ZR/RIFLE

[Ashton Gray]

Got a weird communique (about 13-degrees removed) of a message reportedly circulated in a usenet hotbed of encrypted messages (I don't speak the language), which, when unencrypted and stripped of padding, purportedly just said:

Zapata Revenge RIFLE

Are there creakings in the timbers? Are the mangy mutts in the rabid pack turning on each other? Or is this just somebody's cute way of shaking the bushes?

Ashton Gray

Edited August 8, 2006 by Ashton Gray

[Lee Forman]

Sounds interesting - I always thought that the digraph was gibberish. 2 examples below in Wikipedia where it works - OD and PB. WI? JM?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_cryptonym

Partial list of digraphs and probable definitions

AE: Soviet Union

AM: Cuba

BE: Poland

CK: Soviet Union

DI: Czechoslovakia

DM: Yugoslavia

DN: South Korea

ES: Guatemala

GT: Soviet Union

IA: Angola

KU: Part of CIA

MH: Worldwide operation

MK: Projects sponsored by the CIA's Technical Services Division

OD: Other Department

PB: President Board

SD: Iran

SM: United Kingdom

TU: South Vietnam

ZR: Normally prefixes the cryptonym for an intelligence intercept program. Seems to go with Staff D ops, Staff D being the group that worked directly with the NSA. Staff D was where ZR/RIFLE, a Castro assassination plot, was buried.

http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000078.html

In fact, Captain John McCarthy, US Army Special Forces (Ret.), who ran CIA assassination teams out of Saigon during the Vietnam War, told his friend, LAPD whistleblower Mike Ruppert, that "MKULTRA is a CIA acronym that officially stands for 'Manufacturing Killers Utilizing Lethal Tradecraft Requiring Assassinations'".

That sounds a bit far fetched, esp given the overall scope of the programs contained. 'Mind Kontrol' was another I have seen - maybe there is something to more to it. Thanks for sharing that.

[Ashton Gray]

Got a weird communique (about 13-degrees removed) of a message reportedly circulated in a usenet hotbed of encrypted messages (I don't speak the language), which, when unencrypted and stripped of padding, purportedly just said:

Zapata Revenge RIFLE

Are there creakings in the timbers? Are the mangy mutts in the rabid pack turning on each other? Or is this just somebody's cute way of shaking the bushes?

Ashton Gray

? Zapata Oil - Bush Sr.

Well, there is that. Speaking of which—since you had the misfortune of bringing it up —did you ever notice that Dealey Plaza, with Main Street, forms an "arrow," as in...

And if you extend that arrow out across the Lone Star state, guess where you end up.

FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY:

Of course, extending it further, you probably end up somewhere in Australia. (Nothing personal, James!)

Okay: I apologize for this diversion. Now I'm going to rearrange the rest of your list, like one of those sliding-square plastic puzzles, Peter, so they continue in what I believe to be roughly chronological order.

? Operation Zapata - Bay of Pigs

Well, yes, there's that, too—which appears to be mixed up in more ways than one (circumstantially, of course) with the oilier Zapata you mentioned first above.

(BTW, in the trivia department: Back in "the Big War," there was a core group in the OSS that was somewhat derisively called "the oily boys" because they kept insisting on petroleum-related bombing targets. After the war, some of that same group and their friends, through an amazing shell game, got shunted temporarily over into a low-profile unit under Naval Intel when the OSS was disbanded, then got slid right over into place in the newly created CIA and OPC. Among the "oily boys" were Walt Rostow and Charles C. Cabell—brother of the celebrated mayor of Dallas on that infamous day. When the "oily boys" were calling for continuous bombing of Germany's oil supplies, guess who was supplying Germany with petroleum products. Ahhhh, that's for another day, another thread. Back to Zapata.)

? ZR/RIFLE

That would seem to be the indication in the cryptic message. But if that is what the "ZR" stood for, to what degree, if any, does it link back to (through) the two "Zapatas" already discussed, above? I guess that's the big question. That, and, of course, how all that might link to Kennedy's murder.

(If anyone wants some real fun, try to fix an actual date for the start of ZR/RIFLE. I haven't tried going over Niagara Falls wrapped only in aluminum foil, but I think it might be similar.)

? Zapata was used as a codename breifly before Dallas by Plumlee - Garrison was looking for 'Zapata'

Oh, man, did you hit a nerve! Sure it was "a codename" used by Plumlee. I just bet it was. I bet there's not a chance in hell that he threw that eponymic stun grenade into the middle of proceedings right on cue. Oh, of course not. CIA cruds never use that kind of Tactic Resulting In Chaos and Confusion (TRICC). Let's, see, now; what else do we owe to Plumlee? Oh, yeah: the major Mafia connection; an alleged shot that would have had to go through the windshield, the limo driver, and/or Mrs. Connally to get near Kennedy; a few unidentified Cubans to be running around the scenery; and—naturally—a benign CIA-backed presence organized by Robert Bennett. I only wonder why Plumlee didn't bring Castro along.

? none of the above or nothing but gibberish

Yes, there's always that possibility.

Ashton

Edited August 9, 2006 by Ashton Gray

[John Geraghty]

Tosh plumlee, on this forum, said that he was nicknamed Zapata because zapata is the spanish for 'shoe' and that he lost a shoe while running on a mission. A fairly simple and non-incriminatory explanation.

John

[Ashton Gray]

Tosh plumlee, on this forum, said that he was nicknamed Zapata because zapata is the spanish for 'shoe' and that he lost a shoe while running on a mission.

