined the company owned by Albert Hakim (he was paid $5,000 a month as a part-time “risk analyst”). It seems that Hakim was keen to use Shackley’s contacts to make money out of the Iran-Iraq War that had started the previous month. This just happens to be the same time that William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign are having meetings with the Iranians in order to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections.

Is it also a coincidence that later Hakim joined forces with Richard Secord and Thomas Clines (Shackley’s former deputy in the CIA) to provide Iran with the weapons as a result of Reagan winning the 1980 presidential election?

Just before the election Michael Ledeen wrote an article claiming that Billy Carter, the President’s brother, had visited Libya in 1979 and accepted from the Qaddafi government a $50,000 payment and a $220,000 loan related to an oil deal (New Republic, 1st November, 1980). It was later revealed that at this time Shackley and Ledeen had become business partners. The story also appears to have come from one of Shackley’s old contacts, Giuseppe Santovito, head of SISMI, the military intelligence service of Italy. It is also at this time that Ledeen arranges for $20,000 to be placed in Shackley’s bank account in Bermuda (page 359, David Corn, Blind Ghost)

It was clear that if Bush was going to survive he had to try to disguise his relationship with Shackley. In fact, to really protect himself, he had to make sure that Shackley was not identified as one of the main organizers of the Iran-Contra deal.

Both the House and Senate set up select committees to investigate the Iran-Contra affair. At first Shackley was seen as a prime suspect. He was a colleague and business partner to the main operators. He had been closely linked to Edwin Wilson (the main reason why Stansfield Turner had brought his career in the CIA to an end). Also, along with Secord, Clines and Quintero, Shackley had been involved in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal (Alfred McCord, The Politics of Heroin: pages 461-478 and Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control, pages 103-104).

Bush was also identified as someone who must have known about the Iran-Contra deal. There was documentary evidence that Bush attended the meeting on 6th August, 1985, when National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane outlined the deal to trade U.S. arms for American hostages held by the Iranians.

Bush also attended the meeting on 7th January, 1986, where George Shultz and Casper Weinberger expressed their opposition to the deal signed the previous day by Reagan to sell TOW missiles in order to win the release of the American hostages.

When asked how he did not know about the Iran deal, Bush claimed: “I may have been out of the room at the time” (page 14, Joel Bainerman, The Crimes of a President).

There was also documentary evidence that Bush attended a meeting with Amiram Nir, Israel’s advisor on terrorism at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 29th July, 1986. Also at the meeting was Bush’s aide, Craig Fuller. He kept notes of the meeting. He reported that Nir told Bush that he had been active throughout the past year “to gain the release of the hostages, and that a decision still had to be made whether the arms desired by the Iranians would be delivered in separate shipments or for each hostage as they are released.” Bush and Reagan did what they could to stop this document being sent to the John Tower investigation. Bush’s first defence was that he could not remember the meeting at King David Hotel. Later, he admitted he did remember it but did not understand what Nir was saying. Amazingly, the Tower Commission believed him.

In a PBS Frontline documentary, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a convicted financier for the Meddellin drug cartel, talked about Felix Rodriguez’s role in the CIA involvement in the drug trade: “If Felix had come to me and said I’m reporting to… Oliver North, I might have been more sceptical. I didn’t know who Oliver North was and I didn’t know his background. But if you have a CIA, or what you consider to be a CIA-man, coming to you saying, ‘I want to fight the war, we’re out of funds, can you help us out? I’m reporting directly to Bush on it,’ I mean it’s very real, very believable, have you have a CIA guy reporting to his old boss.”

According to one report, the first telephone call that Eugene Hasenfus made after his plane was shot down was to Bush’s staff (The Progressive, May, 1987).

Then there was the handwritten note from November from George Bush to Oliver North that thanked him for his “dedication and tireless work with the hostage thing with Central America”. When asked about this note, Bush said “he didn’t recall why he sent it”. As Joel Bainerman pointed: “Why can a doctor be sued for malpractice of his profession but a national leader can just say he forgot, and no further investigation is required” (page 22, The Crimes of a President).

One person whose name appeared on several documents concerning the Iran-Contra affair was Donald Gregg, Bush’s National Security Adviser. Gregg had also been the CIA liaison to the Otis Pike committee. He was a man who Bush believed could keep secrets.

In 1985, Gregg sent Felix Rodriguez (a member of Shackley’s Secret Team) to El Salvador to aid the Contra re-supply effort. General Paul Gorman, the head of U.S. military forces in Central America, wrote a memo to the U.S. ambassador in El Salvador. In it he said: “”Rodriquez is operating as a private citizen but his acquaintanceship to the VP (Bush) is real enough, going back to the latter days of DCI (Director of the CIA)” (The Progressive, March, 1989).

The problem for Bush is that too many people knew about his relationship with Felix Rodriquez (Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control, page 224). Bush was eventually forced to admit that along with Gregg he had met with Felix Rodriguez three times. However, he argued that he had not discussed Nicaragua with him (CBS 60 Minutes, March, 1987). He also defended Gregg’s decision to deny these meetings with Rodriguez. According to Bush, Gregg had not lied, he merely “forgot” about these meetings.

At the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, headed by John Kerry, Richard Brenneke, a CIA operative, claimed that Donald Gregg was the Washington contact for a complicated arms/drugs deal that was part of the Iran-Contra operation. This story was leaked to Newsweek magazine. Bush responded to the story by claiming that it was Kerry who had leaked these “slanderous allegations” to the magazine. Bush added that “this guy whom they are quoting is the guy who is trying to save his own neck” (The Washington Post, 17th May, 1988). This is indeed ridiculous because Brenneke had not been charged with any offence.

Bush’s story eventually became that Gregg was working on his own initiative and that he was unaware of his role in the Iran-Contra affair.

