John Simkin

Here is the email that Garry Mack sent me about the stocking of books in the museum.

Namebase entry for Lucien Sarti: http://www.namebase.org/main3/Lucien-Sarti.html Mexico 1972 Back Channels 1991-10 (4) Back Channels 1995-05 (17) Davis,J. Mafia Kingfish. 1989 (602) Kruger,H. The Great Heroin Coup. 1980 (7) Marrs,J. Crossfire. 1990 (80, 208) Mills,J. Underground Empire. 1986 (554-6, 813) National Reporter 1987-F (40-5) Scott,P.D. Marshall,J. Cocaine Politics. 1991 (33, 84) Sterling,C. Octopus. 1991 (125-7) Summers,A. Conspiracy. 1989 (524-5)

Interesting article by Joel Skousen that refers to the Barry Seal case. http://www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/230...id=230&nid=5055 THE “GOOD OLD’ BOYS” NETWORK Friday, May 26, 2006 Introductory Comments on Conspiracy From STRATEGIC RELOCATION (Government Threat Section) This is an amplification of the workings of Group Four--the corrupt law enforcement boys that do the dirty work for the controllers. They constitute what are referred to as the “black” sectors of our own government, and are linked to a larger sector of the organized criminal world. This is one reason why the FBI maintains so many underworld contacts. It’s not just for utilitarian purposes of tracking the underworld. They assist each other in numerous covert activities. Each of the Federal Services (FBI, CIA, ATF, INS, Secret Service, etc.) have many good and patriotic people working for them. The good guys are the regular, naive, “want to serve my country” types who are assigned the legitimate tasks of government enforcement. Virtually every agency head knows about the black side of his organization. No one is allowed to run these agencies unless he can be trusted to execute the special orders that come down via discrete private channels. Upper level managers who are part of the conspiracy are always watching and judging both the above ground side and the covert “black” side to see who can be trusted to do corrupt work or who has to be removed. They look for signs of unprincipled behavior in those they invite to do the “dirty tricks” stuff. These guys carouse, they cheat regularly on their wives, and in short, don’t have any scruples about doing any job for money or future advancement. These are carefully cultivated and tested with a variety of semi-legal activities to make sure they don’t have much of a conscience. Once they enter the “black” underground, they enter the world of covert operations--but not just ordinary covert operations (because there are both legitimate and criminal types of operations performed by the same agency). I do not have the space in this book to detail all the evidence for this, but I will tell you this: 1. The CIA runs a worldwide drug distribution net, to finance this black underground series of operations. Kun San, the infamous drug warlord of the Iron triangle testified of this openly--that his major client was the CIA and he could name names. Barry Seal was killed after revealing his involvement in flying cargo planes loaded with drugs for the CIA into the famous Mena Arkansas 10,000 foot rural runway (during Governor Clinton’s term). 2. The FBI regularly assists and covers up for numerous illicit government operations. Occasionally, critical evidence is falsified in their now discredited forensics labs in order to alter the outcomes of certain investigations. The FBI played a major role in the cover-up of the JFK assassination, the Waco attack, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the Vince Foster murder. 3. CIA and Secret Service agents who were part of the “black” underground side, pulled off the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, to make them martyrs for a much larger political purpose. The killers may not have known the purpose, but those who gave the orders did. John F. Kennedy was, in my opinion, the first president to be elected who actually knew that he was put into power by this powerful underground group. He was only a second level person himself however, and quite disposable, as we later found out. JFK was taken out by the very same leaders who put him in. The job was carried out by a select group of dirty tricks boys from the CIA, Secret Service, and FBI. This was the world’s first good look at the workings of the conspiracy. They made a lot of sloppy mistakes, and got away with it for only one reason--they had enough control over the media, members of the Supreme Court, Congress, and a host of others that they could cover up almost anything. Their errors were huge and needed multiple cover-ups. Watching how they did it told me a lot about how extensive their powers are. Before I go into some details, let me backtrack and show how this gang of government hit-men operates in various parts of the federal security forces.

According to Daniel Hopsicker's book, Barry and the Boys, Gerry Hemming was arrested on 23rd August, 1976, for the illegal transfer of a silencer, and drug smuggling. It seems that this was the point that Gerry began talking about his past work with the CIA. He told one reporter: "All of a sudden they're accusing me of conspiracy to import marijuana and cocaine. Hey, what about all the other things I've been into for the last 15 years, lets talk about them. Let's talk about the Martin Luther King thing, let's talk about Don Freed, Le Coubre, n-killers in bed with the Mafia, the Mafia in bed with the FBI, and the goddamn CIA in bed with all of them. Let's talk about all the people I dirtied up for them over the years." I expect the reference to Martin Luther King is the claim made by Gerry on this Forum about Robert Emmett Johnson being involved in the assassination. We know about the FBI and the CIA but can anyone explain the following: "Don Freed, Le Coubre, n-killers in bed with the Mafia"? I suspect that this was Gerry's way of persuading the officials to drop charges against him. Did it work or was he convicted?

