Operation Lantern Spike

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I thought it would be important to have a thread on this topic. Here is one reference, but if anyone has any primary documents it would be good if you posted them.

___________

http://www.counterpunch.org/mckinney0725.html

[James Richards]

I thought it would be important to have a thread on this topic. Here is one reference, but if anyone has any primary documents it would be good if you posted them.

___________

http://www.counterpunch.org/mckinney0725.html

Nathaniel,

Regarding Lantern Spike and related documents, may I suggest contacting Mark Perrusquia, a reporter from the Memphis Appeal.

James

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Thanks James; hope I don't end up having to move to Latin America, as I can't spell in Spanish either

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Let me speak frankly; if Major General William P. Yarborough were in the room, I might have some logisitcal difficulties in mellowing out.

Recently I learned some interesting things about Yarborough in Columbia during the Kennedy years. This interested me

because of what I had read in William Pepper's book An Act of State (2nd edition, April 2008) about Yarborough's involvement with the 902nd MIG which is described as present in Memphis, after flying in around 4AM on 4-4-68.

First some points from An Act of State:

* Pepper describes a relationship between the 902nd MIG and Carlos Marcello's org:

They were jointly involved in an extenisve gun running venture. Weapons stolen from army bases and

armories were delivered to the Marcello organization which arranged for their sale in Latin and South

America and elsewhere There proceeds were split equally and the 902nd used this "black" money for

covert operations. The operational link between the army and the mob was, apparently, a now deceased

20th SFG captain in New Orelans who dies in a suspicious car crash. I recalled Warren's accoud of running

guns from Camp Shelby to New Orleans where htey wre deliverd to Marcello's man Zip Chimento. I also

recalled Glenda Grabo's description of Raul and his associates picking up guns which were deliverd by water

and unloaded at Houston docks.

Downie also ties two other people tot hei activity. One was a senior Mossad agent working in South America

who acted as a senior liason to the US military and the CIA. The second was an officer of the 111th MIG

based at Frot McPherson in Georgia. Downie urged us to stay away from these individuals. (pp.76-77 Act of

State, 2nd edition)

* Earlier in the book Pepper gives this background on Yarborough:

The Eight MIG-- the 902nd-- was under the command of the army's Assistant Chief of Staff for Inteligence, who

from Demember 1966 until July 1968 was Major General William P Yarborough, the founder of units known

as the Green Berets. The MIG officers were responsible for eye to eye surveillance operations which included

audio and visual recordings of people ad events designated as targets. Dr. King was a target and throughtout

the last year of his life wa under surveillance by one or aother MIG team. Closely related to the USAINTC struture

at the time was the separate intelligence office under ACSI Yarborough.

In addition to controlling the 902nd MIG, he supervised the Counterintelligence Analysis Board (CIAB). This

analyzed a wide range of MIG-produced intelligence and forwarded reports directly tot he ACSI. The 902nd MIG

was a highly secretive organization, carrying outsome of the most sensitive assignments. Warren had always

refused to discuss the 902nd, saying anyone intereste in the "90 Deuce" should dig a deep hole.

Pepper points out that the 902nd was the only MIG that was explicitly authorized to undertake BOTH domestic and foreign ops.

Ok now lets turn to Thy Will be Done, and what it says about Yarborough earlier, when he was in Columbia in 1962:

Kennedy went to Columbia in 1962 to urge reforms. His trip was a huge media success. But Rightists in Columbia didnt want to make any reforms, instead wanting to eliminate groups of semi-autonomous peasant republics in around the Macarena Mountains.

The second event boding well for the military occurred a week after Kennedy's departure. In the town of Buga, a

a bomb exploded amid a Christmas procession; 51 people were killed, and more than 100 wounded. This was the

pretext the Pentagon needed to send top U.S. couterinsurgency experts from Fort Bragg, led by Brigadier

General William P. Yarborough, commanding general of Fort Bragg's Special Warfare center.[ here the authors

point out Yarborough's later explits working with COINTELPRO "AND THEN DEPUTY ATTORNEY GNERAL WARREN

CHRISTOPHER, AGAINST AMERICAN CIVILIANS IDENTIFITED AS 'DISSIDENT ELEMENTS' (MY EMPH.)]