The links between Bush and Shackley failed to go away. The role of Felix Rodriguez was particularly embarrassing as it provided another association with Shackley. The same was true of Chi Chi Quintero, Thomas Clines and Luis Posada. All four men had worked for Shackley since the early 1960s. They had also been active covert operators when Shackley was taking orders from George Bush during the period when he had been director of the CIA. (Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control, pages 121-122, 181-83)

It was reported in the Miami Herald that two men, one an arms dealer and the other a security consultant, had been working for Dr. Mario Castejon, a politician from Guatemala. They told the reporters that Shackley was used as a channel to the Agency regarding the Contra-Iran deals (The Miami Herald, 26th March, 1987).

Shackley denied the story. Congressional investigators did not believe him and sent him a subpoena requesting all documents he had related to various companies and individuals. It was during this period that evidence emerged that Shackley had met General Manucher Hashemi, the former head of SAVAK’s counterintelligence division, and Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, at the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg, on 22nd November, 1985. Shackley had no option to admit to this meeting.

Cameron Holmes, the lead investigator, was convinced that Shackley was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. As he explained when he was interviewed by David Corn: “How could Shackley be the one person in this mob unaware of what was going on? Why was he so insistent he had not picked up a single whiff of the Contra operation or the Iran initiative? There was no crime in knowing. Shackley proclaimed his ignorance too much.” (page 390, David Corn, Blind Ghost).

Holmes was shocked when special counsel Lawrence Walsh decided not to pursue Shackley. He was not even called as a witness. Walsh did not even take Shackley’s deposition until after Congress had finished its hearings on the affair.

However, Thomas Clines told David Corn in 1992 that in 1985 he was purchasing arms for the Contras in Lisbon when he had a call from Richard Secord. He told him that Shackley had suggested that he knew a better arms dealer in Lisbon than the one Clines was using (page 391, David Corn, Blind Ghost). This confirms that Shackley played a role in the Iran-Contra affair. As did Bush. I suspect that it was a leading role but they knew that as long as they stuck together, they would survive. The only possible problem was that their underlings would give evidence against them if they were brought to trial. Thanks to Lawrence Walsh and the George Bush pardons, this never happened.

From previous above:

"... At the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, headed by John Kerry, Richard Brenneke, a CIA operative, claimed that Donald Gregg was the Washington contact for a complicated arms/drugs deal that was part of the Iran-Contra operation. This story was leaked to Newsweek magazine. Bush responded to the story by claiming that it was Kerry who had leaked these “slanderous allegations” to the magazine. Bush added that “this guy whom they are quoting is the guy who is trying to save his own neck” (The Washington Post, 17th May, 1988). This is indeed ridiculous because Brenneke had not been charged with any offence. ..".

John. I think it is importante to note during this time frame Senator Gary Hart and other Senators and Congressmen were trying to get the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate many reports that had came from Undercover Operatives long before matters had rose to this level. The first report to the Senate was in 1983 and others in 1984, 85, 86, and 1988. In all cases these investigations were blocked by the Regan/Bush White House and the CIA on grounds of "National Security", and exposing "ongoing operations', thus harming the undercover operations..., or harming these specialized White House operations controled by the NSC without knowledge of the Senate or Congress.

More than one military UC operative, CIA, and DEA, reported this specialized White House Operation to proper authorites. In Fact, I talked with Ty West and Leslie Cockburn about this matter in 1985 as well as Senator Hart in 1983. (ref; Out of Control, as well as 60 Min; see letter from Senator Hart ref; 1983-86 operations)

For whatever reasons the Senate and the Congress did not want to address these matters even tho they had received documented reports dating as far back as 1981 concerning specialized operations being secretely conducted by the White House and the NSC.. I think this is an important point to keep in mind.

Many people put their lives and carrers on the line in their early contacts with government oversight committees concerning "Top Secret" matters of the time. (ref; Senator Harts letter has recently been posted on this forum)

Tosh

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If Ted Shackley was so good at covert funding, would it be safe to assume that he was directing the Nugan Hand machinations?

Fianally, I was wondering if there are any connections with Nugan Hand and later financing adventures such as Iran Contra, and especially BCCI. I mean connections beyond Shackley and Clines involvement in both.

Are there any other lines of continuity?

The Nugan Hand Bank started carrying out its CIA work in 1976. Shackley was Deputy Director of Operations at the time. He therefore was second-in-command of all CIA covert activity. Given his close association with people like Michael Hand, Bernie Houghton and Edwin Wilson, Shackley is the prime suspect. Thomas Clines was probably the field officer (he seems to have played a major role in the clean-up operation). However, it is unlikely that Shackley would have used Nugan Hand as the CIA banker without the approval of the director of the CIA. Who was the director of the CIA in 1976? George Herbert Walker Bush.

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  • 3 months later...

I argued on other threads that as a result of the assassination certain aspects of John F. Kennedy’s policies were brought to a halt. This included plans to end the oil depletion allowance, investigations into government corruption (TFX and Bobby Baker scandals), secret negotiations with Fidel Castro, the refusal to start a war in Vietnam and an unwillingness to support anti-democratic military dictators in the America. I have attempted to show that all these decisions benefited the Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Complex (MICIC).