I thought this should be added to this thread. I will then give it a link to my page on Gary Mack (its number one at Google). Robert, the same advice might be just as pertinent to another Forum member. Only this one refuses to post, contenting himself to take potshots by private e-mail rather than post in the open where his vituperation might be challenged. To wit, this just in from one Gary Mack, nee Lawrence Dunkel. [Aren't aliases forbidden by Forum rules?] At 10:13 pm my time, Gary wrote me: There you go again, Robert. So Bush travels from Houston to Tyler for his noon speaking engagement and makes a reservation at a Dallas hotel....all BEFORE the assassination.? And the fact that he did so prior to the assassination implies what? That's he's well organized? And you know of his travel arrangements because you personally checked them out and found the claims to be true? Then he remembers the guy who suggested JFK might be killed but no one took him seriously at the time. So Bush calls the FBI in DALLAS right away to report what happened, then tells he would be in Dallas later that day in case they need to speak with him further? And where he'd be on the following day, for what purpose? So that he could be "briefed" by Hoover, as Hoover's own memo alleges? You'd provide a far more beneficial service to the cause of "research" that you once pretended to champion by addressing whether or not the George Bush in question was the same man cited by the Hoover memo. If you don't have the teeth to chew on the meat of the matter, why chime in at all? Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Do you have any evidence that ANY of the above account could not be true? Do you have any evidence indicating whether the George Bush who phoned the FBI was also the George Bush identified by Hoover as being CIA? Seems the rather more germane question, dunnit? Would you have felt better if Bush withheld the information from investigators? Actually, I would have felt better had Mr. Bush informed the FBI prior to the assassination, when it might have done some good. That's what I wrote, and that's what I meant. Is English your second language, or do you send these deliberately pointless e-mails because you have nothing better to do with your time? Would you have felt even better if the FBI had NOT checked out his story and found the guy Bush named was provably nowhere near Dallas and was not involved in anything other than having said something really stupid in front of others? At least his stupid comments were made in public, not in hectoring e-mails. If you have nothing constructive to offer the debate on matters of substance, why do you dwell on the insignificant to the exclusion of what may be of probative value? And if you haven't the manners to state your case in public, can I suggest you cease sending me unsolicited e-mails? This pattern of back-channel needling has been going on for, what, the better part of a decade? If I want to hear from you, I know where to find you. It's just not out in the open, where people can discern your MO, is it? If your employers preclude you from posting, perhaps they'd also prefer that you not send unsolicited e-mails to those who don't wish to receive them. Or perhaps they prefer that you do. The next time I get one, perhaps I'll take it up with them and discover for myself what their preferences are.

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,...,107282,00.html The competition is over, and Taylor Hicks has been crowned the new American Idol. And out come the allegations of voting manipulation and outrage, reported the Washington Post. The conspiracy theories are not new. Since the first American Idol series in 2002, the reality talent show has hatched almost as many conspiracy theories as US president John F Kennedy's assassination in 1963. And this season's competition was no different. It began with host Ryan Seacrest announcing at the end of the competition that viewers would have 'at least four hours to vote'. Idol fan sites picked up on this quickly. PRECONCEIVED RESULT? Did this mean Fox was keeping the lines open longer to achieve some preconceived result? Fox's reply: Seacrest was imprecise and should have just said four hours, the typical window for a final vote. Earlier, viewers had complained that their attempts to vote for rocker Chris Daughtry were misdirected to McPhee's voting line. Then Daughtry was eliminated from the competition, leading to an online petition demanding a recount. As of the results night, the petition had nearly 38,000 names, but no recount was in sight. There has long been accusations of manipulation as to the order in which the contestants perform (the last spot is supposed to be the best as viewers tend to vote for the contestant they best remember). And then some viewers have said that the judges' comments are unfair - a favoured performer might be praised for singing several songs in an identical style, but an out-of-favour contestant gets criticised for doing the same thing. Another common criticism: That the show's producers manipulate things so as to get the most demographically diverse and attractive group of singers into the final rounds to pump up ratings. And what does Fox have to say? Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said in a statement: 'The producers and network have gone to great lengths to ensure the integrity of the voting process. 'America votes, an independent company calculates the tally and the show reports those results.' Of course, it stands to reason that a show as popular as Idol - it attracted more than 30 million viewers - would definitely inspire passionate reactions. CONSPIRACY TALK But Fox has helped fuel suspicion by keeping its voting system secret. The voting totals of the winning singers have never been revealed. In the closely contested race between Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken in Season Two, Seacrest offered three different figures for the margin of difference between them. And controversy crops up every year as popular contestants get eliminated earlier than expected, sparking talk of vote-fixing or voting gone wrong - Remember Jennifer Hudson (Season Three) and Constantine Maroulis (Season Four)? So things are apparently moving as usual in the American Idol universe as fan sites are filled with talk of conspiracy theories once again, even before Taylor Hicks has time to catch his breath and settle down for a well-deserved rest.