Mierda del toro.

Ashton

[Antti Hynonen]

Ashton Gray Posted Today, 12:26 AM

QUOTE(John Geraghty @ Aug 9 2006, 03:40 PM)

Tosh plumlee, on this forum, said that he was nicknamed Zapata because zapata is the spanish for 'shoe' and that he lost a shoe while running on a mission.

Mierda del toro.

Ashton

Your Spanish sentence made my day! Thanks... still laughing.

[Len Colby]

Got a weird communique (about 13-degrees removed) of a message reportedly circulated in a usenet hotbed of encrypted messages (I don't speak the language), which, when unencrypted and stripped of padding, purportedly just said:

Zapata Revenge RIFLE

Are there creakings in the timbers? Are the mangy mutts in the rabid pack turning on each other? Or is this just somebody's cute way of shaking the bushes?

Ashton Gray

? Zapata Oil - Bush Sr.

? Zapata was used as a codename breifly before Dallas by Plumlee - Garrison was looking for 'Zapata'

? ZR/RIFLE

? Operation Zapata - Bay of Pigs

? none of the above or nothing but gibberish

Can't say anything about the Dallas operation but "Operation Zapata" was a code name for the BOP because the Bay of Pigs was (and still is) located on the Zapata peninsula and some of the landing sites near the Zapata swamps. there was and alternate plan also named after the proposed landing site google "Zapata peninsula" OR "Zapata swamp" + "bay of pigs"

[Cliff Varnell]

? Zapata Oil - Bush Sr.

I don't want to appear as a nitpicker, but GHW Bush bailed out of Zapata Petroleum

in 1959, retaining Zapata Offshore.

Bush's Texas Zapata Petroleum partners, the brothers Liedtke, went on to amass

a fortune in the oil business; Zapata Offshore found little success drilling for oil

in the Caribbean.

Webster Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin describe the Zapata split 1959, in GEORGE BUSH:

THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY (Chapter 8: "The Permian Basin Gang 1948-59")

[emphasis added]

http://www.tarpley.net/bush8.htm

By 1959, there were reports of increasing personal tensions between the domineering and abrasive J. Hugh Liedtke on the one hand and Bush's Uncle Herbie Walker on the other. Liedtke was obsessed with his plan for creating a new major oil company, the boundless ambition that would propel him down a path littered with asset-stripped corporations into the devastating Pennzoil-Getty-Texaco wars of a quarter century later. During the course of this year, the two groups of investors arrived at a separation that was billed as "amicable," and which in any case never interrupted the close cooperation among Bush and the Liedtke brothers. The solution was that the ever-present Uncle Herbie would buy out the Liedtke-Tulsa 40% stake in Zapata Offshore, while the Liedtke backers would buy out the Bush-Walker interest in Zapata Petroleum.

For this to be accomplished, George Bush would require yet another large infusion of capital. Uncle Herbie now raised yet another tranche for George, this time over $800,000. The money allegedly came from Bush-Walker friends and relatives. Even if the faithful efforts of Uncle Herbie are taken into account, it is still puzzling to see a series of large infusions of cash into a poorly managed small company that had posted a series of substantial losses and whose future prospects were anything but rosy. At this point it is therefore legitimate to pose the question: was Zapata Offshore an intelligence community front at its foundation in 1954, or did it become one in 1959, or perhaps at some later point? This question cannot be answered with finality.

George Bush was now the president of his own company, the undisputed boss of Zapata Offshore. Although the company was falling behind the rest of the offshore drilling industry, Bush made a desultory attempt at expansion through diversification, investing in a plastics machinery company in New Jersey, a Texas pipe lining company, and a gas transmission company; none of these investments proved to be remunerative.

Why would the Harriman-backed Bush-Walker group take the short end of the stick?

Why would these rapacious capitalists make such an incredibly bad business decision?

More from Tarpley & Chaitkin [emphasis added]:

The first asset of Zapata Offshore was the SCORPION, a $ 3.5 million deep-sea drilling rig that was financed by $1.5 million from the initial stock sale plus another $2 million from bonds marketed with the help of Uncle Herbie. The SCORPION was the first three-legged self-elevating mobile drilling barge, and it was built by R. G. LeTourneau, Inc., of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The platform weighed some 9 million pounds and measured 180 by 150 feet, and the three legs were 140 feet long when fully extended. The rig was floated into the desired drilling position before the legs were extended, and the main body was then pushed up above the waves by electric motors. The SCORPION was delivered early in 1956, and was commissioned at Galveston in March, 1956, and was put to work at exploratory drilling in the Gulf of Mexico during the rest of the year...

As for the SCORPION, during part of 1957 it was under contract to the Bahama-California Oil Company, drilling between Florida and Cuba. It was then leased by Gulf Oil and Standard Oil of California, on whose behalf it started drilling during 1958 at a position on the Cay Sal Bank, 131 miles south of Miami, Florida, and just 54 miles north of Isabela, Cuba. Cuba was an interesting place just then; the US-backed insurgency of Fidel Castro was rapidly undermining the older US-imposed regime of Fulgencio Batista. That meant that SCORPION was located at a hot corner.

Hot corner, indeed.

Maintainence boats could run from Florida to the Scorpion and back without

Customs inspections.

An unscrupulous businessman might be tempted to smuggle illicit goods into

the country that way...

Hmm...Maybe the Harriman/Bush/Walker guys got the better end of the Zapata Petro

break-up, after all.

Edited February 14, 2007 by Cliff Varnell