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

Although the MICIC had a good motive for killing Kennedy, it is much more difficult to show how this was organized. A considerable amount of evidence has emerged to indicate that anti-Castro Cubans working for the CIA were involved in the assassination. This in itself was linked to CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Gaeton Fonzi has argued convincingly in The Last Investigation that CIA officers, David Atlee Phillips and David Morales were involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Fonzi discovered that in 1963 Morales was head of operations at JM/WAVE, the CIA Miami station. (1) JM/WAVE chief was Ted Shackley and his top deputy was Tom Clines. As Warren Hinckle and William Turner were to point out in Deadly Secrets, Operation 40 the “ultra secret… assassins-for-hire” program was based at the JM/WAVE station. (2)

An account of the formation of Operation 40 can be found in the Senate Report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. On 11th December, 1959, Colonel J. C. King, chief of CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, sent a confidential memorandum to Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. King argued that in Cuba there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries." (3)

As a result of this memorandum Dulles established Operation 40. It obtained this name because originally there were 40 agents involved in the operation. Later this was expanded to 70 agents. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon. Tracy Barnes became operating officer of what was also called the Cuban Task Force. The first meeting chaired by Barnes took place in his office on 18th January, 1960, and was attended by David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Jack Esterline and Frank Bender.

According to Fabian Escalante, a senior officer of the Cuban Department of State Security (G-2), in 1960 Richard Nixon recruited an "important group of businessmen headed by George Bush (Snr.) and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, to gather the necessary funds for the operation". This suggests that Operation 40 agents were involved in freelance work. (4)

In 1990 Common Cause magazine argued that: "The CIA put millionaire and agent George Bush in charge of recruiting exiled Cubans for the CIA’s invading army; Bush was working with another Texan oil magnate, Jack Crichton, who helped him in terms of the invasion." (5) This story was linked to the release of "a memorandum in that context addressed to FBI chief J. Edward Hoover and signed November 1963, which reads: Mr. George Bush of the CIA" (6)

Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo claim that in 1959 George Bush was asked “to cooperate in funding the nascent anti-Castro groups that the CIA decided to create”. The man “assigned to him for his new mission” was Féliz Rodríguez. (7)

Daniel Hopsicker also takes the view that Operation 40 involved private funding. In the book, Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History, he claims that Nixon’s had established Operation 40 as a result of pressure from American corporations which had suffered at the hands of Fidel Castro. (8)

Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin have argued that Bush was very close to members of Operation 40 in the early 1960s. In September, 1963, Bush launched his Senate campaign. At that time, right-wing Republicans were calling on John Kennedy to take a more aggressive approach towards Fidel Castro. For example, in one speech Barry Goldwater said: “I advocate the recognition of a Cuban government in exile and would encourage this government every way to reclaim its country. This means financial and military assistance.” Bush took a more extreme position than Goldwater and called for a “new government-in-exile invasion of Cuba”. As Tarpley and Chaitkin point out, beneficiaries of this policy would have been “Theodore Shackley, who was by now the station chief of CIA Miami Station, Felix Rodriguez, Chi Chi Quintero, and the rest of the boys” from Operation 40. (9)

Paul Kangas is another investigator who has claimed that George Bush was involved with members of Operation 40. In an article published in The Realist in 1990, Kangas claims: "Among other members of the CIA recruited by George Bush for (the attacks on Cuba) were Frank Sturgis, Howard Hunt, Bernard Baker and Rafael Quintero.” In an article published in Granma in January, 2006, the journalists Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo argued that “Another of Bush’s recruits for the Bay of Pigs invasion, Rafael Quintero, who was also part of this underworld of organizations and conspiracies against Cuba, stated: If I was to tell what I know about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the greatest scandal that has ever rocked the nation." (10)

Fabian Escalante names William Pawley as being one of those who was lobbying for the CIA to assassinate Castro. (11) Escalante points out that Pawley had played a similar role in the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala. Interestingly, the CIA assembled virtually the same team that was involved in the removal of Arbenz: Tracey Barnes, Richard Bissell, David Morales, David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Rip Robertson and Henry Hecksher. Added to this list was several agents who had been involved in undercover operations in Germany: Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and William Harvey.

According to Daniel Hopsicker, Edwin Wilson, Barry Seal, William Seymour, Frank Sturgis and Gerry Hemming were also involved in Operation 40. (12) It has also been pointed out that Operation 40 was not only involved in trying to overthrow Fidel Castro. Frank Sturgis has claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents."

Virtually every one of the field agents of Operation 40 were Cubans. This included Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero, Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, Roland Masferrer, Eladio del Valle, Guillermo Novo, Carlos Bringuier, Eugenio Martinez, Antonio Cuesta, Hermino Diaz Garcia, Felix Ismael Rodriguez, Antonio Veciana, Juan Manuel Salvat, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Isidro Borjas, Virgilio Paz, Jose Dionisio Suarez, Felipe Rivero, Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, Nazario Sargent, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, Jose Basulto, and Paulino Sierra. (13)

Most of these characters had been associated with the far-right in Cuban politics. Rumours soon became circulating that it was not only Fidel Castro that was being targeted. On 9th June, 1961, Arthur Schlesinger sent a memo to Richard Goodwin:

“Sam Halper, who has been the Times correspondent in Havana and more recently in Miami, came to see me last week. He has excellent contracts among the Cuban exiles. One of Miro's comments this morning reminded me that I have been meaning to pass on the following story as told me by Halper. Halper says that CIA set up something called Operation 40 under the direction of a man named (as he recalled) Captain Luis Sanjenis, who was also chief of intelligence. (Could this be the man to whom Miro referred this morning?) It was called Operation 40 because originally only 40 men were involved: later the group was enlarged to 70. The ostensible purpose of Operation 40 was to administer liberated territories in Cuba. But the CIA agent in charge, a man known as Felix, trained the members of the group in methods of third degree interrogation, torture and general terrorism. The liberal Cuban exiles believe that the real purpose of Operation 40 was to "kill Communists" and, after eliminating hard-core Fidelistas, to go on to eliminate first the followers of Ray, then the followers of Varona and finally to set up a right wing dictatorship, presumably under Artime.” (14)