Lucien Sarti worked for the French-Corsican heroin trafficker and convicted Nazi collaborator, Auguste Joseph Ricord. It was claimed by the journalist Stephen Rivele, that Antoine Guerini organized the assassination of John Kennedy. According to his contact, Christian David, the killing was carried out by Sarti and two other members of the Marseilles mob. It is believed Sarti fired from behind the wooden fence on the grassy knoll. The first shot was fired from behind and hit Kennedy in the back. The second shot was fired from behind, and hit John Connally. The third shot was fired from in front, and hit Kennedy in the head. The fourth shot was from behind and missed. Rivele's material was used in the 1988 television documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. As well as Lucien Sarti he also named Sauveur Pironti and Roger Bocognani as being involved in the killing. However, Pironti and Bocognani both had alibis and Rivele was forced to withdraw the allegation. However, Sarti is a character who needs to be investigated. Lucien Sarti was officially killed by Mexican police in Mexico City on 27th April, 1972. His death was not reported in the United States at the time. However, it was in France's leading newspaper, Le Monde. It reported that the killing of Sarti was the result of a "close Mafia-police-Narcotics Bureau collaboration" in the United States to "shatter Corsican influence in the worldwide narcotics traffic, and create a virtual monopoly for the U.S.-Italian Mafia connection, whose key figure was Santo Trafficante." Peter Dale Scott perceptively points out in the introduction to The Politics of Heroin (Alfred W. McCoy): "If the Washington Post and the New York Times, the supposed exposer's of Watergate, had picked up on stories like the one in Le Monde, then the history of Watergate might have been altered... for the history of Nixon's involvement in Watergate is intertwined with that of his personal involvement in drug enforcement. Nixon's public declaration in June 1971 of his war on heroin promptly led his assemblage of White House Plumbers, Cubans, and even hit squads". Henrik Kruger argues in The Great Heroin Coup that the "remarkable shift from Marseilles (Corsican) to Southeast Asian and Mexican (Mafia) heroin in the United States... was a deliberate move to reconstruct and redirect the heroin trade... not to eliminate it." http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsarti.htm

Good article. I only teach adults now and I sometimes use powerpoint. It is very good for bringing up photographs to illustrate what you are saying. It is also useful for putting up details of a book or some other fact that the audience might want to write down. The thing that I do not like about powerpoint is when the teacher uses it to display the text of what he or she is saying. When this happens I invariably stop reading and listening. This is just lazy teaching and very poor communicating. If teachers are training young people to do this, then they should be ashamed of themselves.

I cannot understand how you can describe the Iran-Contra Scandal as “pretty small potatoes”. I would have thought that senior politicians involved in illegal activities concerning arms and drugs was fairly important. Nor are you right when you suggest the major figures went to jail for their crimes. In November, 1986, Ronald Reagan set-up a three man commission (President's Special Review Board). The three men were John Tower, Brent Scowcroft and Edmund Muskie. Richard L. Armitage was interviewed by the committee. He admitted that he had arranged a series of meetings between Menachem Meron, the director general of Israel's Ministry of Defence, with Oliver North and Richard Secord. However, he denied that he discussed the replenishment of Israeli TOW missiles with Meron. Armitage also claimed that he first learned that Israel had shipped missiles to Iran in 1985 when he heard William Casey testify on 21st November, 1986 that the United States had replenished Israel's TOW missile stocks. According to Lawrence E. Walsh, who carried out the official investigation into the scandal (Iran-Contra: The Final Report), claims that Armitage did not tell the truth to the President's Special Review Board. "Significant evidence from a variety of sources shows that Armitage's knowledge predated Casey's testimony. For instance, a North notebook entry on November 18, 1986, documents a discussion with Armitage about Israel's 1985 arms shipments to Iran - three days before Armitage supposedly learned for the first time that such shipments has occurred." Walsh also adds that "classified evidence obtained from the Government of Israel... and evidence from North and Secord show that during the period Meron met with Armitage, Meron was discussing arms shipments to Iran and Israel's need for replenishment. Secord and North, on separate occasions, directed Meron to discuss these issues with Armitage." The report implicated Oliver North, John Poindexter, Casper Weinberger and several others but did not mention the role played by Bush. It also claimed that Ronald Reagan had no knowledge of what had been going on. The House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran was also established by Congress. The most important figure on the committee was the senior Republican member, Richard Cheney. As a result George Bush was totally exonerated when the report was published on 18th November, 1987. The report did state that Reagan's administration exhibited "secrecy, deception and disdain for the law." Oliver North and John Poindexter were indicted on multiple charges on 16th March, 1988. North, indicted on twelve counts, was found guilty by a jury of three minor counts. The convictions were vacated on appeal on the grounds that North's Fifth Amendment rights may have been violated by the indirect use of his testimony to Congress which had been given under a grant of immunity. Poindexter was also convicted of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and altering and destroying documents pertinent to the investigation. His convictions were also overturned on appeal. When George Bush became president he set about rewarding those who had helped him in the cover-up of the Iran-Contra Scandal. Bush appointed Richard L. Armitage as a negotiator and mediator in the Middle East. Donald Gregg was appointed as his ambassador to South Korea. Brent Scowcroft became his chief national security adviser and John Tower became Secretary of Defence. When the Senate refused to confirm Tower, Bush gave the job to Richard Cheney. Later, Casper Weinberger, Robert McFarlane, Duane R. Clarridge, Clair E. George, Elliott Abrams and Alan D. Fiers, Jr., who had all been charged with offences related to the Iran-Contra scandal, were pardoned by Bush. George Bush’s son continued this process by appointing Cheney as his vice president and Armitage as his Deputy Secretary of State.