Yarborough specifically targetted the civlil rights movement and the "anti-Vietnam/anti-draft movements,"

exteneding the army's intellignece gathering beyond "subversion" and "dissident groups" to "prominant persons"

who were "friendly" with "leaders of the disturbance or sympathetic with their plans"

Yarborough's team arrived in Columbia on February 2, 1962. Lleras Canargo's press censorhsip worked

smoothly. The Chief of Staff for the COlumbian army turned out the entire officer corps staffing the Columbian

Army headquarters, but no press account appeared in Bogata's newspapers. Yarborough's team next consulted

US Embasy consul Henry Dearborn, the former de facto CIA chief of station in he Dominican Republic.

Dearborn, a verteran operative in Latin America, was an old acquaintantce of the CIA's J.C. King; both had

operated in Peronist Argentina after WWII. Recently, Dearborn had been transfered to Columbia from the

Dominican Republic, where he and King engineered the CIA's delivery of weapons that were used to assassinate

dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961.

Now [in Columbia]... the focus of his attention was, however, the VII Brigade at the cattle town of Villavicencio,

gateway to the southern plains that slope gradually into the tropical Amazon basin. Here, in the department of

Meta was where the action was. Refugees from army attacks on the peasant republics had settled here and

turned to guerrilla warfare when attacked.

The VII Brigade kept most of its twenty-two outposts in this region, supplemented by many more police

outposts and a apramilitary nonuniformed cavalry, modeled after the Texas rangers and called "Rurales."

The Rurales were controlled by DAS, Colombia's secret police, and like the Rangers, were not known for

kindness to Indians...... Specifically Yarborough recommended Helio Couriers [ anyone hear much about this

weird plane that the CIA eventually gets ahold of via Summer Linguistics Institute and JAARS base in Charlotte

NC? Lots on this weird plane in this book]....

Yarborough sets up a vast interrogation and counterinsurgency network that seems to share some similarities with the

later Pheonix Program.

The Inter-American Geographic Survey would be enlisted to make aerial maps of guerrilla-affected ares. "Villages

and ares known to harbor bandits should be alleged by the government to be feeding information to the government

Polygraph teams should elicit such information as is neededfor this operation..... [much more psy war details]

It was all vintage Lansdale, to whom, after all Yarborough ultimately reported at the top of the chain of counter-

insurgency command ....

In 1962 Yarborough writes in his report on the Columbian operations:

It is the considered opinion of the survey team... that a concerted country team effort should be made now

to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed

later. This should be done with a view toward development of a cvil and military structure for exploitation in

the event of the Colombian's internal security sytem deteriorates further......

Shortly after Cam [the leader of Wycliffe Bible Translators] signed the contract and General Yarborough's report

was read at a March meeting of the Special Group in Washington, Columbians near Villavicencio watched a long

column of army trucks bearing U.S.insignia pass through. The Column headed south, toward the Macarena

Mountains, just east of where SIL's [summer Institute of Linguistics] base would be located. No troops ever came

out, they claimed. Explosions were heard rubling from the Macarena Moutnains, howeverer. Soon afterword the

Columbian military ruled that airspace over the mountains was off-limits for all commercial airplanes. Over the

years, reports would appear sporaically of planes being lost. Some pilots whe strayed overhead and did come out

reported seeing air runways and telecommunications antennas. In the early 1970s, the Columbian military would

deny and foreign base or presence in the Macarena. Only American strockholders of Loeb family-owned APCO

Oil Company and those who read APCO's annual reports knew better. APCO entered the Mcarena in 1967. In

1976, an APCO map showed that the Maceraena had been honeycombed with clandestine runways.

By then, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Texaco, and Gulf had joined other oil companies in drilling for oil in the

Llanos. JAARS's Helio Courirers were taking off for Villavicencio from Lomalinda, the grey-misted Macarena

Mountains hovering in the distance like a Mirage. (pp. 392-395, Thy Will Be Done)

How long had this cooperative effort between the 902nd MIG and US military cover ops in Latin America extend before 1968?

Yarborough's experience on both ends of this relationship seems noteworthy.

What about Warren Christopher in 1968. If he was working with Yarborough, what about MH CHAOS connections, possibly involving a young Bill Clinton in 1968? Did Bill have an interesting precious relationship with his future Secretary of State?

.