In an interview he gave to Jean-Guy Allard in May, 2005, Fabian Escalante pointed out: “Who in 1963 had the resources to assassinate Kennedy? Who had the means and who had the motives to kill the U.S. president? CIA agents from Operation 40 who were rabidly anti-Kennedy. And among them were Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Antonio Veciana and Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia." (15)

This is not the first time that Fabian Escalante has pointed the finger at members of Operation 40. In December, 1995, Wayne Smith, chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged a meeting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Noel Twyman, Anthony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, John Newman, Alan Rogers, Russ Swickard, Ed Sherry, and Gordon Winslow. During a session on 7th December, Escalante claimed that during captivity, Antonio Cuesta, confessed that he had been involved in the assassination of Kennedy. He also named Eladio Del Valle, Rolando Masferrer and Hermino Diaz Garcia as being involved in this operation. All four men were members of Operation 40. (16)

It has been argued that people like Fabian Escalante, Jean Guy Allard, Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo are under the control of the Cuban government. It is definitely true that much of this information has originally been published in Granma, the newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party.

Is there any other evidence to suggest that members of Operation 40 were involved in the assassination? I believe that there are several pieces of evidence that help to substantiate Escalante’s theory.

Shortly before his death in 1975 John Martino confessed to a Miami Newsday reporter, John Cummings, that he had been guilty of spreading false stories implicating Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of Kennedy. He claimed that two of the gunmen were Cuban exiles. It is believed the two men were Herminio Diaz Garcia and Virgilio Gonzalez. Cummings added: "He told me he'd been part of the assassination of Kennedy. He wasn't in Dallas pulling a trigger, but he was involved. He implied that his role was delivering money, facilitating things.... He asked me not to write it while he was alive." (17)

Fred Claasen also told the House Select Committee on Assassinations what he knew about his business partner’s involvement in the case. Martino told Classen: “The anti-Castro people put Oswald together. Oswald didn’t know who he was working for – he was just ignorant of who was really putting him together. Oswald was to meet his contact at the Texas Theatre. They were to meet Oswald in the theatre, and get him out of the country, then eliminate him. Oswald made a mistake… There was no way we could get to him. They had Ruby kill him.” (18)

Florence Martino at first refused to corroborate the story. However, in 1994 she told Anthony Summers that her husband said to her on the morning of 22nd November, 1963: "Flo, they're going to kill him (Kennedy). They're going to kill him when he gets to Texas." (19)

Herminio Diaz Garcia and Virgilio Gonzalez were both members of Operation 40. So also was Rip Robertson who according to Anthony Summers “was a familiar face at his (John Martino) home. Summers also points out that Martino was close to William Pawley and both took part in the “Bayo-Pawley Affair”. (20) This anti-Castro mission, also known as Operation Tilt, also involved other members of Operation 40, including Virgilio Gonzalez and Eugenio Martinez.

There is another key CIA figure in Operation 40 who has made a confession concerning the assassination of John Kennedy. David Morales was head of operations at JM/WAVE, the CIA Miami station, at the time of the assassination. Gaeton Fonzi carried out a full investigation of Morales while working for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Unfortunately, Morales could not testify before the HSCA because he died of a heart attack on 8th May, 1978.

Fonzi tracked down Ruben Carbajal, a very close friend of Morales. Carbajal saw Morales the night before he died. He also visited Morales in hospital when he received news of the heart attack. Carbajal is convinced that Morales was killed by the CIA. Morales had told Carbajal the agency would do this if you posed a threat to covert operations. Morales, a heavy drinker, had a reputation for being indiscreet when intoxicated. On 4th August 1973, Morales allowed himself to be photographed by Kevin Scofield of the Arizona Republic at the El Molino restaurant. When the photograph appeared in the newspaper the following day, it identified Morales as Director for Operations Counterinsurgency and Special Activities in Washington.

Carbajal put Fonzi in contact with Bob Walton, a business associate of Morales. Walton confirmed Carbajal’s account that Morales feared being killed by the CIA. On one occasion he told him: “I know too much”. Walton also told him about a discussion he had with Morales about John F. Kennedy in the spring of 1973. Walton had done some volunteer work for Kennedy’s Senatorial campaign. When hearing this news, Morales launched an attack on Kennedy, describing him as a wimp who had betrayed the anti-Castro Cubans at the Bay of Pigs. He ended up by saying: “Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn’t we?” Carbajal, who was also present at this meeting, confirmed Walton’s account of what Morales said. (21)

Another important piece of evidence comes from Gene Wheaton. In 1995 Gene Wheaton approached the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) with information on the death of Kennedy. Anne Buttimer, Chief Investigator of the ARRB, recorded that: " Wheaton told me that from 1984 to 1987 he spent a lot of time in the Washington DC area and that starting in 1985 he was "recruited into Ollie North's network" by the CIA officer he has information about. He got to know this man and his wife, a "'super grade high level CIA officer" and kept a bedroom in their Virginia home. His friend was a Marine Corps liaison in New Orleans and was the CIA contact with Carlos Marcello. He had been responsible for "running people into Cuba before the Bay of Pigs." His friend is now 68 or 69 years of age... Over the course of a year or a year and one-half his friend told him about his activities with training Cuban insurgency groups. Wheaton said he also got to know many of the Cubans who had been his friend's soldiers/operatives when the Cubans visited in Virginia from their homes in Miami. His friend and the Cubans confirmed to Wheaton they assassinated JFK. Wheaton's friend said he trained the Cubans who pulled the triggers. Wheaton said the street level Cubans felt JFK was a traitor after the Bay of Pigs and wanted to kill him. People "above the Cubans" wanted JFK killed for other reasons." (22)

It was later revealed that Wheaton's friend was Carl E. Jenkins, A senior CIA officer, Jenkins had been appointed in 1960 as Chief of Base for Cuban Project. In 1963 Jenkins provided paramilitary training for Manuel Artime and Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero and other members of the Movement for the Recovery of the Revolution (MRR). In an interview with William Law and Mark Sobel in the summer of 2005, Gene Wheaton claimed that Jenkins and Quintero were both involved in the assassination of Kennedy.