I cannot understand how you can describe the Iran-Contra Scandal as “pretty small potatoes”. I would have thought that senior politicians involved in illegal activities concerning arms and drugs was fairly important. Nor are you right when you suggest the major figures went to jail for their crimes. In November, 1986, Ronald Reagan set-up a three man commission (President's Special Review Board). The three men were John Tower, Brent Scowcroft and Edmund Muskie. Richard L. Armitage was interviewed by the committee. He admitted that he had arranged a series of meetings between Menachem Meron, the director general of Israel's Ministry of Defence, with Oliver North and Richard Secord. However, he denied that he discussed the replenishment of Israeli TOW missiles with Meron. Armitage also claimed that he first learned that Israel had shipped missiles to Iran in 1985 when he heard William Casey testify on 21st November, 1986 that the United States had replenished Israel's TOW missile stocks. According to Lawrence E. Walsh, who carried out the official investigation into the scandal (Iran-Contra: The Final Report), claims that Armitage did not tell the truth to the President's Special Review Board. "Significant evidence from a variety of sources shows that Armitage's knowledge predated Casey's testimony. For instance, a North notebook entry on November 18, 1986, documents a discussion with Armitage about Israel's 1985 arms shipments to Iran - three days before Armitage supposedly learned for the first time that such shipments has occurred." Walsh also adds that "classified evidence obtained from the Government of Israel... and evidence from North and Secord show that during the period Meron met with Armitage, Meron was discussing arms shipments to Iran and Israel's need for replenishment. Secord and North, on separate occasions, directed Meron to discuss these issues with Armitage." The report implicated Oliver North, John Poindexter, Casper Weinberger and several others but did not mention the role played by Bush. It also claimed that Ronald Reagan had no knowledge of what had been going on. The House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran was also established by Congress. The most important figure on the committee was the senior Republican member, Richard Cheney. As a result George Bush was totally exonerated when the report was published on 18th November, 1987. The report did state that Reagan's administration exhibited "secrecy, deception and disdain for the law." Oliver North and John Poindexter were indicted on multiple charges on 16th March, 1988. North, indicted on twelve counts, was found guilty by a jury of three minor counts. The convictions were vacated on appeal on the grounds that North's Fifth Amendment rights may have been violated by the indirect use of his testimony to Congress which had been given under a grant of immunity. Poindexter was also convicted of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and altering and destroying documents pertinent to the investigation. His convictions were also overturned on appeal. When George Bush became president he set about rewarding those who had helped him in the cover-up of the Iran-Contra Scandal. Bush appointed Richard L. Armitage as a negotiator and mediator in the Middle East. Donald Gregg was appointed as his ambassador to South Korea. Brent Scowcroft became his chief national security adviser and John Tower became Secretary of Defence. When the Senate refused to confirm Tower, Bush gave the job to Richard Cheney. Later, Casper Weinberger, Robert McFarlane, Duane R. Clarridge, Clair E. George, Elliott Abrams and Alan D. Fiers, Jr., who had all been charged with offences related to the Iran-Contra scandal, were pardoned by Bush. George Bush’s son continued this process by appointing Cheney as his vice president and Armitage as his Deputy Secretary of State.

I have a copy of the original edition of this book and it include no photographs. However it does have a drawing that shows the positions of the 4 shooters (pages 356-57)

So did Dick Billings of Life Magazine. When Garrison refused to go along with the "Mafia" did it Billings began a smear campaign against Garrison. Later of course, Billings turns up in the House Assassinations Committee investigations and helps Blakey write the report. By the way, Billings also took part in the Pawley/Bayo mission to Cuba. As several people have pointed out, if Garrison had been completely on the wrong track, he would have been left alone. Bannister and Ferrie were obviously involved and therefore had to die. I suspect some CIA disinformation agent successfully got Garrison to target Shaw. Garrison fell for it and the rest is history. However, Michael Hogan's quote from Garrison is well worth re-reading. Garrison realized that the JFK assassination was just part of a much larger conspiracy. The creation of a warfare state. Very good point. Garrison only got to the minor characters in the conspiracy. It is only in recent years that we have been able to identify those in the next level (David Morales, Carl Jenkins, Rip Robertson, etc.). We will never be able to get to those above them. The terrible thing is that one of them is still alive and is still a powerful figure in American politics.

If you read the complete thread you will realize that George H. W. Bush has been accused of far greater crimes than passing along security information. By the way, Bush denies that he is the "George H. W. Bush" in the memo. That is the same Bush who denies he was involved in Operation 40 and knew anything about the Iran-Contra deals. I don't think George Bush will sue me. He uses other methods to keep people quiet. I recently invited the author of a very good book on Bush that was published in 1993. I wanted to ask him about where he got his information about the links between Bush and Operation 40. His reply was very interesting. "When I wrote the book it was 15 years ago. I am no longer into it anymore after I was targeted for murder by a member of the first Bush's White House. Since then I have kept my nose clean for fear of my health and safety." As for being anti-Republican, haven't you read my posts on Lyndon Johnson? In the next few days I will be making some posts on Bill Clinton's relationship with drug lords in Alabama. My target is corrupt politicians, whatever party they belong to. Democracy does not exist unless you are able to expose corrupt politicians. Mind you, your biography claims that you are in public relations in Washington. I suppose your job is to protect corrupt politicians.

Many thanks for the info John! I was not aware that Seal had offices in the Trade Mart. Very interesting! Where did you find this out? Daniel Hopsicker's Barry and the Boys. It is the most important book you can get if you are interested in Barry Seal. Gerry Hemming claims that Barry Seal was a member of Operation 40 in the early 1960s. Hemming told author, Daniel Hopsicker: "Yeah, Barry was Op 40. He flew in killer teams inside the island (Cuba) before the invasion to take out Fidel." In December, 1962, Seal joined the 21st Special Forces Group and attended the Fort Benning Jump School. In May 1963 he was assigned to company D Special Operations Detachment of the 20th Special Forces Group Airborne. Seal also seems to have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. According to his wife, Debbie, "Barry Seal flew a getaway plane out of Dallas after JFK was killed." In 1964 Seal joined the 245th Engineer Battalion based in St. Louis. He left in 1966. Soon afterwards he went to work for Howard Hughes and the TWA Corporation. According to his biographer, Daniel Hopsicker (Barry and the Boys), Seal "becomes first the youngest 707 Captain, and then later the youngest Captain of a 747." Tosh Plumlee claims that Barry Seal also worked for Ted Shackley and the CIA: "Barry Seal did a lot of damn good stuff in the late 60s. In 67 and 68 he was with Air America in South Vietnam and Laos during Search and Destroy and Special Ops with Ted Shackley's boys. He'd been recruited for Special Ops because of the Cuban thing." On 1st July, 1972, Barry Seal was arrested in New Orleans and accused of sending C4 explosives to anti-Castro Cubans in Mexico. A DC-4 was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport loaded with almost seven tons of plastic C-4 explosives, 7,000 feet of explosive primer cord and 2,600 electric blasting caps. James Miller, Richmond Harper, Marlon Hagler and Murray Kessler were also arrested with Seal. Kessler's partner, Manny Gambino, was kidnapped around the same time the others were arrested. His corpse was later found in a New Jersey garbage dump. The DC-4 was owned by James Boy, a known associate of the CIA. Boy's aircraft were later used to fly Oliver North's mercenaries in and out of Honduras. The man who organized the entrapment of Seal and his friends was Cesario Diosdado, an official with the United States Customs. It took the authorities over two years to bring Barry Seal to trial. When the trial finally got underway in June, 1974, government prosecutors promptly introduced into evidence an automatic weapon that had nothing at all to do with the charges against the defendants. A mistrial was declared and Seal and his fellow defendants were released. According to Pete Brewton (The Mafia, CIA & George Bush), as soon as Seal was freed he "began working full-time for the CIA, travelling back and forth from the United States to Latin America." Daniel Hopsicker believes the arrest of Seal and his comrades was linked to Watergate. Seal was arrested ten days after the arrest of the Watergate burglars. Had they been set-up to get hush money for the burglars. Is this why the government mucked up Seal's trial? Nixon resigned just six weeks after the explosives case was dismissed. Cesario Diosdado is also an interesting character. He was a long-term CIA agent. According to Gaeton Fonzi, Diosdado visited Antonio Veciani on the day of JFK's assassination. Apparently he wanted to know if Veciani had been involved in the assassination.

Where was George Bush and his mate, Felix Rodriguez, on the day JFK was assassinated? Bush admits to being in Texas but cannot remember where. Rodriguez told a Rolling Stone reporter that he could not remember where he was when JFK was killed.

Was the Conference reported in any newspaper other than Pravda? Did Jeff Morley write a report for the Washington Post?