It seems that members of Operation 40, originally recruited to remove Fidel Castro, had been redirected to kill Kennedy. That someone had paid this team of assassins to kill the president of the United States as part of a freelance operation. This is not such a far-fetched idea when you consider that in 1959 Richard Nixon was approaching oilmen like George Walker Bush and Jack Crichton to help fund Operation 40. We also have the claim of Frank Sturgis that "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents."

Further support for this theory comes from an unlikely source. David Atlee Phillips died of cancer on 7th July, 1988. He left behind an unpublished manuscript. The novel is about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City. In the novel the character states: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt." (23)

The issue is whether Operation 40 remained active after 1963. Is it possible that a network of CIA agents, right-wing businessmen linked to the arms and oil industries and Cuban exiles continued to work together in the interests of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Intelligence Complex?

I would suggest that the following people were key members of Operation 40 who need to be looked at very carefully:

CIA Officers: Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Tracy Barnes, David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, Rip Robertson, E. Howard Hunt, Jack Esterline, Carl E. Jenkins, Frank Bender (Gerry Droller), William Harvey, Daniel Hopsicker, William C. Bishop and Edwin Wilson.

Assassins: Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero, Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, Roland Masferrer, Eladio del Valle, Guillermo Novo, Eugenio Martinez, Antonio Cuesta, Hermino Diaz Garcia, Felix Rodriguez, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard L. Barker and Frank Sturgis.

In January 1966, Desmond FitzGerald, who was now in control of Cuban operations, sent Ted Shackley to be chief of station in Laos. His orders was to create a secret army against the North Vietnamese. (24) As Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, pointed out to Shackley, that while in Laos his primary concern was to help the United States win the war in Vietnam. (25)

Souvanna Phouma had become head of a coalition government in Laos in 1962. This included the appointment of the left-leaning Quinim Pholsema as Foreign Minister. Kennedy supported Phouma as it reflected his desire for all-party coalition governments in the underdeveloped world.

On 1st April, 1963, this policy suffered a tremendous blow when Quinim Pholsema, the left-wing Foreign Minister, was assassinated. As David Kaiser has pointed out: “In light of subsequent revelations about CIA assassination plots, this episode inevitably arouses some suspicion.” (26)

This assassination led to a break-up of the coalition government in Laos. The CIA now began funding General Vang Pao and Hmong tribesman in their war with the Pathet Lao. A CIA report explained why the Hmong were willing to fight the communists in Laos: “Primary it is economic and rests on their determination… to protect their homeland and their opium-rich poppy fields from outside incursions.” (27)

Vang Pao was in fact a major figure in the opium trade in Southeast Asia. In order to defeat communism in Laos, the CIA was willing to help Vang Pao distribute opium. As Alfred W. McCoy pointed out in The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, the “CIA adopted a complicitous posture toward the traffic, allowing the Hmong commander, General Vang Pao, to use the CIA’s Air America to collect opium from his scattered highland villages.” (28)

A few months after becoming chief of station in Laos, Shackley appointed his old friend, Thomas G. Clines, as base chief in Long Tieng, in northern Laos. (29) David Morales was put in charge of Pakse, a black operations base focused on political paramilitary action within Laos. Pakse was used to launch military operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trial. (30) Other former members of Operation 40 who moved to Laos included Carl E. Jenkins, Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez and Edwin Wilson. (31)

In 1967 Shackley and Clines helped Vang Pao to obtain financial backing to form his own airline company, Zieng Khouang Air Transport (ZKAT). This was a combined CIA and USAID (United States Agency for International Development) operation. Two C-47s were acquired from Air America and Continental Air Services. These aircraft were used by Vang Pao to transport opium and heroin between Long Tieng and Vientiane. (32)

According to a report published in 1988: “Vang Pao’s officers and agents of Shackley and Clines flew to scattered Hmong villages offering guns, rice and money in exchange for recruits.” (33) By 1968, Vang Pao’s Hmong army had grown to “40,000 soldiers, mostly local defence forces, but about 15,000 grouped in Special Guerrilla Units”. (34)

The growth in Vang Pao’s army helped him to dominate the trade in opium in Laos. Joel Bainerman claims that “Shackley, Clines and Richard Secord helped Pao control Laos’ opium trade by sabotaging competitors”. In 1968 “Shackley and Clines arranged a meeting in Saigon between Mafia chief Santo Trafficante, Jr., and Vang Pao to establish a heroin-smuggling operation from Southeast Asia to the United States.” (35)

Notes

1. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, 1993 (pages 366-371)

2. Warren Hinckle & William Turner, Deadly Secrets, 1992 (page 53)

3. Senate Report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 1975 (page 92)

4. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-1962: The Cuba Project, 2004 (pages 42 and 43)

5. Common Cause Magazine (4th March, 1990)

6. The Nation magazine (13th August, 1988)

7. Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo, Granma (16th January, 2006)

8. Daniel Hopsicker, Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History, 2001 (page 170)

9. Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, 2004 (page 173)

10. Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo, Granma (16th January, 2006)

11. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-1962: The Cuba Project, 2004 (pages 42 and 43)

12. Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Morning News (24th August, 2004)

13. Jean-Guy Allard, Granma (22nd May, 2005)

14. Arthur Schlesinger, memo to Richard Goodwin (9th June, 1961)

15. Jean-Guy Allard, Granma (22nd May, 2005)

16. Fabian Escalante, Centre for International Policy, Nassau, Bahamas (7th December, 1995)

17. Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked, 2003 (page 17)

18. Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 2002 (page 328)