Especially interested in the names of the people concerned and any information on individual operations. John: I'll do my best, but I might not be of much help as to "pin-pointing" the names of all the operatives that were associated with OPS-40. As you know, part of the operation was a spin from the 5412 group. Operatives would come and go as specialized support personal and they were controlled and dispatched by the 40 group which was part of the 5412 group. In reality there was no covert team named as "Operation 40" that I am aware of and as some have claimed. Liberties have been taken for whatever reasons and 40 has been cast into a different function than what it really was. Some of the operatives that from time to time did launch missions in behalf of the 40 or 5412 were mostly from the "School of The America" and other specialized operational personal and their training commands. Kind of like TDY ( Temp Duty assignments). As to the mechanics and various operations I can only name about four I was associated with and those are questionable as being dispatched solely by OPS-40 command and cleared by the 5412 Group. Our Teams were dispatched from the Pentagon with logistical support gave by the CIA. In most cases you could say ".. they were not really "CIA" operations, but in reality Military INTEL OPS with CIA logistical support...". At any rate the operations were "layered" and numerous "Locks" and "cut-outs" were assigned to protect the knowledge of these operations and the operational personal. 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." (1) 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. (2) 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." (3) 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" (4) 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 Felix Rodriguez. (5) 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. (6) 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. (7) 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." (8) This information comes from the deposition of Gene Wheaton made during the Iran-Contra investigation. (9) Fabian Escalante names William Pawley as being one of those who was lobbying for the CIA to assassinate Castro. (10) 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 were 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. (11) It has also been pointed out that Operation 40 was not only concerned about 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 Chavez, 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. (12) 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.” (13) 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." (14) Notes 1. Senate Report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 1975 (page 92) 2. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-1962: The Cuba Project, 2004 (pages 42 and 43) 3. Common Cause Magazine (4th March, 1990) 4. The Nation magazine (13th August, 1988) 5. Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo, Granma (16th January, 2006) 6. Daniel Hopsicker, Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History, 2001 (page 170) 7. Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, 2004 (page 173) 8. Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo, Granma (16th January, 2006). 9. Deposition of Gene Wheaton (1-3, 7-8 March, 1988). Wheaton gave evidence against Chi Chi Quintero during the Iran-Contra investigation. 10. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-1962: The Cuba Project, 2004 (pages 42 and 43) 11. Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Morning News (24th August, 2004) 12. Jean-Guy Allard, Granma (22nd May, 2005) 13. Arthur Schlesinger, memo to Richard Goodwin (9th June, 1961) 14. Jean-Guy Allard, Granma (22nd May, 2005)

Especially interested in the names of the people concerned and any information on individual operations. John: I'll do my best, but I might not be of much help as to "pin-pointing" the names of all the operatives that were associated with OPS-40. As you know, part of the operation was a spin from the 5412 group. Operatives would come and go as specialized support personal and they were controlled and dispatched by the 40 group which was part of the 5412 group. In reality there was no covert team named as "Operation 40" that I am aware of and as some have claimed. Liberties have been taken for whatever reasons and 40 has been cast into a different function than what it really was. Some of the operatives that from time to time did launch missions in behalf of the 40 or 5412 were mostly from the "School of The America" and other specialized operational personal and their training commands. Kind of like TDY ( Temp Duty assignments). As to the mechanics and various operations I can only name about four I was associated with and those are questionable as being dispatched solely by OPS-40 command and cleared by the 5412 Group. Our Teams were dispatched from the Pentagon with logistical support gave by the CIA. In most cases you could say ".. they were not really "CIA" operations, but in reality Military INTEL OPS with CIA logistical support...". At any rate the operations were "layered" and numerous "Locks" and "cut-outs" were assigned to protect the knowledge of these operations and the operational personal. 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." (1) 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. (2) 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." (3) 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" (4) 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 Felix Rodriguez. (5) 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. (6) 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. (7) 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." (8) This information comes from the deposition of Gene Wheaton made during the Iran-Contra investigation. (9) Fabian Escalante names William Pawley as being one of those who was lobbying for the CIA to assassinate Castro. (10) 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 were 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. (11) It has also been pointed out that Operation 40 was not only concerned about 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 Chavez, 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. (12) 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.” (13) 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." (14) Notes 1. Senate Report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 1975 (page 92) 2. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-1962: The Cuba Project, 2004 (pages 42 and 43) 3. Common Cause Magazine (4th March, 1990) 4. The Nation magazine (13th August, 1988) 5. Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo, Granma (16th January, 2006) 6. Daniel Hopsicker, Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History, 2001 (page 170) 7. Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, 2004 (page 173) 8. Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo, Granma (16th January, 2006). 9. Deposition of Gene Wheaton (1-3, 7-8 March, 1988). Wheaton gave evidence against Chi Chi Quintero during the Iran-Contra investigation. 10. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-1962: The Cuba Project, 2004 (pages 42 and 43) 11. Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Morning News (24th August, 2004) 12. Jean-Guy Allard, Granma (22nd May, 2005) 13. Arthur Schlesinger, memo to Richard Goodwin (9th June, 1961) 14. Jean-Guy Allard, Granma (22nd May, 2005)

John...I am astonished by your "hijacking" comment! I am even more astonished that you have relented and reinstated "Miller/Peters" after having previously banished him for posing here as "Larry Peters", violating your rule that members use their real names. Bill Miller and Larry Peters have never been banished from this Forum. They are not the same person. I met Bill in Dallas last November. He is the man he says he is. As Sigmund Freud once said: "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".

In your book you look at the the history of the CIA's use of torture. Could you give a brief overview of this story?

(1) How did you come to write The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade? (2) How did the CIA become involved in heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia?

Alfred W. McCoy, who is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has spent the past thirty years writing about Southeast Asian history and politics. His publications include The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972), Philippine Cartoons (1985), Anarchy of Families (1994), Closer Than Brothers: Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy (2000), Lives at the Margin (2001) and A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (2006): (1) In 1972, Cord Meyer, a senior official in the CIA became aware of your manuscript and made efforts to have the book withheld from publication. Could you tell us more about this story? (2) According to the Frank Church report (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) published in 1976, the CIA arranged for books critical of the agency to receive bad reviews in the media. Did this happen to The Politics of Heroin? (3) On 12th December, 1986, Daniel Sheehan submitted to the court an affidavit detailing the involvement of a small group of CIA operatives that included Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Secord (they were called the Secret Team) in the drug trade. For example Sheehan said: Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines financed a highly intensified phase of the Phoenix project, in 1974 and 1975, by causing an intense flow of Vang Pao opium money to be secretly brought into Vietnam for this purpose. This Vang Pao opium money was administered for Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines by a US Navy official based in Saigon's US office of Naval Operations by the name of Richard Armitage. However, because Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage knew that their secret anti-communist extermination program was going to be shut down in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand in the very near future, they, in 1973, began a highly secret non-CIA authorized program. Thus, from late 1973 until April of 1975, Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage disbursed, from the secret, Laotian-based, Vang Pao opium fund, vastly more money than was required to finance even the highly intensified Phoenix Project in Vietnam. The money in excess of that used in Vietnam was secretly smuggled out of Vietnam in large suitcases, by Richard Secord and Thomas Clines and carried into Australia, where it was deposited in a secret, personal bank account (privately accessible to Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Secord). During this same period of time between 1973 and 1975, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines caused thousands of tons of US weapons, ammunition, and explosives to be secretly taken from Vietnam and stored at a secret "cache" hidden inside Thailand. The "liaison officer" to Shackley and Clines and the Phoenix Project in Vietnam, during this 1973 to 1975 period, from the "40 Committee" in the Nixon White House was one Eric Von Arbod, an Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Von Arbod shared his information about the Phoenix Project directly with his supervisor Henry Kissinger. Saigon fell to the Vietnamese in April of 1975. The Vietnam War was over. Immediately upon the conclusion of the evacuation of U.S. personnel from Vietnam, Richard Armitage was dispatched, by Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines, from Vietnam to Tehran, Iran. In Iran, Armitage, the "bursar" for the Vang Pao opium money for Shackley and Clines' planned "Secret Team" covert operations program, between May and August of 1975, set up a secret "financial conduit" inside Iran, into which secret Vang Pao drug funds could be deposited from Southeast Asia. The purpose of this conduit was to serve as the vehicle for secret funding by Shackley's "Secret Team," of a private, non-CIA authorized "Black" operations inside Iran, disposed to seek out, identify, and assassinate socialist and communist sympathizers, who were viewed by Shackley and his "Secret Team" members to be "potential terrorists" against the Shah of Iran`s government in Iran. In late 1975 and early 1976, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines retained Edwin Wilson to travel to Tehran, Iran to head up the "Secret Team" covert "anti-terrorist" assassination program in Iran. This was not a U.S. government authorized operation. This was a private operations supervised, directed and participated in by Shackley, Clines, Secord and Armitage in their purely private capacities. At the end of 1975, Richard Armitage took the post of a "Special Consultant" to the U.S. Department of Defense regarding American military personnel Missing In Action (MIAs) in Southeast Asia. In this capacity, Armitage was posted in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. There Armitage had top responsibility for locating and retrieving American MIA's in Southeast Asia. He worked at the Embassy with an associate, one Jerry O. Daniels. From 1975 to 1977, Armitage held this post in Thailand. However, he did not perform the duties of this office. Instead, Armitage continued to function as the "bursar" for Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team," seeing to it that secret Vang Pao opium funds were conducted from Laos, through Armitage in Thailand to both Tehran and the secret Shackley bank account in Australia at the Nugen-Hand Bank. The monies conducted by Armitage to Tehran were to fund Edwin Wilson's secret anti-terrorist "seek and destroy" operation on behalf of Theodore Shackely. Armitage also devoted a portion of his time between 1975 and 1977, in Bangkok, facilitating the escape from Laos, Cambodia and Thailand and the relocation elsewhere in the world, of numbers of the secret Meo tribesmen group which had carried out the covert political assassination program for Theodore Shackley in Southeast Asia between 1966 and 1975. Assisting Richard Armitage in this operation was Jerry O. Daniels. Indeed, Jerry O. Daniels was a "bag-man" for Richard Armitage, assisting Armitage by physically transporting out of Thailand millions of dollars of Vang Pao's secret opium money to finance the relocation of Theodore Shackley's Meo tribesmen and to supply funds to Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team" operations. At the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Richard Armitage also supervised the removal of arms, ammunition and explosives from the secret Shackley/Clines cache of munitions hidden inside Thailand between 1973 and 1975, for use by Shackley's "Secret Team". Assisting Armitage in this latter operations was one Daniel Arnold, the CIA Chief of Station in Thailand, who joined Shackley's "Secret Team" in his purely private capacity. One of the officers in the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, one Abranowitz came to know of Armitage's involvement in the secret handling of Vang Pao opium funds and caused to be initiated an internal State Department heroin smuggling investigations directed against Richard Armitage. Armitage was the target of Embassy personnel complaints to the effect that he was utterly failing to perform his duties on behalf of American MIAs, and he reluctantly resigned as the D.O.D. Special Consultant on MIA's at the end of 1977. From 1977 until 1979, Armitage remained in Bangkok opening and operating a business named The Far East Trading Company. This company had offices only in Bangkok and in Washington, D.C. This company was, in fact, from 1977 to 1979, merely a "front" for Armitage's secret operations conducting Vang Pao opium money out of Southeast Asia to Tehran and the Nugen-Hand Bank in Australia to fund the ultra right-wing, private anti-communist "anti-terrorist" assassination program and "unconventional warfare" operation of Theodore Shackley's and Thomas Cline's "Secret Team". During this period, between 1975 and 1979, in Bangkok, Richard Armitage lived in the home of Hynnie Aderholdt, the former Air Wing Commander of Shackley`s "Special Operations Group" in Laos, who, between 1966 and 1968, had served as the immediate superior to Richard Secord, the Deputy Air Wing Commander of MAG SOG. Secord, in 1975, was transferred from Vietnam to Tehran, Iran. In 1976, Richard Secord moved to Tehran, Iran and became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of defense in Iran, in charge of the Middle Eastern Division of the Defense Security Assistance Administration. In this capacity, Secord functioned as the chief operations officer for the U.S. Defense Department in the Middle East in charge of foreign military sales of U.S. aircraft, weapons and military equipment to Middle Eastern nations allied to the U.S. Secord's immediate superior was Eric Van Marbad, the former 40 Committee liaison officer to Theodore Shackley's Phoenix program in Vietnam from 1973 to 1975. It later emerged that the two main sources for this story was Carl Jenkins, a senior official in the CIA and Gene Wheaton, a man who had worked for the CIA on a freelance basis. During your research, did you discover if Carl Jenkins was involved in the drug trade? In an interview given in 2005, Wheaton claimed that Jenkins was involved in training this CIA team of assassins. He also added that Jenkins turned this team against JFK. During your research, did you discover any information on this CIA assassination team? (4) How did you come to write The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade? (5) How did the CIA become involved in heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia? (6) In your latest book, A Question of Torture, you look at the the history of the CIA's use of torture. Could you give a brief overview of this story?