19. Anthony and Robbyn Summers, The Ghosts of November, Vanity Fair (December, 1994)

20. Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 2002 (page 326)

21. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, 1993 (pages 380-390)

22. Anne Buttimer, Assassination Records Review Board Report (12th July, 1995)

23. Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 2002 (page 371)

24. Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men, 1995 (page 28)

25. Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA, 2005 (page 103)

26. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 198)

27. David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA Crusades, 1994 (page 129)

28. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, 1991 (page 19)

29. Christopher Robbins, The Ravens: The Men Who Flew in America’s Secret War in Laos, 1987 (page 125)

30. David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA Crusades, 1994 (page 138)

31. Joel Bainerman, The Crimes of a President, 1992 (page 67)

32. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, 1972 (page 278)

33. Edith Holleman and Andrew Love, Inside the Shadow Government, 1988 (page 13)

34. John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, 1986 (page 282)

35. Joel Bainerman, The Crimes of a President, 1992 (page 68)

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In his autobiography, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA, Ted Shackley defended his relationship with Vang Pao. Shackley claimed that he attempted to “coexist with him without being seared by his breath”. He admitted that some would argue: “Coexist with narcotics traffickers! Just as we always thought! He should have been wiping them out.” Shackley goes on to point out: “only rogue elephants charge at everything in their path, and the CIA was never such an animal…. The mission that had been handed me was to fight a war in northern Laos against the Pathet Lao and the NVA and to interdict, along the Laotian part of the Ho Chi Minh Trial, the flow of military manpower and material from North Vietnam to the battlefields of South Vietnam. My plate was full.” (36)

Shackley’s critics argued that he went much further than co-existing with the drug traffickers in Laos. According to Edith Holleman and Andrew Love: “In addition to his opium trafficking operation, Vang Pao carried out an assassination program, on information and belief under the auspices of Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines. Partially funded by Vang Pao’s opium income, the program eliminated civilian functionaries and supporters of the Pathet Lao, as well as Vang Pao’s rival opium warlords.” Holleman and Love go onto argue that Shackley brought “Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero and Rafael Villaverde, along with Felix Rodriguez, to Laos, to train members of Vang Pao’s Hmong tribe to perform assassinations against Pathet Lao leaders and sympathizers.” (37)

Once again, members of Operation 40 were being funded from outside the CIA. Money was paid to eliminate people who posed a threat to their profits. David Morales and Carl Jenkins were also involved in this assassination program. Morales had told Ruben Carbajal that he had killed people in “Vietnam, in Venezuela, in Uruguay and other places”. (38) Jenkins was another member of what Gene Wheaton had called the CIA "off-the-reservation gang". (39) As Warren Hinckle and William Turner had pointed out in Deadly Secrets, members of Operation 40 were “assassins-for-hire”. In this case it was Vang Pao. Who else made use of this service? In 1968 two important political leaders were assassinated in the United States? Had they been victims of Operation 40?

In December, 1968, Shackley became Chief of Station in Vietnam and took over Phung Hoang (Operation Phoenix). In his autobiography, Shackley denied he was the “godfather of Phung Hoang”. In fact, Shackley claims he did not approve of this program that involved the killing of non-combatant Vietnamese civilians suspected of collaborating with the National Liberation Front. However, according to Shackley, the Director of the CIA, Richard Helms, insisted that “we are not free agents” and that the CIA rather than the United States Army had to run Operation Phoenix. (40) Other members of Operation 40 in Vietnam at this time included Thomas Clines, David Morales, Rip Robertson and Félix Rodríguez. Two other members of the “Secret Team” in Vietnam with Shackley were John Singlaub and Richard Secord.

Shackley claims that Phoenix was set up in November 1966. This was over two years before Shackley arrived in Vietnam. This is true. However, it was Shackley who turned it into an “assassination unit”. Tucker Gouglemann and William Buckley supervised the program. (41) Edith Holleman and Andrew Love claimed that it was Shackley and Clines who played the most important role in Operation Phoenix. The purposely targeted “South Vietnamese town mayors, clerks, teachers, business professionals and educated persons” who they considered were contributing to the “actual or potential civilian infrastructure of the NLF.” (42)

Fred Branfman quotes a U.S. State Department document in July, 1969, that: “The target for 1969 calls for the elimination of 1800 VCI per month.” K. Barton Osborn, a U.S. Phoenix agent, testified to Congress, that in a year and a half of active service, “I never knew an individual to be detained as a VC suspect who ever lived through the interrogation”. He added: “This was the mentality… It became a sterile depersonalized murder program.” He described of how he inserted a “six-inch dowel into the ear canal of one of my detainee’s ears and the tapping through the brain until he died.” (43)

The Saigon Ministry of Information admitted that 40,994 were murdered as part of Operation Phoenix. (44) William Colby disagrees, when he testified before Congress he claimed that Phoenix was only responsible for the death of 20,587 persons. (45) Although he admitted to some “illegal killings”, Colby rejected a suggestion by Senator J. William Fulbright that it was “a program for the assassination of civilian leaders”. (46) As Branfman has pointed out: “This number, proportionate to population, would total over a three-year period, were Phoenix in practice in the United States. (47)

Notes

36. Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA, 2005 (pages 198-199)

37. Edith Holleman and Andrew Love, Inside the Shadow Government, 1988 (pages 14-15)

38. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, 1993 (pages 380)

39. David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA Crusades, 1994 (page 383)

40. Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA, 2005 (pages 233-234)

41. David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA Crusades, 1994 (page 194)

42. Edith Holleman and Andrew Love, Inside the Shadow Government, 1988 (page 13)

43. Fred Branfman, South Vietnam’s Police and Prison System, included in Uncloaking the CIA, edited by Howard Frazier, 1978 (page 113)

44. House Committee on Government Operations, 1971 (page 321)

45. Republic of Vietnam, Ministry of Information, Vietnam 1967-71: Towards Peace and Prosperity, 1971 (page 52)

44. House Committee on Government Operations, 1971 (page 183)

45. Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture, 2006 (page 67)

46. Fred Branfman, South Vietnam’s Police and Prison System, 1978 (page 114)

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McCoy's book is excellent and the CIA / and other black agencies have long used illegal weapons and drug sales to both gather money for their operations and control groups and countries in the process [not to mention control many hooked on their drugs]. Morality doesn't enter into their calculations. There was a very good interview with McCoy on Democracy Now not long ago about both this older book and how he was almost killed for writing it and his recent book. It can be found by searching McCoy on the Democracy Now site www.democracynow.org

I hope Alfred is alright. I made contact with him after reading The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. He was reluctant to discuss what he knew about Ted Shackley (his name did not appear very much in the narrative). I suspect there was legal reasons for this. However, he did say he would be willing to discuss A Question of Torture when it was published. I got it as soon as it came out. It is indeed a very brave book. I immediately sent him a list of questions about the book. I have sent him these on a regular basis for the next four months but I have not had an answer. The book seems to have been completely ignored by the media.

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  • 2 months later...

John Emil Peurifoy (1907-1955) Born in Walterboro, South Carolina, August 9, 1907. U.S. Ambassador to Greece, 1950-53; U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, 1953; U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, 1954-55. Died in an automobile accident, near Hua Hin, Thailand, August 12, 1955.

I have been informed by a contact that Peurifoy might have been murdered. He adds that:

"Some actions taken by Shackley when he was in Laos may have been directed against those whom he thought were involved in Puerifoy's death. Question: Is there any known connection between Shackley and a former junior naval officer Thomas Rafter who was also killed in a car 'accident' in Thailand?"

Anybody know anything about this?

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I have been informed by a contact that Peurifoy might have been murdered. (John Simkin)

The car crash that killed Peurifoy also killed his 9 year old son Daniel and critically injured his 14 year old son Clinton. Peurifoy was behind the wheel of a Ford Thunderbird when they smashed head-on into a truck on a narrow bridge.

FWIW.

James

Edited by James Richards
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The growth in Vang Pao’s army helped him to dominate the trade in opium in Laos. Joel Bainerman claims that “Shackley, Clines and Richard Secord helped Pao control Laos’ opium trade by sabotaging competitors”. In 1968 “Shackley and Clines arranged a meeting in Saigon between Mafia chief Santo Trafficante, Jr., and Vang Pao to establish a heroin-smuggling operation from Southeast Asia to the United States.” (35)

FYI- Dominic Furci, Trafficante's companion on the trip, admitted to reporters that they went to SE Asia. However, Furci said that they only visited Hong Kong to see his son, not to Saigon.

Partial corroboration- Santo was in SE Asia at the time- though I was unable to find out any particulars like airline flights, etc.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Investigators have long wondered how the CIA imposed dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, managed to amass a $26m (£14m) fortune. Earlier this week, Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile’s intelligence services DINA, claimed that Pinochet and his son, Marco Antonio, organized a massive production and distribution network, selling cocaine to Europe and the US in the 1980s. Contreras ran Pinochet’s death squads in the 1970s that killed an estimated 3,000 Chileans.

Contreras has also given evidence of illegal arms deals that was organized via Chile. These deals involved arms companies in the west including BAE Systems.

Is it a coincidence that the CIA in the form of people like Ted Shackley (the Secret Team), were involved in the creation of the Pinochet dictatorship? It was the same group of CIA operatives who made fortunes out of the drug trade in the 1960s in South-East Asia and then were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and the Edwin Wilson case that involved the selling of illegal arms.

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  • 2 weeks later...

One of the most successful CIA covert operations concerns the removal of Gough Whitlam, the prime minister of Australia.

As leader of the Labour Party he advocated the abolition of conscription and Australian withdrawal from the Vietnam War, and in 1971 visited China, promising to establish diplomatic relations. This left-wing stance was popular with the Australian people and on 2 December 1972, Whitlam led the ALP to its first electoral victory since 1946.

After 23 years of continuous conservative rule, the bureaucracy was unhelpful, and the conservative state governments were implacably opposed to reform. Nevertheless, Whitlam embarked on a massive legislative reform program. In the space of a little less than three years, the Whitlam Government:

• established formal diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China[3];

• took responsibility for tertiary education over from the states and abolished tertiary fees[4];

• established the Schools Commission to distribute Federal funds to assist non-government schools on a needs basis;

• introduced a supporting benefit for single-parent families;

• abolished the death penalty for Federal crimes;

• reduced the voting age to 18 years;

• abolished the last vestiges of the White Australia Policy;

• mandated equal opportunities for women in Federal Government employment;

• appointed women to judicial and administrative positions;

• abolished conscription

• established the Order of Australia, Australia's own honours system.

The Senate managed to block some of Whitlam's legislation including:

• a universal, free health insurance system to be known as Medibank.

• Regulate the size of House of Representatives electorates to ensure one vote one value.

• Institute government overseeing of exploitation of minerals and oil.

Whitlam’s foreign policy upset the CIA and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO). Whitlam became convinced that the ASIO was plotting against him and in March 1973, Attorney General Lionel Murphy ordered a raid on the ASIO offices.

According to Frank Snepp, his boss, Ted Shackley began to plot Whitlam’s removal. Ray Cline and William Colby have both admitted that the left-wing government in Australia caused a crisis for the CIA. James Angleton claimed that Whitlam was a Soviet agent (in Angleton’s world every left-winger was a KGB spy).

The situation got worse when the CIA discovered that Whitlam planned to close the American base, Pine Gap near Alice Springs. This was followed on 2 November, 1975, by Whitlam making a speech claiming that the CIA had been funding the National Country Party.