I was present for Armstrong's first presentation of his thesis at the Fourth Decade conference at SUNY Fredonia in 1996 and I recall being unimpressed with the way he handled witnesses and their testimony, and with his way of drawing inferences. The name that sticks in my head is Palmer McBride, an acquaintance of Lee Oswald back in his schooldays in New Orleans. I was astonished that Armstrong seemed to treat McBride's "recollections" as gospel, and I formed serious doubts that Armstrong's work would shed any light upon the assassination of JFK. Consequently, I have not followed the development of Armstrong's theory with any great enthusiasm, and I have not (yet) read his book. I note from the website linked to Shanet's post (thank you Shanet) that Armstrong has stated that his "Harvey and Lee" theory will not tell us who killed JFK, so the question then becomes "why bother?" From a brief private meeting with Armstrong at a COPA conference in Washington, I formed the impression that he was at least a gentleman, if not a scholar, but reading Robert Howard's post makes me wonder if I am a good judge of my fellow man. If Robert's post gives an accurate picture, it seems that Armstrong has joined the chorus of those who cast aspersions on Marina Oswald Porter, one of the victims of the horrible events of November 22nd, 1963. I had the privilege of meeting Marina, a very lovely and charming human being. Of course Marina is a woman, with all the obstinacy and contrariness that comes with the territory, but for any man to suggest that there is something sinister about Marina -- it makes me wish that duelling was still legal.

It seems that Jack and Bill have hijacked this excellent thread to carry on a long-standing dispute. Could you transfer these postings to another thread so that I can delete the irrelevant postings. Then maybe we can get back to looking at Lee's theory of what happened in Dealey Plaza.

Tosh Plumlee claims that Barry Seal began working for the CIA in the 1950s: "Barry Seal was involved with military intelligence in the early days... Military intelligence was the real game, with the CIA just acting as logistical people. Barry was a peripheral player back then, but he was a CIA 'contract' pilot all the way back to 1956 or 1957." In 1958 Seal began ferrying weapons to Fidel Castro fighting against the the Fulgencio Batista regime in Cuba. At the time a section of the CIA was supporting the overthrow of Batista. However, the policy changed soon after Castro gained power and Seal is said to have taken part in air attacks on the new government. The following year he became a CIA pilot in Guatemala. It is also believed that Seal was involved in training Cuban exiles on No-Name Key in Florida and on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. There is a connection between Barry Seal and Clay Shaw. In the early 1960s Seal had a couple of companies: Seal Sky Service and Aerial Advertising Associates. The companies had an office in the International Trade Center run by Clay Shaw.