On 8th November, Ted Shackley sent a message of the ASIO, pointing out the dangers posed by Whitlam. Three days later, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, dismissed Whitlam and installed Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister until a federal election could be held.

The Murdoch press now launched a massive propaganda campaign against the Labour Party and with the two main opposition parties, the National Country/Liberal formed a coalition group and won the new election.

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  • 8 months later...

Here is a message from an undercover agent who wishes to remain anonymous.

There is a persistent theme that Ed Wilson, Shackley et el somehow are a tight group of conspirators. That is not true if for no other reason than that is not how operatives work. The fact is that rarely do these people ever meet, plan, or work in concert. Safety for them lies in extreme compartmental ism. For example, one operative may know, or can guess, that another is developing an asset, or is "running" an agent. Despite a common mission, the level of trust and mutual cooperation is very low. Most operations that fail in fact are the result of "trust". Safety is best accomplished by operating alone. This means that the "dots" cannot be easily connected.

For example, and I speak from experience, operatives depend on "keys" to prove that they are dealing with who they can trust. These keys can be as simple as a torn in half business card which can only match perfectly with the other half when presented by the proper person. Failure to ask for the "key" from the contact can prove fatal to the mission. Yet, it happens! It is a case of lax, or sloppy habits. (How often do you ask your "wife" to prove who she is?)

It becomes difficult to prove what anyone is doing. In "confessions" or betrayals it is often circumstantial evidence and guesswork. This results in scapegoating or the creation of false trails. But, and this is a big one, when top people are guilty of "sins". you should look at their "support" structure. For example, a journalist "exposes" wrong doing. It's not the journalist we should investigate for the "leak", but the people who benefits by the leak. In a knife fight at the top, the knives are blackmail and counter-betrayals. The fight ends when the price is paid.

Did Ed Wilson supply arms ( a couple of rifles) to the Libyans? Most probably, but where did the payments go, who benefits, who supplied? In Vietnam, who ran Shackley? Obviously the answer ultimately is who "created" a Wilson, or a Chi Chi?" Who had the authority or power to create such a powerful agents? The answer will lead you to people much bigger than Ed. And, why did Ed not defend himself by revealing the things he knew? Can you imagine accepting a lifetime of solitary confinement in prison? Who, or what would be worth that?

It takes a man who understands that when you start rolling up the net, you will be destroying the fabric of our national security.

Perhaps Nixon earned his pardon by silence.

The US Senate is controlled by two men. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee (all legislation must go through that committee) and the chairman of appropriations....for obvious reasons he holds the purse strings and these chairmen have the power to make or break appointments ( i.e. federal judgeship's). During the Vietnam War (and the present Gulf War) who were these men, and who did they serve? Who were their "creatures". You can ask the same questions about Hoover, Helms, Bush, etc.

John, you seek the truth, but it is also compartmentalized. Many people hold pieces of it, it would take a lifetime to put those pieces together. The power people, are another story.

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John

Your undercover informant makes some telling points - the Whitlam coup ostensibly done to protect the Pine Gap renewal process was brought about not by Techncial Services, the NRO or ARPA, but by the very dirty tricks network of Ted Shackley,

Michael Hand, Bernie Houghton and others...Nugan Hand's growth as a CIA bank happened mainly after the 1975 coup (and the 1976 election of a CIA-linked rightwing Labor government in NSW). Cui bono in this case was the drug-arms-black ops side of CIA.

By 1976-77, it seems President Carter empowered NID Bobby Ray Inman and DCI Stansfield Turner to act. An oft-told story is of "a lunch that the then chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, John McLelland(sic), suggested he (Inman) attend with a staff aide. At the lunch Inman was introduced to Edwin P. Wilson who suggested that relations with McLelland's(sic) committee would be improved by prchasing certain equipment through him. Inman found to his surprise that Wilson worked for him in Task Force 157. When he went ahead and fired Wilson, he was surprised to get a call from...Ted Shackley, urging him not to do so."Brian Toohey, National Times 3-10 Jan 1981.

According to Toohey, Inman head of the NSA in 1980 coninued to be worried by the "close friendship" between Bernie Houghton and Edwin Wilson fearing that "the continued probing of Nugan Hand could jeopardise the existence of Pine Gap if Labor won the October 18(1980) election." Weeks prior to the next 1983 election the suspect Labor leader Bill Haydon was replaced by he

CIA-friendly Bob Hawke, just as Nugan Hand investigations were concluding -- with many deletions and evasions.

Jonathan Kwitney(p 318) says the failure to investigate the Chavez-Houghton-Hand-Wilson associations "may well be the result, aat least in part, of the incredleinfluence Bernie Houghton continued to wield". He was "the mysterious puppetmaster of Nugan Hand"and confidante to powerful Reagan era generals Secord and Aderholt, as well as Congressmen. In 1970 he was providing inormation to Senator McClellan's investigation into corrupt US Army Quartermaster supply contracts in Vietnam(NT Jan4-10 1981)and in Jan 1980 Houghton was hosting at his Kings Cross Sydney bar a Congressional junket led by his longtime friend and House of Reps. Intelligence sub-committee and Armed Forces Committee member Bob Wilson (R-Cal 1960-80?). A week later the Reps were in Singapore meeting Michael Hand and two weeks after that recently reformed alcoholic Frank Nugan was found shot with Bob Wilson and Colby phone numbers stuck in his Bible.

Houghton's career as a deepcover agent probably from his arrival in Sydney supposedly in 1967 but possibly earlier parallels in many respects Edwin Wilson's and both appear to have been in the Ted Shackley+??????? network. Cui bono?

A possible important CIA figure not mentioned is John Denley Walker - does anyone know of him?

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